He added it in so quickly, so smoothly, I thought I’d misheard him. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t pretend,” he said. “Sammy.”
I looked around the kitchen. There was no one going out of his way to stare at me.
“Who knows?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t taken a poll yet. Would you like me to? I can imagine the dishwashers don’t care.”
“Please, I really need this job.”
“And I really need a good server. Lottie just fired someone else. And tonight’s menu is particularly demanding. So if you can keep up and do your job, your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you.”
“Probably shouldn’t thank me until you hear my definition of good job.”
Before Douglas could say anything else vaguely resembling a threat, the kitchen door swung open, and there he was. Z. He was in his chef’s jacket and pants, wire-rim glasses covering his eyes. He was in his fifties and surprisingly good-looking, considering his red hair, his never-even-seen-the-sun skin. It wasn’t entirely a surprise. He was, for a time, as well known for the women he dated as for his food. There was something about him. Call it confidence, call it not giving a shit. He was hard not to notice.
“All right, people, let’s do it,” he said.
Lottie stood to his right, and everyone else gathered around him in a semicircle. There were several dishes lined up on the counter behind him—piping hot pastas and a lamb shank, an elegant arctic char.
Chef Z picked up a plate of what looked to be some kind of flatbread pizza.
“That’s Z’s strawberry sofrito pizza,” Douglas whispered. “Garden-grown strawberries, heirloom tomatoes, homemade ricotta cheese, balsamic vinegar, fresh basil . . .”
I swear, my stomach started to rumble. I was scared that Douglas had heard. But his eyes were firmly on Z. Everyone’s were.
Z broke off a piece of the sweet, ooey-gooey goodness, which looked like a work of art—the ratio of tomatoes to strawberries to the dense thick cheese—perfectly decadent.
Z seemed less than pleased, though. “Kristin, where’s the basil?” he said.
One of the sous-chefs stepped forward, not answering at first.
“Kristin?” he said.
She pointed to the other five pieces in the pie, which were strewn with gorgeous julienned pieces of the herb, so fresh and abundant, I could smell it from several feet away.
“Chef, it’s right there,” she said.
“Are you planning on going to each table tonight to make sure our guests happen to pick up a piece that you decided deserved fresh basil?”
“No, Chef.”
He pointed at his piece. “It should be right here,” he said.
Then he whispered something to Lottie and dropped the pizza on the countertop, disappearing out the same door he came in.
Lottie sighed. “An hour to service, folks,” she said.
Then she motioned for Kristin to follow her out of the kitchen.
I looked up at Douglas. “She’s not seriously getting fired over that?”
Douglas shook his head. “What did I tell you about those kind of questions?”
Douglas could move. In the first half hour of dinner service, I think I ran a mile just keeping up with him. I started to sweat, and not the cute kind of sweat—beads of perspiration dripping down my back, staining my new shirt. I was desperate for a glass of water, but too smart to dare ask. I was trying to keep mental notes, Douglas racing through responsibilities he assumed I understood from my imaginary years working at restaurants as fancy as—and far busier than—this was.
I tried to sneak peeks at Chef Z, who stood opposite his cooks line, monitoring the orders and doing quality control on every single plate before it went out into the dining room. He didn’t talk to anyone except his cooks, and he spoke to them constantly, giving them orders. I need a sofrito. Where is my salt? Steak, five times. It was like he was a different man from earlier in the evening. Calm, evenhanded, in his element. I started to think: Why was everyone making such a big deal about this kitchen being a nightmare? Then I heard his voice.
“Taylor!” Chef Z screamed. Loudly.
I swung around toward the cooking line, expecting to see Chef Z. But he was standing at an empty workstation, in the back of the kitchen.
“TAYLOR!” Chef Z screamed again.
A thin and scrawny guy came running from the bathroom, back to the workstation. He had tattoos up and down his arms—one in notable block letters. I tried to read it without being too obvious about it. You’re the reason I’ll be traveling on . . . Don’t think twice, it’s all right. Why did it sound familiar? They were lyrics to a Bob Dylan song. I loved that song, though a little less on someone’s arm.
He wiped his hands on his apron. “Yes, Chef.”
Chef Z held up a dirty dish in his hand, a few tomatoes scattered across it.
“What is on this plate?” Z said.
“Those would be tomatoes, Chef. I believe from the strawberry pizza.”
“So you do recognize the fruit, then?”
The kitchen got quieter than before. Everyone was pretending they weren’t doing exactly what everyone was doing: looking back and forth between them, no one saying a word.
“Before you took off on your little break, or wherever you’ve been, did you or did you not mark that a plethora of tomatoes were left behind?”
“I did not.”
“And why not? Isn’t it your one job to note which foods return from the dining room uneaten?”
“I didn’t consider the amount to be a plethora.”
“Is that sarcasm?”
“Absolutely not, Chef. We’re early in the evening, and before I disturbed you with it, I wanted to see—”
“A diner leaves a dozen tomatoes on his plate, I want to know. A diner leaves a single tomato on his plate, I want to know that too. Who leaves a tomato behind? I sat in the garden. I planted it myself. That is heaven. They left a bit of heaven on their plate.”
“And in a few weeks, it won’t even be around to waste,” I said.
He looked around the kitchen, meeting my eyes. “Who are you?”
Everyone turned and looked in my direction. I cleared my throat, knowing I’d just taken a risk, but knowing I had to, if I wanted to get anywhere with Z.
“I’m your new server. In training to be, at least.”
“So you’re not particularly useful.”
Douglas moved slowly away, as though the inevitable firing was something he could catch.
“What do you think about waste?”
“I’m against it.”
There was a chuckle in the group, but I knew that my answer was the right one: succinct, sure of itself.
Z tilted his head, taking me in. His attention was on me; the room’s attention was on me as well.
“Come here, please,” he said.
I hesitated, and Z started flapping his arm.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I walked over, and he motioned for me to step behind the workstation, next to Taylor. I looked at Taylor, who turned away.
“Here’s the deal. Watch everything that Taylor writes down. If he misses anything, if he misses one tomato, you tell the captain and you take his job.”
“And what if he gets everything right, Chef?”