“How did—”
“He just knows things. If you want lunch, it’ll be an hour or so before we
start serving.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t come for lunch. I came to see if—” He paused;
a little color streaked his face. “Is Sage here?”
“No,” she said, amazed again, wondering how they had ever met. “She shops
on Tuesdays.”
“Of course. On Tuesdays.” He sighed. “If I walked in here on a Wednesday or
a Saturday, that would be the day she’s out shopping.”
She stared at him, recognizing that dazed look in his eyes. When on earth had
he had time to fall in love with Todd Stillwater’s wife? Then he was seeing
Carrie again; he glanced puzzledly at the world around her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you working for Stillwater now?”
She swallowed, stepped closer to him. “Listen,” she said softly. “Please.
Don’t tell anyone I’m working here. Please. Nobody at the Kingfisher Inn
knows. Nobody. I don’t want them to know. Except my father. I mean, he
already knows. But he’s not talking about it. Maybe he’ll talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Just—please. Promise me? If you promise, I’ll tell Sage you came here. But
I won’t tell Todd Stillwater.”
He flushed again. But his eyes, on her face, were wide, curious. “I’ll try
to remember,” he promised. “Might be easier if I knew why it’s such a
secret.”
“It’s too complicated to explain, and I can’t, right now. You should go. I
need to work. That way I’ll have something to think about, and Todd won’t
pick you out of my head.”
He frowned at that, still studying her. “Are you all right? I’ve never even
met him, and he has that effect. Of making people not all right.”
“I’m fine. I need to be fine. We’ll talk later. Over a beer at the
Kingfisher bar. All right?”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
In the quiet vault, she took the odd pot out of the corner where she always
found it, no matter where else she had left it. Stillwater moved it out of his
way, maybe. It had other quirks that she was beginning to expect. No matter
how thoroughly she washed it, no matter how it brightened and glowed under her
scrubbing, it would be, when next she saw it, in the same dull, cobwebby,
grimy state as she had first found it. Stillwater, again, she guessed, though
it was hard to imagine him not cleaning a pot, when she never saw as much as a
speck on his gleaming machines. Another weirdness was the way it changed size
according to what she put into it. It seemed to know what she wanted to cook:
It grew huge at the proximity of live crabs from the docks; it dwindled down
to the size of a soup bowl when she melted butter.
It could read her mind.
The first time she used it, she had no idea what to expect. None of Stillwater
’s machines ever did anything predictable. Would it, she wondered, transform
a homely potato into a perfect nest of twigs, deep-fry them golden, and lay
tiny eggs of potato ice cream in them? It did. Would it stack paper-thin
slices of raw beef, black licorice, sweet cherries, white onion, and
bittersweet chocolate into colorful layered bites, and add a rosette of red
onion on top of it? It would indeed. Might it shred the boiled crabmeat, swirl
cracked peppercorns, roasted garlic, and the tender green shoots of onions in
such a magical fashion that the concoction could be inserted into hollow
straws of deep-fried butter and breadcrumbs, to be sucked through them before
the straws themselves were eaten? It might, it would, and it did. Carrie, so
enchanted by the results, picked one without a thought out of the pot and bit
into it.
Tastes filled her mouth: crab, onion, garlic, pepper, salt and spices from the
breadcrumbs. She stood in shock, her mouth full, not daring to chew, just
letting the wonderful wave of flavors flow and break across her tongue until,
reflexively, she swallowed. The flavors did not vanish; they lingered,
reminding her what charms and delights a simple, single bite of anything at
all could hold.
She reached into the pot for another, then another.
Then she heard Todd’s voice, Sage answering, Todd’s voice again, coming
closer as he walked into the vault. He wore his sweet Stillwater face since
the restaurant would soon be open. At other times, he did not know, or perhaps
he didn’t care, what face Carrie saw. She turned to present him with her
experimental crab bite, and found the pot had disappeared, along with
everything she had made.
She stared at where it had been, then at the corner where it usually sat: it
was nowhere to behold.
She still had a bite, she realized, in her hand. He looked surprised by the
bare table, the silent machines.
“You haven’t started cooking yet? It’s nearly time to open. Business is
doing well with all the knights coming in. They inspire me,” he said, with a
faint, thin smile.