Jesus. The air in the room feels exactly the way it did when I left home. At least now I know why Emma seemed a little familiar. I’d seen Chef before, on that show. “Whatever,” Emma says. “Dishwashing isn’t the hardest job to learn. You need a dishwasher. He wants a job in restaurants. I’m just helping you out.”
Wait, what? Where the hell did Emma get that notion? I’m so confused, which must show on my expression because when Emma sees it she gives me a little smirk. “The way you talk about cooking. You don’t want to go back home, do you?”
Emma raises her eyebrows, questioning. Chef Elise has a similar look in her eyes, just a little more on the exasperated side. As I’m caught in their stares, wondering what I’m supposed to say to that, I sense another presence in the room. Of course. Felix. I try to subtly look around for him, find him in the dust swirling around in a beam of light.
“I think the girl has a point,” Felix says. Only my brother could find a way to smirk when he’s dust. “Why go back to the same thing? What’s waiting at home for you?” At least he’s in wisdom-nugget mode and not stupid-joke mode.
I think about what I said to Mom before I left. One week. It feels like a joke now. How could I have thought a week would be enough? It’s enough for a meal, maybe.
My thoughts are interrupted by the squeak of Chef’s chair as she rolls over to pick up her clipboard. “Fuck, Emma, look at him. He doesn’t even know where he is.” Great, I’ve been staring at a beam of light and probably moving my lips while I think up a response. Chef’s about to tell me to go away and I don’t know what I’d do with the rest of my day. Go back to my room, try to hold myself together by cooking things Felix and I used to. Go home. Face Dad again.
“Elias!” Chef yells out.
A Latino dude shows up at the door. “Yes, Chef.” He’s in a chef coat too, a towel slung over his shoulder, sweat already on his forehead. He’s right around Felix’s age, maybe in his midtwenties.
“Have we heard from Richie yet?”
“No, Chef. That’s three days.”
Chef looks back at me and then at Emma. The other cook, Elias, goes back to whatever he was doing in the kitchen. Chef leans back in her chair and then goes over to the computer on her desk and clicks a few times. Emma gives me a reassuring smile, or at least that’s what I assume it’s supposed to be. It’s six in the morning and I think I’m in the middle of asking for a job, which was not at all in my morning plans.
Then Chef sighs and pushes herself away from her desk. “You,” she says, pointing at me. “Come with me.” She walks toward us, combing back a loose strand of hair. I want to explain further, say that I’m only here a short while, that I don’t know what the hell is going on. Frankly, I’m a little terrified to say anything. “And you,” she says, scowling at Emma. “I love you, but you’re such a fucking brat.”
Emma beams a smile and then I’m following Chef out the door. “Love you too, Chef,” Emma calls out behind us. Felix comes along as my shadow, which is the first time I’ve seen my shadow in months. He’s pretty bad at it. He keeps doing all these flips and leaving the confines of where a shadow should be. Given everything else that’s happening, he’s making it really hard for me to keep my cool.
“These are walk-ins,” Chef points to the steel doors Emma and I walked past earlier, “but there’ll be no reason for you to be in this part of the kitchen. You love cooking? Awesome. So does everyone else here. You don’t get to do it my kitchen.”
At the end of the corridor Chef points out the prep hall. There are three cooks in there: a short and stout Latino guy shoving tomatoes into some sort of chopping contraption that I’ve never seen before, even on cooking shows; a tall black guy stirring something in a big pot; and an older Latina looking over a sheet of paper stuck to the ticket rail above her. Chef calls out to them, says, “New dishwasher! This is...”
Caught up in the suddenness of what’s happening, I’m surprised that I manage to say my name. Chef introduces them to me. Memo, Isaiah, Lourdes—I say their names a few times to myself as if I’m really planning on staying. Chef shows me where all the stations are, gives me a brief summary of what each is responsible for. Each person is introduced along with their title: Michelle and Gus are the two sous-chefs; Vee, the enormous Southern rotisseur who carries a machete-length knife in a holster at her side; Elias is the poissonnier, and he raises his eyebrows the slightest bit and goes back to whisking something.
Here is the language Felix and I used to employ as often as possible. Kitchenese, we used to call it. Any time we cooked together, we wanted to feel like we belonged, so we spoke as if we did.
Steam is billowing up into the induction hood, which is much louder than I could have ever imagined. Through the sounds of the kitchen (pots being moved, water running, knives coming down on cutting boards), things are fairly quiet. I catch a lot of Spanish being exchanged, even from the handful of staff members who aren’t Latino. Most people are in chef’s whites or have some other sort of coat on, as well as checkered pants or black trousers. Absolutely everyone is in these big, ugly, comfortable-looking shoes.
On the line, I’m introduced to Morris and Boris (entremetiers), who have matching loud mouths and tattoos, twins if not for their difference in race. Matt arrives in the middle of my tour, giving me a confused look, which I return, because no one here is more confused than I am. His eyes are bloodshot, as if the party continued on long after we left the lake last night.
“This is the pass,” Chef says, pointing to a long station at the end of the kitchen. “This is where I am most shifts, making sure every piece of food that goes out is perfect before it continues on to the dining room floor. If I’m not here, the sous are in charge. Sometimes it’s me. Sometimes it’s two of us. Whoever is standing here, you don’t fucking talk to, okay?”
“Yes, Chef,” I say, thrilled at the way the words sound leaving my mouth. I’ve read the term in books, heard it offhand in cooking shows. Felix the shadow jumps and clicks his heels together. I half expect him to break out into a musical number.
I look at the pass the way an art aficionado might when entering the Louvre for the first time. I see about two dozen spots ready for plastic containers. Mise en place, I think to myself. I can’t believe I’m here. There are a couple of containers arriving to the pass right now, oils and chopped herbs, something that looks like sesame-seed crisps.
“You’re over here,” Chef says, leading me away from the heart of the kitchen.