When I look up, Elias smiles like he knows he’s won, gets up from the office chair. “Follow me.”
The opening of the steel door will be a moment I remember for the rest of my life, I’m sure of it. It’s not necessarily because the walk-in resembles all the ones I’ve seen on TV (every kind of produce lines the shelves, crates of fruit, plastic-covered containers of sauces and marinades and herbs). It’s not Elias gesturing me in or even Emma at my back, hand on my shoulder, giggling on my behalf. I will remember this moment because it so clearly feels like I belong here.
On my left are all the sauces used in the set menu, each carefully labeled with a name and a date, although most are riddled with spelling errors. In the back are lowboy freezers loaded with all sorts of meat, almost every cut of beef or pork that I can recognize and plenty that I don’t. This is like the cracked-out version of roaming the supermarket aisles waiting for inspiration.
Elias points me to some flank steak that we have to get rid of soon, a few dozen Mexican-style bolillo bread rolls. “You’re pretty much free to use the pantry and the veggies. Grab stuff from the front, ’cause it’s older. You can use my old station. Ready to serve in an hour or so, before we open. If you don’t know how to use something, ask me. But don’t really ’cause I’m busy.” He grins.
I’m squatting to take a look at some cooked pinto beans in Tupperware. There’s lemongrass nearby, and I think of Felix’s demonstration of Vietnam the other day in the grass. I start to get ideas. “Thanks,” I say.
“Like a kid in a toy store,” Elias says, and though I can hear him and Emma laughing as they head out, I barely register the noise.
A few minutes later I set the meat down on a cutting board in Elias’s old station. Matt hovers over my shoulder and says, “What the fuck you think you’re doing?”
“Staff meal,” I say, hoping he doesn’t go overboard with giving me shit, that he’ll take it easy. Inside I’m cowering, un-Felix-like, just hoping he’ll leave me alone. “Elias asked me to, since I’m caught up.”
Matt gives me a little side-eye, but then a pot starts to bubble over and he curses under his breath while he rushes to it. Isaiah cocks an eyebrow, tells me that if I need help with any of the equipment to ask first before I fuck anything up. It’s a nice gesture, I guess, though the tone implies he wants to throw something at me.
Never before have I bothered to exactly portion my meals, but never before have I cooked in a kitchen like this one. It’s the first time since I got here that I’m cooking for anyone other than myself, and I want to make sure I’m not messing anything up.
That’s exactly what I do, though. I try to make the guajillo aioli from scratch, wasting ten minutes and five eggs before I realize I used the egg whites instead of the yolk and have to throw it all away. The veggies for the sandwiches are sliced unevenly, I overcook the steak and leave lumps of garlic in the bean puree. It’s almost forty minutes after Elias told me to have something ready when I pull out the last of the bolillos from the broiler where they’ve been toasting. I assemble the sandwiches, cut them into halves, wish to become completely invisible. People are gonna tear me apart.
Elias is in the expedite station, meeting with the front of house manager. I stand nearby, not wanting to interrupt. When Isaiah sees me standing there for a while, he calls over. “Hey, man, if those are done, just play the music.”
“Right,” I say. I’m convinced Chef is going to barge in and fire me. That Elias himself will throw me out and tell me never to set foot in a kitchen again.
Felix appears for the first time all day. He’s a white, transparent, Casper-style cartoon ghost, floating around like a kid’s last-minute Halloween costume. “I can’t believe the emotion you’re going for right now is worry. If I were you, I’d be dancing. You just cooked in a professional kitchen, brother.”
I give him a look.
“You’re right. I’ve seen you dance. Please, continue worrying.”
I hang around the window where the sandwiches are sitting under the heat lamp, not sure what the hell else I’m supposed to do. People don’t abandon their stations right away to come eat; they still have prep sheets to go through, slack to pick up from us being understaffed. Elias shows up pretty quickly. “What do we have here?”
“Banh mi tortas.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Nice.” Then he takes a big bite, wipes at some bean paté that’s on the side of his mouth. He nods while chewing, bites again. I can barely stomach half a sandwich myself while I wait for people to trickle in and lay their reactions on me. “Not bad,” Elias says, and it doesn’t sound like a compliment to me. I disappear back into my station, for once happy at being cast away to a corner of the kitchen that proves I don’t belong here.
Every now and then, I pause, dry my hands, take another bite of my sandwich, taste buds hyperactive to what could have gone wrong (underseasoned meat? Too much cilantro? Awful all around?). I keep looking over my shoulder, anticipating Matt coming in to tell me I’m a joke. But no one says a thing.
When I leave that night, I feel like crawling into bed. I’m slightly buzzed from sleep deprivation and sick with the disappointment of screwing up a simple meal. Sure, no one gave me shit, but they weren’t quite licking their lips either.
I’m on my way home when I see Emma stumbling across the road near The Crown, heading into a stretch of woods. I know the girl finds pathways where they don’t exist, but her gait implies a stupor, a lack of control, and I call after her. She looks over her shoulder at me and pauses while I catch up.
Moonlight filters through the space between the trees. She turns her back to me until I’m there, and when I get there, she whips around and says, “My dad’s an asshole.”
“Mine too,” I say.
She laughs and surprises me by falling against me, cheek against my chest. I almost fall backward but gain my footing. Then I realize my T-shirt’s getting warm and damp.
“He always does this shit. Cancels at the last minute. Cancels right when I get my stupid hopes up, like the one parental instinct he got is a sense of when I’ve just started feeling good about him.” She sighs against my chest, pushes back and reveals tear-streaked cheeks and red eyes and dilated pupils.
A beat goes by, and then she says, “Fuck,” and she leans back into my chest for an hour or three or fifteen minutes, I’m not sure. I want to keep her safe from whatever’s hurting her.
Insects buzz around us with a pleasant hum, like the island’s trying to comfort Emma. She steps back again and blinks, looking at me as if she’s realized I’m here, as if she’s just realized anything is here.
“Carlos?”
“It’s me. You’re okay.”
“Where are we?”