by C. J. Berry
“Yea,” Peyton said, “Brandon, the creative director you met on your first day, went to high school with the owner. If Lizzy wears a low cut enough dress we can usually get the waiters to give us free food. They know us here.” With that she took a long sip on her water and then snapped her fingers in the air.
A man with a full beard wearing all black approached our table.
“Oh ladies, not you again.” He was the most burly, effeminate gay man I had ever seen in real life. Not even New York could lay claim to the gay class of burly logger-man. Only in Portland could such a rare and beautiful specimen be found.
“Hey Marcus, what can you do for us tonight?” Lizzy said pushing her arms together and nearly squeezing her breasts out of her dress.
“Ha, girl you know that shit doesn’t work on me. If it ain’t sausage I ain’t cooking!” He gave Peyton a hi-five.
I liked Marcus.
“Go get the chef. I want to bust his balls for what happened last week.” Peyton was looking at a menu trying to keep a straight face.
“Damn girl. You still mad about that? Ok, I will go fetch him for your highness.” Marcus twirled away and made his way to the kitchen. Even from our table we could hear his voice rise above the low hum of the restaurant as he called for the chef in the kitchen. I couldn’t help but smile.
After about 10 minutes Marcus returned, a sullen look on his face.
“I am so sorry to trouble you all-” he said.
“But you are out of everything we ordered?” Peyton asked offhanded.
“The chef has asked that you all come back to the kitchen.”
Lizzy and Angela shot glances of surprise towards each other.
Marcus looked as confused as we did.
“Hell yes, we are going right now.” Lizzy tried to scoot and shove her way past me. I half fell out of the booth.
“Wait,” Angela said, “Why does he want us to come back there?”
The waiter shrugged his shoulders.
“We are going.” Peyton said.
This is why hanging out with your boss can be bad. You can’t say no when you really want to. I briefly considered trying to protest but realized I held little equity amongst the girls and was just as likely to get left behind. This was no time to try and stand out. Just follow the lemmings over the cliff for one night and everything would be fine.
We followed Marcus through the restaurant.
Marcus pulled us through the double doors that led to the kitchen and planted us in a corner out of the way of traffic. The aromas that had been teasing our pallet and causing our stomachs to growl earlier were stronger here in the kitchen. Cooks in white coats were whirling, twirling and flipping their pans. Fire danced and grew as orders were shouted from across the kitchen towards each other. The repetitive noise of knives chopping had a certain rhythm that combined everything together and made me feel like dancing. Or maybe it was just the booze. Either way, I felt a strange urge to grab Marcus and Tango across the kitchen.
“Please wait here while the chef finds a moment.” Marcus said and left.
I was wide eyed as I watched the cooks tending to their craft. Their motions were so fluid, so precise. They all had that calm look in their eye even though the kitchen itself looked like a mad house. I considered the obscene amounts of time I had spent over the years watching the Cooking Channel and realized how very little I actually knew about kitchen life. It looked much different in real life.
“Damn. I want to take that one home.” Peyton said pointing to the cook standing at the head of the kitchen. He wasn’t standing over a stove but he seemed to be the one in charge, barking orders and handling tickets.
“Well I want that one.” Angela pointed to the muscle bound cook who was gently laying cuts of fish on a hot pan. We could see the oil popping and cracking but he seemed unphased to use his hand to place the fish in the pan.
“Hmm, I would take any of them home. Find me a man who can cook and I am in heaven.” Lizzy licked her lips and thrust her hips.
We all laughed.
Chapter 3
Just as Angela began to get restless and suggest we go somewhere else, the chef arrived.
His hair was just long enough to be pulled back and just dark enough to shine against the bright florescent kitchen lights. He wore thick framed glasses, but took them off to shake our hands. His hand was rough, and it nearly wrapped entirely around mine. A towel was flung over his shoulder and he wore a dark gray chef’s coat that hugged his body in all the right places.
It may have been the alcohol, it could have been the atmosphere, but I was certain that he had lingered a bit longer in shaking my hand than the others. I could have sworn that he gave a little extra squeeze before releasing. And if I hadn’t emptied so many glasses just minutes before I would have testified in court that he gave me a little side smirk.
But one can never be sure about these things with lightening courage coursing through the veins.
“Thank you very much for coming.” He said, his voice smooth and deep.
“Well, thank you for having us.” Peyton said as Lizzy gave her a little nudge with her elbow.
I had this funny feeling that we were all in high school again and the star quarterback had just waltzed into our slumber party - but like I said; alcohol. Either way, we were giddy and he played right along.
He showed us around his kitchen. Introducing the cooks, talking about what each station did in the line and at every station he asked, insisted, that we sample something being cooked at the station.
I tried the smoked salmon in lemon-herb soy glaze, the fresh truffles and pickled garlic. I would have hated the pickled garlic except he hand fed me the little devils and I just couldn’t resist. I had to have another.
At just about every turn our four bodies would get jammed in a corner. The kitchen didn’t seem to be made for people but for ovens and stoves and when it was time for us to move on to the next part of the tour the chef would have to wiggle his body past ours to get out of the trap we had made. Lizzy could barely contain her delight when he would rub past her. I tried my best to steer clear. As hot as he was, the last thing I needed in my life at that moment was to be touched by a man. Especially a man like that.
He took us to an area of the kitchen where beef was being prepared. He said something unintelligible to the cook and took the knife from his hand. He made quick slices of the beef and laid it gently in the pan. The sound and smell of searing meat had me nearly drooling on the floor. After a very short time he pulled the beef off of the pan with his bare hands and laid it on a white plastic cutting board. He effortlessly ran the knife back and forth, back and forth against the meat until he had enough shards for each of us. Not even Gordon Ramsey made cutting meat look so damn sexy.
We tasted the meat. It was soft and flavorful.
“What did you put it in?” Angela asked still chewing, savoring each morsel.
“Love.” The chef said and walked on to the next station.
They say that if you can’t handle the heat in the kitchen that you should get out and normally I would have gone running out the back door but the girls kept ushering me along.
I had to stay.
After the chef saw that we were all properly flirted with and fed, he ushered us into a small back room which looked something like a private office with a portion of the wall knocked out so you could see the kitchen as you ate.
“Please have a seat.” He said.
There was a little table for four attached to the wall and four little chairs which we promptly sat our behinds in.
“I will be with you in a moment, but please enjoy the view.” He turned on his heel and left.
We giggled as he left the room. We could see the entire kitchen from where we sat. It was like watching Cirque Du Soleil. Cooks were calling out to each other in a coded language I couldn’t make out. Each cook seemed to have his or her own style as they chopped ingredients, plated food and danced around the kitchen.
The chef stood at the head of it all tasting, inspecting and controlling. I couldn’t help myself but be attracted to his ability to command his ship. I found his sense of control in all that chaos calming, assuring and even sexy. Every once in a while he would bite the end of a pencil he used to mark off tickets and I felt the room spin slightly.
I shook my head and tried to direct my gaze to the dishwasher. Now is not the time to be getting all hot and heavy over some random guy. Luckily, there wasn’t anything sexy about a machine that scraped used food off of dishes. It worked.
Lizzy was the first to put words together into a coherent sentence.
“Oh.My.God. That guy is spicy hot.” She said as she grasped her head with her hands and pulled her cheeks.
“I want his body on my body.” Angela said without even cracking a smile.
Peyton was barely able to keep her watery eyes open she was laughing so hard. The three girls exchanged a few variations on what they already said and then Angela paused.
“What about you Sarah? What do you think about our old friend the chef?”
Silence. The other two girls stopped laughing. Only the clanging of the pots and pans in the kitchen could be heard now.
I knew to tread carefully here. I was the new girl. This wasn’t just a question about what I thought of the hunky guy who just took us on a personal tour of his kitchen, this was a vetting process and I was unprepared.
Instead of saying what I really thought about their chef, I said,
“He seemed nice. His kitchen is really big.”
At this the girls lost it. Every possible innuendo about kitchen size and male anatomy that could be made was made. Angela nearly passed out from laughing so hard. I felt embarrassed, but was happy to see that I had passed the test.
Whatever this mysterious chef had planned for us that evening I was excited to be sharing the experience with these girls.
Chapter 4
We weren’t sitting there long when the chef returned, plates balancing precariously on his arms. I knew they were full sized dinner plates but the chef’s forearms were so wide that they didn’t even teeter as he swung his body through the door and delivered the food to our table.
He placed each plate, a different dish, one by one in front of us.
“I have cooked you each something very special,” he explained, “Off the menu.” He winked.
He proceeded to give us each a rundown of the dish sitting in front of us.
For Angela he prepared a mushroom udon with oyster sauce and sauteed vegetables.
“A sturdy dish, full of solid flavor and deeply satisfying. Whenever I am in need of a dependable meal, this is what I make myself.” He said to her.
For Lizzy, he had made a bowl of sweet beef ramen in a spicy broth topped with buttered corn and green onion.
“This is an experimental dish. It is zesty, fun and a crowd pleaser. Not something I would feed my grandmother, but I love it even more because of that.” Lizzy took a deep breath over the broth’s spicy aroma and licked her lips.
Petyon’s dish looked like a piece of architecture straight out of Japan. Cuts of Kobe beef, teriyaki chicken and roasted marinated vegetables sat atop steaming jasmine rice.
“Sometimes you want the best, and most of the time you just want it all.” He winked at Peyton as he made his way around the table to my seat.
I looked at my dish. It looked like curry, but smelled sweet and fragrant like it had been dowsed in honey butter. I did my best to wait my turn and not just dive into it headfirst. My stomach was still growling with hunger.
“For you,” he said as he leaned over putting his head near mine so we were both looking at the dish, “I have created something soft and sweet. Something that I learned from my travels overseas. It is my secret recipe for chicken tiki masala. There is only one other person on earth who knows the recipe and she lives in a rural village in India so I feel pretty confident in saying you won’t try anything like this again in your entire life.”
I felt my heart pound faster. Suddenly, the girls were looking at me and my dish instead of the chef and his body. I felt like I might pass out. As much as I was trying to enjoy the moment memories of the pain that I had left behind in New York flooded back into the front of my mind and my body was instantly overcome with feelings of painful anxiety. I was having a panic attack. I didn’t want his attention. I didn’t want to play this flirting game anymore. I certainly didn’t want Mr. Chef Suave over here to ruin my chances of any type of peace and harmony back at work. These girls seemed really into him. To me he was just the guy who cooked my food.
“It looks lovely.” I said, keeping my head down and eyes pointed directly at my “once in a lifetime” meal trying not to pass out, freak out or walk out.
The others began eating their meals as well. The only sounds being the moans of oral pleasure that come from eating the best meal you have ever tasted cooked by a man you would have no problem sleeping with if he would but ask. At one point, I thought Lizzy may have been putting it on a little heavy with her moaning, but the chef seemed to enjoy it. After he saw that we were enjoying our meals he left.
“I am sorry ladies, but I have my kitchen to run. I hope that you don’t mind.”
Before we could respond he was gone.
The moans stopped and all three pairs of eyes were on me. I kept shoveling the tiki masala into my mouth. I could hardly taste it, I felt so embarrassed. Each bite that entered my mouth caused me to gag. The growling of my stomach had turned into a painful knotting. I had come to get used to that feeling of anxiety. I didn’t like it, but I was used to it.
I wanted this dish to be as delicious as I knew that it probably was but there was more to it than just taste. This was a dish with meaning and I didn’t want to eat it.
“So.” Peyton set her fork down and put her arm around me.
“So, what?” I said, refusing to look at her.
“So, what are you gonna do about that?” She pointed to the dish now half empty.
“Nothing.”
Almost as soon as the words left my mouth Angela and Lizzy were up in arms.
“What do you mean nothing?”
“Why not?”
“Are you crazy?”
“She must be crazy.”
“Peyton you hired another crazy one.”
“Jesus Peyton don’t you vet these people anymore? How are we supposed to have any fun around here?”
Suddenly, Angela put up her hand. A look of shock across her face.
“Omigod Sarah, I just realized how insensitive we have been. I am so sorry, I didn’t even think to ask.” She said.
“Ask what?” I said, curious that the harassment had stopped so suddenly.
“There isn’t really a delicate way to ask, and it really isn’t any of my business, but,” she paused and shot a quick glance to Peyton then back at me, “are you a lesbian? Is that why you aren’t going to do anything about that guy?”
“Jesus Christ,” Peyton slapped her forehead with her hand, “You are going to get me fired Angela.”
“What? I just need to know for future situations you know? I totally understand if you went lesbian after what your ex did. I totally get it. I am totally cool with it, I just-”
“Shut up Angela.” Lizzy said studying me for a reaction.
The night couldn’t get any more awkward.
Realizing that Peyton had disclosed what I thought were private comments in our first meeting my mind spun trying to think of a way to salvage what reputation that I may have had left. In a way I was glad Peyton had shared my story. I needed to laugh about it with someone. If I played this situation out with some class I may even get a permanent spot in these girls’ little group.
I sighed, crumpled my napkin and said,
“No. I like penis, just like my ex does.”
The girls didn’t know how to react. They held it in as long as they could but the alcohol got the best of them and they burst into crying laught
er. Peyton flashed a genuine smile and that familiar feeling that comes when you realize you may have just made a lifelong friend fell gently into my mind.
“You really are a hoot Sarah.” Peyton said as she cut a slice of Kobe beef.
“Well, if you aren’t going to do anything about him, I will.” Lizzy said and left the table.
“Now you’ve gone and done it.” Angela said as she twirled an udon noodle around her fork.
Minutes later Lizzy returned with the chef in tow. Literally, she was pulling him into the room. He was yelling for a waiter as he entered the room.
“I am so sorry,” he said, “I didn’t realize that you were ready to go so soon. I will have my waiter come show you out and clear your table.”
Peyton and I exchanged confused glances. I certainly wasn’t ready to go. If the gods were going to force me to keep living after that embarrassing little moment earlier I wanted to reap the rewards and finish savoring the incredible dish that lay before me.
“No chef, it isn’t that at all. It’s Sarah. She has something she would like to say to you.”
I almost choked on a piece of chicken. A wave of heat overcame me, like my head had just been rammed into one of the industrial ovens in his kitchen. I didn’t say anything.
For the umpteenth time this evening, only the sounds of the kitchen could be heard in that little room. All eyes were on me.
“I am sorry - Sarah was it?” The chef stepped over to my chair and put his hand on my forearm. My stomach flipped and a tingle shot through the floor of the restaurant up my legs. I tried not to, but I shivered.
“I am sorry,” he said in a deep chocolate voice, “if you weren’t satisfied with your meal. I can prepare you something else entirely if you wish.”
He was close to me now, a little too close. Marcus came running into the room. Four sets of eyes were now watching the chef and I as he leaned in. I didn’t press him back or ask him to move because I didn’t want him to. To be honest, it had been a while since a man had leaned that close to me who wasn’t also riding the same bus or trying to squeeze past in an overcrowded grocery store.