by Rob Hart
As she was tempering whisked eggs into a pot of hot cream, The Butcher’s voice rang out. “Now, Chef Nova, don’t think I forgot about you. Chef Stuart, did you know how Chef Nova wound up here today?”
Nova closed her eyes.
“She was a last minute addition,” said The Butcher. “In fact, we rejected her when she first applied. But we didn’t reject her business partner, Chef Martiza, who was supposed to be here. But Maritza was scalded by a pot of boiling oil that Chef Nova was carrying. Chef Nova, where exactly were you taking that oil?”
The image flashed through Nova’s head. The one she kept trying to forget. Martiza’s eyes squeezed shut, face twisted in pain. Elbow up, palm out, the olive skin of her forearm turning a furious pink, and then bubbling…
Nova looked up at Stuart, who was staring at her.
“It was an accident,” Nova said.
Stuart kept staring so she said it again.
“An accident.”
She wasn’t sure if he believed her. She wasn’t sure if he needed to. She turned her attention to the ice cream base, wondering if this was it, if this was when Stuart would turn on her. If he would take it as permission, because men could find permission in the tiniest of places. If she should try to explain how it was a busy night and there was a lot going on in the kitchen, and no, it had nothing to do with the fact that Martiza had gotten the callback and she hadn’t, and it didn’t matter that Martiza would have sprung for the cooler and the bathrooms but not the vacation.
It wasn’t that.
“Sugar?” Stuart asked.
Nova looked at the containers in front of her. Two plastic containers, both filled with white powder. One red, one blue. She couldn’t remember which was which, even though she’d tasted them a few minutes ago. She opened the container with the red top and dipped her pinky in and the salt stung her tongue.
“Yeah,” she said, and she pushed the container with the red top toward him.
Without looking, without measuring, he poured some into his base. She watched as he whisked hard in the metal pan over the double-boiler, then brought it to the ice cream machine. She expected him to taste it, to turn and look at her with confusion and fury because they’d just shaken hands, but he didn’t.
And that was on him. A good chef tasted as they went.
As he dumped the mixture into the machine, she finished hers, dipped a spoon in and tasted—perfect—and poured it into the machine next to his.
“Just a few minutes to go,” The Butcher said. “And I’ve got one more surprise.”
They waited, watched, not wanting the ice cream to churn too long into butter. Nova thought about the last time she went on a vacation. Six years ago. And it was to Detroit, for a wedding. She stayed an extra couple of days to check out some restaurants, but that barely counted.
She wanted a beach. She wanted sun. She wanted to forget this place. Six years. Hadn’t she earned it?
The ice cream finished. They dosed it into the bowls they’d chilled in the fridge, to keep the dessert from melting too quickly. Nova watched as Stuart left a large dollop dangling from the machine. He looked at it like he wanted to try it, but didn’t.
He saw her looking at him looking at the ice cream and shrugged. “Lactose intolerant. But I’ve made this a million times. You ready?”
She nodded, suddenly not feeling so clever. The dog barked as they marched back to the cafeteria. The Butcher’s table was now empty. They placed the bowls down and stood on the red X’s and waited. There was a sound from the other end of the room, and then footsteps.
The Butcher was holding his gun out in front of him. He was flanked by two people. As they got closer, Nova felt herself sinking into the floor.
Maritza. Wild black hair cascading around her, olive skin dim in the light, the sleeve ripped off her blouse, her arm wrapped in heavy layers of gauze. She was supposed to be in the hospital another week. Next to her was a stout Mexican man with a thick moustache staring bullets at Stuart. Nova turned and saw Stuart’s jaw hanging open.
The Butcher stopped in front of the table and gestured for his companions to sit. They did, looking at the gun the same way Nova and Stuart looked at the dog. The Butcher stood behind them and said, “Introductions are in order. Chef Stuart, please meet Chef Maritza, who Chef Nova…” he put his hands in the air and did exaggerated air quotes, “‘accidentally’ burned in the kitchen. And, Chef Nova, please meet Eduardo, who led the class-action suit against Chef Stuart.”
“What the hell is this?” Stuart asked.
“This makes it more fun. For me. Not for you.” The Butcher gestured toward the bowls. “I didn’t tell you to prepare two, because I wanted to keep this a surprise, so, Eduardo, Martiza, you’ll have to share. I know which is which, but I won’t tell you. I’m afraid you might be…biased.”
The two of them turned to The Butcher, wondering if they should really be eating ice cream right now. The Butcher raised the gun and Eduardo reached forward. He pulled Nova’s bowl toward them. He took a spoonful, tasted. Maritza did the same. Nothing on their faces betrayed their reaction.
“What do you think?” The Butcher asked.
Neither of them answered, so he prodded Eduardo in the back with the gun. “Good, good,” he said, putting his hands up. “Really good, actually.”
“Yeah,” Martiza said. “Good.”
“Not the most eloquent.” He picked up the bowl and slid a spoonful under his mask. “Now this is lovely. A little scotch and salt really complement the Mexican vanilla beans, which I generally find to be a bit much, but not here. Very nice. Next.”
Eduardo took the second bowl, stuck the spoon in his mouth and grimaced. Martiza followed. “Tastes like salt,” Eduardo said.
The Butcher put his hand on the bowl, then pushed it away. “I’m not even going to try it. I saw what you did, Nova. Very smart.”
Stuart took in a sharp breath of air. Nova looked at him. He was shaking his head at her, his eyes wet with tears. “I didn’t…I thought…we shook on it.”
“It was a mistake,” Nova said.
“No, it wasn’t,” said The Butcher.
Nova’s shoulders fell. She bowed her head. Closed her eyes. Stuart let out a huff of air, like: I should have known better.
“Sounds about right,” Maritza said, her voice sharp. “Though I guess given how things played out, maybe I should thank you. Maybe ask me again when my pain meds wear off.”
Nova studied the floor in front of her, the black and white linoleum tiles, the way they were worn down, the way she was worn down, the way she’d fought and clawed her way from dishwasher to line chef to owning her own restaurant, to the things she fought and suffered along the way, and the feeling that she had to do whatever it took to survive, and how maybe, just maybe, that feeling had poisoned her.
She wanted to say this to Maritza, to Stuart, even to The Butcher, but the words got jumbled on the way to her mouth.
“I broke my leg.”
Eduardo. He was looking at Stuart.
“I took some construction jobs because I couldn’t afford to feed my family,” he said. “I fell off a ladder and broke my leg. That happened because you took money out of my pocket.”
“My mother…”
“Don’t you dare say that again,” Eduardo said, his face twisting in rage. He stood from his chair, knocking it back, and advanced on Stuart. Nova turned to The Butcher, like he might stop it, but instead he watched as they slammed into each other, and it almost seemed like he was smiling under the mask.
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the meat cleaver Nova had used to free the pan in the basement. He placed it next to Martiza and said, “I bet you have some feelings to work out, too.”
“What the hell kind of show is this?” Nova asked.
“Oh, this isn’t a show,” The Butcher said. “It’s more of a personal art project. Basically, I guess you could say I like to play with my food.”
Nova’s heart pa
used in her chest but no one else seemed to have heard him. Eduardo and Stuart were grappling on the floor and Maritza was sliding the cleaver off the table, testing the weight and the swing of it.
“Remember,” The Butcher said. “There are no rules.”
Frederick placed the three plastic trays balanced on his arms atop the green cafeteria-style table. He sat, and after three hours of wandering through Chinatown, and another half hour queuing up at three different food stalls, it felt good to sit.
It was just after the dinner rush and most of the other tables in the Hong Lim Food Centre were empty, though some of the seats were occupied by tissue packets or umbrellas. In one particularly bold choice, a pocketbook. It was an unspoken rule of Singapore’s food markets—leaving an item behind was a way to call dibs on a seat while you were waiting in line.
A good number of the stalls were closed, their gray metal gates pulled down, but the three he wanted to visit had been open, and Frederick counted himself lucky.
The crowd had whittled to office-workers catching a bite on the way home and a few older folks socializing amidst the closing. Stall owners sprayed out their cookware, thick streams of opaque water running toward the drains in the concrete floor. A stooped old man in a stained white shirt crept between the tables, pushing a broom across the floor, the sound of it like a metronome: swish swish swish.
It was hot for February, or at least, hot for what Frederick thought of February—the sun down and still pushing ninety, humidity somewhere around three thousand percent. He breathed in the smell of fryer oil and fish and spices he didn’t know the name for.
He didn’t know if he’d ever be back to Singapore, especially not after tonight, and he wanted to remember it.
That feeling of sitting in a slowly boiling pot of soup, and what a way to go.
“Well, well, well.”
Frederick looked up and found Mateo, standing on the other side of the table, looming, his black pants wrinkled, white shirt soaked with sweat, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, showing the hint of a tattoo on his left arm, the colors muddy, the shape vaguely military. The look on Mateo’s face he couldn’t discern. It was a look that carried a lot of years.
“Have you eaten?” Frederick asked, gesturing to the empty stool across from him.
“That’s what you have to say?” Mateo asked, his face narrowing into a sharp smirk. “After all this time?”
“Join me.”
Mateo looked around, at the emptying confines of the outdoor food market, then down into the courtyard, where a throng of people moved back and forth. Across the way, golden light spilled out from under a red awning.
“Please,” Frederick said, trying to the keep the desperation out of his voice. He didn’t want to give Mateo the satisfaction, but he didn’t want the food to go to waste, either.
Mateo lowered himself on the stool like it might explode. He placed his forearms on the table, fists clenched, shoulders bunched. Waiting for something.
“It’s a standard form of greeting in Singapore,” Frederick said.
“What is?”
“Have you eaten.”
“Is it now?”
Frederick nodded and picked up a pair of dinged silverware, focused on the traffic-cone-orange tray in front of him, the plate of char kway teow, and tried to get every little piece of the dish into one bite: rice noodles and Chinese sausage and blood cockles. There were crisp cubes of pork lard, too, but he couldn’t fit one on his fork, so he vowed to come back. “What do you know about Singapore?”
“Enough.”
“They take their food very seriously here.” Frederick gestured around the market with his fork. “Years ago, it used to be all street food. Like you’d see in Bangkok. But it was getting to be too much. Traffic, sanitary issues. So the government moved them all into these centers. This is an expensive town, but, man, you come to these hawker markets.” He shoved the fork into his mouth, chewed, the fat and salt melting. He swallowed and said, “All this food was less than twenty sing.”
Mateo nodded toward the plate. “What is that?”
“Char kway teow. And this…” He gestured to the second tray, bright lime-green, holding a plate with an omelet that looked like it had been dropped on the floor. “Carrot cake. There’s no carrot in it. Those white chunks are steamed rice flour and white radish. These are both pretty signature dishes. But this…” He put his hand on the third and final tray, deep regal-blue. “Hainanese chicken rice. Pretty much just boiled chicken, served with a sauce, and then the rice is cooked in ginger and chicken fat.” Frederick looked up at Mateo and smiled. “There’s a place not too far from here that Bourdain endorsed, so everyone goes to that one, but my sources tell me this is better.”
“Boiled chicken?”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“I’ll pass.”
Frederick tapped the green tray. “Extra set of silverware.”
“How do I know it’s safe?”
“The food stalls are clean,” Frederick said. “They’re manic about it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do you think that little of me?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
Frederick sighed. He stabbed a chunk of the carrot cake and chewed on it, the salt from the dark soy almost blowing out his palate, so he took a sip of water before he took a slice of chicken, bathed in the brown sauce with a little bit of the rice. He chewed slowly, comparing it in his mind to Tian Tian, Bourdain’s pick. He had to concede—Tian Tian was superior. Still, it was a hell of a lot better than lukewarm boiled chicken had any right to be.
“Satisfied?” Frederick asked.
Frederick had hoped the gesture might soften Mateo a little, but the man’s face remained cast in concrete.
“After all we’ve been through, it feels perverse to share a meal with you,” Mateo said.
Frederick shrugged, leaned over the char kway teow, went hunting for a cube of lard. “You know why I like food?”
Silence. Frederick didn’t look up because he knew exactly the kind of look he was getting, and he didn’t want to get it. He speared a chunk of lard and a fat blood cockle, popped them in his mouth, chewed slowly. When he was done, he looked up at Mateo, who was scanning the market again, like he was looking for someone who was running late.
“The reason I like food is because it’s the one thing we all have in common.”
Mateo raised a reluctant eyebrow. “How is that?”
“Think about it.” He took a few chews of carrot cake, followed by another sip of the water. “Every culture has its own cuisine. Every city has its signature dish. You could say Hainanese chicken rice is the signature dish of Singapore and, I don’t know…pizza is the signature dish of New York. Or moqueca—that’s a fish stew—is the signature dish of Brazil. Those three dishes lined up side-by-side couldn’t be more different, right? So what do they have in common?”
Frederick asked, like he was going to get an answer, but all he got was another eyebrow, which filled his stomach with an empty space. Even after all these years, he didn’t think the gulf between him and Mateo had grown this wide, but then again, the view was probably different from the other side of the table.
“The thing they all have in common is the passion,” he said. “Every New Yorker has their favorite pizza place. Everyone in Singapore has their favorite stall, or their favorite dish that best represents their country. And every country has traditions related to food and hospitality.” He scooped a big heap of rice, fragrant with ginger and chicken fat, chewed it quickly. “Every person alive can probably name a dish they ate in their childhood that meant something to them. Something that sparks a memory. Do you get where I’m going?”
The eyebrow was still there, arched over Mateo’s eye, but something in his face cooled. Or maybe it melted in the heat. Mateo risked a look over his shoulder, at the swish swish swish sound, saw the man pushing the broom, who worked oblivious to the crowds around
him.
“Tell me,” Frederick said. “What food was special to you? In your childhood”
Mateo breathed in deeply through his nose, then back out, the sound of it whistling.
“C’mon,” Frederick said. “I’m not saying you owe me, but after all this time…” He looked around, felt the condensation of the air on his skin. “This is the end of the road, I imagine. So why not indulge me?”
“My grandmother’s pancakes.”
Mateo said it quickly, and after the words left his mouth, there was a look of almost-surprise on his face, like he had meant to think it, but it just spilled out.
“And what made them special?” Frederick asked.
Mateo glanced at the food. He was getting hungry. Frederick wanted to nudge the green tray with the carrot cake a little closer, but was afraid a stray movement might scare the man off, like a stray cat that knew it was hungry but didn’t know how to trust.
“They were just pancakes,” Mateo said. “They came out of a box. But my grandmother put blueberries in them. Fresh ones she picked at this farm near where we grew up.” His eyes got softer, his voice trailing. “There was something special about the way she made them. When I visit home, I get the same brand, same blueberries. But they don’t taste the same.”
Frederick took the opportunity of the nostalgic haze to push the tray a few inches closer to Mateo, who was lost enough in the memory to not really notice.
“I believe strongly in the alchemy of place,” Frederick said. “There are certain foods you really need to eat in their region of birth. It’s like how a pizza place will say it ships its water and ingredients from New York. But it’s still not the same as New York pizza. You know what I mean?”
Mateo’s lip curled a little on the end. “You remember Osaka?”
Frederick nodded. “Great takoyaki. Great okonomiyaki.”
“Yeah, I don’t get down so much with the foodie stuff,” he said. “But one day, I was just really in the mood for a bagel. And I walked by this café, said it had New York style bagels, and my stomach…” He laughed a little under his breath. “My stomach did a flip. I thought, even if it’s close, I’ll be happy.”