Cocky Chef

by JD Hawkins

  The whole thing left a scar that not even weeks of moping around started to heal. I had to couch surf at my sister’s while I figured my next move out, and the huge debt of my cooking education weighed on me like a bag of stones. I wasn’t helped by the fact that my boyfriend at the time, Nick, decided that a day after the closure was his cue to send me a break-up text. In hindsight, it was probably a blessing in disguise—it was clear Nick basically saw me as a meal ticket, and that what I thought was love was really just the comfort of having somebody around, though Nick couldn’t even provide that in the end.

  It’s difficult not to define yourself by a failure that big. I started to wonder if maybe I really was just another average chef who needed a reality check. If maybe my ideals and ambitions should remain just ideals and ambitions. I remember seeing an ad for a fry cook at a cheap steak house and actually considering it, then crying my eyes out once I realized how desperate I’d gotten. I felt like my entire life plan had imploded, leaving me with nothing.

  It was Tony who convinced me to move down to L.A. We’d met while studying under Guillhaume de Lacompte in France. As the only two Americans we clung to each other for support as the grumpy, pockmarked Frenchman ranted and criticized his students in what was more like a boot camp for nuclear war than a prestigious gourmet cooking course. During every lesson we’d approach the stations with the trepidation of a bomb defusal. We should have known it was going to be near-traumatic when Guillhaume’s first words to us were: ‘Food is not a matter of life and death. It is more important.’

  Returning to the US, while I spent a year preparing the most ambitious culinary industry failure in Idaho’s history, Tony worked in L.A. at some of the hottest restaurants, switching between them and working his way up the ladder with the mercenary aptitude of a gun for hire.

  “Listen,” he had told me over the phone, just days after the shutdown of my restaurant back home, “come down to Los Angeles. Chefs can’t walk ten steps here without being offered a job. Pay off your debts, make use of those God-given talents you’ve got, and then figure out what you wanna do with the rest of your life.”

  “I dunno, Tony…”

  “What are you afraid of? Getting a tan? Working with the best chefs in all the nicest places? Serving food to celebrities and actors and singers? The great tips? The gorgeous men? You’re right, it does sound scary.”

  “Ugh. Men are the last thing on my mind right now. Like…the very last thing on the list of things I want.”

  “I get it. You’re a country girl—hate the city. You wanna spin across the meadows like Julie Andrews every morning—and one day you will, I’m sure. But if you wanna make something of yourself, you’ve got to go to the city, and L.A. is the one to be in right now.”

  His words had tumbled through my mind for days afterward, leaving a bitter aftertaste that I could only cleanse by admitting they were probably true. Finally I realized I had nothing left to lose but the little bit of pride I still clung to like a comforter. So I packed up some clothes, books, and all my anxieties and then left my dusty hometown for good. But as I drove down to L.A., I felt more like I was leaving all my dreams behind unrealized than heading toward them anew. Struggling and just about managing to suppress the feeling that I was heading for another personal disaster, that L.A. would chew me up and spit me out.

  Karma decided to start cashing itself in when I arrived though. Within days I found a great apartment with an awesome fitness instructor roommate named Asha, Tony had me taking on open shifts at the sushi place he worked at, and after just a couple of months I landed an interview at the hottest place in the city: Knife. I didn’t expect to get it, being one of the most inexperienced of the candidates, but it turned out to be more of a cooking test than a formal interview, and I got the job. Martin—the manager who was looking after the place while Knife’s owner set up his new spot in Las Vegas—said it wasn’t even close.

  That was just over a week ago, and things couldn’t have gone much better…until about twenty minutes ago when I decided to fuck it all up because I didn’t ask anyone in the kitchen if we had any plain thyme. So here it is. Smacking me in the face. Rock bottom. Now I’m pushing open the door to my apartment, struggling not to cry in case I find I can’t stop.

  Asha’s sitting on the couch watching TV, her long, powerful legs propped up on the coffee table. She turns moon-like brown eyes in my direction as I enter, and with the kind of perception that only someone who genuinely cares can show, asks, “Is something wrong? It’s not even ten. I thought you were finishing after midnight tonight?”

  “So did I,” I say, letting myself slump onto the loveseat beside her.

  She keeps those eyes fixed on me, and I know she wants the whole story. Asha used to be an MMA fighter, so she’s good at staring people down.

  “Spill it.”

  I take a deep breath. “I just fucked up the job at Knife. Royally.”

  “What?” Asha cries, pulling her legs from the table and facing me directly, toned muscles twisting in my direction. “How? Everything was going so great.”

  I rub my eyes and sigh deeply as I replay the scene in my mind.

  “I used a slightly different ingredient for the potatoes than what’s listed on the menu. It was the first time I’ve ever done that, and ninety-nine point nine percent of people wouldn’t have even been able to tell the difference…so—of course—the plate was going out to the one guy who could.”

  “Who?”

  “Cole Chambers. The owner. My boss.”

  Asha breathes in through her teeth, and puts a hand on my arm. I can tell she’s already thinking of how to soften the blow.

  “So…he fired you? Just like that? I mean I know he’s supposed to be a jerk, but—”

  “I didn’t give him the chance. Once he started yelling, I walked out.”

  “Willow…” Asha says, shaking her head.

  “What was I supposed to do?” I say, frustration and anger at myself seeping into my defensive tone. “Just stand there and let myself be embarrassed?”

  “Come on now,” Asha says, her tone gentle but firm. “You shouldn’t have just walked out like that. He might not have fired you.”

  “No, he would have,” I say, shaking my head adamantly. “It’s not like I haven’t seen him fire somebody before. I recognized the look on his face. He was pissed, and he wasn’t giving me any second chances. I was just saving my pride.”

  Asha sighs and tilts her head in disappointment, braids falling over her shoulder.

  “Would he really fire you over that? One ingredient out of dozens, out of a hundred dishes? You could have explained it was a mistake, that it won’t happen again. Surely he would understand that.”

  “No, you don’t get it. Cole’s whole thing is that he’s precise, meticulous. His recipes are like paintings, every brushstroke matters. For me to just throw something else in there—”

  I stop myself to drop my head in my hands, my own stupidity sounding even more ridiculous when I’m forced to articulate it out loud. Asha reaches out and rubs my back.

  “Whatever,” she says, in a voice as soft and soothing as aloe. “It’ll be okay. Los Angeles is full of restaurants.”

  “And all of them are a step down from Knife,” I say. “It’s not like I can just coast much longer. I’m still paying off my debts, and I’m not even sure I’ve made rent this month.”

  “Leave all that for the morning,” Asha says, standing up with a sudden burst of vitality, enthusiastic defiance in her voice. “Look, the night’s still young. Let’s go get a couple of drinks—maybe a few too many. My first class isn’t until tomorrow afternoon. We’ll get dressed up, we could dance a little,” she says, swaying her hips, “and I guarantee you it’ll all seem much less like the end of the world when you wake up with a hangover.”

  I look up at her, forcing a smile to show how much I appreciate it.

  “Thanks, but…I don’t really feel like going out. All I wanna do right now i
s make a gigantic batch of the sugariest, chocolateyest, meltiest fudge brownies and eat myself into a sugar coma.”

  Asha raises an eyebrow mischievously as she considers it, and I can almost hear her stomach growl.

  “Well. That works for me.”

  3

  Cole

  I turn up at Knife early the next morning. Early enough to smell the jasmine still lingering in the coolness of the night air. Insomnia can be a real problem, but in the restaurant business it’s virtually a necessity. So here I am, in the only area of Knife that I allow to be a mess: the back office.

  I’m sitting behind the desk, among the filing cabinets and piled-up receipts, a few crates of wine in the corners (I let the staff use the room for storage sometimes). The sound of the dish washers hosing down the last of the pans a satisfying background music as I run through the accounts and figure out the pricing of some seasonal menu items.

  As a couple of the chefs start arriving for the lunch shift, I hear a knock on the open door and look up to see Leo’s bald head in the doorway. He’s wearing a buttoned-up checked shirt and creased slacks that would have been out of date even in the sixties. He’s one of the few chefs for whom the chef whites are a step up. Even though he’s forty two, he still has the smooth, puppyish skin of a baby. Clean scalp reflecting even the dim light of the office, skin pale enough to make you wonder if he commutes from Alaska.

  “Hey boss,” he says, in his gritty, quiet voice. “Willow just turned up. Should I tell her to leave?”

  “Why would you tell her to leave?” I ask, my voice firmly dismissing his assumption.

  “Ok, ok,” he says, holding up his hands. “I didn’t know you wanted to fire her yourself.”

  I lean back in my chair, cross my arms, and shoot him a look like I’m about to challenge him to draw.

  “Who told you I was going to fire her?” I’m feeling defensive about her all of a sudden, and I don’t know why. Especially considering that her behavior last night was unacceptable.

  Leo looks at me a little nervously, as if performing a dozen calculations at once. He glances back into the hall, looking each way, then steps inside the office, leaning forward so he can lower his voice.

  “Of course you’re going to fire her. Right? I mean, she fucked up a main dish and made a scene in front of the customers, then bailed in the middle of a dinner shift. We were a man down for half the night.”

  I look at him for a few seconds and he waits expectantly, oblivious to my intent.

  “Come see me after your shift, Leo,” I say calmly, returning my attention to the computer screen.

  I don’t want to hear anything else—and Leo’s just about smart enough to realize that, so he turns on his heels, rubbing his bald head as he leaves the office.

  Shortly after that I hear another light rapping on the door, and look up to find Willow there. Except this isn’t the Willow from last night, a pretty face poking out of that shapeless chef’s uniform—there’s nothing shapeless about her now. Tight, ripped jeans hug her toned legs, her shirt struggling with the combination of her round breasts and that tight stomach, leaving a mouthwatering strip of flesh around her navel that reveals itself only a little as she moves.

  “Shut the door,” I tell her, growling the command, then watch with focused eyes the balletic movements of her body. Delicate fingers on the door handle, swish of her hair against the nape of her neck, turning just enough for me to study the jeans-filling roundness of her ass.

  She turns back to face me, big, brown eyes looking up from that angelic face, and I stand up to walk in front of my desk. I need to move, partly because I’ve been sitting down for too long, and partly because the sight of her in street clothes has got my blood pumping a little too hard, a shot of adrenaline unexpectedly slamming through me.

  “I’m surprised you came back,” I say, leaning back onto the desk and folding my arms.

  Her cheeks color a little but her gaze stays fastened on mine. “I came to say I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used the lemon thyme. I get it. And you’re absolutely right. That’s not acceptable for Knife, and I hold my hands up to that. I shouldn’t have changed the recipe. It was a momentary lapse of judgment, and I thought I could get away with it. But I’m not here to make excuses. I just wanted to explain and to say I’m sorry.”

  I nod at her. There’s something down-to-earth and genuine about the way she talks, the way she looks me in the eye. Perhaps I’ve spent too long in the upper echelons of Los Angeles’ nightlife, but her straightforward manner disarms a little of my anger.

  “You don’t get to make mistakes when you work for me,” I say firmly.

  “Which is why I wanted to apologize.”

  “Apologies don’t change the past. I don’t make them, and I don’t accept them.” Willow simply nods before turning back to the door, that gentle hand already on the handle. “Did I say you could leave?”

  She turns back to me, the regret in her eyes replaced by a hard pride. It’s the kind of look people usually build up for decades before they feel they can direct it at me.

  “Am I supposed to just stand here so you can shoot negative platitudes at me before I get fired?” she says. “Because I can watch one of your shows if I want to see you cut somebody down.”

  If those tight jeans made me second guess whether I should fire her, the way she stares me down like I’m not the best chef in the country, and she’s not just some new hire, is piquing my interest enough that I want to keep her around at least a little longer. She’d make a hell of a poker player.

  “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t fire you,” I challenge.

  “I’m not going to beg you for my job.”

  “Most chefs would, in your position.”

  “Well, I’m not most chefs.”

  “Clearly,” I say, allowing myself a little smile as we stare each other down.

  Willow breaks her gaze, hanging her head a little, but I don’t miss the way her eyes flicker over my body, lingering for a half second on the biceps of my folded arms.

  “Neither are you,” she says, though her tone (and my rampaging imagination) makes it more innuendo than retort. Our eyes lock.

  The electricity crackling between us is almost audible. A charge less like that of manager-employee relations, and more like the sexual ambiguity of two people swapping looks across a bar. There’s no doubt in my mind there’s something between us—and the fact that I wanna find out what it is makes it almost impossible for me to fire this girl out of my life.

  “It’s your first week and Michelle tells me you’ve been handling it like a champ apart from this…faux pas. We’ve had chefs who couldn’t even make it through a second shift.”

  Willow shrugs, and I can see she’s relaxing a little now, her hand no longer on the door handle.

  “Well, I won’t pretend it was easy. But I’m not afraid of working hard.”

  “Obviously not,” I say, picking up her resume from the desk and waving it. “You don’t make it through Guillhaume’s course without having some steel in you.”

  “Oh yeah,” she grins. “I think I actually learned more about my emotions than about cooking under him.”

  I glare at her intensely once again, freezing her with a look.

  “Regardless. That was the first and last time you walk out on a shift. If I give you another chance, are you gonna fuck me over?”

  There isn’t even a flinch, not even a quivering lip as Willow looks right back at me and shakes her head, “No. I won’t. You’re the boss.”

  “That I am. And you’ll do well to keep that in mind.” I nod and smile a little, making it clear that the issue’s settled for now.

  Willow seems to relax, and I find myself calming in her presence.

  “So what did Guillhaume call you?” I ask, in a more easy tone.

  Willow lets out a quiet laugh; she knows what I’m talking about. Everyone who studies under the Frenchman gets a specific nickname, an insult designed to demea
n and break one’s spirit through repetition, but which most chefs carry like a badge of honor—that is, if they’re able to survive the boot camp that is his training course.

  “Well, as soon as he found out where I was from he stuck me with ‘the Idaho Potato.’ Said my talent was making everything taste as lifeless as mash,” she says, smiling wistfully at the memory. “‘Curse ze farmer zat pulled you out of ze ground!’”

  I smile along with her. “You got off lightly. He used to call me the Hollywood Assassin. Said I cooked like I was trying to poison somebody.”

  She laughs again, gently. Her face showing a few more phases of beauty. I let the moment settle, enjoying the sight of her a little more, that smile, those eyes…

  “Well,” she says, glancing at the clock above the desk. “I really should get on the lunch shift.”

  “No you shouldn’t,” I say, stepping out from behind the desk. “I had Mark come in to take your spot. Wasn’t sure if you’d even show up today.”

  “That’s fair.” She frowns and nods, as if disappointed that she won’t get the chance to work today.

  I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been too busy to take a woman in weeks, the cramped intimacy of the back office, or the delicious curves of her body, but I’m struggling to find a way to end this conversation that doesn’t involve pulling her over the desk and tugging her jeans down to her ankles to bury my head between her thighs and find out what she tastes like.

  I check the time, and realize I should have left the office about two minutes ago.

  “What do you think about kids?” I say, packing my pockets as I prepare to leave the office.