She, Myself & I

by Whitney Gaskell

  “That’s impressive,” I said, and was about to ask him how the chef had ended up in Austin, when Oliver Klein walked into the room.

  There wasn’t any doubt about who he was, even if he was dressed only in white cotton pants and a white V-neck undershirt, with no sign of the Pillsbury Doughboy hat or traditional white coat. The entire kitchen reacted, everyone quieting down and turning toward him, faces expectant and eager. Kevin was right, it was just as though a rock star had rolled onto a stage. He even looked the part, with thick dark hair that curled down over his high forehead, brilliant blue eyes, a wide nose flattened across the tip, and a slightly lopsided mouth, so that when the full lips smiled—as they did now, at one of the waitresses who was laughing at him flirtatiously—they curled slightly, Billy Idol–style. He was lean but muscular, with the build of a runner.

  “Wow,” I breathed softly.

  Kevin looked at me, alarmed. “Oh no. Trust me—he is not someone you want to mess with,” he whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s married. Well, at least he was. When he moved here, his wife and kid stayed in Miami, so they might be officially separated. I heard a rumor that he left Miami because a hostess at his restaurant was threatening a sexual harassment lawsuit against him. Of course, I also heard that their relationship was very consensual, and she was just mad because he dumped her. And I know for a fact he’s already slept with one of the waitresses here. I saw her coming out of his office the other day, crying,” Kevin said.

  “How do you know they slept together?”

  “Word gets around. You have to be careful. The restaurant business is like high school. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone gossips,” Kevin warned.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, and then edged closer to the rest of the waitstaff gathered around the stainless-steel-topped table.

  With one hand resting on his hip, Oliver cleared his throat and began to speak.

  “Here are tonight’s specials. Write them down, because I don’t plan on repeating myself. Appetizer: seared Hudson Valley foie gras, with a caramelized-apple sauce. Salad: jumbo lump crab with coriander and honey-cured carrots. Entrée: milk-fed veal served with crispy sweetbreads and a rosemary demi-glace. Dessert: espresso soufflé. Any questions? You, New Girl, did you get that?” he said. The words were firing out of his mouth so quickly, it took me a minute to realize he was speaking to me.

  Everyone turned to look at me. I could feel my cheeks heating to a red stain.

  “I . . . uh . . . I think so,” I said weakly.

  “That’s not good enough. You have to know it, and know it cold. Tell me without looking down at your paper, what’s the entrée?” Oliver barked.

  I stared at him and shook my head mutely.

  “Sarah, tell her,” Oliver said.

  Sarah—who, it turned out, was the coquette who’d been flirting with the chef—looked at me and said, “A milk-fed veal served with sweetbreads and rosemary demi-glace.”

  I wondered if Sarah was the waitress who Kevin saw crying over Oliver. She had sallow skin, mean eyes, and her face was hard, but a lot of guys go for that type. I think it’s a regression, a feeling of inadequacy left over from high school when they were too intimidated to ask out the bad girls who wore too much black eyeliner and smoked cigarettes in the school parking lot. So maybe it was her. Or it could have been Caitlin, a short, chunky waitress with sexy blonde ringlets and enormous breasts, or Opal, a black woman with sharp, high cheekbones who walked like a ballerina, with her toes pointed out.

  My cheeks burned, even as the mocking eyes of my new co-workers slid over me, obviously amused at seeing the new kid getting hazed. I scowled at Oliver, but he’d lost interest in me. He turned his back dismissively on the waitstaff and asked his sous-chef for an update on the dinner prep.

  “Don’t worry. He picks on a different server every night,” a voice murmured in my ear. I looked up and saw that it was Opal, her eyes narrow and lips pursed. “I got it yesterday. Oliver’s an asshole. I’m thinking about quitting, I don’t need his shit.”

  “Is he really that bad?” I asked. Unease snaked through me.

  “He yelled at one of the girls the other day for mixing up an order. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but he belittled her in front of the whole kitchen staff. She quit that night. I saw her coming out of his office in tears,” Opal murmured.

  So maybe she was the crying waitress Kevin had seen. Maybe it had nothing to do with sex after all, and everything to do with Oliver’s nasty temperament.

  He was still talking to his sous-chef—Ansel, I’d met him earlier, who had the long, stretched-out body of a basketball player—but his demeanor with the kitchen staff seemed much friendlier. Ansel continued to work while they talked, prepping for the shift ahead—setting out his knifes, checking on the levels of chopped garlic and minced shallots, dicing mushrooms into a neat, rounded pile, and occasionally barking out an instruction to one of his three underlings to fetch something from the cooler. I got tingly just watching him, knowing that’s where I wanted to be. Someday.

  But Oliver, in contrast, was still and calm, exactly like a musician resting before a big concert. He stood with one hand leaning on the stainless steel counter. My eyes inadvertently dropped down, and I looked at his square hips, at the front of his white chef’s pants, and suddenly an unexpected image popped into my head of what he’d look like naked and aroused.

  Oliver looked in my direction. I started and dropped my pencil. It bounced and fell with a muted clatter.

  “Is everything okay?” Opal asked, peering at me.

  I bent over to retrieve the pencil and dared another glance at Oliver as I stood back up. He was laughing again at one of Ansel’s jokes, completely ignoring me. I turned away, ducking my head and smoothing my apron.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little nervous.”

  “Don’t worry. This job is a piece of cake. Just stay calm, and go over your checklist: greet, beverages, order, serve, check back every ten minutes, dessert, check. And try to stay as organized as possible,” she said, repeating what I’d learned from the paltry manual Adam had given me in lieu of any real training.

  My first shift was a nightmare. From the moment my first party sat down to when the bell on the door tinkled, signaling that the last guest had left the restaurant, I ran. Not literally, of course, since sprinting through the chicly understated dining room of gray walls, modern paintings, and Asian paper lamps would have ended my career as a Versa server. But it was back and forth, hurry, hurry, don’t forget this, oh God I forgot that, get the food, place the order, ignore Adam’s supercilious smirk, laugh at Ansel’s jokes. Everything was flying by me, and I was falling back, scrambling to keep up. I’d always thought that waiting tables was a dignified and gracious occupation at these high-end restaurants, one that required a subtle understanding of the melding of flavors in fine cuisine and detailed knowledge of the wine list. It shocked me to find out it was mostly physically exhausting labor, involving lap after lap through the kitchen.

  After hearing Kevin’s warning about Oliver’s libidinous interest in the waitstaff, I would have liked to have had the opportunity to ignore Oliver’s interested gaze just to get back at him for yelling at me earlier, but he paid no attention to me. Instead he turned his narrow focus on what he was sautéing in his pan, or building on a plate, or sniffing as he waved his hand to waft the aroma up toward his face.

  He was beautiful while he worked. And I couldn’t stop watching him.

  The only time he noticed me was at the very end of the shift, when the tension in the kitchen had mellowed out—while the dinner rush was on, Oliver yelled at Ansel, who in turn yelled at his assistants, who screamed at the waitstaff, who got temperamental with the busboys—and the kitchen staff was popping bottle caps off sweating beer bottles and laughing at a goof-up that the grill cook had made in the middle of the shift.

  “Hey you, New Girl,” I heard, and when I turned, Oliver
was smiling at me. He’d taken off his white coat and was again wearing only his white T-shirt, now damp with sweat. I thought chefs normally wear those dorky black-checked outfits, but Oliver’s garb looked like medical scrubs.

  “Me?” I asked, feeling like I was about ten years old.

  “Yeah, you. How did your first night go?”

  “Um. Fine.”

  “And what was the special tonight?” he asked. Although he was smiling, the squinting eyes were challenging me.

  I hesitated.

  “Veal. With sweetbreads and demi-glace,” I said.

  “What kind of a demi-glace?”

  “Um. Rosemary.”

  Oliver nodded. “Very good,” he said. And then he turned away, walking into his office. He left the door open, and although I pretended to organize my credit card slips, I watched him covertly while he shucked off the soiled T-shirt. Fine dark hair covered his chest, thinning as it dipped below his nipples and streamed down over his flat stomach.

  “How’d you do?”

  I spun around and saw Kevin standing there. He too had lost his chef’s coat, and was back to just the stained Nirvana T-shirt, although his shaggy hair looked like it had grayed in the past few hours. I looked closer and saw that it was just a light dusting of flour.

  “Fine. Great,” I said brightly. “Where’ve you been all night? I’ve hardly seen you.”

  “I stay in the back room, partly to stay out of Oliver’s way and partly because I can. I do most of my heavy lifting before the shift starts. Once dinner’s under way, it’s only about presentation and monitoring the soufflés,” Kevin said. “I’m heading out. Need a lift home?”

  “No, thanks, Opal said she’d drop me off,” I said.

  Kevin hesitated for a minute and looked like he wanted to say something. But then he seemed to change his mind. “Okay. See you tomorrow,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “I don’t see why you’d rather stay at Paige’s tiny apartment than at home with me,” Mom said querulously. “I was looking forward to spending the summer together.”

  I shifted the phone to my left ear, balancing it against my shoulder while I raided Paige’s fridge. A few months ago, the pickings would have been scarce—nonfat yogurt, skim milk, a few bananas. But now it held a bountiful crop of cheeses, containers of commercial ranch and black bean dips, break-and-bake cookie dough, ice cream sandwiches. Thank God Paige got knocked up, I thought.

  “Mom, I told you. I’m closer to my job down here. And Paige needs me to stay here so I can look after the place,” I said.

  “But why? She has a doorman. It’s not like anyone’s going to break in.”

  “Other stuff can happen. Remember Rory, my friend from Princeton? When she and her parents went to Vail for Christmas? Their ice maker leaked and flooded the whole house,” I said.

  I settled on a jar of natural peanut butter and plucked it from the refrigerator door. After swinging the door shut with my hip, I grabbed a loaf of bread from the bread box—my anal-retentive older sister was the only person I’d ever met who actually had a bread box, although admittedly it was a really cool stainless steel one—and set about making myself a sandwich.

  “But you don’t have a car. How do you get around? And get groceries?”

  “Paige picks me up on her way home from the office and drops me off at the restaurant. And Sophie said she’d take me shopping this weekend,” I said.

  “How do you get home from work? Don’t tell me you walk by yourself at that hour,” Mom said.

  This was exactly what I’d done the night before when I couldn’t mooch a ride home from anyone.

  “No, I always get a ride from one of the other waitresses,” I lied.

  “I’m going to talk to your sisters, and see if they know anyone who can lend you a car for the summer. If not, you can just take mine.”

  “Mom! No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then you won’t have a car. Look, I have to go,” I said. And then, remembering that I’d promised myself I was absolutely, positively going to tell her about med school the next time we talked, I continued, “But wait, before you go, I have to tell you something.”

  “Did I tell you I got my dress?” Mom interrupted me.

  “What dress?”

  “My wedding dress.”

  At this I lost my appetite, and shoved my peanut butter sandwich to the side. I was suddenly envisioning horrible poofy sleeves, a Scarlett O’Hara hoopskirt, and a long train that I’d be expected to hold up behind her as she pranced down the aisle. The very idea was nauseating.

  “I really should go,” I mumbled.

  “It’s very elegant. It’s a cream raw-silk sheath with just a spattering of sequins across the bodice, and a matching jacket. Although I think it might be too hot to wear the jacket in August, don’t you? Anyway, I got it at Talbot’s, and just wait until you see it, you’re just going to love it,” she continued.

  “Sounds great,” I said, the words curdling in my mouth. “But I really have to go.”

  “Do you want to come over for dinner this weekend? Your dad and I are going to grill some steaks, and we’d love to see you,” Mom said.

  Guilt competed with annoyance; the irritation won out.

  “I can’t. I’m working. Look, I have to get ready for my shift, or else I’m going to be late. I’ll talk to you later,” I said.

  It was only after I hung up that I remembered I once again hadn’t told her about medical school.

  “Why does this have to be so hard?” I asked Paige’s empty apartment. My voice sounded odd and flat, and when there was no response, I got up from the table, tossed the sandwich into the garbage, and got ready for work.

  “Mickey, you’re such a slob. How can you live this way?” Paige asked, looking crestfallen as she took in the mess I’d made out of what had once been her pristine apartment. She’d stopped by to take me to work, but instead of pulling up to the curb outside her building like she normally did, she came upstairs to pick up some of her things. If I’d known the control freak was going to be making a surprise inspection, I would have made an effort to pick up the place.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The clothes everywhere, the empty Diet Coke cans, the dishes in the sink. There’s dried ketchup on my counter. I’m going to get bugs,” she said.

  “I don’t think so. The exterminator came by the other day and sprayed,” I said. “Any cockroach who tries crawling in here will face certain death. If the apartment gets infested with anything, it’s more likely to be mice. Or rats.”

  “Thanks, that makes me feel loads better,” Paige said.

  After she shoved a pair of my Levi’s to one side to clear a space on the sofa, she sat down and looked around.

  “I miss this place,” she said mournfully.

  “You’ve only been gone for a few days,” I said.

  “Ten days. Ten long, long days.”

  “Things aren’t going well with you and Zack?”

  She shrugged. “No, he’s fine. We’re fine. I’m used to living with him. It’s just that now that we’re in the house, he wants to start shopping for nursery furniture,” she said.

  “Well, you are having a baby, aren’t you?”

  “That’s not the point. I just think it’s a little early in our relationship to be picking out a crib together,” she said.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “It’s just too much, too soon. We were just getting used to living together here in my apartment—my apartment, where I was still in charge—and now all of a sudden we’re in a house. His house,” she said darkly.

  “Does he say that? Act like it’s his house and you’re just a guest?”

  “No, just the opposite. He keeps saying it’s our house, my house. It’s just too weird.”

  I had no idea what was upsetting her, but I had a now slightly fuzzy memory of Sophie acting like this when she was pregnant. I’d thought it was just Sophie, who
had a tendency to veer toward the dramatic, but apparently all pregnant women lose their minds.

  “You’re upset that things are moving too fast?” I guessed.

  Paige shrugged. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Zack proposed to me last night. Officially this time,” she said abruptly.

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t say yes,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I wanted to, I was going to accept. You should have seen him, Mick. We were out on the back porch, looking out at the most beautiful sunset over the lake, and he actually got down on one knee and gave me the most beautiful ring. It was a sapphire, with two diamonds on either side. It was perfect. And then I ruined it,” she said, her voice breaking.

  I looked at her in alarm, and saw fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I said I’d have to think about it. You should have seen his face, he looked like he’d been punched in the stomach. He just got up, and said that was fine and to please let him know when I’d decided, and then he went inside and made dinner. And I just sat there like an idiot. I wanted to go after him, but I just . . . couldn’t. It was like all of my muscles were frozen,” she said.

  “Do you think it means that you don’t want to get married? If that was your first reaction?”

  “No! Don’t you understand? I do want to marry him,” she cried.

  “But . . . isn’t that good news? He wants to marry you, you want to marry him,” I said, feeling a little like Alice must have after she tumbled down into the White Rabbit’s wonky hole, and everything that was supposed to be big was suddenly small.

  “I just don’t know if I can be married again. I think I’m defective. I’m missing the wife gene.”

  “You’re not defective. You’re just a little gun-shy.”

  “Either way, it’s bad. What should I do?”

  “Why don’t you say yes? If that’s what you want, I mean,” I said, looking at the clock nervously. I had to be at work in ten minutes. If I was even a minute late, Oliver would know, and I’d have a big target on my forehead during the pre-dinner meeting.