by Mike Wehner
I told Tim he wasn’t the first mental health professional I’d seen and he said that until I wanted help he wouldn’t be the last. After what happened in the backseat of that car, maybe he was right.
I enjoyed talking to him, he helped me even if I didn’t take much of his advice. Not that it mattered, once I saw that book I went all seek-and-destroy. That did it for me, that’s when she had to die. Kill my best friend, shame on me. Sell it to the court as self-defense, shame on me. Profit on his death, shame on you.
The therapist suggested I keep a grief journal and schedule the act of mourning since I was doing it always. Get a notebook he told me and set aside time each day to grieve, when time is up you go back to living your life.
The blond girl from last year was a happy accident. If Erin had been the one in the car and I strung her up with my plastic lasso I’d have regretted it forever. There’s no honor killing her from the dark. I’ll take my time, find a way into her life and make her suffer as I have. Until then this book is my time to grieve and when it’s shut so is the sadness.
I can't believe I paid sixty bucks for this stupid thing and I hope I get the job, I worked too damn hard to let this all fall apart.
TWO
DAY 947
My basement apartment was tucked under the heather foothills a dozen miles east of the bay. The house above me sat in a sleepy development where each home was backed by open spaces and wavy, pine-topped ridges. Annie, the widow who owned the property, needed the income the dated space provided. The fixtures and finishes were a patchwork of mismatched acid flashbacks, patterns of patterns on patterns. The stainless steel and marble California of my dreams existed, but not for what I could afford in rent. I rolled my knives out onto the flecked teal Formica.
Sharpening a knife was the first thing I learned at culinary school, I imagined. Honing was subtraction, a repeatable calculation that was easy to master. I used a synthetic sharpening stone and a gritted diamond steel to edge my chef’s knife. I preferred to use the eight inch for most tasks; the ten inch I’d bought felt like a broadsword on a gusty day in my undersized hands. The sharpening steel is that fencing sword thing with the round handle stuck in every knife block. The steel smooths out what the stone grinds away, it removes debris. I thought that you were supposed to yank it out of the block and then wipe the knife on it, back and forth, like drying dishes with a towel. They do that in the movies for the chings and clanks. Sounds neat, does nothing. It’s absurd that every knife block comes with a steel, because it’s useless without a stone.
I threw my wet hand over the synthetic rock, rubbing it down and letting the grain massage my palm. I began scraping the knife back and forth.
It was easy to fake an education so long as nobody tried to verify it. The pretensions of academia are most clearly held by its students, even ones who study kale. I thought if I acted confident enough my credentials wouldn’t be called into question. My resume claimed I attended the best culinary school the American West had to offer, but all the lazy hours I’d spent mocking food TV over the years didn’t give me the head start I expected—I was better prepared to work in a cupcake shop than a commercial kitchen. I tried to absorb a lifetime of cookery in the duration of an early-term pregnancy to prepare for a job as a cook. It was the only way I could figure to get close to Erin.
Choosing knives was hard. Cooking is a uniformed society, accessories tell your story. According to network cooking competitions—a chef creates their identity with their steel and their ink, so I spent as much time looking at knives as I did tattoos. A chef’s knife splashed across the forearm was ubiquitous, the tramp stamp of the food world. Pigs and pig products were in vogue, the mark of obnoxious hipsters who’d be dated by the swine as soon as America’s bacon fetish ended. I gravitated towards personalities that favored marks of utensils rather than food; the caveat being there were no intended puns. No knives up the sleeve, or god forbid, whisks on the upper lip. Olive you, wrapped in a heart. Butter me up, wrapped in a ribbon. Fuck those awful people.
I wanted to fit in but tattoos were out. I’ve never believed in anything long enough to keep it forever, not even myself.
The worst kind of food people invented elaborate hierarchies for every ingredient. A woman with a cartoon rainbow chard on her biceps dueling turnip greens. A paragraph on the thick shin of a man about which country’s rocks make the best salt. The bust of a well-known tea sommelier traced onto a thigh. These people exist and they’re allowed to breed.
Choosing what to eat can be reduced to one small notion for every person on earth: eat more of what you think tastes good and is good for you than what tastes good and is bad for you. If you don’t like it, don’t eat it—unless you’re a guest in someone’s home, then put it in your mouth, shut the fuck up and chew. Don’t forget to smile.
For every fifty things I hated about the culture, there was something I found interesting. The way the grit of steak disappeared once I understood the grain of meat and how to slice it. The mysterious wet-shoe funk of fermented beans and cabbages from the Chinese grocer. In my former life I was an engineer, a life of calculate and execute—the walls of rationality and science are a far cry from the endless textures, tastes and smells of a kitchen. The variables are so numerous that originality is certain every day, even if by accident.
Business casual life wasn’t something I wanted to escape from, I liked golf shirts with company logos. I wasn’t crushed and soul-deadened by my two-bed/two-bath existence.
I turned the blade over and ran my eyes down the sharpened edge looking for debris, then flipped it over and back to make sure it was wearing evenly.
The first knife I purchased was a reliable yet unimpressive German blade. It was the first knife I’d ever used that could slice a tomato without crushing it. It’s the same knife tattooed on the forearm of every celebrity chef who rolls up his sleeves when it’s time to get serious. Erin’s restaurant had German elements in the food, I needed to be on message, a variation of the theme.
Her place was called Essen which meant eat in German, but when I looked over the online menu the food was actually overpriced and restyled comfort dishes from all over Europe—gussied up for the semi-serious palettes of semi-fine diners. I was familiar with this food before studying the culinary arts—I grew up eating it. Chicken Paprikas, my grandma made that every Christmas Eve but it sure as hell didn’t cost her $32.95 a plate. Chef Erin thought she was clever by laying gold leaf on top of peasant food with her plating tongs (I called them food tweezers). Goulash doesn’t need a top hat, you cunt.
Still at the counter I angled the blade on the stone, ripped it towards me then fanned it away. The scrapes were a satisfying symphony and my hands conducted in even time.
On to the second blade, an expensive seven-inch Japanese Santoku. It had a black Damascus finish and wandering meteorite veins—too beautiful to think of as only a tool. The edge vanished and expanded back with a fantastical shimmer when I slanted it in the store. It was exotic and unfamiliar and untouchable like a woman you meet on vacation whose language you don’t speak—I had to have it.
All my knives have different makers. I wanted them to tell the other cooks I was selective yet adventurous. When I unrolled the black cloth apron that held the blades across the stainless steel table Erin should see the German knife first, old reliable. I meticulously planned each detail of our first encounter. When my chef’s knife wouldn’t fit in the first slot of padded holder, I took it apart and reworked it. I had to get close, I had to know what engine drove her to such hate and rage. It was the only path to truth, to know I was doing the right thing. Then of course I had to do the right thing, which is often the hardest.
My laptop was open on the counter and I saw her face as I clicked around the restaurant’s website. “Meet the Chef and Owner,” on her profile where she leaned against an invisible wall on the far right of the screenwith her arms crossed, a giant blade pinched between her fingers.
Sometim
e after her book was published Erin dissolved westward and set up shop just outside San Francisco. She was trying to start over, the devil doesn’t eat where he slaughters. That fucking book, the reason I was here. Did it mention there were no signs of physical abuse found by doctors who examined her the day of the shooting? Or the day after? Numerous friends were called to the stand and not one could recall so much as a bruise on her liquid paper forearms. It turned out her accusations of abuse by John weren’t lies, they were predictions. I scraped faster, eager to get in bed and not be able to sleep.
The Santoku finished, I pulled down some pizza coupons stuck to the fridge with a magnetic save-the-date for a wedding I didn’t attend. For friends I didn’t talk to anymore. For the life that was no longer mine.
I held the shiny paper up in the yellow light and once it settled I made diagonal slices down the side that flapped in the wind from a box fan sitting on the kitchen table. The little flaps looked like the red feathers in a Native American headdress that fluttered during a rain dance. The sharpness confirmed, my stone needed more water. I batted the palm of my free hand on my lips and sounded the native noises I’d heard in spaghetti westerns as a kid. I pinned the paper back to the side of the cooler and took out my boning knife. I threw some water on the blue-gray sharpening stone. The dance worked, in spite of the racism.
On to the boning knife, the trickiest of the lot. It had a beveled edge and a long, curved tip. The handle had to be lifted and kept parallel to the stone and then rolled as you sharpened. I knew it was right if I felt the edge fight back against the stone like chalk dragging across a blackboard. I practiced boning on chicken wings because the work was intricate and they were cheap. I bought bags and bags of them the first few weeks, the overstock forced me to experiment with new tastes and flavors to get them down my poultry-tired gullet.
The humble chicken was the path to everything important I needed to learn about food, but no dish more so than the cheap Chinese-American favorite General Tso’s. The wing may have taught me some technique, but Tso taught me how to taste. There are five tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (my mom would add love to that list). General’s Chicken was the first time I experienced them all. It was on a grade school night when nobody could agree on pizza toppings and we got white-boxed Chinese takeout instead. I remember the shock of the first bite. The sour suck followed by the sweet release. That wonderful crunch and then the soft, slow burn of the chili. It was the best thing ever. Still is.
Every time I traveled as a kid I ordered that dish and in each city was a new permutation, but its heart remained. It wasn’t the nuggetization of chicken or the greasy stick of the sauce—the heart was the way each bite pulls at the pentagram of tastes our tongue can experience. The literal Chinese telephone result of sharp Hunan spice, echoed in Taiwan, stolen to New York and retranslated with a glop of sugar across the great American melting wok. Dice the onion, sauté the broccoli, brunoise the carrot, steam the rice. Technique, taste, composition, translation—the general was my first professor.
Erin’s face was still on my screen when I pressed the tip of the sharpened blade to it. The colors shifted around her cheeks like a magical bruise and then the pixels realigned when I released. Over and over I watched the fireworks explode from her nose and then dissolve as if it never happened. I wondered if the marks I left would be so quick to disappear, when I got done would she still be smiling, could she still look me in the eye.
Three
DAY 948
Erin’s restaurant was on the first floor of a sleek brick and steel building a few blocks from the water. It was part of a burgeoning new development of work/loft spaces that felt out of place surrounded by the kitschy porches of liberal arts students and mom and pop shops fronted with dilapidated, pastel fences.
The front windows had metallic, designer-sunglass tints and the embossed metal sign next to the door read Essen in an aerodynamic font. Below, it said Eat between parentheses which was the only indication that the door led to a restaurant. Every space along the row had the same minimal signage and zig-zagged steel awnings.
I approached the entrance a few minutes before 9 a.m. and the bolt knocked in the frame when I pulled on the door, a sure omen to turn back. I knew it was all downhill from here but I had no idea to what depths of hell the momentum might carry me. I cupped my hands around my eyes like holding binoculars and tried to see through the tint. A man with laser-etched stubble leaned out the doorway to greet me. I raised my brow a few times to try and regain composure.
“You here for the interview?” he asked. I nodded. “Take a seat and the chef will be out in a minute,” his voice trailed off as he walked back towards the kitchen with indifference. The edges of my vision pulsed as the front door swung shut and stole the sunlight my eyes were used to.
“Thanks, are you one of the cooks?” I said to annoy him. He turned around and met my eyes one at a time.
“Yes.” I could tell he hated the way I’d reduced him to a mere cook. An oversimplification of the impossible task of heating different ingredients and arranging them on a plate.
“I’ve been the sous chef here since we opened a year ago and I am taking over Hulston House as head chef. You are interviewing to be the replacement for whichever cook is promoted.” He stopped before going through the kitchen door and realizing his tone was curt turned back, “I liked it here, good luck with the interview.”
“Good luck to you as well,” I replied and sat down near the espresso stained host stand.
A row of uncomfortable plastic chairs lined the front passageway, bent sheets of white plastic that stood at funny angles. Exposed brick walls were illuminated with black railway lanterns hung every few feet. Their warmth was accentuated by exposed filament bulbs, I stared at the crooked crosshatch glow inside too long and it seared into my sight so I played with the geometric impression by darting my eyes back and forth along the back mirror of the bar, blinking the dazzling lines of light into memories to distract myself from the terror welling deep within me.
The floor was covered with farmhouse boards that looked old and hand-scraped but were probably engineered to look that way. All the tables and chairs sat proudly on top of their polished steel bottoms. It was a tasteful design, a blend of future and familiar. The aesthetic reflected the concept of the menu which made me uneasy. John knew how to pick them. I flicked my head back and forth trying to catch her scent as preparation. Nothing but the lemon zing of industrial cleaner stuck inside my nose.
“Hey, guy,” the outgoing cook said through the pass, “the chef will see you now, the office is back here.”
Panic weighed me down as I walked towards the kitchen; a heavy set of ankle weights that made my feet shuffle and heart tap. My plan to end a thousand days of grief seemed instantaneously stupid. To waste a year of my life studying and drilling for the opportunity to peel carrots for the person I hated most in this world.
I kept my eyes on the floor as I entered her domain. In the kitchen Erin stood before me, the girl of my nightmares. I took her in, starting with the turned out sneaker pointing my direction. I fought the emotional gravity and shame of being there and found my way up to her teeth which were bared and smiling in two almost-even rows. She swooped burgundy bangs up behind her ear and locked them down them with a pencil then extended her hand towards me like an old friend. There was a moment of eternity between her smile and our hands coming together for the first time. Her eyes were too wide and too green, split kiwi set out on the ledges of high cheeks. She was whippet thin and had a face full of what used to be freckles, stars through a cloudy sky—there, but only if you squint.
A belch bubbled in my throat and as our hands met a phantom shock rippled through my arm that numbed my toes. The wet stick of anxiety clung our fingers together for a beat after the shake was over.
“Hi,” she said with enthusiasm, “I’m Erin, welcome to Essen.” I was quaking, unable to reply. I stood there like an idiot, dazed. She held up a
finger and bound over to one of the cooks. The only word I heard her say was shit. She bounced back to me. I was still frozen.
“I’m really happy you’re here, let’s go down to the office to chat,” she quacked firm and fast. I wiped the sweat from my hand and followed her past the vault door of the walk-in cooler down, down, down to the basement. Faint threatened my every step as we descended into the fluorescent unknown. I couldn’t believe I was doing it, my plan was working and it was terrifying.
“Watch your step, there’s some water damage from a flood.” The wood buckled under my weight. “Don’t worry, we don’t keep food down here.” I still hadn’t spoken and she seemed fine with it. Selfish bitch.
Chunks of razor cut drywall were stacked thigh-high in the corner and piled with empty beer bottles. A bunch of upside down vegetable crates were strewn around for seats. The crack house dining set was accompanied by the stench of dry rot. Ironically, I was the one who felt unsafe. At the back of the room was a half opened door flanked with fresh drywall.
The walls of Erin’s office were unfinished and stuck with an assortment of primary color thumb tacks that held up supplier receipts and credit card statements. Peel and stick plastic clips pinned a mess of computer wires to the wall.
I massaged a crack in the floor with the bottom of my shoe. We were alone in the clutter and damp where nobody could hear her scream, or me. I sat between Erin and the door with my arms folded over the knives on my lap, my knees pitched together like a nervous child who’d done something wrong.
“So you must be Alex!” Erin swept the computer keyboard to the side along with some loose papers and envelopes. Her vim concerned me, so cheery it was suspicious. She put her elbows up on the self-assembled desk and twisted her fingers together like a gang sign.
