Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line

by Gibney, Michael

  “All right,” he says. “I’ll go fire up another round.”

  He rifles his butt far off into the street and heads back into the bar.

  It appears the drinks have begun to catch up with you as well. You find you need to spread your legs out shoulder-width across the sidewalk in order to keep a steady posture. Your vision blurs. You blink it out and study the scene back inside the bar.

  Through the steamed-up glass you see Vinny and his new friend. You see them hand in hand, making their way toward the jakes. They stop at the restroom’s threshold to kiss a minute, then enter together, presumably to either blow coke or have sex. Perhaps both. You see Warren putting the moves on Candice, whispering game into her ear. She fixes her eyes on him with great attention. He is obviously telling her something she finds fascinating. Perhaps he’s teaching her about bugs. At any rate, you see she’s gone sweet on him. You see Stefan, too, corralling a fresh set of drinks. Presently Devon rejoins him at the bar. He takes her in and kisses her with profound affection. You see the spark of love between them, whatever that means for them.

  You see most of these people almost every day. You spend most of your waking hours with them. More than with your family. More than with your friends. More than with your girlfriend. And you know more about them than you do about most people—where they are from, what they like to eat and drink, what music they listen to, what sorts of books they are into. You know what they like to do on weekends, what turns them on and off. You know their family histories, their religious perspectives, their relationship statuses, and their sexual preferences. You know their idiosyncrasies. You know their ambitions, their goals in life. You know what they look like when they are happy and when they are sad. You know what they look like when they are angry and frustrated and embarrassed and sorry and scared. You even know what most of them look like when they are in their underwear.

  And yet somehow they feel quite unfamiliar to you right now—like estranged friends from some other period in your life. It’s as if your connection with them is only a matter of circumstance, of time and place. As if, were you working at a different restaurant in a different city, it would be a completely different set of people with whom you were so intimate. As if, were you to part ways with this restaurant and start at another, you’d also be parting ways with this group of people, leaving them behind in exchange for some whole new set of confidants whom you’d soon enough know everything about, too. And a nagging suspicion, which you’d prefer to ignore, wishes to assure you that not only is all this probably true, but also that this parting of ways might be much closer than you’d like to believe. That it always is.

  None of these people are mine, you think.

  A vague desolation begins to hollow itself out inside you.

  You think of Vera. Her absence doesn’t help. You look at her message again:

  IN BED BABE. EXHAUSTED. CAN’T DO IT. MAYBE TOMORROW XO

  Maybe tomorrow?

  Reading it over and over again only extends the perimeter of your loneliness.

  Just then an abrupt change of music can be heard inside. Vinny’s picks have concluded and Pete has taken over. First on his list is “This Charming Man” by the Smiths.

  Suddenly you are transported five years into the past, to a restaurant you used to work at in Brooklyn. It was your first sous chef gig. Right up the block from the restaurant was a bar called d’Accueil, which the crew used to frequent after service. It seemed like every time you went there, “This Charming Man” was always the first thing you heard.

  And then it dawns on you: All these people are yours. All the Chefs. All the Stefs, all the Julios and Raffys and Warrens and VinDogs. All the Catalinas and Rogelios and Bries and Kikos. All the Husseins and Devons and Candices and Ruperts and Petes. Even sometimes all the Marcuses. These are all your people. Restaurant people. No matter what the circumstances, they will always be there. Whatever neighborhood in whatever city, state, country, or continent you find yourself in, you will always have friends nearby. You will always have people who get you. People who speak the same language, enjoy the same customs. People who work with the same sense of urgency, the same motivation. People who share your desire to feed, to nourish, to dish out the tasty bits of life. This is the bond you have with those around you. And it never goes away.

  A smile tugs at your face.

  All at once, the Inveterate’s big wooden door starts calling you back.

  You reach out a hand.

  No, you think, putting yourself in check. I better just go home before I get myself in trouble.

  You chuck the butt into the gutter and steal off into the night, full up with everything you need.

  HOME

  OUT ON SIXTH AVENUE, AWAY FROM TEMPTATION, YOU TAKE a few steps into the street and throw your arm up in the air. It’s late, so traffic is sparse and taxis are hard to come by. To make matters worse, it’s nearing the shift changeover. Many of the cabs that do pass by have already triggered their off-duty lights. Those that haven’t are either already packed full of tipsy fare-splits or are unwilling to make the trip to the outer boroughs. Every now and then a Yellow Cab or car service pulls over. “Where you headed?” they say. “Brooklyn,” you say. Then they either say “Sorry” and zoom off or they throw out some exorbitant figure that no one on planet Earth would be willing to fork over for a three-mile ride. Either way, you aren’t getting any closer to home like this. So after about fifteen minutes, you resign yourself to catching a subway train. You find the nearest glowing staircase and climb down into the city’s guts.

  At the turnstile, a stiff bar to the groin apprises you of the fact that your unlimited ride MetroCard has run out of juice. You’d like to buy a new one, but the hundred bucks it’ll cost you is not the kind of dough you’re prepared to shell out at the moment. And you don’t have any cash on you for a single ride. The last of your scratch went to Stef.

  You have a look around: ghost town.

  If anybody is in here, they’re nowhere to be found.

  Fuck it, you think, and jump the stile.

  Only the night-shifters such as yourself ride the subway at this hour. An exiguous population of dozers and snoozers who seek cheap passage to the outer boroughs after work. They lean on pillars and pews patiently waiting, their blank gazes fixed on the dark tube in hopes that a pair of headlights will soon appear around a bend. When you reach the platform you find the first vacant column and join your kin, staring down the tracks with your fingers crossed for quickness.

  The train is thinly populated when it arrives. You have your pick of where to sit. The best seats in the house are usually at the end, right by the adjoining doors. But tonight someone has spilled some suspicious substance there that suction-cups your sneakers to the linoleum. You take a seat in the middle instead, where you can use the long windows flanking the car like dim mirrors. After a moment’s wait, the doors bong shut. The train chugs into action and crawls away from the station. As you enter the darkness, you inspect your fearsome reflection in the dusky glass across the way. It’s the first time you’ve looked at your face since morning. It’s not a pretty sight. The hours have fastened on you a mask of exhaustion. Pallid skin, dark luggage under the eyes—you look like you’ve spent the last two weeks in a black room examining microfiche.

  I need a tan, you think.

  You pop in your earbuds and lean back into your seat.

  It was everything you could do to keep from falling asleep in the half hour it took to reach your stop. But now that you’re back above ground, you decide you’d like to pick up a 40-ounce bottle of beer and sip it on the stoop for a while with some cigarettes.

  Even though this decision defies all logic—you have to be back to work in five hours—it’s an easy one to make. To wake up and go to work, come home and go to sleep, iterum et iterum, gets tedious quickly. In the interest of sanity, you need some downtime, some time alone to relax and unpack the day. When you never see the sun, you at least deserve some t
ime with the moon.

  You push through the jingling door of the twenty-four-hour bodega on the corner of your street. Oswald, a round-headed man of ambiguous extraction, is the clerk who works the overnight there. He has become something of a compadre to you over the years. You run into him almost every night. The morning guy, however, you couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

  “Oz, what’s up, guy?” you say, placing your 40 on the counter.

  “You know,” he says. “Same shit.”

  “Camel Lights?” you say, pointing to the smokes behind the counter.

  He passes you a pack and some matches. “That’s it?” he says. “No sandwich? No ice cream?”

  “Nah, not tonight,” you say. “Hey, listen, I don’t have any cash on me, I gotta use a credit card. Is that all right?”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” he says, loading the bulbous bottle into a brown paper bag. “Pay me tomorrow.”

  “This is why I love you, Ozzie.”

  “Listen,” he says. “One hand washes the other. I’m still waiting for you to bring me home some leftovers.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” you say.

  You grab the bottle by its fat neck and bounce.

  Your stoop, steep and sturdy, is your place of repose—an after-hours sanctuary lifted a few feet off the sidewalk, where you can look over the peaceful, tree-lined street with the peculiar comfort that comes with being home at last. It is shaded from the glare of the streetlamps by the frozen growth of a tremendous elm tree, and because everyone else in this part of town is always asleep by the time you get home, it’s very quiet and serene. Since the absence of light disturbs you less than the presence of noise, you find it quite a delightful perch indeed. You sit there most nights turning over the remains of the day, your soundless solitude disturbed only by the occasional mew of the feral cats that furtively comb the snow-laden neighborhood in search of nibbles.

  You sit and turn your gaze to the hazy urban firmament. There is always a fuzz floating over this town. Even on the clearest evening, no more than a handful of stars can be seen. Few of them twinkle; none of them shoot. And still your eyes are drawn to them.

  You think of Vera. Of being near her. Of twisting limbs with her. It upsets you that you didn’t get to meet up with her tonight. You don’t like the nights when you have to sleep apart. They make you sad. Especially when it is your fault for breaking the plans.

  But is it really such a bad thing, to stretch out, get a good night’s sleep, meet up with her the next day?

  But tonight is not going to be a good night’s sleep. And even if it were, you would gladly trade the best night’s sleep to be with her. It is like a great weight being lifted off your shoulders when you slide into bed beside her.

  But maybe this is a bit obsessive. Isn’t it strange that you would need or want to see her every day?

  But it makes you feel very good to smell her hair and hold her hand. And your time away from work is so minimal that you need to spend it as best you can: with her.

  But what do you have to offer her in return? A few minutes before service starts? A kiss on the cheek before falling asleep?

  You sip your 40.

  You puff your cigarette.

  You look up at the red moonbeams, wishing you could give her the half-light cloths of heaven.

  When thoughts of Vera grow somber, as they often do at this hour, they recede to your mind’s back burner with a shove from thoughts of work. It’s almost impossible after a busy service to avoid going introspective, to avoid thinking back on what you did wrong and what you did right. The recollections come to you like snapshots strewn about a dining room table: now this moment, now that moment; now Raffy throwing up, now the Times showing up. And the collage they form gives you some basis upon which to evaluate the evening.

  Was it a complete success?

  Probably not. It did get hairy in there; vomit did happen. And who knows what the people at the Times table thought? You know you put out the best food you could, but once it leaves the kitchen it is out of your control. Diners sometimes see something totally different than what you send them.

  Was it a total failure?

  Again, no. We did take in three hundred guests, after all. The Times table had to notice how busy it was. And excluding the goose that got held up because of Devon’s gaffe, and leaving off Raffy’s blunder on his final flounders, everyone seemed to be well taken care of. We did put out some soigné shit tonight.

  But it felt so very difficult at times. So relentless. So strenuous. How did Pete put it? The back must slave to feed the belly?

  Perhaps there is some truth in that.

  At the end of the day, you are a cook. A cook who wishes to be a chef. And if you have any hope of getting there, you can’t let toxic thoughts like this take hold. You must be thick-skinned, hard as flint. You must pluck up courage. You must stay the course. Service: performance of work for another. Alimentation: provision of nourishment. Soigné: cared for, looked after, loved. This is what we are here for. This is what we do. This is the life we have chosen.

  If you had the right amount of booze in you, you’d be content to stay up until that proximate dawn, swigging beers, smoking cigarettes, studying this soupçon of stars. For despite the chill, there is something warm about the stoop. It is as though this thick edifice, its brownstone balustrades cloaked in fresh pelts of snow, somehow insulates you from the bitter cold of the outside world. You could nestle here until the sun came back if you had to.

  But eventually your defense mechanisms kick in. It’s after five. You do need to get some sleep tonight.

  Eight o’clock comes awfully quick, you think.

  With a great heave, you hoist yourself up and begin climbing the steps.

  When you arrive at your apartment, you fall immediately into bed.

  You pull out your phone.

  The screen is hard to read.

  With arduous effort, you finger in the following for Vera:

  GOODNIGYG SWRRTPEA

  You hit SEND and surrender to sleep.

  MORNING

  THE ELECTRIC HOLLER OF YOUR ALARM JOLTS YOU TO ATTENTION. A vague sense that it’s been going off for a while now materializes in you, some faint recollection of weaving the noise into your final dream scenes.

  You look at the clock on your bedside table. The digital glow is a blur:

  08:27.

  Oh, shit, you think.

  You’re due in in three minutes.

  You spring from bed to find you’re still fully clothed, toggle coat and all, in your outfit from last night. It crosses your mind to head out like this, to save time, to just go. But showing up to work in this clothing two days in a row won’t do. Late or not, you need at least to change. Plus, you need at least to brush your teeth, to get this acrid taste out of your mouth, to get this fruity scent of booze off your breath. And you need at least to shower, if only a quick spin, to steam off the film of filth and vaporize the clutter of your mind.

  The shower is unmemorable at best. Sleep deprivation and acute ethanol withdrawal have made a numb husk of your skin, and you can’t even tell if the water sprinkling on it is hot or cold. Soaping yourself is confusing and slippery. You can’t remember whether you’ve brushed your teeth. Yet, next thing you know, you’re standing naked in your bedroom, trying to figure out what to put on.

  But it’s not until you find yourself in the backseat of a taxicab, hurtling at breakneck speed over the Manhattan Bridge, that you truly realize, with mathematical clarity, how horrible you actually feel. It’s as if you’ve been body-slammed by a sambo specialist after running an ultramarathon. It’s possible, given the ratio of hours of sleep to drinks consumed, that you are still a little drunk, which doesn’t augur well. It means it’s only going to get worse as the buzz wears off. The chances of today being better than yesterday are to hell and gone. It will only be with great effort that you make it through. And, judging by the way your throat threatens a gag every time you
cough your deep morning cigarette cough, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to do so without throwing up at least once or twice.

  But whatever, you think. Let’s do this.

  As the taxi touches down cityside, you’re startled by the buzzing of your phone in your pocket. It’s a message from Stefan:

  NICE DISAPPEARING ACT LAST NIGHT GUY. I PROBLY

  SHOULDA DONE THE SAME. I FEEL LIKE A BEDPAN

  RIGHT NOW BRO. LOL. GOIN 2 B A FEW MIN LATE.

  HOPEFULLY I’LL GET THERE BEFORE CHEF. ON MY

  WAY NOW. HOLD IT DOWN.

  Stefan typically comes in around 0930 for brunch on the weekends. When he arrives, you decide between the two of you who will work the line with Rogelio and who will hang out in the back prep area pulling together the mise en place for dinner. Since you get in first, you usually get to do whichever one you prefer. So it’s a good thing he’s also running behind today, otherwise he might have beaten you in and you’d be stuck cooking eggs all afternoon, which is never an attractive proposition.

  You notice another message on your phone. This one, time-stamped at 0815, is from Rogelio:

  ¿DÓNDE ESTÁS CHEFF? TODAVÍA MUCHO TRABAJO

  POR HACER. CREO QUE ESTAMOS EN LA MIERDA.

  ¿DEBEMOS LLAMAR JEFE VRYON?

  You notice now that you’ve missed several calls as well. They are all from Rogelio, too. One after another after another. Every ten minutes for the last hour, it seems. And there is a gang of voice mails to go along with them that all say the same thing: there is still a lot of work to do.

  This is bad, you think.

  Of the whole crew, Rojas is least likely to worry. He always keeps his composure. But if this assault he’s mounted on your phone is any indication, it’s safe to say he’s losing it now—big-time. Who knows what you’ll be walking into now? The falcon obviously cannot hear the falconer. Will the center hold? Will we be ready when the doors open to customers? What rough beasts slouch our way to dine today?