Lenny raised one of his perfect eyebrows. “You’re not a morning person, are you?”
Perspective returned to Nero as abruptly as it had left him. He pushed himself off the doorframe. “I like mornings just fine. Are you ready?”
“Erm, I think so?”
“Good. Get some clothes on and meet me downstairs.”
Nero fled the flat, changed into his whites in the staff room, then dashed to the kitchen to meet Fred, the perpetually cheerful fish man, who was waiting at the back door.
“Late today,” Fred said. “Been out on the town?”
Nero grunted. “Chance would be a fine thing.”
“You should be a fisherman, lad. Be done by lunchtime.”
“I’d stink, though, eh? Besides, I don’t like rain.”
“You young’uns. Don’t make ’em like they used to.”
Nero signed for his order and bid Fred a good day. As the fish van disappeared, the meat lorry took its place, and so it went on until Nero had accepted four separate deliveries that all needed putting away. First, though, he had to find Lenny some clothes, ’cause there was no way he was spending the day with him wearing those jeans.
He left the stacks of boxes and crates and went to the staff changing room. In the spare lockers were various odds and sods of kitchen-wear. A white jacket seemed around Lenny’s size, but the only trousers that weren’t huge were women’s—Debs’s, if the pink animal print was anything to go by.
“Oooh, I like those. Are they yours?”
Nero glanced over his shoulder. Lenny stood in the doorway, hair tamed, a faded Clockwork Orange T-shirt covering his chest, and a healthy dose of— Damn, is that eyeliner? Nero grunted and turned back to the trousers. “They ain’t mine. I can give you my spares if you want, but we’ll have to tie you in with a cling-film belt.”
“Sounds interesting.” Lenny ventured into the staff room, his hand brushing Nero’s arm as he passed. “And fun, but I’m happy enough in the pink.”
He plucked the trousers from Nero’s grasp and undid the button on his jeans. Nero backed away. “You’re putting them on now?”
“Er . . . yeah? You’re wearing yours?”
He had Nero there. “Right. Okay. Um. Here’s a jacket for you. Meet me at the kitchen door when you’re ready.”
For the second time that day, Nero made his escape and retreated to the temporary safety of the kitchen. He began unpacking the vegetable delivery, setting aside what he’d need that day, and storing the rest in the walk-in fridge and dry storeroom. On his return trip, he passed the prep area to find Lenny frowning at a box of globe artichokes.
“What are these?”
“Artichokes.”
“That some type of thistle?”
Nero reached carefully around Lenny and plucked an artichoke stem from the box. “What kind of thistles have you been eating?”
“I’ve never eaten anything that looks like that.”
Cass had a talent for lacing his words with an innuendo so subtle Nero was never sure it was really there. Lenny, it seemed, played that particular game even better. Either that or his sinful jeans had gone to Nero’s head.
Stop ogling him. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Nero dropped the artichoke and continued on his way. At the back door, he waited for Lenny to join him, sensing his presence behind him like a slow burning fire creeping up on him. “You gonna help me, or what?”
Silence. Nero forced himself to glance around again. Lenny was hovering by the fridge, a frown Nero would be proud of darkening his features. “Can’t you just pass me stuff?”
“Pass you stuff?”
Lenny shrugged, all traces of his previous playfulness gone, even with the pink animal-print trousers hugging his slim waist. “I can put it away if you tell me where it goes.”
In his head, Nero roared, like he would at any other fucker who didn’t do as they were bloody told, but Cass’s ominous words resonated, echoed, and despite the odd heat Lenny’s presence seemed to stir, Nero felt chilled to the bone. “Keep Lenny close, if you can. Don’t let him be scared.”
Easier said than done when it was plain Lenny wasn’t going to venture closer while Nero was at the back door. “Wait there.”
Nero stepped over a box of venison and made short work of shoving the stacked deliveries through the door and into the kitchen. “There. How ’bout them apples? Can you work with me now?”
Lenny stared like Nero had grown horns, then a slow smile eclipsed the unsettling fear that had been there. “You’re supposed to be a grumpy motherfucker.”
“Cass tell you that too?”
“Maybe.”
Nero’s fingers itched to send Cass another abusive text, but, as per Cass’s own kitchen rules, he’d left his phone in the staff room. “I ain’t grumpy, just busy. Now you gonna help me, or what?”
Lenny shrugged. “Make me your bitch.”
Only if you return the favour.
They packed the deliveries away, working in the companionable silence Nero preferred in the kitchen. The last box was the hake that Fred had brought. “Leave it there.” Nero pointed at his bench. “I’ll need it in a bit.”
“Why? What are you making?”
“Merluza a la gallega, but don’t worry about that right now. We’ve got shit to do before we start cooking.”
Shit that entailed training Lenny to set up the kitchen, a ritual Nero usually conducted most days—whatever kitchen he was running—in relative solitude, no matter how late he’d been to bed the night before. Not today, though. Today, Lenny trailed behind him, asking a million questions Nero had never thought to ask when he’d followed Cass around this very kitchen too long ago for him to truly remember.
“What’s that?” Lenny asked.
“A mixer.”
“For cement?”
Nero scowled. “What do you think?”
Lenny peered into the giant mixing bowl. “There’s one at Misfits for making the burger buns. It’s not as big as this, though.”
“This one’s not staying here. We don’t use it enough. I reckon it’ll go to the new place in Vauxhall when it’s set up.”
“Jake said there’d be something new this year when he came in a few weeks ago.”
“You know Jake, eh?”
“I’ve met him a few times. He asked me to paint the mural on the wall.”
“That was you?” Nero pictured the geometric mural painted onto the bare bricks in the main dining area at Misfits. It had appeared overnight a month ago and no one seemed to know how. “Cass wouldn’t tell me who did it.”
“He doesn’t know. Jake asked me not to tell anyone for a while. Said it made it cooler.”
“So you told me?”
Lenny winced, mischief dancing in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Nero said. “Okay, that’s all the ovens on. I’m gonna light the grill. Reckon you can remember how to set up the steamers?”
Nero wouldn’t have thought badly of Lenny if he couldn’t, but Lenny sloped away to complete the task with a nonchalant shrug, and returned a few minutes later with a grin.
“Sorted?”
“Smashed it.” Lenny’s grin widened. “You’ll be out of a job soon.”
“That so? All right, then, let’s get you prepping. See what you’re made of.”
Nero retrieved his box of hake and led Lenny to the prep area. “Blue knife and boards for fish prep. There’s twenty fillets of hake in this box. They need pin boning with those tweezers, and cutting into three.”
“Three?”
“Yeah, three, and they gotta be equal. Don’t fuck it up.”
“What happens if I do? Does it go in the bin like on the telly?”
Nero snorted. “No, mate. We don’t chuck good food in the bin here. If you fuck up, we’ll do something else with it, but that doesn’t mean you can piss about. Just do as you’re told; it ain’t hard.”
“Fair enough.”
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Lenny drew the box towards him, effectively turning his back on Nero, so Nero left him to it, ignoring the alien niggle of remorse in his gut. Cass had said to keep him close, not wrap him in cotton wool. Besides, Nero had a kitchen to run.
The rest of the morning was spent prepping and checking the kitchen was ready for the day ahead. Around ten, the rest of the team filtered in—chefs, kitchen porters, front-of-house staff. Lenny kept his head down, doing everything Nero asked of him with no fuckups Nero couldn’t fix, and no one seemed to notice him until Debs, the sous chef, appeared at Nero’s bench.
“Who’s the new kid?”
“Lenny.” Nero studied the spring onions he was charring on the grill. “Cass’s mate.”
Mate might’ve been pushing it, but it was good enough for Debs. Cass’s reputation was fearsome, and no one fucked with him.
Debs hovered, though, understandably curious. “Where’s he from?”
“Dunno.”
“Is he a chef? Don’t look like it, holding that knife.”
Nero glanced at Lenny, who had moved on from massacring Nero’s precious hake to butchering potatoes. “He’s training.”
“Shall I get him on puds with Spanks then?”
“He’s gonna help me.”
Debs’s eyebrows shot up. “Help you? How’s he going to do that if he hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing?”
“That’s my problem, ain’t it?”
Debs had never been good with Nero’s bark. She backed away, hands raised. “Fair enough. Easy day for me, then. I’ll help Jolen.”
She drifted to the starters section, giving Lenny a tentative smile on her way. He responded with a friendly wink. Debs blushed. Nero stifled a growl and returned his attention to his work. Debs was a nice girl. If Lenny wanted to—
“Nero?”
“What?”
Lenny flinched. “Um . . . I’m done with spuds. Do you want me to wash up or something?”
“What?”
“Wash up,” Lenny repeated. “Unless you need me to chop more stuff?”
Sensing Debs’s gaze on them, Nero tossed the last of his charred onions into a bowl and chucked them in the blast chiller. “We’re done for prep, unless we get a manic Monday. Go get a clean apron and wash your hands. You’re staying with me.”
Lenny did as he was told. While he was gone, Nero set about cooking breakfast for the team, an Urban Soul tradition, born of the Borough Market sausage sandwiches Cass was famous for, and the company ethos that no one worked a shift hungry.
Nero threw two dozen sausages on the grill. He was dishing up when Lenny returned. Nero thrust a stuffed bap at him. “Get that down yer. Service starts in twenty minutes.”
“No, thanks.”
“No?” Nero glanced around. The rest of the team had made typically short work of the free food. “On a diet, are you?”
“Very funny. Vegetarian, remember? I’m not putting pig bollocks in my mouth for breakfast, and I don’t eat bread.”
Lenny’s tone was mild, but the niggling guilt Nero had carried all morning returned full force. “Didn’t think you were serious about that shit.”
“Why not? Not a crime, is it?”
“Erm . . . no?” Though it would be a cold day in hell before someone took Nero’s homemade chorizo away from him. “Hang on.”
Nero opened the upright fridge by the grill, searching for a gluten-free breakfast no creature had died for, but in a fridge loaded with steaks and chops, it was slim pickings. He grabbed a slab of halloumi cheese. “Go and ask Debs for a couple of field mushrooms.”
Lenny sloped down to the starters section and returned with a handful of portobello mushrooms. Nero threw them on the vegetarian end of the grill, along with some sliced halloumi. “You eat green shit?”
Lenny scowled. “Not broccoli.”
“Rocket?”
“I s’pose.”
Nero grabbed a plate and pulled all the elements together for a breakfast of fat field mushrooms, grilled cheese, and rocket. He softened the blow of the bitter leaves with roasted garlic butter, and handed it over. “That’s my best offer. Nosh it or toss it, I don’t care. Be ready for service in ten.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Lenny lifted his breakfast to his mouth and took a sinfully big bite. “I mean,” he continued around chewing, “I know what noshing and tossing is, but I don’t know how to be ready for service.”
Noshing and tossing. Nero’s brain caught up and heat bloomed in his gut. He snatched his fags from the side. “Don’t be a dick. Just be ready.”
He strode away, leaving Lenny to his breakfast, and went outside, sparking a smoke. Nearby, a few waitresses were doing the same, but Nero ignored them and stomped to an upturned beer crate in the corner of the yard. Debs and Spanks appeared at the back door, lighting up their own cigarettes, but they knew better than to approach him.
Nero closed his eyes, craving a stiff drink, or a spliff—anything to take the edge off what was fast turning out to be the most bizarrely tense Monday he could remember. Blood pumping, skin tingling, and his teeth worrying his bottom lip, he could barely focus now that he had the time to try. Stress came with the job, but angsting over a fake trainee chef who’d likely be gone by the end of the week? That was a new one, and he’d run out of time to brood on it. He smoked his cigarette down to the butt and tossed it away. It was time to cook.
Back inside, he hit the ground running. Monday was the slowest day of the week, but even a quiet Urban Soul restaurant brought its own brand of mayhem, and the ticket screen logged orders as fast as Nero barked instructions at Lenny. “Two duck, three lamb, and a seabass. Get the plates, I’ll tell you what to put on them.”
Lenny fetched the plates. Nero laid lamb steaks, sautéed potatoes, and grilled asparagus on three of them. “Pour over the jus and put them on the pass.”
“Jus?”
“Gravy. It’s here.”
Lenny took the jug and carefully poured the sauce over the meat. “Done?”
“Done. Remember how you did it. You’ll be plating the next ones on your own.”
“What?”
Lenny looked alarmed, but Nero didn’t much care. On his watch, chefs learned on the job. “Don’t give me them eyes, mate. Concentrate, and put the food on the plates.”
Echoing the way Cass had taught him, Nero kept his instructions minimal, a tactic that worked well until the first orders of the hake special came in. The dish was Spanish soul food at its best, and one Nero refused to tart up for Pippa’s affluent clientele. No towers of garnish or drizzles of crap, just a sprinkle of parsley and it was done.
And then Lenny got hold of it.
Nero glared at the bowls of chorizo-spiced fish stew Lenny had set on the pass. “What the hell is that?”
“You tell me.” Lenny wiped the rim of the fashionably wide bowls—about the only instruction he’d followed. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
“You don’t speak English either, by the looks of it. And what the fuck is going on with that bread?”
“Jenga?” Lenny spread his hands, an impish grin curving his full lips. “You said it was important to make the food appear more intricate than the simple ingredients you put into it.”
“When did I say that?”
“I’m paraphrasing. You actually said posh twats would eat pig shit if you garnished it with hipster micro-cress and charged them twenty quid.”
That sounded closer to something Nero would say, but it didn’t explain the adventure playground Lenny had constructed on Nero’s precious hake dish. Orange zest, garlic, and chopped parsley stalks, there was even a nest of delicately shaved fennel roots. And it looked . . . bloody awesome.
“You would’ve thrown those orange shells out, right?” Lenny said. “The ones you juiced for the sauce? And the parsley stalks?”
Nero growled and turned back to the grill. “Sod it. Send it. And make sure each one going forward is exactly the same.”
And so i
t went on. Lenny’s lightly flamboyant touch graced every dish Nero sent his way, and after a while, it began to feel normal.
Halfway through, the floor manager, Steph, came into the kitchen and beckoned Nero away from the grill. “Two things: who’s the cutie plating mains? What the hell is he doing to our menu? And why are you letting him?”
“That’s three things,” Nero snapped. “You gotta problem on the floor?”
“Not at all. I’m just curious. Cass never said anything about changing things up and you don’t usually give a shit enough to bother.”
The comment stung, but it was nothing Nero hadn’t heard from her before, and really, who cared if she thought Nero’s simplistic, peasant approach was lazy? She hadn’t complained about . . . other things. “Lenny’s helping me out for a while. A bit of fresh air to make up for my ambivalence, yeah? Now get out of the kitchen.”
Steph scowled and flounced away, clearly knowing better than to argue with Nero when he had a grill full of meat he was itching to get back to. She’d likely moan to Tom about his attitude, but what else was new?
“Did I get you in trouble?” Lenny kept his gaze on the pea shoots he was draping artfully across a ginger beer–glazed pork chop as Nero returned to the grill. “She didn’t look happy.”
“She’s never happy unless she’s chewing my ear off. You sending that, or pissing about with it?”
“I’m sending it.” Lenny called for service. The plates left the kitchen, and he joined Nero at the grill. “These are the last tables?”
“Till dinner time.”
“Smashing.” Lenny yawned. “I need a nap.”
Nero snorted and laid steaks on the resting tray. “Good luck with that. You’ve got an hour before I need you back here to prep for dinner.”
“Back? Where do you want me to go?”
“Wherever you want. Pub across the road does a cracking sarnie if you don’t fancy eating with the riffraff later.”
“I don’t want to go to the pub.”
Lenny snatched the tray of meat and returned to the pass. Nero eyed him, taking in the strain in his slim neck and slight tremor in his fingers as he plated up the final orders. A pisshead, maybe? But drunk chefs weren’t safe in the kitchen, so Cass would’ve told Nero that. So what was it that weighed so heavily on Lenny’s shoulders?
Strays Page 3
