Hatched

by Robert F. Barsky

  Jessica had stopped listening only moments into the non-conversation. Nate, she knew, was recalling those evenings they had spent together, usually by the garbage bins, rethinking the world in all of its glories and its failings. She had loved him then, loved his disconnect from the world, loved his eloquence and his care for all those not himself, and she had imagined him warm and compassionate, generous and giving, in the way that those Americans felt who had latched onto Rosa Luxemburg and the Voltairine de Cleyre and yes, even the unattractive Emma Goldman and doctrinaire Leon Trotsky. But no more. In Nate’s presence, Jessica now wanted to laugh, because in the absence of laughter came tears, in the presence of tears came the recollection of all moments lost in a frigid non-world of preservation and destruction they called the ‘walk-in.’

  Nate knew that he was wasting not only the breath that came from his pleading lungs, but the thoughts that had been born in his breast as he lay awake, the heavy Rudolph Rocker book opened up before him in his desperate hands, as he sought, with all of the universe’s futility, to imagine himself with her the night before.

  Jessica acknowledged Nate’s existence and oration, and then, after listening to him for a few moments, she walked, quite literally, right past him to Johnny, who was carefully arranging sizzle pans for the evening’s onslaught. Nate continued for a few moments, speaking to the inner shell of Fabergé Restaurant, and then stopped, mid-sentence. Jessica had foregone her usual compassion, because she suddenly felt that she needed to speak to Johnny, this boy-man, this tall, handsome, and very kind person who seemed but a boy in a man’s frame, a man in a world he didn’t wish to see. She needed to be at work, and not in Nate’s fantasy land, and her own sense of camaraderie at work led her to a broad series of alliances, on different grounds, all through the many shifts she had spent at Fabergé Restaurant.

  Johnny wasn’t a sexual being, and so was hardly a man, but he—in his quiet, his calm, his abstinence—said little, said nothing, exposed nothing, to a world of prying eyes. And so, Jessica appreciated Johnny. And she thought that he must come from another universe than her own, a place that could provide her with some solace in hard times.

  She was not far off from the truth.

  “Johnny . . .” Jessica looked around, suddenly. “Where is, um, what’s his name?”

  Johnny said nothing.

  Jessica looked at Johnny from below his gaze. She observed the world from around 5’ 3”, while he, a 6’ 2” lanky, strong boy, had eyes that conveniently looked out upon the Fabergé Restaurant world at the level of the large broiler that John had purchased for larger, of course, egg-filled birds.

  “Boris.” It had come to her in a flash. “Johnny, where is Boris?” Jessica was so beautiful in her chef’s garb; she seemed to keep the world safe and warm and sensual, the world that was otherwise slaughtering nature’s creations for the sake of a pharmaceutical-spoiling taste bud that is the last vestige of a Fabergé Restaurant client: paid-up, but hopeless. Johnny still said nothing, and he threatened to remain mute to Jessica’s inquiries until her gaze, imploring in its quiet beauty, insisted.

  “He has gone out,” mumbled the usually crisp and clearheaded Johnny. “For a smoke.”

  Johnny had thought by responding to Jessica with short bursts of speech he would be saved from the ravages of leaking blood from his mouth, but he was wrong. Crimson tides sent waves unto the sides of his lips and created great red droplets that careened their way down his all-American, carefully carved face.

  Jessica looked into his big, blue, watery, pain-and pleasure-filled eyes with despair and adoration. She knew that his entire mouth was filled with blood, and that he’d swallow it all only as a last resort. Seeing the rivulets of blood carving pathways down Johnny’s soft skin, Jessica hesitated to engage in any more “conversation” with him, and so she just stood knowingly before him, quietly giving him the special moments required to distribute the life force that he had secretly accumulated after what was undoubtedly a moment or two of blissful pain.

  “John is serving the Taster’s Menu tonight,” she opened.

  Johnny looked at her, calmly, and then looked more animated, as though the life-giving blood was kicking in. Jessica watched him, finally seeing the telltale rise and fall of his Adam’s apple. He had swallowed.

  “Okay.” He really was matter-of-fact, even when his mouth wasn’t full of blood.

  “I’ll help out tonight,” she continued, as though oblivious to Johnny’s antics. “I don’t think that Boris has worked with most of it, but we’re probably going to go through half a crate of lobsters anyway, and even if he just sticks to them,” a strange image, she thought. “We should be okay, Johnny, and so,” she repeated lovingly, “I’m going to help you out. We can work on the Taster’s Menu together.”

  “Great!” He smiled. His eyes twinkled, and his skin, irritated in a few small places on his face and fingers, looked fresh and vibrant.

  “He is so cute,” thought Jessica, looking at his boyish good looks, “but what a weird habit!”

  Johnny’s “habit” was actually weirder than Jessica knew, since she could see but the external signs of what was going on in a body purposefully ravaged to fulfill his lust for flesh and blood, about which she had guessed, based on the state of his cuticles and his obvious habit of chewing on the inside of his lips.

  What she didn’t know was that Johnny’s lust for tidbits to consume extended far beyond those realms, and into scabs, snot, any protruding skin he could scratch off, and even hairs—particularly those that seemed to him to be out of place—and earwax, and even the “sleep” in his eyes in the morning, a delicacy that he cultivated by mildly irritating his eyes before going to bed each night. He had also learned that by rubbing certain areas of his body, like the inside of his ears, the tender skin between his toes, the brittle skin of his elbows and knees, he could provoke his body to produce that delectable, clear fluid that seems to occupy the areas immediately beneath the first and second layers of the epidural. This was an especially desirable product, since, when hardened, it became a kind of crunchy nugget that invoked flesh, but was far more delicate.

  In short, Johnny was a connoisseur of the body qua body, and Jessica didn’t doubt that this odd phase in his life—who knows how long he had been doing this—probably wouldn’t last, particularly when he found the pleasures of sharing in the intake of bodies, as lovers do, from the licking of lust-induced sweat to the smelling of passion-filled inner thighs. It was impossible for Jessica to figure out who would fulfill this lustful role, because it was entirely unclear as to whether Johnny was gay or straight or both, and he would clearly appeal to many people, at different ages and times.

  Although he had worked for John off and on throughout the past four years, doing exclusively broiler cooking, Jessica had never seen Johnny with a significant, or even insignificant, other. Had she in the many months and years been less connected to Nate, she would have explored him; as it was, though, she had simply never had the chance. As he turned back to wipe down the handles of the broiler, Johnny looked as clean, fresh-faced, and youthful as could be, and had she not been witness to his self-induced pint o’ blood, she would never have imagined that he was occupying himself from the inside out.

  Jessica had joined the army of people in the “service industry,” as Nate called it, because she, Jesus-like, was adept and inclined to bring solace to the hungry, healing to the sick, and warmth to the shivering. At first she imagined that Johnny was more pragmatic, that he had enlisted to make up for whatever fissure there was between the fees at NYU and his scholarship’s breadth and depth. She knew from John that Johnny was studying engineering and came from a family that could barely cover his tuition, or that of his older brother Michael, had the two of them attended SUNY or CUNY. But it was impossible to imagine that his father, who owned a small hobby shop in a little strip mall in Locust Valley on Long Island, could cover the cost of private-school tuition. But as Jessica came to learn of Johnny�
��s lust for flesh, she understood that this wasn’t just a part-time source of income subsidy.

  She looked over to him again, as he stood, tall and noble, surveying the kitchen in those early prep hours, from his lofty height. He was neat, tidy, well-kempt, except for a few patches of missing flesh, and he was absolutely reliable in an area of the kitchen that required impeccable judgment. She knew that if a piece of meat or fish or any baked casserole was returned to the kitchen, it was because the client didn’t know the definition of medium or medium rare, and not because the dish was incorrectly prepared. She followed the line of his right arm, down from his shoulder to a white towel placed upon the steel prep counter in front of him, and then to a small chef knife that lay just askance. On its tip was a small globule of blood. That, she knew, was the reason why he was cooking flesh instead of folding sheets or serving coffees or shoveling earth. With the tools of the trade, he could carve out pathways of warm ecstasy to flow from his wounded palate to his lustful tongue. She looked into his eyes and imagined kissing him into submission, her tongue upon his pearly white teeth, her warm saliva mingling with the warmth of his mouth, and then she, imploring now, fantasized biting into his lips while he, realizing her quest, succumbed, and came with all of his essence into her warmth.

  Those were the only stains upon this sterile floor, the gusts of blood, sometimes tinged with flakes of skin or scabs, that Johnny inadvertently let fly when his efforts forced expulsion from his sculpted lips. Oh, Johnny!

  Chapter 20

  Boris suddenly burst into the Yolk, awkwardly stumbled towards the walk-in, and a few short moments later emerged with a tub of lobsters. He placed it right behind him, to the right of the pot-scrubbing station, so that during the inevitable Saturday-night rush he would be able to just reach in and grab the next victim to boil, stab, and then pry open for its slimy, bright-green eggs.

  “Boris!” called Nate from across the Yolk. He had finished placing all the eggs in their stainless-steel holders and was now preparing to man his station for the evening, bringing forth the food he’d prepped and arranging desserts he’d half prepared so that the final touches could be added when need be. “Boris! How does the locker room look?”

  Boris was a large, gruff, forty-year-old chef who, all those years ago, had trained at the Culinary Institute of America, after dropping out, or perhaps being kicked out of Bard College, for rampant pot smoking and, more problematically, selling marijuana and ’shrooms. He had learned, from the almost superhuman consumption and then preparation of munchies-satiating food, how to make really good comfort food for the really, really hungry. As such, he was well-suited to a range of New York restaurants that needed his bull-like ability to produce at “crunch-time” the quantities of food that rush-style evenings required.

  John knew all this, but he also knew that Boris couldn’t be counted on to prepare delicate or fastidious foods, and so he put him to work on evenings like this one, when rapid steaming, dissecting, and cutting of lobsters, in whatever form they needed to be arranged, was of the essence. Boris wasn’t witty, he wasn’t smart, he wasn’t careful, and he wasn’t subtle. But sometimes his gruff rapidity was what the wealthy and often geriatric clients of Fabergé Restaurant really wanted, so as to be able to shed some of their unearned wealth.

  “Locker room?” Boris, after thinking for a few minutes, had no idea what Nate, who was always so strange, was talking about. He did try to decrypt his meaning, though, so as not to feel the idiot that Nate could make people feel, particularly since he was to be working with Jessica, whom he knew he would someday lure into his lascivious bed for many ravishment.

  “You have some of my first-stringers, B!” called Nate, approaching the pot-scrubbing area of the kitchen. He peered down into the basin of insect-like critters whose lives were, he reflected, quite literally at stake, and about to be staked and, in the surf-and-turf dishes, near steak. He made a mental note of this, to mention to Jessica later on. As he stared into the essence of the lobster basin the lobsters, still frisky and not yet depleted by the heat and deoxygenation of their water that would inevitably set in by the latter part of the shift, seemed to raise their claws in salute. They even clicked together their vice-like appendages, grasping at the air above their basin.

  “Ah, Boris, true to yourself, you tender-hearted bastard!” Jessica looked over at the object of Nate’s attention. Boris had removed the elastic bands that protect the chefs’ fingers from their iron grip.

  “Boris!” blurted Jessica, inadvertently.

  “Jess, they are given two chances, the lucky scavengers o’ the seas! Leap! Hop! Extend! Win! And you will receive that shiny golden medal we call LIFE.” Boris looked at Nate with as much bewilderment as Jessica did with comprehension. Jessica, ever the angelical purveyor of sacred knowledge, turned to Boris.

  “Nate’s Lobster Olympics are held this week.”

  “Every week!” corrected Nate. “I’m preparing them for glory, all of them!”

  “Every week.”

  “And tonight’s team, Boris, fared well, but, well, not well enough! I freed every one of them who won gold medals, even those who tied for first place!”

  Boris was catching on; he had heard about Fabergé Restaurant’s antics from those employees who, out of both belligerence and envy, found endless reasons to critique this strange establishment from the warm security of those places that stuck to more standard fare.

  “Well, we’ll see if there’s any talent for resistance to me!” Boris eyed Jessica. She certainly had that talent, in spades, as regards Boris.

  This game, far more amateur and unimaginative than Nate’s, nonetheless helped that clock that seemed on most nights to be bathed in molasses to move more quickly. All of the members of the kitchen staff were caught up in the action, anxious to see if any lobster would be wily enough to grab hold of the hand that cooks it.

  “Remind me not to help you out with the lobster rush tonight,” said Nate, directing his remark to both belittle Boris and defuse whatever admiration Jessica might have for this approach to liberating the worthy.

  Boris took his towel and wiped his cheeks and the areas around his eyes. He was already wet with the perspiration that his hefty frame brought forth with even mild exertion. Boris had earned each one of this 260 pounds with the rich foods that he not only prepared, but gleefully consumed prior to, during, and after each shift. The fact that he pinch-hits in multiple establishments around town only aggravated that problem, rendering him far more unattractive than his ego permitted him to think.

  Suddenly, through the server entrance across the kitchen, John entered the Yolk. He looked over the station that he had occupied for so many years, for virtually his entire life, and there he saw but the obese, obsequious man that he had hired to fill in for him. It was hard to understand why John now directed his talents to the Hobart washing station given his long and glorious career as a chef. “Boris!” he called out, with a rather sardonic grin. Boris stood at attention and dropped his pretensions of glory, of whatever sort might occupy him in his quest for what lay within the chef’s clothing that adorned Jessica’s beautiful body.

  “John!”

  “Boris, this is a big night, and we can’t afford the inspector’s write-up. We’re serving it all tonight, Boris, and they’ll be here to taste it!”

  John seemed to have nothing but scorn for his clients. He once read that Enrico Ferrari likewise treated his customers with scorn. It was true that Ferrari aficionados have to reach deep into their plunging pockets in order to buy one of the miraculous red vehicles that Enrico fashioned. But it was also true that Enrico’s passion was for racing, and not for watching wealthy clients drive racing machines on roads that held back the stallion that is Ferrari’s symbol. Perhaps for this reason, Ferrari carefully cultivated relationships with the drivers of his glorious race team but refused, with a kind of scorn, to have any part in the retail business of selling cars to the “non-meritare,” the undeserving, the ri
ch fools that kept his passions alive. John went a step further, though, feeling a sense of condescension towards his clients and towards pinch-hitters like Boris, pure hatred. His communication with this boor was now over for the night, and forever.

  John turned towards Jessica, who stood between Johnny, Boris, and Nate, awaiting whatever was to happen tonight.

  “Jessica, garnish for Boris tonight!”

  This command represented a not-so-secret coded message that meant: “Jessica, please see to it that Boris’s plates look okay before they are sold to the servers.” The servers were supposed to perform that final act of garnishing with parsley or, depending on the dish, some kind of egg. So with a small amount of thought, Boris would have known that he was going to be surveyed, and not admired, by Jessica. The message here was one of disgust towards having to deal at all with Boris, but complete faith that the products of a pathetic man’s labor would be salvaged by the gentle intervention of Jessica.

  But the backstory here was even more complex. John delegated surveillance of the final products that left his kitchen to Jessica or Nicky or, when neither of them was present, Nate, whom he could trust. Even when it was he himself who had occupied the place of culinary honor behind the sauté station, his rightful throne, he would turn to Jessica when he felt, that is to say knew, that the dish being handed over the steel barrier towards the servers was ill-prepared. He could spot an error in his recipes from a mile away, but it was in just such surveillance that he had almost lost his job of almost twenty-five years at the Ritz Carlton in Boston, where he had received almost all of his training. He had worked in the central kitchen at the Ritz beginning at the ripe, old age of fourteen, and his obvious skill and devotion led to his being named executive chef at the young age of thirty-six. He occupied that post for seven years, before opening up his first restaurant in Cape Cod, and then, five years later, New York.

  There was a food surveyor who had been hired by the Boston Ritz who was paid a portion of tips from all the servers. He was charged with quality control, since he had previously worked—but not worked out—as a sous chef, and he had this not-so-glorious but nonetheless lucrative position, because he had married into the family that managed the hotel. This quality-control guy, with the rather unfortunate but probably fitting name of Harold, had married a member of this rather royal institution, a rather unattractive Italian American, in order to stay in the job and, moreover, in the building that was named “Ritz.”