Текст книги "Roomies"

So, last night was a bust.

I don’t know what happened, but I’m pretty confident it didn’t have anything to do with Leila suddenly becoming ill. For now, though, I’ll just let it slide.

She’s already off to work by the time I come out of my room—I should really ask her whether she thinks we really need to sleep in separate rooms. With as close as we’ve been over the last few days, it doesn’t make much sense to create that artificial barrier.

C’est la vie.

I shower and shave and perform the rest of my morning ablutions. I’ve been doing the purchasing, but today Wilks loses his training wheels.

I’ve done my best to get him good and nervous for haggling with suppliers, but in reality, so long as he can put on a smile and chat without making a total ass of himself, there’s really nothing to worry about. I’ve already put in a good word with some of my favored suppliers, so today should go pretty smoothly.

I give Wilks a quick call to make sure he’s up, moving, and ready to pee his pants when I tell him that he’ll be taking the lead negotiating prices today. It’s nothing personal; I just love fucking with the guy.

He’s suitably tense by the time I hang up the phone and I smile my way to the apartment door.

When I open it, a small envelope falls to the ground. Curious, I bend down and pick it up.

The front of the envelope has my first name on it, but no postage. I open it up and find a Polaroid inside with a very familiar redhead, legs-spread with the caption “Wish you were here” written on the bottom.

This might be funny or arousing if it weren’t so sad.

The idealist in me wants to figure out a way to help her realize there are other things in life worth exploring, but the pragmatist in me realizes that I’m not fucking Superman. She’s been a coitus aficionado long before I ever met her, and while I would love to think that I’m capable of bending women’s wills with my mind, I’m not stupid enough to believe it.

I didn’t ask for the picture, and I certainly didn’t take it myself, but I’m not about to just toss it on the kitchen counter for Leila to find either, so I put it in my pocket and lock the door as I leave.

Wilks is waiting outside his building when I come around the corner. He sees me from a distance but still doesn’t have the confidence to just walk up to me.

This has to be stopped.

While I am effectively useless at influencing women’s actions, I am a savant when it comes to molding people in a kitchen. Wilks is technically my boss now, although I have a feeling that particular fact might slip my mind while I’m trying to build the guy’s confidence.

I get within ten yards of Wilks and stop.

I know he sees me. After all, the guy’s waving.

Our destinations lie in the opposite direction, and this is the perfect time to impart lesson number one of having your own staff:

If you can’t approach

Someone, you can’t possibly

Utilize their gifts.

Yes, lesson one is a haiku.

Yes, all of the lessons are haikus.

When I got my first head chef job a few years back, I had to learn all of these lessons the hard way. The haikus just help me remember them and, I feel, give me the air of a guru whose every word must be followed.

Okay, that and I find the practice hilarious.

Wilks isn’t coming, so I turn around and start walking toward the first stop on our itinerary.

He catches up in a matter of seconds.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“Lesson #2,” I tell him with no explanation whatsoever. “Questions whose answers you know are a complete waste of my fucking time.”

That one was particularly helpful in building staff resilience or, occasionally, weeding out people who can’t bear hearing one of my very favorite words on a frequent and often hostile basis. This was a must for my kitchen.

“Lesson number two?” he asks. “What are you talking about? What was lesson number one?”

“We’ll cover the lessons as the need arises,” I tell him. “Didn’t you write down our shopping list?”

“Yeah,” he says, pulling a notepad out of his breast pocket.

I tell him, “We’re going to start at the top and make our way down to the bottom: simple.”

“All right,” he says. “I just didn’t know if you had a particular order in which you liked to make your stops.”

“I do,” I tell him, laughing. “It’s the order I gave you. But hey, lesson number eight: It's your restaurant. Do things the way they work best for you. Screw the staff.”

He chuckles, and I know exactly what he’s thinking. Sadly, he’s still too anxious to ask the question.

This should be a fun morning.

As we’re walking, I remember the contraband in my pocket and I deposit it in the next trashcan we pass.

“What was that?” he asks.

I take a moment to count the syllables before I answer.

“New lesson: If it's coming out of my pocket, it's none of your damn business, Wilks.”

“Oh,” he says, “okay.”

“Wilks, for god’s sake, loosen up, will you? You’re the fucking executive here. I’m just the washed up bastard who’s filling in the gaps for you,” I tell him. The glory of always being that unassailable character starts losing its luster. “If you’re going to run a kitchen and keep it running, you’re going to need to work on your confidence.”

He lifts his head a little as he walks, but just as quickly lowers it again.

“All right,” he says.

“Okay, we’re coming up to our first stop,” I tell him. “Now, we’re going to go in there and get some fresh monkfish, and whatever he quotes you on price, I want you to talk him down by at least ten percent. I’ll help you a little on this first one, but you’re taking the lead.”

What he doesn’t know is that I’ve done almost all of the shopping for the next day or so, only leaving the items which absolutely must be same-day fresh for him to find his sea legs.

A lot of chefs nowadays like to set up contracts with suppliers that will ship wholesale ingredients right to the restaurant, but it’s a lot better for everyone if you take the time to give a shit what you feed people. Fortunately, Wilks already knows that much.

“Shit,” he says just loudly enough for me to hear. “All right.”

We walk to the fishmonger’s shop and walk up to the counter.

“Ah, Mr. Paulson,” Martin, the sixty-something, perpetually scale-flecked proprietor says. “Come in for to teach the new chef today, huh?”

“You know it,” I tell him. “Don’t go easy on him, Marty. He’s got to learn how to deal with crooks and swindlers like you.”

“With all the fish I give you so cheap, you should be nicer to me, Daniel.”

No, Daniel’s not my name, but for the finest fishmonger in the city, I’m willing to suffer a few small indignities.

Wilks, naturally, is unaware of this.

“I thought your name was Dane,” he says.

Now, Wilks has gone and pissed Martin off.

This was expected.

Most of the time, these people are really easy to work with, once you get to know them. Everyone has bad days, though. In order for those bad days to not transform into profit-margin-killing price hikes, one must learn how to negotiate a sour mood.

“You let him talk this way to me, Daniel?” Martin asks. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

The only difficulty I’m having in this moment is keeping a straight face.

“Don’t piss off the seller,” I tell Wilks, “or it’s caveat emptor to a degree which I seriously doubt you can even imagine.”

“Isn’t it always caveat emptor?” Wilks asks.

“Make the buy,” I mutter and nudge him.

“Why doesn’t he answer?” Martin demands.

I just shrug my shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Wilks says. “I must have been mistaken.”

Martin eyes him, but slowly unclenches his fists.

If Wilks knew exactly how ferocious Martin can get, and how close he came to getting his ass kicked by a senior citizen, he probably would have run out of the store screaming.

Never—and I mean never—mess with a fishmonger.

“Eh,” Martin says, “it’s all right. What do you need?”

“What do I need?” Wilks asks me and I’m about ready to kick his ass myself.

“Monkfish,” I tell him.

“Monkfish,” Wilks repeats. “Fresh monkfish.”

“Now you’ve done it,” I mutter in Wilks’s ear as I walk past him for a better view of the action.

“You think I sell anything that’s not fresh?” Martin snaps. “You think I sell garbage?”

“That’s not what I—”

“I build this business from nothing. Everyone who comes in knows I sell the freshest fish in the city. This is why I’ve been here thirty-five years. Why are you so stupid?”

I can’t contain my amusement completely, but I try to keep my snickering at least somewhat quiet.

Wilks hears me well enough, and it’s not doing his confidence any favors. He’s got to come to some sort of détente with Martin, though; otherwise the old fuck won’t sell to him.

This is one of those baby-bird-out-of-the-nest moments. I’ll step in if Martin starts swinging. Other than that, Wilks is very much on his own.

“That’s not what I meant,” Wilks says.

He’s getting frustrated, but he’s not mad yet. The key is in finding just that right dose of anger. It has to be enough to convince Martin to chill the fuck out, but it can’t be so much that it just escalates the situation.

Let’s watch.

“You come in here and tell me that I call my customer the wrong name and you tell me that you want fresh monkfish when there is no other monkfish that I sell!”

Martin’s screaming now, and I’m laughing my balls off.

Wilks tries to reason with him, but he’s not getting through.

And then, like a miracle, it happens.

“Listen, you ornery old prick,” Wilks starts, “you know very well that I wasn’t saying your fish wasn’t fresh, I was just repeating what Dane told me to get when we came in here! Now, you can put it back in your pants and make a sale or you can keep screaming and lose a solid customer! Now, what’s it going to be?”

He hit all the relevant points and, with the exception of insisting the proper form of my name, he didn’t go overboard.

You can’t teach that.

Martin’s face grows a few shades redder, but in the next moment, he’s got Wilks in a bear hug that’s sure to ruin the latter’s nice, clean shirt.

When Martin finally drops the new executive, he turns to me, exclaiming, “This one’s got the eggs! Ha! Reminds me of when you first started coming in here.”

Now, let me make something clear: we are not the only people in the fish market, not by a long shot. Martin’s been in business this long by being the best and every chef who even thinks of working with sea food in this town knows it.

Wilks is going to be fine, although he’s again becoming aware of just how many people have been watching the scene. I can’t be sure, but I could swear I saw some money change hands between customers when Martin picked the poor bastard off his feet.

Martin gives a decent starting price and, like a trooper, Wilks starts talking him down.

My attention is elsewhere, though.

I could swear that I just saw something on the far corner of the market. It was a flash of red hair ducking behind a display.

When nobody comes out, I tell myself I must be imagining things. Why would Wrigley follow me to a fish market?

“Does that sound about right, Paulson?” Wilks asks, apparently not for the first time.

Pulled back from my ginger hallucination, I turn to look at my new boss.

“It’s your deal,” I tell him. “Does it sound about right to you?”

He turns back to Martin and extends his hand. It’s a rookie mistake.

We leave Martin’s shop and I could swear I see that red hair again before we come to our next stop.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to discover that Wrigley’s stalking me. What I don’t understand, though, is why she’d choose to do it here. Why now?

It occurs to me that I’m trying to assign rationality to someone who may or may not be stalking me, and I give up the futile chore.

“How’d you do?” I ask.

“Were you not paying attention?” Wilks beams. “I talked him down a full twenty percent from his original asking price.”

“Well done,” I tell him and cautiously pat him on the back.

“So, any other lessons before our next stop?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Lesson number five: Whatever you do, do not get on the bad side of a fishmonger.”

His confidence is sufficiently elevated to the point where he’s finally willing to ask the question: “Are all your lessons haikus?”

“I knew I liked you Wilks,” I tell him and we finish off the rest of our daily buys with relative ease.

After everything’s taken care of, I walk the new exec back to his building, giving him further lessons and miscellaneous advice on the way.

“Are you on tonight?” he asks as we approach his building.

“I’m on the schedule,” I tell him, “but look, something’s kind of going on and I might need to have someone cover me. Is that all right?”

“Paulson, after everything you’ve done for me, I think you’ve earned another night.”

“Thanks,” I tell him and shake the hand Martin hadn’t touched. “Oh, by the way, Wilks…”

“Yeah?”

“Lesson ten: Never give your sous chef a night off when he asks. He can't be trusted.”

He has no idea how to react, but seems to take the lesson in good humor. Of course, when he tries to weasel out of giving me the night off, I gently remind him that not only did he already authorize it, he shook my hand.

I leave him with, “Lesson six: Handshakes are how you get what you want and make sure you hang onto it.”

“Oh, fuck off,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I turn around and there she is, leaning against the pole of the stoplight on the corner.

This shit’s got to stop and it’s got to stop now, before it has a chance to escalate.

“Wrigley,” I say as I approach her. “What are the chances that you’d just be standing here at the exact moment I’m walking by?”

“They’re pretty good, I would imagine,” she says, blowing out a puff of smoke. “Have you gotten your head out of your ass yet?”

“Nah,” I tell her. “It’s warm and cozy in there if you don’t mind the smell.”

“Clever,” she says humorlessly. “You know, it is common courtesy not to dump the woman you just started a relationship with, even if she tells you to explore things with someone else.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing,” I tell her.

“Oh yeah?” she asks, blowing her next drag in my face. “What makes you think that?”

“Way too convoluted and, you know, dripping with crazy.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little fucked up how often men call the women in their life crazy?” she asks. “If every woman who was called crazy was actually crazy, I’m pretty sure we’d have a lot more axe murders.”

“What do you want?” I ask.

“Only what’s due me,” she says.

“And what is due you?”

“Do me,” she says. “I get tense as shit if I don’t have a good lay and you, my dear, couldn’t have ducked out at a worse time.”

“Just find someone else,” I tell her. “That’s never been a problem for you before.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re casting some kind of weak ass moral judgment on me for enjoying sex,” she scoffs.

“Not at all,” I tell her. “I’d have no room to talk. It’s a serious suggestion.”

“I don’t want to fuck anyone else right now,” she says. “That may change, but as for right now, I want to fuck you.”

The small group of people waiting for the light to change takes a step or two away from us.

“I’m very flattered,” I tell her, “really, I am. But I’m seeing someone else now. You’ve got to move on.”

“That option’s really not on the table at the moment,” she says. “By all means, screw your roommate to your heart’s content, but don’t pretend like you’re the saint in this conversation.”

“I don’t think either one of us is ‘the saint,’” I answer. “You don’t really think you’re going to get me to cheat on Leila with you by stalking me, do you?”

“I’m not stupid, Dane,” she says. “I’m just planting seeds.”

“What does that even mean?”

She flicks her cigarette into the group waiting for the light. “You’ll figure it out,” she says. Without a nod of acknowledgement for her crassness, she starts walking away, turning back just long enough to call out, “Sooner or later, they always figure it out!”