55

I can still feel the tears on my eyelashes.

            I really hope it’s not surgery.

            Not again.

           

            I found a second grey hair last week.

            When my first alarm goes off in the morning, I hit the snooze button.  Frank rolls over and wraps his arms around me so that we can cuddle for ten minutes until my second alarm goes off.

            I have never—not one single day in my adult life that I can recall—woken up rested, refreshed, and/or ready to face the day.  It doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, I don’t want to wake up.

            Frank is still in bed 25 minutes later, when I’m ready to walk out the door.

            I crawl across the covers, snuggle up next to him and ask, “What time are you getting up?”

            “I dunno,” he answers groggily.

            “Do you have to work today?”

            “I worked extra hours all week so I’m off today.”

            “Oho, jerk!  Then you’re driving tonight.”

*                      *                      *

            At ten till five we are rushing (as best as I can, anyways) down Maryland Avenue in the Central West End; the absolute latest we can get there is five.  I’ve got my knife kit tucked under my arm.

            We pass by a bar/grill where I happen to know three of the employees. 

            My friend Faye is sitting outside, her afro unmistakable even from blocks away.  Her luscious lips are wrapped around a cigarette when she looks up from her phone and spots me.  “Damn girl, twice in one week?” she asks, not at all disappointed as she stands up to hug me.  Last Wednesday, Dick and I popped in for fifty-cent wings while out riding. 

            The manager—a short, tattooed, perpetually hatted and sunglassed man with a light brown beard down to his nipples—sees her talking to me and realizes that he knows me too.  “I’ll be right back, I gotta run and grab something real quick!”

            I simply nod and wave, because there isn’t time to say anything before he disappears down an alley.  Turning to Faye, I explain, “We’re on our way to work a private dinner down the street; we have to be there by five.”  I shrug, “Tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t stick around.  Will you be here all night?”

            She nods and exhales smoke.

            “Cool; we’ll stop back by when we’re done!”

            “Later girl have fun!” she call after me, as we’re back to rushing down the street.

            Frank comments, “I’ve met her three times now, and she still doesn’t act like she remembers me.”

            I didn’t realize; I assume everyone knows who he is by now. 

            “I think she was high a couple of those times though,” says the man who’s only ever gotten high accidentally.  (Such a Boy Scout.) 

            “Well that would explain it.  She also might be trying not to be rude and call you the wrong name.”  It’s not like she’s seen me with a ton of dudes in the seven years that I’ve known her.  I will rectify the situation later.

*                      *                      *

            When we walk into this upscale bar/restaurant, there is one bartender serving a single patron in the whole establishment.  He asks if he can help us.

            I have a sudden and brief moment of panic, because I don’t know if Chef told the staff to expect us; will they even let us in?  “We’re here to help Chef Leonard,” I offer. 

            “Go right on upstairs; you’re gonna go through the door with the ‘B’ on it.”

           Right away Chef Leonard throws fresh t-shirts at us with the secret dinner society’s logo on them—that we get to keep! 

            “You want a beer?” he asks next.

            “I am so ready for a beer!” 

            This is already the best service industry gig I’ve ever had. 

            There are several other helpers here, but no Garrett.  He’s off traveling the world buying coffee for his business, the lucky jerk. 

            My first assignment is julienning carrots; Frank is mincing garlic.

            “How small do I need to chop this up for it to be minced?” he asks me.

            I walk over to his cutting board and glance at his work so far.  “Um . . . a lot smaller than that.  I know you’ve bought minced garlic in a jar from the store, don’t act like you don’t know what it looks like!” 

            I spend about ten minutes trying to find one of the two vegetable peelers that both Chef Leonard and his wife Beth swear they brought.  I could skin them with a knife . . . or just wash them and not skin them at all . . . ew.  While I’m still trying to sort this out, Frank moves on to making chicken noodles.  As in . . . ground chicken, shaped like noodles. 

            When I’m finally done with my julienne, I move on to helping Beth with the “pizzas.”  She baked three sheet trays of focaccia to use as the “crust”; there will be a toppings bar in the assembly area by the bar where the guests will build their own pizzas. 

            “I told him three sheet trays was too much,” she says, eyeing the trays.  She’s trying to figure out how best to cut the pieces into the size she wants.  We end up cutting each sheet of bread in half, then in half again, and again, and again . . . until we’re left with dozens of focaccia squares, about two by two inches. 

            “I told him three trays was too much,” she repeats when we survey our accomplishment. 

            Oh well; time to start on dessert.  Beth made chocolate tortillas, which we need to cut into sixths and go fry into chips.  The deep fryer is “on the other side,” meaning it’s in the kitchen down the hall.  The restaurant chef is already in there working.  We introduce ourselves.

            “Nice to meet ya’ll, I’m Leonard.”

            Beth and I visibly start.  “Are you kidding me?” she exclaims.  “My husband’s name is Leonard, and I’ve never met another Leonard in my life ever!  How weird is it that there are two Leonards here right now??”

            Beth fries the tortilla pieces in batches, while I dust sugar on top of the finished products.

            “You know what this means, right?” I ask.  “We’re gonna have to start calling Chef Leonard Old Leonard, and this Leonard New Leonard.”

            “No this Leonard is Nice Leonard, because he’s letting us use the deep fryer.”

            “I’m still gonna call Chef Old,” I grin sardonically. 

            I glance over to see what Nice Leonard is cooking.  He is making bacon-wrapped stuffed dates, and damn they look delicious! 

            When the tortillas are done, Beth toasts up some pepitas on Nice Leonard’s stove, and I snap a picture of the biggest jar of maraschino cherries I’ve ever seen.

            When we return from “the other side,” guests are already starting to arrive, and of course everyone wants to talk to Leonard and Beth, because being able to tell their other rich friends that they know the chef makes them feel important. 

            “I wish you’d been at the last one; it was all young hip people—not all these boring old rich farts,” Chef complains.

            “Well did you invite me to the last one?”  Didn’t think so.

            Chef wanted to begin the dinner service by 7, but several people still haven’t showed up by this point.  This is the part that I don’t get:  these people paid . . . I don’t know how much money (my guess would be a couple hundred bucks apiece) for a private nine-course meal with cocktail pairings . . . and fucking show up late. 

            Whatever.

            We start service around 7:30; two people wound up not showing at all—it just so happened to be the two people who didn’t want fish.  So Chef prepared a whole separate dinner for these two assholes, and they didn’t even come. 

            Anyways.

            By the time dinner starts, there’s still more than a full sheet tray of focaccia left.

            “I told you three trays was too much!” Beth gloats at Chef Leonard.

            The theme tonight is “Back to School,” since it’s August.  First course is breakfast, naturally.  But this is nothing like the breakfasts we had growing up in public school:

            Eggs Benedict with chorizo sausage patty.  Plating this was a bitch; the eggs were soft-boiled (not poached), and every time one was cracked, it would slide right off the sausage. 

            My solution?  “Hey, just call it deconstructed; it instantly becomes fancier.”

            Beth’s solution:  split the sausage patties in half, creating a divot for the egg to rest in.

            One guess whose idea was picked.

            I was in charge of chopping and sprinkling the cilantro garnish on this dish.

And, I got to learn how to make hollandaise sauce from a master.  What’s the most important part of hollandaise?  I bet you’re going to say eggs, aren’t you?  Well you would be wrong.  The most important part is . . . butter! 

            Duh.

            I got to dump the giant container of clarified butter into the bowl while Chef Leonard whisked away.  Learning can be fun.  And sexy.  Oh god, have you ever seen clarified butter?  Just, oozing and glistening and turning whatever it touches into liquid gold. . . .

            Ahem.

            Now the benefit of the extra focaccia becomes apparent to us:  dipping it in the leftover hollandaise is a stroke of pure genius.

            “Yes!  Please eat the focaccia!” Beth encourages us.  “We’re going to be eating focaccia for weeks!  I told you three trays was too much!” 

            She’s just . . . never gonna let that go, huh?

            The next course is meatloaf.  Which—of course—is nothing like the meatloaf your mom makes (sorry, moms). 

            

            Because it’s deconstructed!  I was responsible for dolloping the mashed potatoes; I found an ice cream scoop that did the job perfectly.  Ice cream scoop is also my hack for filling muffin tins. 

            “Ooh Beth is gonna love you if you tell her you found an ice cream scoop!  We’ll need that for dessert,” Chef explains.

            Next up, another obvious comfort food:  chicken noodle soup!  Featuring . . . my lovely julienned carrots.  I also chopped up the parsley for these. 

            I know what this looks like, okay?  It’s experimental food; it’s not always pretty.  As long as it tastes good, shut up and eat it.

            “We need some whiskey I think; you want some whiskey?” Chef asks, patting his round belly.

            I shrug; Frank says, “Hell yes!” and Chef comes back with an unmarked bottle of amber liquid.  He starts to pour me a glass, but I stop him and say, “I’ll just have a sip of Frank’s.”  Hard liquor and I do not mix well. 

            Kraft macaroni and cheese was a staple of my childhood, so the next dish is completely appropriate:  lobster mac and cheese. 

But wait!  There’s . . . more! 

(Start humming the Imperial March from Star Wars.)

This. . . .

Is. . . .

A log. . . .

Of. . . .

  

Foie.  Gras.  Butter.

It’s a tradition of Chef’s dinners to feature foie gras in some manner.  “Because fuck California!” he cheers in his sweet Canadian accent. 

Just as we’re about to start taking plates out, Beth stops us.

“Woah, that’s way too much foie gras!  It should be cut thinner.”

Chef Leonard cut it like this; he wanted to get exactly 26 pieces out of that log.

“Okay. . . .” she shrugs and sends us out with the plates. 

As we’re clearing plates, Frank shows his inexperience with food service.

“Look at how much food is left on this plate!” he whispers once we’re out of earshot.  “I can’t believe they didn’t eat the lobster.” 

That’s rich people for ya.  “Well, it is really rich . . . and these people have eaten how many plates already?”  Chef made extra, so we get to try some too.  It is everything. 

Next up is “salad bar.”  I was not schooled (heh) in how to plate this dish, so I simply hold the bowl of heirloom tomatoes and the jar of homemade pickles while one of the other girls does it.  When she places the last pickle, there are still two left in the jar, so we each eat one.  No sooner done than someone at the end of the table notices two plates with no pickles on them.

Oops. 

“Uh . . . those are . . . deconstructed?” I offer.

We manage to spread the pickles by using their sizes to our advantage.  Big ones—one per plate; little ones—two per.  And no one needs to know any different. 

The fried stuff is ricotta cheese, and the garnish is actually cauliflower couscous.  The original plating had purple cabbage in it for a pop of color, but Chef decided he didn’t like it.  The photographer was strongly disappointed in this decision.  Oh yeah, there’s a professional photographer here.  Well, more like he’s a friend of Chef’s who owns a fancy camera and hangs around taking pictures in exchange for scraps. 

After salad bar, it’s time for a mini happy hour.  What’s every kid’s favorite part of their day?  When it’s time for Jell-o cups!  These are a bit more grown-up though; they’re Jell-o shots, in grape and Cosmopolitan flavors.  We distribute the grape ones among the guests, and at Chef’s insistence, we each grab a grape for ourselves and return to the dining room to all do the shot together.  Again, many are left untouched or only partially eaten.  I watch one guy try to eat his with a fork.

“With a fork??  Clearly these people didn’t know how to party back in the day,” Chef comments as we return to the staging area.

“They don’t know how to party now!” I finish for him.  I mean, I hope these people weren’t doing Jell-o shots in kindergarten. . . .

We’ve still got all of the Cosmo Jell-o shots left, so I try a few of them, and some of the grape ones that were brought back unopened.  You see now why I didn’t need any of that whiskey. 

The least popular dish goes out next—pasta con broccoli.  Not one plate comes back empty.  We throw away a LOT of that pasta. 

Chef Leonard starts describing the next dish before all the pasta plates are cleared; one man remarks to Chef, “She’s pretty,” as I’m bussing a nearby table.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that, so I just walk away; Chef ignores him and keeps talking about the food.

  

We’re in the home stretch now:  we’ve got deviled eggs in the batter’s box, and dessert is on deck.

You may have guessed that these aren’t your everyday deviled eggs.  You finally got one right!  They have smoked trout added to the filling, and a garnish of smoked trout skin and trout roe.  We plate twenty-eight and have one left, which I give to the girl who ate the extra pickles with me.  Chef comes over to add the garnishes, and notices that one of the “test” eggs was accidentally plated.  The test has a parsley garnish, making it stand out amongst the others.  (Another thing that Chef nixed, much to the photog’s disappointment.) 

“How did this get here?  Do we have another one?”

Shit. 

Oops. 

Wait. . . .

“There’s twenty-eight here, don’t we only need twenty-six?”  Thank goodness those people didn’t show up!  Another crisis averted. 

Now, onto dessert:  sweet corn ice cream with our chocolate tortillas, topped with a cayenne chocolate sauce and toasted pepitas. 

Beth is frantic.

Beth kind of is always frantic—I suspect that was part of her pastry chef training—so it doesn’t really rattle me.

“We should’ve taken the ice cream out of the freezer an hour ago; it’s frozen solid,” she declares in her loudest indoor voice. 

Okay now we can panic. 

This is the fifty-fifth time they’ve done one of these dinners; it’s nice to know that surprises still lurk in every corner, even for seasoned chefs like these.

We start plating the tortilla chips, and send Leonard out to the dining room to stall, stall, stall!

We try submerging the ice cream container in warm water . . . which only succeeds in melting the edges of the frozen block.  We can chip little pieces off at a time, but Beth wants uniform scoops. 

“What about your muscley boyfriend, think he’s strong enough to beat the ice cream?”

Here you go, babe; the thing you’ve been training for your entire life:  scooping some froze-ass ice cream.  Deadlifting 400 pounds was bound to have some kind of practical application one of these days.

Although he struggles at first, Frank makes that ice cream his bitch. 

The plating is beautiful, and there’s plenty left over for everyone to try. 

When we clear dessert, I notice two bowls that are completely untouched.  The accompanying cocktails are also full to the brim, the ice slowly melting in their sweaty glasses.  Clearly these two people just went to the bathroom and will be back any minute to enjoy their delicious dessert.

When I tell Beth about the bowls that I left on the table, she explains, “Oh, we call her ‘The Convenient Diabetic.’”

“So . . . they just left?”

“Yeah the wife is supposedly diabetic, but only every once in a while.”

“But . . . that dessert is really savory; there’s probably more sugar in all the cocktails they served tonight. . . .”

“Right, which is why she’s only diabetic when it’s convenient for her—after the cocktails.”

Dude.  Rich people.

The guests don’t stick around much longer after that, and cleaning goes pretty quickly for us.  That tiny dishwasher is super industrial; it takes only a few minutes to do each load.

Frank and I help carry stuff down to Chef’s car; we get to snake through all the back-of-house passages. 

Now it’s time to drink!

The reward for all our hard work. 

Since we’re in such a fancy place, and we just served the fanciest dinner ever, I order pinot noir.  Pinot noir is my blanket wine, meaning I’ve had the stuff that’s ten dollars a bottle, and I’ve had the stuff that’s ten dollars a glass, and I like it across the board.  Much more economical than my relationship with cabernet sauvignon—I can’t stomach the cheap stuff. 

There’s only six of us who stick around:  Chef and Beth, Frank and me, and another guy and girl (not a couple) who helped us out.  Chef is pissed at the guy who bartended for us tonight; apparently he was supposed to keep us awash in whatever drinks we wanted all night, rather than us having to pester him for one bottle of whiskey.  Normally Chef and Beth bring the booze for both the staff and the guests, but Chef decided to shell out the bucks to collaborate with the bar and just have them handle it.

This to me is better than attending a fancy 10-course meal, and I can’t wait for the next one.  I tell Chef, even if I can’t make the actual dinner, I can help with the prep.  My weeknights are more likely to be free than my weekends are. 

“How’s your foot?” Frank asks.

“Sore.”  It’s that time of year once again—the time when we play Did I Break My Foot Or Not?  Wednesday is my annual MRI to check out this giant lump that appeared on the top of my right foot after this week’s game.  My doctor has already dropped the S-bomb, even though the x-ray didn’t show any breaks.  That bitch just loves to cut me open.

Our server returns and takes orders from the three men for a second round; she starts to walk away without even acknowledging the three women at the table, so I have to call after her for a refill on my wine. 

Everyone else drinks their second round quickly, and Beth starts complaining that she’s tired and ready to leave, so Chef gets the check and I slam my second glass of wine so we can head out.

The bar locked the door to the space we were using, where we left all of our stuff.  My knives are in there; I’m not leaving without my knives.  The bartender kindly lets us back in and we collect our effects.  When all is said and done, it’s not even eleven o’clock. 

*                      *                      *

On our way back to the car we again pass by the grill, and I’m spotted, so we go in for a beer. 

There’s a jalapeno wheat on tap that I just adore.  Faye is wandering around . . . kind of working.  I make sure to re-introduce her to Frank (of course she remembers him).  My hairy tattooed friend the manager has unfortunately gone home for the night.  My friend Brayden is bartending, and I pay for the beers.

He charges me full price.

That’s bullshit; when I was here with Dick he charged me industry price.  If there was ever a night when I should be charged industry price, it’s tonight. 

When I came in with Dick, I made sure Brayden knew that Dick and I were not together. 

Hrmph. 

I can see Faye at the other end of the bar, talking with another patron while looking and gesturing right at me. 

“What are you saying about me down there?” I call out to her.

She replies, “I told him you’re a butcher!”

“Oh!  Yes, I literally have a bag of knives right here!”  Without unrolling it, I reach into my knife kit and wrap my hand around the closest hilt, which just happens to be the cleaver that Frank’s dad bequeathed me.  It belonged to his father, who had apparently already bequeathed it to Frank.  When I asked Frank if he wanted it back, he declined, so it’s mine!  I raise it skyward, smiling and giggling like a kid with a lollipop.   

Within minutes, Frank and I are the only patrons remaining in the bar. 

“What happened, Faye?  Everybody left because I was brandishing a weapon?”

“It’s not so much that you were holding a giant knife in the middle of the bar.  It’s that you were cackling maniacally while waving it around.” 

Well, what can I say?  Knives make me happy.

“Good fuckin’ riddance I’m sick of all these fuckin’ people can’t get a goddamn minute to relax,” Brayden mutters from behind the bar. 

Frank has already finished his beer and is nodding off while sitting up.  So again, I slam my drink so that we can get home before he passes out.  Between that and the wine, I am sufficiently ferschnickered.  I sleep until noon the next day.