2
On the line: The “line”
is the kitchen space where cooking is accomplished.
Being “on the line”
means one is a line cook, an essential foot soldier of any functioning restaurant brigade.
015
February in Connecticut.
The most boring month in the whole year, unless you skied, which, despite living in New England, Gale Carmichael did not.
A New Haven boy, born and bred, where trips to the country were few and far between, even though the country could be found with a car and a few miles’ worth of gas.
February’s only highlight was Valentine’s Day wooing couples out to restaurants for that special dinner.
One and done, like St.
Patrick’s Day for local pubs, Irish or not, though there were a bunch of those speckled throughout the city.
The winter holidays, on the other hand, crammed too many parties into a little over a month, catered and in-house.
Once the patio opened to outdoor dining, winter-month doldrums would burst into warm-weather festive.
But in February it was never busy on random Friday nights.
Typically.
Tonight was an anomaly, and, of course, Gale was on the line.
By himself, except for the new kid who couldn’t pull his own weight yet.
Leaning against the brick wall, Gale didn’t even shiver against the coarse cold seeping through his chef coat.
Winter didn’t make the kitchen any less a furnace.
All he needed was five minutes to cool down, to uncurl the clench in his hands, ease the band of aching heat across his shoulders.
Chopping, stirring, flipping, plating.
He craved a cigarette, fantasized flicking the lighter, inhaling deeply, feeling the nicotine prickle into his toes.
Only fantasized.
He quit smoking when he quit everything else.
His sponsor said, as long as he was having those cravings, it was better to have a cigarette than a relapse.
Eighteen months, and Gale hadn’t had a drink, a smoke, or a hit.
It was all horseshit anyway; AA mentality chafed, but court ordered was court ordered.
Gale had served his time for a full year, still had his year-sober medal thing.
At least, his mother, Lucy, did.
He hadn’t been to a meeting in months.
“Hey, Gale!”
His shoulders tensed.
“I’m on break.”
“There are no breaks during dinner service.
Hurry up, before Marco notices.”
Frances, Marco’s sous chef, took no breaks, so no one else was allowed to either.
She’d left the line to chastise Gale.
She wouldn’t do it again.
At least she called him out, and not Marco.
She was right, of course.
A line cook’s job was grueling, often chaotic, and rarely appreciated.
No glory; it all went to those higher on the culinary ladder—sous chef, executive chef.
Low pay, sharing tips with the waitstaff who couldn’t be trusted to be honest when cash was concerned . . .
such was the life of a line cook, and the price of getting to sous chef.
Chef de cuisine.
Executive chef/restaurant owner.
Celebrity chef.
At least he’d already done his time as busboy, food runner, dishwasher—the lowest forms of life in the kitchen.
The better restaurants had fancier-sounding names for the brigade from front of the house to back.
Gale had learned them all in culinary school, but he’d never worked in a restaurant fancy enough to call its line cooks chefs de partie.
“Back on the line,”
Frances barked.
“Heard, Chef.”
Gale fell back into his place.
Into the frenzied heat of a working kitchen.
Marco’s, an established fine-dining experience where New Haven locals—the ones who could afford a $45 steak—ate.
Being near Wooster Street, they got a lot of overflow traffic when the more landmark waits were too long.
He was still just a grunt in the brigade, but at least it was better than working the line over at the vegan restaurant by Yale.
“Fire two scallops, a calamari, and crab cakes for table twelve,”
Marco boomed from the pass. “Heard?”
“Heard that,”
the whole brigade called back.
Gale put the crab cakes on the flat top to sear with one hand, tapped a knob of butter into a hot skillet with the other.
The butter foamed and sizzled, the taste and texture of perfectly sautéed and basted scallops phantom in his mouth.
Tender, slightly caramelized to perfection.
Two minutes, turned once, two more minutes.
He flipped the crab cakes.
Perfect.
Now a squeeze of lemon, a sprinkle of fresh herbs, and, “Scallops and crab cakes walking. Risotto ready?”
“Risotto walking.”
“Calamari walking!”
Marco waited at the pass.
“Beautiful.”
“Thanks, Chef.”
And that was all.
Back to his station.
More orders called.
More food prepared. An endless cycle of sizzle and aromas that somehow excited him every time.
Home sweet home, man.
The only place he ever wanted to be.
Service was grueling, but it went fast.
Gale walked home only half aware of where he was going.
His feet knew the way.
His body.
No brain activity required aside from that deepest deep within the medulla oblongata.
Animal brain.
Caveman, maybe.
He remembered learning it was where the brain stored the most basic functions.
There was breathing.
There was fight or flight, a term he’d learned in those few college days he had before realizing his foodie heart was incompatible with the career as a biologist that his high school career test had recommended.
Gale was an artist whose art lived on his tongue, in those tiny bumps—papillae—that differentiated sweet from sour, bitter from salty.
And umami, a word learned only because he quit college and went to culinary school.
With Sean.
Where so many things started to make sense—and fall apart.
“There’s no money in it,”
his mother said.
“Restaurants open and close overnight.
You’ll end up in debt up to your eyeballs.
Wait and see.”
“No one ever trusts a skinny guy like you to feed them,”
Danny Carmichael said.
“The Irish aren’t known for their culinary prowess.
Cooking is girlie stuff anyway.
What’re you? A homo?”
He loved his dad, but the man could be an idiot.
The cooking world was still and unfairly male-dominated.
Besides which, Gale wasn’t gay, and was only half Irish.
Kind of.
His claim on Ireland being several generations behind his dad, intermixed with so many other nationalities, the cultural claim to the Carmichael name had overtaken the bloodlines long ago.
Lucy was Italian, born and bred.
Being Italian didn’t make her a good cook any more than being Irish made Gale a bad one, only a delayed sort of food-woke.
He was sixteen before he tasted food that was not fast, pizza, boxed, or from a jar.
The apartment was as cold as the kitchen was hot, evidenced by the cloud of breath accompanying his sigh as Gale let himself in.
Thermostat said it was fifty-eight degrees, though it was set to sixty-eight.
Kyle called the landlord days ago; apparently, no one had been sent to see what the deal was.
Gale yanked open the fridge; a crescendo of beer bottles clanking together made his mouth water a little.
He shoved aside take-out containers, searching for his lone carton of chocolate milk, the kind he used to get in elementary school on Fridays, when his mom let him spend the extra nickel.
Gone.
He looked in the trash; there was the empty container, sitting right on top.
At least he ate at work, but damn, he’d been looking forward to that chocolate milk.
“Dude.”
Kyle Sisto shuffled into the kitchen in his boxers, rubbing his eyes.
Unlike Gale, Kyle wasn’t a skinny chef no one would want cooking for them.
He scratched his soft, hairy belly.
“You just getting in?”
“Yeah.
Did you drink my chocolate milk?”
“That was yours?”
“You knew it wasn’t yours.”
“Sorry, dude.”
Kyle shrugged.
Fucker.
If he had anything in the fridge besides beer, Gale would have consumed it out of spite.
“Supe stopped in this afternoon, said he was getting on the heat situation this week.”
“Yeah, right.
Jimmy here?”
“Nah.
He and Nando went out someplace.”
“Out? Neither one of them’s contributed to the internet bill in months.”
Fuck, he was sounding like his dad.
“Jimmy was supposed to pay me back that ten bucks I lent him.”
“You don’t lend Jimmy money.”
Kyle grunted.
“You give it to him.”
It’s true.
You know it is.
“What am I supposed to do for breakfast? I didn’t get tipped out—”
“Again? You got to stop letting the waitstaff get away with that shit.”
He’s right.
“—and I don’t go in until three tomorrow.”
Kyle opened the fridge, pulled out a container.
He opened it, sniffed, made a face.
“This is his.
Some kind of curry from the other night. I’d say you bought it off him.”
“I wouldn’t pay a dollar for that crap.”
Gale took the container anyway.
Mold laced the edge of the topmost layer.
If he had to, he could scrape it off.
He handed it back.
“Yo, we should go to that soup kitchen I told you about,”
Kyle said.
“Free food.”
“No thanks.”
Beggars can’t be choosers, man.
“Dude, seriously.
I heard it’s good. Nice.”
“A good, nice soup kitchen.
In New Haven.”
Kyle sniggered.
“Yeah, I know.
I haven’t been there myself, but I got it from a good source.
A few guys at work go there when the money runs low and the shifts don’t align with the hunger pangs.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Your call.
If you change your mind, let me know.
I’ll go with you.”
Leaving the kitchen—such as it was without a working stove, only a microwave and a hot plate to cook on—Gale gave a thumbs-up over his shoulder.
He stepped into his room and out of his shoes, his clothes, grateful he’d obeyed his mother and changed the sheets yesterday.
It felt good to get into a clean bed, even if he needed a shower, big-time.
You should go with him.
Gale closed his eyes.
Mistake.
Sean, pale and too thin, burned like an afterimage behind his eyes.
Always this haggard specter he became, never the blond-haired, blue-eyed charmer he’d been. “Not now, okay?”
Whatever, man.
I only wanted to say good on you.
Encouragement, you know?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The beer.
You didn’t cave.
Good on you.
“I wasn’t even tempted.”
If you say so, man.
I’m still proud of you.
Gale rolled over onto his side, phone in hand.
He found a text from his brother that he’d heard come in and forgotten about.
Brian—the success-bound Carmichael brother in his second year of law school—would be home for their dad’s birthday on the twentieth; would Gale be around? Gale sent him a thumbs-up.
He wasn’t getting out of joining the family festivities.
Birthdays were sacrosanct.
They’d even celebrated his own in rehab.
He scrolled.
Twitter.
Instagram.
Facebook.
His parents paid for the phone.
Just so he had no excuse not to call.
Check in. Let them know he was alive. Okay. Not wasted. Speaking of, he clicked into a text:
Hey, Mom.
Just getting home.
Beat to hell.
I'll see you for Dad's birthday next week. Love you.
Eighteen months hadn’t eased her insta-panic, because even at that hour, the little dots that said she was typing, that she had her alerts on through the night, appeared on his screen.
. . .
. . .
. . .
A full thirty seconds of dots.
Good to hear from you, buddy.
See you soon.
I love you, too.
Gale felt bad but grateful his mom had deleted whatever had taken so long to tap in.
It was going to be a while, if ever, before her first instinct wasn’t to gush relief, keep him talking, ascertaining his level of coherence by the speed and clarity of his response.
Or lack of one.
Maybe the longer Gale stayed clean, the more that whole catastrophic thinking would ease up.
For her.
For them both.
Leaving her message on the screen, Gale plugged in his charger.
He set the phone beside him, illuminating a circle on the clean sheets.
As if his mother were there, watching him sleep.
Night, man.
Gale sighed.
“Night, Sean.”