3
In the weeds: Phrase meaning a cook is overwhelmed by tickets, trying to do it all and not necessarily succeeding.
2015
Jimmy didn’t pay Gale back, but he did get him a free Egg McMuffin and coffee the next day; there wasn’t a fast-food place in town where Jimmy couldn’t get free food.
The superintendent fixed the heat that they weren’t allowed to turn up higher than sixty-eight, but it was way the hell better than fifty-eight.
Gale’s dad’s birthday came and went, punctuated by Brian blessing them all with his exalted presence for two days before heading back to Boston and the Harvard law degree—to complement his Yale undergrad—it was going to take even a lawyer half a lifetime to pay for.
Danny Carmichael did that Dad thing he did, comparing his sons and finding one lacking in the most loving and humorous way, that being not at all funny but coming from a place of concern.
Lucy told her husband and Brian to knock it off before she cracked some heads, as always and obviously worried that any adversity was going to send Gale off the deep end.
Stay the course, man.
Don’t prove them all right.
Gale stayed the course.
He worked.
February turned into March, bringing milder temps.
Walking home from work wasn’t quite as grueling, even after a Saturday night shift.
March wasn’t typically any busier than February, and this one didn’t prove out of the ordinary.
Gale couldn’t blame the cold or exhaustion for his carelessness, his lack of street savvy.
He could, however, blame the asshole who rolled him.
“I don’t have any money!”
“Give me what you got.”
It was dark.
The street, deserted.
And Gale had been scared shitless.
He couldn’t tell the police or the ER staff anything about his attacker, only that he—or a very deep-voiced she—had shoved him hard from behind, and then when he was on the ground had taken the three bucks and change in his pocket, a lighter, and a container of Tic Tacs.
His attacker left him with his easily trackable cell phone.
Good thing you didn’t have your knife kit, man.
Or get tipped out. Again.
“That’s a pretty bad wrist sprain,”
the ER doc told him.
“Do I need a cast?”
“No cast, but you need to keep it braced.”
“Can I use it? I’m a line cook in a restaurant.”
“Knives? Hot stoves and pans? I suggest you take a couple weeks off.
For safety’s sake.”
Yeah. Right.
Gale refused the prescription for codeine, but accepted the one for superstrength ibuprofen.
The thought of walking home after a full shift, half the night in the ER, and an extra couple miles to boot, wouldn’t even form into a maybe.
He called his dad, knowing what would result, but deemed worth it in the end.
This would set everyone back on the comfort scale.
Maybe his father wouldn’t tell anyone else.
Wouldn’t count on that, man.
Waiting outside, trying not to think about the throbbing in his wrist, Gale dry-swallowed the ibuprofen.
It’d hopefully kick in by the time he crawled into bed.
He spotted his dad’s 2006 yellow Subaru Baja—hard to miss—pulling into the ER parking lot, waved over his head with the braced hand.
Maybe seeing the brace would prove he hadn’t been lying about what happened.
Gale got into the front seat.
“Hey, Dad.
Thanks for picking me up.
I’m wiped.”
“You look wiped.”
Ire rose.
Gale tamped it down.
“I didn’t—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, son.”
He sounded sincere.
Gale let go of the lingering ire in a sigh so soft he barely felt it.
“What’d they get?”
“He.
One guy.
Nothing, really.
Three bucks.”
“Damn.
Sure worth sending someone to the hospital for, am I right?”
For some, yes.
“I landed on one hand when he shoved me down.
Doc says it’ll be a couple of weeks for my wrist to mend.
She doesn’t know kitchen life.”
Gale chuckled.
His father did not.
“You need to take time off?”
“For this?”
He held up his hand.
“Pssh, no way.
Seriously, I can’t afford to.”
“I can give you a little money to get by.”
Again, sincere.
“I’m thirty, Dad.
Besides, it’s not just the money.
Two weeks out of the kitchen puts me back on the line. I’m working hard to get higher—”
Well, you can’t get much lower, man.
“—on the ladder.
Two weeks out isn’t an option.”
Danny Carmichael grunted appreciation of his show of toughness, even if he still didn’t approve of his vocation.
Lucy Carmichael would have kept arguing.
“What’d they give you for pain?”
Ah, there it was.
“Codeine.”
His father’s knuckles whitened on the wheel.
“But I told them no thanks.”
Gale shook the bottle of ibuprofen.
“Got this instead.
It’s just superstrength Advil.”
“Good call, Gale.”
The sincerity was going to make him cry if it didn’t let up soon.
“What’d the bill set you back?”
“Nothing,”
Gale told him.
“When you make as little as I do, you qualify for Husky D.
Free insurance.
Free everything, pretty much. It’s one perk of being poor.”
“Sounds like socialism to me.”
“Not having this discussion, Dad.”
Another grunt.
More familiar ground.
Gale actually smiled.
“Does Mom know?”
“About this?”
His dad gestured to the brace.
“Nah.
I’ll tell her when I get home.”
Good call, Mr.
Carmichael.
“Where does she think you went at this hour in the morning?”
“I don’t have to report my comings and goings to your mother.”
Then, “I told her I had to go into the shop early.”
Gale let it go.
It was all sorts of fucked-up and his brain wasn’t in the mood for the self-recriminations that would result if he didn’t.
His father pulled up in front of Gale’s apartment—the second floor of an old Victorian converted into four units.
The house had once been beautiful.
Home to wealthy New Havenites, back in the day.
Now, like most of the area, it showed only paint-peeled shadows of its former grandeur.
Danny didn’t even take the car out of drive.
“You going to be okay?”
“Yeah.”
Pressing a twenty into his hand, his father only shook his head, eyes closed, when Gale tried to give it back.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Gale got out.
“See you, Dad.”
“See you, son.
Call your mother!”
Walking backward, Gale saluted.
His dad pulled away from the curb, waved.
Barely seven in the morning, and Gale hadn’t slept but for the doze he fell into while waiting to be treated.
It’s all he wanted. Bed. Sleep. Oblivion . . .
Too far, man. Too far.
“Sorry.”
Slippery slope.
“I know. Sorry.”
The other guys were still asleep.
Restaurant work made them all night owls.
Gale kept as quiet as he could, even though they all slept like logs.
He opened the refrigerator door, more out of habit than desire, beer bottles, as always, clanking.
There, right in front, sat a little carton of chocolate milk.
A note attached.
In Kyle’s chicken-scratch writing.
Gale’s name, and a skull.
Taking it from the fridge, Gale closed the door carefully, so the beer bottles wouldn’t clank.
He opened the lip, tipped all eight ounces down his throat in a few satisfying gulps.
Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes.
Sad, when the kindness of a replaced chocolate milk could make a grown man weep.
Not sad, man.
Appreciation is a noble thing.
Gale appreciated the sentiment.
He appreciated Kyle’s gesture.
He appreciated the free insurance that got him fixed up in a world that generally disdained people too poor to insure themselves.
He appreciated that he was alive, even though Sean was dead.
Even though it was his fault that he was.
“You’re going to slow down the line.”
Frances, hands on hips, shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Gale.”
“Please, I can’t—”
“She’s right.”
Marco blew a breath through his lips.
“Sorry, kid, but you can’t work the weekend shifts like that.
It’s a safety issue.”
“I’ll take the brace off.
Come on.
I can’t afford not to work.”
“I hear you.
I do. But—”
“Trust me, okay? I won’t slow down the line.”
Bushy eyebrows raised, Marco looked to Frances.
He’d cave before she would.
Classically-trained-at-the-Sorbonne Frances was his right hand; Gale wasn’t even his left.
That would be Santos, sous during the services Frances didn’t work, and who Gale had worked under until his recent promotion to weekends.
She’s going to ice you, man.
Think fast!
“What if I go back to Tuesday through Thursday, and Sunday?”
Gale asked.
“Kitchen’s way slower.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
Marco crossed beefy arms, knife tattoo barely visible under all the hair there.
“Santos has been griping about losing you.”
Frances groaned.
“Who would you put in Gale’s place?”
“Dai?”
Another groan.
“I guess he’s better than Gale with the brace.
But his skill level is hardly up to the task.”
Could that have been a compliment?
Gale tried not to fidget from foot to foot.
Tips were a huge part of his pay, when the waitstaff got around to tipping him out.
They always did.
Eventually.
They were a family.
Dysfunctional, but a family. Everyone knew how important those tips were. Especially the Friday/Saturday shifts, the only time those tips amounted to anything. But lower pay was better than no pay.
“Only for two weeks,”
Gale burst.
“The doc said I’d be out of the brace in two weeks.”
Frances let go a long exhale.
“Fine.
Dai it is.
But you better be back to fighting form in two weeks, Gale, got me?”
“Heard, Chef.
I don’t want to lose my place on the line.
I worked hard to get there.”
“You won’t,”
Marco said.
“I promise.”
But Frances did not, and that was crucial.
She just stood there, hands still on hips and lips pursed.
How did a woman as small and slight as a hummingbird give off bird-of-prey vibes? An eagle, or a hawk.
Some kind of raptor, for sure, able to spot prey, swoop down, and swallow it without mercy.
Gale used to think it was her elite education in France that intimidated everyone.
Until he started working in her brigade.
Nothing got past her.
No quarter given.
Gale was more than a little afraid of her.
He almost felt sorry for Dai, truly not up to the task.
If the kid had any brains, he’d work extra hard to win Frances over and steal Gale’s spot.
It was nice for Marco to promise, but he’d been so long off the line, he probably forgot how cutthroat a kitchen could be, family or not.
Frances left them to finish prep.
The air shifted.
Marco uncrossed his arms, shaking them out as if released from a straitjacket.
“You’d never know I stole her from a hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout, huh?”
No freaking way.
“But . . .”
Gale fought for words.
“I thought .
.
. didn’t she graduate from . . . ?”
“The Sorbonne,”
Marco finished for him.
“Yup.
Look, Gale, I know you’re afraid of losing your spot, but I appreciate your talents.
I’m not going to fuck with your place in the kitchen. In fact . . .”
He put that beefy arm around Gale’s shoulders, drawing him away.
“Funny thing is, I was talking to Santos, just last night, about trying out that chicken thing you made last month, you know, as a special.
Remember? The one with the portabella and smoked mozzarella.”
After hours, two months ago, in fact.
There’d been chicken that didn’t sell—because it wasn’t a very good dish—and needed to be used.
Gale transformed what was left, taking what he found in the pantry and fridges, into one of the best chicken dishes he, personally, had ever eaten.
Frances had plenty of critique—the chicken wasn’t pounded thin enough, the cheese overpowered the delicacy of the sauce, which she found slightly too sweet because he used sweet vermouth instead of dry, it could have used a little acid—but she ate every bite.
“That’d be awesome.
Do you think Frances’ll know how to replicate it? Or should I—”
“Tell her how?”
Marco boomed laughter, like he boomed everything; he had that kind of voice, that kind of presence.
“It’d go over like a lead balloon.
You know?”
More quietly now.
“With you going back to your old schedule—”
“Temporarily.”
“Yeah, temporarily.
That’s what I meant.
So maybe you could do that dish this week.
You know, on a slower day. Wednesday, you think? Santos wouldn’t mind you subbing in, unlike . . .”
He jerked his head in Frances’s direction.
Damn, dude.
That’s awesome.
Every hair follicle on Gale’s body crackled. “Yeah?”
“You sure you’ll be up to it?”
“Absolutely.
Wow.
Thanks, Marco.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He leaned in.
“And I mean, don’t mention it.
Frances’ll have my nuts in a vise if she finds out.”
“I won’t.
Again, thanks.”
Silver lining, man.
Silver lining.
“I’ll see you Tuesday then,”
Marco said.
“Leave me a list of what you need and I’ll add it to today’s order.”
His own dish.
Cooked by him.
It was every line cook’s dream.
And he’d missed working with Santos, those less frenzied services that afforded him downtime to create things like that chicken dish.
If he hadn’t sprained his wrist, it might not have happened.
Kismet, man.
That’s how shit gets done.
Gale added the items he needed to the master list.
Marco would figure out the quantities.
He hadn’t cooked regularly in a really long time, but he’d once been something of a celebrity in New Haven, back in the day.
Several James Beard Award nominations, but no win.
No Michelin Stars.
He still had the mounted and framed articles, published in various Connecticut papers, touting Marco’s as the “best food in New Haven,”
number two on the top ten list in Connecticut, among the fifty-best, off-the-beaten-track—New Haven wasn’t by any means off any beaten track, but it wasn’t on Wooster Street, so it counted—restaurants in New England.
He had friends in high places.
Famous friends.
It was hard to imagine Marco rubbing elbows with the culinary elite.
Gale was grateful, and a little humbled, that his boss liked his dish enough to give it a trial on a midweek dinner special.
It was a start.
But money was going to be supertight for two weeks.
An hour at his kitchen table trying to figure it all out came to the same conclusion;
the weekends he didn’t get tipped out on time meant the occasional missed meal, but two entire weeks of lower tips was going to make that more than occasional.
Go to your folks’ place to eat.
“I’m thirty, Sean.”
Lucky you.
“Cheap shot, dude.”
I’m just saying.
“I know what you’re saying.
Fuck off.”
“Hey! Whoa! What’d I do? I didn’t say anything.”
“Sorry, Kyle.”
Gale rubbed his forehead.
He hadn’t even heard his friend come in.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Kyle pulled out a kitchen chair, sat.
“How’s the wrist?”
“Okay.
Not too bad.
Marco won’t let me work the line on the weekend.
I’m picking up my old shifts during the week.”
“Sucks, dude.”
Gale grinned.
“Not entirely.
He’s letting me cook a special.
That vermouth chicken I came up with back in January.”
“The one with the portobellos and mozzarella? Damn, that was good.”
“Midweek special, but it’s something, right? Money’s going to be tight though.
Thanks for the chocolate milk, by the way.”
Kyle waved him off.
“I’d offer to spot you but . . .”
“Yeah, I know.”
Gale took a deep breath.
Always broke; a cook’s life.
Even a lot of chefs complained of the same.
There wasn’t a huge amount of money in the food industry, especially not for people like him.
Always tight.
Always shoestrings.
Always a bad review away from failing.
He couldn’t imagine being one of those Food Network celebrity chefs, who never seemed to cook a bad meal or run out of new ventures to add to their fame and fortune.
He’d be happy being sous in a kitchen like Marco’s, making food and feeding people, and earning enough to live on.
Someday.
Someday was not today.
He swallowed hard, pride and all.
“How about you tell me about that soup kitchen again.”