11
Dying on the pass: A dish that has been sitting too long in the service window (the pass) and is at risk of being unservable.
2002
“Out! Get the fuck out of my kitchen before I throw you out with my own hands!”
Queenie glares at the young man who has ruined his last batch of scallops.
How hard is it to sear scallops? He has no place in her brigade.
Not in Cucuzza.
Not while she’s cooking because tonight, she’s not just the face, the smile, the name. Queenie B is cooking because this is it. The tenth visit that will turn Cucuzza’s two Michelin Stars into three, and nothing, nothing but perfection will go out.
The petrified kid hasn’t moved from his station.
Queenie might feel sorry for him if she had a couple glasses of wine in her.
He might remind her that she has a son who gives her that same deer-in-the-headlights look when she’s raging.
But she hasn’t had any wine. No whiskey, gin, or bourbon. No cocaine or Valium or any of her other go-to substances. She’s going to make it this time.
“I.
Said. Out.”
Between her teeth now.
Scarier than the screaming.
The kid hightails it out of the kitchen.
Queenie dumps the ruined scallops, wipes the pan, and starts over. Four minutes. Two per side. Simple. “Is the risotto ready?”
“Ready, Chef!”
She slides the freshly cooked scallops onto the tray.
“Scallops walking!”
“Risotto walking, Chef.”
Immediate response.
Her brigade runs tight.
Except for the kid on fish.
Who the hell hired him? She’ll find out. After service. Now she plates the dish herself, suspecting if not knowing the diners at table twenty-eight are from the committee.
“Service, please,”
her expo, Lawrence, calls.
“I got it,” she says.
“Yes, Chef.”
Queenie is taking these herself.
Nothing but the best, most personal service tonight.
For everyone.
From everyone. Even Osvaldo, who hasn’t set foot in the restaurant in over a year, has had his sommelier tastevin shined for the occasion. Leave it to him to arrive for the accolades.
She delivers the plates to table twenty-eight.
Casually.
As if she delivers plates to tables any old night.
She will tonight, that’s certain. “Enjoy your meal,”
says she, that signature smile in place.
She feels it.
Almost.
Maybe they won’t notice the tightness of it.
“Thank you.”
“Looks delicious.”
And other such banalities leave their lips before her food goes past them.
The scallops, the risotto, the crab cakes, the squash blossoms—all perfection.
Queenie B doesn’t have to see or hear their appreciation to know.
She returns to the kitchen, to the fish station.
“What’s up next?”
“Two halibut, Chef.”
“Heard that.”
The kid hasn’t left, but is cowering in the service vestibule.
Queenie crooks her finger, and he inches near.
“Who hired you?”
She squirts olive oil into her hot pan.
“Chef Lawrence.”
“Why?”
“Because I .
.
.
I . . . I’ve done well until tonight, Chef. I swear.”
She makes him wait.
Flips the halibut.
Seared to perfection.
“Do I make you nervous?”
“No?”
“Don’t lie.
What’s your name?”
“Michael, Chef.”
Queenie lifts the edge of the halibut.
It sticks.
She leaves it, turns the heat down a little.
Adding butter, she tips the pan and bastes the flesh so it glistens. “Hand me the bouquet, there.”
Michael obeys.
She has to give him credit; his hand doesn’t shake.
“Why shouldn’t I fire your ass?”
“Because I’m a good chef, Chef.
I work hard.
I fuc .
. . messed up on the scallops, but I swear it’ll never happen again.”
Baste, baste, baste.
A quick twist of the wrist.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years, Michael?”
No hesitation.
“Cooking.”
“Not executive? Your own restaurant?”
“Only if I can still cook,”
he tells her.
“It’s all I want to do, Chef.
It’s the only time I feel .
. . right.”
Queenie tips the pan.
The fish releases.
Lifting it from the butter, she inhales the aroma.
Beautiful. Flaky. Herbed and buttered. “Halibut walking!”
She hands Michael the tray.
“Go.
And don’t fuck up again.”
“Heard, Chef.
Thank you, Chef.
Halibut walking!”
She can leave, at this point.
The diners at table twenty-eight have gone.
What Michael said, though, lingers.
He has spoken a truth she rarely acknowledges. Queenie B is not a natural mother, though she has come to love her son tremendously. She is not a good wife, though she has loved Osvaldo, too. She is not even, really, a good person. Selfish. Egotistical. Ruthless. The only time she feels good, right, is when she cooks, and so Queenie cooks the entire night, moving from station to station at will, because it’s her damn restaurant and she can.
She—with Osvaldo—owns many restaurants, but she has no favorite, only the one most presently shiny.
Food is all.
It is everything.
If she could just go back to being Chef Benuzzi, she could get her life together, be a good mother, a good wife, a good person. Queenie B has made her mark on the world and all the money she could ever possibly need. Maybe it’s time for Queenie B to say adieu. Let her be the brand that endures, the personality remembered as the diva prone to tantrums in the kitchen and drunken, drug-induced mayhem. Regina can separate from her. Just step away, let the very competent people she hired run her empire while she, Osvaldo, and Julian live a quiet life, away from cameras and fans and her face on billboards from New York to Tokyo. Maybe Italy, in the tiny, centuries-old house she and Osvaldo bought when the money first started coming in. They never had more than that first summer of laziness and love at that house. Before Julian. Before fame. Before everything that came with it.
In the dining room, empty of diners but buzzing with her employees finishing up for the night, Queenie sits, still in her chef’s coat.
Black.
Smiling logo on the sleeve pocket.
Her name embroidered above her heart, just below Cucuzza. She pulls the elastic from her hair, shakes out her braid. It feels so good.
“Good night, wasn’t it?”
Osvaldo sits on the chair beside her, automatically tilting it back on two hind legs.
“You’re going to fall and break your neck.”
Words spoken just as automatically.
He smiles, but lowers the legs back onto the ground.
He is so handsome, in that mercurial way of Spanish nobility.
Somewhere in his past, duchesses and counts and even a king splashed their blood into his veins.
Blood now, too, in Julian’s. The slight lilt left of Osvaldo’s accent, meticulously maintained, still has a way of shivering through her.
“I think we’re getting that star,” she says.
“I do too.”
Silence, but for the sound of cleaning.
Clinks and clanks.
A vacuum whirs in the vestibule.
Laughter. Osvaldo reaches for her hand, and Queenie gives it. When he brings it to his lips and kisses it, she smiles. Not the signature smile, all teeth and red lips. A tired one. Slightly sad. Maybe a little hopeful.
She asks, “Remember Bova?”
Osvaldo squints, brow furrowed, then, “Our little house in Calabria? I remember it well.”
“Let’s go there.
You, me, and Julian.
What do you think?”
Osvaldo’s eyes close.
“Don’t, my love. Please.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
“I’ve been sober for—”
“One year,”
he says.
“When you can end that sentence with ‘one year,’ ask me again, and my answer will be yes.
I’ll go to Bova.
I’ll go anywhere with you. Forever, Regina.”
Forever.
Queenie cannot imagine forever.
Only tomorrow.
Next week. Months of engagements and appearances and performances. Forever? Does it even exist?
Leaning toward him, knowing he will lean in to meet her, she kisses him with those famous but tired, slightly sad and hopeful lips.
No red gloss to smear, to come between them.
No evidence of it at all besides the quickening of their breath and the hushed whispers of the staff still cleaning.
“I’ll make it this time, Oz.
I swear it.”
Osvaldo.
Master sommelier married to an alcoholic.
Spanish noble hitched to an orphan.
Her partner and husband and the father of her child damaged by her abuse before he was born. The irony of it all would be amusing were it not also tragic. He leans in again, fingers pushing through her hair and tugging her closer. He kisses her passionately now, and Queenie kisses him back. When they pull apart, they are alone completely.
“One year,”
he tells her, rising.
And he leaves her alone in that darkened dining room.
This place of their latest achievement.
Why he believes in her, Queenie B has no idea.
He should never believe in her.
Believe her.
She will lie, if a year passes and she’s fallen yet again. He has to know that by now.
She turns out the last lights in the dining room, makes her way to the kitchen by feel and the streetlights coming through the front windows.
Silent.
Empty.
Spotless. Her people know their jobs, do them well. Even Michael. He’ll be okay, given a little time and tutelage. Maybe she’ll make him her protégé, give him a boost most would kill for.
Taking a clean pan from the stack, Queenie grabs a squeeze bottle of olive oil.
She sets the pan on the stove to heat, grabs shrimp, garlic, scallions, olives, lemon wedges.
She sautés and squeezes, sprinkles salt and just a tiny bit of oregano.
Pasta would be better, but the water on the stove is set up for tomorrow, not boiling now. Bread will do. It is still today. It is still fresh. Enough.
Queenie B sits at the prep table, the first full meal of the day sending its aromas up into her nostrils, fork poised for that first bite.
She gets up again, takes a glass from the rack, goes out to the bar and pours herself a white wine.
Oz would have known the perfect one to pair, but she makes do with the house chardonnay.
Bringing it back to the kitchen, she sets it by her plate, and leaves it there while she eats. A silent companion. Temptation to be denied. She smells it, once or twice, giving herself the illusion of tasting it on her tongue. She’s always been able to do that—taste something by smell.
The shrimp is delicious.
Of course.
She made it.
The bread, still crusty and light if slightly less so than it had been a few hours ago. The wine, untasted, if not untouched. Queenie takes plate and fork, wine and napkin to the sink. She turns on the water, waiting for it to get hot. Bringing the wine to her nose, she inhales deep, and more deeply. Steam rises, making the scent even stronger. Her mouth waters. Her brain screams.
One year.
Queenie dumps the wine down the drain, washes, dries, and puts everything away.
Standing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, she surveys her domain.
Cucuzza isn’t her first restaurant, or her shiny newest, but it is her finest.
She can afford to hire the best.
Chefs vie for positions in Queenie B’s kitchens. For Cucuzza, she’d chosen young, exciting people, leaving only managerial positions for the more seasoned in their fields.
She wants fresh ideas.
Molecular gastronomy intrigues, even if the end result doesn’t quite mesh with what she considers a portion size.
Maybe it’s like fashion, all those models wearing garbage-bag dresses tied together with garden-hose belts and crowned by watering-can hats; it is only the artistic expression walking down the runway, not the garments a designer actually intends anyone to wear.
Foggy dishes under glass domes appearing more like tadpoles in a terrarium is the runway show. And when Queenie B thinks about such things, she feels almost as right as she does while cooking.
Food is all.
It is everything.
Clicking off that last light, Queenie leaves through the service entrance.
She locks up, pockets the keys, and gets in her car parked right there, at the exit.
Another Michelin Star.
Her third for Cucuzza.
It will happen, she is sure.
In a year—less, because she’s already been clean two months—she’ll have it all again. This time, she is not going to throw it away.