43
Mince: To finely cut up food into uniform pieces smaller than diced or chopped foods.
2016
“Wow.”
Gale slid into the limo waiting in front of the studio for Regina—correction, Queenie B—and him. “Snazzy.”
“The network knows how to take care of the talent.”
“I’m just along for the ride.”
He dropped onto the long bench seat.
“The gossip columns are going to call me your boy toy.
You know that, right?”
“Not my first rodeo.”
She snickered.
“It’ll change tack after they snap a few photos of you and Rhiannon canoodling in New York.
I can see the headlines now.
Queenie B loses boy toy to Grand Champion.”
The car glided from the curb.
Smooth jazz played on the sound system.
New York City lights, in this city that never slept.
“You’re her idol, you know.”
Regina shrugged.
“You like her?”
“She’s nice.
I asked her out.”
“I hear a but coming.”
“I’m not looking for anything more than casual,”
he confessed.
“I was kind of thinking, maybe I’d apply to do another competition.
Top Chef, maybe.
It’s been a dream, you know. I mean, not one I ever took seriously.”
Not before her.
Not before now.
“I thought, maybe we could work on elevating my skills.
I know I have a good palate and ideas, but I’m still all over the place. If you could—”
Regina reached across, grabbing his hand.
“We need to talk.”
Gale’s insides gurgled.
He knew what was coming.
He’d avoided acknowledging it for weeks, but he had absolutely known since the moment he saw her in the studio, standing on the precipice between his Regina and the world’s Queenie B, finger raised.
Sitting up, he held tight to the hand holding his. “You can’t go.”
“I have to, Gale.
The soup kitchen can’t survive the return of Queenie B.
Not if I’m there.
It’ll be nuts for a while after the article drops, but—”
“Article?”
She blew out a deep breath.
“I told you, this has been in the works for a while.
That woman I was with? The tall one with the dark hair? She was my assistant a long time ago, and now has her own food magazine.
Marco contacted her for me—”
“Marco was in on this?”
“Will you just listen? I did an interview for A Chef’s Life.
It’s coming out in a few weeks.
I made sure it would be after your competition, because I didn’t want it to impact it in any way.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because it’s not just doing the interview.
It’s me coming out of hiding and all that brings with it.
It’s me going away and your mom and Kyle taking over the kitchen and—”
“Hold on, hold on.”
Gale’s gurgling insides threatened to spill.
“Mom and Kyle? Not me?”
“No. Not you.”
She let go of his hand, fingering hair from his face the way she’d done that night he’d come to her drunk and coming apart.
“I asked your mother to run the everyday and keep an eye on Gladys.
Kyle’s taking over services.
I’m hiring a proper kitchen crew to help them, but it has to stay the way it’s been if it’s going to serve the community it’s meant to serve.”
“Where do I fit in?”
“You don’t.
You’re not for the soup kitchen, Gale, any more than I am.
We were, but not anymore.
I want you to come with me.”
“Come with you? Where?”
“Bova, Italy,”
she said.
“I have a house there being converted into a culinary school and adjoining restaurant.
I haven’t figured it all out yet but the plan is to have great chefs from around the world teaching master classes, all volunteer, of course.
Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to spend a week in Calabria as part of Queenie B’s next great endeavor? The prestige alone will be worth it.”
“Sounds expensive,”
Gale said.
“What chef hopeful will be able to afford that?”
“Students will be on scholarship,”
Regina answered.
“It’s the restaurant that’ll bring money in.
Can you imagine eating in a place where Harold Javian could be your chef one night? Queenie B the next? We’ll get chefs from the French Laundry, El Bulli, La Marine, Ginza Kojyu.
You name it! They’ll come, because Queenie B asked them to. Personally, and with charm, I promise. And the students get the best culinary education on the planet in exchange for creating and cooking and working harder than they’ve ever worked in their lives. Marco’s going to help me run it. And you, if you will.”
“Me?”
Gale’s voice cracked. “I’m no—”
“Don’t,”
she snapped.
“Don’t say you’re no one.
You’re a Cut! champion.”
“And two-time loser.
Seriously, Regina, how do I qualify to be part of this?”
“You don’t.
Not yet.
But you will, Gale. Look.”
She flopped back in her seat.
“I’m not going to force you.
Marco’s keeping his restaurant open.
He’s making Frances executive chef. You can go back to life as it was before if you want. I’ll even tell Kyle you’re—”
“No.
You can’t do that to him.”
Gale pushed fingers through his hair.
“All he ever wanted was a food cart and he got chosen by Queenie B herself to run her beloved soup kitchen.
It’d kill him.”
“Just Eggs?”
“He told you?”
“He might have asked if I wanted to invest after he found out who I am.”
“No way.”
“He did.”
Regina stretched her neck, side to side.
Gale had seen her after a fourteen-hour shift, splattered in food and oil and flour, and she’d never looked as tired as she did right now.
Her neck finally cracked.
“Got to give him credit for having the nerve. I was honest with him. It’s a kitschy idea with a five-year shelf life he’d never break even on. He understood.”
“I thought he’d just given up on it.”
Like every other time? Even Kyle had to grow up, man.
Head back on the plush seat, Regina closed her eyes.
Gale picked at his thumbnail, his cuticles, searching his gut for a reaction to all she’d told him.
He understood why she’d kept it to herself, let everyone in on it but him.
Mom and Kyle. Marco. It made perfect sense, even her wanting him to come with her, because, in all honesty, he couldn’t imagine life without her at this point. Apparently, it went both ways.
“Okay,” he said.
Regina picked up her head. “Okay?”
“Yeah.”
Relief, happiness, excitement, fear, flew out of his mouth like a thousand butterflies released from a net.
“I’ll go with you to Italy.
One condition.”
An eyebrow quirked.
“I get to sit in on those master classes.”
And a smile.
Tired, but all Queenie B.
“How else did you think you were going to qualify to be part of my next great endeavor? Jeez, Gale.
Get a grip.”
Burn, man.
Gale would have laughed if he wasn’t certain he’d start blubbering instead.
He settled for a smile, flopping supine onto the long, luxurious bench seat, arms over his head. “When?”
“It was going to be a few days before the interview came out,”
she said.
“But I think we have to move it up, after tonight.
You have a passport.”
“Mom has it.”
Gale closed his eyes.
“She’s going to have a cow.”
“No, she won’t.
The last thing she wants is you hanging around New Haven the rest of your life.”
True.
She’s been saying for years you needed to get out.
“Does she know? About Bova?”
Regina chuckled.
“I had to tell her.
She wanted to know why I was asking Kyle to run the kitchen instead of you.”
Good old Lucy Carmichael.
Leaving his mom.
New Haven.
Kyle and their apartment and the soup kitchen and Marco’s.
This morning, when he left for the filming, he never could have imagined any of it. And now he was going to Italy with the one and only Queenie B, to be part of something truly great.
Gale tried to imagine how it would be, but he couldn’t picture Italy.
He’d never been.
Never out of the country but the once, when his parents took his brother and him to Ireland.
Danny Carmichael had family there. Lucy felt out of place. He and Brian had been so close, back in those days before Sean and drugs and the chaos of both. Gale felt bad for having lost that. Maybe he could somehow get it back. At least a close approximation. Or something better. Brian was an asshole, but Gale had, in part, created that.
Stars exploded in his brain.
Confidence.
Regina on the seat across from him.
Italy. A brighter future than he’d ever have imagined, than he once thought he deserved.
Don’t fuck it up, man.
“Shut up, Sean,”
he said and rolled over onto his side.
Regina’s phone vibrated, waking her just as the first snips of a dream—a blue coast, the smell of fresh paint—flickered behind her eyes.
Digging it out of her pocket, she squinted sleepily at the screen.
She tapped into the call.
“Hey, Oz.”
“Hello, Regina.”
Always Regina.
“Harold called you, huh?”
“Actually, it was Charlotte.”
She’d have laughed louder were Gale not softly snoring from the luxurious bench seat across from her.
“I wanted to call before ...everything that’s coming. Whatever that everything entails.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Thanks, Charlotte.
Though it hadn’t been done kindly, Regina was grateful.
She’d never have called him.
“How’s Julian?”
“He is doing very well.”
Clipped, but not unkind.
Regina couldn’t blame him; it hurt, nevertheless.
“He with you?”
Gentler now.
“Currently working at one of my restaurants in Jersey City.
He’s happy.”
Jersey City.
So close.
Right now, she could divert the driver and be there in less than half an hour.
Does he remember me? Ever ask about me? Hate me? She had no right to ask. Not yet. “That’s good to hear. And your wife?”
“Fernanda is also doing well.
She is a good mother to our son.”
Our son.
It could have meant all, or theirs.
Regina left it alone.
Silence hovered, threatened to smother. “I’m going to be in Bova for the foreseeable future. I’m starting a culinary school in our old house.”
“I’m glad the La Cornue will finally be put to good use.”
He sniffed a very-Oz chuckle, turning what could have been a dig into a gentle jest.
“I’m glad to know you’re alive and well, Regina.”
“You knew that all along.
You were pretty much the only one.”
“You know what I mean.”
And she did.
“I’m glad to be alive and well, too.”
Laughing with him, softly and sadly, loosened something inside Regina, a conflicted feeling she’d only ever had for him.
She closed her eyes and let it go on a breath exhaled, without even trying to dissect it.
“I hope only the best for you.”
The catch in his voice brought one to her own.
“Thanks. Same.”
“Maybe, in time, we can even be friends again.”
They wouldn’t be.
But it was a nice thought.
A nice thing to say.
And he meant it, no matter how much truth there was to Marco’s opinion. They’d damaged each other so thoroughly, she and Osvaldo.
The sign-off hovered like the silence had.
Across from her, Gale dreamed; she could tell by the batting of his eyes.
Not Julian.
Not even a substitute. Maybe just the chance to do right by someone who looked up to her. Loved her. Despite everything she’d ever done.
“Oz?”
“Yes, Regina?”
“I’ll never just show up, but if Julian ever expresses any interest . . .”
“He has.”
So gently, it hurt.
“He does.”
“Really?”
“You’re not easy to forget,”
Oz told her, the gentleness of his tone falling away.
“We both know what’s going to happen now.
He’s a grown man.
He won’t need my permission to contact you, but I swear on his life, if I feel you’re a danger to him, I’ll do everything I can to stop him.”
“Fair enough.”
That was all.
It was sufficient.
“It is good, talking to you, Regina.”
Again clipped, yet not unkind.
“I’m glad I called.”
This time, it didn’t hurt.
“I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”
“It was not.”
She would not promise.
Anything.
Regina had no right, and she had no heart for it.
For him, yes, but for her, too. Time, that great, silent prognosticator, would tell. For now, she was too happy, too hopeful, to let the thoughts fly into their old chaos.
Staring at the lights flashing by the window, Regina didn’t remember saying goodbye.
Or hanging up.
Across from her, on that long couch, hands tucked under his head and eyes batting dreams, Gale smiled in his sleep.
The world was only just opening up for him. A grueling, backbreaking, spirit-crushing world that was brilliant and rewarding and thrilling at the same time. She’d be there for him, the way she’d never been for Julian. She couldn’t make it up to her son, but Regina—Queenie B—could do better. She would do better.
Scooting across to his side of the car, Regina reclined as he reclined.
Her hands tucked behind her head, eyes closed but not yet batting.
The tops of their heads not quite touching, but close enough to imagine his dreams somehow mingling with hers beginning to form.
Regina’s phone vibrated—Hey, Oz—but Gale was too tired to listen in.
She’d tell him, if she wanted to.
And if she didn’t, that was okay.
The competition.
Losing.
Bova.
Rhiannon. Bova. Regina. Queenie B. Thoughts swirled. Merged. Formed. Dreaming came like clouds rolling in over the Sound. Not a threatening roil and boom, a fog as soft as cornstarch between fingers.
“Hey, man.”
Clear as day.
Not a voice in his head or an afterimage ghost in his periphery.
Sean.
Blond and blue-eyed, no greasy hanks and pinprick pupils. That half grin that used to charm the girls curled the corner of his lips. They sat side by side, not in the limo another piece of Gale could somehow still feel rolling through New York City, toward New Haven. Savin Rock? Of course. Isn’t that where it all began and ended?
“Hey, Sean.”
“You did great today.”
“I lost, but yeah.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“I’m happy for me too.
I just feel so . . .”
Tears didn’t sting.
Not in dreaming.
Gale felt the warmth of them and smiled.
“I feel lucky.”
“You are lucky.
I wasn’t.
You got to let it go at that.”
“How?”
“You’re getting there.”
Sean grinned that shit-eating grin of his.
“I don’t want to forget you.”
“But you should.
Be happy.
I told you a million times.
You keep me around. I don’t want to be haunting you. I don’t want to stick around. I got places to be too, you know.”
“What places?”
Sean laughed.
The sound like tires on asphalt.
Ocean waves.
The wind coming in off the Sound.
“I miss you.”
“Nah.
You miss this me.”
Sean waved a hand from his head to his toes.
“The me I was when we were kids, not the me I was when I died.
We sucked, man.
We really sucked. It’s time to move on. Neither of us is that guy anymore.”
The sway, in this nowhere, jostled them into each other.
Somewhere far off, Gale heard Regina’s voice, if not her words.
They fluttered about in his brain, down to his chest.
“On to better things, man.”
“Yeah.”
Gale leaned his head to Sean’s shoulder that wasn’t, after all, actually there.
Only the leather seat underneath him.
The limo.
The road.
The soft jazz barely audible through half dreams and exhausted slumber.
Regina, no longer on the phone, in the seat opposite him, settled onto the bench seat.
The top of her head didn’t quite touch his, but he could feel the warmth of her.
That long, dark hair streaked with white.
In his half sleep already regrouping, he worked beside her in the soup kitchen that became the set on Cut!, that morphed into Bova that looked pretty much like the kitchen in the Rock Landing apartment she’d no longer live in, because it’s all his brain could come up with but would know intimately soon enough.
Gale didn’t look for Sean, or call him back, or even wish he knew what came after that “Yeah.”
He only dreamed.