Chapter 47 Scalding
Scalding
Jack
I don’t remember how, but eventually, I’m back at my station in the kitchen. The next rush of diners has come in, and there’s
hardly time to breathe, much less think.
It’s easier not to think, anyway.
I run expo and cook like my life depends on it. It’s a blur, all of it, each dish melding into the next. I cook on pure instinct.
Sweat pours down my face. I blink away the film from my eyes. Later, when this hell is over—I’ll go to Poppy. I’ll explain.
I’ll find a way to make her understand how I feel, how sorry I am, because losing her would be too fucking painful. Now that
I know what it’s like to have her in my life, I can’t go back.
While I was gone, Hazel jumped into expediting, so we’re not too far behind. I meant what I said to Poppy; I do care about
this place being a success. I want it to go out on a high note. My pride, tattered as it is, couldn’t take anything less.
I push myself to work harder and faster, despite the sting of my eyes and pit of snakes in my stomach.
As much as I try to ignore it, I keep going back to the fact I’m in this kitchen, my very first kitchen, with my menu.
This is the place where I fell in love with food, and then fell in love with a woman who resists every category, definition, and expectation.
There’s no one in the world like Poppy Winfield, and she wanted me, and I set it all on fire just as neatly and completely as I did more than a decade ago, when I could’ve had a family and chose to run.
When I told myself I needed to leave for the good of my career.
She’s right. Sal was right.
I’m a coward.
But if I end up back here, even if it’s with Poppy, won’t I have ruined things with Sal all those years ago for nothing? With
no way to apologize, because he’s fucking gone?
I rattle out a new set of orders. Oil splatters onto my hands, but I hardly feel it. My chef’s jacket is ruined without the
buttons; I tear it off, cooking in a T-shirt and apron instead. Fire licks around the bottoms of the pans as I run three,
four, five at a time. I fuss over each plate, garnishing it to death, because something cracks in my chest every time I call
for hands and send a new one to the dining room.
I’m running out of time. Soon, there won’t be anything left to cook.
This restaurant won’t be mine anymore. It’ll slip through my fingers, the same as everything else ever has.
“Jack.” That’s Chester, pulling on my arm. “Jack, what’s going on? Where’s Poppy?”
“Get out of my way.” I yank my arm out of his grip, running through the dupes, categorizing them and listing them off. “You
should be behind the bar.”
“Bret saw what happened.”
“I don’t care.”
“He still loved the food. He wants to talk to you.” Chester jerks a pair of tongs out of my hand, throwing them against the
counter. “Hey. Will you stop and listen for a second?”
“He ate the snapper. That was Poppy’s concept. Tell him to talk to her.”
“Maybe if you’d mention where she fucking went—”
“She’s leaving tonight, with us,” says Douglas.
I stop in my tracks. Douglas stands by the pass, a pinched look on his face. Rage pulses through me, white-hot.
“Get out of my kitchen.”
“Son, listen—”
“I fucking told you not to call me son again.”
My crew ceases their near-fluid movements. Chester tenses, as if poised to tackle me if I do something exceptionally stupid.
Douglas, for his part, doesn’t flinch.
“I didn’t realize how you felt about her,” he admits.
“You’ve never believed in her. You’ve never seen her for who she is.”
He has the decency to look guilty. “You don’t know how much she’s struggled.”
“I spent months telling her that she ought to feel lucky to have parents who cared. A family. Not everyone gets that, you
know.” I laugh bitterly. “And some of us are too fucking stubborn to accept it when it’s offered. I defended you, and it blew
up in my face.”
“It’s not what I intended.”
“Well, it’s what happened.” The fight leaves me in a rush. All I want to do is cook until every thought leaves my head. “I
have a service to finish. You have a daughter to apologize to.” I turn to the stove.
“You could come with me,” Douglas says, his voice more tentative than I’ve ever heard it. “The plane doesn’t take off until
early morning.”
I shut my eyes briefly. For a second, I imagine saying yes. It would be worth it to see her one more time. To kiss her, and
tug her braid, and let her know how much I want a future with her, too.
But I can’t give her what she wants, and I don’t think I’d be able to stand her leaving me twice.
“She made her choice.” The houseboat is going to be so empty when I go back. I have to grip the edge of the counter to keep
my hands from shaking. “Tell her I hope she took the damn cat.”
When service finally winds down, then ends, I let everyone go but me.
They protest, especially Chester and Kiara, but eventually, I’m alone. I put on music, loud enough to drown out even the whisper
of a thought, and dive into cleaning.
I start with the mountain of dishes piled up in the sinks.
Then I put the dining room in order, steadfastly ignoring those tiny details that Poppy was so proud of—the bag hooks underneath the tables, the pretty water glasses she managed to snag from a restaurant auction, the rattan votives.
I sweep, then mop, and then rearrange the entire bar.
Whenever I catch sight of myself in a mirror, I grimace.
I look like a ghost, a shell. The moment I finish, I’ll keel over. Hopefully when I do, I won’t dream.
I clean the bathrooms. Rearrange the storage area. Take stock of the walk-in, the units sold, the amount of each dish that
we cooked. I scrub the appliances until they gleam and haul out all the trash.
And when I’m done, I sit in the office—the office that was Sal’s and still feels like Sal’s; I didn’t change anything about
it, not even his shitty filing system—with a bottle of the first alcoholic drink I see.
The edge of something pokes out from behind the desk.
I draw it out slowly. It’s a picture frame. Big, solid, the kind you hang on a wall, not put on a shelf. I flip it over.
It’s a picture of me, Sal, and Kiara in the kitchen. One side of my mouth twitches upward out of reflex as I take in the details.
I don’t remember the specific day it was taken, but it must have been sometime during my senior year. Kiara’s smile leaves
my chest aching. Sal looks so vibrant and alive—a fresh avalanche of grief covers me. I pour another drink, for him this time,
and hold it out before I swallow.
Kiara must have dug through old photographs for this. Sal, despite having a cell phone like everyone else, still preferred
to print out photos and keep them in labeled stacks. I wonder who took this picture. Not Herman. Maybe one of the other line
cooks, or our old front of house manager. She always put together a restaurant Christmas card.
I turn it over again.
Poppy’s handwriting is on the back, not Kiara’s. Just a simple for J xx
I finish off the bottle and finally brave the walk to the houseboat.
The first tendrils of the new day reach across the horizon.
The air, damp and slightly chilled, smells fresh, which, in my inebriated state, turns my stomach.
My body aches so badly, I can hardly put one foot in front of the other, but that’s how I want it.
I’ll fall asleep, and when I wake up, I’ll smell rosemary and mint lingering on the pillows, and for half a second I won’t remember that Poppy is gone.
I can hope, anyway.
“Poppy?” I call as I climb below-deck, feeling like a fool. “Gator, buddy?”
There’s no answer. I walk through the houseboat, checking every corner, even though it’s obvious I’m alone. The evidence she
ever lived here at all has been erased, minus a few straggling details: a hair pin on the countertop, a singular pink sock
on the bed. It’s as if she and Gator never existed. Without her, the space feels colorless. I’ll have to find somewhere else
to stay until the restaurant’s sale goes through.
Maybe things would have gone differently if I’d managed to tell her the truth—that I have been thinking of staying. Of keeping
Fable. Slowly, in the back of my mind, ever since Poppy started to make it something magical.
Why couldn’t I trust myself to say that? To consider the life she wanted to offer me, even if it meant acknowledging how badly
I messed up my past? I love—
I don’t know, and I’m too tired to dwell on it.