She didn’t think saying I crashed my bike into his sous-chef’s Volvo would go over well. “I needed the job.”
“He walk you through the place, show you the stations?” When she nodded, he did the same. “All right, Trick, you’re my tournant tonight. Do what I tell you, don’t fuck up, and we’ll see how it goes.”
It was not the warmest reception in the world, but it was a fair one, and she’d rather be called Trick than kid any day. “Thank you, Chef.”
Rowan expected some form of initiation or other trial by fire, and wasn’t disappointed when Lonzo took her to a big, sunken table at the back of the kitchen, handed her a six-inch flexible blade with a slight curve, and got her started on her first task. That was where Dansant found her thirty minutes later, up to her elbows in fish innards and slime as she worked her way through gutting and cleaning fifty pounds of striped bass.
“What are you doing?”
She finished trimming a fin before she spared him a glance. “You need me to explain this procedure to you, Chef?”
He made an impatient sound. “I meant, why are you doing this?”
“Easy. Your idiot supplier doesn’t clean them.” She made a slit in the carcass’s belly skin, extending it from the anus to the gills. “Also, if I don’t do this, Lonzo will kick my skinny ass.”
Dansant scowled. “He will do no such thing.”
She turned her head toward the front of the kitchen. “Hey, Chef,” she yelled, “what’ll you do if I stop cleaning this fish?”
“I’ll kick your skinny ass,” Lonzo shouted back.
“See?” Rowan reached inside the carcass, felt for the spot where the guts were all connected at the base of the head, and stripped out the lot. “Why doesn’t your supplier clean these guys out first?”
“He purchases them from a fish farm, and brings them into the city in tanks. That way he can keep them alive until it is time to deliver,” Dansant told her. “I prefer to have them cleaned by my cooks.”
“Farmed, tanked fish.” She shook her head, amused.
He didn’t go, but watched her scrape out the bass’s liver and slice away the remains of its swim bladder. “You have done this before tonight.”
“No,” she admitted. “But I’m good with knives, and you guys only have to show me how to do something once for me to get it.” She also sensed their conversation had drawn the attention of the other chefs, which made her shoulders itch. She didn’t want to be seen as receiving any kind of coddling or special treatment from Dansant. That would turn the staff’s wariness and suspicions into resentment and contempt. “Is there something else you need me to do, Chef?”
“Yes.” He studied her face. “Add some ice to the bath”—he nodded toward the basin of water in which she’d placed the cleaned fish—“or the warmth of the water will leech out the flavor.”
Relieved, Rowan nodded and quick-scrubbed her hands at the sink before grabbing a scoop and hurrying to the ice machine.
A second after she had dropped the last fish into the ice water, Lonzo called her over to one of the prep tables, where a basket of brown, wrinkly morels and a huge colander of bright green pea pods sat beside a smaller, cloth-swaddled wooden box.
“After we do the chicken you’re gonna shell those peas,” he told her as he began unwrapping the box. She picked up the colander to take it to the rinsing table as he lifted the lid to reveal a dozen ugly black lumps nested like charred eggs in what appeared to be an airtight inner container. He caught her staring and took out one of the largest to hold it in front of her face. “You know what this is?”
She tried not to breathe in the intoxicating fragrance, but it was too close to her nose to resist. It smelled of the earth and rain, with just the slightest hint of hazelnuts. “It’s a truffle.”
“It’s a Périgord black truffle.” He turned it over in his hand as gently as if he were holding a newborn baby chick. “Twenty years ago you could only get these from Europe. The French exported them, but it would take a week or better, and what they sent was too small or old.” Lonzo made a nasty sound. “Greedy bastards kept all the best ones for themselves.”
She’d read about these rarest and most prized of cooking fungi in books, but at prices that rose as high as sixteen hundred dollars a pound, she’d never had the money to buy even a dinky one. “Are they really that good?”
“They’re the reason I go to the church on Sunday,” Lonzo said flatly, “and thank God that He loves us so much.” He removed a very thin, honed knife from the roll of black cloth beside the cutting board. “Now we got trufflieres that grow them right here, in America. Things go right, in a few years we’re gonna have all the black diamonds we want,” he added, using the fungus’s extravagant nickname.
“You want me to wash the diamonds?” Rowan asked, and watched Lonzo yank the truffle back as if she had tried to spit on it. Dansant came over to the station and selected three more of the black tubers out of the box. “Or maybe I could just watch.” She was curious to see her new boss at work.
“You ain’t got time.” Lonzo stepped between them and dumped into her arms several perforated plastic bags containing fresh rosemary, thyme, and mint. “Rinse the herbs, check them for black spots, and then take them to George’s station.”
Over Lonzo’s shoulder, Dansant gave her a wink. Suppressing a chuckle, Rowan took the bags back to the rinsing sink.
Although she stayed busy, Rowan was able to turn slightly and observe Dansant working with Lonzo. After delicately wiping clean his precious truffles, the garde-manger handed them to Dansant, who sliced them into perfectly even, wafer-thin rounds while Lonzo began lining up several untrussed chickens to one side of the cutting board. Once he had sliced enough rounds, Dansant loosened the skin of one chicken from the neck opening all the way across the breast, and then did the same for the legs.
Rowan caught herself holding her breath as Dansant began deftly slipping one at a time the thin rounds of sliced truffle under the skin. His long, elegant fingers worked them in place, until most of each thigh and the breast were covered with the aromatic fungus. Once he had finished, he used kitchen string to bind the ends of the legs before crisscrossing it over the breast and under the back.
By the time Rowan had delivered the cleaned herbs to George’s station, Lonzo called her over to tell her to carry the truffled chickens, now plastic-wrapped, back to the meat refrigerator.
“Shouldn’t these go over to the rôtisseur?” she asked as she stood holding the tray while Lonzo unloaded them onto the shelves.
“Vince will roast them tomorrow night.” For every package of chicken he put into the fridge, he took out another and placed it on the tray. Then Manny yelled for him, and he cursed under his breath before trotting off.
“The truffles must have a day to infuse the meat with their magic,” Dansant said right behind her, making her nearly drop the heavy tray. He came around and supported it from the other side. “These are the chickens we stuffed last night.” He peeled away some of the wrap and pulled back the breast skin, enough for her to see how the truffle had darkened the meat.
“Poulet demi-deuil must be real popular,” she said, looking up at him. Tonight all the lights were on in the kitchen, and made his eyes look so dazzling a blue that Rowan almost let the tray slip a second time. “To make it every night. Do you? Put it on the menu every night?” In some corner of her head she knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t stop looking at him. Gay or not, he seemed to become more beautiful to her with every slam of her heart in her chest.
“It is a house specialty.” He moved his hands around the edge of the tray until his fingers slid over hers. “Tell me what you are thinking.”
“Why should I do that?” she heard herself ask in a strange, hollow voice.
He bent his head until his breath cooled her damp scalp. “Why shouldn’t you, ma mûre?”
“Trick.” Lonzo’s bellow jerked her back to herself just as she felt her eyes sting. “You go deaf or something? Vince is waiting for the tray. Bring it over, now.”
“Right away, Chef.” She ducked her head, ashamed for making such a transparent ass out of herself in front of the rest of the staff, and hurried off.
Taire heard the guys in the kitchen calling her Trick, and smirked a little. If Rowan thought they were doing it because they liked her, the trick was on her.
She went to her usual spot, a recessed doorway hidden in the shadows, and sat down on the cold slate stoop. From there she watched the comings and goings, although the only person she saw was Rowan going on garbage runs. She passed the time by counting the number of times the other girl emerged from the back doorway carrying two or three overstuffed black bags, which she trotted over to the restaurant’s fenced-in Dumpster. At first she tossed them in like they were filled with feathers, but as the night stretched out, her tossing became heaving and a couple of times she groaned and rubbed her arm before trudging back in.
Taire felt a twinge of sympathy. The guys in the kitchen weren’t as nice as the Frenchman, and they didn’t like women. Sometimes on other nights she had listened to a couple of them joking while they stood out in the alley on a smoke break. They considered women good for only two things: folding napkins and fucking. No doubt they were going to make Rowan suffer as much as they could. Men loved it when women cried and quit.
Father hadn’t been as crude or mean, but what he had expected of her had been just as harsh. If it were easy, my dear, anyone would do.
She pushed her father from her thoughts and looked down each side of the alley. Sometimes bums came to rifle through the garbage bags. There would be plenty of scraps in them, good food from unfinished meals, and even the stink from the older garbage under them didn’t drive off the bums. No matter how hungry she was, Taire knew better than to rummage around a Dumpster. If Rowan or one of the guys from the restaurant didn’t catch her, the rats that were already gnawing their way into the bags would.