Hello, Sunshine

I looked around the kitchen. There was no one going out of his way to stare at me.

“Who knows?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t taken a poll yet. Would you like me to? I can imagine the dishwashers don’t care.”

“Please, I really need this job.”

“And I really need a good server. Lottie just fired someone else. And tonight’s menu is particularly demanding. So if you can keep up and do your job, your secret is safe with me.”

“Thank you.”

“Probably shouldn’t thank me until you hear my definition of good job.”

Before Douglas could say anything else vaguely resembling a threat, the kitchen door swung open, and there he was. Z. He was in his chef’s jacket and pants, wire-rim glasses covering his eyes. He was in his fifties and surprisingly good-looking, considering his red hair, his never-even-seen-the-sun skin. It wasn’t entirely a surprise. He was, for a time, as well known for the women he dated as for his food. There was something about him. Call it confidence, call it not giving a shit. He was hard not to notice.

“All right, people, let’s do it,” he said.

Lottie stood to his right, and everyone else gathered around him in a semicircle. There were several dishes lined up on the counter behind him—piping hot pastas and a lamb shank, an elegant arctic char.

Chef Z picked up a plate of what looked to be some kind of flatbread pizza.

“That’s Z’s strawberry sofrito pizza,” Douglas whispered. “Garden-grown strawberries, heirloom tomatoes, homemade ricotta cheese, balsamic vinegar, fresh basil . . .”

I swear, my stomach started to rumble. I was scared that Douglas had heard. But his eyes were firmly on Z. Everyone’s were.

Z broke off a piece of the sweet, ooey-gooey goodness, which looked like a work of art—the ratio of tomatoes to strawberries to the dense thick cheese—perfectly decadent.

Z seemed less than pleased, though. “Kristin, where’s the basil?” he said.

One of the sous-chefs stepped forward, not answering at first.

“Kristin?” he said.

She pointed to the other five pieces in the pie, which were strewn with gorgeous julienned pieces of the herb, so fresh and abundant, I could smell it from several feet away.

“Chef, it’s right there,” she said.

“Are you planning on going to each table tonight to make sure our guests happen to pick up a piece that you decided deserved fresh basil?”

“No, Chef.”

He pointed at his piece. “It should be right here,” he said.

Then he whispered something to Lottie and dropped the pizza on the countertop, disappearing out the same door he came in.

Lottie sighed. “An hour to service, folks,” she said.

Then she motioned for Kristin to follow her out of the kitchen.

I looked up at Douglas. “She’s not seriously getting fired over that?”

Douglas shook his head. “What did I tell you about those kind of questions?”

Douglas could move. In the first half hour of dinner service, I think I ran a mile just keeping up with him. I started to sweat, and not the cute kind of sweat—beads of perspiration dripping down my back, staining my new shirt. I was desperate for a glass of water, but too smart to dare ask. I was trying to keep mental notes, Douglas racing through responsibilities he assumed I understood from my imaginary years working at restaurants as fancy as—and far busier than—this was.

I tried to sneak peeks at Chef Z, who stood opposite his cooks line, monitoring the orders and doing quality control on every single plate before it went out into the dining room. He didn’t talk to anyone except his cooks, and he spoke to them constantly, giving them orders. I need a sofrito. Where is my salt? Steak, five times. It was like he was a different man from earlier in the evening. Calm, evenhanded, in his element. I started to think: Why was everyone making such a big deal about this kitchen being a nightmare? Then I heard his voice.

“Taylor!” Chef Z screamed. Loudly.