“You’re the chef at a down-home restaurant,” I reminded Lance, who jolted at the sound of my voice and then glanced over his shoulder at me. “If you want a Michelin star, you need to open your own place and make it happen.”
“The menu is not to be––”
“I called your grandmother.”
He slammed the wok down and whirled around to face me. “You fucker!” he roared at me. “You better call her back and––”
“I’m here!” Jennifer Bowen announced as she walked through the door, followed by her bear of a husband, Melvin. “And dear God in heaven, I’ve never seen a restaurant with so many folks not eatin’.”
“Gramma.” Lance groaned in agony. “You can’t just––”
“I ran this kitchen for over forty years, Lancelot,” she informed her grandson, using his full first name, which his mother had given him and Jenny had told me she never liked. “I can do whatever I want.”
“I’ll pay you for the night, Jenny, plus your ten percent of the––”
“No, no,” she told me, going right to the long row of tickets and checking them over, as adorable as ever with her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and the attached beaded chain so she wouldn’t lose them. She put on the apron she’d brought with her and then started pulling pots to cover the stove. “Jere, honey, paying me for the night is enough.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed, because nobody fought with her.
“Oz, Harley, c’mere, boys,” she barked at them.
They both scrambled to reach her.
I turned to Melvin. “Since I’m about to clear the entirety of the pies and cakes in the display case by making dessert on the house tonight, if you could get to baking for tomorrow, I would appreciate that, sir.”
“Of course,” he acceded warmly, hand on my cheek, patting gently. As the man stood six six to my own six two, I smiled up at him. It had been a surprise, the first time I met him, that he was such a gentle giant. What was also fun was when new people met Melvin, who had played basketball in college, and then Jenny, his wife of just over fifty years, who stood, in her bare feet, at five feet two inches.
Taking a quick breath, I turned and headed for the door. Lance caught my arm, his grip on my bicep meant to be painful.
“What?” I asked him, my gaze locked on his.
“You think this is fuckin’ funny?”
“No, dickhead, I don’t,” I snapped at him. “But I need the food to fly out of this kitchen, and if you’re going to try and turn this place into some foodie wet dream, then I can’t have you here,” I stressed, peeling his fingers off me. “This is farm-to-table, Lance, and like I said, if you want to go cook somewhere and be the next hottest thing, I get it. You’re way too good a chef for this place, I know that, but until you sack up and go, you don’t get to treat this place like some piece of shit you stepped in.”
The muscles in his jaw were clenched tight.
I crossed my arms, still holding his stare. “There are people working here who aren’t ever leaving,” I reminded him. “You have people who will retire from this job, and they count on us to put a roof over their kids’ heads, use their medical benefits to take those same kids to the doctor, and will put them through college.”
He was still glaring at me, but I saw his shoulders drop and heard his slow exhale of breath as he took a step back.
“These people count on you to make this amazing food they deliver to the tables in a timely manner that then, in turn, earns them tips. Lots of fuckin’ tips. You know as well as I do, a restaurant with great cuisine can be totally killed by bad service.”
He gave me a quick nod.
“And no amount of amazing service will offset crappy food.”
“Of course,” he conceded.
“You need both. We usually have both, which is why the goddamn wait to get in here on Friday and Saturday night is two hours long.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he groaned, raking his hands through his hair before settling them on his hips. “Fuck.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “You should go work in Sac, or move to San Francisco,” I suggested sincerely, being honest with him, wanting him to hear it in my voice. “Or, if you wanna get the hell outta California, go to Seattle, or New York, or Dallas; go to Miami. Hell, move to Paris or London if you want. You’re not even thirty, for crissakes; you have your whole life ahead of you to plant your flag and build a dream.”
He snorted. “Nice speech, Jere.”
“You know what I mean. You can go, Lance. You don’t hafta stay.”