Chef's Farce

Lovey was running the pass at the start of dinner service. Her husband Simon sauntered into the kitchen, recipe book in hand. He smiled at her as he ran a hand through his glossy dark hair. That move had always driven her wild.

The meat cook asked, “Uh. Can I get an all day, chef?”

“Three chops, all mid-rare, and two squab followed by two chops, mid-rare and medium, tenderloin mid-rare, and a foie,” she barked, annoyed, without looking at the tickets. "I'll plate the foie." She didn’t get the “YES, CHEF!” call back of acknowledgment that the cooks would always give to Simon when he was running the board. Two years later and this still bothered her, every time. Early on in her career, she learned the stone face countless other female chefs were required to have. "There's no crying in the kitchen!" the male cooks would tease when a young woman broke down with stress, anxiety, and frustration. Or even sometimes when they cried out of pain from a second degree burn.

Simon casually chucked his small black book down in front of him at the pass and said, “The roulade and the jus are going downstairs. Jus is almost there.”

Lovey nodded without emotion and scratched at her newly healing forearm burn. She glanced down at his book, opened up to the recipe for the roulade, dog tagged. There was a note at the bottom that drew her eye. Scribbled very small and sloppy, it read “div?”, “1.5”, and a 212 phone number. Lovey hadn’t seen the old New York City area code in about 15 years. It wasn’t like most chefs to put anything but recipes in their books: It was poor form. Then again, Simon was always so charming, his former chefs would let a lot slide. He got away with a lot.

She looked up at the now happy line cooks joking around with Simon. She took her own recipe book out of her back pocket and swapped it with her husband’s. All cooks bought the same brand. The same size. The same color. He wouldn't notice.

Lovey went downstairs to the prep kitchen to check on the jus. It simmered away, thick, muddy, glossy. She pulled out her phone and dialed. the number in Simon’s book. A voicemail told her she had reached a law firm. Divorce specialists.

She could feel the swelling in her chest, the closing of her throat. Her skin got hot. She breathed short and fast. She hadn’t had a panic attack in months. She shut her eyes hard and tried to take the deep, controlled breaths that a therapist taught her years ago.

Lovey thought of the last time it was this bad: The restaurant’s holiday party, where she saw the statuesque hostess with the coltish legs that she always showed off, talking too closely to her husband in a corner. Simon was always a flirt and the young front of house girls appreciated it.

No one noticed when. Lovey broke her champagne glass. "It was an accident! I’m a little tipsy! Oh my god, I’m so embarrassed! Let me help clean it up!" She had. cut herself on the glass, prompting Simon to storm over and scream at the bartender. It was only a couple of stitches, but it had felt so good. It had reeled her back in from the nightmare scenarios that were pouring into her head. "So cliche!," she thought.

Lovey pushed the visuals out of her mind by opening her eyes again. She rubbed the scar on her finger with her thumb, the feeling still slightly missing from the severed nerves..

It was so easy to accidentally hurt yourself in the kitchen. Oil burns. Hot pans handled with wet side towels. Steam burns were the most painful, but least satisfying. “I’m just so fucking clumsy! Trying to do too much!” she’d exclaim to questions from coworkers. It was so hard not to cringe when someone told her "Be careful!" after the fact. Her therapists didn’t even need to ask when she came in with new band-aids.

Simon and Lovey had started at the restaurant at about the same time. When they began fooling around, it was so exciting. The long, stressful dinner services filled with adrenaline, coffee, and dumb jokes. Then cooling off with drinks at the local Irish pub. Keeping it secret from coworkers. The two bonded over knife sharpening techniques, shit talking the other line cooks, and stories of pranks pulled on front of house servers. His meaty hands constantly pawing at her soft unblemished skin. When their relationship was discovered, no one was surprised. A few were jealous. Cooking was so much more fun back then. Back when she enjoyed cooking and eating. "When did I fall out of love with it?" she asked herself.

With shaking hands, Lovey opened up her banking app to check their joint account. There was a recent pending transaction to the name of the law firm: $1500. This would leave them with a little over $20,000. Not much, considering their salaries. She deftly transferred the money to her own savings account, leaving the joint one with less than $700. She knew it was petty and she knew she'd agree to the divorce without objection.

Lovey’s eyes were stinging with tears and sweat. She blinked at the gallons of veal jus in front of her. .It took two hands, but she was already sobbing before she pulled the steel stock pot forward, tipping it forward onto her chest. Right before the pain hit, she thought of skin grafts. She'd. recently read that doctors had been experimenting with using salmon skin. She laughed at the thought before she grimaced, anticipating the physical pain that would help her. Simon never understood her old scars. Maybe she'd use the money on plastic surgery, she thought.