Service ends at eleven, and at ten past the head chef is fired in the walk-in fridge, with the door open so we can all hear it. I am Karim, thirty-four, his sous chef for three years, and I stand at my station wiping a board that is already clean while the investor's heels click out of the kitchen and the man who taught me how to hold a knife walks past me without a word.
At half past, she comes back.
Vivienne. Fifty, perhaps, in a suit that costs more than my station, and she has never once in three years spoken to anyone in this kitchen below the chef. Now she stops at my board, looks at my hands, and says, “You. Office.”
The office is his. Was his. She sits behind his desk as if she's always sat there and doesn't ask me to sit at all.
“The review is in three weeks,” she says. “The critic is already booked. I'm not cancelling. As of tonight you are head chef of this restaurant. Your name goes on the menu tomorrow. I'm doubling your salary.” She lets that land. “And I want to be clear that I am not doing you a favour. I'm making a bet. If it fails, you fail with it, publicly.”
“Why me?”
“Because you're the only person in that kitchen who didn't look at the door when he left.” She stands and comes around the desk. She is shorter than me and it makes no difference at all. “You have three weeks to prove I'm right, Karim. I'll be at the pass every night to watch you do it.” She holds out her hand, and I take it, and her grip is cool and dry and stays a second longer than a contract needs. Behind me, through the glass, the kitchen is watching, and every one of them is waiting to see what kind of chef I am going to be, starting now.
