The Chosen

this?”

Tate ground his teeth. “Tate, you know? Harold Tate? Editor and chief of the City Fucking Sun? The guy who just paid you three bills on a series for the Weekender—”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” Kirby sounded drained, barely coherent. A pause lapsed across the line. “Don’t worry, it’ll be in.”

“Well it goddamn better be, son, and if you don’t mind my saying so, you sound like shit. You—'

Click.

The line went dead.

“How do you like that son of a bitch,” Tate muttered to himself, and hung up. Fucking writers, he thought. They’re all a bunch of fucking weirdos.

— | — | —

^{CHAPTER EIGHT}

“This is unbelievable, Vera,” Dan B. enthused.

Vera strolled down the shining hot line, gazing. The kitchen was huge, and it had been outfitted to the max. Groen industrial ovens and braisers, additional deck ovens, and twin South Bend ranges with ten burners each. And behind the line: Vulcan friers, Blodgett roasters, and Cleveland/ALCO professional steamers.

Dan B. looked dismayed. “And it’s all brand-spanking-new. Feldspar could’ve saved himself forty or fifty percent buying used or rebuilt, but he didn’t.”

“I don’t think that’s Feldspar’s style,” Vera acknowledged. “He’s not interested in cutting corners.”

The cold line, too, was replete with the same: brand-new Bloomfield salad and soup stations, three Univex mixers, and Groen speed-drives, plus an array of shredders, slicers, graters, and grinders. The entire kitchen glimmered in stainless steel newness.

“Every chef’s dream, right?” Vera suggested.

“You ain’t kidding.” Dan B. walked, nearly in a daze, behind the lines, glancing astonished at an entire wall of Dexter/Russell cutlery, Wearever pots and pans, and Wollrath prep gear. “Service bar’s the same way,” Dan B. went on. “Donna’s in there having a baby rhino. And Lee…”

“Holy shit!” the voice exclaimed around the line.

Lee was running around like a kid under a Christmas tree. His chubby moon face bloomed in delight with each of his shocked glances to and fro. Then his belly jiggled when he stopped before a mammoth Hobart chain-washer, which could crank three hundred sixty racks per hour. Lee’s eyes widened in something like veneration. “It’s…it’s beautiful,” he stammered.

“Look at that,” Dan B. laughed. “He’s getting hard. It’s not the Hustler Honey of the Month, it’s just a dishwasher.”

“No, no, it’s more than that.” Lee grinned at Dan B. “It’s the best dishwasher in the world, and it’s even more beautiful than…your mom.”

Dan B. promptly gave Lee the finger. But Lee was right; the great machine was one of the best dishwashers in the world, and so was the three-stage glasswasher behind it. Vera realized that just the equipment in this kitchen probably cost upwards of half a million.

“Let’s not embarrass him,” Dan B. suggested. “Lee wants to make love to the dishwasher.” He took Vera by the arm, getting serious. “Come here.