It was going to be an entrée. Solid, singular, and rich. She was looking for comfort. A nice couch she could come home to after an endless day – and somehow, after it ended, the couch would learn to talk for no other moment but the present one to say, “Come to me. Achieve rest upon my enveloping surface. Stay as long as you need to.”
He was thinking like her again. She wanted to go deep in a singularity. To stay in something and linger there. To appreciate it more than anything else in that instance of time. Allow it to hue the rest of the experiences of her day.
Alvin hoped she was expectant, but was not ready.
Whatever she missed of his, he would convince her that what he had was what she would want in the end. More than anything. That meant he had to defy her. Deliberately.
***
Alvin jolted awake in the darkness to a pounding on his mobile home door. Too early to be an okay thing. No news was good at 2:30 in the morning.
But the last thing the cook had was an enemy.
The pounding resumed.
A sleepy Alvin opened the door to suited men. Bodyguards. Coco’s.
“What are you guys—”
“Wanted to decrease your visibility during transport. Rise and shine.”
“You guys are gonna hafta help me with my stuff.”
“We know the program. Just get ready. We leave in fifteen.”
The day before was quick and productive. Hendrix called mid-morning. Alvin got the greenlight and was going to be serving Coco in time for dinner. And breakfast, for good measure.
If everything went well, the chef’s reconciled boss would arrange for monthly visits, not unlike the one he was about to work.
Alvin was about to return to something familiar, but he sensed he would be kept on the outside the second time. Which was why he was not warned about his present visitors. He was strictly providing a service.
That was not going to work.
The deal was to serve Coco directly. Personally. If he could get that granted just once, and got the head villain in charge talking, he would launch his attack.
They were driving to keep from sounding off any government surveillance alarms. Alvin was also on a no-fly list for the time being so that meant he was a long-distance celebrity with an egregious caravan detail.
He did not have any sour customers, but Coco inherited a fair amount of sharp thorns to her organization. Saboteurs who would not mind slowing or crippling Coco’s affairs to a crawl, for competitive business reasons. Or in Pharaoh’s case, a crazed admirer. He likely was not the only one. In any case, she had to be careful with Alvin’s transport.
She would be damned if someone messed with her meals; that ballsy, viral runner who dashed between the drive-thru and the car, stealing the bag of fast food that was being handed to the customer. Exploiting the driver’s inability or intentional choice at parking the car an arm’s length from the service window. Coco hated that thieving vagrant internet sensation.
It was a long drive to Atlanta from where Alvin was serving his time in hiding. Plenty of minutes and hours for the cook to take a decent look at his courage. Or foolishness. Or psychosis.
“Think we can make a breakfast stop before we get a move on?”
The dark, quiet car full of henchmen remained quiet.
“First round of deluxe platters on me.”
Originally…
“Have a seat, Mister Gates.”
Five years ago, Alvin was just a grunt applying to culinary school. He had the scotch eggs to plead his case for candidacy at a reputable institution. The thing was, he had a fighting chance.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m here to become a professional chef.”
“And you have arrived in spectacular form. You’ve cooked. But more importantly, you’ve cooked in different spaces.”
“I go where I’m needed.”
“You can continue to do that without a cooking education. There’s always training before you start in a kitchen. And even then, seems you already know enough to figure it out.”
This was not going the way Alvin imagined, or prepared it to go. It was less a back and forth and more a conversation with a nonbelieving, conservative older person.
Cooking? A very established vocation. But it still was not taken seriously in the lot of them. Welding got more respect.
Afterall, there was reluctance coming from a representative of a culinary institution. The young cook started to feel a certain burn. The kind that meant something was trying to get out of him. And he had to strain a bit to let it out. The best way to do that was to not get caught up with side orders. Focus on the main dish.
“I could stick with that.”
“You certainly could.”
“But I want to understand what I’m doing in order to invent what I want to.”
The interviewer was intrigued.
“What do you want to do with a culinary education, Mister Gates?”
“I understand my job to be a service. I love what I do. But my job isn’t to enjoy it.”
“You don’t enjoy cooking? You might be in the wrong place.”
Main dish. Middle of the plate.
“I just mean, my primary job is to make sure my customers enjoy the food, the service. I might not even interact with them for nights on end, but I see that as my objective.
The interviewer raised her eyebrows, intrigued, but said nothing. Maybe Alvin had the floor for a moment longer.
“We’re in the business of multi-tasking. At minimum, we should be able to do several things at once. We better know how to between 12-3 and 5-8.”
The slightest chuckle. He kept going.
“I believe I’m capable of producing art on a plate as canvas, but
