The kitchen.
How I love the kitchen.
Cooler air.Real smells.Citrus, garlic, earthy cumin.Every surface shines with the practiced sheen of someone who loves things enough to make them gleam.
Chef stands at the far counter with his sleeves rolled and his knife moving like lightning.He doesn’t startle when I enter.He never does.He seems to know the sound of my shoes.
“Cachama,” he says, lifting the knife to flick a smear of green off the blade.“We’re roasting it whole.Fresh this morning.Your father says the ambassador likes a show.”
The fish lies on a sheet, skin cleaned and scored, white flesh peeking through neat diagonal cuts.The sight of it calms me the way clean lines calm anyone who lives under chaos.
I step closer, my blue skirt swooshing around my ankles.“What are you putting on it?”
He doesn’t answer.He reaches for a bowl and sets it closer to me.“Smell.”
It’s lime and garlic and something smokier.Cilantro, chopped until it looks like confetti.
He hands me a wooden spoon and a wedge of lime.“Finish,” he says and nods at the bowl.
I squeeze the lime and stir.“I’ve…never done this,” I say.
He grins.“I see you watching.Reading cookbooks.It’s time to learn.”
I taste the sauce with the tip of the spoon.My eyes flutter.Acidic and garlicky and so delicious.I want to climb into the bowl and live there.
“Good,” I say and smile despite myself.“It’s?—”
“Don’t taste with the preparation spoon,” he says, but he isn’t scolding.He’s amused.He takes a different spoon, dips it again, and holds it toward me.“Taste properly.”
I do.The lime lifts and the cumin warms.
When I set the spoon down, he’s closer.He takes my hand, pinches the pad of my index finger, and guides it across a streak of marinade that has slopped onto the rim.“This is how chefs taste when they’re too lazy to dirty another dish,” he says lightly.He lifts my hand—my finger—to his mouth.
He shouldn’t.
But he does.
His tongue is quick, a damp swipe, and then he chuckles like we’ve shared a private joke.
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though sorry isn’t the right word.I’m not sorry for my hand.I’m sorry for existing in here.
“Don’t be.”He looks me over, touching the full skirt of my dress.“This color makes promises you should be careful making.”
Heat surges up my neck.I step back.“I should— They need me in the parlor.”
“They don’t,” he says, arranging the fish on the tray.“Stay here.Learn something useful.”
I stay.He hands me a bowl of minced garlic.I tip it into the marinade and stir.“How much salt?”I ask.
“A dash,” he says and nods toward the walk-in pantry.“More cumin.Top shelf.”
The pantry is cool and smells like dry things—grains, spices, the whisper of onions.I reach for the cumin and set my fingers on the jar when the door swings shut behind me.
It isn’t the loud thump of someone slamming.It’s a deliberate click.
Fear surges through me.
“Chef?”I say, half laughing, because I’ve learned that laughing makes everything a bit more tolerable.“Is there a trick to the latch?”
