Page 150 of Neap & Spring

“You absolutely didn’t reduce it enough,” I interrupt. “You never do. You get impatient.”

“See? This is what I’m talking about.” But he’s laughing. “Even when you’re three thousand miles away, you’re still correcting my technique.”

“Someone has to.”

“Yeah.” His voice goes soft again. “Someone does.”

We stay on the phone for another hour, talking about nothing and everything. He tells me about a new line cook who can’t dice an onion to save his life. I tell him about the bald guy who keeps watching me like I’m going to mess up.

Eventually my eyes start closing, exhaustion pulling me under.

“You should sleep,” Callum says. “Big day tomorrow.”

“Every day is a big day here.”

“Then you definitely need sleep.” He pauses. “Vivi?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really proud of you. You know that, right? You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.”

The words settle into my chest, and they feel warm and precious.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Goodnight, Vivi.”

“Goodnight, Cal.”

I fall asleep with the phone still in my hand, smiling.

The first month I am happier than I have been since Paris.

The hours are brutal. Twelve, fourteen, sixteen on private event nights. But I’ve done brutal hours before and this brutality is different because the food is extraordinary. Not merely good or even great, but extraordinary in the way that occasionally stops you mid-motion and makes you understand something new about what cooking can do, what it can mean, and what it can say about a place and a season and a moment. I’m learning new things every day. Every hour, some days.

The kitchen moves at a speed that requires total presence, and I give it my total presence. And it gives me back that feeling I’ve been chasing since the first time I understood what cooking actually was. I’ve been chasing the feeling of disappearing completely into the work where there’s no space left for doubt or fear or the voice in my head that says I’m not good enough. That feeling where my hands know what to do before my brain catches up and every skill and instinct and reflex I’ve ever developed gets deployed at once and there’s nothing left over. Just pure competent motion and the deep satisfaction of doing something difficult exactly right.

I find that feeling at Voss.

I call Callum from the subway platform most nights, still in my kitchen clothes, smelling like whatever we ran that evening. He picks up on the second ring, and I tell him everything that happened that day. He asks questions that show he’s been paying attention to everything I’ve said before, and I think sometimes — while I’m talking about the celery root preparation or the timing of the fish station — I think, This. This and that kitchen. That’s all I need right now.

“How’s the restaurant fund?” I ask him one night.

“Coming along,” he says, and I can hear him moving around, pots clanging in the background.

“Cal.”

“I’m serious, it’s coming.”

“Show me the floor plan again.”

He sends it while we’re still talking. It’s a photo of a hand-drawn plan, coffee-ringed, covered in notations I’ve come to know as well as my own handwriting. The bar has gotten longer since the last version. There’s a note in the margin with an arrow pointing to a table by a window titled good vibes corner.

I’m smiling at my phone on a subway platform at eleven forty-five at night, and I don’t care at all who sees it.

The first comment comes six weeks in.

It’s a Friday and I’m running prep at full speed. I’m breaking down a loin at my station with a clean angle and consistent pressure, the knife an extension of thought rather than effort. I’m not rushing. And I’m definitely not sloppy.