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“I know,” I said. “She’s very funny. But very clear when she doesn’t like something. You’re nicer about it.”
“Well, I would be if I ever had something you made that I didn’t like.”
“That’s very nice of you to say,” I said. “Especially when I am about to hit you with my other dish.”
“Oh no. What’s that?”
“I call it ‘What the Fudge?’” I said proudly.
“You’re going to need to work on that,” she said. “I don’t think we can put that on the chalkboard. This is a family diner.”
“Yes. But you haven’t seen it yet.”
I went into the kitchen and pulled the unholy concoction out of the freezer where the molding chocolate had set in record time. I brought it out in both hands and sat it heavily on the table. It wobbled slightly. Rebecca’s wide eyes went from it to me and back to it again. When she spoke, it was in awe, a deep, breathy sound.
“What the fudge?”
As the diner closed on Thursday night, I was happy it had been a slow day. It meant we were going to get the place cleaned up and shut down early enough for me to sit down with Helen and probably still get a few hours of sleep before opening on Friday. Choosing to work Thursday closing shifts and Friday opening shifts had been a choice I’d made for myself.
Helen came in just before the doors closed for the last customer, looking happy and excited.
When the last customer was gone and Helen had hugged and sent the waitresses on their way, I shut down most of the lights and left on only the ones in the kitchen and office. Helen joined me in the kitchen and started rolling up her sleeves.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Work,” she said. “I haven’t cooked for someone other than myself or Everett in weeks. I need to try something that’s been tooling around in my mind, but I need another cook’s opinion.”
Pulling up to the stove like it owed her money, Helen grabbed an apron off the hanging rack and tied it on. She slammed a pan down on the eye and went to the cutting board.
“You mind if I use your knives?” she asked. “I left mine at home.”
“I’d be honored,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest as she pulled some veggies out of the refrigerator and started building some kind of meal.
“I saw this in my head and thought I needed to make it, but we don’t have shitake mushrooms at home, nor do we generally have much wine,” she said.
We talked as she cooked, mostly about how she was loving being a mother and enjoying every second of her babies’ cuddle time, but she longed to get behind the stove again and to run the restaurant. She wanted to do both as much as possible while the feeling was there, because she never knew if she would suddenly not want to do this anymore.
But the way she moved in the kitchen was like watching a ballerina on stage. She was precise in each movement and fast. Sometimes I forgot that she’d been a rising star chef in Chicago before coming here and that she only hadn’t been in the kitchen because her sister screwed up the diner so bad she needed to be the boss more than the cook.
“Here you go,” she said, fifteen minutes after she started cooking.
The plate looked immaculate, like something out of a magazine or one of the cooking shows. I turned it around at eye level, admiring the artistry of what she did.
“This is incredible,” I said.
“Come on, take it with you. Tell me how great I am while we discuss what we’re adding to the menu,” she said, brushing by me and into the front of the diner.
I followed, grabbing a roll of silverware and heading to a table where I could eat, and we could talk.
“So, what have you got?” she asked as we sat down, and I dug into the dish.
“Well,” I said, chomping away at a mouthful of food. She was the only person I would ever do that with, I thought, only because we had already had multiple conversations about the menu where both of us were stuffing our faces. “I had a couple of ideas I ran by Rebecca earlier in the week.”
“She told me,” she said, a sly grin on her face. “She said you only invited her because you thought she could pick my brain.”
“Sort of,” I admitted. “Also, she wouldn’t give me shit if it was terrible.”
Helen shrugged.
“Probably true. She also told me about a thing you called ‘WTF’?”
“What the fudge,” I said. “It’s a working title. Probably too risqué for here.”
“Most of the time, sure,” she said. “But what if we only offered it late nights on Friday and Saturday. Like, it was a special menu item only available after ten?”
