She stopped at the handwashing sink and started checking in with the other four people working the kitchen. While she wasn’t in motion for once, I had a good chance to look her over. A chef’s coat with the sleeves rolled, a colorful scarf tied like a headband with her short blonde hair pulled into a mini-ponytail.She’d even stuck to the night’s theme with her scarf, decorated in purple and green with little gold fleur-de-lis sprinkled all over it.
“How are we coming on the mushroom caps, Chef?” she called out.
“Do you need help back here?” I asked.
She held up her hand to silence me while she dried her hands and tossed the paper towel. She stepped to a bubbling pot and stirred it.
“Two minutes, Chef,” a voice called back.
She leaned back and her eyes scanned the long, stainless prep surface. I’d never worked in a kitchen myself, but I loved to cook. I’d done a few things in this kitchen, until Chef caught me and banished me to no more than four tiles into the kitchen. But I had skills. Most of my free time was spent watching food competition shows, trying new techniques, and browsing recipes.
“Do we not have any other meatballs in the works?” she bellowed, not angrily but at a volume I found hard to believe.
She was such a tiny woman, but watching her command this bustling room stirred something up in me.
“No, Chef.”
She closed her eyes for a second and took a shallow breath. “Okay, fire meatballs, on the fly. A full order.”
“Heard, fire meatballs, flying.”
Though I wanted to giggle about images of flying meatballs, I knew better. It was just kitchen lingo that meant “right fucking now.”
“Thank you, Chef,” she said, grabbing a spoon from the clean side of the commercial dishwasher and dipping it into the pot. She took a taste of what looked like a soup and wrinkled her brow. She picked up a small bowl, took a pinch of salt, and sprinkled it over the pot. She turned her attention to me. “The rules?”
I gestured to the room. “Fuck your rules, princess. You clearly need help. This is how I could pay you back.”
She raised her eyebrows. “With all due respect, you can’t provide the kind of help we need.”
“Which is?”
She returned to her cruising velocity of light speed and arrived at her destination in a storage galley.
She went up on tiptoe and stretched for one of those long catering pans, then grunted and clutched her mid-back. “Shit. Can you?” She flicked her head toward the shelf with a pained expression.
“Yes, yeah, yes, of course.” I leaned over her, pinning her to the counter with my hips for a second. She let out a surprised sound, somewhere between a squeak and a moan. “Is your back bothering you?”
“No,” she said with enough force that I knew to drop it. I probably had seconds before she physically kicked me out.
She laid the pan on a cooktop and stopped to open the oven door below it. She cussed under her breath, picked up a long ladle, and stirred a pot. She leaned to grab a spoon from the clean silverware rack.
I peered into the pot. “Is this soup?”
“Looks that way,” she said.
I copied her, getting a spoon from the dishwasher’s clean side and dipping it into the pot. I blew on it for a second, then tasted the soup. Flavors exploded in my mouth and the textures were perfect: a thick, smoky stew with Creole seasoning.
“Wait, you actually made my gumbo?”
“Your gumbo?” she questioned.
“Where is this out there? This is incredible! I want to eat this the rest of the night.”
Her lips quirked up and her reluctant glance met my eyes. I saw it: a touch of pride. “It’s not out there.”
I spotted a set of plastic to-go bowls for sauces and soups and snatched one off the top. I ladled soup into half the bowl and blew on it, keeping hold of my spoon.
“I use the extra food from here to make something to take to the shelter on Main.”