Reminds Me of Lobsters

“That smell reminds me of lobsters.”


“What smell?”



“When you clarify butter, it smells like that drawn butter crap they give you with your lobster.”



“Ok…”



“It reminds me of summer time in New En…”



“I got to cut you off there,” she interrupted. “You’re getting too nostalgic for me.”



“Why can’t I be nostalgic?” he retorted.



“Cuz it’s for pussies, that’s why.”



The conversation was dead in the water moments before he began its consummation. It was a vain attempt at small talk and, really, a summarized dissertation of how he felt. She was always too rough around a rusty shell of a woman, but he didn’t mind – in fact he loved her because of it. He returned to his whisking and she back to her occupational hazard of grabbing something hot with a wet towel. Got to make this right; she yelped in pain, her palm’s bordering on second degree; yolks are heating up, coagulating too rapidly, slow it down; he hands her his dirty, yet dry towel; seasoning’s off, pinch of salt and some acid; she removed the sizzle platter from the oven and the duck breast was better off fit for charcoal than consumption; shit, she’s fucked up again; she whips around and throws the entire thing in the garbage – she’s just not getting the concepts and all he wants to do is help.



She was the third angle on a sideways, culinary love triangle. Or at least to him she was. In all honesty there was no triangle, more like a line with two points; and, more precisely, she was more like a pivot point: she was the point in which all of his thoughts rotated; never allowing him to focus on what he needs to do, right now he needs to finish this sauce, but all he wants to do is grab every last ounce of burn cream for her.



It was that moment, that make-or-break analogy you hear every inspirational sports movie talk about: the girl of his fleeting dreams is sitting there distraught and without a soul to care for her, while you are already four tables behind just because you’ve been ogling her in sideways glances; not to mention that your sauce is about to break ruining the next few tables by pushing them; NOT TO MENTION that doing this would send an otherwise otherworldly calm chef into a mental tirade the likes of which should not be mention.



And you would do it all for her. For even a look back in recognition.



Kill the heat; remove the sauce; grab new duck breast; season it; review old tickets, cringe over new ones; four trout – one no butter, but EXTRA béarnaise, what the fuck..? – two NY strip – one midrare, one well –add on three more raviolis (seven all day), still four ducks barely working; start five pans over high heat…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, oil ‘em all; run, no sprint, to first aid; grab burn cream; don’t forget some ice too…



He plops down the burn cream and ice next to her, returns to his sizzle platters all lined up with open arms hoping grasp something beautiful.



He seasons all of the proteins, cranks the pasta water and tastes for seasoning (it reduced too much, more like the ocean boiling). He resumes seasoning, checks the temperatures of the pans and they too have their arms outstretched, smoke at their sides lapping the metallic overhang above.



TSSSSSSSsst…A sound every cook knows to listen for, when food kisses a pan just right the pan orgasms and you hear that noise. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…



He looks at the clock to see that the second hand tickles the 67th minute – it was foolish of him to do so. There will be many more ticks where that came from and to realize the time this early on was going to make the rest of the night drag on. For this is his only tamable woman: a three hour crunch where hundreds open up their festering jaws, teeth glistening in the fire behind him, just waiting, praying, and hoping he’ll be dinner.



And she’s still not getting it.



The hours roll on, the dinner rush slows, and his patience with a dysfunctional wait staff runs so thin it starts to look more like Kate Moss after a coke binge than the body type he fits. The night comes to a close; it was easier today, but still rougher than others. Why can’t these servers understand we have limited amounts of products? Still they order after we are out, still they make us RUSH, still we are holding back Poseidon with interlocking pinkies, still we fight forwards and hope it will all end shortly.



He buys her a beer at the bar that night neglecting to hold back all his compassion for being subtle; his inhibitions have been caught in the night breeze like a plastic bag – it’s somewhere down the road by now. They talk, they say nothing great or astounding, but at least they are talking. He wants nothing more than to tell her that she is the reason he no longer gets mad; she is the reason his last cigarette was four weeks ago even if the nicotine tastes less brutal than love; that she is the only fathomable thing holding together weakening fibers of his being; and he wants to tell her all of this even though she will never understand his mumbled, discombobulated attempts at romance.



He buys her a few more beers. He’s been waiting too long for this moment to let her lacking wallet detract her from furthering their conversation.



They talked about past lovers and previous attempts at post-work fornication in the walk-in fridge. She was letting herself be vulnerable for the first time in a long time; her rough-‘n’-tough attitude was quickly flying away the more she talked with him. She reminisced about how distraught she was tonight, how absent minded she had been lately due to some…blah blah blah, it was really just a pity party excuse, you don’t need to know what it was, just what it meant to him.



She seemed to talk for hours, and she did. He didn’t mind at all, rather enjoyed looking at the way her hair seemed to never be held back by her ear, or how impressed he was at the very simple fact that her hair was always so clean and so well kept even under the hell-like conditions she (they) dealt with.



She was always more striking than beautiful – green eyes hidden under sinking eye sockets that wore the lack of sleep worse than her personality; her eyebrows at perched at a sharp angle towards the outer ¾ of their length making her always seem rushed or in trouble at work by making her always look surprised; she held all of her weight on the insides of her shoulder blades, she complained about it often (he even offered a message or two, she always accepted), right where the two met and you could always see them stick out ever so slightly no matter what she wore; her hands were as kept as could be expected of a cook – her forearms and the top of her hands were littered with so many scars and calluses that they looked more like a battle field from an army that had just lost – but she was still able to maintain a sense of pride with her palms that felt more like silken tofu than skin.



He was holding them now, her hands, and he was happy.



They walked back to his place, sober enough for him not to feel guilty, drunk enough to poor decision making, and he was happy. She was happy.



The formidable shell of ambivalence, misanthropy, dissidence and an unbridled bitterness was melting the next morning. She was smiling, focused, and ready to part ways with the shell she had shed that night.



That day she seared a duck breast: Tssstt it went. That day she understood what reminded him of lobsters and faraway, past tense dreams; that day that noise reminded her of him and that, above all else, made her nostalgic.