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Authors: Sarah Zettel
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always closed on Monday.
As self-deception went, it was pretty lame, but it got me moving. I showered, dressed, brushed and rebraided my hair, cleaned up the last of the detritus from my cooking binge and before I forgot, retrieved Sevarin’s business card from the pocket of yesterday’s pants.
By then, it was time to try another call to PR Elaine. This time she picked up, which told me Chet had in fact managed to pay her bill this month. So, sitting on the couch and turning Sevarin’s card over in my fingers, I let Elaine talk about positive press releases and promised to look for her e-mail with a couple draft statements that could be released to some friendly tastemakers. I thanked her and promised her a dinner when this all cleared up.
I hung up and looked down, realizing I’d blunted every corner on Sevarin’s business card. This was ridiculous. Dead bodies in the Village were none of my business—as long as it didn’t hit Chet anyharder. Even assuming that what Sevarin said about other deaths was true, the Paranormal Squadron officers were the professionals, and they would do their job. My job was to get Nightlife open again.
My eyes slid sideways to my phone. The story had probably already gone away. This was New York City. One dead body wasn’t going to take up valuable mediascape for a whole cycle. My personal drama was no more than a footnote to one of the eight million stories in the naked city.
I knew this to be true. I did not have to look.
My phone lay there, gleaming black against the worn green upholstery. Waiting for me. It knew the truth and was just waiting for me to ask.
My fingers were so cold it took me a couple tries to get the screen to light up. I thumbed the FlashNews app.
And between all the Joshua Blake retrospectives and videos of the latest denials from our latest governor, I saw the new headlines wrapped around Dylan Maddox spread out in my foyer with a fresh vegetable garnish. A dozen discussion boards and op-blogs had sprung up overnight, filled with creative insults for my little brother, and for me because I’d “harbored” him. They came complete with calls for boycotts and wails of “What is this city coming to?” As a bonus, there was plenty of speculation that I’d held poor innocent Dylan down while Chet fed on him.
I dropped the phone onto the couch like it had gone rotten and buried my head in my hands. How had this happened? How could there be so much hate spewing out at the place I’d worked so hard to build, and about the brother I’d protected all my life?
Somewhere in the back of my brain reason whispered that it really would go away. This was New York City. Everything went away eventually. It just needed a little more time.
But the more I thought about Dylan Maddox lying dead in my restaurant, the worse it got. It wasn’t just because it had happened in my place, although that was bad, and it wasn’t just because the whole mess seemed to be landing hard on Chet, which was worse. It went deeper than that.
These days, chefs talk a lot. They talk about the artistry and passion of food. But in the end, real cooking isn’t about art or passion or that fourth star in the Times that we all secretly want to see beside our names. It’s about the basic, fundamental desire to feed, strengthen and care for other people. Giving the best you have to a guest is a sacred act. If you don’t love food on that level, you aren’t a true chef; you’re just a technician.
Dylan Maddox was dead—pointlessly, needlessly dead—and that offended me deep down, close to where my love of cooking existed. I found I didn’t have the strength to just stand back and wait the situation out. I had to find out what had happened, and I had to do something about it.
Sevarin’s card, blunted and bent, lay on the coffee table. There was no way to talk to him until after sunset. Ditto my brother. Little Linus and the Paranormal Squadron, though, would be wide awake and on the
As self-deception went, it was pretty lame, but it got me moving. I showered, dressed, brushed and rebraided my hair, cleaned up the last of the detritus from my cooking binge and before I forgot, retrieved Sevarin’s business card from the pocket of yesterday’s pants.
By then, it was time to try another call to PR Elaine. This time she picked up, which told me Chet had in fact managed to pay her bill this month. So, sitting on the couch and turning Sevarin’s card over in my fingers, I let Elaine talk about positive press releases and promised to look for her e-mail with a couple draft statements that could be released to some friendly tastemakers. I thanked her and promised her a dinner when this all cleared up.
I hung up and looked down, realizing I’d blunted every corner on Sevarin’s business card. This was ridiculous. Dead bodies in the Village were none of my business—as long as it didn’t hit Chet anyharder. Even assuming that what Sevarin said about other deaths was true, the Paranormal Squadron officers were the professionals, and they would do their job. My job was to get Nightlife open again.
My eyes slid sideways to my phone. The story had probably already gone away. This was New York City. One dead body wasn’t going to take up valuable mediascape for a whole cycle. My personal drama was no more than a footnote to one of the eight million stories in the naked city.
I knew this to be true. I did not have to look.
My phone lay there, gleaming black against the worn green upholstery. Waiting for me. It knew the truth and was just waiting for me to ask.
My fingers were so cold it took me a couple tries to get the screen to light up. I thumbed the FlashNews app.
And between all the Joshua Blake retrospectives and videos of the latest denials from our latest governor, I saw the new headlines wrapped around Dylan Maddox spread out in my foyer with a fresh vegetable garnish. A dozen discussion boards and op-blogs had sprung up overnight, filled with creative insults for my little brother, and for me because I’d “harbored” him. They came complete with calls for boycotts and wails of “What is this city coming to?” As a bonus, there was plenty of speculation that I’d held poor innocent Dylan down while Chet fed on him.
I dropped the phone onto the couch like it had gone rotten and buried my head in my hands. How had this happened? How could there be so much hate spewing out at the place I’d worked so hard to build, and about the brother I’d protected all my life?
Somewhere in the back of my brain reason whispered that it really would go away. This was New York City. Everything went away eventually. It just needed a little more time.
But the more I thought about Dylan Maddox lying dead in my restaurant, the worse it got. It wasn’t just because it had happened in my place, although that was bad, and it wasn’t just because the whole mess seemed to be landing hard on Chet, which was worse. It went deeper than that.
These days, chefs talk a lot. They talk about the artistry and passion of food. But in the end, real cooking isn’t about art or passion or that fourth star in the Times that we all secretly want to see beside our names. It’s about the basic, fundamental desire to feed, strengthen and care for other people. Giving the best you have to a guest is a sacred act. If you don’t love food on that level, you aren’t a true chef; you’re just a technician.
Dylan Maddox was dead—pointlessly, needlessly dead—and that offended me deep down, close to where my love of cooking existed. I found I didn’t have the strength to just stand back and wait the situation out. I had to find out what had happened, and I had to do something about it.
Sevarin’s card, blunted and bent, lay on the coffee table. There was no way to talk to him until after sunset. Ditto my brother. Little Linus and the Paranormal Squadron, though, would be wide awake and on the
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