The Head Chef – Part 1: After Service

The last ticket went at eleven. By midnight, the dining room was dark and the kitchen gleamed, steel benches scrubbed, pans hung in rows, the extractors ticking as they cooled. Sabine turned the sign on the pass to CLOSED, folded her arms and looked at Luc.

"Stay," she said.

She was forty-four, head chef of a restaurant with a star and a temper, though never with him. He was thirty-five, her sous-chef of five years and partner of two, quick, funny and capable, who had once said, in the walk-in fridge, that he sometimes wished she would run him as she ran the kitchen.

At the pass she laid out a docket. Terms of Service. His limits and hers, written in black marker. No marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, no one else. The word was Eighty-six.

"Say it."

"Eighty-six."

"If you say it, I put down the knife. We eat."

"Yes, Chef."

"Not yet." She tied a fresh apron and a pair of black gloves, and her face went flat and quiet. Her voice dropped to the low, perfectly level tone she used to call a service. "Luc. You overcooked the lamb tonight."

"I did, Chef. I'm sorry."

"You will be." She pointed at a spot on the tile. "There. Hands behind you. Look at the wall."

He stood, facing the steel splashback with his own reflection in it. Behind him, her clogs sounded slowly on the tiles. She tasted a sauce. She wiped a bench. She checked a thermometer, and ignored him completely for ten minutes.

"Are you content?" she asked, without turning.

"Content, Chef."

"Good. We are not finished."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Family Meal.