Chef

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 22 drawing prompt Chef from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

He loved to cook. If he had his way, he would spend every minute of his spare time cooking, and he just about did.

One day, he was going to make it his full time job.

It was the ritual of the thing, the routine. Arranging his workspace, getting all the tools out, preparing, as the great chefs call it, the Mise-En-Place. It was paramount that he have everything the way he wanted it to be when he started, or else the recipe wouldn’t turn out right. That’s why he always cooked alone. As soon as someone else entered the mix, everything was thrown off. He would either get distracted, or they would measure something improperly, and he would try the final result and end up having to scrap it because it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

Once, he had a friend over just to chat while he was cooking and the recipe was still ruined. It was like their breath in the air or the skin cells flaking off of them into the atmosphere changed the entire chemistry of the room.

He preferred the solitary experience, anyway, so he could become one with the recipe. It was like conducting a symphony while simultaneously playing all the instruments. Everything had to come together in the perfect harmony. If he couldn’t make the ingredients sing, there was no point.

On cooking days, he always got up early and, after sharing a cup of coffee with the sunrise, he would scrub the kitchen from top to bottom. Everything had to be perfectly clean or he couldn’t cook. As he scrubbed, he would think about his day job. He was a bank teller and no matter how good he was at his job, they wouldn’t promote him to head teller. Ten years he’d been there, training every new hire, showing them all his tricks, and watching them get promoted over him. Then, shortly after their promotion, they would quit. It was mostly young girls and, apparently, getting promoted to head teller was catnip to all men of the boyfriend persuasion. Last one, it wasn’t two days after they announced she would be in charge that this girl strolled into the bank with 4 carats on her finger and within a week, she’d put in her notice.

It made no logical sense to him, from a managerial standpoint. He’d been there forever, they trusted him to train everyone that got the job, but offer it to him? No way. Maybe if it would be different if he was a pretty girl.

That’s why he had to work so hard at perfecting this hobby, so he could get out of there. No matter how many other banks he applied to, he couldn’t even get an interview. Not for head teller, not for bank manager, not even as a lateral move to being another bank teller. He tried for junior bank teller at one national bank chain, but they called him and said the two dreaded words: over qualified. He was under qualified to move up and over qualified to move down so there he was, stuck in the middle.

But this week, he finally got his chance. He’d gotten a freelance cooking job and if they liked his recipe, they were going to be putting in regular orders. He’d be like a private chef. That’s why everything had to be perfect.

All day, he slaved over his work, making two, then three batches. Finally, when he saw the third batch, he knew he’d done it. It was the perfect color, the perfect clarity. He bagged it and waited for the pick up. At seven o’ clock, three distinct knocks sounded on his door—their agreed upon signal. He opened up to a surprisingly large man in a black trench coat, black hat, and black out sunglasses.

“Please come in!” He could barely contain his excitement, but when the gigantic man looked down at him and scowled as he walked past into his apartment, he tried to play it cool.

“You got the order ready.”

“Yes, sir!”

He handed him the best bag of meth he’d ever cooked, practically beaming with pride. The big man took a glass pipe and a torch lighter out of his pocket, loaded it with the product, and took a hit. Once he was done, he made what could only be described as a “not bad” face and pulled a gigantic roll of money from his other coat pocket.

“Same time next week?” He grumbled.

“You bet!”

The trench coat man saw himself out and, as soon as the door was shut, the chef jumped in the air.

Tomorrow, he’d put in his notice at the bank: a full time chef at last.