Edward Lee - The Chosen

“What if he doesn’t?”

Tate smirked doubly. “If he doesn’t then I’ll put my foot so far up his ass he’ll be able to taste the dogshit I stepped in on West Street this morning. But don’t worry about it, it ain’t gonna happen. Kirby’s never missed a deadline yet.”

“That’s what I mean, boss. He’s usually a week early with each piece. If I don’t have his copy by tomorrow noon, we’re going to have to re-lay the entire section. That’s a fifteen hundred word block, plus a three-by-four picture grid. It’s not like we can fill it in with ads at the last minute.”

“Maybe we can fill it in with prints of me kicking you in the ass for bothering me with bullshit,” Tate proposed. “How many times I gotta say it? Don’t worry about Kirby; his copy’ll be in on time.”

“It’s just kind of weird—”

Tate glared. “You’re still here?”

Brice took a hesitant step forward, a lamb straying into the lion’s den. He was a worry wart but he was also a good layout man, so Tate tolerated him. The newspaper business was like any business—give and take. You want good people, you put up with their quirks. “I gave Kirby a call today,” Brice finally said.

“You have a nice little chat?”

“He hung up on me.”

Tate’s smirk quickly dulled. “What do you mean he hung up on you?”

“I was just double-checking, you know. This is the first time he hasn’t had his material in early. I thought maybe he forgot about it or something.”

“He better not have,” Tate remarked. “I’ve already paid him for half the goddamn series. What did he say?”

Brice’s eyes looked distant. “That’s the weird part, boss. He sounded hungover or something, or like I’d just woken him up. Didn’t even sound like he knew who I was.”

“All right, so he was tired. Big deal.”

“I reminded him of the deadline… ”

Tate tapped his blotter with a red pen. “And?”

“He hung up on me. Just like that.”

Tate gave this some thought. God knew he’d met his share of pretentious journalists, people whose egos were bigger than the fucking Sears Tower. But this didn’t sound like Kirby. Kirby was low key and very professional. He never caused a fuss and he didn’t make waves. And he’d never been known to be rude.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tate repeated after a pause. “Go back to the dungeon and haunt your own office. You let me worry about Kirby.”

“Just thought I’d let you know.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

Brice left. Tate couldn’t figure it. Maybe the kid was exaggerating…

Tate thumbed through his Rolodex, to the Ks. kirby, paul, west wind apartments. He dialed the number and waited.

Six rings, then: “Hello?”

“Kirby, this is Tate. One of my people says you’re lollygagging on the singles piece. Is—”

“Who?” Kirby’s voice drifted. “Who is this?”

Tate ground his teeth. “Tate, you know? Harold Tate? Editor and chief of the City Fucking Sun? The guy who just paid you three bills on a series for the Weekender— ”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” Kirby sounded drained, barely coherent. A pause lapsed across the line. “Don’t worry, it’ll be in.”

“Well it goddamn better be, son, and if you don’t mind my saying so, you sound like shit. You—"

Click.

The line went dead.

“How do you like that son of a bitch,” Tate muttered to himself, and hung up. Fucking writers, he thought. They’re all a bunch of fucking weirdos.

— | — | —

CHAPTER EIGHT

“This is unbelievable, Vera,” Dan B. enthused.

Vera strolled down the shining hot line, gazing. The kitchen was huge, and it had been outfitted to the max. Groen industrial ovens and braisers, additional deck ovens, and twin South Bend ranges with ten burners each. And behind the line: Vulcan friers, Blodgett roasters, and Cleveland/ALCO professional steamers.

Dan B. looked dismayed. “And it’s all brand-spanking-new. Feldspar could’ve saved himself forty or fifty percent buying used or rebuilt, but he didn’t.”

“I don’t think that’s Feldspar’s style,” Vera acknowledged. “He’s not interested in cutting corners.”

The cold line, too, was replete with the same: brand-new Bloomfield salad and soup stations, three Univex mixers, and Groen speed-drives, plus an array of shredders, slicers, graters, and grinders. The entire kitchen glimmered in stainless steel newness.

“Every chef’s dream, right?” Vera suggested.

“You ain’t kidding.” Dan B. walked, nearly in a daze, behind the lines, glancing astonished at an entire wall of Dexter/Russell cutlery, Wearever pots and pans, and Wollrath prep gear. “Service bar’s the same way,” Dan B. went on. “Donna’s in there having a baby rhino. And Lee…”

“Holy shit!” the voice exclaimed around the line.

Lee was running around like a kid under a Christmas tree. His chubby moon face bloomed in delight with each of his shocked glances to and fro. Then his belly jiggled when he stopped before a mammoth Hobart chain-washer, which could crank three hundred sixty racks per hour. Lee’s eyes widened in something like veneration. “It’s…it’s beautiful,” he stammered.

“Look at that,” Dan B. laughed. “He’s getting hard. It’s not the Hustler Honey of the Month, it’s just a dishwasher.”

“No, no, it’s more than that.” Lee grinned at Dan B. “It’s the best dishwasher in the world, and it’s even more beautiful than…your mom.”

Dan B. promptly gave Lee the finger. But Lee was right; the great machine was one of the best dishwashers in the world, and so was the three-stage glasswasher behind it. Vera realized that just the equipment in this kitchen probably cost upwards of half a million.

“Let’s not embarrass him,” Dan B. suggested. “Lee wants to make love to the dishwasher.” He took Vera by the arm, getting serious. “Come here. I want to show you something.”

Vera followed him to the end of the line, past a pair of five-hundred-gallon lobster tanks and customized Nor-Lake walk-ins.

“What’s wrong?” Vera asked. “Aren’t you happy about all of this?”

“Sure. But there’s something…I don’t know. Something’s not right.”

“Like what?”

“Like that Hobart machine, for one,” Dan B. said. “That’s a fifteen-thousand-dollar rig, it’s something you use for a banquet house or a mess hall. You don’t need a machine that elaborate for a country restaurant. And the same goes for all of this stuff—sure, it’s all great stuff, but it’s overkill. Feldspar’s got to be out of his mind dropping this much cash for a restaurant in a questionable location.”

Why are men always so skeptical? Vera wondered. “Don’t complain. If we work our tails off, and get in some good advertising, we could fill this place every night.”

“Come on, Vera. That’s wishful thinking. You and I both know that the chances for any new restaurant, anywhere, are less than fifty-fifty.”

“That’s why Feldspar’s going full-tilt, to up the chances.”

“Maybe,” Dan B. conceded. “But take a look at this.”

He led her next to a stainless steel door at the back of the kitchen. He pulled it open. Vera stared in.

“Can you believe this?” Dan B. inquired.

Vera shrugged. Okay, maybe Feldspar was going a little crazy with the money. What she was looking at, past the door, was another kitchen, nearly identical to theirs.

“A second kitchen just for room service?” Dan B. questioned. “Feldspar thinks business is going to be so great that he needs a separate kitchen just for the hotel orders? It’s ridiculous.”