Ice breaks between us as we watch the food prep, and soon, I start to realize that Chloe's nothing like the thumb-sucking brat I'd expected. She handles the sight of fish guts like it's nothing, and the smell only seems to intrigue her further. When she asks to try an oyster, and she slurps one down with a giant grin rather than squirming in disgust at the texture, I finally realize that we might just get along after all.
After a while, the shift dies down and the owner lends us a corner of the kitchen so I can work Chloe through different prep techniques. How to chop evenly and efficiently, how to slice and dice so that nothing on a vegetable is wasted. The different flavors from herbs and produce that can emerge even at the prep stage.
"This is boring," she sighs after I correct her handle on the knife for the fifth time. "Do I have to do it again? I know how to cut things."
"Sure. And most people know how to cook-but we still get paid for being the best at it," I reply.
Reluctantly, she draws the knife a couple more times across the onion, then pouts again.
"I don't know … " she says, musing with all the deepness of thought a philosopher might use. "I kinda like it better when it's all uneven. It looks less like a robot cut it."
I open my mouth, milliseconds away from delivering an expletive-ridden rant about the value of precision, about the need for perfection-the kind of rant that earned me a primetime slot on premium cable TV and millions of views online. Chloe's been a little too professional and mature, and I'm this close to forgetting she's just a nine year old kid and not a convict who's used to taking orders.
But then I remember Willow, the soft way she managed to bring Chloe to her way of thinking, how she would use humor and gentleness to teach Chloe about the ingredients we browsed at the market, and instead I suppress the hotness of my blood.
I take a clove of garlic and put it in front of her.
"Chop that just like I told you, as best as you can, and then we can leave."
Chloe stiffens and looks at the garlic with the determination of purpose.
"Do you want it crushed or sliced?" she says, and I can't resist smiling. Maybe some of my lecturing stuck.
"What if I said I wanted it as strong as possible, without any bite or tartness?"
Chloe nods.
"Crushed," she says, already squeezing it under the flat side of the blade.
Maybe the soft way does work sometimes.
Once our time is up and I've dropped Chloe back off with her supervisor, I start making a few moves around town, chasing down a few distributors, going to a meeting with my accountant that lasts way beyond the point at which it can be called torture, and then a sit-down with the new Vegas spot's interior designer to talk color schemes and textures for the fiftieth time.
Unfortunately, none of these activities are as compelling as Chloe's ideas about loving shellfish because she gets to keep the shells, so my mind ends up slipping back to Willow. Maybe I was a little harsh on her during that hurried conversation at Knife, but I had to put my foot down and reaffirm the boss-employee relationship again, rather than the girl-on-top one we'd established the night before. Not just for her sake, but for mine.
I could run wild with a girl like her. Spend an entire week in bed together and still feel like we're just getting our appetites wet. Her body like a map that I've only just set foot on, that still has so many places to explore, so many secrets to unfold. If she wasn't one of my chefs I'd already be planning the how, where, and when-but since she is, I still have to ask myself ‘if.' It's clearly not a smart move. But then again, I'm not known for my smarts. I'm known for getting exactly what I want, and doing things my way.
Memories of her in that tight dress stick themselves into my mind throughout the day with the incessant force of a catchy song, so that even as I'm listening to my accountant reel off numbers, I close my eyes and try to relive the taste of her lips.
By the time I'm done for the day my suit feels like a straitjacket, muscles tensing and skin hot with the aggression of a caged bull. I make the car roar like a beast through the cool evening, yanking it through the winding roads that lead up to my place in the Hollywood hills. I bring the car to a slide-stop at the front door, too impatient to even park it properly, and step through the long building of glass and white walls as if there's something waiting for me. Tearing off clothes the way I'd like to do to hers, until I'm down to my boxer briefs, picking out a bottle of Pinot Blanc and opening it roughly. Wine in one hand, phone in the other, I go out to the deck and sit back on a lounger, letting the breeze off the swimming pool take the heat off my body. Slow sips from the bottle as I contemplate the L.A. skyline between my feet.