Romance Impossible(26)

He let out a little huff of laughter. "No, no, not even close. Seven of us, all told. Kids, I mean. Nine total in the family."

"Wow," I said. Growing up an only child¸ I couldn't even imagine. Well, that wasn't true. I could. Constant chaos. Never a moment of silence, never any privacy. Frequently overlooked. Having to shout at the top of your lungs just to get noticed. I might not have grown up in a big family, but I knew enough of them.

"Me and Max, we were the middle kids." Beckett picked up a bolt, examined it, and then put it back down. It took me a full five seconds to realize who Max was. I'd never heard anyone call Chef Dylan by his diminutive name. "We had to fight for attention a lot of the time. If I were a psychologist, I'd speculate that's why Max is so shouty. But what do I know?"

"Huh," I said, staring at the incomprehensible cartoon in the instructions that was supposed to tell us...something. The Ziggy-like figure was smiling in the first picture, but frowning in the second one. Why? What did he know that I didn't?

"How about you?" Beckett fitted two pieces together, stared at them, and then shook his head. "Any brothers or sisters?"

"Nope, just me. It turns out there's such a thing as too much attention." I grinned, as he struggled to pull the two pieces apart. They were stubbornly wedged in the way only two wrong pieces could be. "Would it kill them to put some words in here?" I waved the instruction booklet.

"Might cut into the profit margin," Beckett grunted. "This way, they can package it the same for all of the eleventy-billion countries they sell this crap in, and they don't have to print a manual the size of The Stand."

Eventually, through sheer luck and brute force, we got the thing together. It didn't immediately collapse, so I considered it a job well done. All the while, I couldn't stop the images in my head of young Max Dylan, a little towheaded boy trying to shout loud enough to drown out six other voices. Struggling to prove his worth. To be noticed.

No wonder he was so driven. Like a shark, I thought. Stop moving forward for too long, and you just waste away.





CHAPTER EIGHT

Entrée





The evolution of culinary terms is one of the more fascinating branches of language. In North America, an entrée is the main course. In the rest of the English and French-speaking world, it's what it sounds like: the first course, or appetizer. As eating habits changed, so did the terminology. Some bemoan this sort of change, but I've never felt that language should be static.





- Excerpted from Dylan: A Lifetime of Recipes





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Max





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Opening night was chaos. And not in a good way.

You expect a certain amount of things to go wrong, of course. That's just the way things are. A perfectly-executed restaurant opening is impossible. There are simply too many variables.

One of my early mentors in the culinary business told me that the more disastrous the opening, the more prosperous the restaurant.

I hoped he was right.

I got there obscenely early, before Beckett, before Jill, before Liam, the surly prep cook who clearly thought this position beneath him. But options were limited, even for someone with his experience, so I ignored his glowering and just appreciated the quality of his work. He'd be out the door as soon as a better job came along, but that was a worry for another day.#p#分页标题#e#

For a while, I just walked around the dining room, closing my eyes for a moment and opening them again, trying to see this already-familiar place through fresh eyes. What message would it send? The contractors and decorators might hate me, but they didn't know what I knew. Every little piece of this place would speak to my patrons, even if they didn't know it. The shade of the paint, the color of the curtains, the shape of the light fixtures. People don't think they notice these things, but they do.

Every little thing plants a thought, a feeling. Yes, I feel comfortable here. Yes, I want to eat here.

On that front, things were as good as they were going to get.

Then, the phone calls started coming in.

Aiden was going to be late. Surprise, surprise - on the one day it really mattered. Then, almost as soon as I'd hung up, another call came in, this one from my seafood supplier.

They had a problem. No oysters tonight. No scallops. Limited lobster...

"I'm sorry," I said, over the ringing in my ears. "I'm having a bit of trouble hearing you."

I hung up.

Jill found me still sitting in my office, staring at the wall like I'd gone catatonic.

"...Chef Dylan?" she said, hesitantly, poking her head in like she expected a bomb to go off.

"No seafood," I said. It was the most explanation I could manage, at the moment.