Chop Chop Read Free Page B

remembered something and dropped the spoons and ducked back into the service fridge and pulled out a gastro of ravioli.
    â€œHow many rav was it?” he asked weakly.
    â€œThree,” said Dave. “In three minutes.”
    Dibden peeled nine raviolis from the gastro and ran over to the chauffant, where he dropped them into a waiting spaghetti basket. The scuzzy water swallowed. In the fifth circle of hell, sighs of the sullen frothed the vile broth. Then he slid back to Ramilov’s section and started quenelling again.
    â€œDon’t forget that ganache, Dibden,” said Bob. “I want everything looking fucking soigné.”
    Even a much-maligned commis such as myself could see by the way Dibden was comporting himself that things were going to end badly for all concerned. I was praying for Ramilov to be released. But you could not beg Bob; he was not a merciful man. You would have been handing the ax to the executioner, so to speak. Sometimes my hatred for Bob burned so fierce I feared he would see the flame and decide to stub me out once and for all. But Bob was so big and I was so small it seemed he did not notice me, and so I kept on with my bowing and scraping and burning and plotting, waiting for my moment, dreaming of a way that we, the chefs, might end him.
    â€œ
Check on! One rav, one pigeon, THREE EEL! That’s four rav and four eel all day! And there’s another dessert check on and away!
”
    â€œHaving fun, chef?” Bob asked Dibden.
    â€œ
Oui, chef
,
” replied Dibden, who was not.
    â€œHow long on these first fucking desserts?”
    â€œTwo . . . Four minutes, chef.”
    â€œFour minutes?” Bob snarled. “You all right over there, chef?”
    â€œYes, chef.”
    â€œYou look like you’re going down.”
    â€œNo, chef,” said Dibden. You could never admit you were going down.
    â€œD’you want I defrost the Russian?”
    â€œIf you want, chef,” said Dibden, desperate.
    Bob sighed and made a flick at some crumbs on the pass. He toyed with the idea, letting the kitchen squirm.
    â€œAll right,” he said at last. “Let the cunt out.”
    I went straight over to the walk-in, unlocking it as fast as I could. Ramilov had been unnaturally quiet since the lobster. He was only in chef’s whites in there—perhaps the cold had got to him. It was hard to know exactly how long he had been inside; time in the kitchen was like time nowhere else; no law governed its leaps and crawls. For a moment I thought I would find him curled up in the corner, a poor lump with lobsters feeding on his eyes. I opened the door, just a wedge at first. There was only darkness. No sound. No sign of life. Had Bob finally done it? Had he made good on his promise and killed Ramilov? I pulled the door open farther and the light clicked on and Ramilov pushed past me and out into the bright swelter of the kitchen looking almost all right, as almost all right as he ever looked, his arms outstretched like a homecoming hero, triumphant.
    â€œHello, bitches,” he said. “Did you miss me?”

2. TRIAL
    H ow did I end up here, chopping carrots on the back bench and daydreaming about destroying Bob? Ramilov and Racist Dave have often asked what a person like me was doing in a place like this, though perhaps in words less civil. This job, you should know, was not something I ever wanted. I took it when I was two months behind on the rent and the landlady cursed me in Portuguese whenever we passed on the steps.
Filho da
puta, pentelho, good for nahting, pol
í
cia will know
. Dear Mrs. Molina, a study in black and gray. Stately, though prone to a quiver about the jaw when money was mentioned. Sweet Mrs. Molina, who had absorbed the colors and textures of the city until her look was solid concrete and her face like the back of a bus. A slight, short-sighted woman, you would never have expected the foul things that came out of