Page 36 of White Lights
“Sorry, you look hungry, but Dr. Lebevre sent me to get you.”
“Who’s Dr. Lebevre?” Dez asks.
“The chef,” Simon says.
“Shit,” Dez says.
“Apparently you missed the breakfast shift?” Esther says, holding out an extra black apron. “So you’re on lunch. With me.”
Dez’s stomach growls in protest, but of course she’s on lunch duty. Of course this respite with Simon and something nice to eat was too good to be true. At least she isn’t fired. Yet.
“Do y’all need another set of hands?” Simon asks, rising when Dez does. “I can throw on an apron, too—”
But Esther’s already speed walking back to the kitchen, and Dez is hurrying to follow her, tying the apron around her waist. Thistime, when she passes Rafe’s table, he looks up at her, eyeing her apron in a way that makes Dez feel he can see through it. She puts her hands in her pockets, clutches the prescription bottle like it’s a stress ball.
“At least it’s an upgrade from Dairy Barn,” Rafe calls, loud enough for his tablemates to stop their fascinating conversations and all look over at Dez.
“Don’t piss off the people making your food,” Dez says.
He laughs. “Poison me. I dare you.”
“Desdemona, you coming?” Esther says, holding open the kitchen door.
Dez follows her, ignoring Rafe and attempting to walk bravely into the kitchen, though her heart has started to pound.
The space is quiet, large and gleaming, everything highest restaurant-grade. Silver storage racks stocked with rainbows of lettuces, citrus fruits, and root vegetables line one of the long kitchen walls. Bins of sauces stored in squeeze bottles, everything labeled with blue masking tape, are stacked on a center island. There’s no angry chef in sight.
If she’d made it to the breakfast shift like she was supposed to, Dez probably wouldn’t be mad at her work study position. Sometimes rush hour at the Dairy Barn put her in a kind of Zen state, when her hands were moving so quickly her mind couldn’t keep up. So her mind took a welcome hiatus from thinking.
“Where’s Dr. Lebevre?” Dez asks Esther.
“Just make yourself busy until he gets back. He does not like idle hands.”
“Right. What are we cooking?” She pulls her hair back, going to the sink to wash her hands.
The back door of the kitchen swings open and in strides a portly, dark-haired man in chef ’s whites. Aggressively masculine, possibly drunk, and Dez guesses about thirty-five. He carries what looks likean archery sheath over his shoulder. When he flings it down and rolls it out on the steel counter, she sees it’s filled with knives.
“You Desdemona Rae?” he asks, not looking up from his sharpening steel, dragging a blade across it.
“I … yes. And I want to apologize—”
“Shut up,” he growls. “Speak when I tell you to speak. I am Dr. Lebevre. I come from Cordes-sur-Ciel, where my grandmother taught me to cook.”
“She must have done a good job.”
“When I fucked up in the kitchen, she would give me a warning.”
“That seems reasonable,” Dez says nervously.
“When I fucked up again, she would lance one of my fingers.”
“What?”
Lebevre flashes a hand before Dez’s eyes, and she sees the scars, the uneven angles, the strange smooth nubs where his fingertips should be.
“You missed breakfast,” he tells Dez.
“I’m sorry—”
