So of course he’d royally fuck up my life when he came waltzing back into it.
I’m not sure what I thought when I saw Gabe’s name next to mine on the lineup sheet – this time during the summer between eleventh and twelfth grade. I’m pretty certain I stared at it for a good five minutes before I noticed my floor manager, Natalie, waving from the other side of the office door.
After taking one more look at the lineup sheet – yep, it still said Gabriel De La Hoya – I pushed open the door.
‘Tommy,’ Natalie said, smiling her wide, shark-mouth smile at me. I tried not to shudder. Natalie wasn’t the nicest person in the world, and like a brightly colored tree frog warning its predators that it’s toxic, her smile warned of similar danger.
‘I got your email,’ she continued.
Shit. The email. I’d totally forgotten I’d sent it. I mean, I’d remembered up until I saw Gabe’s name next to mine, with the word ‘shadow’ in parentheses. The boy with dimples who I hadn’t seen in six years. I wondered what he looked like now. I wondered if he was still cute.
Wait, Natalie’s email first – that was more important right now.
I closed the office door – dulling the sounds of Dante the sous chef chopping onions – and sat down across from her desk. My stomach began to tie itself in knots like a pretzel. There was a reason I sent that request as anemailand didn’t ask her in person. I just wanted a no in writing; I didn’t need for her to tell me to my face.
Natalie’s smile remained in place as she sat in silence across from me. I wasn’t sure if she expected me to start the conversation or what, but I had said everything I had to say in the email. So, instead of saying anything, I admired her makeup again.
Somehow, Natalie managed to use as much makeup as a drag queen, but in a way that actually worked for her. With her light-brown contouring and foundation, I had no idea if she was thirty or fifty. Her smoky eye and dark lipstick were stylish, so I leaned more toward thirty, but her outfits – that day it was a beige pantsuit and white blouse – had me veering toward the fifty side again.
Finally she spoke. ‘You’re planning to go to La Mère?’
I nodded. ‘My dad went there. I heard it’s a great school.’ I was trying very hard to downplay it. I hadn’t just heard that La Mère Labont was a great school; Iknewit was. It was always listed at the top of the best culinary schools in the world, several famous chefs had graduated from there, and admissions were extremely selective.
But I didn’t want to let on how much I wanted to go there. Not to Natalie. She seemed to take joy in the misery of her subordinates.
She raised her well-drawn eyebrows and her tone became very know-it-all. ‘Oh, it’s more than just a great school. You know, when I started looking into schools and was deciding between restaurant management and …’
I started to zone out. I already knew all this. She had been deciding between becoming a chef or going into hospitality management, and she chose management – I mean, clearly. That’s why she wasn’t in the kitchen right now.
It was also why I wantedherrecommendation. Natalie wasn’t shy about where she had worked before Sunset Estates. She brought up her experience managing one of Chef Louis LaGuard’s New York restaurants as often as she could. And now here she was, in an old folks’ home in southeastern Pennsylvania, managing a bunch of high schoolers.
My, how the mighty have fallen, Natalie.
Anyway, Chef Louis wasn’t only one of the most well-regarded chefs in the world. He was also one of the faculty membersandon the admissions committee at La Mère. So yes. I absolutely wanted to use my Natalie connection to try to get their attention. Among other things I was working on, like the required essay – which I was sure the inspiration would come for any day. The application also said I could include supplemental material, and I already had an idea for that.
I tuned back in to Natalie at the perfect time. ‘So I assume that’s one of the reasons you askedmeto write your letter of recommendation.’
‘I also asked George,’ I said. It was a risk, making her feel less special by bringing up our other manager, but maybe if she knew I would have asked her even without her connections she’d be more open to it? ‘La Mère requires two professional references as well as one educational. But, yes, I did specifically want to ask you because I know you worked with Chef Louis in the past and he’s on the admissions committee.’
She shook her head, and my heart sank. ‘There are no professional strings to be pulled when it comes to La Mère.’
‘I understand that, but I figured since Chef Louis knew what kind of management style you had and saw that I had been working here for – it’ll be three years when I leave for La Mère …’ I trailed off, letting her figure out how I would end that sentence on her own.
In reality, the answer was absolutely that I was trying to look impressive by having her name on my recommendation letter. It felt like the universe conspiring to make this happen. Why else would she be here? Chef Louis’s New York restaurant was still open and one of the top in the country.
Natalie clasped her fingers together. ‘I make it a pointnotto write letters of recommendation.’
Again, my heart sank.
‘However,’ she continued. My heart rose … but just a bit, because the tone of her voice made me nervous. ‘I don’t often get asked to write recommendations for La Mère. So I’m willing to make a deal with you.’
A deal? What the hell was this Faustian bullshit? She probably wanted me to stay late every night – off the clock, no doubt – and clean the kitchen with the dish crew. Sheshouldagree to do the letter because I’m already a good employee, not as a way to get free labor out of me. I kept my face as neutral as possible, waiting for her to continue.
‘I’ll give you three tasks to complete to prove to me that you’re above and beyond what La Mère is expecting. If you accomplish all three to my satisfaction, I’ll write you the greatest, most effusive letter of recommendation in the history of letters of recommendation.’
Definitely a devil’s bargain. ‘What kind of tasks? ’Cause I’m not great at spinning straw into gold.’
Natalie, as always, was more annoyed than charmed by my jokes, but she kept her composure. ‘And I imagine if you were, you wouldn’t even need to be here! But since youarehere, I’ll keep the tasks Sunset Estates-related. Now, for the first, and probably easiest: you saw I gave you a shadow this evening?’
