“You will, though.”
I say nothing.
Julien studies me with the calm persistence of a man who has decided he will make his point without appearing to make it.
Finally, I reach for the folder and open it again, not because he has won, but because pretending not to care about critics is as useless as caring too much. A man who refuses information because it irritates him is not principled. He is lazy.
I am many things.
I’m not lazy.
Julien’s mouth moves slightly. “There he is.”
“Careful.”
“Always.”
“No,” I say. “You are many useful things. Careful is not one of them.”
Julien accepts this with a small tilt of his head.
“The fish arrives in ten minutes.”
“Then go wait at the door.”
“You want me to check the eyes first?”
“I want you to check everything first.”
“Of course,” he says.
He picks up the folder, but before he leaves the pass, he glances once more at the empty dining room.
“It’s a good room,” Julien says.
That is not praise from him. It is a verdict. I look at the forty tables, the green leather, the clean lines, the calm before the foolishness.
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
Julien heads toward the service entrance. The restaurant settles around me for one more brief moment before the deliveries begin, and I stand behind the pass with my hands at my sides, looking at the room I built after everything that tried to define the last one. The first restaurant taught me hunger. The second taught me distrust. Maison Holt will teach me whether I have learned anything useful from either.
The service bell at the back door rings before I can decide whether that thought is useful or merely dramatic enough to be irritating. Julien is already moving through the side corridor, his footsteps quick but not rushed. That is one of the reasons he remains employed. He understands that urgency and panic are not the same thing, and that kitchens run best when everyone inside them knows the difference.
I follow him through the narrow passage that connects the main kitchen to the receiving area. The corridor still smells faintly of fresh paint beneath the sharper notes of steel shelving, floor cleaner, and cold air leaking from the walk-in. It has takentwo months to make this corridor functional rather than merely compliant. Contractors think receiving areas are uninteresting because guests will never see them. That is why contractors should be supervised like toddlers near open water.
The fishmonger’s van waits in the alley, white doors open, refrigerated air drifting into the grey morning. Henri stands beside it with a clipboard in one hand and the expression of a man prepared to be offended before I speak. He is sixty, barrel-chested, with white hair shaved close to his skull and a nose that has been broken at least twice. He has supplied three of my kitchens and still acts wounded every time I inspect what he brings, as if trust should replace standards after a certain number of years.
It should not.
“Damien,” Henri says.
“Henri.”
“You are cheerful this morning.”
“I haven’t rejected anything yet.”
“There is time.”
