THENASTYBITS (34 page)

Marvin, hearing this from his table, did his very best to look like six or seven very happy customers instead of one very worried owner and wife, bursting forth with a forced "ha ha ha" of faux holiday mirth. His wife looked at him like he was out of his mind.

"Are you all right?" she asked, her eyes narrowing as she searched his expression for any signs of incipient insanity, stroke, or Tourette's.

"Fine! Fine!" insisted Marvin, beads of sweat erupting on his brow. "Best meal I've had in
ages
...
ho ho ho. Waiter!" he commanded. "Some dessert, please!"

Of course, Alexandra adroitly rescued the situation, smiling warmly at the two women guests, patting one on the hand and confiding, "Actually tonight's a very
good
night to be here. A
very special
night. The chef is cooking everything
himself.
You know he can't do that very often anymore. Tonight is a very
special
night. You're in luck." She whisked them to a four-top in the center of the dining room and seated them with menus. Ricardo, the restaurant's best waiter, was at their elbows in a second, while Paul, in a moment of possibly divine inspiration, pretending to visit the service bar for a consultation, whispered an order to extinguish the lights out front and draw the curtains. "Lock the door," he said. "No more customers." There was a brief exchange with Ricardo.

"Mr. Schutz," said Ricardo in hushed tones meant to convey solemn, yet breathlessly concealed, delight, "the chef has instructed me to close the restaurant to all other customers. It would be his honor and pleasure to prepare a special menu for the four of you. If it's all right with you he'd like you to just relax and enjoy. He has something really extraordinary in mind for your party. Would that be satisfactory to you and your guests?"

The two girls, already thrilled that America's Sexiest Chef would be personally preparing their meals, were exuberant, particularly as the two of them had, until their recent move to New York, experienced nothing more extravagant than Shoney's and Olive Garden. Here they were now—with Roland Schutz! Being fed
personally
by Rob
Holland.
And
look\
Look at
this\
A magnum of champagne, gratis! Headed their way was Ricardo, at his most graceful with the white napkin as he peeled the foil, removed the wire stay, and gently released the cork with a muffled pop. Schutz, who at this early stage of the evening was concerned with nothing more substantial than getting the two girls to go tag-team in his heart-shaped bed later, was happy to go along. They were happy? He was happy. Fuck the food. He'd just as soon be sitting on his couch in his silk boxer shorts, eating his usual peanut butter and bacon sandwich (no crusts) and watching
American Gladiators
with his chin-strap on. But chicks didn't dig that. The girls looked pleased. They looked impressed.

And that was what was important. Cleveland, his security guard, ate, as far as he could tell, only energy bars and Grape Nuts.

"Yes, of course. That would be delightful," he said. "Please thank Rob for me." His use of the chef's first name implied familiarity, though he had never once eaten Rob Holland's food or even met the man, to be honest. "Tell him I'd be very pleased to eat whatever he'd care to send us."

Back in the kitchen, Rob had been, of course, immediately apprised of the situation.

"C'mon, chef," said Paul, grinning horribly, with a death's-head who-gives-a-fuck smile you generally saw in war movies just before the last suicide charge up a machine-gun-infested hill. "This could be the last damn meal we ever cook in this dump. Let's make it a keeper."

"Show me some fucking moves, chef," said Michelle snapping Rob's ass with a side towel. "Victory or death!"

There was a lot of unused food in the Saint Germain stores. Most of it would probably never be eaten. Rob pillaged his refrigerators and shelves for the best of everything. Working quickly, he whipped up a batter for cornmeal blinis, browned them in a nonstick pan, teased them with a few shavings of homemade gravlax, carefully applied dollops of creme fraiche, and heaped them with beluga caviar until they threatened to topple over. He applied near microscopic dots of bright green chive oil—in gradually descending size around wide white plates, and sprinkled a tiny, tiny brunoise of hard-cooked egg yolk over and around. His hands flew. They did not shake.

There was a
torchon
of foie gras, which Rob sliced and cut and stacked into artful submission between paper-thin slices of toasted brioche and quince chutney, a thin drizzle of balsamic reduction issuing from his spoon with a precision Paul and Michelle had thought long gone. He worked silently, saying absolutely nothing, other than when he issued faint commands to his left and to his right. He didn't just work the saute station, he worked
every
station, moving from saute to grill to garde-manger like he'd lived there every waking hour, the other cooks serving as
commis.
Michelle even found herself wiping his brow at one point when a drop of sweat threatened to fall onto a plate of "mosaic of copperhead salmon and fluke carpaccio with citrus jus," surprisingly, not minding at all. Those cooks not helping—Billy, Jimbo, Leon, and the rest—simply stood by and watched as Rob moved efficiently, as if to some internal rhythm, back and forth from station to station, from one plate to anther, course after incredible course. They were silent, as if by speaking, they might break the spell. There was a total hush in the kitchen. The back waiters and busboys tiptoed in to do their work and then tiptoed out. It was as if Rob were a pitcher working on a no-hitter, and a dropped fork, a plate set down too loudly, might destroy what might well turn out to be a perfect game.

While Ricardo cracked open the very best wines from the Saint Germain cellar, knowledgeably describing the domain, vintage, grape variety, and history of each without belaboring the point, Rob cooked, and kept cooking. Six two-bite courses, then seven, eight, nine, and they were still on appetizers! Nothing was from the menu. Each dish seemed to drop fully formed from Rob's mind in a direct route to his hands, then the plate.

Oyster "stew" with a panacotta of cauliflower and lobster essence, ravioli of white truffles with a sauce of morels and confited woodcock (Paul and Michelle had never seen ravioli made so quickly from scratch), "linguine" of baby eels—not linguine at all, but quickly marinated baby eels from Portugal, translucent and tender, tossed with fresh herbs and olive oil from a tiny estate in Italy, the bottle hand-numbered and signed by its creator. Fricassee of sweetbreads, dusted with spice and crisped in a pan with rendered duck fat before being propped up under wide, thin disks of black truffle. It went on and on. Nikki began to wonder if they would be able to eat it all.

She need not have worried. The girls, who hadn't eaten in weeks in anticipation of an imminent shoot for Victoria's Secret (in this they had been misled), ate like hungry longshoremen, devouring everything on their plates and mopping sauce with their bread. Schutz, after the fifth or sixth glass of wine, had begun to enjoy himself with abandon, licking his woefully stumpy fingers with a tiny pink tongue, drops of sauce falling on the napkin fastened under his chins. When the Trio of Bellwether Farms Lamb arrived—a single medallion of perfectly seared and roasted loin, a glazed kidney, and a tiny scoop of braised shoulder, along with lovingly caramelized shallots and glazed cubes of turnip stuffed artfully into a hollowed-out courgette—there were oohs and aahs and even Cleveland, Schutz noticed, seemed uncharacteristically inspired, attacking his food with fervent dedication.

"Extraordinary," said Cleveland. "Absolutely ethereal. Intox-icatingly good. This man is brilliant. This man is a genius. I've eaten a lot of good food in my life, Mr. Schutz. A lot of very good food. I used to drive for that guy from Vivendi, the French dude? He knew how to eat, man. In France. Used to take me with him everywhere. And I've never experienced anything like this. This man doing the cooking? This Rob Holland guy? This man's a genius."

Schutz had never heard Cleveland speak so extensively on any subject. He was dismayed to hear of his prior experience with haute cuisine. He felt suddenly embarrassed about the napkin under his chin, and his own efforts with a fork, as Cleveland worked a veal cheek with lemon and saffron risotto like an aristocrat, doing the fork-knife cross-over with effortless grace, dabbing occasionally at the corners of his mouth as he savored the latest wine with the glass held elegantly by the stem, swirling it almost imperceptibly in his cheek before swallowing.

"You are absolutely right," he said, hurrying to agree. "This is something truly remarkable. I've eaten around a bit too, you know. We have some of the best, the very best chefs in the world at my casinos—but
this
—this
is
something else, isn't it?"

Schutz downed another glass of wine and looked across at the two girls golden in the flower of their youth, imagining they'd taste of strawberry ice cream. But how could anything taste better than this? He felt, in a rush of heat that seemed to rise from his toes to the crown of his overly coiffed head, elated, near giddy with delight. He'd have to pay more attention to what he ate in the future. He'd clearly been missing something.

Marvin lingered over his third cup of coffee and pretended to listen to his wife. He hoped, of course, that Schutz would enjoy himself. That he'd tell his friends. Maybe book a Christmas party or two at Saint Germain, provide a little last-minute cash flow to keep the doors open a few more days or weeks. But who was he kidding? The prick could bail out this business with what he spends on carpet cleaning each week. But why would he?

Chet, the bartender, had more measured hopes for the evening. He wished for nothing beyond a very fat tip, which the floor would carve up and of which he'd get one fifth. Signs were favorable in this department. One rich guy, bodyguard, and two good-looking women usually translated into a heavy tip meant to impress the broads as much as anything else. Chet calculated in his head the likely total, what with all the wine and the multiple courses and the likelihood of port or cognac to follow. He was thinking big. A few rounds of Louis Treize, now
that
would be nice.

In the kitchen, Paul, Kevin, Michelle, and the rest hoped for nothing beyond what they had right now, the pure pleasure of seeing Rob Holland cook again. He was in the zone now, oblivious to the outside world, cooking and cutting and arranging and moving about in some wonderful culinary fugue state, cooking—as all the best cooks do—solely for himself now, climbing the mountain for what might well be one last, best time.

It was okay now, thought Michelle, knowing that Paul was thinking the same thing. All would be okay if they closed the doors to Saint Germain forever after this evening. They had seen Rob Holland at his very best. They could always tell this story and it would all be true. That they were there the night Rob Holland kicked ass like no one else they'd ever seen; that he'd shown them what a cook could be.