A Meal Best Served

I sip the tall glass of iced tea, savoring every sip as I prep the most special meal of my sorry life. Normally, despite the heat of this small cuisine, as Chef likes to call the kitchen, I’m only allowed paper cups of water, no ice. And no eating the food we prepare, except slight tastes.

Still, this room, hidden away, has been our refuge from the industrial kitchen Chef and I have slaved in for years. Now it’s my refuge alone. Am I the chef de cuisine? I guess this is my test: Can I create “The Meal” without Chef’s guidance.

Another sip. Check the fridge for the dessert, already mellowing. A sip and a sigh. Snap the fibrous ends off the plump white asparagus spears, toss them with olive oil, sprinkle with parmesan, and throw onto the roasting pan. Fill my mouth with tea and ice. Peel the Yukon Golds and, with deft knife strokes, render them into cubes. A long, cooling draught. Throw the cubes into the salted boiling water

Salt. Now there’s a luxury. Pepper, too. Beautiful ground flecks rain down from the grinder, and I remember Chef, soon after our work in the Hidden Kitchen began, telling me about pepper. “We take it for granted, but the lust for spices, especially pepper, launched the Age of Exploration, which led to us being here.” And I replied, “Stuck in prison for life?” To which he laughed. But then he added, “It wasn’t so much for the flavor. It was to mask the putrid food and preserve it, because most of the meat was rot.”

No laughing matter. Here we live among the rot. And beyond this room, we get nothing but powders of salt and pepper to dump into the main kitchen’s vats. Every day, an assault on our humanity.

I drain the last drops of iced tea. Daydream of an evening quaffing it on my verandah, admiring a shimmering sunset. I’ll get punished for this. Both for using a glass and for the stolen spoonfuls of Warden’s prize Darjeeling. And for having dreams. But for now, the guard overseeing me doesn’t seem to care. Or maybe he doesn’t understand that drinking from a glass is a crime. As heinous as the offense that got me in here 15 years ago.

If salt is a luxury, what’s the word to describe lobster tail…steamed for exactly 6 minutes, drenched in Irish butter and kissed with a lemon squeeze. And the term for beef Wellington? And for the caviar and saffron for the mashed potatoes? And dessert; for that, only decadent is fitting…and a great joke, too.

The door behind me creaks open, but I’m too focused on The Meal to turn around.

“Hey!” my guard says. I turn.

“Your assistant.” The guard who just came in pushes a kid carrying a dining room tray into the room. I don’t recognize him. Still a teenager. He must be one of the new prisoners who arrived this morning. I know that look on his face, that what-the-hell-is-happening blend of blankness, sweaty terror, and lingering swagger.

Which way to play this? Send the kid into a sniveling panic, or be nice? I know what Chef would say.

“Come here,” I tell the newbie. “And put that damn tray down.”

“They pulled me out of the dining hall before I could sit down. Do I eat it here?”

A sharp “No!” from the guard.

Quieter, I say, “Stand next to me and act like you’re helping.”

“Help with what?”

“Have you ever been in a kitchen?”

“Not like this one, but I was working in a diner when—”

“That’s why you’re here. You’re the new me.” So, orientation won’t be too tricky. He’s just not used to food like this, or fine cookware. And he’ll get used to the guard drawing his weapon, as instructed, every time we touch a knife or fork.

“They’ll assign you to the kitchen crew,” I explain, “and every 2 weeks you and I will be sneaked out to here.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Listen, don’t be a dumb banger. If you can’t see what’s in it for you, you’re lost.”

Half an hour of mostly silence. An occasional finger point to an ingredient or a utensil. A quick instruction. “Mince the saffron fine.” “Slice the morel this way.” “Slice this in half, then 5 slices paper thin.”

The newbie stares at the black sphere I push his way. “This hunk of dirt?”

“It’s a black truffle, and it’s worth a thousand bucks, maybe two.”

The kid is shaking his head. “What’s this all about?”

I knew he’d get to that. This may take the remaining hour before we serve Chef.

“This, Newbie, is our Warden’s revenge. Warden was the arresting officer 25 years

ago, when Chef was caught. In fact, he asked to be assigned. And over the next dozen years, he crafted his life to move up through the police force, all with the plan to become warden of this prison one day.”

“To torment a prisoner?”

“To torment a prisoner.”

Between instructions about constructing the beef Wellington and about soaking the dates in cognac, I tell Newbie the story. Well, some of it. And, I admit, I leave out a juicy detail or two, a couple of dramatic touches I know Warden can’t resist as a final flourish, a coup de grâce to the story. If I set to telling the whole tale, we’d stop working and it would go on for hours.

I tell Newbie about how, one day about a year after Warden arrived, Chef and I were each pulled from our cells and brought to this room. I was confused, but Chef understood in an instant. We had stepped into a replica of Chef’s family’s kitchen. Where, over four generations, the magic of a city’s culinary mecca was created and sustained. Where, after traveling the world to study and absorb cuisines and cultures, the young Chef, then a sous-chef to his tyrannical father, murdered the old man and a baker’s half dozen others. “It was out of pain,” Chef once explained, “and rage, and ambition, and stupidity, all tied together in knots.”

Chef had put a slow-acting poison in an appetizer, a favorite of his father that he knew the old man would sample. Which he did. He ate two, in fact. Then, before Chef could swipe the tray away, his father handed it to a waiter, who plucked a piece off the tray, popped it in his mouth, and took it out to the table of a movie star and five guests.

People started falling ill late that night. And 3 days later, 8 were dead. Chef hadn’t even fled. Just hid in his apartment until Warden personally smashed an enforcer into Chef’s door. Warden’s testimony at the trial was passionate, and his wrath was as deep when he came here.

“The Hidden Kitchen took a year to construct,” I conclude. “This is where, every other Saturday for the last 9 years, Chef created The Meal for Warden and his 7 guests—always 7 guests—exactly to Warden’s instructions. And bit by bit, Chef taught me—gently, thoroughly, patiently, firmly. Over the years, The Meal evolved, but mostly it got more complicated, laced throughout with symbolism.”

“Symbolism?”

“You’ll see in a second.” Almost everything is ready. I pull a bottle of Montagne-Saint-Émilion from a crate on the floor, uncork it, and sniff the cork. When Chef apprenticed in Paris for a year, this was his favorite table wine.” I place the bottle and two wine glasses on the trolley at the end of the counter.

I’ve laid out each dish on a large silver tray. “Before I cover this, let me give you a tour. Beef Wellington surf and turf, the signature dish of the restaurant and what Chef’s father was about to present to his famous patron. Lobster tail because Chef as a child spent 2 weeks with family every summer along the Maine coast. Asparagus, because Chef, after returning from Paris, convinced his father to switch from green to white. Very French.” I point to the risotto, three mounds shaped to resemble mountains. “Warden’s newest addition—‘Himalayan’ risotto because Chef traveled to Nepal after Paris.”

“Risotto’s Italian, right?”

“Yeah. The left peak is black truffle and lobster risotto, the right a parmesan risotto topped with caviar, and the tallest in the middle is saffron risotto topped with saffron threads and . . .” I pause, “flakes of pink Himalayan salt.”

“And the mashed potatoes?” Newbie asks.

“No idea on that. Chef never explained. They were part of The Meal before the risotto, but never got removed when the risotto was added.”

On a far corner of the tray, I place the fluted glass retrieved from the fridge. “Dessert. Chef’s kiss.” I touch the last plate, though the first to be served. “Warden’s pièce de résistance of The Meal, the amuse bouche on this—” Newbie has that perplexed look again. I have to stop all the hoity-toity French shit Chef taught me. “Warden’s sharpest dig is this appetizer. You see those toothpicks?”

Newbie nods.

“Sterling silver with a semi-precious stone embedded atop each. Warden stole them from the evidence box some time after the trial.”

“And no one noticed?”

“Not until Chef did when he opened a drawer that first day in here. This should be a tiny dish with one piece, but Warden made me prepare 8, as I do for his dinners. Eight cognac-soaked Medjool dates stuffed with goat cheese, each wrapped in smoked bacon, stabbed with a toothpick, and baked. Of course, we leave out the poison in the cognac.”

The guards are getting jumpy. “Let’s get a move on here.”

I place the cloche over The Meal. We load it onto the trolley.

“I forgot. One last thing.” I take a glass teacup, a tea ball filled with hand-picked blossoms, and a thermos of boiling water, and place them in a corner of the trolley.

“Where do I go?” Newbie asks.

“With us,” the guard says. “Take that.” Pointing to the prison meal as we all troop down the corridor toward the visitation room near the death chamber.

I haven’t seen him in weeks, and as we enter I worry I might cry. Not something inmates do.

“Hello, Chef,” I say, moving toward him. I’ve never done it before, but I want to hug him.

“Hello, son.” Chef’s voice is firm as ever, not a quiver.

“You will address him as ‘Prisoner 37927’ or not at all,” Warden snaps. “Stand where you are.”

Warden turns to Chef. “Prisoner 37927, you have been sentenced to death. You have lost all appeals, up to the highest court in this land. What you did—killing your mentor, your own father, out of greed and ambition and whatever your sick mind imagined—was horror enough.…”

I can see the joy of revenge in his stare and tight jaw. I can hear that rancid pleasure in every clipped phrase. I know he’s been imagining this tirade for months, maybe years, and rehearsing, memorizing these exact words for weeks, since the irrevocable execution date was set.

“Horror enough,” Warden repeats. “But you cared so little about humanity that you let 6 diners die…and an innocent waiter…my son.”

I wince. I knew it was coming. Newbie’s mouth is agape, the tray he holds quivering. Chef remains unshaken.

I place my tray before Chef, standing to his right, as he taught me.

For the past 10 years, every 2 weeks, Chef and I placed just such a meal before the Warden and his invited guests. Now, strangely, The Meal is Chef’s. But the game is Warden’s? He sees it as forcing all of this down Chef’s throat, literally. All the metaphor and symbolism that Chef, for a decade, had to meld into every dish, now being forced into Chef’s body. And then he dies.

Before I can remove the massive silver cloche to reveal The Meal, Chef places his hand on it. “First, our guest needs to sit,” gesturing toward Newbie, “and his meal placed and presented.”

“Placed and presented” sounds too dignified to be attached to this pathetic prison meal, now stone cold and even more unappetizing than when first dished out. Newbie sits across the table, and I, standing to his right, lift the plastic cover, then return to Chef to lift his cloche.

“Your Meal, Chef,” I announce.

Warden gasps. He approved Chef’s requested last meal, but seeing it still throws him for a loop. HIS meal, on his fine china, accompanied by his sterling silver cutlery served to the prisoner he most hates. I hope he notices my added flourish, making the caviar not just a pile atop the mountain peak but an artful black glacier on the summit with rivulets of beluga eggs sifting down the slope.

Before Chef can lift a fork, Warden steps over, reaches past Chef’s face, grabs a bacon-wrapped date, slides it off the silver toothpick into his mouth, and declares, “Ah, heaven. I could die for this.” It’s the line he says to start every Meal before passing the plate around.

Newbie cuts a bite of the flat, brown disk covered in a gummy excuse for gravy and puts it in his mouth. He’s expressionless. No pleasure in it, though this is the first food he’s likely had since arriving this morning.

“Do you know how many cows you may have just eaten?” Chef asks.

“Huh?”

“In that bite you took, the flesh of dozens of cows, maybe hundreds. A pound of ground beef has bits from a thousand animals. DNA tests prove it.”

Newbie’s utensils clatter down onto the tray.

Among the countless food anecdotes, facts, and trivia Chef has laid on me over the years, this one’s new.

“I’m not doing this to torment you, son.” He reaches across the table, pulls the metal tray toward him, and pushes his silver tray in front of Newbie. “Bon appétit!”

Newbie doesn’t get it.

“It means ‘Eat this and enjoy,’” I say. Warden scowls at me.

Newbie slices into the beef Wellington. He closes his eyes in wonder as he eats.

“One cow, not a herd forced through a grinder. Cooked to perfection. And you know where it came from.” Chef takes the bottle and pours wine into the glasses.

Newbie lifts his, as does Chef. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” the kid replies. He gets that, takes a swig and digs into The Meal. Chef inhales the wine’s aroma for a long while, but doesn’t drink. I doubt he will.

They talk, softly, as Newbie feasts. Warden festers. I watch. Through the beef, through the lobster tail, through the risotto. Newbie bites at one asparagus spear and leaves it.

“What is it you want right now more than anything?” Chef asks.

“My freedom, Sir.”

Warden is rankled hearing “Sir” spoken with respect.

“You can’t have that, though, can you? At least not for years.”

“No, Sir.”

“You can make it. Choose the right choices, which may be thrown at you daily. You’re in a tunnel, but it ends. Never forget, your tunnel finds daylight. Not like mine, which has met the brick wall.”

Chef waves to me. “Tea.” I place a spoon and tea ball in the teacup, then pour the water in. Gold threads emerge as the chamomile blossoms.

To Newbie, “Enjoy your dessert, son.” He grins at Warden. “It’s death by chocolate.”

As Newbie spoons the chocolate rum mousse dusted with dark cocoa on top, he asks, “What’s it YOU want, Sir, more than anything?…Your freedom?”

“Oh, that isn’t even worth daydreaming.”

“Your life then?”

“No, son, the system has judged me, and judged me fairly. I did such a horrible thing. Too horrid to ever be forgiven, and I must pay. I’ve been allowed life, however harsh, for 23 years. I’ve made good use of that time.” Chef looks at me. “That man was beyond saving when he came here. In for 25 and eligible for parole in...”

“15, Chef,” I say when he pauses. “In 2 years.”

“With no hope of getting it. He was beyond redemption.…And yet, he will walk out of here in 2 years.”

Newbie dredges the devil’s food cake at the bottom.

“What is your name, son?”

“Shaquille, like the basketball player, Sir. But you can call me ‘son.’ My dad left before I even remember.”

Chef’s smile reappears. I know what he’s thinking. About having a father but killing him. About never having a son of his own to pass along the legacy of the family’s restaurant. About me perhaps. But most of all, about Warden seething at all of this—that the torture he thought he was inflicting was, all along, giving Chef meaning and memory.

I glance over at Warden. His normally pasty face is red. His eyes squint. He’s feeling none of the relish he expected at seeing this son killer have to eat this final Meal steeped in vengeance.

Hell, Chef isn’t even eating a bite. Instead, an ignorant kid feasts. Nor did Chef eat a bite from the metal tray.

“What makes a meal, Shaquille?”

“Food.”

“That’s secondary. It’s sitting with other people that’s special, that makes it a meal. I know, most condemned prisoners will wolf down their last dinner.…But that’s not a meal. You, son, the newest of residents in this hellhole, sharing this time with me, a resident about to depart, is what makes it a meal for me to treasure, if only for the last minutes of my life.”

Newbie is close to tears, as am I.

“Let me tell you the recipe for success, or at least survival, in life.”

“In here, or out?”

“In both. Find hope and purpose even where you see none, and grip it tight. Remember this first meal every time you feel you’re slipping. And my last.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: All 15 possible prompts included.