Lisa Grunberger Chef Richard as Jesus A friend sends me news. Someone we both knew has died. An old cranky cook with yellow teeth and shriveled balls he once tried to show me in the walk-in cooler where he aged the meat and kept the lobster tails frozen stiff. He is survived by two daughters and a wife who tried to ex him out but he resisted each time and was proud of that too he told me once on a winter afternoon. I was laying out the silverware and he sitting at an unkempt table seemed to be speaking casually, polishing knives himself but he was hawk-like with huge hands and their proud liver spots, the scent on him of fish, veal stock and blood. He said in a low, almost sexy bedroom voice, the voice of a train about to go off its tracks, he said I was a kid when I got married the first time and she had big tits I loved to rub myself inside them. My daughter from that union is pushing forty now and more like me than her mother, she has the gift to cook and stand for hours and the gift to lead like you. For this I was supposed to swoon in the empty shady room? I was to go and sit down with him, bring him a thick shot of espresso the way he liked it (and he made sure we all knew from Maria the salad lady, a short stout woman who chopped the salads tight and small, to Carlos the broiler man) we all knew Richard liked his coffee short and sweet, three sugars and with a shot of whiskey, but I didn’t bring him coffee or sit with him that day I stood at his feet and we looked at the dining room, the white tablecloths delivered minutes before in plastic bags from the dry cleaners, the shiny silverware, the water goblets, the salt and pepper shakers and the bright sun coming through the curtains white and yellow reflecting the snow that had fallen the day before. We could hear the sound of Jimmy, the owner, shoveling snow. He liked to do things himself, Jimmy, liked to be outdoors taking care of things.
78
u
Crab Orchard Review