High Season (15 page)

‘Vinnie!' the young bookie shouts in desperation.

‘Yeah, that's right,' Vinnie responds. ‘Don't bother booking a table or anything, Tom.' And really, anyone who even remotely knows Vinnie Rae knows that this is a potentially explosive situation.

‘Vinnie, I'm sorry, mate. I couldn't call, the press are all over us and I just couldn't . . .' Tom pleads.

‘Do I look like the fucking paparazzi, mate?'

Then Paris intervenes. ‘Paris Hilton,' she says, holding out her hand.

‘Vinnie Rae,' Vinnie replies, getting up from his chair and shaking her hand. ‘How was lunch?'

‘Great!' says Paris.

‘So nice,' chime in the rest of the girls.

‘It was definitely the best meal we've had in Australia,' Paris adds, as the security guys start moving things along.

‘Glad you enjoyed it,' Vinnie replies, as one of the security guys says, ‘Got to go. Now!' He holds up his phone, as if we're all in a movie.

‘Thanks so much for everything,' Paris calls to Vinnie as she skips down the stairs with Nicky and the girls, the smell of perfume wafting back to hit the kitchen.

Tom wraps his arm around Vinnie and guides him down the stairs as the girls pile into a car that screeches into the drive. Heads are turning everywhere, from punters trying to get a park on Marine Parade, to guests in the hotel, to passersby on their way to the beach. It's like this small moment of chaos has been suppressed up until now, and at the point of departure people are keen to shake it up, say what they always wanted to say, be what they always wanted to be. Famous people are weird like that. We generally have a celebrity of some description at Rae's, either staying in the hotel or dining, but there's no doubt there's been something different about Paris Hilton. It's like she really is the centre of something in this particular cultural moment, and when she leaves the people she waves back to lack direction for a beat as if, now she's gone, everyone's lives are somehow a little less meaningful.

The car with the girls inside screeches back out of the driveway and roars down Marine Parade. Another car pulls into the driveway. The security guys pile into that car, then wait while Tom tries to smooth things over with Vinnie. But Vinnie is not easy to win over. He doesn't give a fuck what the other punters in the restaurant think of him or the staff or anyone else; he's the host and owner of Rae's of Watego's and Tom got it wrong when he thought it would be a good idea to dine at Rae's and not tell Vinnie they were coming.

Despite not being able to hear what Vinnie is telling him, it's obvious the guy is getting a dressing-down. Eventually Tom hangs his head, nods in agreement with everything Vinnie is saying, then slinks off into the waiting car.

Vinnie bounds back up the stairs at Rae's and takes his place again at the table with Jackie. Order is restored. Vinnie's presence fills the celebrity vacuum that Paris Hilton has left. And as Vinnie might say, ‘Who the fuck is Paris Hilton anyway?'

‘You ready for the fries, Chef?' Choc asks.

‘Fuck yeah,' I reply, and clap twice for service. ‘Let's get Vinnie's food out, ladies.'

‘Salad's up, Chef,' Jesse says.

‘Fries in one minute, Chef,' Choc tells me.

‘Sodapop, you lazy dishwashing shit-for-brains, give me a hand to plate up these dishes,' I call down to Soda, who desperately needs a break from the galley. ‘Choc, take over on the dishes for ten minutes.'

‘Yes, Chef.'

‘What do you want me to do, Chef?' Soda asks.

‘Wok me up a fish of the day pot and shine up two plates,' I instruct.

Soda fires the wok up straight away, turns on the water that keeps the surface of the wok station cool, lightly oils the top of the wok and then dumps the vegetable pot into the instantly hot copper bowl.

I admire the way that all the boys in my kitchen have a certain confidence at the wok. I've worked hard to ensure they're all comfortable with its peculiar ways. To see Soda now, having not been anywhere near the wok for a week, rip into it like he owns a street stall in Thailand is satisfying.

‘Vinnie's lunch ready, Chef?' Scotty asks.

‘Hang about, mate,' I tell him. ‘C'mon, Soda, get those plates down and shine the fuckers. I'm ready on the protein.'

My portion of beef and extra-small portion of fish are resting on the protein tray. I could have done the plates and sides myself but Soda was fading down in the galley and I wanted to snap him out of dishwasher land and into service.

‘Yes, Chef,' responds Soda, who is moving like a professional chef ought to move. In the next half a minute he has the plates polished, the vegetables for the fish cooked to perfection and spooned neatly onto one of the plates with just the right amount of wok sauce oozing out from under them. Then he salts the fries and pours them into a sparkling white bowl set with creased white paper.

‘I think we might let Soda spend some time down here on woks tonight,' I tell Jesse and Choc.

‘Yes, Chef,' they respond, familiar with the routine of mixing up positions in order to share around time spent at the dishwasher.

‘You reckon we can afford a dishie tonight, Chef?' Jesse asks facetiously.

‘Only if you're paying for it, Jesse,' I inform him.

‘Yeah, I'll pay if I don't have to do any dishes,' Jesse says.

‘We're obviously paying Jesse far too much money, Chef,' Scotty puts in.

‘I think he was going to pay with sexual favours, Scotty,' I say.

‘Where's my fucking lunch, you clowns?' Vinnie leans into the kitchen.

‘Coming up now, Chef,' I tell him.

‘You fucking morons can't cook steak anyway. Mr Fucking Carpetbag Steak here . . .' Vinnie goes on with it, taking the piss out of me in front of the boys, something he is fond of doing when things go well: pull the glory out from under head chef in order that the rest of the crew get to feel a little less like the kitchen scum they really are.

‘You want me to tuck a few oysters into your steak, Vinnie?' I ask, giving it back to him as much as I am able to without ending up on my knees.

‘Fucking oysters . . . you would too. That's what they did in the seventies, wasn't it? What are you doing, Scotty? Mr Fucking Technology! Can't use a phone, can't phone a friend. You're fucking hopeless, mate,' Vinnie says, warming to the task of taking Scotty apart, limb by limb. He has obviously swallowed a quick half-bottle of wine and is starting to get a shine on. His mojo would appear to be flooding back through his system, his confidence returned, after being temporarily thrown off-balance by the whole Paris Hilton thing. Now it's time to pull everyone down a few pegs, get their minds back on the job.

Scotty grabs the plates off the pass and nods at Vinnie, all business. ‘You ready for this?' Scotty asks.

‘Of course I'm fucking ready. I've been ready for half an hour, you clown. Fucking Jackie's lost two pounds just waiting for her . . . oh, that's very nice, Chef.' Vinnie laughs when he sees the size of Jackie's piece of fish. ‘Now I've got to listen to her for the next hour while she whines on about how small the portions are at Rae's.'

‘Food costs are killing us, Vinnie,' I suggest as a possible argument.

‘Mate, she saw all the figures the other night,' Vinnie sighs. ‘I got too pissed to put the paperwork away and she went through everything.' He laughs again. ‘She knows it's you clowns that are costing me all the fucking money.'

‘Jesse wants to know if we can have a kitchen hand tonight, Vinnie,' I call after him as he walks back out to the restaurant.

‘You're on dishes tonight, Jesse. Fucking dishwasher . . .' Vinnie shakes his head, like he can't believe what he just heard. ‘There's four of you idiots in the kitchen and you want a kitchen porter as well.'

‘Thanks, Chef.' Jesse nods to me from over in larder as Vinnie disappears from view.

‘I'm here for you, Jesse,' I tell him.

‘Where's Vinnie's fucking mustard?' Scotty is back, and he sounds pissed off.

‘Settle down, mate. C'mon, Choc, just because you're on dishes doesn't mean you can drop the ball over here, mate.'

‘Sorry, Chef,' says Choc, and he grabs the hot English mustard from the stand-up fridge.

‘Jackie's whingeing about her fish,' Scotty adds.

‘Did you tell her the food costs are killing us?' I ask.

‘Vinnie did,' Scotty says, and all the chefs laugh.

Scotty grabs the mustard and runs back to the restaurant.

‘He's stressed,' I observe.

‘He knows what's coming,' Jesse says.

‘Yes, he does,' I acknowledge. ‘And I don't want to miss it.'

21

I was working at a cafe in Coogee when Alice and I started going out. It was a time of new beginnings for us, and endings for a number of people we knew. In many ways, things got off to an overly serious start; like, I don't actually know you that well but here we are at another funeral. In fact, we weren't sufficiently close to go to all the different funerals together—it would have been disrespectful to our families—but we lived through the various grieving processes and got to see how each other ticked.

A couple of junkie mates and my little brother died, as did assorted grandparents and Alice's previous boyfriend, all in the first six months of going out. It was an emotionally complex time where we kept getting tossed between the highs of falling in love and the lows of dealing with an impossibly long procession of deaths.

During that time, I'd start work at six each morning in the cafe and begin the day by baking off breads, cakes and whatever specials needed to get done for lunch. At about seven Alice would come in to see me and grab a pastry and a coffee before going off to uni. Each day I would forage and search for some new ingredient to use in the baking to impress her. And our nights together merged into one long dream where my mission was always the same: to create some magic flavour that would somehow elevate Alice out of the sadness which was everywhere around us at that time and seemed impossible to escape.

What I realise now and didn't then is that it's unusual for two people to have quite such complicated histories, quite so young. Most evenings we'd spend our time going over old ground; me compelled to tell her my ridiculous secrets before she somehow discovered them for herself, and Alice eventually letting me into her secret world and hidden stories, which in their telling seemed to clutch and claw and catch and slowly pull her down.

In order to lure her back to the surface I cooked. My recipes were all the same, involving gas fires and heated pots, oils and spices and garlic and time. While potions boiled and bubbled, I would set the table with plates and bowls and knives and forks and candles and spoons and cups and wait. Slowly I would bring my sweet love home, up from the icy depths, and we'd eat.

I worked in a lot of average kitchens in the early days of our relationship. My ambition at the time had nothing to do with a career in fine dining or write-ups in the newspaper or pats on the back from chefs much better than me. And Alice wasn't interested in marrying a workaholic cook or famous chef. She wanted to spend her life with a human being: someone she could talk to and share things with; someone who would look after the kids and feed the pets and take out the rubbish and listen.

As the years rolled away and the kids came, we were forced to make do with fate's hand. And as my energies became once more focused on larger kitchens with brigades of chefs and job descriptions that required obsessive attention to every little detail, it was her turn to listen to my stories. How from nine till noon I would be checking off deliveries and prepping my section; how I'd rotate everything in the coolroom to keep a handle on what supplies were needed. How each chef had to have their section ready for service: fresh sauce, protein, herbs, garnishes, oils, seasoning. And how each chef had to know how many serves they had of everything they were responsible for cooking. How when the lunch bell rang at midday, it was all hands on deck.

At three pm lunch service would end and each chef would break down their section and clean it up and start a prep list for service that night, the maître d' yelling booking updates into the kitchen every time the phone rang. I told Alice about how I determined which chef would cook a staff meal on any given night; how if there was a section that wasn't ready for service they would be left alone to get it boxed. How after a quick dinner and the six o'clock call and last-minute preparations and adjustments the adrenaline would surge at the sound of the first order clicking through the docket machine. And I'd tell her how, when I called my first check down the line, my voice would always be a little tight, like until I'd heard the three or four or five chefs on the line all call back, ‘Yes, Chef' or, ‘Oui, Chef', I was never sure I wasn't alone.

It takes a team effort to fend off the chaos of a busy lunch or dinner service in a half-decent restaurant. Kitchen life is a social event in restaurants that require a brigade of chefs to function. It becomes normal to end up spending more time with grungy, blood-splattered chefs and kitchen porters than at home with loved ones. Marriages and partnerships bend and twist from the endless heat and pressure. Some find ways to adapt and mould or cope. Some buckle beyond repair.

I have been fortunate over the last fifteen years in that one look from Alice can always bring me undone. A particular mood or cool stare will break the spell of the most manic situation. Not that she does it often. Like most people we negotiate the complexities of life, but if I lose focus for too long and forget what really matters, she'll say the word and I'll collect my knives and walk away.

The photos she's been sending me lately are a warning bell. There's still a playfulness about them; it might amount to nothing. But along with her efforts in the garden and the heatwave that hangs over everything, things might also erupt in any number of ways. All of which will bring about the end of things for me at Rae's and a return to her, and us, and our most treasured recipes.