Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Yookyung!”
Louie lost the ingredient challenge to Vegas when his Jerusalem artichoke dish had too gluey a texture. Then Madame Queen threatened Vegas with strike three because she said his dish, though tasty, had given her a digestive complaint.
When the women had all retired to the dormitory room, Maryann took the first shower, and Alia sat on her bed and looked frankly at Kacie. “I haven’t been thinking about what might happen if Louie gets eliminated before I do,” she said. “But I guess I need to.” She leaned forward, elbows on her thighs.
“That doesn’t stop you guys from being a couple,” Kacie said.
“Yeah, I know, but it doesn’t help, either.”
“Well, it’s not as if you guys have a strategy that requires either of you to win,” Eloise offered. “So he gets eliminated, then you do, so what?”
“I’m not planning to get eliminated,” Alia snapped.
“Well, you know I’m not,” said Eloise. “Look, I don’t want to be insensitive. You guys can be fine as a couple. The only thing is to have a plan about what you’ll do when it’s over. Have a council of war or something.”
“Did you talk about it?” Kacie asked. “About when it’s over?”
“He has to go back to Cleveland pretty quickly,” Alia said. “His dad is running the restaurant while he’s gone, but his dad isn’t in the best health. Louie said he’ll look for work in Manhattan, but the competition is pretty fierce here. I don’t want Louie to take a step down in job quality, or walk away from his family, just because he’s interested in me.”
“Of course not,” Kacie said. “I wouldn’t want Toby to do that either, but he’s just planning to grow slowly with his food truck, not look for a job.”
“That’s your plan?” asked Eloise. “A food truck? Did you guys actually talk about that?”
“We want to see who wins first,” Kacie bluffed. They hadn’t talked about it. Damn Eloise and her big mouth.
“I think I should break up with him,” Alia said. “Maryann is right. Men in love do crazy things. I need to protect him from ruining his career for me.”
“But you’re in love with him too, right?” Kacie asked.
Alia shook her head. “I just… He’s a nice guy. He’s good company. But there’s just no spark for me.”
Eloise had changed into her robe and put a towel over her shoulder. Evidently she was going to stand by the bathroom door to be sure of the next shower. “I think it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you break it off with him, that may upset him so much he loses anyway. Better to let the thing run its course.”
Later, in the shower, Kacie thought about the commitment she had made to Toby, to be his girlfriend and call him her man. They had decided to be together regardless of the outcome of the show. Soon they would make love. Alia had a good man available to her and was deciding she didn’t want him — or was that just fear of change? Kacie didn’t want her love affair to turn out like that.
She toweled off, put on the sweat pants and t-shirt she slept in, went out to the hall to dump her soiled uniform for the cleaners to pick up. Back in the room, only her bedside light was on. Maryann was sacked out; Eloise was lying awake, eyes open, staring at the wall. No sign of Alia. Kacie went out to the common-room, heard the sound of voices there, stopped out of sight inside the doorway.
“Why not?” Louie asked.
“Because I can’t give you what you deserve,” Alia answered.
“But if you think I deserve it, why can’t you?”
“Because there’s something wrong with me.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that shit before. What is it, that I’m fat? Or that I’m white?”
Kacie leaned against the wall. It was a bad idea to keep listening, but she did anyway.
“It just doesn’t feel right to me.”
“It’s right. Give me more time to win you over. I know it’s right. After the show, let me fly you out to Cleveland, and we’ll hang out with my folks and my sister. You’ll see how my family welcomes you. It won’t feel so strange.”
“I have to get back to my restaurant,” Alia said.
“One weekend. One three-day weekend.”
Kacie whispered, say yes. Say yes.
She only heard some noise of the cushions shifting on the sofa, and then a soft kiss.
“I’ll think about it.”
Kacie coughed and then headed out into the common room. Alia and Louie were not touching, had space between them. “Hey, you guys going to bed?”
Both looked at her strangely.
“I meant — it’s late. I just want some water and then, you know.”
She went to the kitchen and got a chilled bottle from the fridge. Louie got up and went inside, leaving Alia on the sofa.
“Just go,” Kacie told her. “Just give him a chance.”
“Yeah,” Alia said. “Yeah, I guess I should.”
∞∞∞
Toby was in the hallway in the morning, apparently waiting for her.
“How was dinner?” Kacie asked.
“We had a good talk,” he said. “I’ll tell you all of it when we have some more time. Boris wants me to work for him again. I mean, it’s pretty complicated.”
“Did you say yes or no?”
“Not yet.”
∞∞∞
The dish challenge that day was ice cream. Madame Queen was adamant that anyone who made a standard flavor would not survive the round. “Be dynamic. Be exciting.”
Buster raised his hands in triumph at the announcement of the dish. “Mine!” he shouted. “Mine!”
Kacie had watched on YouTube the old episode of Iron Chef America in which the Japanese master Sakai Hiroyuki had made a nasty trout-flavored ice cream. She knew from that blunder that it was a bad idea to get so creative that the quality of the flavor profile would be at risk. In the end she decided to reproduce patbingsoo, a red bean shaved-ice treat well-known all over South Korea, with bits of melon, a coating of honey, and some lightly sweetened rice cakes on the side.
Madame went from dish to dish with a small spoon and a bottle of carbonated water as a palate cleanser.
“Chef Camacho — the heat of chilies in an ice cream is intriguing. You are the runner-up. Chef Chen — mint chocolate chip is dull, but the plating is intriguing. Ice cream eggs inside a bird’s nest of pastry? It’s a wonder you had the time. You survive till tomorrow. Chef Lee — what is this?”
Kacie explained.
“It’s absurdly sweet. No cook-off for you, however. Strike two.”
Kacie blinked, but said nothing. She was tired of drama. Toby, on her right, snorted, but she kicked his ankle, and he didn’t say anything.
“Your queen is in a difficult situation,” Madame said. “I must begin to eliminate competitors, but you are all so good, and so fierce, that I must seem cruel when I do so. The bad news begins today. Be warned. Someone is about to be eliminated. Chef Brutus.”
Toby was being eliminated? Kacie’s heart rose into her throat.
“Yes, Madame?” he said.
“I dislike the blackberry-apple compote. You will be in the cook-off tonight. Your opponent will be Chef Hamilton.”
“Why?” Eloise asked. Her burrata ice cream with chopped Brazil nuts, garnished with basil, a’ la Dominique Ansel, looked exceptional. “My dish is great.”
“Indeed it is. But I want to see how you will fare against Chef Brutus.”
“Okay,” Eloise said. “Cool.”
That only left Alia, Buster and Louie.
“I am sorry,” said Madame Queen. She paced and looked each in the eye in turn. “Chef Kamara, a very inventive plating. I half feared the dish would taste like macaroni and cheese just as it appeared; butterscotch was a delectable surprise. You have no strikes, and you are not at risk of elimination today either. Chef Alpharetto, come and stand beside me.”
Louie lowered his chin, stepped off his mark. The camera followed him. He reached for Alia’s hand. “I’ll see you in Cleveland, won’t I?” he asked her.
Alia swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll come to Cleveland.”
“That’s all I need,” he said. “Now I can face this.” He stood next to Madame Queen.
“You are a fine Italian chef,” said Madame. “You are a fine individual. I am truly sorry, but your gelato did not set properly. It is inferior, and so I must eliminate you. Strike three.”
Louie sniffed. Kacie felt tears welling up. What would happen when she and Toby found themselves in the same situation?
Buster did a happy dance and crowed about his win on-camera, but when the cameras were off, he gave Louie a goodbye hug and they promised to get in touch quickly after the show was over. “You’re all right, man,” he said. “Honor to share a kitchen with you.”
Buster’s prize was a $2000 on-camera shopping spree at JB Prince, the elite restaurant supply company on East 31st Street.
A break for interviews followed. Kacie said she liked Louie a lot and that having him eliminated was a surprise, but she would redouble her efforts to be the best. She said her second strike didn’t bother her. She realized that actually it didn’t. By the end of the show, everyone was sure to have two strikes, right? That was part of the drama needed for the TV series. It was the prospect of Toby getting eliminated in his match against Eloise that bothered her most. If Toby was sent home while she remained, would his feelings for her cool?
∞∞∞
Something that happened in the kitchen after the ice cream challenge forced Kacie to retreat and take a shower. When she came out after drying her hair, Eloise was waiting with her robe and towel to clean up before her own cook-off, Maryann was asleep in her bed, and Alia was somewhere having, as she announced, a little private time with Louie before his Uber showed up to take him to the hotel the network had arranged for him in New Jersey. Kacie had just lain down when a rap came on the outside door.
”Chef Lee,” Ozzy called. “Someone to see you.”
Kacie moved to the entrance. She had hoped to see Toby; it was important for them to talk about the elimination. But Toby would have knocked on his own, not needing help from Ozzy. Therefore, it had to be some network executive, or one of the kids from the pantry, asking for something to be cooked for them.
“I think it’ll be a great surprise,” Ozzy said. “Dude looks pretty serious, though.”
Kacie stepped into the hallway and saw there her father, Steve Lee, in his rumpled suit with his faded leather briefcase.
“Yookyung,” he said.
“Dad! How did you get them to let you in? I’m supposed to be locked down.”
“Your mother cried on the phone so much – she is very persuasive, your mother. They put her through in time to someone called Kerr, who is that?”
“He’s the showrunner, Dad.” Her father stared blankly. “The producer.”
“Your mother convinced him that she was a frightened foreigner, an ignorant woman. I was listening. It was well done. She is a good actress. I was impressed.”
“Dad, oh my God. It’s good to see you. You want to come out to the common room, sit down, meet some people?”
“No, no. Let me just…” He leaned his briefcase against the wall. “I have worked all my life, and never come this close to something important. I thought God was testing me. Now I think … Something else, anyway. Wait.” He reached into his inside coat pocket for a folded post-it with writing on it. “Your mother wants answers to these questions. Let me ask them.”
“Okay, sure, Dad. Go ahead.”
“Do you still have your virginity?”
“Dad, I’m twenty-four. Isn’t that my business?”
He looked pained. “Yes, it is. But your mother wanted me to ask you. Please tell me what to say to her.”
“You could tell her it’s none of her business.”
“I can’t say that to your mother.”
Kacie had never seen her father so nervous. “Okay. Tell her yes, I still have my virginity. Tell her I said she should trust me. You guys raised me, okay? I don’t have bad judgment, because you guys raised me. Okay?”
Steve Lee nodded.
“It’s not like I was rebellious.”
“You were,” he said plaintively. “You went to culinary school instead of becoming an engineer the way I told you.”
“But Dad, I was right about that. Come on, I know I didn’t do what you wanted, but now I have my own restaurant and I’m on TV. I was right.” She looked into his downcast eyes. They hadn’t spoken to each other so directly since her childhood.
He thought a moment, then raised his head and met her eyes and nodded. “Yes, you were right.”
The blood rushed to Kacie’s head so fast she became dizzy. “Did you really just say that?”
Steve Lee nodded again. “I said it. I came to understand after a time that I would have to respect your choice. That is why I gave twenty thousand dollars to Jinwoo to go with the ten thousand from his mother.”
Now she did fall down – rather, she fell backward against the wall. “You what? You…”
“I financed your restaurant. It is time now for me to tell you. I have…” He took out a pocket handkerchief and dabbed his eyes. “I had a smart, beautiful daughter who was doing nothing in life because I did not trust her. It is not so important for me to have money in the bank; it is more important that my daughter become something worthwhile. And so I made the decision. A smart, beautiful, and brave daughter.”
Kacie felt that she was about to cry, too. Her knees trembled. Her father had never said anything like that to her before – and he had given, twenty, twenty thousand…? Steve Lee had…
Her father coughed. “Let me go to the next question on your mother’s list.”
Kacie wrapped her arms around the shoulders of her shorter father. He responded with a nervous pat on the shoulder blades. She said, voice trembling, “Dad. Thank you. Oh my God. Thank you. I’ll pay you back the twenty thousand you invested.”
Kacie let go, looked at her father. He shook his head. “Pay me back only with good news and with smiles. I am not too old yet to make more money. And please, don’t hate me anymore.” He lifted the paper. “I will go back to the list. Do you still have your virginity? You said yes to the first question. Here is the next question.” He looked at the paper again. “Oh, I see. There is no other question.”
Kacie threw herself at her father, hugged him again. “I thought you were ashamed of me.” The tears came finally; she cried into his suit.
“I am not ashamed,” he said. “I came to America to make a good life. You are part of the life I made. You will be richer and happier than I am. There is no reason to be ashamed.”
Kacie gripped her father desperately. “I just thought you were ashamed. I’m sorry I disrespected you. I’m so sorry.”
“Another thing,” he said. “Late at night, when you were asleep, I always went to the refrigerator and ate your leftover food. Don’t tell your mother. She thinks I threw it out.”
“I won’t, I won’t. Dad, when this is over, when I come home… We’ll have a long talk, okay? But I have to get cleaned up and head back to the studio. Madame Queen is pretty tough about that stuff.”
“Yes. I must meet her also, I suppose. When this is over. To thank her for including you.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Dad, thank you. Thank you.”
Kacie almost staggered as she retreated to the women’s dorm. Such a complete transformation of her relationship with her father! It had been unimaginable.
Then she heard her father’s voice roaring her name in the hallway, with the vigor and tone he had used in her childhood.
“Yookyung!”
She rushed out to the hallway in a panic. “Dad, I thought you left, I…”
Toby was standing there with her father.
“Toby, what the fuck?”
“Yookyung. Do you like this man?”
What had Toby been up to?
“Yeah, Dad. I like him a lot. We’re pretty good friends.”
“Is that all?”
“Dad, if you tell Mom about this stuff she’ll get crazy.”
He nodded. “We will have to break it to her carefully. But tell me right now.”
“Dad, it’s really awkward.”
“Are you more than just friends?”
“Yeah, Dad. He’s my boyfriend.”
Kacie looked at Toby. He gave her a gentle smile. She gave him the finger.
Toby shrugged and walked down the hallway and out to the common room.
“I will tell you a story about your mother,” Steve Lee said. “When I went to her parents, she and I were your age. I said that I intended to marry Mingyung and that I believed she would accept my offer. And her mother said to her, ‘Are you serious about this boy?’ Then she said, ‘Oh, he is a salesman who came into the office. I like him a little, but I’m not sure.’”
“She wasn’t sure about you?” Kacie asked. It was different from the story her mother had told her.
“Oh, part of her was sure,” her father said. “You want to know what part of her was sure? The part of her that was already pregnant with you. Maybe she had some doubts in her mind, but they were just part of being afraid. So if you have real doubts, that’s all right, but if it is only fear, like with your mother and me, then, what are those doubts doing really to help you?”
Kacie nodded. “Not much.”
Her father touched her gently. “You are still a virgin. Right?”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m still a virgin.”
“For how much longer, do you think? Your mother will ask.”
“Probably not much longer.”
“Well,” said Steve Lee. “When this show is over, bring the Crawdad King home to meet the whole family, all right?”
“All right,” Kacie said.