Kitchen Boy Losange Volume 1

The first two pages of Kitchen Boy Losange Volume 1 were taken up by a single illustration.

The beautiful Losange is suspended in mid-air. He is looking into the distance, shoulders back, hair ruffled by a gentle breeze, his feet hanging loose, toes pointing down. Stars wheel in the background, overlaid by cirrus clouds spun high in the sky, curtains that sparkle with the light of the moon. Blooming flowers burst like supernovas in the middle ground, sprouting from the pages of loose-leaf notebooks that scatter in the foreground around Losange’s feet.

Lalo felt a strange sensation pulling on his shoulders as he took in this first illustration. He felt as if he might rise up, too, and float away into a space of infinite possibilities. He turned the page.

Losange sits scribbling in a notebook on the floor in front of a couch, an empty plate full of crumbs by his side. He picks up the empty water glass by his side and takes an absent-minded drink from it. He pauses to look at the emptiness of it, his face not seeming to register it, then puts it back on the floor.

“Losange.”

A tired-looking beauty stands looking down at him, hair falling in loose waves past her shoulders, her eyes full of sadness.

Losange rolls his eyes. “Please, auntie. You know drudgery is the death of creativity…”

The next few pages detail the many times Losange has gotten a job and been fired. Flowers and starlight bloom around him in great clouds that obscure almost everything but him. He’s always got a serene, almost taunting smile on his face. His bosses always scowl and scream at him.

His auntie crashes through these recollections of jobs long past, gentle eyes full of tears.

“Losange, your mother’s money has run out…” reads the top right corner of the page.

And at the bottom left: “...so this time, you cannot mess it up!”

Losange is drawn into a whirling vortex of light filled with dollar signs and chef’s hats. Kitchen knives spin around him, points turned inward, as if at any moment they will close in and cut him all to pieces.

“If you read it, you buy it.”

Lalo nearly dropped the book. He blinked himself back to the reality of Geraldine’s Books. Hank was rubbing up against his ankle. Miss Geraldine was squinting at him over what must be her reading glasses, chain glinting in the light. Her aviators were propped up on her head.

“Sure, sorry,” Lalo said, rummaging in his jeans pocket for his wallet. “Do you have any more volumes of this?”

Miss Geraldine motioned with her hand until Lalo reluctantly closed the book and gave it to her to inspect.

“What is this?”

“It’s a manga. I found it on the floor. It must have gotten knocked down from the shelf?”

“I don’t sell manga. This must be one of Valley’s. My nephew.”

“Oh, duh. Of course.”

“He works at that new-fangled shop in Commerce City. They have all the comics you could hope to find there.”

“Comics?” Lalo asked. “As in superheros like Insect-Man and The Bulk? Or manga like this one?”

Miss Geraldine waved an impatient hand. “What’s the difference? All I know is they have an edge, because that’s all you kids want to read these days! Picture books!”

Lalo could see the beginning of a rant coming down the pipeline. He tried for a course correction.

“What sort of books do you like to read?” he asked.

“Why science fiction, of course. I’ve thought about specializing in it, but my current inventory is quite vast, as you can see, and full of books nobody wants to buy. It would take a considerable investment to make the transition.”

“You could do a crowd-funding thing.”

Miss Geraldine snorted. “That’s a young person’s game. That’s why I need Valley here full time, but he insists on working for the enemy. He’d rather waste his time reading comics than literature.”

Lalo, despite not having a very favorable impression of this Valley guy, was starting to feel indignant on his behalf. Don’t argue with her. Don’t argue with her. Just disengage. Disengage, Lalo.

“Isn’t it all literature, technically? Isn’t it just about telling stories? How can you say one story is better than another?”

There was a loaded pause, but to Lalo’s surprise, Miss Geraldine just laughed.

“Son, I think you’re in the wrong shop.”

Lalo thought about buying a book full of big words just to contradict what she’d said about “kids these days,” but that was what old Lalo would have done. New Lalo didn’t give in to pressure like that. So what if the old lady thought he was an idiot based on his reading choice of the moment? That was her problem, not his.

He hesitated, trying to decide if it would be rude to keep reading a book that he knew belonged to someone else. He remembered the stacks and stacks of manga that his cousin had kept in their room when they were growing up, despite his mother constantly harassing him about it. Miss Geraldine had no respect for this story. Just like his aunt had no respect for his cousin. Everything in his body was screaming at him to rescue this poor book from the clutches of such a person.

“Commerce City, you say?”

“Yes. The Animation Store or something like that. But don’t tell Valley I sent you. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“I...uh...he’s there now?”

“Yes. For the rest of the afternoon. I think they close at 8 o’clock.”

“So, if I went now, I could drop his book off for him?”

Miss Geraldine was eyeing him with a glint in her eye.

“Yes. You could. That would be very kind of you, considering how rudely he treated you.”

Lalo felt a little guilty, but not enough to abandon the plan. He should have plenty of time to read on the bus on the way over, and he wouldn’t need to feel bad about it because the book would be actively in transit back to its rightful owner.

“All right. That’s what I’ll do.”

Miss Geraldine pressed a hand over her eyes. “I can’t believe this. I am a traitor to my own cause.”

“I disagree,” Lalo said, with a little bow. “You’re obviously a very honorable person. I promise I’ll come back. I’ll buy so many books from you that you’ll have no choice but to replace them with science fiction books. And I’ll tell all my friends to come here, too.”

The old woman guffawed in delight. “You really are such a sweetheart. What’s your name?”

“Eduardo. But most everyone calls me Lalo.” Lalo held out his hand to shake, but instead, Miss Geraldine pressed Kitchen Boy Losange into his palm. He felt a tingle in his fingertips when he touched the cover again.

“Go on, Lalo, my boy. And don’t let Valley run you over again. He can be a little harsh at first, but he isn’t that bad once you get to know him.”

Lalo decided it would be best not to overthink it. It’s not that he expected everyone to like him, but he made it a point to try and meet people in the middle, and when that didn’t work out, it left him feeling at a loss. His hip was still sore from hitting the floor. Hopefully this Valley guy would be in a better mood when they encountered each other again.

Hank head-butted his leg and he bent to pet him one last time. The door chimed cheerily when he left, book clutched in hand and his duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

On the way to Commerce City, Lalo learned that Losange got a job working as a kitchen boy for a chef. This must be the man who towers behind him on the front cover.

The kitchen at the restaurant where Losange works is pristine. Everything has its place. All of the stainless steel winks at him, polished until it shines with the glow of a thousand fluorescent bulbs. Heloise, the patissier, assigns Losange to wash the dishes. She’s friendly, her eyes scrunching closed when she smiles. She’s pretty, too, but Losange doesn’t notice. He’s too busy watching as soap suds bloom like flowers in the sink. It’s a small restaurant, and they don’t have a machine to do the washing, so he must fill two out of the three giant industrial sinks with water to do the washing by hand.

Heloise shows him how it works. The middle sink is where he must rinse the dishes. He sees the steel emptiness of it as a barren canyon where once a mighty river flowed through. Now it’s dry as a bone, leaving only a detritus of food scraps. The third sink is for sanitizing the dishes. Heloise shows him how to check the levels on the containers of soap and sanitizer concentrate that live below the sinks. Losange sees them as humble stewards, looking back at him with serene confidence. Everything in the kitchen has come to life for him.

The chef, however, has yet to make an appearance.

The bus slammed on its brakes, horns blaring in stereo as the driver yelled at someone through the windshield. Lalo glanced out the window, imagining a flock of metallic falcons screeching while robotic blue jays jeered, beaks emitting loud honking sounds. Of course, there was nothing to see out there, just the usual mundane chaos, so he turned back to the manga. It was hard to resist the urge to page forward, to see when this chef guy was going to show up, but he was determined not to let his impatience get the best of him.