Kitchen Boy Losange Volume 2

Lalo woke up at 3:32 am with a crick in his neck, a book on his face, and a foul taste in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut, groaning in misery, and then forced himself to go brush his teeth and wash his face. When he returned to his room, he felt a little more awake, so he picked up Kitchen Boy Losange Volume 2, settling back down on the bed to finish it. Losange still gave him mixed feelings. He liked his idealism. He hated his naivete and self-righteousness. Surely, he had judged the chef too harshly. The man had a kitchen to run...

Losange comes home and his aunt bursts into tears.

“My dear Aunt. You cannot expect me to work with a man such as the chef. He is a brute, poisoned by the siren call of wealth. He cannot be trusted.”

“Losange! I am tired of this. Do you not see what I do when you spend half the night awake, mooning away in that dream world of yours?

“I am not mooning away. My dreams serve a purpose.”

“Losange, I work as a cocktail waitress serving drinks to men who would have once evaluated me as a marriage prospect and now consider me nothing but a slab of meat to admire, free to make comments on my body, and I endure it, because I must. Do you think this is my purpose? To be on display for these men?”

“Of course not! We were made to commune with the world, not to be subjugated by it.”

“Beautiful words from a man who never had to cook for himself, to clean for himself. Did you not wonder about the people who served in your mother’s household?”

Losange is troubled. “Of course I did. Why do you think I am like this?”

“What is the use of ideals if they do nothing to change the world?”

“My beloved Aunt—” Losange stops talking. Around him, the world is starting to pixelate, pieces fluttering away. Darkness overtakes him, and then a sprawling landscape unfurls behind him. Gentle, rolling hills fill the background, meticulously detailed to show the evergreens that blanket the slopes, but there are machines in the fields, their bodies lean and mean in comparison to the softness of the land. Smoke fills the clear sky, obscuring the scudding clouds. Flower petals gather at the bottom of the page, wilting.

When Losange comes to, he is standing in a city park. Gravel walkways wind through the trees. There is a person sitting on a bench, surrounded by pigeons. It is the chef, Maximilian, scattering grain like a farm maid feeding the chickens.

Losange laughs, and Maximilian notices he is there.

“Ah, the nuisance returns. Do you know how much of my time you wasted playing dishwasher today? It’s a good thing we didn’t pay you.”

“Do you know how much time you are wasting by feeding the pigeons right now?”

Maximilian crunches the bag of grain in one huge fist. “You dare insult me?”

“No, I am congratulating you. I didn’t know you knew how to waste time. Come, let us waste time together.” Losange wades carefully through the pigeons, whose beady eyes fix on him hopefully. “Will you share your grain with me, Maximilian?”

“You dare address me by my name?”

“I am a very daring person, so yes.”

“You are obviously a foolish person, that much I can tell.”

Losange is unbothered by this assertion. He watches as Maximilian continues scattering bits of cracked corn. The pigeons crowd around both of their legs. Sparrows perch in the trees nearby, waiting to snatch any errant pieces. Couples stroll by, arm-in-arm. A tiny spider crawls across Losange’s trousers, just above his right knee. He places a finger beside it and watches as it runs in the other direction.

“What do you want, Losange of the Unknown?”

Losange turns his full attention on Maximilian for the first time since he sat down next to him.

“I want nothing. I accept everything.”

“That makes no sense. You sound as empty as a prayer.”

Losange cocks his head to the side. “You believe prayers are empty? Do they not contain words? Are words empty?”

“They are until you fill them with action.”

Losange imagines words gathering around them, big soap bubbles that leave nothing behind when they pop. Work. Youth. Money. Love.

“You don’t pray.”

“I don’t,” Maximilian agrees.

“And what do you believe in, then? Your work?”

Maximilian pauses in feeding the pigeons. “My work exists whether or not I believe in it.”

“It only exists if you do it. And you have to believe in it to do it, don’t you?”

Maxmilian dumps the last of the grain on the ground and shifts toward him. Their thighs brush together with the movement. He lets his arm drape across the back of the bench, nearly touching Losange’s shoulders.

“There is only one thing I believe in, Losange.” Maximilian looks down at his mouth, then back up. “Come to my kitchen. Let me teach it to you.”

For the first time in a long time, Losange has nothing to say.

“Think about it,” Maximilian says. “Then come find me at the restaurant.”

His fingers brush the back of Losange’s neck as he stands. Losange shivers. Maximilian smiles knowingly and walks away down the path.

“Damn,” Lalo said, lowering the book. His alarm clock was ticking away in the silence. Outside, the sky was starting to lighten. His eyes were burning, but he didn’t care. There were barely any pages left. He could do this. He yawned so wide that his jaw cracked, then got back to reading.

The next morning, Losange struggles to wake at 10 o’clock, assuming this is early enough to have a leisurely morning and then head to his first day of work. He stares into his closet, its walls lined with elegant clothing. All of it has fallen out of fashion by this point. Nevertheless, he can’t bring himself to wear such fine fabrics to work in a kitchen. It hadn’t mattered that much before, when he didn’t care to actually work. Now, though, he’s on a mission, and he must be dressed appropriately.

He goes to a kitchen supply store to purchase a few sets of chef’s trousers and jackets. He picks out some work shoes and spends far too long perusing the knife section, wondering if he should bring his own knife on his first day or rely on Maximilian to provide him with all the necessary tools.

By then, it is well past his usual lunch hour, so he decides to swing by his favorite café. Once there, he discovers that a collective of local poets will be performing in an hour’s time, so he decides that perhaps now it is too late to show up to the restaurant for his first day of work. He can put it off for another day. Besides, poetry is vital to the enrichment of the soul, and far more important than earning money.

The next morning, he finds it a little easier to wake early. When he arrives at the restaurant in his new uniform, the serveurs stare openly at him. The host sniffs and sends him to talk to the sous chef, Françoise. Fortunately, he runs into Heloise on the way in, and she directs him to a small office, where Maximilian sits at a ridiculously tiny desk, all the more to exaggerate the proportions of his muscle-bound physique. He looks surprised to see Losange standing in the doorway, and then his mouth twists into a smirk as he takes in his uniform.

“All outfitted for adventure, I see.”

Losange bows gallantly. “Of course, Chef. I am at your service.”

“Hmmm.” He looks at his wristwatch. “You’ll be doing prep work. Tomorrow you’ll need to be in at 6 o’clock.”

“In the evening?” Losange asks, poker-faced.

Maximilian laughs. “I think you know the answer to that.”

“Right.”

“Fortunately, there is never an end to the work. Come along. We’ll get started with the basics.”

The first thing Maximilian does is teach Losange how to wield a knife.

“Not like that,” he says, standing too close, taking the knife from Losange’s hand.

Losange bristles at the patronizing treatment. Maximilian has demonstrated this same skill several times already, and he has painstakingly copied his form each time. He can see no difference between them, and he says as much.

“Watch closely.”

He becomes distracted, watching the deft motions of Maximilian’s hands.

“Losange, watch.”

And that was the end of volume two.

Lalo closed the book and called his cousin immediately.

“Lalo, it’s five in the morning,” Claudio said when he answered.

“You should read this so we can talk about it.”

He heard a soft laugh. “You like your new books?”

“Yes. Thank you so much. How much do I owe you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not, Claudio. I want to pay you for them. I know they’re rare.”

“I’m going to hang up now, you rotten boy.”

“Hey, wait. I was being serious. Will you read them?”

There was a pause. “Sure. But you know what? You should ask that guy Valentine about it. See what he says.”

“Why?”

“Because any time I’ve asked him about anything, he always has a ton of interesting information to share.”

“But I already tried and he shut me down.”

“Yeah, but persistence is key. He’ll come around. Trust me. It took me a while, too, but he finally cracked when I asked him about The Count of Monte Cristo: In Space!!! We had a whole entire conversation about it. Ha ha, Leslie was so mad.”

“Hmmm. I’ll think about it.”

Lalo hung up, thinking about what Claudio had said. All of the changes he’d gone through in the recent past had felt personal, a journey he needed to take alone. This felt different, though. Losange’s story had cracked something open inside of him, and talking with Claudio and Leslie had wedged the crack open even further. It felt like he was embarking on a whole new adventure, and this time he wanted to share it.