Valentine's Cafe

Valentine’s Café

Anthony Schmitz

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Anthony Schmitz

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Chapter One

They wait outside, as always. They stamp on the sidewalk, trying to beat some warmth into their feet. A hatchet-faced woman in a sensible coat raps on the glass door, as if that might do some good. Of course I ignore her. She is shouting something — it’sfreezingouthere!can’tyousee?letusinforGod’ssake!!, etc., etc. — and the steam that shoots from her angry, thin lips freezes against the gold, italic lettering painted so artfully on the door.

Valentine’s Café.

C’est moi!

I love these moments, I do, the last few minutes before I send Jimmy, finally, to the door, and he extracts from the cummerbund of his tuxedo a polished brass skeleton key that’s nearly as long as his hand. With a flourish he displays it to the frozen mob outside —the key to a treasure room, the key to your most vivid dreams, the key to… well, why get ahead of myself? At any rate, Jimmy slides the worn key gently into the ancient lock and gives the door a tug, because it sticks and I refuse to repair it. I enjoy the idea of it, the door that opens reluctantly, requires a little coaxing, a little force, but opens nightly nonetheless. And then the warmth of Valentine’s Café spills out into the street, the warmth and the aromas of a day’s worth of cooking, a bouquet that is never quite possible to fully describe. Butter and garlic, onions carmelized, wine splashed in a hot, heavy pan, cardamom and basil, but more, always more. Beneath this perfume lurks another palette, not quite detectable, like a word you can’t remember, like a dream just out of reach. The smell of moss turned over on the rain forest floor, thick and rich, living and rotten, too much alive and too much dead. My own special touches, passed down, you might say, through the family. I gesture to Antonio, my Argentine accordionist, who begins to play as the mob pushes inside. They elbow their way in as if they have never felt warmth, never heard music, never eaten such a morsel of food as will be served up to them tonight.

The last of which is true.

But for now they remain outside in the cold and I am inside in a room that I purposely keep too warm. A bit close, a little sticky, so that as my patrons eat, a veneer of sweat rises to their brows. In the perfect light their skin glows. The marks of age are blurred and instead you see experience, experience that in the beholding stirs your blood, sends a faint prickle down your spine and beyond.

The tablecloths are white, white, brilliant white. I have held a knife to the laundry man’s throat — you think I’m exaggerating but you’re wrong — to ensure that my linens are spotless. On the eight tables in the middle of the room the glassware and silver gleam. I hire a boy, Raimundo, whose only job is to polish the glasses with a soft cotton rag and then remove any trace of lint that remains. I love to watch him — he has the face of an angel! — I love to watch him lift a glass to the light and squint as he examines it, as if there were no more profound undertaking. Which, I have told him repeatedly, is true. I whisper the words into his ear and he believes me.

Tucked against the walls are booths, three to a side, their heavy red curtains held back, at least when we open, by gold, tasseled cord. If you want one two years from now you had better book it tonight.

Jimmy checks his watch, then glances at me. I give my head such a slight shake that no one else would notice. Not yet. Not quite yet. More rapping at the door. No matter. Let the rest of the commercial world accommodate the clientele’s ill-considered desires. More, faster, now, now, now. That is not my way. A touch of pain, the promise of pleasure, the smell of paradise with the faintest hint of the barn or worse, the sense that euphoria waits just on the other side of a border that, at a whim, may be removed. Welcome to Valentine’s Café!

But not quite yet.

I hear a buzz from behind the kitchen doors. Next a primal shriek, followed by the sharp crack of a plate slammed to the floor. Nats, Nats, I mumble to myself, bracing for the barrage to come.

Nyet! What? You serve!?

I very nearly hired a chef I dubbed Mr. Stinky. I liked the way he looked when he crossed his arms, holding one of his Japanese knives in each hand. He had excellent tattoos on each bicep and a thousand-yard stare that was genuinely frightening. Frankly, he looked half past nuts, which was what I thought I wanted. During his trial run he appeared directly from his health club, where he lifted weights for two hours before dabbing his armpits with a paper towel and dressing for work. He smelled of cigarettes and cooking grease, sweat and iron.

Then Nats appeared and it was all over between Mr. Stinky and me. The way she opened the door was enough. I knew. The door stuck, as I’ve mentioned. Did she stand there wondering what to do next? Did she wait for help? No, no. She gave it a smack with the palm of her hand, as if it were the manifestation of all human ignorance, all contemptible slackness, an annoyance to be crushed as quickly as possible. The door slammed into the wall. That the glass didn’t shatter was a small miracle.

At first all I registered was hair. Black black black, a tar pit, an arctic night, a tomb’s worth of black, and so thick that you that you could have wrapped it around your fist and lifted her off the ground. An avalanche, a torrent, a landslide of hair, falling over her face, spilling down her back. She took both hands to push it back and then I got a look at her face. She did not lack for nose. I knew right then that if she looked down that emperor’s schnozz at you, even for an instant, you would know to your soul that you had truly been looked down upon. You would feel like a bug, an idiot, a worm.

After a minute spent comprehending the nose, I was on to her eyes. Eyes set off by an extravagant pair of brows, a single thick slash against her pale skin. Judging from her complexion, she’d seen as much sun in her life as a mushroom. The eyes were violet, Liz Taylor eyes, with lashes that belonged on a llama.

She opened them so wide that I felt like the most startling being on the planet. She planted herself as solidly as anyone could on four-inch heels and announced, Elevana Natasha Demidova. Chef!

I am not too proud to admit that my thinking at this point was, If she can’t cook, I can teach her.

I start when? she added. Her voice was perfect, Bond-girl, Spy vs. Spy, half command, half purr. She wore a black leather coat that came down to her knees, where it met those spike-heel boots. I figured she stood six feet tall barefoot.

"How about now?’ I said.

Is no problem, she replied, without missing a beat. You have knives, yes?

I led her to the kitchen and that was that.

#

I believe I mentioned that tolerance is not Nats’ long suit. When she gets frustrated she throws things. Knives. Plates. Glasses. Pots, empty and full. It’s theatrical, mostly. She rarely hits anybody. I’ve never actually had to take anyone to the ER. There is no denying that when five pounds of cast iron flies past your head you realize that a point is being made. We are, you could say, a passionate establishment.

Slime, no, we no serve. Nyet, nyet, nyet!!!! Idiot!

Although, in fact, we have served slime, in the service of our larger goals. And absolutely no one complained. Trust me.

We have a reputation, which explains the lines outside the door, and the two-year wait for a booth, and the fact that the waiters and waitresses leave each night with so much cash that I ought to drive them home in an armored truck. Even here in this parsimonious, level-headed, flat, frozen wasteland of a city, this hick town, teetering, as it does, on the very edge of agricultural nothingness, where you can feel the huge, watery, uncomprehending eyes of a billion cows upon your back, even here, each and every night the clientele loses all sense of proportion, all sense of everyday rectitude. Our product, ultimately, is abandon, carnality, a splendid wallow.

I nod, finally, to Jimmy. The frozen mob pours in. Antonio coaxes a few first sounds from his instrument, little groans and wheezes, quick gasps of melody, musical foreplay. Jimmy, filled with self-importance, fawns, blusters, points, snarls, filling the tables according to his own inscrutable plan. My waiters appear, like actors taking the stage. Akmud, the beautiful Ethopian with his golden nose ring; Nicolette, whose accent is so charming that I pay her extra not to take English classes; Rafael, who acts as if he were once king of Chile, though I happen to know his ancestors herded sheep. Each of them imperious, wordlessly communicating that they understand certain truths impossible to describe. Yes. To be here is to be inside a hive, warm and buzzing and sweet, desperate and driven, all of it turned toward one end.

Which is… Well, we’re coming to that.

At exactly ten o’clock a black limousine pulls up to the door. From the front passenger seat a gentleman emerges who is instantly recognizable as muscle. Hair in a quarter-inch bristle, neck as thick as his head, wire in one ear, black suit tailored to fit around his bulk. He sticks his head in the door, pow-wows with Jimmy for an instant and is gone. A minute later the governor of our great state appears, the honorable Luther Lutherson, followed by his wife and two girls. I cannot help but think that there has been a mix-up, a miscommunication, the result of which will be rolling heads back in the office tomorrow morning. Valentine’s Café is not the governor’s kind of joint.

Luther Lutherson arrived in office via a familiar road. He promised to cut taxes. Expand highways. Pack the courts with lunatics. He baited gays and yammered about family values. And now he surveys my restaurant, waiting to be recognized, eager to feel the love. This is not his crowd; the love is not forthcoming. The disappointment is visible on his features.

Not disagreeable features, even I feel obliged to add. There’s an appealing primitivism about him. Thick of brow. Broad of jaw. A set of choppers that could bring down wild game. A natural physical grace left over from his career as an end on the state university’s football team. His campaign literature featured a photo from thirty years ago of Lutherson the student-athlete hauling in a pass while floating over the messy pile of bodies below. He makes a show now of helping the First Lady out of her fur coat, a piece for which fox died by the dozen. He hands the fur to Jimmy, who passes it on to Akmud, who carries it over to Jewels, the coat-check girl, whose principal qualifications are an appearance of corn-fed honestly and a knock-out figure. Jimmy plunks the governor in the middle of the room, where everyone has an equal chance to stare at him.

I go to his table because that’s the way it’s done.

I am myself an imposing figure. I look the governor in the eye. Which is to say that I gaze into eyes of the brightest blue that give away exactly nothing. You could just as well be ice-fishing, staring into a hole cut in a frozen lake. We take each other’s hand, we grab each other’s elbow, we squeeze harder than is strictly necessary, the inevitable contest of virility. He introduces the First Lady, Maryanne, the no-nonsense offspring of a Lutheran minister. Pale, blonde, bloodless. A hard type to work with, though on those occasions when lightning strikes, when the flush of color rises from the breast to the neck, from the neck to the cheeks, where it blossoms in blotches, and that wall of reserve and piety finally crumbles, well, then I suspect the governor feels that he has accomplished something on the order of balancing the budget while jamming, so to speak, a chicken in every pot. Hail to the chief. Maryanne turns her dry cheek to me for the coldest of kisses, then introduces the Lutherson girls, Carmen and Roxanne, who grin at me with the trouble-making awareness of kids who know what’s what. For the newspapers they are a gift from heaven, Lutheran girls gone bad. Dresses? Too short, too black, too low, too tight. Antics? Why, yes! Carmen hauled off to the drunk tank after tossing a bottle of Bombay Sapphire through a liquor store window. The persistent rumor that a certain grainy loop of webcam footage features Roxanne and four of her close personal friends in a messy, naked swirl. I give the girls a nod, which they understand. Then I signal to Kenneth, the sommelier, to bring the governor a certain wine I have in reserve, a wine for which the grapes are stomped by bare-footed Bolivian peasants toiling in the Tarijan dust and heat, leaving the homeopathic trace of their sweat and musk inside each bottle. It’s all there each time Kenneth pops the cork; the clove-ish smell of the sun-wizened grape, the aroma of parched soil, the note of urine not quite washed away by the too-infrequent rains. Thus I begin my treatment of the governor’s disease. Thus I unsnap the first hook of the first lady’s corset. And as for the girls, what is my Bolivian wine but gas tossed upon the fire. Stand back, folks, stand back! I take the bottle from Kenneth’s hand and fill their spotless glasses myself.

Interesting, to watch their faces. The First Lady’s nose — a sensitive instrument, apparently — turns up, as if she has suddenly found herself with a Bolivian’s toe in her mouth. Even so, a slight smile rises to her tight lips, a memory of some distant and uncharacteristic spasm. A similar dreamy grin is stretched across Roxanne and Carmen’s faces. The governor swirls the wine in his glass, holds it to his slab of nose, and throws down a mouthful, none the wiser.

From the kitchen comes a shriek, something like a pig getting stuck, then a thud that shakes the walls. Excuse me, Governor, ladies, I say. I believe I need to check with the chef. I wave over Akmud, who glides across the floor like the royalty he may very well be. The ladies, I know, will hardly notice that I have gone once they get a good look at the African prince.

#

I glance through one of the small, heart-shaped windows of the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen. Chaos, not so surprisingly, awaits. Flames shooting from the range. Steam roiling from the stock pots. A cast-iron skillet stuck, hatchet-like, into the sheetrock. Nats crouched on top of the new sous chef, Julie, who is sprawled on her back on the floor. Nats appears to be strangling her. The rest of the kitchen staff looks on, none of them daring to intervene. I smooth back my hair, straighten up my jacket, take a deep breath and push through the doors.

Ladies, I say. Ladies! What seems to be the problem?

Julie replies, Gggggeeehekhkl!

Nats, I say, you can stop choking her now.

I kill troglodyte bitch! Nats says.

Troglodyte? Where does she come up with these words, I wonder. I crouch beside Nats and remove her hands from Julie’s throat. The girl has a beautiful, swan-like neck, which is, fortunately, unmarked. More show than go on Nats’ part, as usual.

Why don’t you go stir something, Nats, I suggest.

Why I no stick head in pot, no more being stupids? Her eyes are blazing, but then again they always are.

We’ll talk about that later, I say, helping Nats to her feet. I steer her toward the stove.

Julie is immobile on rubber kitchen mat, wide-eyed and unblinking, hair spread around her head like drowned Ophelia. I put a hand on her cheek. You all right? I ask.

Slowly she focuses on me. It takes a while for her mouth to form a word. Finally she says, She’s crazy, isn’t she?

The rest of the kitchen staff is still looking on. Folks, I announce. We’re running a restaurant here. Could I ask you, please, to return to work?

I mean, nuts, Julie adds. Totally nuts.

Why don’t you sit up? I suggest. I slip a hand between her neck and the floor and gently lift her. When I get her on her feet again I put a hundred dollar bill in her hand. Nats is an artist, I observe. Nuts, like an artist. I make allowances.

I give the back of her jacket a swipe. Dazed, she does a zombie-like stumble back to her cutting board. I head over to Nats and put a hand on her shoulder. She has trapezoids like a powerlifter.

Nats, I say. This isn’t the old country. You can’t choke the help. We’ve got laws.

Strands of hair push out of her chef’s hat. You could shrink-wrap her head and still her hair would not be contained. She focuses those eyes on me, eyes the color of lilacs, or so it seems to me at the moment. Valentinski, she says. This is among her many pet names for me. Valentinski. Valentuska. Victor. Vitya. She cuts straight, the beans, like murder. I say, dabognal, so pretty, and nothing.

What? She’s got me interested now. Dabognal?

She holds out a finger and makes a cutting motion across it.

Diagonal. You wanted the beans cut diagonally.

Da, dabognal. What, too much?

I see your point. But Nats, no strangling. I put my hands around my neck, stick out my tongue and make a gargling noise. Then I waggle a finger in her face. No, I say, just to make certain.

Is bad, she admits. A giant tear drips down her cheek. Of course I kiss her on the forehead. She sighs and says, Later, yes.

But first we’ve got to get through the night, okay?

She slips a few fingers through the buttons of my shirt. It’s like she’s just taken her hand out of the oven. I good, Vitya, she whispers.

I know you are.

She gives the stock a stir.

Is that for tonight? I ask.

She nods.

I remove a small amber bottle from my breast pocket, uncork it, and shake a single drop into the stock. Then, thinking, oh, what the hell, let’s take the governor on a ride, I tip in another. There’s a slight but distinct snapping sound as each drop hits the simmering liquid, followed by a snaking strand of scarlet vapor that rises from the surface.

Oh, oh, says Nats with a conspiratorial grin.

We’ve got special guests. The governor and his family.

Governor wants? This?

It’s his wife I’ve got in mind.

Show me!

We go together to the swinging door. Each of us peers through a heart-shaped portal. I point out the governor and his family. The First Lady is looking down into her wine glass, as if she might find the answer to a riddle there. She has slipped out of her sensible Icelandic sweater. Her silk blouse is clinging to her sticky skin.

Ha, ha, says Nats. We melt ice cube, Valentuska, yes?

Nats, I say. You read my mind.

#

One of the things I love about Nats is that without actually being beautiful she nonetheless manages to create the impression. Have I mentioned her lips? Oh, they are the ripest fruit, plump and soft. Not long after we met I was sitting in my boss chair, the mighty Areon, when she pushed it away from the desk and arranged herself in my lap, facing me. She snapped my head back and insisted, Vitya! Teeth. I count. I didn’t bother to disagree. With the tip of her tongue she started at the front teeth and worked her way back to the molars, mumbling the numbers in Russian.

Now you, she insisted, parting those glistening lips.

I can’t count in Russian, I said.

Who caring? You make sound, I pretend, she offered.

She is an artist, but she also possesses a deep practical streak. Tell her we’re serving five hundred people and at the end of the week you can fit the wastage into a five-gallon bucket. She makes sauerkraut in the cellar. Is what, cabbage, salt? Why pay? She stuffs a sausage like no one I’ve seen, and believe me, I’ve been around. She can do things with a potato that would make St. Patrick burst into tears. Give her a radish and a sharp paring knife, and all I can say is, abracadabra! Thirty seconds and a dirt-flecked tuber is transformed into art.

When I explained who I am in fact, when I sketched in the details of my true occupation, she did not waste time seeking verification. She did not insist on proof. She knew. She understood. I kiss your hand, she announced, and did exactly that.

Nats, I confessed. I’ve made my share of trouble. Things don’t always work out. It can be a messy business.

You try. I help. I am servant of love.

I know you are, Nats.

She kissed my hand again, covering it with tears and, let’s be honest, a certain amount of snot. There’s nothing tidy about her. She’s an effusion, a spray, an eruption. I’ve been looking for someone like her for… well, for a long, long time.

#

There is not a menu at Valentine’s Café. We do not explain the dishes. For those who dare ask what will be served, the waiters say, Whatever the chef prefers. Or, in the case of Nicollette, "Whatevair ze chef prefairs." Should our patrons begin to tell us about their various dietary restrictions, real or imaginary, their allergies, their morals, how they could eat, perhaps, wild, hook-caught salmon but never, ever, pork, how asparagus does not agree with them, how chocolate gives them headaches, we simply show them the door. The customer can be right at Valentine’s Café, but only if he or she does not presume to believe that we might conceivably be wrong.

At ten thirty or so the soup comes out of the kitchen. Akmud, Nicolette and Rafael push tureens on carts from table to table. They ladle stock into each bowl, then arrange, on careful instruction from Nats, the remaining ingredients. We balance the yin and yang in ways that to the layman cannot be consciously understood. Leaves of dandelion harvested by moonlight. Roe of herring caught off the Bering Strait. Slivered penis of wild boar fried in the beast’s rendered fat. Water cress harvested at dusk from a fresh mineral spring, then rushed by motorcycle at ninety miles an hour to our kitchen door. And of course a drop or two from my collection of vials, the choice depending on the cycle of the moon, the pull of the tide, the barometric pressure, a certain tingling sensation located just behind my scrotum, and the gestalt of aromas escaping from my kitchen. Everything arranged just so, culinary feng shui, islands of suggestion, of insinuation, afloat in the iridescent sheen of Nat’s magical stock. Yes, yes, it appears almost clear, but if you look long enough you will begin to discover the barely describable colors of nature — the glow of cobalt, the green of an Amazonian dawn, fog thirty miles off the Vancouver coast. And the smells, of course the smells; of freshly bloomed lilies on a northern lake, of the sea’s faint scent two miles inland, of the sweat in the folds of a baby’s neck, of life’s vast swath, condensed somehow into two cups of broth in a flawless white bowl. And all of the above being the case, why, why, oh why would we give a single one of our customers the chance to say, No, just bring me the salad.

Tonight, with two drops of my potion, the stock has taken on a scarlet note that reminds me of maple leaves on a November day, half covered with wet, fresh-fallen snow. To the stock Nats has ordered the waiters to add a few strands of chard grown in the composted manure of back-bred pullets, a slice of seared belly fat from Lithuanian boar hunted with bow and arrow, fire-roasted Scotch bonnet peppers grown by a hippie turned Druid and a few other odds and ends. When, inevitably, a patron dares to ask, What’s this? our staff is trained to cock an eye and ignore the question.

Twenty minutes later, as the busboys scoop up the bowls, you can already see the effect. Flushed faces. Sensible wraps draped over the backs of the chairs. Hands that wander beneath the tablecloths. And this is the soup course, folks, only the soup.

The First Lady delicately dabs at her lips, sets down her napkin and, as Akmud pulls back her chair, gets unsteadily to her feet. Antonio coaxes a tango from his accordion, a soundtrack for the first lady’s sally toward the bathroom. I touch her elbow as she passes by. Everything all right? I ask. Not because I wonder. Of course everything is all right. It’s magnificent. She’s never had anything like it. She never will again, not unless she returns.

It takes her a while to focus on me. Her pupils are dilated. There’s a sheen on