Chapter 6: Table for Two

On Tuesday I came down the back stairs at ten past eleven, in my cardigan and my sock feet, because I couldn't sleep.

The restaurant was dark except for the pass.

Ewan was alone in the kitchen, wiping down a steel counter in long slow strokes.

The last of the line cooks had gone home and the chairs were up on the tables.

The whole room smelled like thyme and hot oil.

He looked up when I came in, and his face did something I hadn't seen yet.

It opened.

"You should be asleep," he said.

"You should be on the couch."

"I'm closing."

"You've been closing for three days. You're polishing a clean counter."

He put the rag down.

"I'm hungry," I said. "Cook me something you never serve."

"I serve everything."

"Not everything. I looked at your menu. There's nothing on it you'd make for a hungry kid."

He went still, and the line of his shoulders changed.

Then he nodded once, and he turned to the stove.

I sat on a stool at the end of the pass and watched him.

He moved like a man who had done it forty thousand times and loved it every time.

A pot of water.

A knob of butter in a pan, and a fistful of black pepper ground so coarse it crackled.

An egg cracked one-handed, and fried until the edges lace.

When he put the bowl in front of me, I looked at it for a long time.

It was buttered egg noodles, with a runny yolk on top, and enough pepper to make me sneeze.

"My mother used to make it," he said. "Then Gram did, when I came to her at eight."

He stirred the air with his fork.

"I wouldn't eat for three days. She made this, and I ate the whole pot."

"What happened to your parents?"

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