The
Kitchen

Greybriar (Location: Classified), Team Orion’s Kitchen — December 2006

The kitchen was on the first floor at the back of the south wing. Section Six had built it the way someone might have built a kitchen for a family of fifteen — too many burners, two refrigerators, a long oak table that could seat the cohort and the kitchen staff at once.

She paused outside the open door. She could hear them, and it made her smile. Three months in and she had already fallen a little bit in love with them all. She hadn’t expected that.

“—I told you the cabbage doesn’t need that much water, Paddy. You’re such an idiota.”

“It needs water, Diego. It’s cabbage. I know cabbage, okay? I’m Irish.”

“You’re Irish. But you’re also an idiot. And your idiocy wins.”

“Listen, Diego. You’re not in charge of the cabbage. I’m in charge of the cabbage. I am Cabbage.”

“No, I’m in charge of the kitchen. The kitchen contains the cabbage. By the transitive property—”

Jo stepped through the door.

Heat met her first, thick with garlic and butter and the sweeter smell of onions going soft in a pan. Under it was something bright and wintery — orange peel maybe, or cloves — and the faint wood smoke smell that seemed to cling to Greybriar all through December. Somewhere near the sink a radio was playing Christmas music low and tinny, one of the old ones her mother liked, half lost beneath the clatter of pots and Paddy’s voice.

Diego was at the stove with an apron tied at his waist and the sleeves of a dark green thermal pushed to the elbow. He had a wooden spoon in his hand the size of a small oar. Paddy was at the counter next to him in a gray Henley, gesturing with a head of cabbage. Thomas was at the far end of the long counter with a small saucepan and a magazine clipping pinned under a saltshaker. Chris was at the table with a board of onions and a knife, a black sweater pulled over his undershirt.

And Marcus was at the other end with three fish on a board, dark sleeves rolled forearm-high.

There were six pots on the stove, two cutting boards in use. Someone — Diego, no doubt — had strung a cheap line of colored Christmas lights along the top of the window over the sink, and the glass beyond it was black with early winter dark. Snow feathered softly against it. The room smelled like sweat and garlic and wood smoke and something citrusy simmering in one of the back pots.

“SAINT.” Diego saw her first and threw both arms in the air, the wooden spoon sweeping a half-arc that almost caught Paddy in the side of the head. “She made it. She made it! Cabbage, she made it. We did not lose her after all your hitting on her. Thank the Lord.”

“Maybe it’s because I kept hitting on her,” Paddy said with a wink. “You ever think of that, Chef?”

“You said she’d skip. She didn’t skip. God, I love you, Saint. I bet twenty dollars you’d show. Hand it over, Cab.”

Paddy looked at her with what he probably thought was a charming expression. “How much do I get if I get a kiss from her under the mistletoe?”

She turned to find the mistletoe above the door she had just walked through.

“Patrick Quinn, you are fixin’ to meet Jesus before dessert?” she said.

“Ahh, but one of us will get a kiss though, don’t you think? There’s a good chance you’ll find one of us good-looking enough.” Paddy looked around the room. “Well, there’s me, obviously. The sexual tension is so thick I can almost slice it.” Diego snorted. “Hmmm… Cupid? I mean, look at the guy. I thought Tom was a buff girl when I first met him. Tried kissing him and everything.”

Thomas threw a tomato, and Paddy caught it.

“Thanks. I needed that. Then there’s Captain America himself.” Paddy eyed Chris, then shook his head. “Nah. And certainly not Mr. Smiles over there.” He indicated Marcus. Jo had loved his nickname the moment she’d heard it two ops in. It worked even better because he hated it. “I just can’t help but think it comes back to me, you know? Christmas is a time for miracles, mistletoes, and a little snogging. I’ll get that kiss eventually.”

Jo caught Marcus’s eye and then looked away.

“Paddy, you’ve got to stop digging,” Chris said from the table, not looking up from the board. He was sniffling, with tears in his eyes from the onions. It was the strangest sight she had ever seen.

“You know she’s been learning how to throw things with her mind, yeah?” Diego said.

“Thank you, Cap,” Paddy said. “Thank you, Chef Reyes. I appreciate the supervision.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Chris said with a wave.

Thomas, at his end of the counter, looked up from the saucepan. “Will someone tell me what brown butter is supposed to look like?”

“I think,” Diego said, wiping sweat from his brow, “and I know this might be crazy. But I think it’s supposed to be brown, Cupid.”

“Yes, thank you, Chef Smart Ass. But how brown?”

“Like my skin.” Diego gestured at his arm. “Not yours. That’s for sure.”

“That is not helpful. I am asking you a serious culinary question.”

“Hazelnut,” Marcus said, without looking up from the fish.

Paddy, who must by now have been rather grateful to anyone for not being the topic of the room, walked across to Thomas and looked into the saucepan.

“That’s not brown, Tom. That’s black.”

“Damn it. I am following the recipe.”

“You clearly didn’t learn how to read right in your fancy boarding school.”

Diego pointed at Thomas with the spoon, having recovered enough to speak again. “Tom. My friend. My brother. That recipe was written by an American woman in a magazine.”

“She’s probably blonde and looks kinda like Tom too,” Paddy said, and the room burst into laughter.

Jo was laughing too. She did not remember when she had started.

“Saint,” Diego said. “Apron. There.” He gestured at a hook on the wall with three aprons on it. “The green one. The red one is mine, and the blue one looks too sad for Christmas.”

“What else is Christmas law?”

“That I get a kiss—” Paddy began, but this time Jo used her mind to throw the tomato at him. It splattered across his face.

“Forget Christmas law. You’ve passed it all,” Diego said with an approving grin at Paddy, who had tomato bits falling off his face.

“Sorry! I thought you’d catch that. Mostly,” Jo said, cringing.

“I think I’m even more in love,” Paddy said, wiping it off his face with a towel. “Saint. You and I will one day be married. We’ll have little redheaded babies.”

Jo rolled her eyes and took down the green apron. It was, she realized as she put it on, a child’s apron. It had a small chicken on the front of it. The strings did not quite reach around her back.

“This is a child’s apron, Diego.”

“I am aware.”

“Where did you even get this?”

“From a… child.”

“You took an apron from a child?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny anything.”

“He totally stole an apron from a child,” Paddy said, and there was a fondness in the way he was looking at the apron. As if there was history there she didn’t know about.

Jo finished tying the apron. Diego nodded approvingly and turned back to the stove.

“What am I making, Diego?”

“Go to Mr. Smiles. He’s going to teach you a thing or two about fish.”

Marcus, at his end of the counter, looked up at her. He had a fillet knife in his right hand and the edge of a fish under his left.

“Come on,” he said, and Jo walked the length of the kitchen to him. He was watching the fish. “You’ve done this before?”

“I have never cooked before.”

“You’ve never cooked before?” He looked up at her as if offended by the very idea.

“Oh, you expect because I’m a girl—”

“Cooking is an art, Jo.”

She realized she liked very much the way he said her name.

“I didn’t realize you were so poetic.”

“And filleting is an art in and of itself.”

He gestured with the knife at the spot just behind the gills.

“Cut here, angled toward the head. Down to the bone. Then turn and follow the spine. Let the blade ride the bone. Don’t try to think your way down. The bone tells you where to go.”

He set the knife down. He took a half-step to her left.

“Try one.”

Jo picked up the knife. She put her left hand on the fish.

“Not there. Here.” He moved her left hand two inches, his palm briefly over the back of hers. She would very much have wanted this to be happening somewhere other than over a dead fish, with a bunch of guys throwing food at one another while colored lights blinked idiotically over the sink.

Jo took what she could get, though.

She made the cut. It went in at the wrong angle. The blade slipped off the spine and into the meat.

“That’s too steep. Lay it down. Almost flat.”

She pulled the knife out and tried again. The blade rode the bone. She felt it for the first time — the small, constant push of the spine against the metal, the way the knife wanted to go up and the bone wanted it down, and the place where they agreed.

“There,” Marcus said, and he smiled at her. She could distinctly remember the feel of his scar on his lip, and she swallowed and focused back on the fish.

She made it all the way down the fish. The fillet came up clean.

“That was… okay, yeah,” she said.

“That was lucky. Do another one.”

He pressed his thumb into the flesh of a second fish, watched it come back up, and passed it to her.

She made the second cut. She did not get lucky this time. The blade went too deep at the tail, and she had to come back and clean up what she’d left on the bone.

“Good,” Marcus said.

“I’m pretty sure that was worse.”

“You learned more on that one. Mistakes are a good thing.”

He put a third fish on the board.

“Three?”

“We need eight,” came Diego’s voice.

“Eight?”

“Diego brought twelve. I’m doing the other nine.”

He stepped back to his side of the board and started on his own fish.

They worked in parallel. He did three to her one. She watched him out of the corner of her eye and tried to match his rhythm and failed. He was perfect at it. His hands did not move much. The knife did most of the work, and his hands provided only the suggestions the knife needed.

He talked to her once while she worked. Quietly, so the rest of the kitchen did not hear.

“How are you after yesterday?”

“Me?” She looked over at him again. “I’m fine. How are you?” They had just gotten back from an op where Jo had to lift all of them onto a platform landing. She had felt a rib crack. Sore was an understatement.

“It was a hard op. You kicked some serious ass.”

“Thank you, Mr. Smiles. That means so much from the king of ass-kicking,” Jo said. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Chris turning away from them.

Marcus made a sound that could have passed for a laugh.

“Where’d you learn this?”

He finished the cut he was on before he answered.

“Home.”

Jo waited. The knife went back in behind the gills.

The kitchen carried on around them. Diego was correcting Thomas’s grip on a whisk. Paddy was telling someone about something that had happened at the gym. Chris was on his second board of onions.

Jo finished her third fish.

“Saint,” Diego called from the stove. “Status.”

“Three down, five to go.”

“That’s not three. That’s two and a half. I see the tail you left on that one.”

“I can throw more than tomatoes.”

“Five to go, Rojas. Move.”

Paddy came past her with a colander and bumped her hip.

“Sorry, Saint. Didn’t see you there.”

“I’m learning how to remove flesh from bone. You watch it.” But Jo was laughing again. Her hands had not stopped working. Three fish became four. Four became five.

Thomas, at his pan, said, “The butter is brown this time. Diego. Tell me when to take it off the heat.”

“Now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Take it off, Cupid.”

Jo finished the fifth fish.

“Three more,” she said.

“Two,” Marcus said, sliding one of his own finished fish toward her board. “I had extra time.”

“Show-off.”

She was starting on her sixth when Diego stopped stirring the pot in front of him.

He had been facing the door. He was not facing the door now.

Diego had gone very still.

Paddy, at the colander, registered Diego’s stillness and turned. Then Thomas. Then Chris. Marcus and Jo turned at the same time.

Ross was in the doorway.

He was in a gray sweater and dark trousers and leather boots, snow melting dark at the shoulders.

“Two minutes,” he said. “Gear. Then briefing room two. We have a situation, team.”

He turned and left.

The cohort was moving before the door closed.

Diego turned off the burners. All of them at once, with one sweep of his hand across the dials. Paddy dropped the colander in the sink. Thomas pulled the pan of brown butter off the heat and set it on a trivet and then, after a half-second of indecision, abandoned it.

Chris was already at the door.

Marcus wiped the knife on the rag at his hip and put it down.

“You’ll want to wash your hands,” he said as he turned to begin washing his.

He waited for her. He did not move toward the door until she was done.

She untied the green apron. She set it on the hook. The small chicken on the front of it stared up at the kitchen.

Then she followed Marcus down the corridor.