Five Stars

            Five Stars


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         The cook brings out the food.

         I shift in the hard-backed chair and wait for him to put it down. He looks shaken from what had been happening to him. I smile at him. He can't seem to match my gaze but I hold my eyes on him anyway. “I-I want to thank you” the simpleton says, “Your first review made things difficult for a while, but I'm honored you would try to reconsider.”

         He starts prattling about his old, whatever grandmother's recipes and I begin ignoring him. Stories and empathy aren't ingredients. They don't add a flavor, or a texture, or a scent. I'm more interested in the smells wafting in my direction.

         Know how you can tell if they're good tomatoes?

         They smell just different, just right. They smell like the sun and the brick ledge they laid on. Savory, but without even a hint of artificial sweetness. Real tomatoes are tangy, as if they just curl up in your senses. These were at least pretty good.

         “Well? Put it down,” I order. He sets the dish and backs away quickly. Before I know it, I'm laughing. “This is your try?” I ask, “A plate of spaghetti?” It looks very much ordinary, something a  forties housewife would cook. I pull off the sprig of wilted, green something and flick it onto the floor. “I believe that it's your grandmother's recipe,” I say, disdain dripping from my voice.

         “I..” the cook began. He looks idiotic standing there, apron between his hands. “I think I can  teach you something.” He pulls up yet another hard-backed chair and sits down. “Cooking has meant everything to me since I was very young.” His brow, I notice, is soaked with sweat, “And I think I know it at least as well as anyone else alive.”

         Artists are nasty people. Never get involved.

         I reach for my fork, eager to get to my meal. I take a forkful of noodles and spoon them into my mouth. They are regular noodles. Thin, chewy, and commonplace. They are almost a little too thick.

         The real surprise is the sauce. It's a savory, sweet masterpiece of sensations on a wooden canvas. Sweet at first, to lure the eater, then with a strike of savor, ending with the gentlest bitter to cleanse the pallet. I could have drank a gallon of the sauce alone.

         “Your problem, sir,” the cook continues, “Is that you eat too quickly, and focus too much on the flavors that are easy to find.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small green leaf. “This is Basil.”

         He is an idiot if he think I don't know what basil is.

         “It has a smell that's all it's own, but it can hide in a large dish fairly well.” He smiles at me for the first time. “Do you think you can find it?”

         I don't answer, but I find myself probing a little deeper into the food. He is still looking at me, maybe waiting for some kind of sign. There is meat in the spaghetti, but it is clearly store-bought. The pieces are pelletlike and perfectly shaped, both dead giveaways.  They taste like I imagine pencil erasers do.

         Beneath that, I find a few peppers, and a bit of cheese. Both are uninteresting.

         The basil, I find, is not even much of a taste. One of those weird freaks of the senses that you can't taste, see, or touch but you can feel. Just bits of an antiquated system sending up errors. The cook looks at me and I look him in the eye. He smiles. “This is Oregano,” he says, holding up another leaf, “An essential in this kind of food.” He looks as if he's enjoying himself, with a stupid shiteating grin pasted across his face. “Can you find it?”

         My fork has not yet touched the table, or rested on the plate.

         I go back to my meal and notice a slight gritty texture for the first time. That's probably from the idiot's laziness. Occasionally there is still dust or dirt on fresh tomatoes. Any good chef washes them thirty times, then thirty more. He hadn't washed them correctly.

         The oregano is a bit of rough texture stuck in a solid wall of sauce. It's almost like the skin of a popcorn kernal, or bit of leaf that's fallen in. I truly don't care for it, but I swallow it anyway. “Delicious oregano,” I say.

         The cook smiles again. His infuriating smile. “Those are called synergistic tastes,” he says, “Tastes that work together.” The restaurant can't be more than sixty-eight degrees, but the cook is still sweating. “There are also tastes that don't synergize, that work against each other.”

         For the first time, I notice his shiny, shiny eyes.

         “Can you find one?”

         I take another bite and freeze.

         “Almonds?”

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Word Count: 843