Beck slid into the booth with a slump and a hard clink of his bourbon glass against his teeth.
Jenna winced at the sound and nudged a hip closer to David so the chef had room, wondering why her upstairs neighbor hadn’t slid into the empty spot where Sven sat with the pile of winter coats.
“Well?” The man’s bright blue eyes peered out unabashedly from a weathered face further creased by concern. “How did he do?”
The chef set the glass atop the tablecloth with a thump and took his time opening the top button of his jacket before answering. “Rolf is…”
Jenna could hardly hear him over the last of the diners, and she couldn’t lean much further toward him in the narrow booth. “Sorry, what?”
Beck spun the last of the amber liquid in the glass and watched it slosh up the sides. “Rolf is the best chef a seafood restaurant could ask for. No matter that half the staff tried to kill him today. They won’t after family meal, right?”
Jaw open in outrage, Sven clenched a hand over his heart, fingertips tracing the rough wool’s pattern. “What do you mean, tried to kill him?”
“Oh, Rolf can handle his own. No one’s going to mess with him now, no way. Except maybe at the market, but he’s already got a reputation there, too.” He drained the last of the bourbon and let out a sly grin. “As do I. What chef brings his pet octopus with him to market, right?”
“Kraken,” Sven muttered, but only Jenna heard him.
“It’s only natural to chase the escaped seafood, yes? The chefs thought he was fresher than fresh, no? He waved a few knives with those tentacles, then squirted the only one who dared to get too close.” Beck tipped back the glass again and received a single drop in return. He greeted it with a frown.
“But how did he do as a chef?”
“Well, normally we’d put him on prep, chopping onions and the like. But he gets the prep done faster with all those arms, yeah? And he gets us the freshest mollusks. Saved us from a a bad batch, you know? It could have been ugly.”
An orange tentacle poked over the white linen tablecloth, its suckers pale against the walls of the bourbon glass it was wrapped around.
“Thanks, man. I needed a refill.” Beck nodded to the kraken, who was busy climbing onto Sven’s shoulders. “At first, everyone thought it was a gimmick, yeah? No one seemed interested.”
“So we put it on social,” a burbling voice said, as if a waterfall has spoken. Jenna caught her glass of wine before red splashed all over the tablecloth.
“And then people seemed to believe the whole ‘cooked by an octopus’ story. I had no idea what behind the scenes photos could do, yeah?”
“And then the raving started after the first guest dared. Then the orders started coming, and coming, and coming. More covers than we’ve done in a long time, yeah?”
“The secret’s in the brining, but no one else seems to think it’s that easy.” Rolf twined a long arm around Sven’s raised wrist, not seeming to mind the fuzzy, oatmeal-colored wool.
Beck gave an emphatic nod. “The spices of your people, yeah? It’s okay. You don’t have to share, as long as you keep working here. We just need to figure out where to get a chef’s jacket with eight arms, yeah?”
***
This week, Leigh Kimmel challenged me with “At first it seemed nobody was interested. Then the orders started coming. And coming. And coming.” I continued Walkabout, although Rolf may be getting a bit of a makeover soon during the latest WIP…
Over at MOTE, I challenged Cedar Sanderson to write about sacrificial penguins, inspired by real-world events at the zoo. Those warm-weather penguins stood around honking and flapping their wings until the test penguin told them the water wasn’t too cold, I swear…but her version is more interesting!
