I am assigned strawberries.  

	It is the worst and most embarrassing sort of insult imaginable.  It is silent, deadly sabotage by a bowl of red fruit.  I read the list, scrawled in messy, unreliable handwriting, and read it again to be sure.  I don’t always trust my eyes, but there it is, stuck loosely with a magnet onto the stainless steel industrial refrigerator, absolutely undeniable.
	This morning, a postcard from my mother arrived.  She is the only person left in the world who still sends me mail.  It is something cathartic for her, some remote form of forgiveness I do not understand.  I never reply.  I cannot seal words into paper like tattoos seared tightly onto skin and send it across an ocean anymore.  I can never tell the truth and mean it. I used to be able to, but now I can’t.  It’s not that I don’t have anyone to write letters to; I could fill a whole room with people claiming to be my friends at some point in time if I wanted.  This is my problem.  It is simple in the way that preparing rue is simple.  I am either obsessive or utterly uninterested. 
	I run my eyes down the rest of the list, and notice three things.  Michel has been assigned to hazelnuts, Louis, the arugula, and Stephen the hollandaise (this is the third time this week that this has happened).  I open the fridge to find the bowl of red fruit behind stacked cartons of eggs and three wilted bowls of spinach. 
	Strawberries are tricky little shits.  They are seedy and rough, with pockets of red juice that burst unexpectedly like land mines and have the unpleasant effect of making a chef in white appear as though he has just slaughtered a cow.  The inside is the worst part; gummy and raw, and only extractable with a sharp knife.  
	In another life, I used to love strawberries.  I would eat them like truffles on a porch, juice dripping down onto my bare legs.  I would eat them like candied ginger, sitting in the shade discussing interesting things with people who wanted to be around me.  All of these things are gone now.   
~
   At Le Ris, meals are prepared mise en place.  This means the sous chefs arrive at three a.m. to chop green beans into toothpicks.  This also means fruit is taboo.  Fruit is the equivalent of failure, and nine times out of ten it means you’re fired.  It is a quiet letting go, a stratocaster projecting silently into the atmosphere, a hand waving goodbye from a train.	
      People ask me if I am okay all the time, stopping me on the metro and in restaurants.  If any one of them actually wanted to know, I would tell them in a heartbeat.  I’m fine, I say instead.  I make up excuses; my tooth just got pulled, my cat just died, my boyfriend just broke up with me.  I like watching people’s eyes crescendo and fall into sliced lines.
      Today is one of those strangely bright days when everyone walks around with their eyes half shut and trees seem to disappear every time you drive by them.  
When the bell rings, Michel, Louis and Stephen head to their stations like an army approaching battle, backs straight, eyes fixed forward. I watch as they select their knives of choice and begin to calmly remove bitter ends of arugula, whisking eggs, and shelling hundreds of hazelnuts.  Stephen fidgets the most, shifting his feet like he is dancing to some internal rhythm as he thickens eggs with flour.  
      I stand there and think how strange it is to miss someone I am standing besides.  Most people do not experience this until they get quite old, but I am one of the few who has known the feeling of everyone receding around them like ice slipping away on a tile floor for as long as I can remember.
      I stand in the kitchen and watch the sous chefs.  My arms feel as heavy as artichokes.  They have saved the corner by the double freezers for me.  It is my favorite corner because I like to leave the doors open when the stove in front of me is on maximum heat and I am simultaneously being melted and frozen.  It is the closest thing I have ever felt to disappearing.
      When I open my eyes, Michel has removed the strawberries from the refrigerator.  He has kept them on the counter as a last desperate attempt to coax me into doing my work.  I am not going to do my work.  I am the least egotistical of them all, and Chef Rene has assigned me strawberries.  
      Stephen is always giving me lectures.  He says that I am so goddamn self aware, that it is killing him to watch me self-destruct like this.  He says it is not the French way, to live ones life the way I do.  I am not French, I reply.  Last week, he told me I am an old soul trapped in a young girl’s body.  I nodded, because most days I feel ancient.  I am exhausted all the time, like I have been standing awkwardly at a party for so long and I’m so tired and I just want to stop pretending to smile and making small talk, to go home and sleep for a thousand years and wake up to a fresh start.  Every time I go looking for a fresh start, I end up in exactly the place I began.  But isn’t that the way the universe works?
~
	
      It is half past four, and I have not started on the strawberries.  Louis has finished chopping the arugula and has started on the Egyptian pears.  The lights turn off, automatically, because violet streetlight is starting to leak through the windows.  Inside, it smells like eggs and leaves.  I wonder if I have been asleep my whole life. Sometimes I think I haven’t ever enjoyed one moment of my whole ridiculous existence.  
      Pourquoi restez-vous a regarder le ciel? Stephen is the first person to break the silence.  Why do you stand looking unto heaven?  The hour hand has, by some miracle, reached six, leaving me thirty minutes to wash and slice the strawberries lying victoriously in my corner.  Louis has slid the last sheet of pears in the oven and is helping Michel with the hazelnuts.  I cringe at the sight of them, lying naked and pale in mounds on the shelf. 
      Then, suddenly, the knife is out of my hand, my torso is on the floor, my lungs are out of my chest. I scream loud, silent obscenities at Louis. Something is very, very wrong with me, but I do not know what it is or who to tell about it.
      I feel alone in the loudest places, like restaurants and parties with loud music I do not want to be at, or classrooms where everyone is talking at once.  I feel more alone surrounded by people I know, than I do lying in my bed at night, feeling my pulse beat against the sheets like raindrops.  
      I walk over to the strawberries with a stride similar to that of one who is approaching the guillotine.  The strawberries waggle their rosy tongues like schoolchildren as I approach.  I pick up the first berry. It lies like a lump in my palm, mushy at the base and knuckly and grainy near the tip.  I dig my knife into the top, extract the conical part, and leave it on the counter.  With precision, the remainder is chopped into four equally sized pieces.  Each one is placed in a different ramekin.  The pile of fruit in front of me is the size of a mountain and I am a teardrop.  I used to think the worst thing in the world was not achieving success.  It’s not.  The worst feeling in the world is when the view isn’t as terrific as you thought it would be.
~
      By the fifty-first strawberry my legs are begging my torso to be horizontal.  My knife is an axe, and I hack off the flat part of each berry now, without thinking.  Red juice runs down the sides of my hand and into my jacket sleeve. It feels like the juice is pulverizing the electricity in my heart.
      It is Chef Rene’s wish that the sous chefs clear out before seven a.m, when he begins his work.  I think it’s the small act of magic he believes in, that there are four fairies that flutter in before dawn and everything is set up perfectly.  He does not want to know what mise en place means for the three a.m. sous chefs.  He has not watched Louis work on hollandaise, he does not know how many drops of sweat run off his long, bridge-like nose into each batch.  Thirty-two.  I have counted.
      When the ramekins are finally filled, I am horizontal on the tile, my pulse synchronized to the whir of Louis’ electric mixer.  Stephen bends down and shakes me, and when I stand up again he takes my hand.  For a moment I see the rest of my life like a skipping record, and for a flash there I am not lonely.  Then, just as suddenly, it is gone, and I am lying on a tile floor in a country four time zones away from the town I had my first kiss in, alone.
      The strawberries look good, Stephen says, and I don’t let go of his hand for a second.  Then he laughs, this beautiful deep throaty ring and my heart starts again.  What’s wrong? I whisper and I do want to know.  He picks a sliver up like it is moon dust.  You forgot to wash them, he whispers into my ear.  It is some kind of gentle only the French can do. He is twelve years old and has just been caught picking flowers from the principal’s garden.  I am sixteen lying facedown in a bathtub, wondering how long I can stay under. 
       I let him take me by the hand and lead me out the doors, into the kind of sunlight that makes trees disappear. 
      
En Passant
9-10





1