Chương 187: Three on the Podium

The spotlights came up again and turned the middle of the stage to daylight. Mario Benini pushed the covered plinth over to Chris, Ethan and Kira himself. There was a genuine, gratified smile on his face.

"My congratulations to the three of you." He shook each of their hands in turn.

"You have given this final — and the act of cooking itself — a new meaning." Then he took hold of the red cloth and pulled it away. An enormous trophy in solid silver, shaped like a burning flame, stood in front of the world. The Global Culinary Champion League championship trophy. The hall went up again.

"Now — will the champions, Team USA, take the podium that belongs to them!" Benini called. The three of them looked at each other, and none of them could hold the joy down. Side by side, one step at a time, they climbed onto the highest and brightest of the three blocks. The moment they were standing on it, the world seemed to become the backdrop behind them. Benini and the other four judges together put that heavy trophy into their hands.

The instant it landed, the cold, dense weight of the metal came up through Chris's palms and went through all of him. He looked down at the highest honor in cooking, at the names of past champions cut into it, at the light coming off it. And a great many things came back. The version of himself eliminated from Burning Kitchen over a simple potato purée, who couldn't accept it.

The version of himself in Le Château's back kitchen who peeled hundreds of pounds of potatoes a day until his fingers went numb and kept going anyway. The version of himself in New York running everywhere trying to build a team that could stand for America, doubted and laughed at. The version of himself in Paris, pushed to the wall by one formidable opponent after another, and cutting his way back out every time with his teammates beside him.

Every painful, lost, self-doubting hour of that road had turned into the weight of the object in his hands. He touched his breast pocket without thinking about it. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Inside it lay the brass tasting spoon Philip had given him. You brought me here. He said it silently to an old man far away in New York. You told me a cook's starting point isn't talent and it isn't glory.

It's a heart willing to bend down over a plate of potatoes.

"Chris. Say something." Ethan elbowed him and whispered it, still lit up. Chris came back to himself. Every person and every camera in the building was pointed at him. Benini was smiling and holding a microphone out. He drew a breath and took it. What was he supposed to say? Thank the judges. Thank the organizers. Thank his teammates. Thank everyone who'd backed them. All of it correct. All of it hollow. He looked out. In that crowd he found Sarah instantly.

She had her phone up and pointed at him, and her face was wet, and she was smiling harder than anybody in the building. He saw the French team's area, and Raphaël leaning in the doorway watching him from a distance with something complicated on his face that finally settled into peace. And he could almost see Vincent and the rest of them in the back of Le Château, crowded around a small television, applauding. And Gareth Vane, far away in the States, hammering the desk in his stream.

And the nameless old cleaner under the Eiffel Tower who had told him that only a flavor that gets inside a person makes them remember you for a lifetime. Every one of those faces and voices and stories gathered, finally, into one simple, true sentence. He brought the microphone up, and the arena went silent.

"We…" He started, hoarse and very clear.

"We didn't use the most expensive ingredients. We didn't use the most complicated technique." He paused and glanced at Ethan and Kira.

"We were just three real people." Short, plain — and it went into the crowd like a stone into water and put rings through everyone in it. It was true. One real person chasing scientific truth, who blamed himself for a mistake. One real person living inside her own art, who cried over somebody else's story. One real person caught between a system and himself, who had chosen in the end to connect everything through feeling. They weren't perfect. They made mistakes. They got nervous. They got frightened.

And they carried the strongest weapon there is: what they actually felt, as human beings. Chris finished and bowed deeply to the hall. Then he handed the microphone to Kira. She started, waved both hands in alarm, and tried to indicate that she didn't want to speak. Chris just looked at her, encouraging. She hesitated, and took it. She looked at the dark mass of people out there and her palms went wet. She opened her mouth and nothing came out.

A long moment later, in something barely above a whisper, she said one sentence.

"I… today I learned how to make an apple pie." Then her face went scarlet, roughly the color of the apples she'd cooked, and she pushed the microphone at Ethan as fast as she could. The hall was silent for one beat, and then broke into warm, kindly laughter and applause. Everybody had understood exactly what that sentence meant. Ethan took the microphone. He was a great deal less shy about it. He cleared his throat, hoisted the trophy over his head like a rock star, and roared at the building:"We are the champions!

Anybody want a drink? They're on me!" The place caught fire. Cheering, whistling, wave after wave. Chris looked at the two of them, one mortified and one showboating, and started laughing. This was his team. These were the people who had come to the top of the world with him. He took the trophy back off Ethan, and the three of them lifted it high above their heads together. Click. Click. Click. Below the stage, thousands of flashes went off at once.

And that image — three young people with nothing in common holding one trophy up between them — was fixed there for good. That night the photograph went around the world. The caption read: A Scientist, an Artist, and a Translator.