Chương 189: Sarah's Exclusive

The next day, in a hotel suite in Paris looking out over the Seine. Sarah had her recording gear set up. Across from her, in ordinary clothes, sat Chris. Out of the whites he'd lost some of the edge he carried on a competition floor and gained something easier, a kid from down the street. Sunlight came through the tall windows and lay across him, and he looked completely relaxed. This was her exclusive with the new world champion, for her column.

"So, Mr. World Champion," Sarah smiled and hit record and opened in her most professional voice, "a night has passed. How does it feel? Any sense yet that you conquered the world?" Chris laughed and shook his head into the sofa cushions.

"No. It feels… unreal. Like a very long dream. I'm faintly worried I'll wake up and still be in the basement at Le Château peeling potatoes."

"That would be a nightmare." It was easy between them — less an interview than two friends talking.

"Let's go back to the beginning." Sarah put the smile away and went to work." Burning Kitchen. What did that elimination mean to you?"

"It meant everything started." He didn't have to think.

"Before that I believed cooking was about talent, about inspiration, about making a dish that would stun a judge. Losing told me I was wrong. Cooking is fundamentals first. It's about how much time and effort you'll put into the most basic and most boring thing there is."

"So you went to Le Château. The legendary boot camp."

"I did. And the first thing I learned there wasn't sauce and it wasn't plating. It was how to peel a potato. Twelve, fourteen hours a day, potatoes and nothing else. I genuinely thought I was going insane."

"What kept you there?" He was quiet for a moment.

"Philip," he said.

"He told me every potato has its own life and its own story. Only when you've learned to respect it and listen to it do you have any chance of becoming a cook."

"Listening to ingredients. That's your philosophy, isn't it?"

"You could put it that way." He thought about it.

"I'd rather call it translation. I've never felt like a creator. I feel like a translator. I take what an ingredient is trying to say and turn it into flavor and feeling a person can understand. I take the ideas of cooks with completely different styles — Ethan and Kira — and translate them into one coherent dish. In the final I even tried to translate the stories inside five people's memories." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"And you succeeded. Spectacularly." Sarah said.

"What's the most important quality for a translator?"

"Empathy," Chris said.

"Being willing to put down your own pride and your own assumptions and actually try to understand what's in front of you. Whether that's an ingredient, a teammate, or the person eating."

"Tell me about your team." She changed direction.

"Ethan and Kira. How did you take two people with nothing in common and make a championship team out of them?" Chris smiled.

"I didn't make anything out of them. I let them be themselves."

"Ethan is fire. Science, extreme precision, explosive power. Kira is water. Art, empty space, stillness. All I did was give them a vessel that let water and fire collide and coexist at the same time."

"They're both geniuses." There was real admiration in his voice.

"I'm just the man who got lucky enough to stand between them."

"You're the captain. You're the spine of that team." Sarah looked at him.

"At the most important moment of that final it was your bowl of congee and your mousse of pasta that held the line. It was your sentence — we were just three real people — that defined the win. You matter more than you think." Chris didn't argue. He accepted it with a smile. The interview ran past an hour. They covered a great deal: potatoes at Le Château, the apple pie in the final, the day the system woke up, what he had finally decided cooking was. At the end, Sarah switched the recorder off.

"Right. The official part's over." She stretched.

"This is private time now." She looked at him, and her expression got complicated.

"So. That question about the future. You really don't have an answer?" Chris knew she wasn't only asking about his career. He looked out at the Seine, moving and bright under the sun.

"I really don't," he said quietly.

"That competition took everything I had. I need time to think about what kind of cook I want to be, and what kind of life I want."

"Will you… come back to the States?" He turned and looked at her. He saw the hope in her face, and under it, something like nerves. And he thought that maybe he did have an answer, even if it was still out of focus.

"I will," he said.

"When I've rested, I'll come back." Her eyes lit.

"Then—" She hesitated, and made herself ask.

"Could we get dinner? Not an interview. Just us." Chris smiled. He stood, crossed to her, and gently tucked a strand of hair that had come loose back behind her ear.

"Of course." His voice was warm and completely certain.

"I'll call you when I'm home." Sarah went red. She nodded and said nothing else. Some things don't need confirming out loud.

"Oh — one more thing." She sat up as though remembering.

"Last question. For the end of my column."

"Go ahead."

"If you had to sum up the whole road, from being eliminated to winning a world championship, in one sentence—" she looked into his eyes "—what would you say?" Chris thought about it for a long time. A great many images went through his head. Finally he lifted his head and gave her an answer that could not have been simpler.

"I just kept cooking."

"I didn't stop." Sarah stared at him. And then she understood exactly how much weight was in it. He hadn't stopped. Not while he was peeling potatoes. Not while people were telling him he wasn't good enough. Not when he was pushed to the wall with nowhere left to go. And he wasn't going to stop now that he'd won either. That was Chris White. That was the whole story of a champion. Sarah smiled at him, and it came from somewhere real.

"Thank you, Chris. That's the best interview I've ever done."