Chương 75: Those Three Ruined Fish

"Fish course, Mediterranean sea bass, first ticket, four!" the server's call came in.

"Heard! Four!" Jack answered loud, his voice steady and strong. He seasoned the four sea bass fillets with salt and pepper in a practiced motion, then laid them skin-down—almost all at once—into four pans preheated until they smoked faintly blue. Sssss— A crisp hiss filled the kitchen, carrying the rich aroma of butter and fish. Jack's focus was total. He didn't even need a spatula to press them down; from experience alone he could tell the skin was forming a perfect golden crust.

A minute and a half later, a flick of his wrist sent the four fillets arcing gracefully through the air and landing flipped, neat. Thirty more seconds, and the pan's residual heat carried the flesh to exactly the right doneness.

"Pick up!" He slid the seared bass onto a tray lined with paper. Chris took over at once, setting the fillets onto plates already laid with their sides, and Marcus quickly spooned warm lemon butter sauce over each.

"Table one fish, go!" The whole sequence ran in one breath, the coordination seamless. Over the next dozen-odd minutes, Jack worked like a precisely programmed robot, searing sea bass batch after batch. His rhythm grew faster, his confidence climbing with every flawless plate. But crisis always slips in at the moment a man relaxes most.

"Round five, eight!" Jack was running eight pans at once—the limit of his ability. With one cold fillet after another going in, the temperature in a few of the pans had quietly begun to drop, no longer as high as he'd assumed. But he was too confident to catch the subtle change in time. When he pulled this batch of sea bass, he himself saw no problem. But at the pass, where Chris kept the final watch, his eyes changed in an instant.

"Stop!" His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an authority that brooked no argument. Marcus, mid-pour with the sauce, froze, his hand stopped in midair. Jack froze too, looking at him, baffled.

"What is it?" Chris didn't answer. He nudged three of the bass fillets gently apart with a fork. The problem was laid bare—the skin had gone yellow, yes, but it hadn't formed that crisp hard crust; it lay limp and soft against the flesh. Worse, in trying to make up for the weak skin, the sear had run slightly long, and the edges of the flesh had gone faintly past, no longer the ideal tender. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"These three—no good." Chris's verdict was simple and cold. Jack's face flushed crimson in an instant, a surge of heat rushing to his head.

"You say no good and it's no good? Do you have any idea what situation we're in? There's three of us! Redo three fillets and every ticket behind it gets dragged down! The guests will complain!"

"If these three garbage fillets go out, the guests will complain too." Chris met Jack's eyes head-on, not yielding an inch.

"Our goal is zero negatives. Out of two hundred guests, if even three taste this, we lose. There's no room to negotiate. Redo them."

"You—!" Jack's fury caught fully now; he felt his craft had been insulted. He slammed the spatula down on the counter with a tremendous clang. The air in the whole kitchen seemed to freeze. In the instant before Jack was about to blow, Chris grabbed his arm—hard. He pulled Jack aside and lowered his voice to a volume only the two of them could hear.

"Jack, look at me. The day of the restaurant takeover, you trusted me once, and we won. Now I need you to trust me one more time." There was no blame in his voice, only a heavy trust.

"You're the best meat cook on this team. I know you can do it perfectly. Don't let that one percent of error ruin our ninety-nine percent of work." Chris's grip was strong. His words were stronger. The fury in Jack's chest, faced with that, deflated like a punctured balloon in an instant. He thought of the restaurant takeover—how Chris had dragged the whole Blue Team back out of hell in a hopeless spot. He thought of how, designing this menu, Chris had handed the most critical, most central task to him.

That was the feeling of being trusted. He drew a deep breath, his chest heaving hard a few times, then nodded heavily.

"Okay." He said only the one word, then turned and quietly took three fresh sea bass fillets from the chiller and started a new pan. Chris let go of his arm and went straight back to the pass.

"Marcus, clear those three problem fillets! Set up three new plates!" In the three minutes Jack took to redo the fish, the work at the pass fell almost entirely on Chris alone. He had to receive Jack's other finished fish, sauce them fast, set the sides, and direct the runners to the right tables, all at once. His brain ran like a supercomputer at full tilt, juggling several tasks at the same time. [System prompt: multitasking under high-pressure conditions. Process-management experience +3, slight increase in Stress Tolerance proficiency.] Three minutes later, Jack carried over three perfect sea bass. The skin gold and crisp, the heat coming off them palpable from a step away.

"Here." He handed the plates to Chris. Chris glanced at them and nodded.

"Good. That's the standard." The crisis was over. The overall rhythm had been set back three minutes, but they'd held the line on quality. All of it had been taken in by Vane, patrolling the back kitchen. He'd seen Jack's mistake, seen the clash between the two—and more, seen how Chris had defused the conflict and held the standard. His face still showed nothing. But as he turned to leave, no one noticed the faint, all-but-imperceptible lift at the corner of his mouth.

Chris didn't know he'd just passed an invisible test. He knew only that the battle of the main course was about to begin.

"All hands, heads up! Fish course is winding down! Switch to the main—filet mignon!" His voice rang through the kitchen again.

"Jack, how's your state?"

"Couldn't be better!" Jack shot back, his voice full of the relief of a man who'd just escaped disaster, the fight in him relit. He knew that if Chris hadn't stopped him just now, the mistake he'd made would have been beyond saving.