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other in flat northern tones. “All right, but what’s gourmet about it? I still say you can’t beat a Nando’s.”
    â€œNando’s?” said the other man, stooping to read the measuring scales on account of his gangliness. “It’s not chicken.”
    â€œOf course it is,” said the first chef. “What is it, then? It’s not fucking Poulet de Bresse, but it is chicken.”
    â€œHello,” I said. “I’m here about the job.”
    Both chefs looked up in unison. Their eyes were ringed with shadows, their faces gray and hollowed. I thought I saw, just possibly, the tiniest hint of amusement somewhere in their features, a dark and unknown joke slowly tickling them.
    â€œYou need to see the chef,” said the northerner hereafter known as Racist Dave. “Have a look in the bar.”
    The taller man, who would later introduce himself as Dibden, nodded in sympathy or agreement.
    They did not stop working, but their eyes followed me past the walk-in fridge and out of the room. The bar and restaurant area was at the end of a narrow corridor. To the left was a small box room stacked with rice and flour and pulses, the dry store. To the right were stairs leading to the cellar. Down there, I would soon learn, was the office where Bob reviewed the closed-circuit television system to see if his chefs were stealing from him; also the alcohol reserves, and the enormous chest freezers for storing meat and occasionally less reputable items.
    The main room was a handsome old-fashioned saloon bar with frosted windows, dark chocolate wood and a sad, lingering smell of old beer and spilled coffee. Small taxidermied animals—a pheasant, an otter, a mangy-looking fox—sat around the room on high plinths. Above the till was a silver statue of a swan that looked expensive. In the middle of this room, his great bulk balanced ridiculously on a stool at the bar, Bob, my future tormentor, surveyed a sheaf of bills. He looked glum. His head, part bald, part shaved, stuck out of him like a bollard. Gravity had gathered the fat on his face into folds around his jowls and throat but left his cheeks and nose sheer. Eyes fell fast from that face, but they got a soft landing. His own eyes were large and liquid-dark, feminine. He regarded me unhappily as I explained why I was there.
    â€œThere’s no bar work going,” he said, “but I need more bodies in the kitchen. People keep leaving.”
    He looked at me as if daring me to say something about it. I remained silent.
    â€œWhat do you know about The Swan?” he asked.
    I knew it was a poem by Baudelaire. We had studied it in my modernism class.
    . . . its feet
    With finny palms on the harsh pavement scraped,
    Trailing white plumage on the stony street,
    In the dry gutter for fresh water gaped.
    But something told me Bob would not appreciate the allusion.
    â€œNot a lot,” I said instead.
    Bob dug about in the sheaf of papers and drew up my CV.
    â€œThis says you’ve got an English degree,” he said, studying it briefly, “but it doesn’t say anything about kitchen work.”
    I agreed. Bob looked at me. He was still unhappy, possibly bored.
    â€œLet me see your hands,” he said.
    â€œSorry?”
    â€œYour hands. Let me see them.”
    Slowly I raised my hands to Bob. He looked and I looked with him. And I saw for the first time the soft frowning palms and feckless fingers, the creamy, pampered complexion of the skin. I felt ashamed and a little cheated. Could these really be mine? Bob grunted and held up his hands. They were huge misshapen clods, scorched and scarred by every blade and element known to man. Around the thumb and forefinger of each hand the skin wascalloused and dead, the color and texture of pumice. On his left hand, a livid gash that ran the length of his heart line winked beneath a soggy blue Band-Aid. The tip of the middle finger had been sliced clean off.