The Most Perfect Steak

You Have Ever Seen in Your Life

            by Daniel Heinrich

 

            It is the most perfect steak you have ever seen in your life but it is almost not worth putting up with the restaurant to get it.  There is seating for three and you are the only one dining in tonight.  The French-Canadian chef is singing poorly about how the girls swoon when he shows them his spoon and if he keeps it up you might have to pick up your knife and put him down.  It is not everyday that you can afford such a high quality piece of meat and you should be able to eat it in peace.  You seriously consider pressing your knife into your chef until you realize that he towers a solid foot and a half above you and could probably throw you across the street if he took the fancy.  Another, smaller French-Canadian wearing a green sock hat, or a toque as they are called in Canada, emerges from the backroom and storms up to the chef screaming at him in the most prissy french imaginable.  The chef, with a somber expression on his face, watches the other man turn on his heel and march into the back room, still ranting.  He stops singing and clutches a large, heavy meat tenderizer in one hand before briskly but silently following him.  You take several more bites of steak which are interrupted by seven or eight swift and loud bangs of something metal against something soft and the chef returns, whistling his song while he cleans off the tenderizer with a small towel.  You look at him and he looks at you and asks you how the steak is.

            “Great.”

            “Ah, magnifique, I love people who love my food.”

            “Don’t take criticizism too well do you?”

He pauses for several seconds and casts you a suspicious glance, says that he must close the restaurant early tonight and asks rather gruffly if you would mind taking the rest of your steak to go.  You take another swig from the flask you brought in with you and say that you have to be on your way anyways, which is a half truth.  You have work tonight.

            You step out into the night air and pause to smell the sweet scent of end of the day lilacs which the flower stall on the corner forgot to pack up that evening.  You decide they won’t miss a few lilacs too terribly and pick some up as you walk by.  You hear a loud bang from the restaurant as you step into your car.  You drive away.

 

            It is half past eight and the clock isn’t slowing down.  You were supposed to be at work an hour ago and the boss won’t be happy.  Rocco won’t cover for you, you never got along, so you just have to have a little luck.  Maybe the boss is sick today.  Maybe he won’t notice the time.  Maybe he died, after all, he is pushing eighty three.  You pause before opening the door, just to collect yourself, and then calmly walk in.  The boss is sitting at his desk, wheezing and coughing and almost not noticing you.

            “I thought I made it quite clear that if you were late one more–”

            Suddenly the window breaks, his face goes pale, his expression goes numb and his body goes limp.  He is no longer wheezing and an orange dart is sticking out of the back of his neck.  With a sudden surge of adrenaline you jump to your feet and peer out the window into the building across the street where a blowgun is pointing at your heart.  Right before it fires you fall to the ground and hear the dart stick into the wall behind you and the only thing on your mind is to get to your car.  You try to get up but something inside you tells you to stay down.  You listen to yourself breath to keep your mind off your impending death and after what you figure to be an hour you pull Marie out of her holster and fire three shots through the window while dashing out the door, slamming it behind you.  A thump on the door says that you narrowly escaped the fate that your boss did not and you run.

            Once safely behind the wheel and cruising away from work you have a chance to reflect.  Where was Rocco?

 

            Rocco’s apartment is on the fifth floor.  Utilizing your experience from years in the industry you let yourself in.  The only light from his four room apartment is from the kitchen and you smell a pasta fazule one the stove, he always had a thing for pasta fazule.  Rocco is hunched over a coffee and watching a game show that you are not familiar with on a small tv which rests at the other end of the table.  He yells the answer to the question that the contestants are trying to answer as you slide into the kitchen and send a quick, fierce blow to the back of his head.

            “You were wrong.”

            When he comes to you ask him who did it and he says he doesn’t know anything.  You tell him that if he doesn’t answer now you will have to take out your knife.  He still won’t talk.  As you begin to shave the muscle off of his forearm he breaks down and gives a name seconds before an orange dart crashes through the window and perches in his neck.  Angelo.

            It can’t be Angelo, he’s only a boy; he barely comes up past your waist.  However, he has always been an ambitious one.  He always volunteers for the jobs none of the other boys want to take, and he reminds you of yourself in that respect, he even looks a bit like you.

            As you exit the building you hear an all too familiar whistling and feel a sharp prick.  An orange dart has nestled into your left hand and a creeping numbness climbs up your arm.  As the world around you gets blurry you pull the dart out of your hand.  Your left arm becomes uncharacteristically heavy and pulls you the ground.  The last thing you see is a kick in the face.

 

            The first thing you notice when you wake up is that you can’t see out of your right eye.  The second thing is a remarkably large furnace across the room from you with a roudy fire jumping around inside.  Half the floor is concrete and the other half is just upturned dirt, as though it had recently been dug in.  The only light not provided by the furnace is  seeping in from a window near the ceiling.  You can not stand up.  A door opens behind you and a man you have never seen before walks into the room and just stares at you with a thoughtful expression for several minutes.  He then starts to roll up his sleeves and asks in a Russian accent whether or not you have to use the rest room.  Suddenly you have to go.

            “No,” you bluff.  He says that you can use the toilet right after you tell him where the Burlough emerald is.  After not answering he swiftly punches you in the chest and you can not remember ever being punched so hard before.  You fall over backwards in your chair and hit your head on the concrete floor.  You can’t breathe and it is getting harder to stay conscience.  You wet yourself.  He slowly walks back out of the room and when he returns it is with a knife.  He holds the knife with two fingers above your face and starts to let it slip.  You pass out.

            When you wake up the Russian is gone and an attractive woman is sitting in your now dry lap.  You are not wearing any pants.

            “You know what really drives me crazy?”  She asks in a thick, Russian accent.

            “What?”

            “The Burlough emerald.”  And she stands up and provocatively takes several steps away from you, accentuating her heart shaped derriere.

            “You know what drives me crazy?” You ask.

            “What?”

            “Women with big butts.”

            She slowly walks over to you and leans towards your face and just when you think that she is going to kiss you she draws a large syringe out of her purse filled with an unfriendly liquid and stabs it into your arm.  She wishes you a good night before she presses down on the syringe.

 

            When you awake it is fully dressed and in a bed in a room with no windows.  You sit up and the first thing you notice is that the Russian man is waiting by the only door.  The second thing you notice is that you are missing half of your left ring finger along with both of your middle ones.  Instinctively, you reach for Marie but find her missing along with your knife.  The Russian apologizes for the ordeal that he put you through and explains that someone had recently stolen a stone of immeasurable monetary and sentimental value from one of his superiors and that person was believed to have been in your family.  The real thief was caught trying to pawn it in China Town and would you like to see him?  You tell him to put the thief in the room with the furnace and to not skimp on the knots.  He puts Marie and your knife at the end of the bed and says he will return for you in twenty minutes.

            You are not surprised to see Angelo tied up in the same spot and chair that you yourself were bound in all too recently.  He says nothing to you and you say nothing to him but you each lock gazes and you see no fear in his eyes.  You lean forward and give him a kiss, then walk across the room and open the gate of the furnace, which still has an eager fire dancing around inside.  You walk back over to Angelo and lift up the chair, carrying it over to the furnace.  You tell him he is lucky that the Russians are not dealing with him before placing him into the fire, closing the gate behind him.

 

            They wouldn’t do it for a lesser man, but for you the Russians want to make amends and they ask you how they can do it..  You tell them that you need a steak and you tell them where they can get you one.  They blindfold you and lead you out of the building and into a car.  The blind fold is not removed until after the car arrives at it’s destination.  The Russian man opens the door for you and passes you a large roll of bills.  He then nods farewell and leaves you in front of a small restaurant that only has seats for three.  When you enter, the chef is singing about how the girls want to be his wife when he shows them his knife but stops when he sees your face.  You sit down and watch as he prepares the most perfect steak you have ever seen in your life.