Crave

Short Fiction by Cheech Sanchez

For Erika

It wasn't a real surprise that my epitaph read "At least He died happy."

Because the truth is, I did.

They said it was cardiac arrhythmia producing sudden death, caused by cocaine overdose (contrary to what you might be thinking of me already, I never knowingly touched the stuff). But that's the kind of superficial finding you come to expect from the folk at the coroner's office, who are used to dealing with the usual, dead junkie scum.

I'm here (in spirit) to tell my side of the story.

I died from eating.

Not the Lisa Sellers, I-eat-33,000-calories-a-day, kind of eating anyway. I wouldn't eat just ANY old thing. I wasn't obese. I didn't need a prying pole to get me out of bed in the morning. I could easily tie my own shoe laces. I could still see my cock when I looked down. I didn't have a cookie-filled gunt the size of a small chimpanzee hanging over my knees.  I didn't even eat that much. I just loved food. Good food. Top restaurants. Iron Chef. 3 Hats. I craved it.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what can make you lust after a piece of Adriano Zumbo's chocolate rose cake the way a piece of Adriano Zumbo's chocolate rose cake can - but it does. Unlike normal, I-could-eat-the-horse-AND-the-cart type of hunger, a food craving is an intense desire to eat a specific food. They say cravings are caused by vitamin deficiency, but if you've ever seen a pregnant women  demolish everything from peanut butter and a jar of pickles to talcum powder, you'll agree there really is no explaining it. That is, aside from the fact that whatever the cook puts in it that thing you desire must be really, really good. And - that a chef like that can leave you begging for more.

A while ago, before it got popular, I heard about a restaurant that served food like that - food so good people couldn't get enough. The kitchen was run by a mysterious chef known as The Captain and was located in a obscure little laneway in the heart of inner city Sydney (some food critics argued the locale was cashing in on Melbourne's culinary coolness - but I thought it just added to the mystique).

No one knew much about The Captain. Rumor had it he was 6'10", single and more handsome than Brad Pitt. Apparently he liked to party and by 21, he had a deviated septum as a result of a colorful apprenticeship spread across numerous Sydney kitchens. Thankfully he really was a talented chef, and after a couple of stints in rehab, he got lucky and landed a job with a celebrity chef in a very famous NYC kitchen. But The Captain was said to have a fiery temper, and after one too many gin and tonics, he had a disagreement with said celeb chef and got sent packing.

Back in Sydney, The Captain encountered some Japanese businessmen at a strip club who, after a night of sake and hookers, offered to back The Captain in his own culinary venture. Like the Banksy of the food world, The Captain had one condition - he would run the kitchen, so long as his real identity was kept secret.

The mystery surrounding the head chef only proved to make the restaurant more popular. People would line-up around the block for hours without a booking for the chance of a table, and maybe even catch a glimpse of The Captain. There were even customers who the staff referred to as kitchen rats - people who would come back night after night, despite the somewhat exuberant prices and waiting lists.

I was a kitchen rat.

The first time I went there was pure luck. I managed to blag a lunchtime table at reasonably short notice to impress one of my least favorite clients. This snake had been screwing me for weeks over budgets, and I needed a quick way to loosen his purse-strings. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and this guy was a tight-arsed fat fuck who was always stuffing his chubby face with filthy fast food. So I figured some quality culinary foreplay might do the trick. If he had a heart underneath all those scales, this was how I was going to find it.

My client didn't seem particularly impressed by the restaurant, but the food did the trick. After 3 courses, including a delicious organic pork belly with caramel vinegar main and pot de caramel with a caramel foam for dessert, the guy was eating out of my hand. Literally. We'd only had one beer each, but we were deliriously eating off each others plates, sharing desserts. And he went straight back to the office and signed off my new budget. And my boss signed off my pay rise.

Even though I'd got what I wanted, I couldn't get the tarte tartin off my mind. All I could think about was how fantastic the food was, and how I had to try every item on the menu. By the time I left the office that night, I'd already rung the restaurant hunting another booking. The  next booking they had available was for dinner and a week away. I took the table, and spent the next week more anxious than a teenage father at 38 weeks.

The day finally came and I was more excited than a zoophile at a petting zoo. I'd dropped into the restaurant a few days earlier so I could 'borrow' a menu, which I then spent a lot of time studying in the reading room in preparation. I'd decided exactly what I was going to eat - oysters to start, quail main and souffle for dessert.

I arrived right on time and breezed past the 40 deep queue towards the hostess who ushered me towards my table for one. The interior was dark and curious - which suited the place perfectly. My waiter was impeccable, and after telling him that I already knew what I would like to order, recommended an excellent wine to accompany my meal.

After two glasses of wine and end of the entrée, I was feeling giddy. In the 18th century, Casanova might have praised the aphrodisiac properties of oysters by eating 50 for breakfast each day, but I'd only eaten half a dozen. And I couldn't be drunk from two glasses of wine. The food must be really good, I thought.

I took a brief intermission between the entrée and main - I went outside for a cigarette. It was late and the lane way was deserted, except for a shadowy figure puffing on a smoke in the stock entry to the kitchen. I reached for my lighter, but I couldn't find it. I walked towards the figure in the stock entry to ask for a light. Before I had a chance, a flame stretched out of the shadows. He spoke in deep voice, husky from too many cigarettes and boozy nights.

"Enjoying the food?"

I nodded (mostly because I was tongue tied - this had to be The Captain).

"Try the raspberry sorbet."

Stubbing out his butt, he disappeared back inside.

My heart was pounding with excitement as I hurried back inside to my table. A personal recommendation from The Captain himself! When my waiter brought over my main, I asked for another glass of plonk and to change my dessert to the raspberry sorbet. He smiley wryly, like he knew something I didn't.

"Of course, Sir."

I scoffed that quail like it was the greatest Zinger burger I'd ever eaten. In fact, I was grateful the portion size was on the smaller size. There was no time to waste on enjoying each delicate bite,  I needed to get to the sorbet as quickly as possible - do not pass go, do not collect $200. Before I'd downed the last mouthful, I glared at my waiter until he came to take my plate. This was my message to him that I wanted my fucking sorbet, and I wanted it now.

I waited what seemed like an eternity for the waiter to come back. The room seemed to be moving in slow motion, but I was fidgeting like a 5 year old with A.D.H.D. I watched my waiter slug across the room from the kitchen, carrying my precious cargo. He placed it on the table in front of me.

"Compliments of The Captain."

It looked like a tiny piece of art created just for me. My own private Picasso to digest and keep inside me forever. It seemed a shame to destroy something so beautiful, but I was sure it would taste better than it looked. I took small bites, eating slowly, savoring the taste. I felt like I was the only person in the room, and each bite was better than the last.

Fast forward a few months. It was lucky I got that pay rise, because my eating habits had become, well, a habit. I was going to the restaurant 2-3 times a week. I was booking multiple reservations months in advance, and I was well and truly a regular kitchen rat now. The waiters knew me by name. I'd tried everything on the menu. But I'd never seen The Captain again since the second time I'd eaten there.

It was getting harder and harder to make a reservation. Bookings were full up months and months in advance, partly because the eccentric chef had become a minor celebrity thanks to his popular range of affordable knife blocks and stints on reality cooking tv shows (where he'd wear a mask to hide his identity - he was now know as the Kitchen Stig). His kitchen had become the place to eat. 

It was Thursday night and I had a booking for 8pm. I worked back at the office so I could easily make it on time. As I wandered through the city towards the restaurant, I thought about how sad it was that so many people would never get to taste this wonderful food and how lucky I was to eat there so often. As usual, there was a huge line-up outside, which I walked right past. Inside, the staff greeted me like an old friend, and sat me at my favorite table - one with a clear view of the kitchen. The place was busy. Once seated, I ordered some wine and sat back to admire the view. To my surprise, The Captain was in the kitchen.

"Would you like to hear the about the special?"

I'd been coming here for months but they'd never had a special.

"Yes, I'll have the special!"

I didn't even wait to hear what it was and I didn't care. It was something new! Plus - I was so hungry I could eat the table. So I order the black angus tartare and the fig ice cream too. My heart started to pound. Sweat dripped down my forehead. I readjusted my semi-hard self and found myself wishing all food got me this pumped.

My waiter brought out the tartare, which I wolfed down. Eating it seemed just like tearing at raw meat, minus the blood. I felt something like a crazy person, sitting there with my napkin tucked into my necktie, knife and fork at the ready, licking my lips.

The waiter walked towards me, plate in hand. Everything slowed down to almost stopped. I don't think I'd ever want to eat something so badly (the food, not the waiter). As the plate moved towards the table, my eyes grew bigger, and bigger in anticipation of what was going to be on the plate. My chest was pumping so hard I thought it might explode.

"Compliments of The Captain."

The second time the Captain had sent me a special dish, and this time it was an egg. This has to be one of those molecular gastronomy things, I thought. I took my spoon and delicately cracked the surface. A little liquid oozed out, but there was something inside. I broken a little more shell off. There was a baby duck inside! A balut! A balut is considered something of a taboo in western countries - but considered a delicacy in the east. An egg of darkness, balut can strike fear in the heart and queeziness in the stomach of even the most hardened culinary adventurer. A balut is a boiled, fertilized duck egg containing an almost fully formed duck, said to aphrodisiac properties. The best time to cook them is around 15-17 days old - when they still don't show a beak. But if it wasn't boiled on your plate, it'd be hatching in a few days.

I sucked the life out of that egg.

It was the best thing I'd ever tasted.

But it sucked the life out of me. Maybe I'd eaten too quickly, because I was sweating like a pig, my heart was thumping and indigestion rushed through my chest. I hadn't felt rushes up my spine this good since an E I took back in the 90s (of course, this was my atora spasming). The rushes moved to my sternum, throat and jaw. I stood up from my chair.

"I'm having a fucking heart attack!"

And that was it. I collapsed in heap on the floor, and the staff rang 000. But it was too late. I was gone.

But it's not the end. As I was pronounced dead at the scene, the restaurant turned into a shit fight of police, ambos, staff and patrons all clambering to get an eye-full of my crumpled dead body. At the same time, the kitchen was all but deserted. All but one, that is. Out in his secret backroom 'workshop', The Captain was calmly racking up lines of the left over cocaine he hadn't laced the food with that night. Any he couldn't hover up his nose, he was planning to flush, along with a few other choice ingredients he hadn't used yet - ketamine, M.D.M.A, ice.

No wonder his food was to die for.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.