On the kitchen island, I set out four bowls on top of plates, and filled each with the rice, curry, and sliced chicken topping. Then I folded pieces of roti to set on each plate beside the curry. Just as I did so, two more staff members I hadn’t even known were in the house entered the kitchen.
“Are they seated?” Ali asked.
A young man, barely in his twenties, nodded, so I went ahead and prepared a quenelle of sorbet on a porcelain soup spoon for each diner.
“For regular service, the waitstaff will run the plates,” Ali explained to me.
“In that case, these go out first,” I told the guy and girl, pointing them to the sorbet spoons.
They each took two and left the kitchen.
“I’ll have you join us with the main course to briefly explain the dish,” Ali said to me.
“Is there time to freshen up before I meet them?” I glanced at my reflection in the stainless steel door of the freezer. “I look hideous.”
My hair was a frizzy mess and I had curry splatters on my jeans. Not the best first impression to make on my new employers.
Ali gave me an appraising glance and barely concealed her grimace. “You’ll be fine. Keep your words brief and to the point. Mrs. Hawthorne hates rambling. And speak up. No muttering. Other than that . . .” She grabbed a napkin and wiped a spot of bright orange curry from my cheek. “You’ll be fine.”
Every time she saidfine, I felt my knees buckle.
A couple of minutes later, the waitstaff returned with the empty sorbet spoons. That was our cue.
Ali set her bowl aside and quickly dabbed her face with a paper towel, straightening her posture as she took two bowls of curry. I followed her with the other two, back through the staff corridor to the formal dining room, where the rustic decor continued. The main feature of the room was a solid oak table that might’ve come from the brother of the tree that gave up the front door. At the far end of the table, an older man with graying hair, who I took to be Mr. Hawthorne, sat at the head in a green quarter-zip sweater over an Oxford shirt. He had a friendly smile that lit up at the arrival of the main course.
“Well, doesn’t that smell great!” he said, watching us enter.
Ali set a bowl in front of Mr. Hawthorne as I placed one in front of his wife at the opposite end of the table.
“Curry?” Mrs. Hawthorne was in her early sixties, an immaculately polished, blonde woman in a black turtleneck with piercing blue eyes and an angular face. She glanced down her nose at the food and sniffed.
I wasn’t sure how to interpret the reaction, except that a bubble formed in my throat and I suddenly had the uncontrollable urge to cough. Which is just about the worst first impression you can make at a meal service.
“Remember that lamb curry we had in Amsterdam last year,” Mr. Hawthorne said. “Incredible.”
“I remember you spent the whole trip in the hotel room with a terrible flu,” his wife remarked flatly.
“Yes, but the lamb curry made the trip worth it,” he answered with a laugh.
I held my breath as I set a plate in front of the younger blonde at the table, perhaps in her thirties, with her hair in perfect ski-bunny curls. Their daughter, if the family features were any tell. She wore a white, long-sleeved cashmere crop top with matching leggings and had her face buried in her phone, thumbs moving furiously over the screen.
“Dad always gets sick when we travel,” she said. “I told you to drink more green juice.”
Relieved to have delivered their food safely, I glanced quickly at the fourth member of the party and nearly passed out then and there. The bowl wobbled loudly on the plate as I let go. Because seated directly across from the daughter was a thirty-something man with dark blond hair and two dimples that froze mid-smile and faltered as our eyes met across the dinner table.
“Why does the color have anything to do with it?” Mr. Hawthorne joked, earning an eyeroll from his daughter.
Finally, Ali’s eyes sought mine and widened, urging me to get on with it.
“Y-you have a massaman curry,” I told the table, voice trembling. I cleared my throat, but nothing would dislodge the boulder that was growing larger just behind my tongue.
Charles’s eyes locked with mine in a brief moment of mutual horror before we both quickly looked away. I felt the blood drain from my face. My vision went blurry and a loud ringing filled my ears.
“Um . . . served over white rice with, uh, spinach and potato,” I fumbled to continue nervously. “On top is gochujang-marinated chicken katsu.”
“Please enjoy,” Ali said, her expression urging me to back the hell away from the table so the daughter could pick up her utensils without me practically standing in her curry.
As delicately as possible, I bolted out of the dining room and practically sprinted to the kitchen. Ali entered a moment later, her face puzzled.
