#nychef

So Carmy didn’t have to work at Empire.

He didn’t have to stay there when Chef insulted his cooking, cussed him out in passing, got more and more personal, made himself more imposing over Carmy’s shoulder, more cutting, more targeted, more violent, did everything in his power to get in Carmy’s head and entirely succeeded. He didn’t have to stay when Chef told him he was better off dead.

There were other restaurants.

But he wanted to be good. And maybe it started off slow. And it was making him better than good.

No matter what else it did to him, that life or death determination made him push himself into something extraordinary. He got good. He got excellent.

And his mom taught him that perfection can’t be achieved without self-sacrifice, and by fucking god did he give himself up to this thing.

And he just kept getting worse and worse, but it was making him better and better at it, pulling him in, and his meteoric upward momentum was too much to sacrifice.

He was throwing up every day before work. After, he would pass out with his wool jacket still on and only wake up after nightmares about the day before and the day after. Malnutrition breeds brain fog. They say being sleep deprived is as bad as being drunk. Momentum is a powerful beast.

So with everything fighting him, his teeth rotting with stomach acid, panic attacks burning up his lungs when he thought he would have a second to breathe, he takes paths of least resistance.

Chef’s voice intertwines with his own, inseparable. It gets harder to answer texts. He doesn’t want to lie to anyone. So he doesn’t.

He can leave. Chef is impossibly, gut-churningly close, insulting him from behind until it sounds like it’s coming from the back of his mind. The highest praise he could get from Chef was silence. It’s no way to live. This sway between becoming God or scum is no way to live. But he’s already here. He has momentum.

It’s easier this way. He tells himself it’s necessary. This place’s claws are deep into him, past the layer of sweat into his lungs, into his stomach, already torn through everything in his head.

So there’s some half-meaningless last text he sent months ago, the last text he sent to his family, to anyone. Since then, it’s been pure radio silence, static all the way through him.

It’s 2022. It’s for the best to stay away from people. Order groceries online. Let his license stay expired when he hasn’t used it in years. The world follows his isolation, smooths that path over for him.

So for months if not years, the only voices he hears are his own, tight, determined, desperate, and Chef’s.

He chose to stay here. It’s not like he’s never had bosses like this before. Chef stood impossibly tall over his shoulder, and Carmy decided ‘Yes. I can take this. I want to be here.’

So he’s here. Maybe it’s doing something to him. He’s less than 30, and his stomach is lined with ulcers. He keeps sleepwalking, waking in the hall to his apartment then at the edge between the sidewalk and the road. But he works at Empire. It’s the top of the world, the highest he can go.

And then, he finally picks up a call from Sugar. Mikey’s dead. The one that he did this to himself for, the one he did everything for, is dead.

Momentum keeps him going. He doesn’t know how.

It’s impossible to describe what everything does to him.

But he just keeps going.

He throws up every day before work, he has ulcers and panic attacks and nightmares, and it’s been so long since he talked to someone he doesn’t fantasize about burning alive, and he’s never going to work at his brother’s restaurant, and this thing is killing him slowly and painfully.

It takes the reading of Mikey’s will to change his course, break the momentum. Suddenly, leaving is the easiest thing in the world now that he’s responsible for The Beef.