Under the Table Read Online Free Page A

he traveled to Chicago to eat at Charlie Trotter’s restaurants. Tucker went straight from high school to a job on the assembly line cranking out car parts, and buying a house in the small suburb he grew up in.
    Tucker came from a long line of autoworkers. His entire family—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings—were employed by General Motors at one time or another, before the industry took a dive and layoffs became more common than paychecks. When Tucker was laid off himself, he went into the repo business, reclaiming the cars, trucks, refrigerators, televisions, even the bedroom furniture of people who believed the economy would be golden forever, or at least until they caught up on their payments. It was nasty work, and Tucker disliked having to tow away the hopes and dreams of his neighbors. But it wasn’t until he stumbled upon the Food Network one day after work that he began to dream of doing something different.
    Mesmerized by the antics of Emeril Lagasse, and finding a hero in the macho posturings of Bobby Flay (an alum of our alma mater), Tucker began to believe that his hobby of fixing elaborate meals for his friends and family could be a career. He got a job slinging hash in a restaurant at night for the necessary restaurant experience whilehe saved up money from his day job until he was accepted at The Institute.
    By the time Tucker came east, he had a wife who worked in a GE refrigerator plant, and two kids under the age of three. Tucker was a man with a lot of responsibilities, and he was taking a gamble that school and the six months he would be out of work would eventually pay off. But Tucker loved to cook and he dreamed big, and those things, more than anything else, were what we had in common.
    I’d attended a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts before settling down in New York and finding work in publishing. I had a nice apartment and a lovely, not to mention very handsome, boyfriend, but I wasn’t ready for the sort of responsibility Tucker handled—forget kids, it was enough for me to share ownership of our cat, Spankie.
    It was 8:00 am sharp on our very first day of class, and as I walked into the large room that was dazzlingly bright with the glow of many overhead fluorescent lights bouncing off the stainless steel workstations, ovens, pots, pans, sinks, and even the tools of my classmates, I saw that Tucker had taken up a spot at the front of the room, closest to our chef-instructor’s dark green marble–topped lecture station. While I had been hoping for that spot myself, I was content to take the open spot across from him, determined that the foot that separated us, and put him closer to Chef, would not hinder my learning curve. And my parents thought I was too competitive. If I were competitive, I would have created a diversion and just snatched his spot when he was momentarily distracted. Okay, maybe I was a little bit competitive, but as it turned out, so was Tucker.
    We eyed each other warily for a moment or two, and then I decided to introduce myself.
    â€œHi, I’m Katie, nice to meet you,” I said as I juggled my toolbox, knife kit, neckerchief, notebook, and textbook from one hand to the other, trying to get a hand free to shake with.
    â€œPleasure, ma’am,” said Tucker, as he grabbed a few things frommy failing grasp, setting them gently on the table, before he shook my hand. He had large hands that ended in blunt fingers, I noticed, and they were well scarred from doing manual labor. Despite their size, Tucker was not a tall man, and I looked him right in the eye as we shook hands. They were nice eyes, their corners upturned in a way that made him look almost elfin, and he had the beginnings of smile lines fanning out toward his temples. He was a few years older than I, it seemed, probably in his thirties, and it looked like he had been hard at work for most of his adult life. His small nose was