Two Chef!

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Tim rocketed to his feet from his chair in the television studio audience and stared in horror.

He’d been anonymously given a ticket to the sugar competition show, a thousand dollars, a fake beard, and a Yankees ball cap. The note with it had been simple, “Stay until the end. Don’t look away. Get a thousand more.”

And he’d done it despite the show’s early hour and his total disinterest. Sugar sculpture? People gave a rat’s a*s about sugar sculpture? But he needed the money bad for tuition and rent.

Now he couldn’t look away if he wanted to.

The blood splattered across the television studio.

The chef’s gaping wounds, cut deep by knife-points of sugar towers, pumped and spewed.

One competitor screamed and ran. The other stumbled back against his workstation to vomit out his guts and knocked the crystalline reproduction of Nemo to the floor.

The massive sugar-built anemone hit the concrete and shattered like a bomb. Bits and pieces scattered all the way to Tim’s second row seat.

The judges, now peppered with shards, were trying to take cover behind their table. The tall brunette in the center offered the audience a major thonged full moon as she dove under the table. Some people just shouldn’t try to wear things like that.

Most of the audience screamed and stampeded to the exit doors.

Except one.

A seriously cute blond in the first row jumped to her feet and rushed toward the bleeding man.

Tim had watched enough CSI—when he should have been working on the fashion design portfolio that was his college senior project—to know the man was past helping and no one should disturb the crime scene.

He leapt over the seats and managed to catch the woman three steps before she reached the dying chef.

She cried out one last time as Tim turned her away from the pumping blood and into his arms. She buried her face into his shoulder and wept hysterically.

He held her and watched the last of the life drain out of the chef’s straining eyes even as the studio’s staff rushed to help.

Holy f**k! Death was so…so…real!

Tim had never expected to see violent death any closer than his television screen.

The guy didn’t look all that old, even had a total babe for a girlfriend, and now his a*s was fried but good. Death was supposed to happen to old people.

Shit, Tim! You wanna be some Page Six designer, you better get your a*s in gear. Just might have less time than you think.

He’d always known something was missing from his designs. And now, as the dead-man’s blood flowed out slower and slower, Tim could see that his clothes were no more than a television image of a much harsher, more vibrant reality. A month left and he’d have to redo his whole design portfolio, but it would totally kick a*s.

For now he simply watched reality unfold—rather “leak”—out of the chef’s multiple wounds visible over the shoulder of the weeping woman he held. He shifted a little so that she wouldn’t notice his body’s inevitable reaction to holding her.

Inside Tim’s baseball hat, a small camera peeked out at the base of the “K” in Yankees. He’d trailed the wire down through his hair, inside the back of his shirt, and to the phone in his pocket that, per instructions, he’d turned on at the start of the show. He knew enough to see that the icon on the phone screen logged onto an account in the data cloud, even if he couldn’t see which one. He’d been streaming the video from the camera since the very beginning of the show.

And now he understood why he was here. In minutes, the video would be gone from the cloud. The on-line account deleted. So, he waited until the dude was bled all the way out and the pool of blood was flowing toward them.

Man! So much blood.

He noted the attributes: shine, richness of tone, flow and movement… He waited it out because his unknown benefactor had to get full value; he needed that second thousand dollars to redo his entire line even more than to keep his apartment.

When there was truly no more to see, he guided the sobbing blond out of the studio without letting her turn toward the dead man.

In the hallway she thanked him, and apologized for getting his t-shirt all wet and snotty.

He mumbled something sensational like, “S’okay. Needs washing anyway.” So did most of his clothes.

She dropped into a hallway chair as if leaving the studio had pulled the plug on her nervous system. A network assistant rushed up to her and soon she was weeping again in that woman’s arms.

Tim almost stayed with her, then considered the equipment currently hanging on his body, the fake beard and mustache he still wore, and that the police would be here soon. He definitely needed to not be in jail as an accomplice to murder, even if he was an unwitting one.

So, he opted for a discreet exit and headed down the elevator. When he reached the lobby, he could see the police already blocking some of the exit doors.

He stayed on the elevator and rode down to the Concourse Level. As casually as he could, he strolled out the long way, past Banana Republic and Ann Taylor. He couldn’t help but window shop there a bit. The designs looked impossibly simple but were so urban chic. He wished he could have an Ann Taylor girlfriend, they always looked so casual and perfect. Not gonna happen even in your dreams, Tim. His last girlfriend had been a goth with habits even less sanitary than his own.

Holding that weeping blond for a moment—who would be like the perfect Ann Taylor model—was as close as he’d ever been. Probably ever would be.

At his apartment, a thin envelope had been slid under the door. It had the second thousand and another simple instruction, “Dump the gear.” He considered hocking it, had to be worth at least a grand retail, but that could lead to awkward questions.

Using his fan-of-CSI experience, he waited until after dark to diminish what the street cameras could see. He walked a half dozen blocks downtown wearing his roommate’s oversized Disneyland hoodie and dumped it all in a public trashcan outside the Chrysler Building wrapped up with half of a sandwich that his other roommate had left in the fridge until it was gone too green to eat.

Nowhere near his apartment or the studio.

Not a heavy tourist attraction, mostly a lot of office space.

So, the outside cans would catch a lot of garbage, but it was like there was no real reason to have a whole lotta cop patrols nosing around here to protect the dumbass tourists who couldn’t find s**t in this town. Always looking lost, always asking directions. Easy marks he’d tapped a time or two when tuition got tight.

This was now a job done clean and he’d get bonus points from his roommates for braving the disposal of the rotting food.

Back at his apartment, he actually started a badly overdue load of laundry and took a shower to remove any traces of whatever. Beneath the hot water he fantasized that the pretty blond had peeled off an Ann Taylor, deep-cleavage cashmere dress in blush pink to come into his arms and hold him like the world was beginning rather than ending.