Chapter Text
"Three filet, working. I need plates!"
The kitchen was so loud that Colette imagined her voice may have been swallowed up entirely by the loud clattering of pans and frequent dinging of utensils, but proper communication was essential in any professional cooking environment, so she called out her work anyways. Even if she said it and no one heard it, she knew there would be a far more severe stink over her not saying it. Then, when no one heard it, it would amount to an excuse.
Lalo had already rushed to be the first to greet Chef Skinner upon his entry into the kitchen this evening, meaning she needed not turn away from her own station to be made aware of the diminutive man's arrival. While he was no Gusteau, whose bubbly personality could command the presence of a room like it belonged to him the moment he set foot within, Skinner's shrill and often abrasive barking still provided him a degree of presence.
Footsteps passed her by (not even stopping to look), so Colette issued her own greeting. "Evening, Chef."
He ignored her, as he ignored everyone. There were times when she wondered why she even bothered for the grouchy businessman (for he was more of a businessman than a chef at times, certainly in the way he moved 'Gusteau's frozens').
Yet again, the second I don't greet him, I'll become the frosty crone who can't be bothered to say hello.
Colette noted, as she noted every day when she had this same internal conversation, that La Rousse declined to greet Skinner, instead launching straight into a conversation about the new plongeur that Horst had hired.
That was a conversation she was glad she didn't need to be a part of. The boy, so overwhelmed by being in a genuine French kitchen that he nearly tripped standing up, was clearly over his head. Apparent family friend of Auguste Gusteau or not, it was clear he wouldn't last long.
Even if Chef doesn't immediate discard him for merely being here, he'll run the risk of his head coming unscrewed if it keeps spinning that fast to look at every little noise.
Kitchens simply were inherently chaotic environments, a fact that Colette had accepted with relative ease upon the awarding of her apprenticeship. One needed to focus on one's own work without letting the distractions pile up if one was to survive in a cutthroat environment like this. She wished the garbage boy well, but she would also be wishing him luck elsewhere in no time.
"WHAT?" Skinner roared at La Rousse. "HOW DARE YOU HIRE SOMEONE WITHOUT –"
"We needed a garbage boy," Horst said, saving the hide of the chef de partie. Truly, Colette was amazed as La Rousse – she had no idea he had a death wish, for only a suicidal man would begin by informing Skinner of the hiring only to follow up with the role afterwards.
The garbage boy's eyes lingered on Colette as she walked by, and she briefly wondered if she needed to be concerned. Many a man had verbally objected to a woman's mere presence in the kitchen, and far more had expressed the same sentiment in subtler ways. She found it almost comedic, the conflicting narrative of those stupid, stupid men, many of whom also demanded women stay in the kitchen when at home.
Si Dieu le veut, let this plongeur not be one of them.
But his mouth dropped open as she passed, and Colette quickly realized that while the boy's gaze did stem form the fact that she was female, it was not of the same variety as what she'd feared.
In the end, it didn't matter who or what he was – she had her own job to do, and he had his.
"One filet minion, three lambs, two ducks," Colette called out to Lalo, who this time absolutely was listening. Whereas her own work was sometimes ignored and assumed to be left to her, he tended to be…professional, to say the least, when his sauces were involved. Pride may have been involved.
"One filet minion, three lambs, two –"
FLUOOSH!
Lalo kept reading back her requests to her, having heard the commotion but filtering it out as kitchen background mentally, but Colette had been looking in the direction of the soup when the garbage boy stumbled into it with the back end of his mop. Sighing, she mourned the loss of a good batch of ingredients, but this was more or less an eventuality.
Some people simply don't belong in the kitchen, and not in the fundamental way my critics imply.
Still, it had been a genuine accident, and while Colette loathed waste in general, the loss of, say, ten bowls full of soup was hardly worth the young man's job. Someone did need to remove the garbage and scrub the floors, and she was not without sympathy to the plight of a person down on their…
What? What on Earth is that imbécile doing?
Evidently, he had decided that the damage inflicted by spilling half of the bowl's contents was insufficient, and he'd elected to poison tonight's customers as well by… les cieux au-dessus, he was tossing sumac into Tuscan fish by the fistful.
"Plongeur!" she called, not recalling his name. "What do you think you're doing?"
Like a mouse in the jaws of a cat, he fearfully flinched upon realizing that his mistake had been witnessed. "I-I-I was just –"
"Arrêt," she demanded. "Stop."
Peering into the large pot, she surveyed the damage. Taking a small spoon from the countertop to her right, she quickly tasted its contents.
Problematic, but not beyond repair…rather, the spill would have been.
But instead, the garbage boy had gone and tossed random kitchen elements into the mix as though cooking was as simply as mashing buttons on a television remote. Colette could have screamed at the perceived insult to her profession had it been anything but a boy's desperation to avoid being fired.
"Accidents will happen," she said very clearly. "If…"
I shouldn't get involved.
But she already had. The time for passive ignorance had long since passed. Besides, Gusteau's was hanging by a thread. Ignoring what was going on in her own kitchen just because it was not her fault was a recipe for the entire kitchen closing down.
"If you make a mistake, such as disrupting a prepared dish, tell a chef," Colette instructed the recent hire. "We are not bêtes sauvages who will bite your head off for the most minor offense. What you should not do, plongeur, is intentionally contaminate a dish."
He stuttered so pathetically that Colette felt a swell of sympathy for him rise up within her breast. Even though not a single word of drivel was comprehensible, she understood the question at the base of it.
Shushing him with a finger to his lips, she met his eyes. "I will repair this mistake and make a new soup, but please, if something similar happens again, inform a chef. We can afford more tomatoes and stock. We cannot afford a botched dinner being sent out."
To anyone else, her words would have been seen as cruel, denigrating his haphazard 'cooking' by describing it so. To the plongeur, who had not a trace of culinary pride, Colette's offer was seen as a godsend.
"Thank you so much!" He lifted his arms as though he intended to hug her, then thought better of it, though his raised arms remained awkward positioned as he clasped his hands together. "You're a life saver, Miss…er, I mean, madam-missile…oh! Eh, t-tu eres un…s-saveur d-de…mi…"
Yet again, she pressed her hand to his mouth to prevent him from further embarrassing himself. "I speak English, garbage boy. Simply be mindful of your surroundings to prevent this from…to minimize this happening in the future."
As for herself, Colette resolved to be mindful to avoid using French in front of the plongeur, as he seemed utterly incompetent when it came to her native language.
And in France, no less. How could he even come here without at least knowing the basics?
"Alfredo," said the garbage boy.
Colette stared at him for a second. That was neither French nor English.
"My name," he quickly clarified. "It's my name. I'm Alfredo. Alfredo Linguini, though some people call me Freddy…n-no one that I like, but they…well, they did, uh, call me that."
"Alfredo," Colette said with a nod and a smile, the most pleasant one she could muster. She wasn't sure why she bothered to commit his name to memory, as the young man was almost certainly going to be fired within the fortnight. "Colette Tatou, chef rôtisseur."
Alfredo's mouth opened up, and Colette waited for him to gather the courage to speak for far longer than was desirable. The soup was waiting.
"S-So…is your name…Colette, or is it rotiss…ro…which, uh, one was your name, there?"
Rolling her eyes, Colette ushered the boy and his mop aside, unable to stop the genuine smile that now graced her lips.
And there, with Alfredo gone and her view of the soup no longer blocked by his wiry body, Colette saw the rat.
Typically, her first instinct in the face of vermin was to grab the nearest blunt object, as sharper blades tended to be too messy.
That this vermin's back was turned to her wasn't enough to negate that instinct, as Colette felt no desire to be sporting with carriers of disease like rats. However, the fact that its entire upper body was wrapped around a wooden spoon that it was currently using the stir the soup was.
It's…
Entranced by the bizarre sight, Colette momentarily forgot herself and the kitchen around her and watched. The soup had been rendered inedible by Alfredo – she'd tested it and tasted it herself – and yet here was some abnormal rodent, mixing in the occasional ingredient that it would scurry down a ladle tilted on the side of the pot to dip its nose into and then retrieve.
What was the rat doing? Rue was too bitter for Tuscan fish soup, and brown mustard would only clash with the existing flavors that came out of the tomatoes and onion.
Colette shook her head. What was the rat doing cooking was the real question? Adding spices in like that, stirring them with a spoon – it shouldn't even have comprehension of what these items were, or of how they played into the soup.
Pawing its way down to the table, the rat crawled up to a shelf that was probably a half foot above the soup where Remouillage stock had been set aside in a small bin. In a movement that was absurdly human and not nearly rodentine enough, the rat placed its back to the stock and pushed its hind paws against the wall. The stock fell into –
Attends, attends – quoi?
Animals surpassing their means aside, Colette looked at the scene as a whole and realized the recipe the rat was using made next to no sense. Rue was too bitter, but the soup had been absurdly sweetened to the point of excess by the sumac Alfredo had added. It wasn't sugary, but the taste of sumac provided an artificial pseudo-honeylike flavor that would – but it didn't matter! Rue and sumac couldn't mix together and neutralize one another. That wasn't how it worked in the slightest.
Rue, sumac, brown mustard…it wouldn't even remotely resemble Tuscan fish stew, and with Remouillage for a base, you've basically killed all of the original flavors. I'd be surprised if a reasonable palate could down a spoonful.
She lifted her eyes from the final drops of stock pouring into the soup to see that the rat had finally noticed her. Unlike Alfredo, whose human expression could be described as a 'deer in the headlights,' to use American slang, the rat's expression was completely unreadable, and yet Colette felt some instinct tell her that it too was embarrassed at having been caught.
What was she saying – a rat being embarrassed?!
But what was she seeing – a rat cooking?
Her curiosity got the better of her, and she reached to grab a fresh spoon from the counter. The rat flinched when she moved, but it didn't flee like it should have.
Colette tasted the soup she had been prepared to write off as beyond salvation.
It wasn't Tuscan fish stew. It wasn't even similar.
It was better than any Tuscan fish stew she'd ever tasted. It was better than any stew or soup she'd ever tasted. The uniqueness of the flavors, the synergy of rue, sumac, and mustard coming together to form something new – it was simply astounding.
Her eyes widened in surprise, and she stared at the architect of this unforeseen masterwork. The rat watched her reaction eagerly for two seconds, then shook its head – again, comme un humain, absurdly so – and turned to scurry off.
Sadly for the rodent, it had forgotten that it had been standing directly behind an empty bin of soup stock on its side, and it ran straight into the vessel. The rat's momentum tipped it upside down, and the small creature trapped itself before Colette could even react.
What in God's name did I just witness?
"Mademoiselle Tatou, what is the hold up on this soup?" bellowed a waspish voice from behind her. So focused on the rat had she been that she was now the one caught unawares, and by the chef, no less.
"Apologies, Chef," Colette said, her mind still racing to make sense of what she'd just seen. "The…The…The soup will have to be thrown away, as…it's…fouled. An ingredient must have spoiled. I take full responsibility for this."
Skinner didn't look happy about this. Collapsible step stools were no uncommon sight within Gusteau's since he'd taken over, so he didn't have to walk far away to come back with one.
Dipping his own spoon into the soup, he himself sampled it, as Colette had moments ago.
"Bah, tt tastes fine," the chef said, wasting not a single second to descend his ladder and move on to his next target to bother. "Stop dawdling and send it out, chef, then resume work at your own station."
Colette would have liked to say she was too spellbound by the unanticipated rat chef to continue working, but it only lasted about five minutes, when Horst started harping on her about the lambs and threatening to flambe her instead if they were late. At that point, the part of herself that was adept at filtering out background noise in a rambunctious kitchen kicked in, and she acclimated to the worldchanging truths she'd just witnessed and got back to work. Her mind wasn't in it, but it was work she'd done many times over. Perhaps the unique Tatou flair was absent in her meats, but it wasn't like there was a critic out there in the dining room or anything.
As for the rat, she merely slid the container it had caught himself in onto a plate, then transferred it…him, as it happened, because even the accursed rats had to be male to get into the kitchen…into a plastic vegetable crate through which he could breathe. To ensure it remained in place, she placed a hefty kabocha squash atop the flipped crate and left them both in the back corner of the storeroom.
Skinner also seemed uniquely occupied, and uncharacteristically chipper as well. While she wasn't paying attention to whatever had initiated this conversion of his behavior, the change itself stood out too much to ignore.
Colette decided to utilize it to her advantage when business finally ceased that night. "I can close up, Chef."
"Oui, Mademoiselle Tatou." Skinner was ferrying files from his office to his car, and he barely seemed to notice. "Sure, sure, be sure to…to…corn puppies…thin out the dough…something to think about…"
He was distracted, then, with more of the disgraceful frozen foods. Such products were of so low quality that Alfredo would probably be within his duties to discard them into the dumpster outside the back of Gusteau's. To dilute the good name of the man who had devoted his life to adventure, to spit on a chef and suggest that all he was good for was microwaves meals, meals with no love, no care, no intent, just nutrients and preservatives and grease to make it slide down…
Is that why he's happy? Some new line of breaded chicken to purvey to unsuspecting Americans who've only heard the name Auguste Gusteau in passing?
But Skinner's daily machinations paled in comparison to the surprise waiting for her in the back of the restaurant. Colette's heart was pounding in anticipation as she, after finishing the tasks required for closing up the restaurant because she was no slouch. Lifting the squash she'd placed on the crate for weight up, Colette steadied herself and prepared to investigate her bizarre finding.
A rat that cooks…
"Now, let us see what has become of –"
She knocked the crate over.
It…It was gone.
The crate, while full of holes through which she'd expected the rat to breathe, had nothing in it large enough through which the rat should have been able to crawl. Where –?
"Mère de – gahh!"
The rat, she didn't have a clue how, but it was inside the squash, the one she was holding. It was when it moved that she realized, and it nearly caused Colette's beating heart to explode out of her chest. Even as it was, her shock had propelled her backwards, and she'd collapsed into a wall of food.
The squash fell to the floor when dropped and ruptured, revealing the rodent hidden within. Flattening out like a starfish, it absorbed the impact with no grace whatsoever and lay there, legs spread out in the pile of rind, fleshy mush, and seeds both half-eaten and undisturbed.
"What in the…what is it doing?"
In hindsight, the rat escaping was no grand surprise, certainly not the kind Colette had treated it like, and the fact that it chose to eat from the food she'd placed so close to it wasn't either. However, the question had already escaped her lips, and she couldn't rescind it.
The rat blinked rapidly and shook its entire body in a manner that reminded Colette of a Beauceron, dispelling some of the orange mush. It rotated its body to meet her eyes, blinked again many times, and lifted up to two feet.
The front paws were freed up, and Colette watched from her own seated position as the rat lifted up a kabocha seed. For a moment, she wondered if it was going to continue eating it.
It didn't eat the seed.
It held up the seed just in front of its mouth, released one paw, and rubbed its own stomach.
What? What is this?
If she didn't know better, she would have thought the rat…the vermin animal was trying to answer her question. She'd asked what it was doing, and it nonverbally indicated that it had gotten hungry while waiting for her return and dug into a food source that it knew Colette would come back to check on.
Her brain must have left her body during the fall, because Colette spoke again to this creature. "D-Do you…understand me?"
The rat nodded.
The rat had nodded.
Colette's hand slipped on the ground as she tried to pick herself up, her haste getting the better of her.
The rat had nodded.
So distracted by the sight before her that she forgot how to breathe, in truth. Her throat choked up, and she began to cough.
The rat had nodded.
"M-May I…pick you up?" Colette said when her voice returned to her after the fit.
She didn't know why she asked that first rather than the far more important questions – how the rat understood her, why it knew how to cook, why it was interested in cooking, why it had even been aware that the soup needed resuscitation – but it was what she chose to ask in her addled state, and the rat responded once more. This time, though, it did more than nod.
Colette's hand pulled away as it crawled towards it. Sense returned to her, and she recalled that rats were not despised simply on principle. Vectors of disease like them could destroy kitchens, and who knew what parasites it could transmit if it bit her?
The rat blinked many more time, so fast that she could hardly keep up with it. It looked at its own kabocha-coated body and began to use its paws to pick off strands and clumps.
"N-No, it's not –"
No sooner had she spoken than the rat's head lift up to meet her eyes.
Polite, her brain supplied. Eye contact.
Human characteristics. Cooking, nodding, manners…
"What are you?" Colette said, finally uttering something worthwhile.
She probably should have disposed of it.
That wasn't true. Colette had no idea what she should have done with it. There were procedures in place for dealing with rodents, but no one had ever prepared for the day one acted more like a man than a beast.
Was the correct course of action to report it to, peut-être, the government? A university? Chef Skinner? Colette didn't have a clue what phone number she could even call, aside from pest control.
Whatever she should have done, she didn't do it…assuming that it wasn't deciding to take the rat home with her at the end of her shift.
When she'd finally gotten her thoughts together and calmed down from the surprise of discovered the first intelligent animal in human history, Colette realized several dismaying things about the rat. First of all, it had been inside a French restaurant – Gusteau d'Paris, no less than the finest culinary institution in the world with a appropriate reputation – and it had chosen to restore and improve a contaminated soup. Coupled with the fact that it had cooked, Colette had been able to decipher the fact that the rat…wished to cook.
Her second revelation was that the rat had remained in place. When, in her eyes, it had been a nothing more than a bête sans intelligence, she could have assumed that its animal instincts drove it to eat the kabocha without a thought for its own well-being. However, if this rat was 'smart,' and she chose to reserve judgement on that for the time being, then that implied it had known Colette was its captor…his captor, rather.
If it is a rat with the mind of a man, I…I should…
There it was again. Should.
What did should even mean in this case? What was should in the face of something that should not exist?
Regardless, the rat had chosen to relax and snack on the supplied gourd knowing Colette would be around later to collect it. That implied it wished to remain in her care.
A rat that desires to cook, asking to remain with a professional rôtisseur…she supposed that logic held, insomuch as logic even existed today.
Colette placed the rat in her breast pocket and took the Métropolitain home rather than her scooter, fearful that the aberrant rodent would be lost if she moved at high speeds. Every so often, the tiny animal would lift its head out of her jacket to gaze up and out the windows of the train.
When it discreetly snuck its nose out for the fifth time, Colette sighed and grabbed it gently. The train was by no means empty, but the Paris Métro permitted animals smaller than dogs to ride.
"I trust you know not to cause me any problems," she said, receiving another nod from the ghastly rat. Placing it on her knee, she sighed and leaned back. Regardless of miracle rats or not, today had been a rather long shift, in part due to Alfredo's introduction into the kitchen and in part due to many other factors.
Gusteau's, as an enterprise, was struggling. That much she understood without having ever seen a single financial document that Skinner guarded like platinum within his office. Despite how she often found facets of the kitchen to criticize, the restaurant still meant something to her, and as more than just a place of employment. Sentiment was a cap that only fit on fools' heads, but Colette was not yet ready to bid her beloved home adieu yet.
A child, no older than seven, approached Colette and tugged on her leather jacket, stirring her from her heady thoughts.
"Puis-je caresser votre chien?" he asked.
Colette stared at the boy briefly, then over to a woman three seats away who was distracted by her magazine.
"Ce n'est pas un chien," she said, but relented.
The child's face brightened immediately. He cupped the rat with one hand and began to stroke it with the other. The rat's head pivoted over to Colette as though looking for confirmation or guidance, but the child failed to realize any significance behind it.
"Adorable." The child gave the rat a scratch on its belly, rotating it upside down like a doll. "Comment s'appelle-t-il?"
A name? Colette had no idea. Rats, aside from pets, rarely had names, and this one…well, perhaps it was a pet, but that explanation felt lackluster to her. Pets might be trained, but they didn't know how to interpret human speech.
Perhaps this rat already had its own name, but short of it astounding her further and revealing it possessed the capacity for speech in addition to its other super-human…other super-rodentine abilities, she would never know what that self-applied name was.
Colette supposed that meant it was up to her to give the rat a name. However, the unfortunate reality was that she had little talent for naming things. She…She…She didn't break new ground, not anymore. Colette Tatou followed the recipe, without fail. Despite having been the most adventurous little girl one could imagine, Colette rarely found herself inventing the 'new' these days.
But perhaps names could be simpler than dishes. The boy was still waiting for an answer, after all.
Hmmmm…what would a good name be for a rat? Rene the Rat? Raphaël? Remi? Renault?
Non, none of those. Just because it is a rat does not mean it must begin with R, anyways.
Matthias? Mattimeo? Templeton?
Or maybe a fun name would be better, to amuse the boy?
Mister Rat? Ratty Hatty?
…Harvey Rodent?
Colette took a step back, so to speak. This was a rat, but it was no ordinary rat, and so it should not have a name befitting an ordinary rat. For whatever reason, she felt as though the name she gave this child would stick with her, so an absurdist joke would be…dissatisfactory. She could do better.
She had been thinking in English, her primary language, but perhaps this child using her mother tongue of French could provide some inspiration.
It is a – non. Not it. He is a rat that wishes to cook. A tiny creature with no business in the kitchen, surrounded by humans towering over it…and yet he fears us not. At great risk to himself, he created a soup the likes of which no man or woman has ever tasted before.
"Petit Chef," Colette said to the boy. "Il s'appelle Petit Chef."