"Once Upon Love" (A Modern "Cyrano de Bergerac" story)

2: The Food of Love

Edward Regan felt like a duck living in a pen right next to a pond. The only son of famous chef couple Oliver and Rita Regan, they nurtured in him a love for the kitchen as soon as he could hold a spoon, and cultivated his palate for gourmet foods as soon as he was weaned. What then, they reasoned, would prevent him from following the footsteps of his illustrious parents?

Yet there as something within young Ned that gave him more thrill than a perfectly-formed sugar rose, or the smell of fresh-picked herbs: the love of poetry.

More than anything, Ned loved the blending of words into flavorful rhymes. His parents tried to discourage it, ignoring him or clapping a recipe in his hands when he began rhyming, and they very nearly succeeded. While Ned did not excel in English class, he was certainly among the top students.
Elementary and high school were all harmless bothers to Ned, but when his parents spoke of shipping him off to the Isituto Culinario of Florence, Italy where they had studied, met, and married, Ned knew he needed a way of escape.

This escape was effected by a desperate application form written entirely in rhyme that amused the board of directors at Ballard College of the Arts, who granted him a scholarship.
The doors of the institution were the veritable gates of Paradise for the "Shakespeare of the Kitchen." He prided himself for his cleverness in convincing his parents that Ballard contacted him first, and he simply could not waste or refuse the scholarship, but must use it to obtain a general education, after which time he would transfer to the Italian institute.

Though particularly enthralled with poetry, Ned nevertheless excelled in the kitchen. He presided there now, overseeing the production of a banquet for that evening. Fretting and bustling, he scurried around the commercial kitchen, peeking over shoulders, sampling the various sauces, soups, and dishes, all the while working out a poem spinning through his head.

"You!" he demanded of an underling,

"As the zucchini softens into stew,
Canst thou find aught for thy hands to do?"

The student stared at Ned, wondering if he was joking, but the young sous-chef stared back in all seriousness. "Well," the stunned freshman replied, "I guess I could."

Ned nodded and hurried off to the large steel machine in the back of the kitchen, the pasta extruder. He stared at the ribbons of fettuccini issuing from its side. Looking up at the freshman who had made the dough, he said lovingly,

"Golden streams of noodle flow,
Exactly as they ought to go!"

This particular student was not so naïve to this wordsmith of the Ballard kitchens, so she knew that the rhyme-struck chef was delivering a compliment. "Thanks," she said.

Just then, Ned Regan caught sight of a familiar form he desired to follow as often as he saw it. There in the back of the kitchen was situated the special corner reserved for Regan, where he stored special ingredients and tools, where he could invent menus and recipes, and (when no one was looking), he would take the opportunity to write poetry, whether his own or copied from a book. Now in that corner, evidently agitated about something, was Hayden Berger himself.

Ned hesitated, basking in moment after moment of undetected observation. He fought back a reaction as he saw Hayden Berger pick up a poem Ned had worked out on a piece of butcher paper one of students had forgotten back in the Corner. Ned had many such over-written papers, whether butcher, parchment, or even wax. One really could not blame the lad; it was the only sort of paper to be found on such short notice in the kitchen!

Hayden never flinched, never moved a muscle, but his well-known, steely voice pierced the glory. "Ned, my friend, I have a favor to ask of you."

Ned rushed forward, "Name it, O hero of the stage and page!" he cried.