Bird on a Wire
(An Enterprise novel coming in September 2003)
* * * * *
...Put out about a hundred fires in Engineering this afternoon, and missed
dinner, then somebody told me that Chef made a Pecan Pie, and suddenly my life
brightened! It's been my favorite since I was a kid. Care for a bite?
No thank you.
It's delicious...
It's mostly sugar.
What, Vulcans don't have a sweet tooth?
*pause*
May not be good for the body, but it sure is good for the soul. Mm...I feel
better already....
* * *
Everton!
Yes Chef!?
What...is...THIS?
Pecan Pie, Chef!
Pecan Pie? THESE are what pass for pecans on this ship? I thought perhaps some
alien being had dropped crumbs while rifling through their inverted pockets for
a crumpled bill to pay some tart during shore leave on Rigel 10. These are NOT
pecans, pecans come from the finest shady groves in the Southern part of the
United States region of Earth, preferably from an area known as Georgia. They
are meaty, crisp, exciting to the palette, blending brilliantly with the
perfectly smooth texture of the purest sugar and a pastry crust that flakes if
you so much as look at it. THESE...are simply...brown!
Brown, Chef?
YES, Everton! Brown crusts peeling from someone's muddy boot. I want you to sort
through and find THE best pecans we have on this ship.
But Chef, we only brought two stones worth...
TWO STONE? To care for the heart and soul of eighty-two crewmen, out here in the
cradle of the universe? Who ordered a mere two stone of...pecans...since that's
what someone mistook them for?
Chef...
Two stone is a mere beginning salve for what ails a man ripped from his
homeworld and thrust into the outer reaches of the arms of Zeus!
But Chef...
It begs the heart to taste it, a masterful pecan pie does! Two stone? Who? Who,
I demand to know...
You did, Chef...
ME?
Yes, Chef, you said you needed more room for the Captain's cheese.
*pauses*
Everton?
Yes, Chef...
What is the most important part of cooking?
Ingredients, Chef?
*glares*
Presentation?
*glares more*
...timing?
DESIRE! DESIRE, EVERTON!
Desire...?
YES! What makes the passion fruit all the more sweet, the tactile pleasure of
mixing texture with lingering, lustful taste? Why does a man's senses grasp onto
the wont of a piece of heaven as a lover pants after the scent of a beautiful
woman? Everton!?
Desire, Chef?
*slow grin*
Everton, perhaps you will live to cook another day. A pecan pie is more than
just a dessert, it is a yearning for a slice of childhood, of your grandmother's
love, precisely kneeded and rolled out, cut with accuracy, crimped to geometric
perfection, carefully blended and reduced to a syrup sweeter and richer than
mother's milk, poured as new wine into a new cask of dough, and tiled with the
symmetrical, paper-crisp earthy reddish-brown meat extracted carefully from each
individual capsule, as one would pull a newborn babe from its mother's womb. The
essence of which during baking was rumored to have first drawn Sherman from one
shore to the other and then kept him from burning on through the Atlantic Ocean.
DESIRE, Everton! Want, drouth, the torment of Tantalus. THAT is the essential
part of cooking!
Chef?
What is it, Everton?
One pie or two?
*sigh*
Knowing our Chief Engineer, two may keep him occupied for the better part of a
day.
-- FIN--
Bird on a Wire
(An Enterprise novel coming in September 2003)