A Celebration Steak

by John Weagly

“How do you want your steak?”

“Medium.”

“Medium rare or medium well?”

“Just medium. Not too rare and not too well done. The middle. Medium.”

“Just medium. I'll see what the chef can do.”

“And,” I added, “I'm not really in a hurry, but I do have theater tickets.”

The waitress, a pretty, skinny thing in her early twenties, gave me a look that could have been courtesy or could have been disdain or could have been confusion and was probably a little bit of all three. She then took my order back to the kitchen.

I'd been looking forward to this: the meal, the restaurant, the reason to celebrate. Oliver's was the new “it” place in Chicago . They featured white tablecloths and red linen napkins, fresh-cut flowers on each table, soft jazz filtered in through invisible speakers and five star food at five star prices. They generated an elegant feel that was pretentious in how un-pretentious it was trying to be.

It was exactly what I was in the mood for. This was my celebration dinner to commemorate a hard earned milestone.

I write plays. For the first time ever I was having plays performed in New York , Chicago and Los Angeles all on the same day. None of them were fully professional productions, the one in New York was as far off-off-off-Broadway as you could get without leaving the island, but, to me, they constituted a trinity of success. I lived in Chicago . After dessert I was going to the Glass Eye Theater to see what they did with my script, “Jonah and the Kangaroo.”

My steak and potatoes meal apparently took a half an hour to prepare. Never having eaten at an “it” restaurant before, I assumed the wait was part of the “it” factor and I waited patiently. I'd allowed myself plenty of time to get to the theater.

When the waitress brought my order out and put the plate in front of me she asked, “Will there be anything else?”

I looked at my meal and smiled. Steak. Baked potato. Asparagus tips. Even the steak knife looked appetizing. All perfect, except…

“This isn't quite done enough,” I said.

“What?”

“My steak. It's a little too bloody.”

“Bloody?”

“A little bit too rare.”

She gave me that look again, this time with a little less courtesy and a little more disdain. The confusion was still the same. She smiled and picked up my plate. “I'll see what the chef can do.”

I shifted in my chair as tension seeped into my shoulders. “Will it take long?”

“Not at all,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

I rolled my shoulders a couple of times. The tension evaporated, but now a tiny ache was starting in the back of my head, near my neck. I looked at my watch. The play started in forty-five minutes. The theater was only a couple of blocks away. I still had plenty of time.

My stomach grumbled.

I was never involved in the rehearsal process. I've always felt that it's the writer's script but it's the director's show and that the playwright shouldn't try to interfere with the director's vision. I liked to go on opening night and sit with my fellow theater patrons, all of us experiencing the magic for the first time. Over the next couple of weeks I'd be flying to New York and Los Angeles to have that experience on both coasts.

After another twenty minutes, the waitress brought my plate back out. “Will there be anything else?” she asked.

The baked potato and asparagus both looked a little dry, like they'd been sitting under a heat lamp. The steak looked…

“Now it's overcooked.”

“What?”

“The steak. It's practically burnt.”

“Isn't that the way you wanted it?”

“No. I wanted it medium.”

“Not medium well?”

My jaw tightened as I answered. “No. Medium.”

This time the look had a smidgen of confusion, no courtesy and a whole lot of disdain. She smiled and picked up my plate. “I'll see what the chef can do.”

After she left, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The ache in the back of my head was getting a little more intense and my stomach was feeling a little more empty. When I opened my eyes, I looked at my watch. Twenty-five minutes to curtain. I suppose I should have just eaten the scorched thing, but this was a celebration! I wanted the meal to be perfect! Most theaters hold the curtain for about ten minutes. I should still have plenty of time.

What would it be like? One of the side effects of not being involved with my plays was that seeing them on opening night, I never knew what to expect. Would my play be a success or a failure, a revelation or a travesty? The anticipation could be nerve-wracking. Hopefully I'd find out in a little while.

As I waited for my food, I listened to the clatter of other people's silverware on other people's plates as other people enjoyed their meals. It sounded loud enough to be a hangover. The soft jazz was becoming an annoyance and the effect of smelling my table's aggressively aromatic fresh-cut flowers for the last hour was making me want to choke.

After another fifteen minutes, the waitress brought my plate back out. Everything looked the same, just fifteen minutes older. What was different was the man she brought with her.

“This is Oliver,” she said. “He's the chef.” Then she went away to another table.

Oliver was an average sized gentleman dressed in an off white uniform and apron. When I looked up at him and saw his mess of black hair I was disappointed that he wasn't wearing one of those tall, puffy chef hats.

“Something wrong?” Oliver asked.

“My steak is overcooked.”

“You didn't want it that way?”

“No.”

“Another steak'll take at least twenty minutes.”

My head was filling with a hot, red haze. Another twenty minutes would definitely make me late.

“I don't have twenty minutes,” I said.

“Then eat this one.”

“But this isn't the way I wanted it.”

“How did you want it?”

“Medium.”

“Medium rare or medium well?”

He may have said something else after that, all I could hear was a thumping in my ears, like a clothes-dryer off balance. Without the rest of me knowing what it was doing, my right hand curled around my steak knife, veered up and carried the knife into the chef's throat.

When my head cleared, I wondered how they'd get all that blood out of the white tablecloth.

***

“What would you like for your last meal?”

It was many, many months later. I smiled up at the guard. I'd thought a lot about this. “Filet Mignon, baked potato with sour cream and butter, asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce and chocolate mousse for desert.”

“How do you want your steak?”

“Medium.”

The guard looked down at me. “Medium rare or medium well?”