Xander Stephen, “i love you like a housefly”
The tallest standing building in all of Cold Spring, New York, was a three-story, reused, residential establishment that had been converted into a restaurant, no later than the year of 1981. The place was a magnificent sight; employees in hand-crafted linen uniforms, the chefs dressed with Michelin Star smiles, and flour-coated fingertips. The hostesses at the door wore their hair pinned up into neat buns with five bobby pins, two spritzes of hairspray, and one stunning emerald green bow with ribbons that fell down to their neck. All waiters carried around a small slip of paper with the updated daily special written in a professional, sleek black font, as well as a menu and a black pen with the company’s logo. Restaurant des Nuisibles, founded by the world-renowned chef, Alexandre Auclair, had been the greatest creation to hit Cold Spring in the village’s entire history; a glorious title held for only one day.
Out of the building’s three massive floors, nearly every operation was followed out on the first. Forty tables had been carefully set with origami swan napkins, and water glasses and silverware arranged in perfect order. When Alexandre Auclair had created the operation, his competitive nature to make a name for himself had taken a lead over his natural common sense. Alexandre moved to Cold Spring in the year of 1990, after his third wife had filed for their fifth divorce, just one state over. He had been a chef in his old town, but claimed that the ungrateful community did not have the emotional intelligence to comprehend his culinary masterpieces. And so, he had bought a dusty, abandoned restaurant complex with the last he had saved up, to attempt to share his cooking around chipping red paint that exposed the foundation’s primer and rock, and cracked glass windows that let in the cold night’s air. But worse than the external issues that so apparently lined each room of the complex, was what lived inside the walls. The city’s newspapers and reports had deemed the place “infested to the brim.” The reason, Alexandre believed, was why in all the years since it had been converted into a dining building, no restaurants had made it more than a few weeks. Nevertheless, the dedicated man that Alexandre was; a man who valued his glory more than any location’s cleanliness, cared less about the atmosphere his work was in, but more about what he created within that space. When the construction crew finally arrived to assist in the pest-filled building’s refurbishment, Alexandre refused to take “no” for an answer.
“The renovations will follow through.” Alexandre would demand. “You fools believe some pests will stop me?” he would mock, dogmatically. And so, against the health inspector’s judgement, and the building’s crawling walls, the construction did begin. It began for many months, and for many long hours. Contracts were signed, secrets were kept, and any rodent, vermin, or bug that the construction team faced, was ignored.
“These things come back, you know?” the head of construction had told him. “You pretend they aren’t real, but no illusion of a paradise will disguise what you are hiding. They will come back.” Alexandre rolled his eyes in utter disgust. “Not if we seal off the walls,” he spat. “Lock them all in there and hide them away. I expect this restaurant to be up and running without complications. Agreed?”
The first official opening day of Restaurant des Nuisibles was the greatest moment of Alexandre’s life. He stayed in the back of the kitchen, awaiting the first of his customers to arrive. For the first time in his life, Alexandre felt proud of the work of others, and even he agreed that the interior of the restaurant was the most glorious sight he had ever beheld. With the opening of a door, tens of people began to flood in. A line had formed down the street, and past an entire sidewalk, people all eagerly awaiting the newest addition to their small town. Alexandre felt the familiar rush of a job well done, the clamour and chatter of the folk outside the kitchen doors flooding his ears. The sound, however, slowly began to drown out. Happy voices got replaced with small squeaks. The laughter and jabber that echoed through the three stories faded into scritching and skittering. Alexandre’s pride transitioned into fear. He slowly turned around, away from the kitchen door, trying to follow the sound of the insistent chirps. The door to the large, quite obnoxiously pretentious pantry, began to shake.
As his shaky hands turned the handle, Alexandre looked back at all of the produce and meats and fish spread out on rows of ice, eccentric spices and herbs hanging from the walls, shelves of rice and handcrafted pasta. Each and every inch was covered in pests. Insects and creatures crawled across the kitchen floor, seeping through the building’s cracks, and busting through plaster and rock. Nearly hundreds of thousands of tiny, squeaking critters filled the once crystal clean room, chewing up food, crawling over utensils and pans and ladles. Each rat, and mouse, and weasel, every ant, and fly, and roach, each and every vermin that Alexandre had dismissed, had finally made their appearance.
The deep pit in his stomach he had forced down, a plague he had ignored, rose up to the surface as fast as the rodents in front of him had. Restaurant des Nuisibles, founded by the world-renowned chef, Alexandre Auclair, had been the greatest creation to hit Cold Spring in the village’s entire history; a glorious title held for only one day.
