“Queso a la Parrilla… is that what I think it is?”

I nodded. “Yup. Good old fashioned grilled cheese.”

“That’s… not an impressive dish.”

“Oh, you haven’t had mine then.”

He shook his head. “No, I have not had food made by you. We just met an hour ago.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “I can’t believe it was only an hour. Time is weird, here. Sometimes it feels like it’s only been a few hours since I entered the casino, others, man, practically a lifetime.”

Don laughed. “I know what you mean. Now, you have talked big game about this… grilled cheese. Show me what you’ve got.”

I shot him a cheeky grin, then set about gathering ingredients.

“We start with only the finest. White bread, butter, and the most important ingredient, cheese.”

Don crossed his arms while standing near the end of my all-in-one kitchen setup. His neutral expression fell lower and lower into a frown, complete with furrowed brows. I browsed through the bread selection on the rack near the side of the kitchen. It wasn’t where I would keep bread in a hot and humid kitchen, but I also was not used to working with magic, yet. For all I knew, the bread was kept fresh by some ward.

Of the breads available, a surprising number were ‘white.’ I saw three different kinds of potato, which were excellent, dense breads in my experience. There was the traditional white-bread, made with ‘enriched’ flour, whatever that meant. And there were even two milk-breads. I gently prodded each until I found the one I wanted, a potato from a bakery I would guess came from Germany. It was dense, yet fluffy. Perfect for taking on the butter and crisping to give that perfect browned edge. I put the bread down and wandered in search of dairy.

I found the butter and cheeses in the walk-in fridge. The butter came in two varieties, exactly like I was used to: salted and unsalted. I took the unsalted butter, not my usual choice, but for the grilled cheese, it was perfect. Then I looked at my cheese options. That is where I got hung up. Not because the options weren’t good, no. It was actually the opposite: I was paralyzed by too many choices. Dozens of baskets held all manner of cheeses, some so soft they had to be stored in tins, a handful that looked more like mold than cheese, crumbles spilling from another set, and even a few that were vacuum packed. Out of curiosity, I looked at one of the vacuum sealed cheeses. It had a small label that read ‘Limburger’, and the basket next to it read ‘Epoisses’. I blanched.

“Nope. No foot cheese here.”

I kept looking until, at the end, I found what I sought: single slice cheeses. The variety honestly shocked me. I was used to American sliced, which was more solidified oil than actual cheese. But I saw pepperjack, mozzarella, provolone, colby, and cheddar. A few other types were there, but I didn’t recognize their names. I took a handful of cheddar, mozz, and pepperjack each, then made my way back to the kitchen I was using. Don still stood at the end of the aisle, arms crossed, eyeing my armful of dairy with clear disgust.

“I did not know we even stock those cheeses.”

I shrugged, unwrapped a slice of American, and popped it into my mouth. I spoke around the gooey goodness. “Must be magic.”

He grunted in disgust. “Is that everything you will be using?”

“Huh? Yeah, grilled cheese is easy. Three ingredients: bread, butter, and cheese.”

“Very well,” he sighed. “I will gather my own ingredients. You may begin whenever you want. You will have thirty minutes to provide two dishes.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

I flicked on the gas burner, selected a wide skillet, and set it to warming. I started to whistle, feeling some energy return to my limbs as I started to work.

“Hey, Don, is there some sort of music available back here?”

“This is a kitchen!” Came his shouted response. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. I figured he was just upset he had to make the best American dish on the planet, instead of his fancy French cuisine or something.

“Keep it simple, stupid,” I muttered to myself. An old adage my dad had drilled into me for years. He allowed me to choose the competition. I wasn’t going to throw myself under the bus trying to cook some haute cuisine. I was going to drag him down to my level and utterly stomp him with experience being a stoner. It wasn’t going to be pretty. It wasn’t going to be expensive. But by the gods, it was going to be tasty.

Once the pan felt warm, I dropped an entire stick of the butter in. It melted quickly, quicker than I was anticipating, so I turned the heat down to low. I gently stirred the butter with a little spatula, spreading it over the entire pan. While the butter melted, I opened the bread and cheeses. I cooked with my nose, or rather, I cooked by the smells offered to me. Another side-effect of hyper awareness, or maybe I had undiagnosed hyper-osmia. I could tell just by smelling if something would be a good addition to a meal.

I pulled the pepperjack and sharp cheddar to the front, and put the rest of the cheeses aside. Then I took the heel from the bread and tossed it away. It wasn’t going to do me any good, and there was no way anyone would want it.

“Did you just throw perfectly good bread away?” The reproach in Don’s voice was staggering. He sounded like he watched me kick his puppy.

“It was the heel. Nobody likes the heel.”

“Hmph.” He grunted, then turned to his own work. I shrugged. Then I chose four slices of bread with no holes. They would be perfect. The butter had just started to brown and foam, which I stirred a little more, and it was ready. I dropped the first two slices in, letting them soak up butter like sponges. Normally, that would be too much, but I had a secret. One time, while nearly couch-locked, I had come up with a solution to soggy bread with my friend. The bread was allowed to soak until it was nearly falling apart, then it was transferred to an air fryer. There, it crisped up while the next two slices went into the skillet. By then, there was the perfect amount of butter, and they wouldn’t get soggy.

While the first two slices crisped in the air fryer, I watched the other two. As soon as they started to brown, I flipped them, stirring to get the last of the butter onto the bread. Then I draped four slices of pepperjack on each slice. Once they started to melt, I put in my secret ingredient. I sprinkled salt over the cheese, then grabbed the pepper grinder and cranked out five turns on each sandwich. Then I put four slices of cheddar. At that point, I pulled the two air-fryer slices of toast and put them on the cheese, and flipped it.

“Oh, hey, can we add something last minute?”

“Last minute? You have twenty minutes left.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Dope,” I said. That made Don quirk an eyebrow again. For someone who spoke such good English, he sure struggled with the language.

I hurried over toward the dry storage and found exactly what I was hoping for: a can of tomato soup. I brought that to my station, poured the can into a small soup pot, and started it warming. Then I went over to the fresh ingredient walk-in and grabbed a few different herbs. Returning once more, I added a few torn leafs of basil, a pinch of thyme, and a bay leaf. Then I let it rise to a simmer. Meanwhile, I killed the flames for the sandwiches, flipped them again, and put a lid on the skillet. That would keep them perfect while the soup heated. I grabbed a two plates with matching bowls, got the sandwiches out and cut diagonally, plated them, and ladled soup into the bowls.

“Ready.”

“Wh-what?”

I turned around looking at Don. He was slicing tomatoes and putting them into a steaming pot. It looked like the sandwiches were half done.

“Oh, uh, I guess I can wait.”

“Excellent work, young man.” He swallowed hard. He looked flustered, which confused me. He was an experienced chef. He should have been ahead of me at every turn.

“You good, bro?”

“Yes, I am just not used to this type of… dish. So simple.” He looked at my dishes, then back to me before speaking. “You can put your food in stasis until the thirty minute mark. That will keep it fresh.”

I turned and looked at the stainless steel counter, not understanding. “How? I mean, where, or… what?”

“Put the food near the end of the counter, then hold your hand near the back wall. You’ll see.”

I did as he said and saw three sigils appear on the back wall. Both were a light, pleasing blue, each a circle about the size of my hand, the left one had a little flame, the center had two bars, and the right had a snowflake. I figured it was magical controls to set the temperature before sending a dish out. Not wanting to mess with perfection, I touched the two bars, the apparently universal symbol for pause. Nothing seemed to happen, but when I looked closer, I saw that even the steam had stopped moving.

“Well, that’s cool.”

“It is neither cool, nor hot. It is in stasis.”

I opened my mouth to argue the point, then stopped. He was right, even if he hadn’t actually understood me. I shrugged, then crossed my arms and leaned against the counter. He was a whirl of activity, seemingly working on four different actions at once. The sandwiches were built with care, crisping in his skillet while he brought his soup to a boil. It didn’t look right to me, but I was reserving my comments. He was the professional, after all.

At five minutes left, he pulled both grilled cheese from the heat and began plating them. At the same time, he started some sort of sauce in the same pan, using the browned goodness stuck to the bottom of the skillet. He took a ladle of the soup and made a roux in another pot, thickening it with flour, making it nearly into a paste before reintroducing it to the soup. That made it thicken rapidly. Then he added a few seasonings, ladled into two bowls, poured fresh cream in a delightful pattern, and garnished with a single fresh basil leaf.

“I am prepared.”

“And with a full minute to spare, nice,” I commented. He started to glare, then shook his head.

“I am unused to being the late finisher. It is… odd.”

I shrugged. “I’m usually the last to finish a project, but that’s what I get for being a slacker. Well, that, and having to psych myself up to do anything.”

That made Don quirk an eyebrow, obviously a non-verbal question about my last statement.

“Yeah, I, uh… well, before this whole ‘zombie’ thing, or, I guess I’m actually a half-dead now… anyway, I had this condition. It’s called hyper awareness. Say, for instance, I tell you that you are manually blinking. You’re suddenly aware of your eyes and how often you blink, right? Same for manual breathing. You become aware of these normally completely autonomic processes.”

Don held a hand up as he shook his head. “I’m not a fan of that sudden awareness, but I do not understand that word: ‘autonomic’.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. I suppressed the urge to smile. It wasn’t all that funny, anyway. “Autonomic, which is just a weird, fancy way of saying unconscious and automatic. Your body handles breathing, blinking, your heartbeat, all that stuff.”

He nodded, satisfied to listen to my story while the food was held in stasis.

“Well, hyper-awareness means I felt all of that, all the time. I see my nose all the time. It doesn’t get filtered from my perception. I’m aware of blinking, of breathing, I can always feel my heartbeat. Well, I could. Now, sometimes, it doesn’t beat at all.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“Well, that’s the not-so-bad side of it. When I was younger, I had a problem with things touching my skin. Being permanently aware of my body means anything that felt unpleasant, well, it wouldn’t go away. There was no ‘getting used to it’ for me. If a shirt was scratchy in one spot, it would itch constantly, no matter what I did. In any case, all that means that if I wanted to go out, be social, or really do anything but leave my bubble of comfort, I had to psych myself up. Parties, even the fun kind, like birthday parties, were exhausting. I usually only went for an hour or two before leaving.”

“That leads me to believe you had a difficult life.”

I smiled and shook my head. “I did, but I didn’t. My mom was incredible, she did everything she could. Even tried getting me diagnosed with autism, to see if I could qualify for special programs in school that could help with my condition. It didn’t, and funny enough, I’m not autistic. Just weird. But she helped me get through a lot.”

I hadn’t realized it, but my arms had grown tight across my chest, and I was holding myself. I took a deep breath in, then relaxed as I let it out.

“I miss her. I hope she’s okay.”

Don nodded, and I could tell he was at a bit of a loss for words. He turned and swiped at the stasis control, releasing his food. I followed his lead and released my own.

“How do you want to do this, Don?”

“Since it is just the two of us, and between you and me, I’m mostly making the rules up, I think we can keep it informal. You try both dishes, I try both dishes, and we see if we can agree on a winner.”

I shrugged. “Works for me.” I traded a plate for a plate and a bowl for a bowl. His food was so delightfully presented, I almost didn’t want to eat it.

“It looks incredible,” I said.

“I think we can both agree I have better presentation,” he said with a wry smile.

“Oh, for sure. I’ve never really cared about presentation. I’ve always been a function-over-form kind of guy, even when it might look the other way.”

I took half of the sandwich he made, dipped the corner into his tomato soup, and bit in. I let the bite linger on my tongue for a moment, appreciating the perfect melding of grilled cheese, crispy toast, and rich tomato soup. I opened my eyes to see Don looking on with something like… interest. Like he hadn’t done a one-on-one like this in a long time.

“It’s incredible. Everything fits with everything else like it was meant to be.”

He nodded, finishing his bite.

“And now for yours,” he said. I once again followed his lead, taking my sloppy-looking sandwich, dipping it into my cheater soup, and savagely tearing the bite off. A long string of cheese dangled between my mouth and the sandwich for a long moment. Then the flavors slammed into me like a boulder. The cheese was just crisped at the edges, while the toast had the lingering flavor of smoke, all paired with the homeliness of cheap soup that all-but-screamed soul food. I let out an involuntary ‘mmmh’ as I savored the bite.

A small sound brought me out of my reverie. Don had his back to me, shoulders high and bunched. It was weird to see him looking like an old man again. Then I heard the sound, and saw his back heave.

“Ah, damn, that bad?”

He turned to me, and I saw the truth in his eyes. A single tear rolled down his cheek. Then another.

“It’s not fair.”

I shook my head. “What?”

“I’m a professional. I’ve been cooking for a hundred years. I used the finest ingredients. My dish, by all accounts, was perfect.”

I smiled, feeling the sadness around the edges of it. “Maybe that’s why mine is better. It isn’t perfect.”

He swallowed, then took another bite. I laughed and ate the rest of my sandwich while he devoured every last bit of his lunch.

“You win.”

I looked at him. He was back to being the old man in the back of the kitchen.

“I’m not even trying to fudge the rules. You win, hands down. You may continue higher.”

He swept his hand in a grand gesture, and a doorway I hadn’t noticed before lit up. It led to a shadowed elevator bank, with a single button between the two simple metal doors.

“Good luck, Master Blackwood.”

I nodded.

“Thank you, Don Don. One last question: where is my friend?”

“Basil, the zombie you brought in with you?”

I nodded. His eyes went distant for a long moment, then he smiled. “He’s still on the first floor. It looks like he got distracted.”

“For three weeks? Dang, those games are good, but I didn’t think they were that good. I might have to talk to him about the possibility of him having an addiction when we get out of here.”

“A conversation for another time. Best to be on your way, young man.”

“Thanks again, Don.”

He nodded, and I walked into the dimly lit elevator room. I pressed the button, humming a tuneless song while I waited. Something alerted me, and I turned around to find… a blank, dingy tile wall. Then a ding sounded, and the elevator opened. To my surprise, I found a gorilla in a uniform standing just inside.

“This way, Master Blackwood.”