Diamond Chef

Diamond Chef appeared in my kitchen one evening last Spring. He was (is) essentially two-dimensional. His body is a black diamond, such as one might see on a playing card, about two feet in height and one in width. His head is that of a stereotypical chef, with a moustache and a brioche-shaped, puffy, white hat. He floats, bobbing slightly in the air, and does not speak.

Within seconds after his appearance, there appeared, just as mysteriously, on my kitchen table, a complete pot-roast dinner. What was especially bizarre was the fact that just that afternoon I had been daydreaming of pot roast. Diamond Chef smiled, knowingly, it seemed, as this thought occurred to me. I blinked my eyes (or did I?) and he was gone.

The pot roast was delicious. Perfect. The onions and carrots were perfectly caramelized, and the fat of the beef was crispy. In addition, there was a rich flavor to the jus at the bottom of the pan, as if sherry and shallots had been sautéed in it.

I waited in vain throughout the Spring for Diamond Chef’s return, sometimes checking the kitchen fifteen times in a single day. Why had he come, I wondered. Had I done something to drive him off? Then one day, as Summer was fast approaching, in the food section of our county newspaper, I read a curious item. Apparently five other households had been visited by a similar apparition: A floating diamond with a human head. In each case, the apparition had remained only ten or twelve minutes, leaving behind a fully cooked dinner ideally suited to the tastes of the homeowner and his family. I determined to look up these families one by one, to hear their stories firsthand.

The news item included a small photograph of a house I recognized from the long, constitutional walks I regularly take in my neighborhood, with no particular destination in mind. It was not far—maybe ten minutes on foot—so I set out immediately to speak with the owner.

When I arrived, the television was on so loud that you could hear it clearly through the door. It was playing “Fear Factor,” a show I don’t watch but whose music is distinctive. I knocked loudly, certain that the occupant would not be able to hear over the television. Then I went to the window and looked in. The television watcher, a woman of approximately four hundred pounds in a shapeless floral nightgown, saw me and screamed. I smiled harmlessly.

Dubiously and with great effort, she raised her great bulk from the armchair and shuffled to the door. She opened it as far as the chain would allow. I spoke quickly: “I am here about the Diamond Chef. I have seen him too.” Her eyes widened and she unlatched the chain.

It turned out that her name was Mabel. She lived alone and, consequently, had been terrified when, the Thursday evening before, she had entered her kitchen to find an enormous bucket of fried chicken steaming on the counter. She had been even more shocked when, a moment later, she noticed what she described as: “some kind of big honking insect” floating in front of her, with the head of a man and a black, diamond-shaped body (It was with some difficulty that I was able to coax this full description out of her. For a long time she insisted on describing Diamond Chef as an insect, merely adding such unhelpful adjectives as “flat” and “hairy” in response to my interrogations.)

According to Mabel, she woke up twenty minutes later on the kitchen floor with a nasty knock on the head. During the brief period of her unconsciousness she had had what she described as a “vision” of Diamond Chef’s origins. She saw a planet, far from Earth, on which many creatures almost identical to Diamond Chef lived, floating inside glass bubbles. The planet (as best as I could glean, given Mabel’s somewhat limited powers of description) was entirely barren except for a magnificent glass city in its center with towers stretching up to the sky: the City of the Diamond Chefs. Suddenly there was a great commotion—the Diamond Chefs were abuzz like a giant hive of bees. The agitation seemed to be focused around one of the creatures, whose bubble was glowing a pale orange and giving off a high-pitched hum. This bubble and its occupant suddenly shot at tremendous velocity straight up into the air and out of the planet’s atmosphere.

Mabel understood that inside this bubble was the same creature that had appeared to her in the kitchen, and that it had come to Earth on a mission of goodwill. Furthermore, she understood that it could not and would not appear in any country upon whose soil a war was currently being fought, for it was peace-loving by nature and found all forms of aggression abhorrent.

Upon awaking from this vision, and after steadying her nerves somewhat, Mabel sat down at the kitchen table and consumed the entire bucket of fried chicken. It was, as she put it: “The god-damned best thing I ever tasted.”

So let us array the facts before us, as on a chessboard, so as to see if some pattern will emerge:

• Diamond Chef appears in the kitchens of people in this county.

• He cannot (or will not) speak.

• He prepares (or makes manifest) a delicious meal, then disappears.

• He appears to intuit individual food preferences without asking.

• His body is a black diamond, his head that of a stereotypical chef.

• He is benevolent.

• He hates war.

• On his own planet, he lives inside a bubble, but here he does not.

• He is not fully subject to the laws of gravity.

• His hat is white and puffy.

Although I cannot as yet discover the full meaning of this web of interconnected facts, the outlines of a pattern do dimly, tantalizingly begin to emerge. I know, nonetheless, that we may never fully understand why Diamond Chef has come to us at this time, still less who or what he is. That he loves mankind, I have not the slightest doubt. That he is of a superior intelligence to our own I am also certain.

Even as I write this, the subtle flavor of that pot roast haunts me. I will seek out the others he has visited. I will gather up their stories. I will seek to penetrate to the most esoteric layers of this mystery, even if in the very process of doing so I am transformed into something hideous and unrecognizable and must thereafter divorce myself from the society of men.

In all Sincerity,

Roger Brostworthy, Montgomery County Maryland
8/20/06