Sasha’s Missing Doll

“Hey, you, new boy!”

I pointed to myself, in a gesture to ask if the infamous Chef Gordon Ramsay was really referring to me.

“Yeah, you think I didn’t see you there? You think winning Season XXX: ‘Hot Steamy Action’ of Hell’s Kitchen entitles you to slack off? Guess what, the President wants the full fucking Gordon Ramsay experience!”

So why did that have to involve me?

“Well, it wouldn’t be the Ramsay experience you bloody Americans want if I didn’t have someone to yell at half the time, now would it?”

I shrugged my shoulders. You think a guy who was just invited to cook a meal for Barack Obama would be in higher spirits.

“Now get to work on breading that chicken breast! Don’t let me catch you slacking!”

I thought he could at least help with the pasta, but Chef Ramsay ducked out for a quick smoke. So there I was, cooking the chicken breasts by myself and waiting for the rest of the White House cooking staff, when who should I see walking through the kitchen but The Man Himself, President Barack H. Obama. Granted, he seemed to be bounding through the kitchen, as if he was afraid a protestor of some kind was going to leap from a nearby oven and strangle him until he signed a petition. It wasn’t the look of someone who owned the place. But anyways, I tried to strike up a conversation with him. I started out by simply saying, “Hi Mister President!” in as cheerful a voice I could manage.

“What?” Obama whipped his head around to face me, like an actor who had just forgotten his lines, then cleared his throat and took a brief second to recompose himself. “Oh, uh…sorry. I uh…didn’t see you there. Who are you again?”

“You don’t recognize me?” I said, “Winner of the XXX season of Hell’s Kitchen? Ring any bells?”

“Sorry, I don’t like to watch those kinds of shows in front of the children.”

“I don’t doubt you. Besides, I’m sure Michelle’s got all the action you’ll need.”

I’m pretty sure Barack blushed at that moment, but I don’t remember. I do know that he said, “Um yeah. She’s uh…she’s real hot. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got…uh, Presidential things to do.”

“Hey, Mr. Obama, do you think this chicken is fresh enough for your liking?” I handed the President one of the boneless breasts I planned on cooking. He fumbled it around in his hand for a few seconds before he tossed it back in the pan. He then left in a huff before I could offer him a chance to taste my cooking. Then again, I didn’t want Chef Ramsay to mysteriously appear behind my back and find something to yell at me again. Instead, I focused on pan-frying the breaded chicken.

A few minutes later, Chef Ramsay returned and chastized me for letting the pasta cook too long. I replied that it was perfectly on time and pointed him to an egg timer, and even stuck my hand in the pot of boiling water to offer him a sample. My male pride unfortunately overrided my common sense, and by the time the latter regained dominance in my brain, I screamed in pain. Great, first-degree burn and I hadn’t even finished making the main course dinner for Obama. Good thing he wasn’t able to see this.

“Oh, so now you’re going to run your hand under some cold water? You’re such a bloody queer!” Ramsay whined in his disappointed tone, which stung just as harshly as the boiling water did on my pain-wracked hands. “You think I let a little thing like scalding hot water stop me from serving food to the Prime Minister back home? Bah, you Americans think you deserve everything on a silver platter!”

I didn’t feel like arguing with him, and instead decided to finish making the large order of chicken parmesean while Chef Ramsay worked on the appetizer. Apparently, the normal White House cooking staff would be working on the rest of the meal, or maybe they already had. It would certainly explain why both myself and Chef Ramsay were the only two people in that very well-kept kitchen.

I don’t know how much time had passed, only that my left hand was burning like crazy. Unfortunately, I was more afraid of what Chef Ramsay would do if he saw me slacking on my special tomato-basil sauce than what would happen if I lost all the feeling in that hand. Eventually, the White House staff sent down a cart to help us carry all the food upstairs. Apparently, the appetizers and the wine were prepared in a seperate kitchen. Two kitchens for a family of four and hundreds of staff and Secret Service. Must be a nice place to live in.

I loaded the first round of food onto the plates as the servers prepared to take us to the dining room to witness how the President and his family liked our food, until a Secret Service agent came down with standard-issue suit and his standard-issue tie and his standard-issue earpiece and his standard-issue pistol hidden under his jacket. And he told both myself and Chef Ramsay to come with him.

“We have a situation,” The agent said in his standard-issue monotone with his expression hidden behind standard-issue sunglasses. “I’m going to have to ask you two to come with me.”

“We got ourselves a President and his family to feed!” Chef Ramsay yelled, “What’s the meaning of this, Mr…?”

“You can call me Agent Stan. And the President wants you to leave the food here for now. He will consider eating it after the situation has been resolved.”

“What’s the situation?” I asked.

Chef Ramsay sharply flicked my ear with his finger. As I winced more in pain than annoyance, he exorciated me in front of Agent Stan. “Quiet boy, the men are talking!” Turning to Agent Stan, he repeated the exact same question I asked a moment ago.

“Long story short, Sasha’s doll has gone missing, and he wants everyone who might be remotely connected to this disappearance = to be sent to the dining room for questioning.”

“But what about the food?” Chef Ramsay asked again.

“I told you, the President and his family will not eat it until we resolve this situation. If worse comes to worse, the food will be packed into doggie bags and then distributed to local homeless shelters.”

“NOOOOOOOOOO!” I cried out.

“I know how you feel,” Agent Stan said with as much standard-issue emotion as he could muster, which amounted to very little. “However, this doll was very important to Sasha. So if you two will please come with me…”

_______________

“Friends, enemies, and other assembled folks, we have a situation.” The President sighed as he stood behind the chair, and clenched the back of it very tightly in his hands. “My sweet daughter’s little dollie has gone missing. We’re not leaving this room until we figure out who took it.”

“So buy her a new one,” Congressman Contrarian shouted, “it only costs her a few hundred thousand dollars!”

You might be shocked to realize that in the year 2008, the value of that same doll was just about $10. No one knew exactly how the economy hit hyperinflation in such a short time, though some suspected the recently-passed Throw Money At The Problem Until It Goes Away Act might have had something to do with it.

“Maybe you did it, then!” Kenneth Kneejurk shouted back, “You were always opposing the President’s budget for the sake of your masters in Israel!”

“Calm down, people.” Barack Obama said in a stern tone, “My daughters don’t want to see us fighting in the dining room! Now, if this was the war room, we’d be singing a different tune.”

“Damn straight!” General Lee Threatening grunted as he chomped on an unlit cigar. No one ever saw the man without his uniform on or his cigar in his mouth.

“But for their sake, let’s all calm down and think this through.”

Suddenly, everyone in the room just stopped talking and decided to take a look at all points of view. The President had that mysterious power. Even the verbally-abusive Chef Ramsay seemed to be a teeny bit calm, but I didn’t want to ask him a question and break the moment, so I just waited for Obama to continue.

“Now, Dr. Snidely Evilton, where were you about one hour ago?”

“I will tell you nothing! Not even torture can break me!”

“Pleeeeease? For the sake of my children, and their children, and their children’s children?”

Dr. Evilton stared into Obama’s wide eyes for a second. “Gah! Enough! I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” Evilton took a moment to take out his inhaler while Agent Smith whipped out his pistol, expecting that Evilton was pulling out a portable death ray like he did last time. Oh, that crazy Dr. Evilton, always being sent to jail and then mysteriously breaking out of that same jail within 24 hours.

“Okay, I was concocting an evil plot to blow up everyone at this table once the main course arrived. But then I saw the visage of a familiar figure, the face of one of the people in this room! Even with my asthma, he seemed emit the powerful stench of cooking oil mixed with uncooked chicken. My plot was foiled before I even had a chance to enact it! All because of that accursed President!”

Everyone in the room thought about that for a moment. Mostly about why the President kept letting this man into the White House despite his frequent attempts to kill him. But apparently no one could stop Dr. Snidely Evilton from getting wherever and whatever he wanted. He just never really had a endgame in mind once he put his plans into action.

“There’s only one place that raw chicken could have come from…the kitchen!” Obama pointed an accusatory finger at Chef Ramsay, “You! What were you doing one hour ago?”

“I was taking a smoke break, Mr. President. What the bloody hell did you expect me to do?”

“So you didn’t handle the chicken?”

“No, I left that task up to my…capable assistant here.” He sharply flicked my ear again, causing me to wince in annoyance. “Well boy, I didn’t know you had a thing for dolls.”

“I don’t!” I shouted, “Why would I want to steal your daughter’s doll, Mr. President?”

“Because you secretly have a doll fetish!” Congressman Contrarian shouted out of the blue. A long awkward pause followed before Contrarian continued, “Uh, just y’know, exploring the possibilities of his motives.”

“More like you’re projecting your own fetishes onto others,” Kneejerk muttered.

“You have no proof! Those negatives were burned three weeks ago outside my apartment!”

“I never said anything about proof, Mr. Contrarian.”

“Both of you, shut the hell up!” Chef Ramsay shouted so loud that even General Threatening started cowering behind his chair, careful as to not drop his cigar from his mouth. “I don’t know how you can accuse my student of wanting to steal Sasha’s doll! He may be a lot of things: A good-for-nothing slacker, an emotional trainwreck, a beaten-down pussy, a retard, a spoiled brat, a loser, a virgin and a person that not even the ugliest monkey at the zoo would want to date…but he does not steal people’s dolls!”

“Uh…thanks?” I mumbled, trying to fight back the urge to cry. I was grateful to Chef Ramsay for defending me, but simultaneously wondering if I could ever show my face in front of these people again after tonight.

“Okay, so if it wasn’t the two chefs, then who could it have been?”

Wait a minute, the only other person besides myself and Chef Ramsay was…”Barack Obama!” I pointed at him, “It was you who stole her doll!”

“What? Why would I steal my daughter’s own doll?”

“To teach her a lesson in personal responsibility, that’s why!”

“Well yes, I teach her that all the time, but I would never steal her doll.”

“But I saw you down there! I was talking to you about Michelle…”

“I never went to the kitchen, I was too busy trying to get General Lee Threatening to stop fondling his cigar for the sake of this dinner!”

“So wait, if that wasn’t you in the kitchen, then who was it?”

“I have the answer to that one.” Agent Smith appeared, dragging another Barack Obama by the collar before he threw him face-first onto the table.

“Barack Obama’s evil twin brother?” Kneejurk wondered aloud.

“No…just his body double B.B.”

“Alright, I confess! I did it!” B.B. shouted

“Why, B.B., why?”

“Why? Do you know what it’s like being the body-double of the most popular man on Earth? It’s real fucking exhausting, and I wanted you to be exhausted trying to find you daughter’s precious doll!”

“C’mon B.B., tell me the truth.”

“I can’t say it here…”

“I’ll give you a coooookiiieeee.”

“Alright alright! God I can’t withstand those eyes!” B.B. growled, “I just really, really like dolls! It’s in my pants!”

________________

And so the tale comes to a close. Sasha found her missing doll, Barack Obama saved the world from the misguided plans of Dr. Snidely Evilton, and Chef Ramsay was hailed for cooking the best damn chicken parmesean a President and his assorted family and friends had ever tasted. I would’ve taken the credit, but the Chef said I still had a lot to learn about cooking. And so I set out for greener pastures, cooking for the local homeless shelters until I could one day call myself a true chef.

The End.