by Zuri Day
She arrived early and waited in her car, determined to not make a repeat of their past interactions. Placing bets and blurting out leading questions in a direction she totally intended not to go. It wasn’t like her to flip out over a handsome guy. She was neither a starstruck fan nor a bumbling idiot with no command of the English language. She was a serious journalist who knew the price that could be paid for turning a business opportunity into potential pleasure. Embarrassment. Heartbreak. Delano had taught her that.
That the two men knew each other was yet another reason to keep things strictly professional between her and the chef. No telling what her ex had told Pierre about them. Knowing Delano, he wouldn’t have kept quiet about their past relationship or been hesitant to throw her under the bus with why it ended.
Roz thought these things and ignored the flutter in her stomach when an image of how Pierre had looked that night swam before her eyes. Ignored how she’d thought of him all day and anticipated this meeting. Told herself she’d gotten there early because she wanted to be there when Pierre arrived, lest he take one look at the humble abode that served as a public eatery and keep on driving.
On one matter, however, she allowed herself to face the truth. When it came to Louisiana cooking, nobody could outdo Manette Lafeyette, whom everyone called Ma. Roz’s bestie, Stefanie, had dragged her there the day Roz decided to leave the city’s biggest newspaper for the job at NO Beat. While she’d been excited about the possibilities attached to the start-up, feeling she’d been forced from the job she’d snagged right after college had left her down in the dumps. That day Roz had learned that anything going wrong in life could be cured with Ma’s gumbo. And her crawfish? Lord have mercy. Roz couldn’t wait to see Pierre’s face when he entered Ma’s and was assailed by the aromas that wrapped themselves around you as soon as you walked through the door. Smells that effortlessly pulled you farther into the room. Just thinking of the bucket of crawfish and buttered bread loaf served free with every meal made her mouth water.
Roz got out of her car and checked her watch, anxious now to assuage her grumbling stomach. It had been months since she’d eaten at Ma’s. She’d purposely skipped lunch today to enjoy the meal. She checked her watch again, frowned as she looked up...and into Pierre’s eyes.
“Am I late?” He’d lowered his window to ask the question before pulling to the curb and parking. He turned off the engine and hopped out of his car.
Those eyes. That smile again. Damn, he was gorgeous. Don’t be affected, she warned her body. Don’t let it matter, she told her head.
“Right on time, actually. Hope you’re hungry.”
“If the food inside looks as good as you do...”
“Don’t be average,” Roz said, as she rolled her eyes and began walking up the sidewalk toward the house. “Save that for your groupies,” she added over her shoulder.
“Groupies? I don’t have groupies. And that wasn’t a line. You look very nice.”
“Then perhaps that’s what you should have said.”
A smile softened the caustic words as Roz waited until Pierre caught up with her before she opened the small home’s screen door and the thick wooden one behind it. She wanted to see the look on his face that she’d seen on so many other Ma first-timers.
“Ready?”
His glance was skeptical. “I guess.”
Her smile widened. She opened the inner door. A cacophony of odors rose up like instruments in an orchestra. Oregano harmonizing with garlic and onion. Thyme keeping time with dry mustard and dill seed. Cayenne, smoked paprika and bay leaves adding oomph to the melody. Pierre took two steps. Stopped, closed his eyes and inhaled. Roz laughed.
He opened eyes filled with wonder. “Whose place is this?”
“Mine, and y’all need to get on in here and close the door. I’m not trying to cool off the whole neighborhood.”
A petite woman with long white hair and an ageless face that could have been sixty or ninety-six walked toward them. Mouth frowning, eyes beaming.
She reached up to give Roz a hug, all the while looking at the man standing beside her. “Took long enough for you to get back here. Where have you been?”
“Way too long, I know. I’ve been really busy lately, but I’m so glad I’m here. Just thinking about your food makes my mouth water.”
“Hmm.” Ma looked at Pierre. “Who is this handsome young man you’ve brought to my house?” Her eyes slid back over to Roz. “Is he why you’ve been busy?”
“What? Oh, no, Ma. This isn’t... We’re not...”
“Pierre LeBlanc, ma’am.” Pierre leaned down to hug Ma, then raised her soft and slightly wrinkled hand to his lips and kissed it. “It smells like I just walked into crayfish heaven, and a whole lot more.”
Ma stepped back to look up at him. “What would you know about it? You look way too fancy to know about mudbugs.”
“I know a little something about them. Grew up in New Orleans.”
“He’s a chef, Ma,” Roz explained. “Just opened a restaurant in the Quarters, called Easy Creole Cuisine.”
“So you think you can cook, huh?” Ma asked.
“I do alright.”
“If I ever get to taste something you fix, I’ll be the judge of that.”
Roz raised her hand to cover a chuckle. Pierre’s eyes gleamed as he smiled. “Alright, then.”
He took a couple steps and looked around him. “Never would have guessed all of what was going on in this little house.” He tipped his head. “Behind that door we just entered.”
“That’s the way I like it,” Ma said, giving him a little shove as she pointed to one of four tables, all unoccupied, in what had originally been a living room. “Don’t want the city coming in here bothering me, telling me what to use and how to use it.”
“How do you get your customers?”
“How’d you come here?”
“Word of mouth.” He nodded, looking paradoxically comfortable as he sat in a plastic chair that might have been around at least half as long as Ma. “Well, if the food tastes half as good as it smells...”
“It tastes even better.” Roz took a chair to his right, facing the door. She placed her purse on one of two empty chairs at their table and pulled out a small recorder. “Do you mind?”
“What’s that for?”
“With the smells assaulting your senses I can understand you forgetting what brought us here. Our interview.”
“Oh, right. That.” He shrugged. “I guess I don’t mind. Depends on what you ask me.”
“Fair enough. If you want to share something off the record just let me know.”
“Does that really work?”
“What?”
“Sharing something off the record.” He used air quotes to underscore his distrust.
“Depends on the reporter. There is a code of ethics that most professional journalists follow. I’m a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the organization that established the code in 1909.”
“Then how do magazines get away with printing any and everything about celebrities and people they don’t even know?”
“Clearly, everyone who writes and prints a story does not follow that code. But don’t worry. Given you’re already the city’s golden boy, I’d imagine this chat will be pretty painless.”
“Y’all go wash your hands!” The command yelled from the kitchen caused a raised brow.
“You don’t want to disobey her,” Roz whispered, scooting back her chair to comply. When the two returned, Ma had set two lemon waters on a table now covered with newspaper. She came up behind them swinging a small bucket in one hand, holding a small loaf of buttered French bread in the other.
“Bone appetite,” she said, purposely mispronouncing the famous French phrase as she set down the fare, along with two large “napkins,” otherwise called hand towe
ls.
Pierre leaned into the steam rising from the bucket and inhaled. “Wow.” He positioned the towel over his lap and prepared to dig in.
Roz made a sound that stopped him. “Um, ladies first?”
“Ladies better hurry.”
“Ha!” Roz reached into the bucket and pulled out what was alternately called a crawfish, crawdad, crayfish or baby lobster, depending on who you asked. She felt Pierre’s eyes on her as, with a quick twist of the wrist, she separated the body from the crawfish head. With unabashed pleasure she placed the latter in her mouth and sucked out the juicy meatiness inside. After tossing the shell on the newspaper, she made quick work of slurping the remaining meat from the tail while reaching for her next one.
“Obviously not your first bucket,” Pierre quipped as he picked up one of the Louisiana delicacies and devoured it the same as Roz.
“Nope.”
“You from here?”
“Born and bred. Only recently developed a love for crawfish, though. My mom hates them and refused their presence in our home.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Eastover.”
“Ah, one of those.”
Roz frowned as she shamelessly licked juice from her fingers. “What do you mean by that?”
“Girls from your part of town had nothing to do with us boys in the Ninth Ward.”
“Is that where you grew up?”
“Spent a lot of time there” was Pierre’s vague answer.
“Well, I can’t speak for the girls you met back then, but I was not a part of the popular girl crowd.”
Pierre eyed her as he twisted the head from another crawfish. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, believe it. I was tall, skinny, with a head too big for the slender neck beneath it. I was too light in some places and too dark in others. In other words, I often didn’t fit in anywhere.”
Pierre’s eyes narrowed seductively. “Clearly all of that’s changed. You are...lovely.”
“When I look in the mirror I still see the socially awkward bookworm.”
“Everyone else sees someone beautiful, educated, successful. Someone with the world in the palm of her hand.”
“I guess you’d know.”
“Me?”
“Of course. Superstar chef with the world as your oyster, probably with a trail of broken hearts scattered down Interstate 10.”
“Not even close. What you see of my life now looks nothing like it did growing up.”
“In this area?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where else?”
“Didn’t matter where. The results were the same.”
“According to what I’ve read, being here mattered in 2005. You were here when Katrina hit.”
“Until the water pushed us out and I landed in Houston.”
“Tell me about that. It’s the angle for my story. New Orleanians who experienced Katrina to survive and thrive.”
Pierre nodded, slowly and thoughtfully. “What would you like to know?”
Roz wiped her hands on the towel and reached for her water. “Everything.”
Chapter 6
So easy to talk to, Pierre thought, as he considered her question. He, too, wiped his hands and sat back in the hard plastic chair. When he did his eyes dropped to the recorder. Sure, she was beautiful, and dismantled one of his favorite crustaceans like a pro, but she was a reporter. Of course talking to her would be easy. Maybe too easy. She’d been taught how to coax information from individuals, make them feel comfortable. Catch them off guard. If this was what her schooling, training and experience had taught her, Pierre thought, she must have graduated at the top of her class. She was very good at her job.
So good that Pierre had almost forgotten some very important rules. He didn’t talk about his past, especially Katrina. Because to talk about Katrina, he’d have to talk about family. To talk about family, he’d have to talk about his mom, and Grand-Mère Juliette. Pull the scab off the wound left by his grandmother’s and mom’s disappearance during the storm. He still called it that, a disappearance, even though with all the time passed he was sure that they’d met the same fate as thousands of others whose lives had ended in a watery grave. The mom whose last words had been “Take care of your sister. I’ll see y’all soon. Promise.”
Only she hadn’t arrived in Houston. She’d broken her promise. Which was why to this day there wasn’t a woman he could trust.
Especially one who’d set a recorder between them. He shifted in his seat, saw Ma carrying a heavily laden tray out of the kitchen, and was thankful for her timing.
“Here, let me help you with that.”
“I’ve carried heavier burdens in my lifetime,” Ma insisted, though she readily allowed Pierre to take the tray of steamy goodness and place it on the table beside them, while Roz, knowing the drill, carefully bunched up the newspaper and placed it in the now empty red bucket.
“What all do we have here?” Pierre removed two small bowls from the tray, lifting one to his nostrils before setting it down. “Red beans and rice with, what’s that, andouille or boudin?”
“Neither. That’s Ma’s sausage. None else like it nowhere.”
He stepped back so Ma could set down piping-hot plates of jambalaya being transferred from the tray to the table.
“Ma, this all looks amazing,” Roz said.
“Smells even better than it looks,” Pierre added.
Ma replied in her traditional fashion. “Bone appetite.”
He’d barely sat down before picking up his fork to spear a chunk of sausage swimming in the bowl of beans and rice. He placed the nugget in his mouth and closed his eyes as he began to chew.
“The usual suspects,” he began, still chewing. “Thyme, paprika, bay leaf, sage...” Swallowing, he turned admiring eyes toward Ma. “But what’s that sweet undertone? Nutmeg? Ginger?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to never find out. Knowing that here is the only place you can get it will keep you coming back.”
“No doubt, I’ll be back.” Pierre tested the jambalaya. “Ma, this is divine. I need to spend some time in your kitchen.”
“I guess I could use a dishwasher from time to time.” She winked at Roz while Pierre laughed, and walked back into the kitchen, a smile clearly showing that his compliments were appreciated.
For the next few minutes, the deliciousness of Ma’s food dominated the conversation. But midway through the jambalaya, Roz repeated her earlier question to Pierre.
“You were telling me about your experience during Hurricane Katrina. What was that like?”
“You first. Where were you when it hit?”
“Out of state, Columbia, Missouri, preparing to enter my first year at Mizzou.” At Pierre’s raised brows she added, “University of Missouri.”
“Why didn’t you attend college here?”
“I wanted to. My mom wanted me to go to Southern, or Tulane. But my dad is a Midwesterner and felt that spending time outside my home state would broaden my cultural horizons. Plus, the University of Missouri has one of the best journalism programs in the country. So it wasn’t a long argument. Dad won.
“Watching that storm on TV, and the events that unfolded afterward, was surreal. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the videos I saw and the town I knew. I wanted to come back and cover it, write an article for the school paper. Of course, my parents forbade it. Too dangerous. I was livid, sure I could cover the events in a way foreigners couldn’t. Foreigners being anyone not from New Orleans.
“Looking back, I know they were right. I may have been ready to write a story, but I wouldn’t have been ready to see in person the aftermath we all witnessed on TV, or handle the emotional and psychological aftereffects.”
Having dealt with those aftereffects for more than
a decade, Pierre understood.
Both became quiet—somber, reflective, remembering a moment in history that few who witnessed it could ever forget. Pierre wanted to, wished he could, and continued to steer the focus away from those painful memories.
“They made it out, your family?”
“Yes,” Roz answered. “Our home wasn’t in the major flood area, but my parents didn’t want to take any chances. One of my uncles lives in Atlanta. They left before the storm hit. What about you? Where were you when it happened?”
“A few blocks over.”
“From where we are now?”
He nodded.
“In one of the areas hardest hit. That had to have been a painfully frightening experience.”
“It was.”
“Did you have to be rescued?”
“Almost. We were able to get on one of the buses headed to Houston where...we have family.”
“So your whole family was displaced. Mom, dad...”
“My sister and I.”
“And your parents stayed here?”
“My mother raised us. She stayed behind to help my grandmother. It was a traumatizing experience that’s hard to talk about. I survived it by focusing on what was ahead of me, not by looking back.”
“Yet while living in Houston you ended up at a restaurant called New Orleans.”
“It wasn’t planned.”
“How did it happen, you working at a restaurant that bears your hometown’s name?”
Pierre shrugged. “Needed money.”
“McDonald’s wasn’t hiring?”
“I’ll admit that the name of the place drew me in. I missed the food we’re known for and wondered if the place lived up to it name. Of course, I couldn’t afford to order a meal. So I asked for a job instead.”
“Ingenuity in action.”
“More like desperation, but whatever, it worked.”
“They hired you as...”
Pierre smiled and looked toward the kitchen. “A dishwasher. And to my great surprise the food was delicious, just like back home. I was there for about a month, glad to be eating good and earning a steady paycheck, when one of the prep cooks quit unexpectedly and I volunteered to take over. The work was tedious, but the kitchen atmosphere—infectious. The workers loved and often fought like family. But during service all hostilities were dropped for the sake of synchronicity. That’s when I discovered the mechanical and scientific aspects of cooking, the work that went into each perfect plate. Marc orchestrated each player’s movements like a conductor leading an orchestra. Everyone’s role was important, from dishwasher to head chef. Don’t get me wrong. The work is hard, the hours long. And if you’re running the kitchen, it can consume your life. But I found it fascinating, began staying late and coming in early, learning how the kitchen ran, how things got done. Marc noticed my interest and took me under his wing. My culinary journey continued from there.”