Disappointment crossed Mom’s face. For a second, Guster thought she would scold him. Instead, she tugged him onward.
They passed a bakery, a small café, and a dozen other shops. Some were closed. The rest smelled awful. He shook his head at each one. His tiny stomach was so empty, but Mom’s patience was wearing thin.
“Guster,” said Mom, leaning down to look him in the eyes, “You’ve got to find something to eat.” That was easy enough to say, but it couldn’t be just any old food. He looked down at the oily pavement under his feet. He wished Mariah were there, instead of at home, babysitting Henry Junior. She never got angry at him.
“Then we’ll have to go home,” said Mom sadly. She started toward the car.
Then a new smell hit him. One that was different from all the rest. Across the street, on a dimly lit corner, the word “Patisserie” was painted in golden letters on an old and dusty window. The most wonderful aroma of tarts and cakes spilled from it. It was so strong, he felt like he was tasting fresh berries and chocolaty crusts, all from the little pastry shop right in front of his eyes. “Wait,” he said. Mom stopped. “Over there,” he pointed.
Mom took Guster by the hand and led him and Zeke across the street toward the patisserie. The curtains behind the window were closed and, except for a faint sliver of yellowish light that shone between them, the shop was entirely dark. A sign that read “Closed for Business by Order of the City of New Orleans” was propped up against the glass in one corner.
“You couldn’t pick a place that makes more than desserts?” asked Mom.
Guster shook his head. There was no doubt about it. This had to be it.
“Maybe the chef has a cookbook I can buy,” she said, and pounded on the boarded-up door.
No one answered. Please, someone be in there, thought Guster.
“The place is closed Mom,” said Zeke. He clutched his learner’s permit in his hand. “Maybe we ought to drive back over to —”
Mom shook her head. “Walking will be just fine.” She put her ear to the door. “I think I hear someone inside.” She pounded again. It was silent.
“Let’s check around back,” Mom said. She went around to the side of the building to a dark alleyway, where there was a porch with a narrow door. She turned the knob and the door opened a crack.
“Mom, is this breaking the law?” Zeke asked. Mom held her finger to her lips. Guster grabbed hold of her baby blue apron. The dark entryway was just the kind of place where someone might break your kneecaps.
Don’t be stupid, he thought. How could something that smelled so good possibly be dangerous? There was a weak coughing sound.
“Hello?” Mom said. She opened the door wide, took Guster’s hand and stepped over the threshold. The place was dark and cramped. A small oil lamp burned in one corner, casting a dim light across tables cluttered with strange cooking devices. There was a tall, golden mixer with gears sticking out from every side, a set of silver measuring spoons with etched handles, an old wooden rolling pin the size of Zeke’s entire pudgy arm, and a set of iron scales that balanced perfectly in the still air of the patisserie.
Zeke picked up a tiny wire whisk and held it up to the light. “What kind of place is this?” he whispered.
“Careful what you touch, Zeke,” said Mom, ducking to avoid a pot dangling from the ceiling.
On the other side of the room a dim, white light shone in a glass case full of pastries: éclairs topped with cream, tarts smothered in berries, layer cakes with flaky crusts and heavy chocolate filling drizzled in vanilla. Guster let go of his mother’s hand and ran to it, his mouth watering.
He pressed his nose against the glass. Finally! There were fruits; there were nuts; there was chocolate! He wanted to laugh. He had never been so near such wonderful food. If he could just touch one — He stood on his toes and reached over the top of the glass.
“Guster! Hands off!” hissed Mom.
A loud, hacking cough came from an open doorway in the back. “If pastries are not made for eating,” said a voice before it started coughing uncontrollably again, “then what are they good for?” A short man with a white chef’s hat that bubbled up out of his head came out of the door. Long white hairs stuck wildly out from under the hat. He wore a navy blue bath robe and slippers.
Startled, Guster snatched his hand away from the glass case. The old man was a strange sight indeed.
Mom grabbed Guster and Zeke and pulled them close. “Pardon us Sir, but of all the shops in the city, my son only wanted a taste of your pastries,” she said.
“Oh?” said the old man and coughed a big, noisy cough that shook his body. His face looked pale and sweaty, like he’d eaten something that disagreed with him.
“It seemed like your shop was closed, but there was a light on. He wouldn’t eat anything else, so we had to try,” said Mom.
The old man steadied himself on a chair and breathed slowly. “So determined then, are we?” he said. He eyed Guster carefully as if trying to size him up. “A particular palette can be useful.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or dangerous.”
Guster squirmed. The way the old man stared at him was odd. “I wasn’t going to steal anything,” he said.
“No! No! Boy, you misunderstand me,” said the old man and stepped toward them with his arms open wide. “I am the Maitre Patisserie! The Master Pastry Chef. I make all these creations.” He put an arm around Guster’s shoulder. Mom tried to pull Guster away. “I admire someone with such excellent taste as yourself! Would you like a tart?” he whispered, as if it were a secret for only Guster to hear.
Of course, thought Guster, no matter how strange you seem. He was very hungry, and they looked so delicious. He nodded.
“Good!” said the Master Pastry Chef. He plodded his way behind the glass counter, his slippers flopping against his heels. “Which one shall it be?”
“How much do they cost?” interrupted Mom. The family didn’t have the money to buy expensive things.
“My dear,” wheezed the Master Pastry Chef, “I have little use for money anymore. You may try whatever you like.”
Guster looked back and forth between the chocolate layer cake and the raspberry tart. He pointed at both.
“Excellent choice,” said the Master Pastry Chef with a smile. He picked them carefully out of the glass case with a tissue and handed them to Guster.
He bit into the chocolate layer cake first. At last! It was soft, dense and spongy like warm fudge wrapped in a crispy crust. There was nothing wrong with it. In fact, it tasted like the cocoa powder had been hand crushed, and like the milk chocolate had been brewed only yesterday. Divine, he thought, as the sugar rushed all through his body. He closed his eyes and took another bite. I didn’t know food could taste like this!
“Guster is very particular Sir. If he likes your baking it is an extraordinary compliment,” said Mom. Rain began to drum softly on the window outside.
There she went, calling him particular again. If this were any other moment, he might have opened his mouth to protest, but right now, it was full of the most delicious raspberry tart, and he could not miss a moment of taste.
“Do you, by chance, also cook other things? Like healthy, stick-to-your-ribs kind of meals?” Mom asked.
The Master Pastry Chef laughed a laugh that quickly turned to a cough. “Food should never stick to your ribs Madam, so much as it should linger on the tip of your tongue — like a butterfly kissing a flower.”
“I need some new recipes, you see. It is very difficult for me to find something that my boy likes. He tells me that he tastes things — things that are impossible — like the size of a sugar grain, or which part of the country oranges were grown in.”
“Indeed?” said the Master Pastry Chef. “So he does have such clever and discerning buds?” He leaned on the counter as if to get a better look at Guster. “Would you like one of my specialties?” he asked.
“Please,” whispered Guster.
The Master Pastry Chef turned h
is back to them and rummaged through a cupboard. He turned around and placed a small tray on the counter in front of Guster with two identical, crescent-shaped cookies dusted in powdered sugar.
“Go ahead. Choose one,” he said. Guster took the one on the left and placed it in his mouth. It was dense, but sweet.
“You like it?” said the old chef.
Guster nodded, then swallowed. Of course he did.
“Good. Then have another,” said the old chef, pushing the tray toward Guster.
Guster took the second cookie and bit into it. It would easily be as good as the first. But then — there was a foul, sour taste at the back of his throat — he spat. “What’s in this?”
“Aha!” cried the Master Pastry Chef, throwing his arms into the air. “So it is true! I knew it! This is wonderful! So wonderful!”
He hopped around the counter and took Guster by the shoulders. “Just one extra drop of lemon, my boy, and nothing more. But that’s too much for you, now isn’t it?”
Guster was annoyed. He’d done it on purpose.
The chef peered down at Guster. “Some have the eyes of an eagle. There are others who can hear a pin drop in a crowded shopping mall. But there are few indeed who can taste the stories of the world with their tongues. You have a gift,” whispered the Master Pastry Chef.
Zeke could crack jokes, and Mariah was really smart. But him? A gift?
“And that is why I need a new recipe,” said Mom. “Somehow I have to make a meal that he’ll eat.”
“A recipe!” hacked the Master Pastry Chef. He hobbled over to a cluttered book shelf, shuffling his slippers as he went. “Very well! Let me see!” he said and pulled a yellowed piece of parchment from the shelves. He peered at it in the low light, muttering to himself, then tossed it aside.
“No, that won’t do,” he said. He opened a drawer, yanked out a scroll and untied the ribbon around it. The scroll unrolled across the floor. He turned it over then tossed it aside too. Next he limped to the book shelves, and while standing on his tip-toes, ran his finger across the titles written on their spines. The Creams That Crippled the Crown, read one. Tastes and Treachery, read another, The Forbidden City of Flavor and Pain, read a third. He stopped at a large, red, leather bound volume as thick as his head. His finger lingered on the title, The Final Season. He turned to face Mom, taking his shaking hands away from the book. “I don’t know if I have what you are looking for.”
But he had to! As strange as the Master Pastry Chef was, this was one of the few times Guster had tasted something that did not hurt him. It was his one hope. If anyone could give them a worthwhile recipe, it would be this chef, and now he was saying he couldn’t help them?
“Those tarts, you like them, don’t you?” he asked Guster.
Guster nodded. He liked them very much indeed.
“It took me years to find the perfect combination of ingredients. Thousands of trials before I finally made them into the mouthwatering treat they are. You may eat one hundred in a row, savoring every particle.” He shook his head, “But alas, you would even tire of them. Their taste too, would fade. And so it is for all cuisine.”
There was sadness in the old pastry chef’s voice. Those tarts were the best taste Guster had ever had. He wanted to help the chef somehow, tell him that it wasn’t true, that his tarts would never grow old.
“Except, there is —” the old man shook his head, “No, I shouldn’t. I cannot tell you. The burden would be too great,” he said, then bent over in a fit of coughing. He coughed for over a minute, sucking in a great lung full of air. Sweat poured from his face and his cheeks turned deep red until he finally collapsed in an easy chair in the corner.
The Master Pastry Chef seemed like he’d grown older, as if decades had passed since they’d come to the Patisserie. He breathed slowly, muttering, arguing with himself. “But they’re here, and I don’t see any other way. No, no other way.” He paused, turning back to them with a piercing glare. “Are you sure you want a dish so exquisite, so luscious, that, once you taste it, you will never care to eat anything else again?”
Guster looked to Mom. He couldn’t cook. She had to be the one to agree. She wiped the last of the tart from his cheeks, sadness in her eyes. “Yes,” she said.
“Very well,” sighed the Pastry Chef. “I am about to tell you a secret you must take to your grave. Do I have your word?”
Mom hesitated. “Yes,” she said.
“Any gourmet historian will tell you how merchants risked their lives to sail their ships around the horn of Africa just so they could trade spice. They will tell you that tea was the final straw that started the American Revolution. They know that Kings define their countries by the dishes they eat! They know the power of flavor! They know that history hangs in the balance, and taste will tip the scales! Since the day Paris was founded, gourmets everywhere have been seeking — baking, cooking and experimenting endlessly.
“See these books?” he nearly shouted, pointing to the hundreds of cookbooks stuffed into his shelves. “Across the world there’s a trillion more! Why write them?” he shook his head and threw up his hands. He wasn’t making eye contact anymore, like he was talking to himself. “Why make yet another recipe? What is it that they want to find?
“It of course! The One Recipe.”
The rain pounded on the roof like bullets as the Pastry Chef’s eyes grew wide. “I will tell you this night that the legends are true! The One Recipe exists! The One that is delicious beyond compare. It is shrouded in legend, but as real as you and I. The One Recipe that none have tasted, but men have killed for in hopes that they might be the first to savor just a teaspoon of it.” He coughed, then leaned dangerously close, “And those killers are among us!”
Mom clutched Guster’s hand. She was trembling. “Zeke, will you please go get the car?” she said, handing him the keys. He was stuffing tarts into his mouth with both hands. Mom must have been as scared as Guster if she was letting Zeke drive again. Zeke tip-toed carefully out the back door, taking a look back before he closed it.
“That One Recipe, as they tell it, is the Gastronomy of Peace,” said the Master Pastry Chef.
He motioned to a large red cake high up on the shelf behind the counter. It was several layers thick, like a tower, covered in a smooth frosting, with intricate designs across the borders. “Boy, would you be so kind as to get that cake down from the shelf?” he said.
Was that it? thought Guster, the Gastronomy of Peace?
“Go ahead honey,” Mom said without taking her eyes off the Master Pastry Chef. Guster squeezed his mother’s hand before letting go, slid a stool up to the shelf, and started to climb — keeping an eye on the chef all the while.
Shiny pearls of sugar shined across the cake’s edges in the dim light. On the top was an intricate drawing in frosting of a dove on a spoon with an olive branch. The smell was so heavenly that the strange chef, the dark alleyways outside and his talk of killing for food didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. The frosting would be perfect; there was no doubt about that. Guster lifted it down from the shelf and stepped to the floor carefully. It was much heavier than it looked.
“Bring it here,” said the Master Pastry Chef. Guster took it to the old man. “Now drop it,” he said.
“No!” Guster cried. He couldn’t destroy a dessert as beautiful as this one — not without tasting it.
The Master Pastry Chef looked pleadingly into Guster’s eyes, the veins on his forehead throbbing like they were about to burst. “Please,” he said.
The old man was so pitiful, so frail and weak he seemed like he could die at any moment. Guster could not refuse. He dropped the cake.
It fell to the floor and broke all over, smearing bits of frosting and sponge everywhere. Something hard clanged against the ground. In the middle of the mess lay an old, oversized metal eggbeater with a long wooden handle. A faint hint of pickled ginger seeped into the room.
“Take it!” The Master Pastry Chef stood up, grab
bing Guster by the shoulders, his aged eyes popping from his skull. Guster reached for the eggbeater.
His fingers almost touched it when lightning flashed and the electric lights in the glass case went out. There was a crash of shattering glass and a grunt, then more smell of pickled ginger. Guster turned. The lightning flashed again, and standing next to Mom was a man dressed as red as the devil himself.
He wore a tall, red, cylindrical chef’s hat pulled over his face with two eye holes cut in it like a mask. His red apron was as long as a snake, streaming out the window through which he’d come. His chef’s jacket was red as blood. He pulled a giant shining metal meat cleaver from his belt and raised it into the air.
Guster was too scared to scream. He was too scared to move. He felt Mom grab his hand and drag him to the back door where they had come in. The lightning flashed again. In that split second Guster saw more than he wanted to. The old Master Pastry Chef coughed one more time, “Get it to Felicity!” he said, then fell back into his chair, clutching his chest. His eyes rolled back into his head as the red-aproned chef sprang toward him.
“The eggbeater!” cried Guster as he realized what was happening. He lunged for the eggbeater, scooping it up as Mom pulled on his shirt and dragged him from the room. The doorframe of the back door bumped his shoulder hard as she yanked him into the alleyway.
The old Suburban screeched to a halt in front of them, knocking over a trashcan.
Zeke honked the horn. “Let’s get out of here, Mom!” he yelled. Guster had never been so glad to see Zeke in his life. He jumped into the back seat, slammed the door shut behind him, then smashed his hand down on the lock as the Suburban accelerated. The red-aproned chef burst into the alley, his cleaver wound up and ready to throw.
Guster ducked as the red chef hurled the giant knife. It flew, spinning straight toward the back door of the Suburban. The engine roared then metal clanged where the knife struck the car as they zoomed off into the night.
Read the rest of the story in:
The Buttersmiths' Gold Page 12