The Lost Recipe for Happiness

by Barbara O'Neal

  “Of course.” He stood with her. “I do need an answer fairly quickly. We need to get moving, and if you are not interested, I’ll need to move on to my next choice.”

  Elena pushed away her nervousness. Told herself to take her time anyway. He wouldn’t run out and get another chef before the end of the day. “I understand,” she said with as much cool professionalism as she could muster.

  “This is my cell phone number.” He gave her a business card and held out his hand. “Thank you for coming.”

  “My pleasure.” As his long fingers clasped her hand, she caught the scent of his skin. Not the food preferences she sometimes picked up, but simply his skin, himself. It smelled of rain hitting the earth on a summer evening. “I’ll let you know by the end of the day.”

  “I’ll look forward to that.”

  Their hands were still linked. Palm to palm. Eye to eye. She liked him. She thought she could trust him.

  And yet, there was some darkness about him, sad and lonely, lingering in the air around him. Now she caught another scent, still not food, but a waft of old-fashioned perfume. She didn’t move for a moment.

  He didn’t move away. The air seemed to buzz.

  Damn it.

  Elena pulled away. “Thank you, Mr. Liswood. I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

  “A pleasure meeting you, Ms. Alvarez.” His eyes twinkled. “I look forward to hearing from you.”

  The rain had slowed to a soft drizzle, and Elena fetched her dog Alvin from the neighbor who kept him while she worked. They headed for the seawall. If she didn’t walk, all the broken bits of her—the shattered hip, the pinned left leg, her spine—stopped working.

  So, every day, rain or shine, blizzards or gales, Elena headed out. Here in Vancouver, it was mainly to the seawall that looped around Stanley Park, always next to the water, a six-mile trek that kept her joints lubricated and head clear.

  What a morning! The article and the Blue Turtle and getting fired and Julian Liswood and the possibility of a kitchen of her own. It was so much to think about.

  And there at the center of it all was the fact that her home was gone. Again. Dmitri and the Blue Turtle. Her heart burned with sorrow and anger, like those flaming hearts on saints.

  Not that it was a surprise. It had taken three months, three months of breaking up and getting back together in wet and heated make-up sessions; and more recently, three weeks of late night phone calls—both his and hers.

  The usual. Civilized breakups probably happened, but not between a Russian man and a Latin woman.

  But she also felt the end was solid now. This time, they would not get back together.

  A slap of wind gusted over the water, and Elena winced against it. This was not how she had imagined her life would turn out, that she would be nearly forty and still husbandless, childless, rootless. As a girl, curled up in the corner of the kitchen in the roadhouse where her grandmother had tended bar, Elena had read every fairy tale known to man. All the pretty American Disney ones, with princesses who had flowing blonde locks and long white gloves. Cinderella, notably, with her lost shoe and the determined prince who knew he would find her, who would not give up until he did. She had liked Snow White, with her black eyes and black hair, and it seemed her world of seven dwarves was a comforting depth of family. There was Sleeping Beauty, locked away in her briar, and enchanted cats who turned into princes, and cursed orphans, and fairies who brought blessings spiderwebbed with curses.

  There was simply no doubt in her mind that she would one day find her own prince. He would kiss her, and Elena would Know, and they would Live Happily Ever After.

  Depressing that none of that had materialized. She loved her work, but honestly—how much longer could she do it? It was a challenging occupation for those with good health. Her pinned, patched body was not in that category.

  Alvin, sensing Elena’s mood, nudged her hand with a wet, cold nose. The king of empaths, Alvin was high-strung and utterly devoted to Elena. He couldn’t bear it if she was shouting or weeping or distressed in any way. “It’s all right, baby,” she told him, rubbing a hand on his silky red head.

  Now fate had delivered a chance. It rose through her like a harp note. Executive chef.

  It would be a make-or-break opportunity. Visible. Public. There would be reviewers from high places, and some of them would still judge her more harshly because she was a woman, and American, and trained in Santa Fe. Her long education had taken her many places after that, San Francisco and Paris and London and New York, but that was what the bios all said, “a woman chef trained in Santa Fe.”

  Colorado was awfully close to New Mexico. Her family was there still, and she sometimes visited, but only for brief stints. Watching the seabirds whirl and spin in the air above the rocks, she saw a map in her head, with one star each on Aspen and Santa Fe, and a red dot showing Espanola in the northern New Mexico mountains.

  Alvin licked her hand, bumped her knee. “I’m okay, honey. Promise.” Reassured, he pranced along, tail swinging, head upright and eagerly alert. Elena had found him in an alley when she first arrived in Vancouver, an abandoned puppy of five weeks, a fluffy ball of red fur. He loved snow—Aspen would be his idea of heaven.

  But—a binge-drinking chef who’d be pissed that Elena was taking his kitchen? That should be lots of fun. It was also cold in Aspen. How would all the arthritic points in her body react to that?

  “Get real, Elena,” she said aloud, fiercely enough that Alvin licked her hand. There were no real objections. The opportunity was heaven-sent.

  Well, except for Julian himself. Cloaked in that vampire stillness, so clean and tall and searingly intelligent. There was something real and solid about him, and yet—talk about trouble! A famous director with piles of money and a long stream of beautiful girlfriends and wives, who were a Who’s Who of one-bean-for-lunch actresses who kept the tabloids in business. But it was that flavor of sadness surrounding him that tempted her. He was hungry. Starving.

  Luckily, he was so rich and so accomplished and so out of her league they might as well have been different species. His appetites would run to an entirely different sort of flavor than a chef from New Mexico.

  When she finished the six-mile circle, Elena sat on a park bench in the sunshine, Alvin at her ankle lifting his nose to the air. A breeze rippled over his red-gold mane. She waited to see if her ghosts would have anything to say, but the air stayed still.

  From her pocket, she took her cell phone, checked the world clock function to make sure it wasn’t the middle of the night in London, and pressed 5 to autodial her friend Mia.

  “Hello, baby,” Mia answered in a voice as smooth and melodic as the Lady of the Lake. “I’m on my way to meet a juicy man. Can it wait?”

  “No.” Elena smiled, imagining Mia’s choppy black hair blowing around on a London wind. “You’re going to move to Aspen anyway, so forget about him.”

  “Aspen? Why am I moving there?”

  “Because I have been offered a position as executive chef in a new Julian Liswood restaurant and I will only take it if you agree to be my pastry chef.”

  “Oh, my God! Liswood the director?”

  “The same.”

  “This is fantastic.” She paused. “Oooh, the timing is horrible! I might have to think about this, though, you know? The man is really good. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about him.”

  Elena heard something in her friend’s voice. “Who is it? You haven’t mentioned anyone.”

  “I just didn’t think it was going to be anything. He’s…” She laughed breathlessly. “I’m still afraid to talk about it very much.”

  “Oh, but I need you, Mia. This is what we’ve been planning for a million years.”

  “Is Dmitri coming?”

  “No. He fired me this morning.” She sighed. “It’s a long story. I’ll explain it all in person.”

  “So the breakup is on?”

  “The breakup is finished, finally.”
r />   Mia took a breath. “Good. He was bad for you.”

  “Why didn’t you say that before?” Elena frowned. “Never mind. Not important today. Will you come?”

  A beat of hesitation. “I have to think, sweetness. I’ll call you in a week or so, okay? I really have to go now. Call you soon.”

  “Okay, I—”

  But there was the sound of a man’s laughter on the other end of the line and Mia was gone. Elena frowned and clapped the phone closed.

  When she hung up, she called Patrick, the third member of their team, but only got voice mail. “Hello, this is Patrick,” he said precisely, and she thought of his coxcomb of blond hair, his excruciatingly neat appearance. “Leave a message.”

  Elena smiled. “Allo! I have a wonderful opportunity for you, h’ito. Call me.”

  As a hired car transported Julian to the airport—he disliked navigating streets in unfamiliar cities—he drew the newspaper from his bag and unfolded it to show the article about Elena.

  The likeness was a good one, making her look saucy. She was no longer young. Not quite forty. He suspected by the way she moved—a little unevenness in her gait, a certain stiffness of the lower spine—that there were physical challenges. The camera loved her face, that thin straight nose and high cheekbones. Blue eyes in a Mayan face. Blonde hair around that olive skin.

  And Jesus, that mouth.

  Careful, man.

  After his fourth divorce, seven years ago, Julian—weary and embattled—had given up alcohol and taken a vow of celibacy. Surrounded as he was by the banquet of temptations that was Hollywood, it seemed the only way he could get his head on straight. His last wife, Mallory, had been a yoga teacher who ran the highly successful studio he’d called when he found his body resisted running more and more each year. Yoga had been a boon, centering him, allowing him to see his life for what it was.

  Which, ironically, nudged him into realizing that he and Mallory had absolutely nothing in common. She was a spiritual being, ethereal and without high appetites of any kind—for food or sex or even music—and while she’d been a lovely teacher, not such a great life match.

  Feeling profligate over women and wine and too much of everything, he gave up sex and alcohol after the divorce. To be a good father, to be a decent human being, he had to figure out how to live with too much money and too much power and try to be whole and human.

  His celibacy had lasted twenty-eight months. He ran, practiced yoga, poured his thwarted sexual energies into his films, his restaurants, and the practice of being a father to his daughter.

  One rainy San Francisco day, he’d ducked into the kitchen of the Yellow Dolphin, and there had been a woman taking tomatoes out of a basket. She was new to the place, her skin faintly sallow, her hair fine and ordinary beneath a bright scarf, her body hidden beneath her stained smock. Ordinary, really.

  And yet, he stood rooted, his ears hot, the back of his neck swamped with blood, staring at her plush mouth. As he stood there, airless and stunned, she sliced a thick wheel from a tomato and tasted it with an expression of distance and internal focus, obviously gauging the depth of flavor. Those lips moved in the most ordinary of ways, pressing together, pursing.

  Julian left the restaurant and went for a run, thinking maybe extremes were a bad idea. Balance in all things. That evening, he found a willing partner and ended his celibacy.

  But this morning, when he saw that mouth again, on Elena, who stood on the sidewalk in front of the Blue Turtle, looking both angry and crushed, he had been dismayed to realize her mouth still had the power to stun him.

  He had nearly turned around without saying a word. And yet, he’d flown to Vancouver to meet her.

  He’d done a great deal of research on the sous chefs in his existing restaurants, looking for one who might have the skills to move up that last step. Elena had won in every category—she was known for sharpness and good humor and intelligence. Every chef he spoke to admired her clever and sensual food. He liked that she had her roots in the West, that she’d worked in all the major food markets.

  She was such a shoe-in that he’d really only come to Vancouver to meet her in person.

  As the car looped through the streets of Vancouver, he tapped the paper on his knee. The women who tempted him most were never the great beauties, though God knew he’d had his share of those as well. It was stories that snared him, and Elena Alvarez was a composite of opposites and mysteries he found deeply intriguing. He read the article again.

  His cell phone rang. The display showed Elena’s name. He answered warmly. “Elena, I hope the news is good.”

  “I have questions,” she said in the faintly and uniquely accented voice—a hint of a drawl, the softening influence of Spanish, a musical dash, perhaps from the time in France. Entirely unique. “Can I bring two people with me?”

  “Absolutely. Anyone I know?”

  “No one from the Blue Turtle. Patrick is a sommelier with genius for the front of the house, and Mia is a pastry chef. Very talented, both of them.”

  “Aside from the two I mentioned, everyone else is your call.”

  Julian heard her take a breath, as if to steady herself. “All right, then, Mr. Liswood. I’m all yours. The sooner I get out of here, the better.”

  “Excellent. I’ll fax the contract and get on the condo right away.”

  “Don’t forget I need to bring my dog.”

  “I won’t forget.” He paused. “Welcome aboard, Elena.”

  “I’m honored to have the chance. If I haven’t said so, thank you. Very much.”

  “My pleasure.” He hung up and held the phone tenderly in the cup of his hand for a long moment until the car stopped at the airport.

  He tugged his hat lower on his head, hiding his hair. Dark glasses hid his face, and the combination made him anonymous. Until the recent security crackdowns, he’d traveled as Jonathan Craven, the antihero in his block-buster horror series, but 9/11 had put an end to that. Now he was simply Julian Liswood. Not many security guards recognized the name by itself. Directing was not like acting.

  Settled into his first-class accommodations on the plane, he remembered to be grateful for the extra space for his long legs, and flipped open his cell phone, dialed the number of his business manager. “I found my chef. We’re a go for the Aspen restaurant,” he said, watching two burly men load bags into the hold. “Let’s meet this evening.”

  FOUR

  ELENA’S BEST FOODS

  Paris Hot Chocolate

  Very nearby the Louvre is a strip of tourist shops and eateries. One is a two-story restaurant with beautiful young waitresses and a counter in front to sell chocolates. It’s called Angelina’s, and I think it was famous at one time. The walls are baroque and a little grimy, with mirrors and gilt. There, three expats in Paris retreated on a miserable, rainy November day in 1993 and huddled together, wishing for home. Until the chocolate came, a big, boiling hot pot of it, served with a pitcher of thick cream. Patrick, who had been there as a child, smiled and poured.

  “Now taste,” he said.

  Mia and I, mourning our language and our homes and our boyfriends, who lived ten thousand miles away across an ocean, picked up our cups. I took one swallow, and a chocolate river opened into my throat, down through my chest. I swam in it.

  Patrick laughed.

  FIVE

  Elena had met Patrick and Mia in Paris. The trio were eager students at Le Cordon Bleu, giddy with possibility and miserable in their Americanness and clumsiness with the language.

  Mia was a soft, round Italian-American girl with clouds of hair and breasts and lusciousness, who could prepare pastry so seductive that she never lacked for lovers, though she could not master the art of keeping them. She made Elena think of her lost siblings, and that led her to sit down next to Mia the first day of class. They bonded immediately.

  Patrick was a Boston blue blood with a flair for service, who fussed over details and beauty. He joined Elena and Mia a week into t
he program, rejected by a pair of French youths who disdained Patrick’s slight and boyish plumpness, his nearly albino paleness.

  On long rainy afternoons, the trio huddled in the tiny apartment they shared, and nursed hangovers from drinking too late in tucked-away spots with black-clad human commas who made Elena think of beatniks. As they warmed themselves with coffee, shivering beneath shawls and blankets, they spun a dream of opening their own restaurant—Elena as chef, Patrick in the front of the house, Mia as pastry chef.

  Now, fourteen years later, they would have the chance. Within three days, Elena had promises from both of them to join her in Aspen, and three days after that, she was on the road in her Subaru that had plenty of room for Alvin, her possessions, most of which belonged in the kitchen—she didn’t even have many clothes, since she spent most of her time in chef’s whites—and herself. She nestled a geranium, a bright magenta bloomer, in a secure spot. It was the one thing she’d carried from place to place to place all these years, grown from a cutting she’d taken from a plant in her grandmother’s restaurant.

  Place to place, she thought. Place to place to place to place. God, she was getting weary of always moving on! And yet, what choice was there? She was a chef. She went where the work carried her.

  She arrived in Aspen on a Tuesday afternoon. “Look at this!” she said aloud, just in case Isobel was listening. Her sister never showed up in a car, which Elena could understand, but she talked to her sometimes anyway. “It’s like a scene from a View-Master!”

  Mountains towered into the air on three sides, around a town that was scattered down the valley like spilled Tinkertoys. The landscape was painted in seven shades of green—aspens and grasses and junipers—and twelve shades of blue, from sky to mountain and back again, with splashes of gold here and there, like jewelry. On the ground was ocher and red, a little pink granite.