“You? Hungry?”
She yawned. “It’s Saturday. I’m tired of not eating all the time. Maybe I’ll go for a run later or something. You have to have energy to run.”
He nodded, wondering what he could fix for breakfast. He didn’t want to go into town, but was there anything here worth cooking? “Frozen waffles?”
“Packed with transfats and white flour, dude.”
“Oh. Sorry. Hmmm.” The coffee stopped gurgling and he poured two cups.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “I don’t drink coffee.”
“One’s for Elena,” he said without thinking.
A deep pause. “She spent the night here?”
“Not like that.” He turned around and looked at her. “She’s in the guest room.”
She raised her hands, palms open. “None of my business.”
“It is your business, actually. You live here, too, you know. I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable, Portia.”
She stared at him for a minute, a thousand small betrayals swimming over the surface of her irises. It shamed him. “Really?”
He nodded. “Really.”
“Okay—here’s the truth: it’s weird when your parents have a boyfriend or girlfriend over.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my chef.”
“I get it,” Portia said.
“Hello—I’m warning you that I’m here,” Elena said from the doorway.
Alvin wiggled happily toward her, head down, body arched, looking like a comma. He shimmied into her legs and Elena chuckled, a low earthy sound, and she knelt, or kind of crumpled, to kiss him and hug him, rubbing him all over.
“That was awful,” she said in a ragged voice. “I missed you so much.” She held Alvin’s muzzle and kissed the velvety snout, then between his eyes, and Alvin made a low, pleased noise. Licked her nose very politely.
Julian wished to be a dog. Her fine hair was loose on her shoulders, long and pale. For the first time, he noticed a thin, faint scar edging from the top of her shirt, along her collarbone. Inexplicably, the sight made him think of his mother.
After a minute, she stood up, and Julian saw the swollen eyes, the extreme paleness. “You all right?” he asked.
“More or less,” she said with a tilted grin that made her look about sixteen. “I’d kill somebody for that coffee in your hand.”
“It’s all yours,” he said. “Cream and sugar, as I recall.”
“Bueno.” She looked at Portia. “He was sleeping on your pillows when I got here, and he wouldn’t come with me. You’re a real dog charmer, aren’t you?”
“But look how happy he is to see you now!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Elena said. Alvin dashed into the great room, grabbed his crocodile, and brought it back to her, his head and tail high and happy. Elena grabbed it and yanked, letting him play tug-of-war for a minute before she took it away and tossed it toward the hallway. He danced toward it, and leapt on it as if it were a live thing.
Julian watched her with a sense of airlessness, feeling stricken, starving, yearning, and for no earthly reason. Her hair, stick straight and too fine to be particularly alluring, was combed, but hardly styled. She looked a little hungover, and she wore the same clothes she had on last night.
And he really would have liked kissing her good morning.
Elena sat across from Portia. “How was he last night? He seems very happy. Did you guys have fun?”
“We did.” She grinned. “He is such a good dog!”
“I couldn’t stand not waking up to him this morning, so I had your dad come get me from the restaurant and then you guys looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“That was nice. Thanks.” She frowned. “There were some fireworks, though, and he totally freaked out. Does he always do that?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s absolutely petrified of thunder, fireworks, anything like that. I tried drugs but they don’t really help.”
“Poor baby.” Portia rubbed Alvin’s back. “I’ll do some research, ask around, see if there’s something to do for it.”
“I’d be so grateful if you found something to help him.” Elena put her cup down. “Now. How about if I make breakfast to thank you both?”
“You don’t have to wait on us, Elena,” Julian said.
Elena inclined her head. “You don’t actually know how to cook anything, do you?”
“Uh—”
“He offered frozen waffles,” Portia said.
“Ugh!” Elena rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m starving,” she said. “And I am—as you may remember—a spectacular cook.”
He smiled. So did Portia.
Elena narrowed her eyes, as if she were reading something written on the air. She peered at Portia carefully, and Julian swore he again saw that odd bend of the air around her, a shimmer of heat or light or something. “Let’s see—you are a pancake girl, aren’t you? Is it…nuts…no, bananas. Banana and—is it chocolate?”
Portia’s mouth dropped. “How did you know that?”
Elena raised her eyebrows ruefully. “Well, here’s the deal—it’s kind of magic.” She grinned, and for the first time, Julian noticed that she had a great dimple deep in her right cheek. “I can smell things sometimes, like an aroma of cooking food. I smelled latkes around your dad, and bananas around you.”
Portia looked wary. “Are you making that up?”
“No. I know how it sounds.” She took a sip of coffee, raised a hand as if swearing before a jury. “I swear it’s true.”
“That’s weird,” Portia said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “But kind of cool.”
Elena nodded. “So, banana pancakes?”
“Sounds great.” She swirled off the stool. “I’m going to go brush my teeth.”
Elena smiled after her, an expression of softness around her eyes. After a moment, she stood and looked around. “Where is everything? I see bananas. Any chance there are chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate or something in here?”
Julian wiggled his brows and reached into his stash in the cupboard. “How about Dove chocolate?” he asked, bringing out a bag of small bars.
“That will do very nicely.” She put them on the counter next to a bowl she found, and opened drawers, cupboards, familiarizing herself with the kitchen. “Hmmm. I don’t see measuring spoons.”
Something was different about her this morning, and Julian finally put his finger on it. “You’re not limping.”
She scowled. “Do I limp a lot? Ivan said that last night, too. I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Not really. Just a little, when you’re tired or something. Still”—he inclined his head frankly—“you’re moving a lot more freely than usual.”
“That’s the tequila. If I wanted to be a drunk, I’d never have any pain at all.”
“Speaking of drunks, how was Ivan last night?”
“Fine.” She pulled open a drawer and crowed, pulling out a set of measuring spoons and cups. “He wasn’t drinking the way I expected. Maybe he’s turned over a new leaf.”
“Was that a test?”
She met his eyes. “Partly. Mainly, it was just to show the kitchen I’m in charge.”
He nodded. “How’d you do?”
“I won. And we cooked for a good portion of the kitchens in town, so the respect ratio will be high.”
“Excellent.”
“Hand me the flour,” she said, pointing, and he passed it over. “And now we have our big week, huh?”
“Yeah. How are you feeling about it?”
“Good, honestly. We’re going to have a tamale party tomorrow, making tons of them. And Mia was getting on a plane the last time I spoke to her, so Patrick should be bringing her here any time.”
“Good.”
“The staff tasting is tomorrow night, your party is Thursday, right?—we need to hammer down that menu, by the way—and the soft opening is Saturday.
“Pretty exciting.”
She touched he
r lower ribs. Smiled up at him. “It is.”
Her cell phone rang on the counter and she frowned at it. “Do you mind? It’s Patrick. He went to get Mia.”
“Go ahead.”
Her body angled away, and Julian stood up, walked to the window to give her some privacy. The new snow made the air so bright and clean it was like a glass of fresh cold water. He crossed his arms, thinking of Portia’s resistance to skiing, wondering how to get around it. Maybe they could go snowshoeing, get her feeling excited about it all again.
When did the tide turn toward such skinniness, anyway? It seemed to him that there used to be lots of lean, lanky girls, but also girls with lush breasts and lots of gorgeous ass, and still others with the supple squareness of athletes.
Then one day, they all showed up to casting calls looking like coat hangers.
Behind him, Elena said, “It’s your call, Patrick. I trust your judgment.”
He turned. His gaze caught on the white skin over her collarbone, on the line of her throat. Traveled over her delicate wrists and battered hands, and her breasts, too, more evident here than at the restaurant, where she camouflaged her body beneath chef’s coats or loose T-shirts. Very nice breasts, full and natural.
Her mouth was tight when she hung up the phone.
“Problem?” he asked.
“Mia’s not coming. She’s in love and her man doesn’t want her to leave. So, I’m without a pastry chef. Patrick is going to see if he can find anyone appropriate in Denver. He has some connections.”
Julian shrugged. “Not such a big deal. The menu is in great shape.”
She nodded, staring into the distance with one hand on her hip. “I’m in love with Ivan’s baklava,” she said. As if in memory, she licked her lower lip. “He’s amazingly talented.”
The unmistakable thrust of jealousy twisted through his gut, and Julian squashed it. “That’s why I wanted to keep him.”
Portia came back into the room. “What can I do to help?”
Julian was startled—Portia help with a household task?—but wisely retreated. “I have to make a couple of calls. Yell when it’s ready.”
“Will do, boss,” she said, putting him in his place.
Where he needed to stay.
Back at her apartment, Elena took some time to rest and read, only walking over to the restaurant in the very late afternoon. Alvin slumped on the porch, enjoying the sunlight. Roberto washed dishes, singing along to the radio, and Ivan scraped a bowl clean with a spatula. He looked fine, and she realized that she’d been worried that the drinking would make him binge. “You didn’t have to come in,” she said.
Ivan shrugged. “I know.”
“Is Hector here today?” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” Roberto said. “He has Sundays off when he can. Likes to go to mass.”
“Does he have a sister?” Elena asked.
Roberto raised his head. After a moment, he nodded. He touched his temple. “Ella es adivina.”
Fortune-teller. “Will you see Hector tonight? Will you tell him for me that I want to see her?”
Roberto nodded. He rinsed the bowl and put it away. From his pocket, he brought out a cell phone and punched in the numbers. Elena left him to it and went to the office. She had paperwork to do.
There was an email from Mia, of course. Ripe anger bloomed in her throat and she was tempted to delete the post unread. Instead, she stabbed the button to open it.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: (no subject)
My darling Elena, I know how angry you are this morning, but please call me. Please don’t see this as a betrayal, because you’ll never forgive betrayal, and it isn’t. I swear. I’ve been trying to tell you for two months that I wasn’t sure, that I might really need to stay with this man, that he’s right for me, and you haven’t been listening.
Babycakes, my dearest, dearest sister, please call me. I want to tell you the story. It was so romantic—Kevin came to the airport with flowers, begging me to stay. I am so in love! It happens to you all the time, but not to me.
Call me, call me, call me.
I love you.
Mia
Elena glared at the page. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she muttered at the email. “I don’t fall in love all the time!”
But with shame, she saw a sudden parade of men—serious love affairs. Christopher and Timothy and George and Andrew and Dmitri. Between them, minor connections—a blues singer in San Francisco, a sturdy businessman in New York, a soccer player in Vancouver.
And Edwin, of course, so long ago. The only lover who visited, over and over, the memory of him unsullied, always sweet. She thought of her dream, of his supple, unflawed eighteen-year-old flesh, his unmarked face and furious passion.
Perfect. And of course, no one could ever measure up to a memory.
But Mia, as her note plainly displayed, knew what the price of betrayal was. She had known Elena would not forgive this, and she had chosen a man over a friendship. “Sister!” she said aloud to the screen. “Some sister.”
Somewhere at the core of her, Elena wanted to put her head down on the desk and wail. She had so been looking forward to having Mia here, a woman, a friend, an ally.
But she didn’t put her head down—because she already knew this truth: people left you. It was the one true thing she knew. Everyone always left you. She could only count on herself.
And she could count on work. Focus on her job. That was where real reward lay. She deleted Mia’s email and pulled up the books and ordering forms. Almost time. She would make a checklist to make sure nothing was missed for this week.
Work.
The first tasting, for the staff on Monday night, went over with wild success, and despite her annoyance at Mia—who called every day to leave apologetic messages on her voice mail, and sent email after email, which Elena deleted unread—Elena felt the first real surge of confidence. Thanks to the long hours of training and establishing the spirit of the kitchen, the evening ran very smoothly.
Elena put Peter on figuring out desserts. He wasn’t happy, and it didn’t help that the other guys in the kitchen snickered over it—pastry chefs were an entirely different realm. Not really chefs at all, in the opinion of the male world. Peter protested, too, said he was a cook, not a chemist. But she’d seen something in his loving attention to detail that made her think he’d do a good job, that he might be more of a pastry man than he knew.
At any rate, it wouldn’t hurt him to do his time at that station. He had a lot of talent and drive and would one day have his own kitchen, she was sure. She told him as much, gave him a raise, and he was mollified.
For the time being.
It turned out, too, that one of the Mexican dishwashers was well versed in tamales. He suggested the upstairs could be a kitchen devoted not only to desserts and tamales, but all manner of prep work, leaving space free downstairs for the actual assembly and cooking.
On Thursday, they would present the tasting menu for the dinner party at Julian’s. It happened to be Halloween, which Elena thought hilarious for a horror director, and she developed a theme of El Día de los Muertos for it.
On Friday night, the restaurant would fling open the doors to members of the community invited in to eat for free. It would allow the staff to do a serious trial run of systems—front and back of the house—and uncover any flaws. On Saturday, they would have their “soft” opening, ready for business.
By day, Elena raced around checking details, testing and retesting menu items, refining the systems in the kitchen, rearranging schedules as personalities emerged. By night, she went over the numbers, the figures, the ordering, and woke up in the middle of the night to write notes to herself about things to check in the cooler.
Three days before the soft opening, the dessert menu still had not been refined. Elena wanted to kill Mia on a daily basis, since of course those who might be qualified had
already been snapped up. Peter struggled to get something together, but he wasn’t there yet.
The printer was waiting for their refinements to the menu after the soft opening, but Elena was beginning to despair. She was taking inventory Wednesday afternoon when one of the Mexican youths came into the kitchen. “Jefa,” he said. “Can I speak with you?”
“Sure, Hector.” She answered in Spanish. “What’s up?”
“I brought my sister here to talk to you—they said you want to see her?”
A thin girl of about nineteen, wearing clunky shoes and a dress that was too big for her, hovered behind him. “Good, thank you.”
“Also,” Hector said, “there was a fire in Carbondale, at a bakery. The woman who made their pastries was a very fine cook, and she no longer has a job. I thought she might be good. For the desserts, you know?”
“Oh, you fabulous creature!” She squeezed his arm. “When can I talk to her?”
“I can call her. She’ll drive over whenever you want.”
“Today! The sooner the better. Seriously.”
He smiled and nodded. “I’ll call her.” He turned to his sister and gestured her into the office. “This is Alma.”
“Come in, Alma,” Elena said in Spanish. The girl slipped into a chair, hands in her lap. Her wrist bones were highly defined. “Don’t be afraid.”
In Spanish, she said, “I’m not afraid of you, Jefa.” There was the faintest emphasis on the “you.”
“What then?”
She looked over Elena’s shoulder. “There is a car accident. A boy—or man?—I cannot tell. Flying through the air. It will change things.”
“That’s from a long time ago.”
The girl shook her head. “Not a long time ago. Still coming.”
Elena scowled. “What good does that do me?”
“It will help you, if you let it.” She looked around the room, and Elena had to tamp down hard on her impatience. The girl was fey and odd, but wasn’t Elena sitting here with her because a ghost told her to?
Who was strange?
Elena sighed, feeling the ache in her leg, in the base of her neck. “Thank you,” she said, and gave the girl two twenties.
The Lost Recipe for Happiness Page 18