The kitchen staff worked itself into its new alignment. There were a few struggles for dominance among the line cooks, and there was never going to be the ease between Ivan and Dag that there had been between him and Juan, but the Danish skier had a lot of talent and he showed up reliably, so they had to keep him. Twice, Elena clamped down on them when a struggle broke out; the rest of the time, she looked the other way. Dag deferred to Ivan in the kitchen—this was a personal struggle.
She missed Juan. Terribly. He was an excellent chef, with a personality to calm the roiling waters, but it was Juan himself she missed. The twinkle in his eye, his old-world mannerliness, his easy chatting with her in Spanish. Having him around had been like having a piece of her home with her every day. She’d come to rely on him and his soothing influence, and she really wanted to get him back. Through Hector and Tansy, she found out the name of his hometown in Mexico, and asked Julian to help her find him. Maybe if they requested this particular cook, they could make a case to the authorities. It was worth a try.
In the meantime, she cracked down on the legality of the papers in her kitchen. Hector produced a legitimate green card somehow, and his sister married a local—probably for her green card, but Elena didn’t care, and a loophole in the law allowed the restaurant to request a certain number of work permits, which they sucked up as fast as they could.
Elena also wrote letters. Lots of letters—to her congressmen, to the INS, to the local state and city officials. She even wrote a letter to the President. The laws, in her opinion, were idiotic and benefited no one—not the employers, nor the illegal immigrants flooding in to take the jobs, nor the American citizens who supposedly wanted the jobs the illegals were taking. Nobody won.
Entire projects were shut down throughout the city because there was no one to work them. Potholes on side streets grew to the size of small lakes with no one to man the trucks to fill them up. Restaurants could seat only 70 or 80 percent of their former numbers. And construction projects sat silent, heavy plastic flapping beneath the brilliant skies.
One thing that had come out of the decimation of the kitchen staff was that Elena found herself leading a kitchen with a much higher than average percentage of women. She and Tansy; Hector’s sister Alma on dishes; the line-cook-in-training—i.e., kitchen slave—Katya, who had come to them through the party at Julian’s; and another slave Ivan had unearthed somewhere, a squat girl with mean eyes who didn’t talk much but could wield a knife like nobody’s business.
The only real challenge was her body. Which was falling apart, slowly but surely. The hot tub helped, and she had found a second massage therapist to work on her twice a week in addition to Candy. She walked on a treadmill for an hour every day, since long walks around town were impossible with the banks of snow, some up to ten or twelve feet deep.
Nothing really worked. She was in almost constant pain, in her back, in her hip, taking more and more drugs, which made her irritable and sometimes a little confused. Mostly, she’d learned to cover it, but the strain was showing in her face, draining her strength.
Secretly, she found a doctor who did X-rays and confirmed what Elena had dreaded—she needed more surgery. There wasn’t a lot they could do for the hip, which was riddled with arthritis, but the surgery on her back would, he was sure, be an almost complete fix. It would require her to wear a brace for four to six months, and for the first two, she couldn’t be on her feet, not for any length of time.
And she would need help. Lots of it. She couldn’t be on her own.
That day, she went back to the tower room at Julian’s house, closed the door, and wept bitterly. To relieve the pain, she would have to give up her kitchen. How could she make that choice? To relieve the pain, she would have to depend on others to help her, and show her weakness.
Maybe, she thought, it was the extreme cold making it so bad. When the weather got better, she’d feel better. So she took some more drugs and scheduled massages for nearly every day of the week and hid from everyone the pain she was feeling. It wasn’t as easy to hide the stiffness, a fact that embarrassed her.
Maybe, she thought, more and more mornings, she should go ahead and have the surgery. Ivan was stable. He could run the kitchen—especially if she let him get rid of Dag—and he wouldn’t undermine her. Maybe Patrick would let her stay with him, or she could hire a nurse. But where would she live after this mythical surgery? She could not bear to let Julian see her that vulnerable!
It was taken out of her hands, anyway. On the fifteenth, she had an email from Dmitri, out of the blue.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: ouch!
Saw the slam from Bok. Condolences. Heard you had trouble with INS, which no one can predict. Bad luck.
Here is some good news for you, however—would you consent to be interviewed for my television show? We’ll be in Aspen end of January to shoot a feature that will run on Valentine’s Day: “Aspen for Lovers.” Julian Liswood has always been good to me, and I’d like to feature the Orange Bear, and you, with your gorgeous lips.
Ciao,
dmitri
PS you were right about Jennifer. She was too young for me.
Of course, she thought. Of course. Because the universe couldn’t let her have one freaking minute of peace. She wanted to punch her fist through the monitor. Instead, she opened a reply and wrote:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: re: ouch!
Dmitri! What a great surprise—you must be absolutely thrilled to be hosting the show. It’s just your cup of tea (remember the reporter in Vancouver said you were from the Mick Jagger school of beauty?) and I can’t wait to say I knew you when.
Of course I’d be delighted to be interviewed. Name the time! If you want to call me the numbers are: 970-555-4398 (restaurant) and 970-555-0936 (cell). If there is anything we can do to make your stay more enjoyable, please don’t hesitate to let me know. I look forward to seeing you again.
Warmly,
Elena
Before she could add anything snarky, she hit the Send button.
His reply was instant:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: re:ouch!
Very good. We will be arriving 28 January and will stay through 1 February. Will call before then to arrange details.
ciao,
dmitri
Ivan felt as if an anvil were hanging over his head. Dag was a constant, needling presence, continuously flirting with Patrick, who ignored him for the most part, but every so often, Dag got through, like when the skier made a plate of blintzes for somebody’s birthday on Sunday afternoon, always a more relaxed day, the end of the workweek, since the restaurant was closed on Mondays. He served them with cherries, red and plump and sinful, and ricotta cheese whipped with lemon curd.
Patrick’s eyes widened at the first taste and he blinked at Dag. “Marvelous!” he said. “Yes, please. I’d like some more.”
Chuckling in his loose way, Dag served the blintzes. He winked at Ivan. “Would you like some, Rasputin?” The nickname had stuck, and Ivan rather liked it, but he didn’t want to touch anything Dag made. Burning inside, he nearly flipped the entire pan of cherries on the floor. Instead, he rolled his eyes in disdain and stalked outside to smoke.
He simmered through the shift, steam coming from his pores like a volcano about to blow. He felt the unrest and turbulence in him and tried to calm it down, going out to smoke regularly, staying away from Dag as much as he could. He drank some herbal tea Elena kept around, and forced himself to pay attention to his own work.
A therapist he’d been sent to after one or another of his drinking violations—driving and fighting, mostly—told him to notice how a thought wasn’t always a directive, it wasn’t even real sometimes. The woman
showed him how to break it down—event, reaction, thought. He tried to practice it this afternoon. The event was Dag’s fucking annoying behavior. He needled Ivan deliberately, trying to find his weaknesses and make him crazy.
No, that wasn’t the way this worked. Ivan spun in his station, broiling lamb chops, acknowledging orders with a volley of commands, giving orders, spraying vinegar water over a flame leaping too high, and reviewed.
The event had no emotion. Dag made blintzes. Offered them to Patrick, who ate them and liked them.
Marvelous.
After that, Ivan’s reaction was to feel annoyed. Jealous. His thought was that Patrick didn’t love him and would leave him for Dag. Or someone else more beautiful or more polished or more whatever.
The dark knots of fury eased away from the back of his neck. Patrick did love him. Ivan honestly didn’t know why—Ivan was difficult and high-strung and given to wild mood swings—but it seemed to be true. Dag was trying to get to him, trying to get Ivan to react and do something stupid to mess up either his job or his relationship—while Patrick was faithful, it was impossible to miss that Dag wanted him. If Ivan allowed himself to fall for Dag’s game, Dag would win.
More tension faded. Whew. Maybe he was getting the hang of this sanity thing. Damn. He grinned to himself.
And it all would have worked out just fine, Ivan thought later, if they hadn’t stopped to have a drink at their favorite nightclub after work. The crowd was thin on a Sunday night. Patrick and Ivan found a booth in the agreeable dark and ordered an ale for Ivan, a pinot grigio for Patrick, who never, ever had more than one. “I’m hungry,” Patrick said, and glanced over the very small menu. “Maybe some mushroom caps?”
“And some wings.” Ivan wiggled an eyebrow across the table. “I’m in the mood for something sloppy.”
“It was busy tonight,” Patrick commented, leaning back with a sigh. “Good to see it.”
Ivan nodded. Music from a very good jukebox played quietly. Weariness pooled in his elbows and lower back, tingled through his knees, calves, feet. Sometimes lately, he could really feel his age. Not like Elena, though. “What’s with Chef, anyway?”
The quick shuttering fell over Patrick’s face, making it a blank mask. It irritated Ivan a little, that Chef was more important, or higher in Patrick’s loyalties, but he remembered his mantra: event, reaction, thought. Patrick had known Elena a long time, and in fact, wasn’t loyalty one of the things Ivan found so appealing about him?
“What do you mean?” Patrick asked.
“Here lately there’ve been times she can’t even stand up straight. She’s in serious pain a serious amount of the time.”
Patrick lowered his eyes. Nodded. “I’ve noticed, too.”
“What’s the deal? How does she get better?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t ever been this bad. I mean, sometimes at the end of a long week or a long trip, she might limp around a little, but…” He took a breath. “Not like this.”
Something in Ivan broke a little, thinking of the way her mouth pinched by the end of a shift. He thought of her scar, that thick cord of violence that ripped her back apart. “Sucks. That she should get the kitchen and then—”
“Do not say a word, Ivan, not to her and not to anyone else, do you hear me?”
“Jesus, man.” He scowled. “I like her. I feel bad for her. Why do you always think the worst of me?”
“I don’t,” Patrick said, and straightened. “But you’re competitive and she took the kitchen that used to be yours. You called the INS. I’m over it, but you wanted revenge, right?”
Ivan found this didn’t set off his temper. Huh. “I hate that I did that,” he said. “I did want revenge, before I met her. Before I knew her. I don’t anymore.” With an ironic little twist of his lips, he lifted his bottle of beer. “If not for her, you wouldn’t be here, now would you?”
Patrick’s mouth pursed into that pleased little smile Ivan liked so much. “That’s true.”
“Why don’t you get a backgammon board and I’ll go play some music?”
“Back in a flash.”
Ivan ambled over to the jukebox and leaned over it, his long arms folded on the top so that the light flashed over his face and chest, purple neon, his favorite color. He fed a few bills into the slot and started punching in his favorites—some Springsteen and Prince and Mellencamp for himself, some Melissa Etheridge and Toni Braxton for Patrick.
“How sweet,” said a voice nearby. Dag, as clean and tucked as a new shirt, leaned on the jukebox. “Choosing songs for your sweetheart?”
A ripple of irritation crawled up the back of Ivan’s neck, but he twitched his nose, blew it off. He was here with Patrick to relax and have a good time after a long night at work. He didn’t look up again. “Get lost, Dag. I have to put up with your shit at work, but not on my own time.” He pressed a set of numbers gently with great control, and flipped the cards inside the jukebox, looking for something lively. Cheerful, like Cyndi Lauper. Hard to get too pissed off when she was singing. He spied the Bangles and put in “Walks Like an Egyptian,” too, for good measure.
Dag leaned in close. “He’s too young for you.”
A sizzle, like too much electricity, buzzed over his ear, but Ivan ignored him. There was the Lauper. He punched it in.
“Look at that ass,” Dag said. “I keep thinking of those sweet cheeks, that pretty mouth. It’s ti—”
Before he knew he was swinging, Ivan had connected with that foul mouth. He saw it almost in slow motion, the arc of his fist, large and knotty and strong, fueled by the anger of nearly forty years of assholes like this, starting with his mother’s boyfriends, hurting him and teasing him, then kids at school because he was too thin, later because he was gay, always taunting him, for one thing and another and another, always putting him down, making him feel like he didn’t measure up; he saw it flying and Dag noting too slowly that it was coming, and then the flesh of his left knuckle and Dag’s mouth collided. Ivan felt something give, in his hand and in Dag’s mouth, a tooth, and then there was blood, and he had time enough to think, Fuck, I never even had a chance to get drunk, before Dag roared and tackled him, a bull. He slammed his fist into Ivan’s face, and he felt the crunch against his cheekbone—Jesus, it was like getting hit by an anvil. Then Ivan’s street sense kicked in and he managed to get a few punches in, and then people were hauling them apart, and the bouncer was dragging Ivan outside, while the patrons—all fucking punkass skiers—were crowding around Dag, who spit on the floor.
“Stay the fuck out of my bar, Santino!” said the bouncer, and Ivan was flung to the sidewalk outside, stumbling in this sudden rejection, shivering in the cold. He sat there for one long minute, humiliated and stinging as tourists in expensive boots and thick coats steered around him, looking down in disdain at his sweat-stained shirt and his bloody mouth.
He was expecting Patrick to come out, waiting for him to step outside and help him to his feet and gingerly tend his wounds. But he didn’t come. Ivan stood up, feeling the punch to his eye more than he wanted to. Through the window, he saw the commotion had already died down, and the music Ivan had chosen was already starting to play. “When Doves Cry” came through the windows faintly.
He didn’t have his coat. His lip was bleeding pretty fucking bad. Patrick was sitting in the booth, drinking his wine. Didn’t he know what happened? Dag sauntered over to the booth and Ivan saw him pointing toward the door. Patrick nodded.
And didn’t move.
Ivan stood there, blinking. How was that fa—
Fair.
Pierced to the bone, he headed back to the Orange Bear, where his car was parked. What the fuck. He’d get drunk somewhere else.
Because what had toeing the line got him? Same fucking life he had all along. What was the point?
What was even the fucking point?
Julian watched Elena moving around the bedroom and took her arm. “I’m worried about you.”
As she alwa
ys did, she made a conscious effort to straighten her spine. “I’m just tired.” She sank to the ottoman and took off her shoes. Her skin was pale.
“You’re not fine, Elena. You need to see a doctor.”
“So they can tell me how bad it is, Julian? So they can show me the intolerable choices left to me?”
Alvin jumped up and came over, his tail swinging nervously.
“You’re worrying him,” Julian said.
She bowed her head. “I’m sorry. I did see a doctor. Last week.” She swallowed. “They want to do more surgery.”
He sank down beside her, took her hands, even though she was trying to pull them away. “Elena. Stop resisting me.”
She smiled a little, let her hands still. Took in a breath. “So much for your chef, huh?” she said, and couldn’t quite cover the despair she felt. The blue of her irises seemed to bleed right down her face.
He cupped her face, touched her hair. “What kind of surgery?”
“A lot. Pins and cages and braces and things.”
“And what’s the prognosis?”
“I didn’t get that far. It would mean being in a brace for maybe six months. I can’t run the kitchen that way.”
“Do you think we—”
Her cell phone rang. In the quiet, the late hour, the sound seemed ominous. She shot him a glance and grabbed it from the table. “Hello?” Through the line, she heard a voice, rushing and urgent. “Slow down, Patrick. I can’t understand you.” She put a finger against her opposing ear. “What happened? Who is—”
The color bled from her face. “When? How did that happen? I thought he’d been on the wagon.” She listened a little longer, made soothing noises. “I’ll be there soon. Don’t freak out. It’s not your fault.”
She clapped the phone closed. “Ivan got into a fight with Dag at the bar, then got in his car and drove it into a tree.” She stood up. A white line edged her mouth, and she swung her hair over her shoulder. “I’ve gotta go to the hospital. Patrick’s losing it.”
The Lost Recipe for Happiness Page 32