Roux Morgue

by Claire M Johnson

  I’d often thought there should be a disclaimer in miniscule fine print on the bottom of these ads, like the three-point type on packs of cigarettes warning you about cancer: “Graduates will work like dogs for not much money.” The corporation doubled tuition, opened up branches in other cities, and still had a waiting list. The aroma of greenbacks induced other corporations to open their own schools. Parents with no hope in hell of getting their unruly, barely one-step above juvenile delinquent into college jumped at the idea that their kids would be earning $80,000 per year after a sixteen-month course. Anyone with half a brain would question the math on this, but the era of the celebrity chef, like Wolfgang Puck, Emeril, or Jamie Oliver, seduced parents into thinking that the $40,000 dollars in tuition was a bargain.

  A part of me wondered where all these graduates were getting work, with young chefs flooding the market every four months, but that wasn’t my problem.

  I was going to teach my first real love: pastry—perhaps a slight clue as to why my marriage didn’t work out.

  Teaching pastry had always been the part of cooking that floated my meringue. Trying to impart to my employees my love of creaming butter and sugar to just the right consistency, knowing when to add the eggs so the batter won’t curdle, tempering chocolate back and forth on a marble slab and the enormous satisfaction gained when the chocolate hits the right temperature and assumes that sensual gloss, so rich in contrast to the matte of the marble, just begging to glaze a cake or blanket a truffle.

  And now I’d have a whole room full of people to ooh and ahh with. I hadn’t been this excited in years.

  I spent most of the month of December poring over cookbooks, generating handout after handout about the history of pastry, the chemistry of baking, and the cultural traditions behind the art of patisserie. Benson had smelled my desperation and capitalized on it, the turd. Considering how clueless he was with money, it must have been nothing more than a power play. Cutting the puffed-up pastry chef who’s too big for her checked pants down to size. But so what? I wanted this job. I wanted to teach. I’d worked with assholes before. He wouldn’t be the first or the last.

  Loaded down with handouts and flush with anticipation, I eagerly wove my way through tables and chairs to where the chefs were congregated. When I reached them, I stopped short.

  It was the culinary version of the Sharks versus the Jets. The older, Escoffier-trained chefs occupied one table, stiff and starched in traditional white jackets and drab, checkered pants, white kerchiefs tied smartly around their necks. White paper chef hats stood at attention next to their coffee cups. At the other table, the new, cool, younger generation of chefs lounged. Their outfits ranged from chef’s jackets lined with wild fabric and matching balloon pants to checked overalls. The hats were equally eclectic ranging from floppy colorful toques to baseball caps.

  One seat beckoned at each table. All eyes were on me. The atmosphere was so thick you could hack through it with a meat cleaver. Obviously, I was expected to choose between my original mentors and my contemporaries.

  I raised my eyebrows at my former teacher Antonello de Luca, who was sitting with the older guard, as if to say, “What in the hell’s going on here?” He shrugged imperceptibly in the Italian manner that conveys both humor and resignation.

  “Sit here, Mary,” said Étienne Broussard, one of the original teachers with the school, and pulled out the chair next to him.

  “Yo, Mary,” hailed Tessa Dunn, an old acquaintance. She jerked her head toward the seat next to her. “This seat’s more comfortable.”

  I had no intention of choosing sides. Dumping my paperwork on an unoccupied table, I bounced back and forth between each table, shaking hands, hugging old friends, and introducing myself to people I didn’t know.

  I refused to sit down, stalling for time until 7:00 a.m. when classes began. I’d forestalled the inevitable.

  Before Antonello made his escape, I pulled him aside.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was like West Side Story here?” I hissed.

  He threw up his hands in Italian-speak. “What is this West Side Story?”

  “For God’s sake, you’ve lived in this country for twenty years and you’ve never seen West Side Story? The two camps: the old guard at one table, the new guard at the other, both obviously hating each other’s guts.”

  He laughed. “It started last semester. I didn’t tell you because I was hoping all this,” his hands rotated in large circles, “would have blown over during the Christmas holidays. Good luck on your first day.” He cupped my chin, gave it an affectionate shake. “I need to go, Cara.” The dining room was empty, everyone now in their respective classrooms.

  I watched him walk off to the garde manger kitchen, the white toque artfully concealing the shiny bald spot at the back of his head, the old-fashioned chef’s jacket hanging smartly on his broad shoulders. I sighed. Still sexy, still smart, he’s one of the few men I’ve met in my life who really likes women.

  Time is so unfair to women. The thirteen years since I’d been a student had not whittled away one ounce of his physical appeal. I, on the other hand, had recently started dyeing my hair and routinely spent a small fortune on face creams with ludicrous anti-aging claims. Even though I was still in the financial shits, I’d gone to Saks yesterday and plunked down $150.00 for a matchbox-size container of La Mer. And let’s not even mention my recent devotion to support hose. Professional kitchen floors are murder on your legs.

  Back to the task at hand. I squared my shoulders and headed off to the pastry kitchen. I wasn’t going to let some culinary turf war ruin my first day.

  My students were assembled by the time I made it to the pastry classroom. I hate being late and tripped slightly in my haste to get into the room. Not an auspicious beginning. I greeted everyone with a smile, expecting to see twelve eager, happy students excited by their first day at school.

  Nine sullen faces, slack with exhaustion, stared at me. The tenth guy stood out like a strawberry in a flat of green beans. He was much older, I’d guess in his early forties, and in contrast to all the other students, who could have auditioned for extras in some zombie flick, this guy’s vibes were shrieking “ON!” Traditional chef’s jackets have little or no tailoring. Basically they are boxes with arms. He filled his out, both the arms and the chest, suggesting that a lot of his spare time was spent pumping iron. Time would tell if he had any kitchen smarts, but given all that muscle, I couldn’t help but think him more suited to forging horseshoes, not decorating petit fours.

  The rest of the students were in their late teens or very early twenties, with that total lack of posture endemic to youth. Their spanking new chef’s jackets hung on them like shrouds, industrial strength creases down the middle of each flap, a sure sign that they’d been taken out of the package that morning. My smile began to slip. I tried again. Bigger smile this time. No one smiled back.

  “Did the storeroom run out of coffee this morning?” I joked, trying to get some sort of response.

  Nothing. I’ve seen more animated cantaloupes.

  I tried again.

  “My name is Mary Ryan. I’m a graduate of École d’Epicure. I’ve cooked at a number of restaurants in San Francisco. At my last job I was the pastry chef at the restaurant American Fare.”

  That perked them up in a hurry. When in doubt, pull out the I-was-involved-in-a-notorious-murder-investigation gambit. Eyes bulged and necks craned forward, even though we were only a table’s width from each other. I’d have done the same in their shoes.

  “If you guys show a tad more enthusiasm for being here, like you actually decide to breathe, I’ll give you the gory details of the murders at the end of the day. This is a freshman class, right?” Now that everyone was awake, a few had the courtesy to nod their heads. “How about introductions? If you were alive last October, no doubt you know all about me”—that got a few giggles—“so let’s start with you. Tell everyone your name, why you’re he
re, if you have a special interest, garde manger, pastry, whatever.” I pointed to the blacksmith-type. “You get to be first because you’re the only student whose vital signs appear to be working. You interested in pastry or just here because your schedule dumped you here?”

  While the class went through their introductions, I kept an ear open for the last two students. As everyone went through their spiels and still no one else appeared, I began to get irritated. I had a lot of material to present this morning, and I didn’t want to repeat myself.

  The whoosh of the door signaled at least one arrival. I turned, narrowing my eyes in what I hoped was a teacher-is-not-amused glower. A waif of a girl glided into the room, so slender I wanted to relieve her of her knife-roll before she tore a rotator cuff. Hair no longer than three-quarters of an inch, cut to a peak in a sweet little vee at the center of her forehead, her dark brown eyes swallowed the rest of her delicate features. One of those elfin, petite women that brings out the maternal instinct in women and the protect-the-wimmin-folk impulse in men.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Chef,” a breathless and apologetic voice begged forgiveness. “Cab driver didn’t speak English, French, or Italian. He took me to some college out near the beach. And then he was so sweet. He wouldn’t let me pay.”

  Apparently this charm worked on cab drivers as well.

  “You must ask for the trilingual cab driver next time,” I commented dryly. “All the others here have introduced themselves. Your turn.”

  She turned to everyone and, with an easy, sweet charm reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn with a tongue ring, introduced herself as Coolie. She’d just graduated from Brown, was twenty-one years old, Daddy wanted her to go to law school, but she wanted a profession that was creative, trend-setting, and wasn’t devoted to the almighty dollar. Didn’t everyone feel that way? The other students nodded eagerly, her innate helplessness demanding agreement.

  Freedom from the mighty dollar? I didn’t think it’d be a problem accommodating everyone on that score. The average wage upon graduation probably is around twelve dollars an hour. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Dean would order her creative and trend-setting tongue ring gone by the end of the day.

  “Thank you, Coolie, and tomorrow you will be on time.” Time to get moving, the remaining student would just have to get notes from everyone else. “Okay, people, listen up. We have a lot to cover this morning, and I hate repeating myself. I want to say right off the bat: ask questions. No question is too stupid. I’d rather you clarify something with me than throw out thirty dollars worth of butter because you weren’t sure how to use the scale and added three pounds of baking soda instead of three ounces. First, I’ll give a quick tour of the kitchen….”

  From behind me I heard the final student enter the room. Finally, I said to myself in exasperation. I turned to greet him/her. My vocal chords shriveled to the size of a raisin. This will teach me to read the student roster before I begin teaching.

  O’Connor nonchalantly eased by me to take his place among his fellow students.

  For a delicious millisecond, shivers went down both my legs. A hot, hot blush blanketed my face and chest and then vanished, leaving me as lifeless as if a vampire had been feasting on me for breakfast. The only thing alive in my entire body, the spot between my shoulder blades that throbs only in times of extreme exhaustion or stress, began pounding so hard it was difficult to breathe.

  “Mr. O’Connor, introduce yourself to the others,” I squeaked out in between shallow breaths. “I think I need some coffee myself. Here.” The blacksmith stepped forward; his name, he said, was Brad. “Why don’t you hand these out. I’ll be right back.”

  I managed a weak smile before I exited the room, the voices of the students buzzing behind me as I ran down the hall to the bathroom. Locking myself in a stall, my sweaty hands fumbling with the catch, I perched on the toilet as mortifying visions of me and O’Connor behaving like sex-crazed teenagers in the front seat of his car last October filled my head. We’d been oblivious to everything: his wife, his kids, my ex-husband (who happens to be his best friend), not to mention the police cruiser parked not twenty feet away. Only the shrill ring of a cell phone had stopped us from committing several felonies in broad daylight.

  After five minutes of squirming on the seat of the john, I realized if I didn’t get back to that classroom and face him it wouldn’t just be my peace of mind that was shattered; I’d be fired on my first day with equal trauma to my bank account. The job for which I’d swallowed pretty much every ounce of self-respect I possessed.

  Splashing cold water on my face for a full minute until the pounding between my shoulders subsided into a dull ache, I checked myself in the mirror. Naturally pale, the shock of seeing O’Connor had drained every ounce of color from my face. My eyes, spooked and tired, looked like two slices of kiwis marooned on the top of a cheesecake. In my bathroom mirror at home, my hair, recently dyed to stop people from calling me “Ma’am,” looked fun. In this light it looked garish and pathetic, a too-obvious attempt to fool the march of time.

  The repeated chill of water on my face brought me back to reality. We were both sensible people, we’d work this out.

  I straightened up to my full five feet, eight inches and pinched my cheeks to restore some color. At some point during the day, I’d nail that sorry Irish hide of his to the wall and demand what in the hell was going on.

  Filling a cup of coffee for show, I made my way back to the classroom to begin. My impending mental breakdown aside, the freshman pastry class is responsible for providing the mise en place for the more experienced students.

  There’s an immediacy about cooking that is impossible to convey to people not in the profession. If you make a mistake in a recipe, you can’t shove thirty ruined Sacher tortes in a drawer and deal with it the next morning like unfinished paperwork. You remix and re-bake those thirty cakes right then and there because you have a luncheon for two hundred and forty Rotarians who have paid for and expect Sacher tortes for dessert. Which meant that while the pit of my stomach never let me forget O’Connor was somewhere in the room, I didn’t have time for a wing ding, a nervous collapse, or a quick trip across the street for a double whatever.

  At 10:30 a.m., we broke for lunch and I had my chance. As everyone filed out into the dining room, I grabbed the sleeve of O’Connor’s chef’s jacket and roughly pulled him into the alcove where the ovens were located, giving us a modicum of privacy.

  “What in the hell are you doing here, O’Connor?” I demanded.

  Chapter Three

  Ignoring my question, O’Connor stared at the top of my head.

  “What’d you do to your hair? It’s horrible; like someone painted your head with redwood stain.”

  All my intentions of being a paragon of poise evaporated.

  “My hair is not the issue here, O’Connor,” I bristled. “What are you doing here? I thought we had an understanding of sorts.”

  He picked up an oven mitt, turned it over a couple of times, and threw it back on top of the oven.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mary.” O’Connor’s voice was just short of belligerent. All the camaraderie and respect that we’d developed toward each other during the course of solving last fall’s murders disappeared in the three seconds it took to utter that sentence.

  “I told you I was going to be teaching here. Ever hear of the telephone?” Tears of frustration smarted my eyes. “Couldn’t you have given me a head’s up, instead of sneaking up on me and just appearing like the Ghost of Christmas Future? I’m asking you again, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m a student, just like everyone else.” He picked a blob of dried chocolate off my sleeve. The broad shoulders of his chef’s jacket burned bright white against his black Irish complexion, his unruly graying black hair peeked out in wild tufts from underneath his paper chef’s hat.

  “You are NOT a student here.” I shouted. “You’re
a homicide inspector with the San Francisco Police Department.” The throbbing between my shoulder blades ratcheted up several notches to an intense drum beat.

  “On leave for sixteen months,” he countered. “I’m in your pastry class for the next four weeks. We’ll work around this…history between us.” He waved his hand in dismissal, as if he were shooing a pesky fly away from his food.

  “History?” I choked out in disbelief.

  Was it the heat from the ovens or this conversation that was pushing my blood pressure up to near fatal heights?

  “I’m here to get my life back on track, to start a new career. I don’t need you here, I don’t want you here,” I whispered as loud as I could.

  “Ryan. I’m here. Get a grip.” He picked at the shoulder of my jacket again.

  “Stop touching me,” I hissed.

  Next, three things happened. The oven timer went off, Antonello de Luca came into the room, and bone-deep mortification curled around every joint and muscle in my body. I stood there paralyzed as the oven timer droned on in an incessant whine.

  All the agonizing and guilt I’d been carrying on my shoulders for the last three months had been my burden alone. A silly moment of madness for him, reduced to a grope on the front seat of his car, and he’d gone home to his wife. Based on his all-too-obvious ease, our conduct was worthy of one confession and a Hail Mary.

  While me. Me.

  Get. A. Grip.

  Easier said than done.

  A cornerstone of my rage against my ex-husband had been my conviction that no matter how bad it got, how angry or frustrated or just plain irritated I got with him, that I’d never cheat on him, that I’d never mock our private and public oath to fidelity. I’d worn that smug assurance like a hair shirt all through our separation and subsequent divorce. In the worst of my pain, I hugged that surety to myself, smothered my own guilt about working too many hours, always putting my career first, refusing to acknowledge relationships and marriages take time and that any vows that one makes are worthless if the one uttering them is working seventy hours a week. And liking it. It took me a long time to accept that betrayal came in many forms. Mine didn’t sport a nice ass. It manifested itself in a paycheck and a bonus at Christmas because I’d made Gourmet magazine’s top ten restaurants for desserts three years in a row.