Memo to self: buy truckload of beige bras because you never know when you’re going to find yourself in the middle of water fight and then end up being Miss July.
Plumes of water flew every which way. French, German, Danish, and English epithets accompanied each watery bullet, with blood-curdling screams from Marc that could only be described as rebel war cries. As angry chefs emptied their glasses of water at a target, they’d scramble to refill them from the pitchers on the table.
The chefs who weren’t in on the water fight were pinned to their seats. Every time I made to move to get out of my chair, water came flying in my direction. I had to shield my face with my arms to avoid getting hit in the face with a wet missile.
Finally, the water ran out. As if frozen in time, the main perpetrators, Étienne and Gustav representing the old guard and Marc and Shelley the new, stood rigid with empty water glasses in hand. Étienne raised his glass an inch. Marc followed suit. Shelley hiked her glass up over her head. Gustav grabbed another glass from the table and raised his two glasses in the air. Someone was going to lose an eye—or worse.
“Stop this at once,” ordered a female voice, worn down from a lifetime of smoking Marlboros. Marilyn Cantucci. I caught Antonello’s eye and grimaced. Benson couldn’t have stopped this before all of us weren’t reduced to wringing out the hems of our chef’s jackets? “Dean Benson!” she snapped.
Finally galvanized into action, Benson fussed, “Yes, yes, yes. We’ve got customers arriving in less than an hour.”
“This isn’t over, Marc,” Étienne threatened, his hazel eyes all iris with fury. He slammed his glass down on the table and walked across the dining room to his kitchen. Marc watched Étienne leave the dining room, apparently unaware that his glass had slid out of his hand, rolled off the table, and onto the floor. Shelley lowered her arm and deposited her glass on the table, then leaned over to pick up Marc’s glass from off of the floor and place it on the table. In a surprisingly gentle gesture, she hooked her arm through his and led him out of the dining room.
I surveyed the damage. Paper chef’s hats lay in mushy puddles on the tables. Lemon slices from the water glasses were pasted to the front of several jackets. Even though not everyone had participated in the free-for-all, we were all soaked to the skin, wet hair hanging around our ears like dreadlocks. No one moved. No one wanted to be responsible for what came next.
Antonello, bless his heart, broke the impasse.
“I’ve got a dry chef jacket in my locker. The bidding starts at one bottle of Veuve Clicquot.”
I did my bit for peace.
“I’ve got dry socks and dry underwear. I won’t accept anything less than a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem.”
The mood shifted; everyone started laughing and began picking lemon slices off of each other. Things were getting pretty festive until Curt appeared in front of the chefs’ table in the tux he wore for service.
“Do I need to remind everyone we serve lunch in forty-five minutes? Get hair dryers from your lockers and designate a student to stand here and try to dry out the chairs.” He sighed. “If we make a dent in the chairs, it’s on to the carpets.”
Ignoring the stares of the students, we all headed in the direction of the elevators to retrieve hair dryers. Marilyn had collared Benson and dragged him over to a corner of the dining room. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but based on the angle of his chin and the hunch of his shoulders, she was reaming him a new asshole. He stood there taking whatever she was dishing out, shuffling his feet and trying to wring the water out of his two-hundred dollar tie. I wish I could be a fly on the wall of Marilyn’s office to read the near-certain email to corporate headquarters detailing Benson’s latest incompetence. There’s no way to sugar-coat a water fight among your senior personnel in front of half the school.
I ran to the locker room to get my hair dryer and a dry jacket. Benson was a moron. Aside from someone possibly getting maimed or killed, our authority in the kitchen had been compromised, perhaps fatally, because this man allowed a petty spat to blow up into a full-scale war. If he wasn’t in a position to demand that the chefs respect each other, who was?
Retrieving my hair dryer, I high-tailed it back to the kitchen. Students huddled together to compare notes on who threw water at whom. If we didn’t get a move on I’d be here until eight.
“Hey,” I called out to the room. “Rehash the gory details of the water fight in the bar across the street after school. We’ve lost thirty minutes of prep time.”
Jake, a kid I’d privately nick-named Slouch because his center of gravity rested on his hips, piped up, “Looked to us like the chefs were just about ready to kill each other.”
I groaned internally; the fall-out from the water pitchers at thirty paces had begun.
A loud cough got my attention. A miniscule smirk played on the edge of O’Connor’s lips.
I shot him a look that would separate mayonnaise.
“I wouldn’t say that, Jake,” I lied. “Tempers are a little short being the first day of school.” I raised my voice to be heard over O’Connor’s irritating coughing. “We have a lot to do before the afternoon group arrives, so keep your lips zipped at least until you meet at Jack’s after class. Now, I need a volunteer to help dry out the chairs. Thanks, Brad.” I handed him the hair dryer. “Go see Curt and return the hair dryer to me when you’re done. Remember, everyone, ask questions if you don’t understand something. Move it, people.”
The next couple of hours were a blur of mixers humming and whirling. We filled sheetpans heavy with paté sucre and paté briseé, the doughs used for lining tart shells; we chopped up and blended pounds of chocolate with gallons of cream for ganache, the chocolate standard filling for truffles and cakes; and we whipped sixty-eight pound blocks of butter with sugar to make buttercream to frost those cakes.
Pastry is precise. Chemistry dependent. It’s not touchy-feely at all. Two cups of sugar, a cup of butter, and two eggs whipped just so, and you have a perfect product every time. For that reason, it attracts your classic Type A personality.
It’s an anal person’s game, and what that says about me I haven’t bothered to examine yet.
Although the afternoon was a blur, a few things stood out. Nine of the students didn’t know their asses from their elbows. I exhibited truly amazing restraint when one student added entire eggs to twenty pounds of butter—shells intact. The sound of those eggs cracking as the paddle smashed them to bits is the culinary equivalent of nails scraping on a blackboard. “But the recipe said add whole eggs,” the clueless student wailed.
Brad, O’Connor, and Coolie were the only students who somehow understood that eating in restaurants for three of their meals didn’t impart an innate knowledge of cooking.
As I surveyed the kitchen in a rare moment of calm, with no one tugging on the arm of my jacket or firing questions at me, I spied Coolie over at one of the enormous industrial mixers whipping eggs and sugar together for a batch of genoise. If I squinted I could almost envision my younger self. Her body curled over a mixer, watching the warm eggs spiral together with the sugar as the whip incorporated air. Reveling in the smells. A small hand poised over the on/off button, as she waited patiently for the eggs and sugar to reach the right volume. Punching the off button, she paused as the whip slowed to a stop. She noticed me watching her, and I got a big smile. A smile I understood. It looks right; it smells right; it’s time to add the sifted flour, then the melted butter. Yeah, I know what you mean I nodded to her and smiled back. Whatever the political shenanigans brewing among the chefs, I knew I’d made the right choice to come back.
At 1:45 p.m., as promised, making a special effort not to glance even remotely in the direction where I knew O’Connor was standing, I gave everyone the National Enquirer version of the murders of last October. By the rapt expression on their faces, it clearly raised their opinion of me in their eyes. At 2:00, I dismissed everyone, but pulled Coolie aside before she could leave th
e room.
“We never would have finished all the prep work if it hadn’t been for your help this afternoon. Thanks.”
“No problemo, Chef Mary.” Coolie talked quickly, like she was afraid someone was going to interrupt her before she finished her sentence. “I spend a lot of time in the kitchen at home with our personal chef. Plus, the caterer always let me help out whenever my parents threw parties. I love cooking.”
“Personal chef?” I asked.
“Yeah. Dad’s a rich lawyer. Royally pissed off when I wouldn’t go to Harvard. You know. Law school. All that alma mater shit. I like being in a kitchen, the togetherness.”
The money shouldn’t have been a surprise. Unlike the rest of her fellow students, whose standard issue chef’s jackets made them look like they were wearing white shrouds with arms, she’d had her chef’s jacket and pants professionally tailored out of linen and silk.
“Sounds like your father doesn’t approve of you cooking. What about your mother?” I asked somewhat absentmindedly, as I grabbed my clipboard and began tallying up the mise en place for Allison Warner, the night chef.
Coolie raised her chin in a defiant gesture. “Dad yelled, threatened to cut me off. Other stuff. The usual. But mom set up a blind trust for me to come here. I caught the first plane out of Chicago. Mom’s very cool.” Coolie paused and then amended, “When she’s not in la-la land. You know. Meds. Did your father pitch a fit when you decided to go to cooking school?”
My experience couldn’t have possibly been more different. I clutched the clipboard so tightly that later that night I found a charming little groove through the middle of my palm.
“No, he really didn’t care.” My announcement was met with complete indifference. Granted, it’d probably been the same as if I’d announced I was in line to become the next Nobel laureate. Basic nod, whatever, vaya con dios.
“You’re lucky,” she sighed.
“I suppose that one’s way to look at it.” I pried my hand from the clipboard. “My uncle wasn’t too pleased, though. Said I was disgracing the family by going into trade, as he called it. He reminds me of this every time I see him.” I grimaced. Not that I didn’t take his generous birthday and Christmas checks with alacrity. It was something I wasn’t particularly proud of, but couldn’t seem to muster the pride to tear them into confetti and return the pieces in an envelope.
She swept her eyes around the kitchen and sniffed to catch the smell of cooling genoise that still lingered in the air. “They don’t get it, do they?” she smiled and threw her arms up in the air. “Doesn’t it smell wonderful?”
“Yeah, it does,” I agreed. Ma soeur. “Thanks again, you were a real help.”
That got a deep blush. “Got to go. We’re all meeting at the bar across the street after school. See you in the morning.”
“Be on time,” I reminded her as she flittered out of the room, her knife roll slung over that shoulder so slim you’d think it would crack from the weight.
***
I was just finishing writing up my report, when the phone rang—the office with more forms to sign. I took the stairs two at a time up to the office. Cheryl, the receptionist who had yet to spell my first name right—she always put an “i” on the end—had another set of forms for me to sign. Did I need life insurance? If she’d told me this over the phone, I could have saved myself a trip and I’d be on the bridge by now. “It’s a really, really good deal. How can you pass this up?” She was so insistent I began to suspect she received a percentage of the sale from every employee she signed up.
An emphatic, “No, I don’t need any life insurance. No one cares if I live or die,” seemed to shut her up. I silently cursed her, with a fleeting glance outside of window at the increasing traffic. Shit. It’d take me over an hour to get home in that mess.
“If you’re really sure,” she pouted and gathered up her purse. How can a receptionist who makes, at the outside, $24,000 per year, afford an Yves St. Laurent handbag? “I’m going to get something to eat. Allison is in a meeting right now with Ms. Cantucci. You’ll see her later, yeah?” I nodded. “Will you tell her the jeweler called? Her ring will be ready next Tuesday. She got life insurance,” she sniffed and made her way to the elevator bank.
“Bully for her,” I shouted and decided to wait until she got her kick-backed ass on the elevator before I went for the stairs.
Just as the elevator doors closed I heard screaming. Screaming as in, “You fucking bitch. Do not mess with me.”
Allison Warner came shooting through Marilyn Cantucci’s door, slammed it shut with enough force to break something, then slammed the office door shut, and began pounding the Down button with her fist. She stopped short when she saw me, her shoulders heaving with the effort not to cry. What in the hell do you say when you’ve just witnessed a major bitch-slap fest between an old friend and Miss Spectator Shoes. I hope you won?
Without a word I tried to hand her the clipboard. She stared it as if it were an alien life form and didn’t bother to take it from me. As if it was somehow inappropriate to remind her that she had twelve students to teach in about, say, three minutes.
“How about we go downstairs and we can discuss the mise en place, uh, away from here?” I suggested.
She nodded. As the doors opened, I remembered what the reception said. “Oh by the way, Cheryl said that the jeweler called. Your ring will be ready on Tuesday.”
The transformation was amazing. Allison’s shoulders straightened up, her chin jutted forward, her hands uncurled from tight fists.
“Hold the elevator for me, will you?” she said, with what couldn’t be described in any other way but jubilation.
Without knocking, she wrenched open Marilyn’s door, announced that, “My ring will be ready on Tuesday,” and then slammed the door shut with as much force as before but with none of the rage.
***
After that stupendous exit, Allison’s first words to me were not, “I hope that shellacked bitch’s nails all fall out,” followed by a blow-by-blow account of the rip-roaring argument I’d had the good fortune to hear the tail end of. Sigh. Allison’s opening gambit was, “Did you hear that David Kinney got the Beard Award this year?” Catching up on old classmates until we eased back into some semblance of normal conversation was about as good as it was going to get. Damn it to hell.
Classmates at École fifteen years ago, Allison Warner and I weren’t friends so much as compatriots; we happened to be in the same place at the same time and knew the same people. At the top of our class, both of us had been pastry students and both had vied for the attentions of Chef Antonello de Luca.
Blond hair that can only be described as tresses, a heart-shaped face with eyes so vividly blue they look like they’re enhanced by contacts—they aren’t—her hips and breasts spill out of her clothes. Allison is every Renaissance painter’s wet dream. She’s the only woman I know who looks sexy in a chef’s uniform. Constantly on a diet in a futile attempt to ape the anorexic waifs that parade across the media, Allison was oblivious to the power of her own sensuality. I’d never heard any gossip about her dating someone, and yet every guy I knew had a hard on for her.
Once we arrived in the classroom, Allison gave me a warm hug, “Good to see you, Mary. I see you survived the baptism.” Her heavy perfume wrapped itself around my vocal cords. I coughed discreetly in a bid for fresh air. Her liberal use of perfume always surprised me. Most chefs don’t want artificial smells competing with the natural odor of cooking. Often I know when something is done by the smell coming from the oven. “I heard about the water fight even before I got out of my car. How are you? I heard you’ve had a rough few months,” she murmured in a polite nod to the murder case I’d been involved in.
“Really happy to be back,” I replied, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to repeat any of the gory details of (a) finding my employee beaten to death by a frying pan; and (b) finding my employer shot to death in my bed. “I
’m dry by now, although the elastic on my underwear is still damp.” I grimaced. “It got real ugly there for a minute. I thought someone was going to get hurt.”
“Idiots,” she spat out. Allison expertly twisted her long hair into a chignon, secured it with a clip, and fitted her chef’s hat on top. If her uniform was any judge, she’d allied herself with the old guard; classic checked trousers and white, boxy, polyester jacket. “Fortunately the night chefs all get along.”
“Clue me in on what’s happening around here. Here,” I handed her the clipboard with the mise en place listed on it. “I asked Antonello about it and he just waved his arms and pinched my cheek.”
She sighed. “Basically, it’s a few twenty-five year old brats who think they invented cooking. Marc’s the ringleader. He’s singled out Gustav and Étienne for the majority of his nasty remarks, calling them culinary dinosaurs to their faces. Last semester, in a voice loud enough for the entire dining room to hear, Marc announced that he’d rather be roasted on a spit and served for Christmas dinner than admit to being trained at Maxim’s. That it’s little more than a training school for culinary terrorists where they learn to torture and maim food. Can you imagine?”
I’m surprised that remark didn’t give Étienne a stroke. In his mind, nothing was equal in taste, finesse, and elegance to a meal à la Escoffier, the nineteenth-century French chef whose name is synonymous for classic French cuisine.
“What about Antonello? Where does he fit in all this?”
She snorted and made notes on my list. “Thanks for making all those extra genoise. You know Antonello. He’s friends with everyone. He actually likes some of the new ideas.”
I raised an eyebrow at that tiny note of criticism. Normally, Allison worshipped the ground Antonello walked on.
“I can see where he’s coming from, Allison. When these kids graduate and look for jobs, they need as much experience as possible,” I pointed out. “Food has changed. The school needs to change with it.” I took off my apron and arched my back. Christ, it was hard to believe this was my first day.
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