Roux Morgue

by Claire M Johnson

  My finger was about to hit the delete button when a flat, androgynous voice threatened, “Leave the school.” I dropped my pen and stabbed the replay button. Punching the volume button as far as it would go, I listened to the message again and again. Besides the voice, the only discernible clue was a sound in the background at the very end of the message, like a victory whoop, something you’d hear at a ballgame. Then the caller had hung-up.

  Why were ex-husbands such pains in the ass? This was so typical of Jim. No doubt the cop toms-toms had beat their rhythm before Allison had arrived at the morgue. “Hey, Jimbo, heard someone died at that fancy cooking school your ex works at.” That’s all it would take for Jim to get on the horn and do something as inane as try to get me to quit my job. During last fall’s murders, he’d tried to protect me and almost got blown away by S.F.P.D. His interference was as welcome now as it was then.

  I dialed his house hoping his wife number two wouldn’t answer. I gotten over most of my rage toward him, but it was still a huge effort trying to be civil to her.

  “Yes,” a female voice answered.

  Shit.

  “Hi, Tina, it’s Mary. May I speak to Jim?”

  She paused and then said, “Well, it’s dinnertime. Is it important?”

  I wanted to scream, “Of course, you bitch, do you think I called just to chat?” but my knees were still sore from all those Hail Marys and Our Fathers; a not-so-subtle reminder to turn the other cheek. “Please, if you wouldn’t mind. I won’t be long, I promise.”

  I heard several children giggling in the background and Jim’s gentle warning to keep it down while he was on the phone.

  “Mary, is everything okay?”

  Funny, in the beginning of a relationship you can’t say enough to each other. As the relationship sours, even the simplest statements become marital landmines so you stop talking altogether. The simple phrase, “Did you stop at the store and get something for dinner,” in reality is, “Did you stop at the store because as usual there’s no food in the house because you work an eighteen-hour day and you are too tired to cook and I don’t want to eat out or have chicken pot pies for the fourth night this week.” When the relationship is really over you’ve come full circle and you can’t stop talking. You say all the nasty things you’ve warehoused for months and months in an attempt to keep the relationship together. I’d always been contemptuous of couples whose divorce deteriorated into a series of ugly shouting matches until I’d had a few dozen of those myself.

  “Jim, I know you’re eating, so I’ll keep it short. I have no intention of quitting my job. I appreciate your concern, but I’m staying at École. So no more phone calls, please.”

  Silence for a few seconds and then, “Mary, what in the hell are you talking about?”

  Goddamn it, he was going to act all innocent until I dragged it out of him. Well, my dinner wasn’t getting cold.

  “You know, the phone call telling me to leave the school.”

  “Mary, it wasn’t me. I swear.”

  “Stop it, Jim. After trailing me last fall, your track record on this stuff isn’t too good.”

  “On my honor as an altar boy it wasn’t me,” he insisted.

  Jim never invoked the altar boy stuff unless he meant what he said. It’d been our last refuge of honesty when our relationship was falling apart. The heebie-jeebies began marching down my spine. If it wasn’t Jim, who was it?

  “Tell me more about the phone call,” he demanded.

  “Someone said, ‘Leave the school.’ Nothing else. And before you start doing your cop thing, I didn’t recognize the voice. I’ve saved it on my machine if you want to hear it.”

  There were a few beats that there shouldn’t have been, like he was thinking, like there was a whole background on this that I wasn’t privy to.

  “You need to call O’Connor. Tonight,” he insisted.

  After that scene in Foghorns? Not an option. “I can’t do that,” I insisted right back. “I need to go to work tonight and prep for tomorrow. I’m working double shifts for a while until the school replaces Allison. I’ll see him tomorrow and I’ll tell him then.” Maybe I could slip him a note?

  “Do you promise you’ll tell him?”

  “On my honor as the ex-wife of an altar boy, I promise. Now go eat your dinner.”

  I hung up before he could say anything else. I’d had a horrible thought when I’d realized it wasn’t Jim. What if it had been O’Connor trying to get me to leave the school? What if he was afraid I was compromising his undercover work there? What if he just couldn’t stand to face me after that scene in Foghorns but had no choice about remaining undercover at the school? I’d have to tell him about the phone call if only to make sure it wasn’t him.

  If I had to work a double shift tomorrow, I better get moving. I didn’t want to walk in and be blind-sided. I hoped Allison had a production schedule hidden somewhere.

  Clearing all the messages except for the threat, I cranked up the espresso machine for a triple mocha with extra chocolate and made my phone calls before I drove to the City. I phoned my mother and by faking happy was able to get off the phone in less than ten minutes. Next I phoned Benson to let him know that I’d gotten his message, and then called Foghorns and thanked Dave for saving my life by watering down the martinis. I cut him off before he could ask me for a date.

  You’d think dinnertime on a Sunday night would mean I’d be able to zip across to San Francisco in twenty minutes. An hour later I’d paid my toll, and like all the other frustrated, angry drivers, crawled my way up the incline. Although I’d desperately needed my parents’ support after my divorce, the ready cup of tea in my mother’s kitchen was beginning to pale next to the daily grind of negotiating the bridge.

  Maybe what I really needed to completely heal from my divorce was a drastic change. A complete amputation. Move to another state, another coast, maybe do a stint in France. I’d never lived and worked farther than a twenty-five mile radius from where I was born. I was an anomaly in the food business where skipping from job-to-job, state-to-state was de rigeur. On the other hand, why leave an area that was at the forefront of every food trend before it was a food trend? But maybe, a little voice nagged, maybe it was also a good excuse not to push that envelope.

  A headache the size and weight of a watermelon began pounding at the back of my head, warning me that this was dangerous mental ground. I pulled into the garage of École just in time to avoid a stress migraine.

  As I exited the service elevator into the production kitchen, the perfect aroma of baking chicken and garlic banished all traces of my headache. I hadn’t eaten since that morning when I’d forced miniscule bites of toast down my throat to give my body something to live on other than old gin. Now my stomach began whining “feed me, feed me” and rumbling in grateful anticipation of decent food.

  Marc’s long body hovered over one of the big black stovetops as he sautéed green beans, the hot flames licking the sides of the pan as the vegetables and butter tumbled over each other at the flick of his wrist. It was with a jolt that I saw Marc out of his chef’s uniform. He wore jeans, a white tee-shirt, and black cowboy boots as shiny as the waxed fender of a Cadillac. No longer hidden by the boxy chef’s jacket, his waist went on forever with that slippery, rubber band quality young men have, starting under the armpits and swooping to a graceful end at his knees.

  Singing that Edif Piaf song, C’est Lui Que Mon Coeur A Choisi, at the top of his lungs, Marc seemed not to notice me standing there. Like a high-wire artist in the circus, his every movement was fluid, balanced, as he’d give the beans a shake in tempo to the music. Then he stopped singing, popped a couple of beans into his mouth and closed his eyes, as if afraid that it wouldn’t be cooked to perfection. It was. His lips, shiny from the buttery beans, curved in a smile of satisfaction. He opened his eyes.

  The smile vanished to be replaced by what looked like the most severe of disappointments.

>   “Oh, Mary, it’s you. I heard the elevator….”

  Clearly he was expecting someone else. Flanked by two barstools, one of the stainless steel tables was set with china, linen, and glassware. For two. A bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé stood chilling in a bucket of ice. He’d even remembered candles. It was terribly romantic. Marc was truly turning on the heat. No one had tried to woo me in a hell of a long time. I’d be in tears if I didn’t get out of there.

  “Hey, I’m not going to rain on your parade,” I assured him. “Looks like you and Shelley have quite an evening ahead of you. I need to see what Allison had planned for tomorrow then I’ll be out of here. Smells fantastic.” I made an inane thumb’s up sign.

  I moved in the direction of the pastry kitchen when I heard Marc slam an oven door shut and say, “Fuck her,” in a low voice.

  “Mary,” he called out to me. “You want some dinner?”

  Turning back around toward Marc and all that lovely food, I watched him cut up the chicken with the skill of a surgeon, the smell of baked garlic filling the kitchen. He plated up two dinners, the leg of each chicken forming an arm for the fan of chicken breast. A high pile of pommes frites nestled next to an equally high pile of green beans.

  Ignoring the nasty rumblings coming from my stomach, I said, “Wait a couple of minutes. If she sees me sitting here it’ll spoil this romantic feast you’ve planned. She’ll show.”

  “Nope. She ain’t coming. She’s more than an hour late. Had a bust up fight so loud I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the police. Thought my groveling on the phone set things right. Guess not.” He took a big swig of wine and refilled his glass. “Tough merde, as they say in France.” Marc perched himself on a barstool and filled the other glass to the brim with the wine. “Dinner,” he announced, thrusting the wine glass in the direction of the other barstool, “is served.”

  I looked back over at the elevator. The panel showed no activity. No Shelley. I didn’t want to get in the middle of Marc’s and Shelley’s fight, but I was near to keeling over from starvation. “I’ll take you up on your offer.” I smiled and sat down on the other barstool. “I never turn down forty-clove chicken.”

  “You know your Julia Child.” He toasted me and the ping of the crystal echoed off of the stainless steel tables like a church bell.

  Halfway through the meal we turned off the lights and lit the candles. By dessert we were feeding each other raspberries dipped in melted chocolate and swigging champagne directly from the bottle. At the end of the meal we were dancing an excruciatingly slow two-step, my bare feet resting on the tops of his cowboy boots while one free arm encircled each other’s waists, the other held a snifter of cognac. We sang Gershwin songs to each other in between sips of cognac.

  “Mary, I like feisty women. I like you,” he whispered. The alcohol on his breath sent shivers down my neck. I ran a hot hand down the long length of his back. It went on forever. Desire danced a marathon up and down my body. I wet my lips with the last of the cognac and pulled him toward me.

  You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes you get what you need.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You’re one great piece of ass, Mary.”

  Marc nibbled on my ear for a few seconds and then nestled his head between my left ear and my shoulder blade. Following the curve of my body, he shimmied even closer to me, sealing every possible air pocket. A searching hand found my breast.

  In my twenties that type of remark would have raised my feminist ire to just short of nuclear. I’d have ranted and raved for ten minutes, thrown on my clothes, and exited with some well-placed insults. At thirty-five, I basked in the knowledge that I was still an object of desire, that a young stud muffin whose entrance into a room caused every female student to lick her lips twice found me, dare I say it, hot.

  In the back of Marc’s VW camper van, the clean, spanky aroma of Tide detergent mingled with the musty smell of fresh sex. We lay spoon-fashion on top of every piece of clothing Marc owned, snuggled under a trench coat for warmth, with my bunched-up clothes for a pillow.

  Earlier, we’d raced through the kitchen scooping up plates, silverware, pots and pans, and thrown everything into the dishroom. After a perfunctory wipe-down of stainless steel tables, we’d repeatedly punched the elevator button between frantic, hot kisses. I dropped my keys twice as I struggled to unlock the elevator to ride down to the garage where Marc’s van was parked. Only the elevator’s security camera stopped us from ripping each other’s clothes off right then and there. As the elevator made its slow descent into the garage, we’d faced each other, panting with anticipation.

  Sex at my age is no longer that long road of wonder and discovery that makes young love so poignant and unforgettable. Thank God. Now I know what I want and how to get it. It’s more mechanical, but it’s also a hell of a lot more fun.

  I’d been celibate for over two years, three counting the last year of my marriage. Jim and I’d had sex only as a pathetic attempt to tell ourselves that the relationship couldn’t be over. We were still having sex weren’t we?

  Now I was like a vegan who, walking by The House of Prime Rib, suddenly finds herself almost crazy from a deprivation she didn’t even know existed. Storming through the front door, she lunges for the first piece of prime rib she can find and begins tearing it apart with her bare hands, stuffing the hunks of meat into her mouth to satiate a wild, painful hunger. We rumbled, we tumbled—my Pandora’s box of a sex drive more than a match for Marc’s raging young male testosterone. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of Marc’s clothes weren’t covered in scorch marks.

  Finally, after two hours of sexual acrobatics that left me sore and smug in a gee-I-didn’t-know-my-body-could-do-THAT kind of way, we were satiated. I stretched my arms and back in a cat-like, post-coital grace and linked my hands behind my head. I was a very happy camper.

  “Must have been some fight for Shelley to dump all your clothes in the hallway,” I said, wriggling to escape a shirt button poking me in the butt.

  “Yep. Shelley’s got a temper.” It didn’t seem to bother him; in fact, he sounded wistful.

  “Don’t worry, by tomorrow she’ll have calmed down. Surprise her with two dozen roses and a bottle of French champagne.”

  “Not this time, I blew it,” he sighed. “She’s going to France.

  “Oh?” I said, in what I hoped was appropriate surprise. No need to broadcast how much I knew about her travel plans.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” he said sheepishly. “But she’s planning on ditching school at the end of the semester. She’s got a gig lined up in Paris. Wants me to join her.”

  Early in our marriage, Jim and I spent three weeks eating our way through France. Did we visit Versailles? No, we ate at Alain Chapelle’s. Did we climb to the top of Notre Dame? No, we sipped frothy cappuccinos at Deux Maggots, searching in vain for the ghosts of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Young love, eating warm baguettes as only the French can bake, espressos in cafes, sex in the afternoon. And the food, the food! I practically had another orgasm just thinking about it.

  “Sounds like a lot of fun.” Now it was my turn to sound wistful.

  “Told her no.”

  I raised myself up on one elbow and stroked Marc’s chin once before raking my lips over his for the last time. “Marc, you hate it here.” I waved a hand in the general direction of school. “You’re not cooking the food you want to cook. How many more times can you order students to plate up Duck à L’Orange without going barking mad?”

  “It’s personal. You wouldn’t understand.”

  His sulky whine put a pinprick in my bubble of contentment. Ugh. How young he sounded. Time to get dressed, go home, and wake-up in my own bed. I wasn’t going to beat myself up over having sex in the back of a van like a drunken sixteen-year old on prom night. It’d been a lot of fun. But in the blur of our sexual escapade, it’d been very easy to forget the ten years between us. What if
we woke-up in the back of the van and Marc spent the whole morning squirming with embarrassment, privately blaming our passion solely on the gallons of wine and champagne we’d consumed? Maybe if I left now what we’d both remember would be the taste of our kisses, sweet from the cognac and raspberries.

  “Hand me my clothes, will you?” I ordered. “They’re under your head. I need to get home and get some sleep. I’ve got a double shift tomorrow.” He dutifully lifted his head and handed me the bundle. I began to unravel my clothes, searching for my underwear and socks. A hopeless endeavor in the dark. “Is there a light in this thing?”

  Marc reached above me and flicked on the overhead light. Climbing out from under the trench coat, I slipped on my jeans and shirt, then balled my underwear and bra and shoved them in my pockets. I pulled on my socks and laced up my hightops. I tucked the trench coat under the length of Marc’s body and gave his waist one last caress.

  “See you later,” I said and kissed him gently on the lips, all passion gone. In the faint, yellow light with the trench coat up to his chin he looked about six years old.

  “Don’t go,” he asked with enough quiet desperation to make me feel a little bit like a sexual heel.

  “I have to,” I lied. “I have a bunch of material at home I need to bring to school. It was…”—I was going to say fun, but it was more than that— “…lovely, Marc. Truly lovely. Thank you for a wonderful evening. But it’s time for me to go home.” I looked at my watch. Two a.m. “The flower mart down on Fourth Street opens up in an hour. Go scrounge up two dozen roses and make nice to Shelley. I’m telling you from experience. There are people who come into your life who are irreplaceable. It’s like you share the same DNA.” The stiff hurt on O’Connor’s face when I told him to go back to his wife flashed in front of me. “When you find them, grab them, because they’re as rare as hen’s teeth. Is Shelley like that for you?”