by Sandi Scott
“Not for a while,” she said smiling. Malik was not a bad boy, just a nice guy who liked to wear leather jackets. “No boys for quite a while, thank you.”
Ashley made cakes, pastries, and croissants in the morning and crêpes during lunch, then she had the rest of the day for herself and Belle to explore the quarter in a way that she had never done while Serge was around. The experience was strange, realizing how much he had controlled how she spent her days even when he wasn’t at the apartment to tell her what to do. Serge had not liked it when she went out without him, even for things like food.
The feeling was liberating, walking around the streets of the quarter with Belle, but from time to time Ashley did think she saw Serge out of the corner of her eye, following her. Surely, she couldn’t be seeing him, he was a wanted man. With the help she had given the police, they were unraveling his whole horrifying scheme, bit by bit. They kept telling her that he would be arrested soon, and she would be able to go home. Ashley wasn’t so certain about that, Serge was smart. If he’d been framing her from the beginning, and it looked like he had, then he had already set up an escape route, too. Serge was likely long, long gone.
Baking was so satisfying, and the idea of getting back on a computer so nerve-racking, that Ashley wondered whether she would ever do any programming again. Never, she told herself firmly. She was making enough money to support herself in Paris for the moment, but this was Paris, Parisians had a lot more respect for food than Americans. Can I support myself as a baker back in the States? That was a worry for the future. What she needed now was to heal and breathe for a while.
CHAPTER 5
Ashley felt like her whole life was being lived with bated breath, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Serge was always just around the corner waiting for her. There was still no news about where he had gone, but the police said that she was in the clear as far as they were concerned, she just couldn’t go home yet. Her days settled into a peaceful routine, working at the café from early in the morning until lunch time, creating delicious baked goods, then exploring more of Paris with Belle at her side.
Finally, something unexpected did happen, but it didn’t involve Serge or any of his shady activities. The crêpe cart that had served her on the day of the big rainstorm moved from its original location to set up shop just outside L’Oiseau Bleu.
Patty, Ashley, and Malik, stood inside the front door and watched the line of people waiting for crêpes grow longer, and longer, and longer. And it was only eight o’clock in the morning! Patty called the chef, who arrived in a towering fury. “What does he think he’s doing there?” He stormed over to the crêpe cart owner and demanded the man leave. They could all see the cart owner shaking his head. Soon, a police officer arrived on a bicycle to break up the very loud, argument, which was probably a good thing. “He has no license to be here!” shouted Chef Lemaire.
“But, of course he does,” the officer said. “If you’d calm down for a minute, you could see he has his business license, his health inspections papers, and everything else in order.”
“He can’t sell his crêpes here! He’s hurting my business.”
“Then sell better crêpes yourself,” the officer said, riding off.
Patty looked at Ashley. “We’re in trouble.”
Ashley sighed, “I already know that my crêpes aren’t as good as his are. Maybe I should just quit now.”
“You’re going to give up? And where else will you find a job near here? Anyway, I make better crêpes than you. Watch and see.”
Ashley sighed again. Chef Lemaire was already storming toward the door. The three of them backed out of his way. He flung open the door and said, “Mademoiselle LaFontaine, you must learn how to out-crêpe that imbécile and the sooner, the better!”
“Oui, mon capitaine.” Patty threw the angry chef a mock salute.
All sales that day were bad, but their crêpe sales were worse. Patty guarded the crêpe station like a hawk, making good crêpes all day long – good, but not as good as the ones François Babin, the owner of the crêpe cart, was making. Chef Lemaire had told them the owner’s name after seeing it on the paperwork the police had shown him.
Chef Lemaire discussed the matter with several other café and restaurant owners nearby. They all agreed that the vendor was affecting their business. But what to do? Babin’s papers were in order, and the man and cart both disappeared as soon as he was done each day, reappearing first thing the next morning. No one knew where the man or the cart went overnight, which meant that the despicable tactic of sabotage was out of the question. The man seemed immune to threats, bribes, begging, or any other type of pressure that they applied, but he did have one weak spot, and that was his assistant, Oscar Metais.
Oscar Metais was not as tough as his boss. In addition, he seemed desperate for money, as several spies who went through the line to buy a crêpe reported. He was always talking about how he was broke and needed an advance from M. Babin. Oscar had perpetual dark circles under his eyes and hollows under his cheeks. Chef Lemaire, rubbing his hands together, said he thought Oscar might be taking drugs and could be bribed.
Ashley, who was still working on tracking down some of Serge’s more creative hacking efforts for the French police, bit her lip and worried. What if L’Oiseau Bleu closed because someone found out that the chef was involved in some kind of bribery scandal? She was already having nightmares about the French police knocking on her door again or worse, Serge. Ashley had no desire to get involved in any kind of criminal activity, even at arm’s length.
Unfortunately, the situation soon got even more tense when Oscar Metais rebuffed the bribery attempt made by another restaurateur from down the street. M. Babin called the police, and they arrested the other owner and closed the restaurant for the day. The next morning, the owner was released, and the restaurant was open again. Money was collected from all the local shops to pay the man’s legal fees.
A secret meeting of the Rue Daguerre restaurant owners was called. Patty heard from Jan Hamelin, the man working for the distributors who sold the restaurants their wine, that he would be attending the meeting. After the meeting, Jan told Patty and Ashley that he had been asked to perform a very special task for the restaurant owners, he was to linger around the neighborhood in the afternoon and wait for M. Babin to take his cart away for the night.
Jan’s sly, narrow face with its long, thin nose was perfect for the role of spy. “Soon”, he chuckled as he told Ashley and Patty of the plans, “we will know where the cart is kept overnight. Then, my duckies, we will have some fun.” Ashley had nightmares of rubber ducks quacking at her and following her with pitchforks. “Some fun,” they quacked. “Sooome fuuunnn.”
In the morning Ashley awoke to the sound of Belle eating her mostly-empty shampoo bottle, which squeaked as the dog chewed. Ashley couldn’t help thinking that if she didn’t come up with a way to improve their crêpes soon, they would all be doomed.
THAT MORNING, ON TOP of her other baking, Ashley began her quest for the perfect crêpe. At least, the perfect wheat-flour crêpe, the sweet crêpe. Starting with four types of flour, two types of cream, two types of butter, a club soda, a beer, some champagne, an entire flat of eggs, and some sourdough yeast, she opened a notebook, then recorded and mixed ingredients for recipe after recipe. Next, she split each recipe into two equal parts. one to put in the refrigerator for an hour, and the other to start using right away.
Other experiments included processing crêpe batter in a blender, running it through a sieve to remove lumps, and using several different types of oil – grapeseed, canola, vegetable, peanut – on the griddle that could take a high temperature without burning.
Chef Lemaire saw her working, and shook his head, indicating it was pointless to try to undo the damage that the crêpe cart had done. By then every customer in the neighborhood had been convinced to go to the cart, and nowhere else, for crêpes.
Patty t
ook one look at the mess Ashley had made and said, “You’re on crêpes today, ma chère. Is all the baking done?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll run a special on crêpes. A very good special—enough to make sure you have people to practice on.”
“Thanks.”
Patty kissed both her cheeks, as if sending her off to war then stepped outside for a cigarette.
Soon, customers were coming into the restaurant, asking if they could buy one of the crêpes as a snack. “No buckwheat this morning,” Ashley heard Patty say, “only sweet crêpes.”
“Only sweet crêpes?”
“At that price, take it or leave it.”
Apparently, most of the customers decided to take it, because Ashley was kept hopping. What she was looking for in the perfect crêpe was something light and thin, yet still fluffy. She soon mastered the technique of coating the thin batter on the two hot griddles with the thin wood spreader and flipping the crêpes with the wooden spatulas. That wasn’t a problem, but there was still something off about the crêpes. Patty came in. “They’re selling, all right – but I haven’t heard anyone say that your crêpes are better than the cart’s. Sorry.”
“I need someone to buy me a crêpe from the cart.”
Patty bit her lip. “You mean, wait in line and buy a crêpe in front of everyone?”
“Yes.”
Patty muttered something under her breath, that Ashley pretended not to hear, then said, “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
“If I don’t come back, it’s because I’ve drowned myself in the sewers out of despair.”
“Fine, but first bring me a crêpe. Sugar and lemon is fine.”
Grumbling and complaining, Patty left, but soon she was back with a stack of crêpes. “At least we’re ruining his sales today. The line isn’t as long, even if his crêpes are better, ours are cheaper.”
“Great,” Ashley said drily. “I’m sure Chef Lemaire would be happy to hear that.”
“If we could only get the recipe worked out,” Patty said, feeding Ashley a mouthful of crêpe, “I would open a crêpe cart and ride the streets of Paris selling my crêpes, too.”
“Would you really?”
“You basically have to wait until someone dies to open a new restaurant, so why not?” Patty asked.
Ashley laughed, “You do not.”
“A foreigner like me does. You saw the way the other owners acted about the cart coming into their territory, it’s a thousand times worse if you’re opening a shop! The police will have nothing to do with it, the restaurant owners are like sharks around here.” Patty fed her another mouthful of crêpe. The cart’s crêpe was different, that was true. The edges were stiff and cracked, and the center was tender, but still crisp on the outside. The flavor in the center wasn’t anything different than what she was making, but the texture was different. Of course, the darker, crisper browning added a little bittersweet taste to the crêpe. Ashley swallowed and flipped the crêpes on her griddles.
“Was that the owner cooking this morning? And not the assistant?”
“Monsieur Babin himself.”
“Odd, he doesn’t usually show up until later, at any rate, I may have figured it out.”
“Reeeallly! Just like that?”
“I said I may have figured it out.”
Ashley finished up the crêpes she was working on, plating them quickly and sending them out. Turning up the heat on the two griddles just a fraction over the blue mark that had been drawn on the dials to indicate the temperature that Chef Lemaire used, Ashley spread out another pair of crêpes and danced from foot to foot. If this worked ... Ashley crossed her fingers.
Patty returned. “Well? What’s the big secret?”
“Just a sec.” Ashley flipped the crêpes and let them finish. The smell of the cooked flour was different, she was nervous leaving them on the griddle—what if they burned? In what seemed like a heart-stopping short amount of time, the crêpes were finished. She plated them up with lemon and sugar then handed one to Patty, who lifted one eyebrow, grabbed a fork, and dug in. Ashley just slid hers to the edge of the plate and bit into it.
“Mmmm,” Patty said. “That’s the stuff. What did you do to it?”
“Secret ingredient.”
Patty laughed. “Don’t even try to pull that on me. I wasn’t gone long enough for you to change the recipe and still make crêpes.”
Ashley took another bite and pointed down to the temperature controls.
“Ohhhhh,” Patty said.
“And I thought of something else we could do to put the cart out of business,” Ashley said.
“What is it?”
“Champagne?”
“Eh?”
“Add a little champagne to the batter. L’Oiseau Bleu doesn’t just sell just any crêpes, we sell champagne crêpes, far more light and delicate that anything you’ve ever tasted. Not really, but they do taste interesting.”
“Will that work?”
“You tell me. You’re eating one right now, I think.” She double-checked the label on the batter pitcher. “Yep. Champagne crêpes.”
“Chef Lemaire will have a fit.”
“Not when he sees the back of the cart driver rolling away into the distance!”
CHAPTER 6
Chef Lemaire grumbled about the expense of all the extra champagne that he would have to buy from his distributor, Gergovie & Co, but he was rubbing his hands as he did so. Not all that champagne would be going into crêpes, he would run a special on a crêpes-and-champagne breakfast. The locals might not go for something that extravagant, but the tourists would.
Ashley went back to baking and Patty took over on the crêpe griddles. The crêpes that Ashley made were close to being as good as the ones made by M. Babin’s cart when he was making the crêpes himself, and they were far better than the ones made by his assistant. However, the crêpes that Patty made were magnificent, clearly better than the ones made at the cart, either by owner or employee.
Slowly the lines began to shift from one location to the other. The other restaurateurs grumbled, they were still a little down on their business, but they admitted that L’Oiseau Bleu had more or less solved the problem of the crêpe intruder. Obviously, he would soon have to be moving.
Chef Lemaire walked around with a puffed-out chest for the rest of the week. As for Ashley and Patty, they both got bonuses for their crafty, legal solution, one that left L’Oiseau Bleu in a far better financial position than it had been for years. “At last,” they both overheard Chef Lemaire telling one of his regulars, “I have a business that is worth turning over to my sons when I die.”
Patty bit her lip, clearly hearing something that had upset her. Ashley took her aside and said, “Are you all right?”
“‘Finally, I have a business worth turning over to my sons when I die,’” she said. “Where are those sons? I don’t see them. When was the last time they even visited him? Christmas?” She was shaking with anger.
“I have to get out of here, Ashley. Chef Lemaire is a good man, a reliable boss, but I need to think of myself. There’s no way he’s going to wake up one day and realize that you and I are the best things that have ever happened to his business. I have to start something for myself.”
“Okay,” Ashley said. She understood Patty’s desire to have something of her own that she had made from scratch. That was how Ashley felt each time she solved a complex programming problem.
“But it can’t be here. An American trying to start a business in Paris? What a joke.”
“What about the crêpe cart idea? Would that be any easier to get started?”
“Maybe. I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll try to take out a loan.” She put her hands on her hips and stretched. That morning, Patty had shown Malik how to make the crêpes. He caught on immediately and was soon turning out crêpes that were almost as good as Patty’s.
The rest of the day passed without incident. It was one of those fa
bulous fall Paris days when the evening seemed to stretch out forever, the breeze rattling leaves along the street and the air taking on a tinge of sweet, dry coolness. The crêpe cart was parked in the same place, still turning out crêpes. Patty and Ashley stood at the front doors, both were done for the day. Lunch service was over, and the prep for the dinner service was under control. The floors were swept, the napkins folded, the glassware sparkling, and the tablecloths spotless.
“I’m going to go out there and talk to him,” Patty said.
“Really? What about?”
“I’m going to make him an offer on the cart.”
“Wow, really? You have the money?”
“Not yet, but I can get it. Stay here. I’ll be even more nervous if you’re with me.” Patty pushed open the door and went out, crossing to the cart quickly and getting into line. Soon she was speaking to the owner, who took a step back from the cart and crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his head.
Ashley’s heart fell for her friend, but she wasn’t exactly surprised. The man was good at what he did and clearly loved his work. He didn’t need to sell though he just needed to move to another street, maybe one with a park ...
But Patty didn’t seem to see the situation that way. She kept talking, her hand gestures getting wider and more emphatic each time she spoke. M. Babin was still shaking his head. Finally, his nostrils flared, and he stepped close to the cart and leaned forward, careful not to touch the griddles. He had a mean look in his eye and then he said something to Patty that rocked her back on her heels. Her arms dropped to her sides, and her mouth fell open. M. Babin kept talking, the edges of his mouth stiff and cruel. Finally, he lifted his nose with a particularly French sniff of disgust and pressed his lips together in a thin line.
Patty looked utterly destroyed. She turned around and walked back along the sidewalk, but she did not come back to the restaurant. Passing the door without even looking in Ashley’s direction, Patty had tears running down her cheeks that she brushed away with an angry, hurt gesture.