The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “Like I said, I’ve been thinking about my current ‘relationship’.”

  “That could be good. Maybe it means Dolly is the right woman.”

  “Evidently a string of other guys thought so.”

  “Not nice, Hubert.”

  “Sorry. You’re right – the issue isn’t how many times she’s been married. That’s her business. The issue is whether she’s the right one.”

  She sighed. “You’re asking the wrong person. The list of guys I’ve thought were the right one includes a married guy, a gay guy, and a murderer.”

  “Well, at least you’ve been looking, so maybe you can help me with this. See, I never looked at dating that way. I don’t go out with someone with the aim of finding out if she’s the one. I go out with a woman because she’s fun and interesting. To put it bluntly, I’ve never shopped for a wife.”

  “Oink.”

  “I said it was blunt.”

  “Oinky, too. Did you grow up wanting to be a bachelor?”

  “No. I assumed I would be married like everyone else.”

  “And how did you think that would happen if you didn’t ‘shop for a wife’ on your dates?”

  “I just figured it would happen. What did I know? I didn’t date much in high school except before big algebra tests. That’s when the girls would smile and speak to me.”

  “That’s sad, Hubie.”

  “I didn’t see it that way. I liked being more popular than the jocks even if for only a few days. And I got to smooch with a few of the girls after the tutoring sessions.”

  “Define ‘smooch’.”

  “A few kisses behind the 510 shelves in the library.”

  “The 510 shelves?”

  “The Dewey Decimal number for math books.”

  “Jeez. And it never even crossed your mind to wonder if one of those girls would end up as your wife?”

  “I was a teenager. I figured I’d meet my wife when I was really old, like thirty.”

  She shook her head slowly. “No wonder relations between the sexes are so messed up. Girls grow up dreaming of being married, and guys grow up dreaming of being sports stars and assuming a beautiful wife will plop into their lives at some point.”

  “That was me, except for the sports star part. But it hasn’t happened, so I have to do something about it or grow old alone.”

  “You have to shop for a wife.”

  “Forget I said that.”

  “Which brings me back to my question. Is Dolly the one?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. She’s a nice person. She has a sense of humor. She’s sexy.”

  “Well if nice, funny, and sexy don’t give you a clue, what else are you looking for?”

  “Fabulously wealthy would be nice.” She threw a chip at me, and I amazed both of us by catching it.

  I decided to hazard a serious answer to her question. “Dolly is fun to be with now because we’re dating. We’re together only for special events, so to speak, one of us cooking and the other being a guest. Or we go to the Balloon Festival or see a movie. But if we were married, we’d be together all the time.”

  “And that would be bad?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t have many interests in common. She likes decorating, gardening, and watching television. I like reading and watching the stars. She’s not interested in Indian pottery or anthropology. If I bring up one of my anthropological theories, she listens politely, but she’s obviously not interested.”

  “She’s not the only one whose eyes glaze over when you start explaining one of your theories.”

  “I know. But it’s not just anthropology. She doesn’t seem interested in abstract ideas generally. When you see a painting, you think about what it means, what the artist was trying to do. When Dolly see’s it, she wonders if it would look good over the sofa.”

  “Hubert! That’s an awful thing to say.”

  “I didn’t mean it as an insult. I don’t think less of her because she’s not an art historian or an anthropologist. But when I think of marriage, I wonder what we’d talk about.”

  “My parents talk about the weather and the chores they have for the day.”

  “Mine talked about what they had done during the day. They had a cocktail hour just like we do, but they didn’t call it the cocktail hour. They called it ‘general conversation’.”

  “So neither of our parents talked about big abstract ideas. But my parents have a great marriage and so did yours.”

  She was right. “There’s something else,” I said. “It seems… I don’t know, illogical I guess, that now that I’m thinking about marriage, the person I happen to be dating goes to the top of the list. Maybe the other women I’ve dated would be a better match, but I don’t know it because I wasn’t thinking about marriage when I was with them.”

  “So what’s your plan, Hubert? You want to go out with all your exes again to make sure you didn’t miss something?”

  “No, of course not,” I said emphatically. Then in my Groucho Marx voice, I said, “But there were a couple of them that might make me say the magic woid.”

  She laughed and said I sounded nothing like Groucho Marx. I pointed out that I must have because she knew who I was trying to sound like.

  “So why don’t you start dating some other women? Don’t rush into anything, but just see how it feels to think of someone as a potential wife.”

  “I can’t date other women while I’m with Dolly.”

  She stared at me for a few seconds. “You haven’t said anything to Dolly that would make her think you don’t date other women, have you?”

  “No, but we’ve been dating for three or four months and we sleep together, so in my view it would be wrong for me to start dating other people.”

  “What if you told her?”

  “That I was going to date other women?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be cruel. I couldn’t do it.”

  “So you’ve never broken off a relationship?”

  “You know I have. You were there when I ended it with Stella Ramsey. That was tough. But I can do that. If I decided to break up with Dolly and had a good reason for doing so, I could do it. But I couldn’t look her in the eyes and tell her I want to date other women.”

  “Why don’t I meet guys like you, Hubie?”

  “Why? You like wishy-washy guys?”

  Her laughter ended in one of those crooked smiles except with her big brown eyes wide and bright. “I know a good reason for you to break up with Dolly.”

  I could tell she was joking, so I played along.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, that legion of husbands.” She leaned over the table towards me, still smiling. “Come on, aren’t you curious about how many?”

  28

  Over a hundred people passed through Spirits in Clay Friday night. Not one of them made a purchase.

  As they exited the store, many of them said they might come back later. None of them did.

  It was a little depressing, but I had the five thousand from Tristan’s sale, less the commission I had decided to pay him.

  I sometimes don’t open on Saturdays until noon, but the Saturday after Holiday Stroll is usually busy, so I decided I’d open at ten. In order to fortify myself for the onslaught of customers, I ate some breakfast tacos. I had only one glass of Gruet because it was a work day. I crammed a whole chicken in a glass bowl just large enough to hold it. I filled the bowl with lime juice and put it in the fridge. I was hoping to wow Dolly that evening with what I call Ave Tampico.

  Then I opened and sat there watching the shoppers pass by.

  Martin showed up at noon, which was convenient for him because I was fixing lunch and for me because I needed the roller back in my workshop and the kiln back in my patio. Martin is my height but about twenty pounds heavier, all of it muscle, so he was the right man for the job.

  “How’d you get this kiln in the truck?”

  “The head dishwasher helped
me.”

  “Meaning he put it in and you watched.”

  “I had to carry the extension cord.”

  “So you exploited the lowest-skilled worker in the restaurant.”

  “You expect one of the chefs to carry a kiln?”

  “Good point.”

  After he brought the slab roller in, I said, “The last time you came, I gave you breakfast. Now I’m making you a lunch. You out of groceries on the Rez?”

  “I didn’t come for lunch. I came to bring your dog home.”

  “So you’re not going to eat lunch?”

  “Of course I am. It’s payment for keeping him.”

  “Was he a good doggie?” I asked as I rubbed him behind the ears and deftly avoided being licked on the mouth.

  “I guess you could say so. He didn’t chase the livestock or pee in the house.”

  “He’s a gentleman.”

  “He also didn’t chase the prairie dogs or the lizards and there were a lot of them running around. He seems to be missing his chase instinct.”

  “What about a stick?”

  “Sticks don’t run,” he said deadpan.

  I told him about seeing M’Lanta Scruggs coming out of Molinero’s office in the middle of the night.

  “The dishwasher you made carry the kiln?”

  “I didn’t make him do it. He volunteered. I like the guy, although I suspect he’d be surprised to hear it. He has a chip on his shoulder, but he seems to be an honest and straightforward guy. And unlike most others at Schnitzel, he doesn’t gossip or complain. He certainly doesn’t seem the type to break into his boss’ office.”

  “Maybe he was just cleaning up.”

  “I thought of that, but at ten at night? Also, I asked Molinero later how he keeps his office so neat, and he said, ‘By doing it myself and never letting anyone else touch anything’.”

  “Hmm. Maybe Molinero left the door open by mistake and Scruggs was closing it like a Good Samaritan.”

  “He could close it, but he couldn’t lock it. When Molinero let me into his office, he had to use a key to unlock it even from the inside. It’s a double-cylinder dead bolt.”

  “And when you tried the door after Scruggs left, it was locked?”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe he picked the lock.”

  “Yeah, like Bernie Rhodenbarr.”

  “Who is Bernie Rhodenbarr?”

  “A friend of Susannah’s,” I said.

  After Martin left, I called Dolly. She asked for a rain check because her father was having a difficult day and needed her help.

  29

  Father Groas dropped by that evening.

  “You missed Saturday Mass again, Youbird.”

  “Don’t you normally hear confessions at this time?”

  “Yass, but evidently everyone wass good this week,” he said and laughed his deep rumbling laugh.

  I offered him a beer.

  “Perhaps would not mix well with consecrated wine,” he replied.

  San Felipe de Neri church in Old Town was founded in 1706 and has a strange enough history that Father Groas seems to fit right in.

  In 1715, a local criminal was exiled to El Paso. He escaped on his way and took sanctuary in the church, which he evidently thought preferable to life in El Paso.

  It rained so much in 1792 that the walls of the church collapsed. No doubt the climate scientists of the day were warning of global monsooning. New adobe walls were built five feet thick.

  Around 1850, a Frenchman, Father Machebeuf, became the first non-Spaniard priest at Neri. Italian priests arrived twenty years later. Now we have Groas, originally from Romania. Or maybe The Ukraine. It doesn’t matter because his allegiance is to the Rusyns, a people without a country, and don’t get him started on their history.

  The Good Father is over six feet tall, weighs in at around two forty and has a thick bushy beard. He speaks English like Béla Lugosi.

  “I have some ethical dilemmas, Father.”

  “You want to make confession?”

  “I’m not a Catholic.”

  He smiled broadly. “Is probably why you miss Mass.”

  I told him about seeing Scruggs leaving Molinero’s office and asked if he thought I should say something to Molinero or even to the police.

  He shook his head. “Is only one person you can tell – Mr. Scruggs.”

  The idea of confronting Scruggs was terrifying. “Can I just say nothing?”

  “Yass. There may be an innocent reason for Mr. Scruggs being there. Bot if your conscience says you must do something, you must start by giving Mr. Scruggs a chance to explain before you accuse him to a third person.”

  I knew he was right. I told him next about seeing Rafael with Wallace Voile.

  He stroked his beard and said nothing.

  “Same answer?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  Great. So now I had to confront both Scruggs and Pacheco. Or call it none of my business and not stick my nose in.

  “I saved the biggest one for last,” I said and told him about Dolly. Having decided that I should at least think about marriage, I asked him how I would know if Dolly is the right woman. And if she isn’t – or even if I’m just unsure – how do I go about finding the one who is?

  “Do you want to ask her to wait while you see if someone else should be your wife?”

  “No.”

  “I did not think so. So again the answer is obvious.”

  “I have to either marry her, decide to remain single or break it off.”

  He nodded again.

  “You are a wise man, Father.”

  “I tell you only what you already know. Is same for confession. People come because they know they have sinned. They do not need me to tell them this. They need me to listen. Then I tell them what they should do to atone.”

  “You left out that last part for me,” I said.

  “You have nothing so far to atone for in these cases. You should pray about it, Youbird.”

  A few customers drifted in after he left. When one drifted out empty handed around four, I closed the door behind him and rotated the sign to ‘closed’.

  I took the chicken out of the fridge, dumped out the lime juice, and left the chicken on the counter so it could come up to room temperature.

  I took Geronimo for a walk. But first I waited for him to poop in the patio because I resolved long ago, when I first saw someone doing it, that I would never walk around behind an animal carrying a plastic bag and a little scoop. I mean, what must the dog think when we do that? I still have to scoop it up, but I don’t have to bag it and carry it around like a souvenir.

  When we got back, I rubbed the chicken with corn oil. I cooked up a simple sauce of honey, smoked paprika, fresh ginger and lime juice (newly squeezed – never cook with liquids in which a chicken has been marinating).

  While the chicken roasted, I read some more of Escoffier’s Memories of My Life. I can’t say it was exciting reading, but some of it was interesting. For example, he was short like me and wore platform shoes so that he could work more easily on the burners of the stoves. He began restaurant work when he was only thirteen, starting as an assistant to the saucier but was taught all aspects of restaurant operations. When he was nineteen, the owner of Le Petit Moulin Rouge, one of the finest restaurants in Paris according to the book, was dining where Escoffier worked. Evidently a man who knew talent when he saw it, he hired Escoffier on the spot as his sous-chef.

  When I was nineteen, I was a sophomore in college and had never worked a day in my life. The only thing I could cook was popcorn. Escoffier at that age had worked for six years and was second in command at a major Parisian restaurant. He eventually became director of kitchens at such world-famous hotels as the Grand Hotel at Monte Carlo and the Savoy and Carlton in London. I became a pot thief. Perhaps a hard early life does stiffen the character.

  Every few pages, I would take a break and baste the chicken with the sauce. The evening progressed in
this fashion – read, sip, baste, read, sip, baste. Did I mention I was enjoying some well-chilled Gruet? When the chicken was so tender that the wings were about to take flight sans the body, I put the roasting pan on the counter and tented it with parchment.

  The aroma had Geronimo howling. After the chicken had cooled enough to handle, I took the meat off the back, legs, and wings and gave it to him. He stared at the plump breasts as if comparing our portions.

  “This is mine,” I told him. He slinked away.

  If Dolly had joined me for dinner, I would have prepared a side or two, perhaps a salad as well. But as it was just us guys, we both ate a politically incorrect all-meat supper. I finished the bottle of Gruet and had enough judgment left to ignore the little voice urging me to open a second one.

  30

  Which was a good idea because I needed my wits about me Sunday morning when Whit Fletcher and Danny Duran showed up at my door looking like the before and after pictures for a fitness center, Duran’s muscles bulging under a leather jacket, Fletcher’s paunch draped with his trademark shiny one-size-too-large silver suit.

  Detective First Grade Whit Fletcher of the Albuquerque Police Department is a friend or nemesis. Maybe both. He has no interest in enforcing the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, reasoning that if there’s money to be made by selling old pots and no one gets hurt, what’s the problem? That’s also his view about cops making a little something on the side. He would never take a bribe, but if there’s money no one is going to miss, it generally winds up in his pocket.

  I’ve expedited his little bonuses by doing things like selling a pot after it was used as evidence in a trial and no one claimed ownership. Like a pot in the ground, he figures one in the evidence locker serves its best and highest use by being converted to cash.

  He in turn has helped me out of a few scrapes with the police, although I can’t give him full credit because he got me into some of them in the first place.

  None of my mental pigeon-holes would accept Fletcher and Duran together at my front door, so I just stared at them uncomprehendingly.