Bon Bon Voyage

by Nancy Fairbanks

  “We don’t want to stay for this,” said Mr. Griffith, waving his hand toward some acrobats in turbans. “It’s just the usual cruise crap.”

  I didn’t appreciate his language, but I did accept his invitation to have a drink at one of the ship’s many bars. In fact, Mr. Griffith had three to my one. He was very interested in the fate of Mrs. Gross. “Smashing,” he said when I’d told the story. “We’ll have to find out what happened to the old girl.”

  Finally, someone who had the common humanity to worry about the poor woman, even if she was an unpleasant drunk. We discussed strategies for locating her.

  “But then she may show up tomorrow at Gibraltar as Hartwig said. Ugly sod, isn’t he?” Mr. Griffith waved to the bartender for a refill. “I put a description of him into my computer,” he continued. “Probably use him as the villain in my next book.”

  “Yes, everything’s an inspiration to a writer, isn’t it?” I agreed. “I’ve been entering notes on the meals, especially the desserts. They really are marvelous. Would you like a bonbon? I have some in my purse, although they may be a bit soft after all that heat in Tangier.”

  “Why don’t I order you a nice, sweet liqueur?” suggested Mr. Griffith. “How about Galliano?”

  “Too sticky. But I wouldn’t mind a Baileys Irish Cream. And after that I really must get to bed. I want to be fresh for the tour of Gibraltar tomorrow. Did you know that they have apes running free there? I find that interesting, but quite possibly dangerous. On the other hand, I was warned that I’d have my purse snatched in Tangier, and nothing of the sort happened. The warnings for tourists are often quite overstated. Except for Barcelona. I was almost entangled in a sailor’s brawl there, and a taxi driver tried to kill me. And then there was Mont-Saint-Michel. I got caught in the tide off the beach. Very frightening. And the dead people—I’m amazed at how many murdered people I’ve come across since I started traveling.”

  “Good God, woman,” he exclaimed with a truly delighted smile. “You’ll have to tell me all about your adventures.”

  “Well, I’d love to,” I replied, flattered, “but there’s Gibraltar tomorrow. I really should get to bed.”

  “Those apes aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” said Mr. Griffith. “More a nuisance than anything.”

  I’ve written about crème brûlée before in this column, but the raspberry crème brûlée I had on the cruise ship after a difficult day in Tangier is really worth a mention and a recipe. However, if your day has been doubly difficult, chocolate is always the answer to stress. For those particularly bad days, try the second recipe: Kahlúa Ganache in Puff Pastry. You can buy the puff pastries at the supermarket. For all I know, you can buy the ganache, as well, but this is a tasty version.

  You’ll note that the second recipe has two feel-good foodstuffs in it, chocolate being my favorite. Chocolate was first made from the seeds of “the Tree” of the Mayan gods, who allowed their worshippers to imbibe the drink of the gods until the whole civilization mysteriously disappeared around AD 900. Then the Toltecs and Aztecs found the Tree, provided by Quetzalcoatl, the bearded god of the forest. The worshippers loved the gift, but the god deserted them by climbing on a raft and setting out to sea. The appearance of Cortés, unfortunately for the Aztecs, was taken to be the return of Quetzalcoatl. When Cortés asked to see their treasure, they showed him the huge store of beans. However, the Spanish were more interested in gold than beans.

  Later, missionary nuns to South America decided to convert chocolate to Christianity by eliminating the heathen spices used by the Indians and adding instead cream, sugar, and vanilla—so much more civilized than hot chili powder.

  Raspberry Crème Brûlée

  Heat oven to 300°F. Set a teakettle of water to boil.

  For six servings of raspberry crème brûlée, divide 48 fresh raspberries among 6 ramekins.

  Bring to a simmer 2½ cups whipping cream. Whisk 9 egg yolks with 1/3 cup sugar and a little salt until blended. Then, whisk in very slowly the hot cream and finally stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

  Pour the cream mixture over the raspberries in the six ramekins and set them in a baking pan. Pour boiling water into the pan until it comes halfway up the ramekins.

  Bake in preheated oven until set (35 to 40 minutes). Remove ramekins from pan, cool, and chill thoroughly.

  Before serving, sprinkle 2 teaspoons of sugar (12 teaspoons total) over each ramekin of brûlée and put under the broiler only long enough to caramelize the sugar. If you have a little brûlée blowtorch, use that.

  (Optional: Decorate each custard with several raspberries.)

  Kahlúa Ganache in Puff Pastry

  Buy and prepare the number of puff pastry sheets you need. I suggest shaping cups from the pastry.

  Estimate the amount of ganache you will need and provide equal amounts in ounces of a fine semisweet dark chocolate, chopped, and heavy cream.

  Place the chopped chocolate in a stainless steel bowl.

  Heat the cream in a medium saucepan over medium heat until just boiling and pour over chocolate immediately. Allow to sit for 5 minutes.

  Add 1 tablespoon Kahlúa (brandy or cognac can be substituted) per 16 ounces of cream and chocolate and whisk until smooth. Refrigerate.

  Fill the puff pastries with ganache before serving.

  Leftover ganache can be rolled into small balls and then coated with cocoa or chopped nuts to make truffles, a nice snack for the home chef who has to clean the kitchen after the dinner party. Otherwise, refrigerate the truffles. They will last for several weeks.

  Carolyn Blue, “Have Fork, Will Travel,” Boulder, CO, Times

  19

  Barbary Apes and Bad News

  Jason

  After a satisfying day of discussions on toxin research, spent in a small Canadian town surrounded by flat agricultural fields that stretched in every direction to distant horizons, I connected my laptop to the telephone jack in my room so that I could access my e-mail from home. I planned to glance through the messages and then go to bed. All were academic in nature and didn’t require instant replies, except for the last, an e-mail and attachment from a colleague in El Paso.

  Hey Jason,

  Your wife’s column debuted in the Times today. What’d you do to her? She seems really steamed up about bonbons for some reason, and I take it they were a present from you. . . .

  I groaned. I didn’t want to read the attachment. Although I’d meant well in ordering the bon voyage gift for my wife, obviously she hadn’t forgiven me for sending her on the cruise with my mother for company. God only knew how my mother had responded to the bonbons. Not her sort of thing, but the inspiration had hit me late, and I hadn’t had time to think of something else for my mother.

  Luz

  Gibraltar is one hell of a big hunk of stone, I can tell you. They put us ashore right after breakfast, and this chunky woman, our guide for the tour, shoveled us onto the minibus and drove us around town, mostly higher and higher, while she pointed out views of Africa and Spain and told us Gibraltar stories. First, we had to hear about this big monster cannon the English had brought in to help defend the place. We were on our way to see the miles of siege tunnels they’d blasted into the rocks, and the cannon was in there, but it hadn’t been the big success they’d expected.

  First screwup: they couldn’t get it off the ship. Every time they winched it up, the boat rose with it, which was not what they had in mind. Then they weighted down both ends of the boat, successfully got the cannon off, but the boat sank. Finally, they got the cannon into the tunnel with its snout stuck out of a cannon window or whatever and took a practice shot. Shattered every window in town, which was not real popular with the locals. At this point in the story, we were walking in the tunnels, Vera complaining about the dust, and Carolyn soaking up everything the guide had to say. She thought the whole thing was great, but frankly I pretty much tuned out when we got to some tale about a French submarine surfacing while the English were sho
oting their cannon. I’m not sure what happened there. They accidentally blew the French out of the water? Or the French thought they were being attacked and shot up the town or torpedoed some boats in the harbor? Whatever.

  After the tunnels came a cave with stalag-somethings while the guide griped about the huge taxes people on Gibraltar had to pay and the crappy health insurance, which, if you used it, got taken out of your pension. Ha! She thought she had health insurance problems. She should try getting an insurance company to pay for rheumatoid arthritis meds.

  Then we drove around some more until we found some Barbary apes to stare at. They weren’t actually apes and were either brought here by the English or got over on their own before the rock split apart, leaving some in Africa and some here. You’d think the guide would know, or maybe I missed it because I was staring at them.

  They were chunky monkeys (making me wish I had some of that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, because my throat was dry after the dusty siege tunnels), and they had sort of blond-brown hair and liked to scramble around on the rocks or sit on one with their knees flat on the surface and their privates on display. Nice. They also liked to steal stuff. One big male jumped up and grabbed Vera’s purse. She was really pissed— you can’t blame her—so I grabbed the ape and pulled out the plastic cuffs I always carry in my purse. Harriet Barber was a real champ. She sat on him while he screamed and I cuffed him and yanked the purse away from him. Randolph got the whole thing on video, and it took a while because that monkey was strong and put up a fight.

  The guide told us I couldn’t do that because the apes, although a real pain in the ass, were a protected species. No one was allowed to mess with them.

  “He’s a thief, and I made a citizen’s arrest,” I said, but I had to uncuff him. Then he took a poke at me, and I knocked him over on his hairy blond butt so we could get back on the bus in a hurry before the local cops arrived to arrest me for ape abuse. Our guide ground the gears and took off for the shop at the end of the continent or the world. Whatever. It was full of tourist crap, which the guide insisted was cheap because it wasn’t taxed.

  Last, we made another shopping stop. We were going to get to see the famous Gibraltar glassblowers, and by mentioning the guide’s name, we could buy stuff at a discount and send it back free to the U.S. I stayed on the bus. Carolyn stopped worrying about the still-missing Mrs. Gross and raced off to the glass place with Vera in hot pursuit to see that her daughter-in-law didn’t spend too much of Jason’s money. Good thought, but it didn’t do Vera any good, because Carolyn bought a tall pink and purple vase. At least she shipped that purchase. If she kept buying stuff, we weren’t going to be able to get into the sitting room.

  Vera said it cost $275, which was a ridiculous price, but Carolyn said it was “signed by the artist,” which made it “priceless.” I don’t know why. She couldn’t even remember the artist’s name. She probably could have gotten the same thing for ten dollars in Juárez. They’ve got glassblowers.

  On our way back to the ship, the guide admitted that she couldn’t stand the Barbary apes because they stole wash off the clotheslines, and nobody on the rock had air-conditioning but they couldn’t open their windows in the hundred-degree weather, because the apes climbed in and stole everything they could eat or carry off, besides which they screamed a lot and woke up the kids at night. I was glad to get back on the boat.

  Carolyn

  My hope was that Mrs. Gross had caught up with the Bountiful Feast here on Gibraltar and was even now in her cabin, dressing for lunch. Not that I wanted to join her; I just wanted to stop worrying about her. As soon as I entered the ship, I spotted Mr. Hartwig and hurried over to him, bypassing the desk where my return should have been recorded. Two men marched after me, but I passed them my card and told them to swipe it for me. Of course they looked to Mr. Hartwig, who nodded.

  “Did she arrive on board while we were gone?” I asked eagerly.

  Mr. Hartwig sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid we haven’t heard from her.”

  “Then you must call the authorities in Tangier and have them institute a search. Surely there’s an American embassy or consulate that can—”

  “Ma’am, if Mrs. Gross doesn’t want to rejoin the ship, that’s her right. My investigation tells me that she was not happy with the cruise. Or she may have decided to meet us in Casablanca, which is her right.”

  “But what if she’s been kidnapped, or she’s ill and not receiving proper treatment in Morocco?”

  His lips compressed. “Or she’s planning to sue us for leaving her behind and for other imagined deficiencies in our service. The truth is, Mrs. Blue, that your friend has a record of inveigling money, unpaid services, and entire free cruises from other cruise lines by—”

  “You put her off, didn’t you?” I cried. “You considered her a troublemaker or even a mutineer and told her she couldn’t reboard. I’ve heard that cruise lines do that. There’s a story about a man who was trying to organize a boycott of the bars on board a cruise ship because of the high prices, and the ship’s officers—”

  “We did not put Mrs. Gross off at Tangier,” Mr. Hartwig snapped, either his patience with me at an end or, more likely, his anger taking over when I put my finger on what had happened to Mrs. Gross. He turned away and left me standing there, discouraged because her fate was now back in my hands.

  20

  The Duty to Investigate

  Carolyn

  Owen Griffith asked to join me at lunch. Naturally, I agreed, eager to tell him the bad news about Mrs. Gross and my suspicions that she might have been told to leave the ship at Tangier. He thought that possible, in which case, there was nothing we could do for her, although she might have herself a nice case against the cruise line, which could be just what she wanted. “Maybe cruising and putting one over on the cruise lines is her hobby,” he suggested. “Sounds like good fun, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t think so. Furthermore, I suggested that he wasn’t taking the problem seriously enough. He grinned at me and said, “Oh, I’m fascinated, but we’ll have to wait for Casablanca to see if she shows up there. In the meantime, have you met a couple named Crossways? Bloody fascinating people.”

  Mr. Griffith seemed to feel everyone was fascinating, including me—fascinating, but not to be taken seriously. “They’re adjunct professors at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography,” I informed him frostily, after which I finished my lobster pasta, which I’d ordered to please our sweet steward, and asked about the desserts that were available. I felt a great need for a nice dessert to cheer me up after the stress of finding out that Mrs. Gross was still missing and that no one seemed to be in a hurry to find her. I told the waiter that I’d have a double portion of chocolate mousse cake. Just this once I’d eschew my duty to order something I’d never tasted and eat something I knew would make me happy.

  “Adjunct professors? Not likely,” said Mr. Griffith. “What do you want to bet?” I told him I didn’t gamble. “Fine, but we’ll still check it out. My take on those two is that they’re SOTS.”

  “They haven’t indulged in any excessive drinking that I’ve noticed,” I replied. “You drink a lot more than the Crossways do. Do you consider yourself a sot?”

  Mr. Griffith laughed heartily and admitted that some people might consider him a sot, but he certainly wasn’t a member of SOTS, which was the acronym for Saviors of the Seas. “They cruise to catch the lines dumping prohibited stuff into the water and then make reports to environmental agencies. The lines hate them.”

  I immediately saw how this might apply to the disappearance of Mrs. Gross. “Goodness, if you’re right, Mrs. Gross may have caught them investigating and threatened to turn them in.”

  “Interesting theory, love. Let’s check them out.”

  “Maybe they kept her from getting on the boat, or even injured her,” I suggested over my cake, which had already effected a lifting of my spirits. After dessert, I accompanied Mr. Griffith to the computer room, whe
re we accessed the Web site of the oceanographic institute. His guess was quite correct. The Crosswayses were not listed as adjunct professors or anything else. What if they’d killed her?

  Again insisting that I call him Owen, he suggested that we track the Crosswayses down and question them. A good idea, I thought, especially since he’d be along to protect me in case they turned out to be murderers. I postulated that a thriller writer might know all sorts of hand-to-hand combat techniques, not to mention the obvious fact that he was a somewhat burly man. Next, he suggested that we check out the exercise room, because the Crosswayses struck him as the kind of people who would exercise regularly. We checked, they weren’t there, and somehow or other I found myself trying out one of the treadmills that faced the sea. I could look right back at Gibraltar from the machine, a spectacular sight, so the experience was rather nice as long as the machine was set on slow.

  However, we never did find the Crosswayses. Instead Mr.—Owen urged me to speed the machine up to see how I liked it. I was not enthusiastic, but since he was on the treadmill beside me egging me on and I didn’t want to seem lacking in a spirit of adventure, I gave the lever a push, and the mat began to race under my feet. Naturally, I shrieked in terror and fell off. Owen hopped off his treadmill without mishap and tried to help me up. Then an attendant rushed over to check on my well-being and offered me twenty free minutes in the white health capsule. I just wanted to go back to my suite and nurse my bruises, which I did. I did not, however, cry, although I felt like it. Falling off a racing treadmill is very painful.