Chapter 4
New Orleans
The aircraft seems to do little more than taxi and take off before landing again. An animated female voice comes over the plane’s intercom system.
“Welcome to New Orleans. Outside, it’s a balmy seventy-two degrees, perfect weather for a Cajun Christmas. We hope you enjoy your stay, and as always, thank you for flying with us! We hope to see you again soon.”
The seat belt lights switch off and the doors open.
I grab my backpack from the overhead bin and walk toward the aircraft door that has opened onto another Jetway, just as old-fashioned as the last. On a table in the Jetway there’s a newspaper.
I scan the headlines about the winter weather putting a damper on holiday travel in the north and lots of excitement about the local NFL team hitting the playoffs. But then my eyes fix on the date:
December 22, 2009.
The night of the Christmas party where Edward and I had our very heated, very public breakup.
I am known for having a very long fuse, but Edward was foolish enough to find out what happens when the flame finally meets the tinder.
He’d said some cruel words. Maybe, just maybe, I can smooth things over so that even if I don’t get the job at 540 Blake (I doubt I can smooth things over that much), he might reconsider destroying every other aspect of my career.
I pause to breathe and try to recall more details of my life in 2009. I am all of twenty-three years old and working in my first-ever adult job. I look down at my body. I do feel and look fifteen years younger.
Nice.
Whatever weird hallucination this is has its perks. I consider . . . Maybe I’ve fallen off the ladder at Chloe’s party, and this is all a concussion dream? Logical, reasonable.
But it all feels far too vivid to be a manifestation of my subconscious.
As I walk down the Jetway toward the outside world, I continue to take stock of myself.
My clothes have changed, and I am now wearing my signature black chef’s pants and one of a million white tees I owned in this era of my life that would disappear under my chef’s coat at work.
Robin had sent me a boxful of quality white tees when I mentioned my work uniform.
She insisted quality cotton was worth the investment.
They were a luxury in this time of austerity in my post–culinary school years, and I thought of her every time I slipped one on.
That was one of the last of those sorts of gestures she made. Over the years I struggled to figure out what I’d done to bring about their end, but I always came up at a loss.
But now isn’t the time for Robin. I realize, as a bead of sweat forms on my brow, that I shouldn’t have agreed to come on this weird little trip. Not without asking a lot more questions. Chief of which would now be, “Is time travel involved?”
I’ve seen enough movies and read enough novels to know how dangerous time travel can be in the fictional realm, and I know better than to test my luck when my own future is at risk.
I don’t know if anything I do here will impact my real life or if this is some sort of weird simulation.
This could be the worst sort of butterfly effect disaster, and I don’t want to travel back to my own time to find that I’ve mangled everything.
I shudder at visions of myself managing a failing Waffle House in rural Alabama.
Not that there’s anything wrong with honest work like that, but it’s not what I’ve spent fifteen years bleeding for.
Or worse, I don’t want to find out that my actions have somehow caused someone else’s life to implode, even inadvertently. The enormity of that possibility is just too much to contemplate.
I can’t do this.
I turn and jog back down the Jetway, determined to reboard the aircraft.
I’m not doing this without more knowledge in hand.
I reach the plane only to find the door is shut.
I pound against the smooth white metal of the cockpit, but it stays resolutely closed.
No magical flight attendant comes to rescue me.
And I don’t expect them to.
I have no facts to work with, only my gut intuition.
And it’s telling me that it’s too soon to go back.
I have to believe the Ticket Agent was honest when she said I am free to come home whenever I want, but I’m beginning to think I am obligated to give this .
. . experiment, for lack of a better word, a shot.
I don’t know if that means a few minutes, a few hours, or even days or weeks.
What I do know with certainty is that the plane door is definitively shut, and I have no alternative but to continue to the terminal.
I curse my own impetuousness for agreeing to get on that plane so easily, for not having a better sense of self-preservation. But there is nothing for it now; I have to figure out how to make the best of the situation I’ve gotten myself into.
December 22. I try to remember what I did that day before the ill-fated Christmas party. It doesn’t take long to recall I was on the lunch shift at La Fontaine Mirabeau and hopping busy because of the holiday season.
My wrist is devoid of a watch; I never wore one when I worked back of house.
I dig around in my backpack, hoping the Ticket Agent’s promise about it containing everything I would need is accurate.
Inside are the contents of the workbag I usually carried in those days, including my first-ever smartphone.
This one was a graduation gift from Brian who, by this time, was already doing well up in Portland in his swanky software job.
I’d first scoffed at the idea of being held captive by the device but found it indispensable for keeping my ever-changing schedule straight, being available to my supervising chef, and snapping photos of an especially good plating. I’ve not been without one since.
The time on the front of the phone reads 9:47 a.m., and there is a glaring red reminder that, yes, I have to work that day. I remember clearly that I was expected to report by 10:00 for lunch service, and I always made a habit of showing up at least twenty minutes early to prep my station.
I’m already late.
But do I have to work? Can I just go explore my life and skip out on service? Tempting, but every neuron in my body is telling me I need to go where I would have been and let my life unfold.
I slip on the backpack and rush down the Jetway.
At the other end I find myself in Louis Armstrong International Airport, as I expected I would.
Unfortunately, it’s a solid thirty minutes from my restaurant in the French Quarter.
A crowd of holiday travelers, all looking merry and bright as the cliché goes, meander about.
I think back to what was going on at the time.
The economy was slowly improving after the recession, and the general mood of the country was brightening.
I remember culinary school being a tense place to be in the middle of an economic downturn.
Restaurant dining, especially of the middling to upscale sort, was one of the first things people cut from their budgets.
But by the time I graduated, things were looking up, even if they weren’t totally better.
I start to dash to ground transportation, hoping there will be an obliging taxi at the ready, but it dawns on me that in 2009, I was not the sort of person who could afford a half-hour cab ride.
I presume my old wallet is in the bag somewhere, and it probably has a lovely colony of moths making their home in it, Looney Tunes–style.
I’ll have to pray the bus schedule is in my favor.
The airport buses only run every ninety minutes, so if I haven’t hit it just right, I’ll be disastrously late. And this is a gig I don’t want to ruin for past me . . . if indeed that’s a risk. It’s probably better to assume my actions here have consequences for my future, so I’ll act accordingly.
“Princess, you running late?” A familiar baritone sounds behind me.
I swivel my head to see Jean-Rémy, the sous-chef from La Fontaine Mirabeau, jogging to catch up with me.
He’s in his sixties but is robust for his age, so it doesn’t take long for him to catch up with me.
Tears well up in my eyes as I take in his lanky frame, warm features, and salt-and-pepper hair, cropped close to his head.
I throw my arms around my old friend, having wished for just this chance more times than I can count.
Jean-Rémy was my first mentor and guide.
He saw my skill and wasn’t about to let me waste my time as an escuelerie (the fancy restaurant term for dishwasher) and insisted our boss, Antoine, promote me to commis chef—the lowest rank in the kitchen who is actually trusted near food.
And despite having no outward signs of poor health, Jean-Rémy will die of a massive heart attack in about five years.
Despite lots of emails and texts, I won’t see him in person again after I leave La Fontaine Mirabeau about six months from now.
I think back to my breakdown at Burbank Airport and the feeling of friendlessness. Had Jean-Rémy survived, he’d have been the first person I called when everything went wrong. He might not have had all the answers to fix my future, but he sure as hell would have tried to help me find them.
It’s no exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t be where I am without Jean-Rémy.
Rather than letting the chefs de partie—the station chefs—order me around haphazardly, he had organized a proper apprenticeship for me where I could learn each rotation in detail.
I dig around in my mind and remember I was likely working with the poissonnier—seafood chef—that month.
I bet that if I raise my hands to my face, I’ll still have the scent of briny oysters clinging to my fingers despite countless washings.
He made sure I left his kitchen knowing how every cog in the back-of-house machine works.