Chapter 14 #2
Mebel ignores the alarm going off inside her and greets Bella. Bella has been partnered up with Adam to do the red meat course, and Mebel has no doubt that between the two of them, they are going to come up with something genius. But now, Bella just turns away from Mebel with a muttered “Morning.”
Mebel takes her spot at her workstation.
As she sharpens her knives, she scans the room, taking note of all of the students in there.
The atmosphere in the kitchen this morning is tense, everyone lost in their own worlds, scowls being worn and nothing being said.
She can’t wait for Gemma to arrive so she can talk to her about it.
Or at the very least, she can make very obvious looks aimed at Gemma to communicate the strangeness of the morning.
“All right, class,” Chef Clarke says. “This morning, I would like you to go over your proposed dish and present a description of it to me.”
At this, everybody gets to work, going into their respective partnerships and murmuring in low voices, as though deathly afraid that anyone is going to listen in on their conversations.
Mebel swears that not even CIA operatives would behave in such a secretive manner.
Whenever she turns her head to look in a certain direction, the students in that vicinity hunch their shoulders more and lower their voices while glaring at her.
My goodness, Mebel thinks. What is everyone’s problem?
Well, it’s obvious, really, isn’t it? her brain replies. They’re all scared that you’re going to steal their ideas.
But we all have different courses assigned to us, she argues.
Yes, but even within each course, you could use similar methods to cook your ingredients. And you could deliberately ruin the taste of the next course, for example, by serving artichokes in your dish when you know the next course is going to be a white fish, which would alter its taste.
I wouldn’t do anything like that, Mebel thinks furiously.
I know that, but do they know that?
Mebel looks around at the toxic atmosphere in the kitchen and sighs. No, she does not know that, and worse still, she does not know that no one else in the class would stoop so low, especially when the prize is this meaningful.
She settles back in her seat, twirling her pen for a while, gazing at the door, willing Gemma to come through it.
It is now fifteen minutes since the class officially started.
It isn’t like Gemma to run so late to class.
Mebel stares down at the blank piece of paper in front of her.
She writes Duck at the top, then underlines it.
After an excruciating minute crawls by, she writes Confit/Peking underneath it.
When she looks up, she jumps. Chef Clarke is right next to her.
“Mebel,” he says by way of greeting.
“Chef,” she replies. She hooks her arm over her notepad, trying to cover it from view without being too obvious.
“What’ve you got there?”
“Well, just preliminary notes for our dish, not anything official or anything like that.”
Chef Clarke nods. “What poultry are you and your partner thinking of doing?”
Mebel gestures at the empty space next to her. “My partner not yet arrive, as you can see. So I don’t want to make any decision without her.”
“Mm. Yes, I see that. However, because of the time crunch we have surrounding this event, you do need to come up with a proposed course by the end of the day, with or without your partner.”
That’s not fair, Mebel wants to wail. But she merely gives Chef Clarke a smile and says, “I think we decide on duck.”
“Wonderful. One of my favorite meats. And how will you be cooking it?”
“Ah,” Mebel says, frantically working through her memory. She and Gemma had had a cursory discussion, and in theory it sounded delicious, but they have no idea if it would work in practice. “We are thinking maybe a duck confit—”
At this, Chef Clarke’s smile wanes, and Mebel’s senses go into overdrive to compensate. Her only purpose right in this moment is to come up with a duck dish that would prove to Chef Clarke that she belongs in the school. “But we are going to do something special with the skin!” she says loudly.
Heads look up and turn toward her. Now she has not only Chef Clarke watching her, but most of the class as well. Wonderful.
Mebel makes an effort to lower her voice. “We are thinking maybe something like Peking duck, with the crepe, but the duck itself is cook in the own fat like a confit.”
Chef Clarke nods, his lips thinning as he considers this. “Bit of a fusion dish then? I suppose it could work. But what are you doing with the skin? Peking duck is traditionally roasted, which gives the skin that beautiful golden brown shade and subtle crunch. Are you going to fry your duck skin?”
Mebel, who has no idea what the fuck they’re going to do with the duck skin, nods vigorously. “Yes, sure, yes.”
“All right,” Chef Clarke says. “Well, I look forward to it. Let Gemma know when she arrives.”
With that, he stalks off, on the lookout for his next prey.
Mebel is so limp with relief she practically melts across the kitchen worktable.
She hurriedly writes down as much as she can remember Chef Clarke saying.
She likes the sound of her and Gemma’s dish, and as she tries to work out a recipe for it, she wonders for the hundredth time where Gemma is.
It really isn’t like her to disappear like this.
Mebel checks to make sure Chef Clarke is out of earshot before reaching over and tapping Adam on his back.
He turns around, wearing a look of mild irritation. “What is it, Mebel?”
Mebel notes with a pang that he’s calling her Mebel and not Mebs. “I—ah, have you hear anything from Gemma? I am worried about her, why she not come to class yet, is not like her to be this late and—”
“Right, yeah,” Adam says distractedly. Bella gives him a pointed look, and he says, “Okay, Mebel, I get that you’re worried, but I can’t do anything about that right now. We can check on her after class, all right?” With that, he turns his back on Mebel.
A sense of loneliness threatens to overwhelm her.
Don’t be silly, she tells herself. This is nothing.
Gemma probably overslept, like young people usually do, or maybe she has a cold, or is hungover.
Ah yes, probably the last one. These English kids drink a lot, much more than Chindo kids, that’s for sure, and there have been many a morning where they’ve shown up to class bleary-eyed, their hair greasy and pulled back from their faces in a hasty ponytail.
Yes, that’s probably what happened to Gemma.
Mebel just needs to—hmm. Well, she just needs to work on this stupid recipe.
She looks around at the paired-up students who are murmuring quietly to each other.
She catches bits and pieces of their conversations, and it all intimidates her.
Terms like “sous vide” and “foam” are being thrown around.
She recalls what Alain said about how chemistry is vital to the culinary arts, and she jots down Chemistry.
She stares at it, her mind blank. Or more accurately, her mind is whizzing with a dozen random ideas, gibbering uselessly at her.
A quick snapshot of the many thoughts crowding her mind would show something like this:
Chemistry, that means mixing potions.
The act of firing up the stove and cooking a piece of raw meat is chemistry, isn’t it?
Can you foam duck? Oh, maybe you could foam the duck fat!
I could use a Nespresso foamer on liquid duck fat maybe.
And I-ee-I will always looove youuuu, and I—
All of the thoughts are voicing their opinions at the same time, while one of them is always singing a random song in the background.
Once in a while, one of the thoughts would actually be an okay one, and Mebel would try her best to pluck that out of the sea of useless thoughts and jot that down.
She does so now, writing Milk frother + duck fat.
She leans back and tries to envision it.
It sounds like an idea that might turn out to be absolutely brilliant or absolutely revolting, but at the end of the day, she won’t know unless she tries it.
By the time the class ends, Mebel is a frazzled mess.
She hurries out of the kitchen and up the stairs, taking them two at a time, which just goes to show how worried she is about Gemma, because at her age, her knees are no longer of the two-steps-at-a-time caliber.
She briskly walks down the hallway and knocks sharply at Gemma’s door, then steps back and tries to catch her breath.
No answer.
Mebel raps her knuckles at the door again, a little bit harder this time. Not quite at the level of Open up, this is the FBI and we know you’ve got several dead bodies in there! but at the level of Open up, I am a Chinese mother and I can smell wrongdoing in there! which is pretty close.
Still, there is no answer.
“Gemma?” Mebel calls out. After checking to make sure there’s no one else in the hallway, Mebel presses her ear gingerly to the door and tries to pick out any sounds from within the room. Any guilty shuffling? Held breaths? But there is nothing.
And now, Mebel’s brain switches from irritated concern to paranoid worry.
As a mother, she excels at paranoia. When Sammy was a newborn, Mebel woke up several times through the night to check that he was still breathing.
Sometimes, if he was sleeping too deeply, she would reach into the cot and poke him gently just to make sure he stirred.
It drove Henk crazy, because sometimes, Sammy would fully wake up and start to cry.
“Leave him alone,” Henk would say. “Haven’t you heard of the saying ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’? ”