Chapter 18 #2
“This is worthy of a Michelin restaurant,” Gemma says, picking up another roll. “This is so good. Oh man, seriously? They are going to beg you to work at Canard et Vin.”
“Yes, they will,” Mebel agrees happily, “but I won’t go. Because you deserve to go.”
Gemma’s smile withers, and she puts down her half-eaten roll. “No, Mebs. I don’t want to. I’m happy where I am, shooting cooking videos for my channel.”
“I don’t understand,” Mebel says, frustration coloring her voice. “You are such gifted chef. Why you quit the program halfway through? What a waste of money. And no offense, Gemma, but you clearly don’t have money to spare.” Mebel gestures around her at the tiny house.
“Wow,” Gemma says, and now, finally, she looks angry. “No offense? Why is it that people only ever say ‘no offense’ when they know they’re about to say something offensive as hell? That hurts, Mebs. Sometimes, the things you say are really mean.”
“Sorry,” Mebel says in a soft voice. “I don’t mean like that, like not having enough money is shameful or anything. Is not. Let me tell you something. I am wealthy.”
Gemma rolls her eyes. “Yeah, we all know that. The wardrobe full of Gucci and Fendi and all that other stuff was kind of a dead giveaway.”
“I never work a day in my life. My parents send me to school, I don’t really work hard, I just work hard enough to get by, and then I marry rich man for rich family and done.
My son, he works for his father. I don’t think he knows what is like to work for a living.
We are all soft. If one day our money goes away, we won’t be able to pick ourselves up and rebuild from the ground. ”
Gemma purses her lips, her eyes softening as Mebel continues to talk.
“But you are different. You are not brought up like that. I admire you. You work so hard, you put yourself through school, and I don’t think is easy to save up enough money to go to culinary school, am I right?” Mebel says, her eyes searching Gemma’s.
Gemma gives a small shrug. “I mean, this house was left to me by my grandmother, so it’s not like I’m starting from absolutely nothing.”
“Yes, and that is very valuable, but what about culinary school? How you pay for it?”
“I worked different jobs and saved up.”
“You see?” Mebel says triumphantly. “You do it yourself. You work hard and you save up. So why you suddenly just throw it away like that? What happen?”
“Nothing happened,” Gemma says, and her voice trembles, threatening to break.
Mebel pushes harder. “Something must have happen. You leave so suddenly, you don’t even tell me, or anyone else, and when you leave, everybody go crazy. Doesn’t make sense, you tell me right now what happen, why—”
“Chef Alain hit on me!” Gemma cries, and it is so loud in the tiny space and so sudden and unexpected that there is total silence for the next few moments.
Then reality crashes back, and Mebel says, “What?”
Gemma bursts into tears. “I’m sorry!” she sobs, covering her face with both hands.
“Aiya, why are you sorry?” Mebel says, moving the container of food off the couch so she can sit next to Gemma. She strokes the young woman’s back. “Why are you sorry? There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, silly girl.”
“Because you’re so in love with him?” Gemma wails. “And isn’t this exactly what happened between you and your husband? He left you for a much younger woman? Someone my age?”
“Well…” Mebel bobs her head sideways. “Got some similarities, yes. But I’m not in love with him. And you are saying that Alain hit on you? Did you have relationship with him?”
“No!” cries Gemma, her head snapping up. “God, of course not. I could never do that to you. And no offense, Mebs, but he is way too old for me.”
“Hmm, you know, someone wise once say: Why do people always say ‘no offense’ before they say something offensive?”
Gemma laughs through her tears. “Sorry.”
“But you are right, he is too old for you. He is too old for me, even.”
Gemma laughs again. “God, I don’t know how you’re able to make me laugh right now. I feel like shit.”
“Why you feel like shit? I don’t think you do anything wrong.”
Sighing, Gemma pushes her hair back from her face. “I did do something wrong. The truth is, I was so eager to prove myself in the school that I was seeking out Chef Alain privately to ask for his advice on the lessons. I have all these recipes, you know—”
“Oh yes, in your notebook,” Mebel says.
“Yeah. I like creating new recipes, and I’d go to him and ask if he could look them over and give me some input.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I was sucking up, basically.”
Mebel shrugs. “So? People do it all the time. Is part of business, you smile and pretend to be nice and all that. So what?”
“Well, I think I went overboard and gave him the wrong impression. One night, he just leaned over and kissed me—” Gemma pauses, wincing at the memory of it.
“I kind of pulled away, and he looked so confused. He asked me what’s wrong, and I said I wasn’t looking for that kind of relationship, and”—tears well up in her eyes once more—“and he got so angry. He said I’d been leading him on for days and I was trying to take advantage of him by seducing him—”
“What?” Mebel yells. She holds up her hand. “No.”
“But Mebs—”
“No!” Mebel says again. “You are twenty-year-old student, and he is—I don’t know how old he is, sixty-five?
He is a boss at the school and he owns multiple restaurants, and at least one of them has three Michelin stars.
He is so rich and so powerful until you cannot imagine, and he says you giving him the wrong impression and taking advantage of him? ”
“But—”
“You think he get so far in life by being stupid? You think Alain is stupid?”
Gemma gulps. “Um, no?”
“That’s right. He is not stupid. Nobody get to where he is without understanding how people relationships work.
He told me so many times already that everywhere he goes, people are always sucking up to him.
They want him to endorse this, stock that in his restaurant, they want him to hire them, blah blah blah.
Everywhere he goes, people do this, and he see right through them.
So why you think you are so special that he got tricked by you? ”
“Um.” Gemma gnaws on her lower lip. “I don’t know.”
“You know what I think?”
“No, but I have a feeling you’re about to tell me,” Gemma says.
“I think Alain is full of shit. He try to have the sex with you and you turn him down, so he is so embarrassed—oh no, his manhood is threatened—so he turn around and bully you. He feed you all this bullshit about how you lead him on, et cetera,” Mebel rants.
“And he make you feel like is your fault.”
Gemma doesn’t say anything.
Mebel takes a deep breath, trying to clear the chorus of angry voices in her head. “And that is why you quit?”
Gemma shakes her head. “Not quite.”
“Oh?”
“Well, after he told me off for taking advantage of him, Chef Alain told me that I’ll never find work as a chef in any respectable restaurant in the whole of Europe.” At this, Gemma bursts into a fresh wave of tears.
Mebel is incandescent with rage. The anger inside her is boiling so hot that she feels as though she might combust into literal flames. “He blacklist you?” she hisses.
Gemma nods through her tears.
“Oh, that wang ba dan,” Mebel says. “I will kill him.”
“No,” Gemma sobs. “It’s okay, I mean, like I said, I’m perfectly fine here. I shouldn’t have gone to culinary school. I’m just not cut out for it.”
“Rubbish! You are the best student there. You are made for culinary school. All we have to do is deal with Alain, then it will be fine. Your position will be restore.”
Gemma sniffs and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Okay, when you say, ‘deal with him,’ what do you mean? I don’t think we should, like, kill him, you know? I don’t have it in me to chop up a body.”
“There is meat slicer at school,” Mebel points out.
They meet each other’s eyes, then both of them start cackling.
Mebel doubles over with laughter, and there is something so wonderful about this moment, a release that both women desperately needed.
She laughs until tears leak from her eyes and she runs out of breath.
When they finally stop, the awful tension in the air is gone, and Mebel feels like she can think halfway clearly once more.
“I don’t know what to do about Alain yet,” Mebel admits. “But I know one thing, and that is we have to clear your name. Doesn’t matter if you decide to be food influencer or work in restaurant, you don’t deserve to have your name blacklisted like that.”
“He’s one of the most powerful chefs in the world,” Gemma says. “I’m sure anyone who crosses him would be blacklisted.”
Mebel harrumphs. She’s had just about enough of powerful men.
Powerful men, she is coming to realize, are some of the neediest, most insecure human beings she has ever met.
The more power and money they amass, the more fragile their egos become.
Maybe she should just hit Alain over the head with a cast-iron skillet and be done with it.
“I take care of it,” Mebel says.
“How?”
“You don’t worry. You let me take care of it.”
Mebel leaves Gemma’s house with her mind racing.
The whole drive back to Cowley, Mebel goes over all the events of the past two months.
Because despite the bravado she showed to Gemma, the truth is, finding out about Alain’s evilness has shaken her.
How could she have been so bloody stupid?
This is Henk all over again, isn’t it? Oh, it’s different in the way that Alain was so forthcoming about him being married, and his honesty that they are not exclusive ironically lulled her into a false sense of security.
She put more faith in him because she thought she could trust that they were simply two consenting adults enjoying each other’s company, with no strings attached.
She was so confident in that, so smug in the knowledge that they come with an expiration date, that she didn’t see this one coming at all.
And now, she has failed to keep her friend safe from her predatory lover.
Tears roll down Mebel’s cheeks, and she lets them, crying softly in the back seat of her Uber. Despite everything, she has to admit that she does feel hurt. She does feel betrayed. And above all, she feels utterly foolish. When is she going to fucking learn?
She allows herself to feel sorry for herself for a few more minutes, then she sniffs and wipes her tears away. It is important, she thinks, to let one mourn, even for a bit. And now, on to revenge.