Chapter 7 A French Feud
A French Feud
— O NE W EEK A FTER B ARBARA’S W EDDING —
When my phone beeps, I finish buttoning my chef’s coat and fish it out. Maybe a tad too excitedly.
Ian:
This one you can’t possibly disagree with, so here it goes. The whole thing about sleeping apart the night before the wedding is ridiculous. Hello?! Most people move in together before they get married these days.
I loosen a jagged breath at the relief washing over me. Like a light wind on a warm day, it soothes me from the inside out, and like every day since Barbara’s wedding it quickly fades away when I realize just how happy I am that Ian hasn’t stopped texting. It’s been a week, and he’s sent me his unpopular opinions about weddings every day. “Why is it called a honeymoon if neither honey nor the moon are involved?” and “Never mind. It comes from the Scandinavian practice of drinking fermented honey during the first moon cycle of the marriage to help with conception.” And, of course, “I’m happy to ask the bakery if they have some fermented honey for you as soon as you tell me what it’s called.”
I haven’t answered since the day of my fight with Frank, but he keeps going with a new message every day, and despite myself I’m getting used to the steady stream of witty one-liners about weddings. I suspect he’ll stop soon: he must be getting discouraged by my lack of response by now.
The phone beeps again and I wrinkle my nose, surprised he’s texting twice in one day. But it’s not him. It’s Frank.
Frank:
Just got into the new apartment. Love you.
There’s a new notification in the Find My Phone app, so I tap on it, and Frank’s picture is somewhere in the center of Mayfield, but it’s gray instead of the usual green.
“Last seen two hours ago.”
I guess he stopped sharing his location with me.
I shove my phone back into my pocket as my heartbeat quickens, and Tanya, one of the line cooks, enters the kitchen. “Chef Preston wants to see you in his office,” she says as she passes by me.
Great. That’s just what I need this afternoon, after I haven’t talked to Frank on the phone for a week and then he stopped sharing his location: texts from a stranger that shouldn’t feel as pleasant as they do, and a conversation with my father.
I turn to Barb, who’s putting on her jacket. She winks, pressing her lips tight to contain a smile, and with my heart beating fast, I turn around and walk to my father’s office.
I guess it’s time.
He’s been hinting at wanting to retire from the kitchen for a while, and we’ve all been waiting for him to name his worthy successor. He’s also made it perfectly clear that he won’t hand me the head chef position and that I am on an equal footing with every other chef in his kitchen.
But we also know I’m the best chef in his kitchen.
When I knock on the door, my dad, in a muffled voice, tells me to come in. The large space feels crowded on account of the busy shelves and stacks of paper cluttering his dark wooden desk, and though he’s squinting all the time, he insists on keeping a soft yellow light in here. “You wanted to see me?”
He motions at me to enter the office, and as I sit, my phone beeps. Once again, it’s not Ian; it’s just a notification. He’s kept it to one daily message, riding the dangerous line between endearing and creepy, and so far coming out a winner.
Glancing at my dad, who’s bent over his desk and studying a thick folder, I swallow. This is definitely it. He’s going to give me the position.
I love La Brasserie. I basically grew up in this kitchen and have worked with my father for fifteen years. But I’m also not as thrilled as I should be at the prospect of becoming the head chef.
It’s not that I don’t want the position, because I do. The thought of being the captain of my kitchen is thrilling. It’s what I’ve worked so hard for. But I have this horrible feeling that if I do become the head chef of La Brasserie, I’ll be stuck here for the rest of my life. I’ll never work anywhere else. Never try anything different. I’ll always be living under my father’s shadow.
When a whole minute passes and my dad still hasn’t looked up at me, I scroll through seven days of Ian’s texts.
Ian:
Wedding without kids? Totally fine.
Tossing the bouquet is horribly passive-aggressive. Not all of us are dying to get married, and it’s like throwing garbage at your single friends.
Destination weddings are the last frontier of selfishness, aren’t they?
“Am I interrupting all your posting?”
I look up at my dad, his eyes narrowed and his thick gray brows taut, then put my phone away. I guess another reason for not exactly dying to work here forever is that, though he’s undoubtedly talented, my dad’s a bit of an ass. “What’s up?”
“Did you see the Marguerite’s latest campaign?”
“Hmm?”
“The Marguerite.” He drums his fingers on the desk. “It’s William Roberts’s restaurant.”
I nod, perfectly aware that he’s talking about some restaurant in Mayfield, over a hundred miles away from here. “I know. William Roberts is the Lex Luthor to your Superman.” His eyes narrow. “Your archnemesis. I remember. What about his campaign?”
He huffs out a breath, the light disdain now turning into a teeth-baring sneer. I know I shouldn’t enjoy it as much as I do, but my blatant indifference to this stupid little feud with some irrelevant chef—and my equal indifference toward all his public endeavors—frustrates him. And frustrating him is my petty way of getting back at him for being the absent, cold father he is.
“Look.” He takes out his phone, then proceeds to aggressively tap on it. On the screen, there’s the Marguerite’s Twitter profile and their latest tweet.
Biting my lower lip, I fight as hard as I can to hold back a chuckle. “Hmm.” I give him back the phone, and the muscles in his jaw flex when he notices my enjoyment. “So what, Dad?”
“ So what? ” His neck stiffens. “It’s distasteful, Amelie. How dare William Roberts and his vulgar little enterprise come at me and La Brasserie? We’re a staple of French cuisine—a staple! Fils de pute! ”
Crossing my arms, I ignore his cussing and wait for his skin to tone down a few shades of red. Pointing out that he’s making a big deal out of nothing won’t help: I’ve tried before. Saying that this competition to see who has the biggest dick is ridiculous because Roberts’s restaurant is in Mayfield, a whole other city? Also pointless. But it’s always been more about the two of them butting heads than the restaurants, and who am I to stop two grown men from wasting their time? No one, that’s who.
Once the muttering of French swear words subsides, I sigh. “Dad, it’s just a marketing campaign. It’s called competitive advertising, and if our manager weren’t six hundred years old, maybe he’d be able to do it too.”
Leaning forward as if he’s about to deliver instructions on how to detonate a bomb, he joins his hands. “I’ll do it: I have the perfect comeback.” He snickers, then proudly announces, “?‘At least we know how to cook.’?”
“That’s terrible,” I say in a bored voice. “Hire a social media guy.”
“How about, ‘Learn French, jackass!’?”
“Hire a social media guy.”
“Amelie, we have to respond. The post already has hundreds of comments and likes and…” He frantically points at the phone. “And the other buttons.”
Taking the phone from his hand, I fight a groan. “First, this is a tweet, not a post. And you mean retweets.” He rolls his eyes, the usual frown just a few inches deeper. “Are you sure you want to start a social media war with William Roberts? With the Marguerite?”
He mutters something that sounds like “We’re already at war,” and with a resigned shrug I tap on the “new tweet” button.
My dad’s right: they’ve been at war for years. But it was a passive war, started on a cooking show when William Roberts had the audacity to comment on the thickness of the crust on my dad’s crème br?lée. A war fought with snarky comments thrown at journalists during interviews, with heated discussions at various culinary shows, and with gossip passed along by other cooks and mutual acquaintances. This would turn it into a full-on active war fought in the most public arena of all: social media.
Boy, I hope we don’t go viral.
Pleased, Dad walks away, his cheeks still red and puffy, but that’s his usual state when William Roberts is involved. I’ve never met the man—never eaten at his restaurant, either—yet I’ve heard his name about twenty billion times since they opened their restaurant a decade ago. I’d be happy to never hear the name Roberts again.
I think of the latest critic’s review of the Marguerite I read and chuckle to myself. I think I’ve got it.