Chapter 6 #3
The sunchoke velouté for tomorrow's second course is three-quarters of the way to where it needs to be. The base is silky and the earthiness is there, but the finish still isn't landing. I've adjusted the ratio twice already and I'm standing here with a tasting spoon considering a third attempt.
I add another drop of the vinegar and whisk it through, then taste. Better, so I set the spoon down and make a note on the prep sheet to adjust the ratio for tomorrow's full batch.
Tomorrow is opening night. Which means today is about execution, timing, and making sure every person on this line can deliver at the level I expect without a single garnish a millimeter off center or a sauce broken under pressure.
Martinez is breaking down a case of heirloom tomatoes at the next station, Sofia is organizing mise en place for the cold line, and Tomás is reducing stock that'll become the base for tomorrow's sauces. Everyone is locked in.
Alex disappeared an hour ago and hasn't been back.
He doesn't have an official role in my kitchen, my father's arrangement notwithstanding, but over this past week I have regrettably come to value his palate during tastings and his annoyingly accurate instinct for when a dish needs one more element I haven't identified yet.
So I keep glancing at the door, because I want his read on this velouté before I finalize it. That is the reason. The only reason.
Though the way my pulse picked up two minutes ago when I heard footsteps in the corridor and they turned out to be Tomás coming back from the walk-in is becoming harder to file under professional concern.
I adjust the velouté again, whisking it like it has personally wronged me, like if I just work it hard enough I can whisk away this inconvenient awareness of Alex Midnight that's been building all week. Because there is no point in going down that road with him.
We live on opposite sides of the country. My father would destroy his career without a second thought if he even suspected something, and I can't pretend I'd be able to stop it. So better to keep this whatever-it-is in the category of collegial respect and leave it there.
But I glance at the door again.
And as if summoned by the sheer force of me trying not to think about him, it swings open and Alex strolls in carrying a wooden crate covered with a small towel. He crosses the kitchen and sets the crate down on the empty station at the far end.
I abandon the velouté and my good sense along with it, and walk over to investigate, wiping my hands on my apron as I go.
"Where have you been?" I ask, peering at the crate with what I hope looks like professional curiosity rather than the fact that I've been tracking his absence like some kind of Alex Midnight surveillance system. "You've been gone an hour."
"The Windfall Farm delivery guy was here," he says, looking absurdly pleased with himself. "He had a ton of produce in his truck for the other restaurants on his route, and some of it was too good to let drive away."
"Too good how?"
"See for yourself." He pulls back the cloth to reveal a crate of Black Mission figs, two dozen of them nestled in damp paper, the skins a purple so dark they're nearly black, still carrying that faint white bloom of sugar that means they were picked this morning.
The scent reaches me before I even step closer and suddenly I am eight years old in my grandmother's garden in the south of France, barefoot in the dirt with fig juice on my chin and Grand-mère laughing at me from the kitchen window.
"Ooh, figs are one of my favorite things ever!" I exclaim, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice, all my carefully maintained professional distance evaporating at the sight of perfect produce.
He laughs, nodding toward the crate and I pick up a fig eagerly, turning it in my fingers.
The skin is warm and velvety and up close the smell is even more concentrated, almost intoxicating, and I press the base gently with my thumb to test the give.
The flesh yields exactly the way it should, the sugars concentrated to the point where the inside will be practically liquid.
"My grandmother had this fig tree near the south wall of her house," I say, bringing the fig up to my nose and inhaling deeply, the scent triggering a cascade of memories so vivid I can almost feel the summer heat on my skin.
"I'd snack on them all day, and she’d make this incredible roasted fig and honey galette with lavender.
The figs would caramelize against the pastry and the whole house would smell like butter and burnt sugar for hours. "
"Nothing beats a grandmother or a mother's cooking," he says.
"I didn't really know my grandparents well, but my mom was a wonderful cook.
She used to make these incredible blackberry jams and pies in the summer with the berries we picked off the bushes on our property.
I still can't smell a blackberry without thinking of her. "
"Food does that," I say, smiling. "My father is the reason I do Michelin cooking. But Grand-mère, she's why I fell in love with cooking in the first place. Sometimes I wish I still cooked like her, instead of with tweezers and ring molds and a timer on every course."
I'm surprised that the last part slips out of me, that admission of something I haven't even fully articulated to myself before this moment. But he just nods like he understands exactly what I mean.
This conversation is starting to feel strangely intimate, no longer about figs but about the way food can hold your whole history inside it. And as someone who hates vulnerability and closeness of any kind, I definitely need to put a stop to that.
"So," I say, clearing my throat and trying to reestablish some professional distance. "How did you even talk the delivery guy into giving you these if they were for someone else? Who were they even for?"
"Well, they were supposed to go to that place down the road." He leans back against the counter. "But I can be very persuasive when the produce warrants it."
"So you charmed a man out of someone else's figs."
"I prefer to think of it as redirecting them to a kitchen that would appreciate them more." He winks at me and I hate that I laugh, but I do, the sound escaping before I can stop it.
The image of Alex sweet-talking a delivery driver out of someone else's figs at nine in the morning is so perfectly him.
He picks a fig up too, holding it close to his nose and inhaling with his eyes half closed like he's savoring expensive wine. When he opens them, he catches me watching him, and I look away too quickly, caught.
"Is there anything better than that?" he asks.
I look down at the fig in my hand. "No. I don't think there is."
He smiles, warm and a little crooked. "I figured they were one of your favorites, because of that perfume you wear."
I blink. "My perfume?"
"Yah. It smells like really fresh summer ones, very..." He pauses, tilts his head, runs his thumb across the skin of the fig he's holding. "Breezy. Green and fresh at the same time. The whole fig tree, I think."
"I had no idea you were such a perfume connoisseur," I say, trying for sarcasm but landing somewhere closer to flustered.
"I'm not." He laughs, setting the fig down on the counter and turning to face me fully. "But I am a chef. And scent is part of what we do, right? You learn to pay attention to how things smell. You get close, really close, because that's how you catch all the layers, all the complexity."
He leans in at that last part, close enough that I catch his own scent cutting through the kitchen smells of stock and herbs and tomatoes. Vetiver and sandalwood and a trace of smoke, like a bonfire that's been out for hours but left its ghost behind.
I look up at him and I feel like we aren't talking about figs or perfume anymore, like we've crossed into some other conversation without me noticing.
Or maybe it's just my mind wandering to other, less professional places.
Warmth floods up the back of my neck and spreads across my cheeks, and it has nothing to do with the kitchen temperature.
Even my pulse is hammering in my throat, so hard I'm certain he must be able to see it, and I pray he can't.
"Diptyque Philosykos," I stammer out, my voice coming out breathy. "It's a fig perfume from a French fragrance house. I've worn it for years because it's always reminded me of summers at my grandmother's."
His eyes drop briefly to my neck, to the exact spot where I spray my perfume every morning, and I feel that look like a physical touch. Then they come back up to my eyes, holding my gaze with an intensity that makes it hard to breathe.
"It suits you," he says.
I have no idea what to say to that, or how to respond to the way he's looking at me like he can see straight through every defense I've ever built, and I make the mistake of holding his gaze for a moment too long.
Somehow I never noticed what a nice brown his eyes are. Warm and amber-colored, like good bourbon held up to the light. I could drown in those eyes if I let myself, just sink right in and forget about opening night and my father and every plan I've ever made for my carefully controlled life.
I shake off this absurd thought and clear my throat, stepping back slightly to put some desperately needed distance between us. "So what are you planning to do with me—uh, I mean the figs?"
Oh my God.
Alex's mouth twitches and I could die right now. Please let something large fall on my head. A piano, a chandelier, the entire walk-in cooler, I am not picky. I would accept a meteor at this point. Anything to end this moment.
"Not sure yet," he says, mercifully letting that one sail past without comment, though the amusement in his eyes tells me he absolutely caught it.
"Maybe roasted with miso butter and sesame alongside seared duck breast. Or kept dead simple, just split open with a spoonful of good ricotta and a drizzle of wild honey and some flaky salt. World's my oyster, right?"
I nod, but I can't shake the flustered feeling that has settled over me.
As though I'm slightly off-balance, like the ground shifted two inches to the left when I wasn't paying attention.
I've dated before, happily enough if never that seriously, but none of those men ever made me lose my train of thought by talking about scent profiles and looking at my neck.
Maybe it's the Napa air. All these vineyards and rolling hills and golden afternoons doing their work on me. But I feel as though I'm getting dangerously close to doing something stupid.
Alex tilts his head. "Are you alright?"
"Uh yeah, I'm great," I lie. "And those are, well, those are good ideas. For the figs. Very good."
I add the last part lamely and he chuckles, and lifts the crate up to the shelf above the counter.
The motion pulls his grey t-shirt up from his waistband, revealing a strip of tanned skin across his stomach and the line of muscle that cuts down from his hips in a V and disappears below his belt, leading right to his…
I jerk my gaze back to the figs on the shelf.
I actually feel my mouth watering. From the figs. Obviously.
"I have to go back to prep," I say, and it comes out irritated, as if he's the one who asked me to come over here instead of me crossing the kitchen of my own free will. "The velouté still needs work."
He shrugs, looking completely unbothered by my sudden rudeness. "Sure. Let me know if you need anything."
I turn and walk back to my station, picking up my whisk and attacking the velouté with renewed focus. Tomorrow is opening night. I have a second course to perfect, a line to drill, and a career to prove I deserve. There is no room in any of that for flirting with Alex.