32. Mille-feuille
MILLE-FEUILLE
*protect the fragile puff pastry with a layer of coconut oil to keep the crisp.
“ O h là là , what have we here?”
The next morning, Louis brought up a package from the lobby, where his landlady had informed him someone had left it at about six this morning.
Both of our heads were aching after last night, but it wasn’t anything a good espresso couldn’t fix.
Well, at least the hangover part.
Somehow, I found my way back last night through the crooked streets of Montmartre until I reached Louis’s quieter side of the neighborhood. Had it been my imagination, or perhaps the absinthe, that made me see a Lucas-shaped shadow following me the last few blocks?
By the time my friend returned, wrapped in his favorite silk kimono, box in hand, I had set two espressos on the little table by the kitchen window as well as toasted sourdough bread, butter, and fresh blackberry preserves.
“Package for you?” I asked as I poured us both some water.
“No, ma puce , a package for you .” Louis looked up, his dark brows furrowed. “From La Belle Fleur . You have an admirer so soon? I’m jealous. Celeste hasn’t gotten flowers in months.”
“Poor love. I’ll get you some when I get my first Michelin star.” Playfully, I stuck out my lower lip as I took the large box from him and opened it up while he enjoyed his coffee, bread, and morning cigarette out the window.
There were indeed flowers inside the box. Expensive ones. A tall, exquisitely blooming white orchid suspended in tissue—the kind that had to have been shipped from Bali or Singapore or some place equally obscene.
I frowned. The carbon emissions alone made a gift like this ridiculous.
I took out the note.
Not quite a ghost orchid, but still rare, like you. Clearly, you can bloom for more than one night. I feel lucky to see it every time.
—Lucas
I stared at the note for a long time, then at the flowers, now blinking in the sunlight.
“From your money man?” Louis waved his cigarette toward them.
I scowled at them. “Yep. He’s feeling guilty after last night and for the last month. I don’t really know anything other than flowers aren’t going to cut it, and I have better things to do than take care of a finicky plant.”
I picked up the orchid and took it to the trash bin under the sink. Louis raised his cigarette and espresso toward it in a parody of a salute as I tipped the plant, pot and all, into the bin.
“It’s a pity, though,” he said as I returned to our breakfast. “The flowers, they were quite beautiful.”
The next day, after I spent most of the afternoon compiling a list of restaurants I thought might be willing to take me on, either to stage or as a line cook, I returned from the market to find another big box waiting for me in the lobby.
This one was much smaller than the flower box and bore a Japanese logo that put a heavy stone in my belly.
If the gift was what I thought it was, there was no way I could accept it.
“What is this?” Louis stopped practicing a concerto as I walked in, the box in one hand, a bag of fresh lemon sorrel and delicata squash in the other. “Another mea culpa?”
“Looks that way.” I set the box on the counter and let him open it while I put away the produce.
“ Marie ,” Louis started reading from another note tucked inside with the gift.
The sharpest wit deserves the sharpest tools. And an artist must have the brushes to complete her canvas.
I hope these will be adequate for you.
—Lucas
He looked inside the box. “ Putain , is he expecting you to fence with this?”
I turned just as Louis drew out a box containing a long, particularly wicked-looking knife called a sujihiki, or a slicer, sheathed in a wooden block.
“Be careful with that,” I warned as Louis pulled out the knife and started brandishing it like a rapier. “Louis, seriously. Put it down. That thing could slice your finger right off.”
With a rakish grin that rather matched the knife, he set it back in its block, then abandoned the box to return to his oboe practice. “I think I will leave the rest of those to you.”
“The rest?” A peek into the box revealed at least ten more boxes contained similarly sharp blades. A full set of what looked like custom-made Japanese knives.
I picked up the sujihiki, marveling at the craftsmanship.
The rosewood handle felt like butter under my fingers, and the blade was almost as thin as a sheet of paper but showed no sign of warp or bend.
I had met a few chefs who owned Japanese knives, widely considered the gold standard for serious cooks.
Ondine had a cherished chef’s nife she would never let me touch.
I’d always wanted some for myself, but the cost, which ranged from several hundred dollars to upward of two thousand for a work of art like this, was prohibitive.
I’d made do with my trusty Wusthofs until receiving my graduation gift from Xavier.
Holding the knife made me feel like more than just an assistant cook. It made me feel like an artist. Someone who could do great things in the kitchen, the way Louis did with his oboe or his costumes.
Lucas had known that.
I scowled. I didn’t want him to know that. I didn’t want to play this game at all.
Carefully, I put the slicer back into its box, then wrapped it up with the rest of the knives. Lucas had sent me fifty thousand dollars’ worth of metal and left it on my front porch like it was a birthday card. All to what? Buy my forgiveness?
The knives were nice. But my pride was worth more.
On the third morning, we were woken by the buzzer at close to eight.
“ Bordel de merde !” Louis exclaimed as he stumbled out from the other side of his privacy screen in his underwear while he threw on his kimono. “Marie, if this is your money man, I will throw his next gift into the Seine.”
The look on his face when he listened to the holler from the landlady through the intercom told me he was exactly right.
“You need to talk to him,” Louis said as he returned with the world’s largest bakery box. “I should be sleeping for another three hours.”
I turned from the kitchen, where I’d already made us both a badly needed espresso. “What is it?”
“Mamiche,” Louis said simply as he opened the box to reveal row upon row of baked goods from a boulangerie I happened to know had a line out the door nearly any time of day.
“At least the les croissants are still warm.” He gave me a dirty look.
“Don’t even think of throwing these in the garbage.
I deserve a croissant for waking at this ungodly hour. ”
Though I’d thrown out the orchid and called the delivery people to send the stupidly expensive knives back to where they came, I didn’t have it in me to refuse the smell of perfectly baked pastry this early in the morning.
“Bring me one too,” I said as I brought our coffees to the window table.
“And a note,” Louis said as he sat down.
I took it and opened it while I sipped my espresso.
I’ve been everywhere looking for a pastry that comes close to yours. These were the best I could find.
–Lucas
P.S. Please eat something. You’re too thin.
“I think maybe he wants you back, ma puce .”
“It would seem that way.”
“But this is not the one you want? You still want the other?”
Daniel. I hadn’t thought about him for days now, to my surprise. My mind had been so filled with Lucas that I hadn’t even stopped to think about what his actions had done to Daniel.
God, I was a horrible person.
“I don’t think I’m right for either of them,” I said finally.
Louis nodded. “Maybe your money man is not good for the rest of your life, but maybe good for, you know, an apartment, new clothes, good food.” He gestured at our croissants as if to solidify the point.
“ Pour la joie de vivre , we don’t need money, but it helps, you know?
” He lifted a shoulder in a purely Gallic gesture that acknowledged the cynicism of his statement but cheerfully accepted its truth at the same time.
Was that what Lucas was doing? I fingered the note, then quashed the nausea that filled me when I looked down at the croissant. For once, the scent of butter and flour didn’t make me want to scarf the whole thing down. In fact, I felt rather ill.
“You can have them,” I said, tossing back the rest of my coffee before I stood up. “Take them to school with you. I don’t want them here.”
“Not even one?” Louis looked genuinely surprised as I moved back to my little corner.
“I can’t eat croissant bribes,” I said, doing my best to chase away the nausea with anger. Just who did Lucas Lyons think he was? “I’m going to get ready and go out for the day. My CVs are finished. It’s time to find a job and get off your couch.”
“ Bonne chance !” Louis called as I headed for the bathroom, right before he turned to his croissant and took a big, happy bite.
“We are not hiring, and you need a visa,” said the seventh head chef that day with barely a glance at my CV. “Try Le Cocteau. She has hired an American before.”
It was the same conversation I’d been having all morning. At every restaurant I’d visited, I’d met either the head chef or sous chef, most of whom were some variation of an older white man stinking of cigarette smoke and with a penchant for snarling.
This one also seemed to have a love of port, judging by the scent clinging to his coat and the redness in his nose.
I sighed. “I went to Le Cocteau. The chef told me to come here.”
The corners of the chef’s mouth curled, as if he were digesting a joke I wasn’t privy to. “Ah, well. Then no one is hiring you.”
“Look, even if you had space for me to stage for a few weeks, just to build some experience, learn from you?—”
“ Désolé, mademoiselle , but we don’t have the space.”
He sounded polite, but addressing me by “mademoiselle” instead of my rightful title, “chef,” was basically calling me a fraud.
I bit my lip as tears threatened. God, I had been crying so much lately.