Chapter 4
The rain was coming down in sheets by the time I got to work the next afternoon.
Rain always put diners in a bad mood. They got cold, their nice clothes got wet, their hair turned flat or frizzy, and they complained about not being able to see the view of Paris they’d been promised.
The staff at Le Jules Verne was used to providing perfection, but even we couldn’t control the weather.
(Although, after one endless month of rainy days and damp, sullen diners, Luc had attempted an anti-rain dance in each of the three dining rooms. It hadn’t worked—and it’d taken days for the smell of burnt sage to dissipate—but no one could say we weren’t devoted to our guests.)
I and the other servers darted around, taking dripping umbrellas and damp coats, making sure the bathrooms were kept stocked with a pile of fluffy towels, and cheerily assuring guests that the city’s lights sparkled even more beautifully in the rain.
We were well-practiced at lifting spirits, and most of the guests, once enveloped in the restaurant’s serene opulence, shook off their disappointment.
“Paris in the rain, what could be more romantic?” they said to each other, smiling as though it was a secret they’d been let in on.
There were always hold outs, though, people who arrived at the restaurant mad or seemingly hoping to get mad.
There was a couple like that this evening.
I had known they’d be difficult from the moment they’d walked in.
It was something in the way they held themselves, as though readying for a fight.
They were gorgeously attired, and, despite appreciating elegant fashion when the wearers weren’t making my job a misery, I’d silently dubbed the couple the Peacocks.
The Peacocks were at one of Yasmine’s tables, and her smile hadn’t even slipped when they’d dumped their sopping umbrellas in her arms. From the corner of my eye, I watched as my friend passed back and forth from their table to the kitchens, looking a little more harried each time she went by.
I was grateful for my own guests, who were happy and obliging, listening raptly as I explained how the different parts of each course played against each other and where our ingredients were sourced from.
One of my tables was an older couple from Edinburgh who’d come to Le Jules Verne years ago while honeymooning in Paris.
Each time I checked on them, we traded stories of what Paris had been like back then, how the restaurant scene had changed, and, yes, it was magical when anyone could just walk under the Eiffel Tower, wasn’t it?
“Is this the right time to visit Giverny?” the woman asked. “I’ve been wanting to go for years.”
“It’s the perfect time,” I assured her. “The water lilies are blooming and—”
Raised voices abruptly cut me off. Immediately, every staffer at Le Jules Verne turned toward the source of the outburst.
It was like a tableau at the Louvre. Madame Peacock was sitting with her arms crossed, glowering at Yasmine.
Monsieur Peacock had half-risen out of his seat, one hand gripping his chair, the other pointing at my friend.
As for Yasmine herself, her face held a mixture of indignation and apprehension.
I gave my table a reassuring smile, then made my way to Yasmine as quickly as possible without looking hurried. The voices picked up again.
“We pay all this money, and you’re telling me my wife has to take whatever is on her plate and be happy about it?” Monsieur Peacock shouted, his words slurred. “I can go to McDonald’s and tell them to take the pickles off my burger, but I can’t do the same here?”
He rose fully from his chair and swayed on his feet. “Overblown tourist trap,” he sneered, gripping his chair with both hands now. “And the tower’s swaying, too.”
Plastering a smile on, I stepped firmly in front of Monsieur Peacock.
“Good evening, Monsieur. How may I help you?”
Monsieur Peacock appeared momentarily confused by the appearance of a second server. His head swiveled between me and Yasmine. Madame Peacock, however, beamed at me.
“My dear,” she said, not breaking her smile.
“There’s been a silly little misunderstanding.
I didn’t like the sound of the next course; scallops don’t agree with me.
I remember last time we were here—we’ve been here several times—we had the most delightful lobster ravioli.
It was on the menu last time; I’m sure the chef still knows how to make it, but that woman—” she shot an ugly look at Yasmine, “She said we couldn’t make substitutions, even though this meal is costing us a pretty penny. ”
Internally, I heaved a sigh. I remembered the ravioli; it had debuted a little more than two years ago (although it had been made with langoustine, not lobster).
I smiled at both the Peacocks. “I’m so sorry,” I began, and I watched their faces contract into frowns.
“We ask for dietary restrictions when making a reservation, but it’s not possible for us to make an entire course substitution the day of.
I loved that ravioli, too,” I said, turning to Madame Peacock, “But I’m afraid we don’t have the ingredients here to make it today. ”
“Ridiculous,” Monsieur Peacock fumed. He was standing right beside me, and I smelled the wine on his breath as he glared at Yasmine. “This place is going to the dogs. The food is bad enough, but now the staff isn’t even from France?”
I heard Yasmine’s tiny, sharp intake of breath. Mechanically, I smiled again.
“Have my colleagues been gossiping about me?” I asked, lightly, like we were all sharing a joke. “It’s true I was born in Austria, but no matter how many times I ask, the chef still won’t put schnitzel on the menu!” My laughter rang out across the silent restaurant.
“None of the rest of the staff hold it against me, though. Even though they were all born in France.” My smile danced the line between friendly and ferocious. “Every. Single. One.” I gave the Peacocks a final glance, then grabbed Yasmine by the shoulder and turned away.
In the privacy of the staff room, I seethed while Yasmine watched.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Yasmine said, following my progress as I paced back and forth. “Those comments stopped bothering me years ago.”
“It’s just that it’s wrong,” I spat. “You were born in France, you’re a native speaker, you’ve lived your whole life here. What more do they want?”
Yasmine smiled sardonically. “You know. They want their vision of a Parisian waitress, not a Franco-Algerian.” Her face hardened. “This is why I can’t wait to get out of here.”
Ever since I’d known her, Yasmine’s dream had been to go into the hotel industry and eventually open her own inn.
After talking about it for years, she’d finally saved enough money to enroll in a hospitality program and make her dream a reality.
She was applying widely, and her top choice was the prestigious EHL Hospitality Business School in Switzerland.
“When I have my own hotel, I’ll just throw out anyone who speaks like that,” Yasmine said, her eyes blazing. “Right on the street, I don’t care if it’s midnight. No more being polite and crawling back to see if they’re enjoying the dessert course.”
“Colette will take care of their table; don’t worry about that,” I said, waving my hand as though brushing the problem away.
“I never understood why you love this job so much,” Yasmine said softly.
I smiled. “Because I’m a hopeless romantic who lives for making people’s wildest proposal dreams come true. It makes it easier to forget about the bad apples. Now, come on. I bet Paul will take pity on you and give you a glass of champagne before you head back out there.”
The Peacocks had refused their desserts and made a great show of announcing that they wouldn’t be leaving a tip—which may have hurt servers in some parts of the world, but not in France, and certainly not at Le Jules Verne, where staff was compensated quite decently.
The rest of the service had gone by smoothly enough, with all us servers making apologies for the distraction and offering extra meringues on the house.
After final diners had left (on their own time, of course.
The staff at Le Jules Verne would rather impale themselves on the top of the Eiffel Tower itself than hurry a guest along), I was about to shrug on my coat when Le Jules Verne’s imposing head chef appeared in the dining room.
Immediately everyone froze, except for Luc, who actually dove under a table.
I’d been standing in the middle of the dining room, so there was nowhere for me to hide. Taking long, heavy steps, Chef Jean-Baptist La Croix planted himself directly in front of me. I was centimeters from his clenched fists and bloodstained apron. He seemed to blot out the evening’s feeble light.
“I’ve created a new chestnut soup,” Chef La Croix declared, taking the same tone I expect a dictator would use to announce the construction of a new nuclear warhead. “I need taste testers. You will come,” he said, pointing right between my eyes, “And you,” he said to Yasmine.
“Hurry up,” he added, as Yasmine and I slunk together behind him. As I walked past, Colette reached out to clasp my hand, as though I was being shipped off to war.
Towering, with a baritone voice and a formidable gaze, Chef La Croix was the kind of personality stories always swirled around.
I heard a new one nearly every week: that even as a student he’d been so intimidating that it’d been he who’d struck fear into the august teachers at Le Cordon Bleu rather than the other way around.
That he’d turned down the chance to be the private chef to the Sultan of Brunei at a salary of five million euros a year because he would have had to bow to his new boss.
That he’d served as a cook in the military before becoming a restaurant chef and, during one particularly intense firefight, had climbed out of the bunker and shouted at everyone to be quiet while he iced his cinnamon rolls (and quiet had duly ensued).