Chapter 10
“You’ll do it? Margot, you’re amazing!” Yasmine gripped my face between her hands and kissed me on each cheek. “What made you change your mind?”
I shrugged. “I decided I should challenge myself. That, and my life’s work is now to prove to my neighbor that I’m competent at something.”
“I support your obsessive need for validation if it means the gala gets a pastry chef.”
Yasmine was staying to make an inventory of past gala decorations, so I took the opportunity to head out before Monsieur Roche popped out from behind a corner or something.
The day was crisp but bright, with the scent of fall just coming in on the wind. I decided to get dinner in the Latin Quarter.
When I told Parisians that my favorite part of Paris was the Latin Quarter, they generally looked as though I’d just suggested we get coffee at Starbucks (i.e. horrified to their very soul). The Latin Quarter, they insisted, was too crowded, too touristy, too…overdone.
I didn’t have time for that kind of negativity. The whole point of the Latin Quarter was for it to be filled with people. The bookshops, the cafes, the grand buildings, the tiny, winding streets: none of them would mean anything if they were empty.
So I always smiled when I saw it busy, even if the people were loud, blocked the sidewalk to take photos, and tried to pay for their gelato with American dollars.
I strolled past the Cathedral Notre Dame which was happily swarming with people.
Growing up, I’d always preferred the nearby Sainte-Chappelle church, with its stained-glass windows that were so beautiful they looked like sheets of jewels pounded flat.
But after the terrible fire Notre Dame had suffered, I, like every other French person, had catapulted Notre Dame to the top of my best beloved and most cherished of places.
A woman near the entrance was playing guitar and singing, and doing a beautiful job of it. I took a seat on one of the benches and let the crowds part around me while I looked at the old church. The restoration had been done so well.
Past the cathedral, I walked for a few minutes until I found the place I was looking for: one of Paris’ quintessential cafes, with a crowd of small tables outside, chairs all turned so they faced the sidewalk. I slipped past them, though, and asked the hostess for a seat inside.
“A good idea on a day like today,” she said, looking at the leaves being battered around by the wind.
Once seated at a corner table, I ordered a glass of Alsatian Riesling, flinty and bone dry.
The waiter recommended the roast chicken with hazelnuts, so that was what I ordered, along with a baguette and some homemade butter.
Leaning back into my chair, I took out the battered notebook I used for recipe ideas and everything else that needed to be jotted down.
I was actually doing this. I was going to be the pastry chef for an actual event. And things hadn’t even gone terribly yet. The team had agreed on my idea for fusion recipes, and now it was all up to me to come up with the desserts for the gala. This was the fun part.
Flipping to a blank page, I began making a list of recipe ideas. Macarons with a cardamom filling? Petit-fours topped with jalebi and a dusting of chopped pecans? Madeleines flavored with rose water?
I scribbled wildly, filling several pages with ideas. Now that I was committed (both to the gala and to proving Monsieur Roche wrong), I didn’t want my work to be anything less than my best.
When my food came out, my heart lifted at the sight of it.
The chicken was hot and crackling, the dark meat sliding off the bones.
The hazelnuts swam in a garlic sauce surrounded by heaps of caramelized onions.
I spread a thick layer of butter across the baguette and bit into the velvety, still-warm bread.
It was nearly dusk when I put down my pencil and swallowed the last sip of wine. After complimenting the server on the food and paying for my meal, I stepped back outside. The sun was setting, but the wind had dropped, so it was still pleasant enough to walk.
The street lamps blinked on as I walked along the Seine.
It was the tail end of golden hour, and all of Paris appeared burnished to a high sheen.
In the rich light, even the peeling paint on the buildings, even the lopsided sign advertising cheap cigarettes, even the bits of trash skittering along the road looked beautiful and as though they were meant to be here.
I reached my building and climbed the stairs to my floor. The light was still out in the hallway, so I didn’t see the little package in the gloom until I nearly stepped on it. There in my doorway was a tidy parcel, small enough to fit in my hand.
Perplexed, I brought it inside and opened it up under the fluorescent light of my kitchen. I pulled back the paper to discover a thick piece of quiche. How odd.
I leaned in closer. The quiche was cleanly cut, nicely browned on top. I sniffed, taking in scents of onion, spinach, and pork lardons. There was a crispy bit of pork sticking temptingly out of the filling. I broke it off and popped it in my mouth, letting it melt on my tongue. Delicious.
I flipped the quiche over. The crust was cooked nicely, not soggy or underbaked. I broke a piece off and tasted it.
Eh. Not much flavor, and the dough had been overworked. I went to pinch off another piece, then froze.
What was I doing? Eating food that had been abandoned on my doorstep by who knows who? What if it was trash that had fallen out of a garbage bag? No, it’d been too nicely wrapped for that.
What if it was poisoned? Frantically, I tried to make a list of potential enemies.
The guy from the winter I’d declined a second date with because he’d been rude to the waiter?
The diner from last week who’d been inordinately angry when I was unable to magically whip up a side of macaroni and cheese (which was not on Le Jules Verne’s menu and never would be)?
My cousin Timothée for that time I’d trounced him at tennis in front of all our relatives when we were teenagers?
None of those warranted murder by quiche.
Right??
With rising panic, I pawed through the quiche’s wrappings. There, tucked into the paper, was a notecard, neatly folded in half. I opened it, hoping for a pleasant greeting (or at least an antidote recipe).
Instead, I blinked in surprise. The note was written in elegant cursive, although the effect was somewhat marred by a splattering of grease across the card.
Mlle Delcour, just wanted to get your opinion. -Laurent
Oh. Well, then.
I read the note several times despite understanding it perfectly. Unconsciously, I’d begun to eat the quiche again. It really was delicious, despite the crust.
Maybe Laurent Roche didn’t actually despise me? Maybe he was simply having a bad day every single day that I’d seen him? Maybe our run-in today had thawed some of his frostiness?
I read the note through again. He wanted my opinion on his food. This Michelin-starred chef wanted my opinion. I took another bite of quiche. Well, I’d give it to him. But I’d provide it along with a gift.
My mother had always impressed upon me the importance of having fresh bread available for whenever unexpected guests dropped by. I hadn’t baked anything today, but, fortunately, I had a round of pain de campagne sitting in my tiny freezer. It only needed to be thawed and warmed. I took it out.
It was such a small thing, a single scribbled sentence, but I was strangely excited. It was as though my entire perspective had been shifted back into alignment. Laurent Roche didn’t hate me after all.
I was hugely impatient for the bread to thaw, so I sliced the loaf to hurry things along. Once it was ready, I spritzed it with a bit of water, then put it in a hot oven for a few minutes so the crust was crisp and golden.
Now, what to write back? Something clever, but not too clever, lest he think I was trying hard. I pondered it while the bread cooled on the rack, then ripped a page from my notebook and dashed off my message.
Quiche: excellent. Crust: store-bought? -Margot
I tied twine around the sliced loaf and tucked the note in, then went and stood in front of Monsieur Roche’s door.
Here, I encountered another conundrum. It was late, nearly midnight. I would normally never consider bothering someone at this hour. But if I didn’t knock, Laurent probably wouldn’t notice the bread until morning, when it’d no longer be at its warm, fresh-from-the-oven peak of deliciousness.
I never liked giving people food that was less than its best, and the stakes felt unusually high here.
Obviously, the sane thing to do would have been to wait until morning to do the baking, when I could have left the bread at a normal hour. But no, in my eagerness to respond, I’d cooked through the night, like a flour-dusted Dracula.
I stood in the darkened hallway, shuffling from foot to foot as I tried to decide what would be the least-bizarre course of action. I had just decided to leave the bread in the doorway and was bending to lay it down when the door swung open.
I came face-to-face with a pair of shiny shoes. Very shiny shoes. They were so shiny I could see my reflection in them. I looked scared out of my wits.
Slowly, I lifted my head. Laurent stared down at me. He’d ditched the suit jacket I’d drenched with coffee and was now wearing a polo shirt with a perfectly-starched canary yellow apron over it. There was a smudge of flour on his cheek, which I swear only enhanced his cheekbones.
I can only imagine how I appeared, crouching in his doorway with my floury clothes and hurriedly pinned-up hair. Probably like a sewer troll who’d decided to take a stroll in the aboveground world and be really creepy about it.
I scrambled up quickly. “Hi! I mean, good evening? Why are you up so late?” I demanded, as though I wasn’t just as wide awake as he was at this hour.