He looked to the side. “You know it’s not…I mean, it’s not Girard.”
I nodded.
“But…I’ve tasted worse.”
“I’ve tasted worse? That’s not actually a compliment.”
“Oh, it is. It is. You’ve definitely got…you’ve definitely got something.” He ate another piece. “Okay, well, here you’re missing the black pepper. You need it to bring up the base notes. And a touch less butter, okay? This isn’t for children, or Americans. And stir a little less, you’ve overchurned. It messes up the components.”
I looked around for a piece of paper to write all this down on. He stopped chewing for a second.
“But really,” he said, “compared to last week’s…fiasco…I mean, you’ve done really well.”
I didn’t want to say that I’d been up for three nights, but he must have seen my eyelids drooping.
“Look, do that, then I’ll come and talk mint with you another time, all right? Do you want to go and get something to eat? I am absolutely super-fatigued, and I think you might be too.”
I nodded gratefully—another four-hour session in the greenhouse at this point might just have totally wiped me out—and followed him out of the front door, locking up again, then following him down a tiny maze of alleys I still hadn’t worked out. Three turns around though, and we were at yet another one of those dark doors that seemed to appear out of the middle of nowhere. I felt for the tourists at the great huge outdoor restaurants that lined the Seine or the Bois de Boulogne; they had no idea, could never know about these places. The locals were jealous and selfish with them, had no interest in sharing them. Paris could be pretty tough on the newcomer. This one had nothing but a tiny mushroom over its door to let you know it was even there.
Laurent knocked and was answered by a stooped man with a napkin thrown over his shoulder. For a second, he paused and stared. Then he took a step back.
“S…Laurent?” he said incredulously.
“Salvatore, yes, it’s me,” said Laurent.
The old man looked nearly tearful, then threw his arms around Laurent’s neck, kissing him three times on each cheek.
“I thought…God help me, I thought it was your father’s ghost standing there. You look so like him.”
“So they say.”
I looked at Laurent again. I couldn’t see the connection at all between huge, wheezing Thierry with his skin like uncooked dough and this tall, olive-skinned, flashing-eyed man, his black curls bouncing, so full of vigor and life, even if his passion sometimes overtook him. Surely he wouldn’t end up like his father.
“We haven’t seen you in…” The man shook his head. “It has been so long. So long.”
“I know,” said Laurent.
“And now. Finally. You are here to run the shop. Your father?”
“He’s recovering,” said Laurent firmly. “I’m just helping out.”
The old man looked closely at me.
“And this is your wife? Your girlfriend?”
Laurent waved his hand. “Oh, no, nothing like that. She works for my father. Hey, Señor, can you get us something to eat?”
“Of course, of course,” said Salvatore, throwing open the old wooden door into a passageway from which emerged the most amazing smells of mushrooms sizzling in garlic and butter, with white pepper and all sorts of other things I couldn’t identify.
But I barely noticed the stunning aromas; I was so tired and shaky that suddenly I was furious that Laurent had referred to me in such a dismissive way. I mean, I know that’s all we’d been doing and all we were, technically, to one another, but…after everything we’d bloody been through. Couldn’t he at least have said we were friends?
I realized as he ushered me through into a tiny restaurant not much larger than somebody’s front room—decorated like someone’s front room too, with family photographs and knickknacks, nearly every table filled with people concentrating furiously on the process of eating as a tiny little old woman ducked and bobbed between the tables carrying piled-high plates as if she was dancing—that actually, if I was being completely honest with myself, I had perhaps seen us as something more than friends. That if I was being completely honest with myself, I did actually fancy him a bit. I suppose it was the high emotional pitch with which we’d been thrown together, I suppose because I’d been alone for so long—I started to feel very foolish—that I’d just fixated on the first available male. Maybe I was ovulating?
But also something about Paris had reawoken me. After the accident, after my illness, everything in Kidinsborough had seemed so very cold and gray and lifeless. I’d seen Claire and myself as the same, even though she was twice my age. She had noticed it and realized it, and sent me here to bring me back to life. The problem with life was that it had sent a bit of human blood shooting around my veins for once. But I’d forgotten how to do it. I’d forgotten how people fancy each other and how people get together. It’s very rarely because one person thinks the other person sent his father to hospital and is a really terrible cook. I bit my lip thinking of how earlier tonight, I’d even thought about going over to him…oh god. I was such an idiot. I felt so stupid.
“Anna?”
He was asking, not what I wanted to drink, but whether I wanted the red wine Salvatore had already brought over. I shrugged and let him pour me a tiny glass.
“We shall have the risotto of course,” he said. “Marina, has it changed at all?”
The tiny old woman had much the same reaction as Salvatore, except her kisses were even more effusive. She spoke in a rat-tat-tat Italian-influenced French accent that I could barely follow, but I did catch her saying,
“No, of course it is exactly the same. We wouldn’t change a single tiny thing. If you change a single tiny thing when you have something perfect, it is all wrong! Wrong, wrong and terrible and a disaster.”
Laurent cocked an eyebrow at me, but I was too unhappy to flirt back with him. I just nodded, suddenly feeling so terribly, terribly weary. He attempted to make conversation, but I felt so unsure of myself that I could barely mutter responses. Eventually he too lapsed into silence until the food arrived. Then he closed his eyes and inhaled the steam. It smelled almost impossibly rich and flavorsome, full of onions and cream and stock and good things.