Vanilla Salt (25 page)

“I’ve never been to Burma. But I’ve been to Thailand. The women there are real beauties. A lot of fun too!” He winks. “I got the collection of Buddhas from my decorator, because I wanted a nice office and he says ethnic’s in fashion. I don’t know about these things, but I listened to that pansy and, as you see, it turned out well, didn’t it?” Mister Self-Made Man in person!”

“Lovely, yes, very lovely,” Annette mocks, and then, not wanting to beat about the bush any longer, continues. “Thank you for the appointment. I come for to find way of pay debt and no have freezing order.”

“You’ve had this debt for months now and I’ve been very patient. I called Àlex on many occasions and he never picked up the phone or answered my messages. The freezing injunction is already underway and can only be revoked if you pay before the end of this month.”

“I no have money for to pay you all now, but can to pay instalment every month. I spoke with bank and I get promissory note so we finish debt in eight months,” Annette offers, ignoring his account of the situation.

“Well, that’s difficult, because the freezing order can only be revoked if you pay back the whole sum.”

The fish boss is finding it difficult to have a serious conversation with Annette. He’s not used to negotiating with women, and still less with
such a strong-willed female. The ones he employs to clean fish are uneducated, loud and always joking. He treats them with a mixture of paternalism and despotism, constantly checking on them and considering them inferior beings, like all women. This redhead, he thinks, is quite different. She’s cultured, expresses herself well and, most shocking of all, looks him in the eye. He can’t handle this direct gaze so, copying a scene he once saw in some American film, swings his chair round to face away from Annette, joins his hands to form a triangle and seems to be praying to Buddha.

Two long minutes of silence ensue as he wonders what to say and how to deal with this situation. He stares at a studio portrait of himself and his family of three children and a peroxide-blonde wife with prodigious breasts. Then the solution occurs to him.

“One of my sons is a layabout. He doesn’t want to study or work in the company and I don’t like him hanging around in the street all the time, because he’s going to fall in with bad company. He’s very young, just sixteen. He might like working in a restaurant kitchen, because being a chef is all the rage now. They say girls are dying to go out with a potential Ferran Adrià! I’d be much happier if he was working and learning a trade. If you take him on I’ll advance the money right now to settle the debt plus interest and you’ll pay me back in the form of my son’s wages each month as instalments. You understand? That way it won’t cost you anything to take on my boy. The main thing, and I stress this, is that he mustn’t know anything about our agreement. If he finds out that his dad’s behind this he’ll go berserk. It’s the only solution that occurs to me.”

Annette can hardly breathe. Does she have to take on this fat man’s son on top of everything else? It’s too much! When she tells Àlex he’ll throw a fit… no, a Greek tragedy at the very least!

“Yes, we do that.” She agrees without further ado. “But when we finish to pay debt we no have more obligation for your son.” She wants to
make it clear that she has no intention of keeping this millstone round her neck and that she’s agreeing to the deal out of pure necessity.

“Very well. But remember that there are two conditions. First, you can’t kick him out, which means you agree to have him for a whole year, which will cover all the instalments. Second, he must never, under any circumstances, get wind of this conversation, not as much as a whisper. Is that clear? And there’s one other last condition, which is that you have to keep me informed about his behaviour and his cooking skills. If he doesn’t turn up at work one day, for whatever reason, you have to tell me. Ah, and tell Àlex he has to be very strict.”

The meeting comes to an end and Annette isn’t sure whether she’s won or lost. Maybe asset-freezing would have been preferable. But, for the time being, the reality is they’re going to have to cope with a wayward kid.

She comes into Roda el Món calling, “Hi Àlex, where are you?”

“I’m cooking. This morning I thought, ‘Damn it, bloody hell, I actually like cooking,’ so here you have me. A change is as good as a holiday, eh? What about you?”

“You make many jokes lately, no? I come for to tell you that tomorrow a new boy he start work in kitchen,” she says quickly.

“So you asked me about this? Sorry, I don’t recall when.” He pretends to be angry.

“I have no time for to consult but there no choice. You no ask me why. We must give job to boy. That is that. No problem for money. He very cheap. It necessity. I no meet this boy, but think he good person. He come here for to work and we must to teach him and control him.”

“What a mystery! OK, you’re the boss, as I’ve said many times. I would have preferred to choose the kitchen hand myself, which is the least I can ask, but it doesn’t matter. The main thing is I’ll have an extra
pair of hands, and that will be a very good thing. I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

After turning down the offer of the Can Bret owner, they’re working like navvies in Roda el Món. Àlex is doing his very best now, and instead of disappearing to rest every afternoon he cooks as if his life depended on it. The tasting menu – “Food for peanuts,” he jokes – is excellent and the number of fans is growing fast. The ten-euro lunchtime menu is famous throughout the region. All the tables are taken every day and today they’ve done two sittings.

Annette’s been cooking this afternoon. She has to make some cakes and also wants to make
biber dolması
, the famous Turkish stuffed peppers.

She’ll use some beautiful, fresh medium-sized green peppers brought by Albert, the organic-vegetable supplier. She cuts off the stalks, cleans them inside to get rid of the seeds. She fries a couple of onions, adds some pine nuts and a good handful of rice, covers it with hot broth and lets the rice take it in as it cooks nice and slowly. She chops up some fresh herbs – dill, mint and parsley – which she sprinkles over the rice, after which she adds a pinch of cinnamon and a few drops of lemon juice. When the rice is cooked and has absorbed all the aromas of the herbs and spices she fills the peppers, which she then places neatly in a casserole dish and covers with water and white wine. She makes a paste out of crushed almonds and a couple of dry biscuits and adds that to the sauce. The whole thing is then simmered until the peppers are cooked and the sauce has thickened. They’ll be on tonight’s menu. Today, too, they have plenty of customers and the reservation book is practically jumping around on the desk.

The lone diner has come back again tonight, working slowly and thoughtfully through the menu. When Annette serves him, he asks her a few questions about the food or the cooking, and also about her
professional background: where she learnt to cook, if she’s cooked any of the dishes herself, how long she’s been living in Catalonia, and so on. Annette is flattered and answers trustingly. When she goes into the kitchen to get this customer’s order, she tells Àlex. “The peppers are for this man at the Table 2. He come many times and always put me questions. He seem very interested in restaurant and how we make the food. This man have a lot of curiosity. He look at everything in restaurant and watch me working. You think he a Michelin inspector?”

“I fear he’s more interested in your buttocks than in what comes out of this kitchen on a plate,” Àlex laughs.

“Now you be serious. You think Michelin guide check our work?”

“Hmm. It’s strange, because, as far as I know, you have to ask them to come. I don’t think they send their inspector unless you ask first. And you haven’t asked. Listen, my advice is that you ignore the whole thing, even if he does turn out to be a Michelin man, because being in the guide isn’t much use if you don’t have a star. If you do have one, then you become a slave to their rules and regulations and way of doing things. Of course a Michelin star attracts customers from everywhere and the town would be very proud of having a starred restaurant in the guide. All the same, it’s better to do things your own way and not have to end up following their instructions. It seems counterintuitive, eh?”

“Yes, totally. If customers come from far and people in town they are proud for have a restaurant with star, where is problem?”

“There are two problems. First, the people from a long way away come for a ‘taste’, but only once and you never see them again. Second, the locals will put you up on a pedestal, by which I mean when they’re talking to people from other places, they’ll boast about the importance of their town because it’s got a Visigoth or Romanesque church, or a square with a crumbling stone arcade, some caves from the year dot, plus a restaurant with whatever number of Michelin stars. But they never
set foot in the restaurant, just like they never gaze at the stained glass in the church windows or venture into the caves. They have to walk under the arcade when they go to buy bread, but if it weren’t for practical reasons they wouldn’t go there either. Michelin stars actually frighten people away. The sensation of elitism and starchiness puts them off… and they can’t afford it anyway. Bloody hell! The peppers. With all this talk, they’ve almost gone dry!”

After they’ve closed up for the night, there’s one serving of peppers left over. Annette invites Àlex to try them. Although he tries not to give away anything with his expression, as he still resists praising her cooking, he likes the peppers a lot and Annette can see it. This makes her so happy that she tells Àlex that this dish is reserved for special occasions in Turkey, weddings for example. Things seem to be going well at last. She pours two glasses of wine from a bottle that some customers haven’t finished and asks sweetly, “Can we go to your room and listen to music?”

“We have to get to sleep early today. Tomorrow’s very important for us.”

“Yes, the presentation to press and the new helper he start also, you remember? It is important day, so good for us we relax a little bit.”

“You make things happen to suit you… and you make me go head over heels.”

“Go your head to hills?”

“You still have a lot to learn, baby,” Àlex says, playing the role of a movie heart-throb.

They pick up the glasses of wine, plus another two half-finished bottles, and take the stairs two at a time in some kind of unspoken hurry to get to Àlex’s room.

Àlex gets flustered trying to choose the right kind of music. Annette helps, more interested in putting on any old CD to hurry things along than expressing any clear musical preference. As they’re standing side by side at the shelf of CDs, their bodies touch and Àlex feels as if he’s
on fire. He has already decided that tonight’s the night. He wants to see her moving, touch her skin, feel her red hair against his chest, tangle his fingers in its curls, make drawings out of her freckles and find a moistly welcoming heaven between her legs.

They settle for a CD of Mayte Martín. Annette’s never heard her before and is soon bewitched by the voice and the boleros that transport her to some indefinably safe place. She has already decided that tonight’s the night, after too many imaginative sessions of spiriting him into her room at midnight, just as she’s dropping off to sleep, conjuring up his rough hands, the castigated chef’s hands that neatly tie up a rolled roast, delicately break off rosemary leaves, deftly chop vegetables and confidently shake the frying pan in which mushrooms are cooking. She wants the heaven of feeling Àlex’s hand between her legs.

They drink their wine in silence, turn towards each other, still in silence, and kiss. It’s a furious, wet, shameless kiss. Àlex undresses her, impatiently unbuttoning her white shirt to touch her breasts at last. Annette throws herself into his arms. They’ve contained this desire for so long, working so hard to hide it that it can only explode. They would have liked to make love slowly, enjoying every moment, letting the heat rise until almost melting their flesh, but they fuck urgently, trying to absorb one another.

It’s taken no more than three minutes and they’re both panting, not satisfied but certainly burnt, like puff pastry cooked in a too hot oven: the high temperature won’t let the pastry rise so the layers can separate to acquire the crunchy texture that melts in your mouth. They sit on the bed, drenched in sweat. Annette covers herself with the crumpled sheet.

“You owe me one,” Àlex says all of a sudden.

“We make now more love?”

“No, I’m fine, though I wouldn’t say no to a second helping either,” he jokes, imitating a customer being offered another ration. “You owe
me an explanation. I want to know who I’m taking into my bed. I don’t know the first thing about you except that you’re from Quebec and your name. Ah yes, and you’ve got the most delicious vagina. But that’s not what I want to talk about now.”

Annette understands. She owes him an explanation, so she tells him her life story without sparing the details.

She’s the only child of well-off parents. Her father was the director of a very profitable company specializing in fattening farm animals, mainly cows. She was sent to the best schools for young ladies in Canada, and her childhood could come under the “Very Happy” heading.

The young Annette grew up and met a handsome, studious, well-mannered and very ambitious American boy from a good middle-class family. Her parents were enchanted with him, as he met every requirement they’d decided on when they were raising their daughter. They lost no time in marrying her off to the brilliant young man. They had a lavish wedding and her parents bought them a flat, with everything they could possibly want, in Chicago, where Annette’s new husband worked as an executive in a multinational.

Annette Chaubel, now Mrs Annette Wilson, acquired dual citizenship. They decided not to have children straight away, because she was interested in too many things and didn’t want to spend all day wiping snotty little noses. She enrolled for a degree in anthropology, which she loved and kept her busy. At night, she didn’t miss a single art show, or new play, or performance of experimental music. Her husband worked long hours, climbing up through the ranks in a career full of successes and recognition from his bosses. He got home late, very tired and tense after a whole day spent wheeling and dealing. At the weekend they had dinners with friends and occasionally escaped to New York, where she took lots of photos, another of her passions. They lived very comfortably and were much better off than most couples their age.