Marketplace (53 page)

* * * *

“Chris? Ali just called, she says
Horace will come with her after all, so please re-set his place?”
Chris smiled thinly as he nodded and then stopped himself before he
turned to grab Brian again. Alex’s brows were taut, her fair skin
almost ghostly. When she pressed her fingertips against her
temples, he knew.

“Migraine, Ma’am?” he prompted
gently.

She sighed, hating to reveal her
weakness. “Yes, I think it might be. You keep with what you’re
doing, I’ll take care of it.”

“I’ll send Enid with something to
drink,” he said.

* * * *

“Oh my God, oh my God.” Brian
stammered, staring at the rearranged table. “But... you said not to
use the extra arrangement, so I... I...”

“You threw it away?” Chris’s voice was
low and even. “Did I tell you to throw anything away? Brian,
tomorrow you are going to wish you’d been quartered and served for
dinner with a cherry port reduction. But for right now, call the
damn florist.”

After Brian took care of that, his
anxiety reached a new high and he yelled at Ramesh, making him drop
the mandoline he was washing in the kitchen. Naturally, it fell
apart, which make Cook hit the two of them with a look of such fury
they both fled. When Brian then discovered Enid had never reached
the second floor bathroom because she had been hijacked to deliver
drugs and drinks to Alex, he almost wanted to throttle her.
Instead, he yelled at her, too. Oddly, it didn’t make them any more
efficient or make him feel any better.

* * * *

Chris reassembled the insulted
mandoline after hand-cleaning the blade and then calmed Cook about
her Meyer lemons. She was showing him her diagram for plating the
salad when they both heard a man’s cry of alarm from the second
floor. Chris ran.

* * * *

“I don’t know what happened! I don’t
know!” Brian was insisting. Enid was coughing and gagging on her
hands and knees in the hallway outside the bathroom she’d been
ordered to clean; the air seemed sharp and foul. Chris pushed Brian
aside and slammed the door shut, grasped the retching Enid around
her body, and forcibly pulled her away from the closed
door.

“Call 911,” he snapped. “Now! Tell
them it’s sodium hypochlorite poisoning! And Ramesh, open the
hallway window, now!”

* * * *

“Well, hasn’t this been an exciting
day so far?” Grendel asked, as an EMT took the oxygen tank to pack
it away. “Broken car, changing guest list, and an accidental
poisoning. And a broken window.”

“As you say, Sir,” Chris murmured.
Ramesh had slammed the window so hard to get it open, the glass
cracked.

“I am not used to windows that slide
open so easily,” he said in his own defense. His mournful, dark
eyes were red with allergies, his shame at having overreacted so
clearly palpable. But he was now also on the list of trainees to
suffer the Wrath of Chris on the following day and he knew
it.

“You never mix bleach and
ammonia,” Grendel said to Enid, who insisted she was fine, and had
to be ordered to accept the medical attention from the emergency
crew. “Now you know why. I’m shocked—
shocked!
—to find Chris has not taught
you that.”

As Grendel walked away, Chris turned
his narrowed eyes to Enid for just a moment before he thanked the
EMTs and escorted them to the door. He was holding one of the
phones to his ear, waiting for confirmation on the rental car. The
glazier was arriving. The deluge started. The avalanche continued.
And Cook was packing to leave.

* * * *

“The sorbet for tonight is in the top
tray. You understand how to fan the apple slices under a wee scoop?
Don’t use the raspberry by mistake! And I trust you will not burn
the house down when you fire my crèmes brûlée?”

Normally Chris would enjoy the teasing
banter. He merely nodded politely and Cook took pity on him before
giving him the latest news. “There’s a bit of a leak under the
sink, I think. I’ve slipped a pan down there.”

* * * *

Alex came downstairs for more soda for
her aching head just as Julio arrived. Chris was about to tell the
Salvadoran masseur to find Rachel upstairs when Alex cried, “My
God, Chris, you are an absolute treasure. Julio, come on up! I need
quiet and darkness and a deep tissue massage today.”

Chris smiled and acknowledged her as
she swept away his only bribe to get Rachel’s help.

* * * *

Brian found Ramesh, his nose no longer
dripping, but his head nodding over the pot of simmering parsnips.
“What’s the matter with you now?”

“I am so sorry,” Ramesh said, covering
a yawn. “It is the drug. It makes me very sleepy. Normally, I would
have a few cups of tea, but we are forbidden the tea I drink, and
therefore, I am feeling fatigued.”

“You have to wake up! Fuck!” Brian
stormed off, wondering what he’d ever seen in that pathetic Indian
whiner. He turned into the dining room and found Enid staring at,
of all things, her own hand. “And what the fuck is wrong with you?”
he demanded.

“I broke a nail!” she wailed, showing
it to him.

Indeed, the nail on her index finger
was cracked and the tip broken off. For a former guy, Brian thought
savagely, you are the femmiest piece of shit I ever met. “Well, fix
it!” he shouted.

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she said,
scampering off. What did she expect me to say? Brian wondered. Of
course fix it. Five minutes, then come back down because we have to
help Chris set up the kitchen. How long could it take to fix a
nail? They just glue a new one on, right?

* * * *

Chris came to the kitchen with his
toolbox, got on his back under the sink and fixed the leak with no
trouble. Grendel stuck his head in while Chris was showing the
yawning Ramesh and fretting Brian how to handle the palate
cleanser.

“Horace is out again,” Grendel said,
and then went on his way.

Brian whimpered.

“Leave the table as it is,” Chris said
firmly. He turned to Brian and asked, “Why is this staff member of
yours so tired?” Brian explained, haltingly, about the allergy
medicine and the tea, until Chris held up a hand to stop
him.

Ramesh trembled as Chris turned to
him. “You need caffeine? I think we can manage that.” Chris grabbed
the carafe of cold coffee left over from his morning brew in one
hand and Ramesh’s training collar in the other. “I’ll return him
shortly,” he said, pulling the man upstairs. “Where the hell is
your other staff member?” he called over one shoulder.

* * * *

“Well, I had to file the rest of them
down to match, see?” Enid explained, showing off her hands. “And
then I had to get fresh nail polish, because I used the last of my
lucky bottle of Iridescent Desert Blush, but Rachel yelled at me
and wouldn’t let me use hers, and none of the ones I had really
went with the red shirts, so I had to ask Alex what she
had.”

“You bothered Alexandra for nail
polish?” Brian felt his cock shrivel and his balls compress with
the thought of how well that was going to go over. “Are you out of
your fucking mind?”

“I thought she’d want me to match?”
Enid offered with a very weak apologetic shrug.

“We are all dead, do you understand?”
Brian knew he was getting hysterical, tried to pull it back and
failed completely. “You didn’t kill us with poison gas, so you did
it with fucking nail polish!”

“I’m sorry!” Enid sniffed, her
grey-green eyes wide and filling with tears. “I didn’t mean to
ruin... everything!”

They panicked and gave into hysteria
together until Brian heard Chris approaching and fled.

* * * *

Jack cleaned up very well in his best
suit, his hair tied back at the nape of his neck. He still smelled
a bit of horse, but Chris reflected, Nancy and Lawrence would like
that. In fact, when Jack heard who he was picking up he laughed and
offered to bring them over to the stable. “You c’n send pretty
Brian over and we’ll have a party there, eh?”

“Not this time,” Chris said. “Just try
to get them here with no accidents?”

Jack snapped off a credible salute and
sauntered out into the storm. He liked this sort of weather. And
the rented Lincoln Towncar. He couldn’t wait to see how it handled
on the rain-slick roads.

* * * *

Ramesh returned to the kitchen more
alert. Whether it was from the caffeine now coursing through his
system or from the rude way in which it had been delivered was
debatable. But he and Enid and Brian were lined up with brutal
efficiency by Chris as he slipped into a chef’s coat. “You―slice
the beets paper thin on the mandoline. You―rinse and dry the mache.
No, that’s the mache, that’s the arugula. You―keep an eye on the
soup and start making the puree in batches over there.” Chris was
sorting the best of the basil for garnishing the soup when Ramesh
suddenly hissed and swore in Hindi. The red beet juice was being
augmented by his own blood.

* * * *

“I thought we’d decided against
gloves?” Alex asked, feeling refreshed from the lengthy massage and
the eventual success of her various remedies for the migraine.
“Didn’t you have some concerns they’d get stained with all the red
sauces we’re having?”

“It seems prudent to give them the
opportunity to show me they can succeed,” Chris answered. Without
showing the bandage on Ramesh’s finger, he neglected to
add.

“Excellent! I hope they live up to
your confidence. Oh, by the way?”

“Horace is coming,” Chris said, not
bothering to make a note.

Alex smiled. “I don’t know why we need
to tell you anything!”

Chris smiled and nodded politely and
waited for her to turn away before he dashed the pairs of serving
gloves over to the kitchen.

* * * *

The three trainees were spot checking
their livery: black trousers and jackets for the men, a severe
pencil skirt for Enid, with Venetian red shirts for them all,
buttoned to the top with their training collars dangling over the
front. Enid and Ramesh slipped into their shortwaisted jackets and
took the back stairs down to the kitchen, which was full of
wonderful smells and simmering pots. Brian put his more formal
jacket on and tried one of the many mantras he’d found in the
library. I will serve with dignity and grace; I will serve with all
my heart; I will serve for the benefit of others and bask in the
radiance of their pleasure.

I will fuck this up so badly I’ll be
sent walking home tonight, he concluded. In the rain.

* * * *

“Madeleine, Carl, how wonderful to see
you!” Alexandra Selador, resplendent in a shimmering satin jacquard
sheath dress, met her first guests as their chauffeur walked them
to the door under a golf-sized umbrella. Brian felt tight as a
virgin and about as confident as he stepped to one side to take
coats and hats. He remembered Claudia’s mistress, but had never met
her companion before, a tall, imposing, dark-skinned man with a
beautiful, bald scalp and the roving eyes of a connoisseur of
flesh. For a moment, he panicked about what to do concerning the
chauffeur, but the woman simply returned to the idling car, and he
busied himself putting the garments away.

* * * *

“Hey, Chris, whatcha doing back
here?”

“Cooking,” Chris was slightly terse,
not looking up from his work slicing figs. “You can camp out in the
servants’ dining area as usual. This is Ramesh and that one is Enid
and no, you can’t have either, they’re both working. Trainees, make
sure Mercedes is fed and has reasonable accommodations but under no
circumstances take your attention away from the master
table.”

Mercedes made a pouting face and shook
her cap to get the rain off, splattering the floor near the kitchen
door. With a crooked grin, she angled her way toward the servants’
hall, eying Enid with some speculation. Enid shook from the slight
draft of cold air in the wake of the departing chauffeur and looked
at Chris with question and panic in her eyes.

“Mercedes is notoriously promiscuous,
having her owner’s permission to be so,” Chris said, again without
looking up. “Don’t allow her to distract you. Am I perfectly
understood?”

Enid nodded and turned with her
cocktail tray, knocking perfectly into Ramesh. The tray hit the
floor.

* * * *

Alison Cruz arrived with her
on-again-off-again date, followed by one of Grendel’s favorite
spotters, Hal Lee, who had given a ride to another guest, who
brought something else for Brian to stare at helplessly.

“I’m so sorry, Alex,” the portly man
was saying, as he handed Brian a small suitcase and pet carrier.
“But Asta is really not feeling well and my regular girl is on loan
for the whole week. I just couldn’t bear to leave the poor thing.
But she’ll sleep most of the time! I brought her special food and
all her favorite toys, poor little thing.” He handed her over,
looking expectant.