Sweet Love (6 page)

She stops buttoning the blouse halfway. “Background check?”

Clipping off the tag, I say, even though I shouldn’t, “I’m up for the national election team. The
network
, Liza.”

Squealing, she nearly impales herself on my nail scissors in the course of giving me a huge hug. “Congratulations! That’s so exciting.”

“Thanks.” I steal a glimpse of my watch and realize if I don’t get moving I’m going to be really late for class.

“You know what’s so great about this?” she says, back to buttoning. “Is that it happened to you in your forties, right when you’re beginning to wonder if life is over.”

“It hasn’t happened
yet
, Liza.”

She ignores this as she rustles through her jewelry collection. “The beautiful thing about being our age is that you start to focus on what’s really important instead of getting distracted by men and kids.”

This is kind of funny coming from Liza‚ considering she has neither men nor kids.

There’s a knock at the door and without waiting for an answer, Marisol pops in. “It’s six-thirty. You said I was supposed to get you.”

Liza checks her own watch. “Already? Okay, I’m almost ready. Just tell the car to wait.”

Marisol goes blank. “Car?”

“The car.” Liza plugs in one more earring. “Remember? It’s supposed to pick us up at six-thirty.”

The poor girl throws her arms over her head like she’s ducking a hail-storm. “Oh, geesh. I forgot to call for one. Please don’t kill me.”

Liza slowly turns, her purple eyes shooting darts. “Marisol. You had one task this afternoon, to make sure we had a car to the airport. It’s an international flight with tons of security. We can’t be late.”

“I know. I know.” She’s hopping up and down. “Just that I got so caught up in the Skopje reservations, I forgot.”

Liza says to me, “
Now
can I murder her?”

“No.” Getting up, I pat Marisol reassuringly and tell Liza I will take the two of them to the airport on my way to dessert class. Never mind that Logan Airport is across town and on the waterfront while the Boston Cooking School is two blocks away, this is what friends do.

“Thank you,” Marisol blurts. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll never make a mistake like this again. I promise.”

As we exit her apartment, Liza says to me. “If she’s this bad in Boston‚ what’s she going to be like in the outskirts of Bucharest?”

“It depends,” I say. “How well does she network with goats?”

Chapter Four

—OTHELLO, ACT III, SCENE 3

On the way to the airport, Liza and I hashed out a strategy for dealing with Michael and now I’m much more relaxed. This is going to be a piece of cake. Not to pun.

All I have to do is go to this one dessert class, pretend to be fascinated by the nuances of flaky pie crust, and somehow get Michael alone so I can convince him to play dumb should he receive a call from Kirk Bledsoe concerning our relationship during the FitzWilliams debacle.

Simple, no?

Of course, there is always the possibility he might refuse since I ruined his career so why shouldn’t he ruin mine. To which I’ll have to choose Plan B: my mother.

Michael adores Mom, the woman who fed him and clothed him and comforted him while his own mother lay in bed entertaining “fantasies.” There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

But lie? Hmm. That’s a toughie. Michael has an annoying loyalty to the truth. How he managed to survive all those years in Washington is a mystery.

After dropping off Liza and Marisol at Logan, I find a parking spot a mile from the cooking school and dash down Newbury Street, red faced and hair flying in my mandated closed-toe shoes (pink ballet flats) and flowered cotton dress with sleeves. The flowered cotton dress is a definite mistake, I decide as I catch my reflection in Bergdorf’s window. This is not the effect I was looking for, preteen bride of Utah polygamist Warren Jeffs.

Too late now, I think, snaking among the cluster of culinary students enjoying cigarette breaks in the warm summer evening. Quickly, I climb a flight of stairs to Kitchen 2B. The hallway outside smells of warm yeast and melting chocolate and my adrenaline spikes as I catch the vague drone of a lecture followed by the sound of clanking pans and laughter within the classroom. So what if Michael’s here? We’re adults.
Breathe, Julie.

Quietly, I turn the handle and open the door. It’s a much smaller kitchen than I would have expected. A wall of stainless-steel stoves and sinks, one refrigerator, and lots of hanging pots and evil utensils dangling over a raised counter around which my classmates sit on stools. All laughter and conversation stops as they turn to look at me.

Not
too
awkward.

There’s a Japanese couple, two nuns in full habits (do they still wear those?), a fat, balding man and a violently orange-haired woman, a suburban mother in a riotous Lilly Pulitzer skirt (here to get away from the kids, no doubt), and a deformed creature of blond perfection rising to a swan neck with tanned, toned arms and Valentino jewel thongs. Blatant violations of the cooking school guidelines, I might add.

Naturally, Michael’s smack next to her. He is so predictable.

Our gazes click and he gives me a wry smile, as if he had money on me being the last one to class. He’s still gorgeous by conventional, middle-aged women’s standards. Tall, dark. There’s a little more gray at the temples and he’s sporting wire-rims, but he’s got his hair and—damn him—he’s able to pull off a gray T-shirt and faded jeans like he’s in college. Grow up, I think. Get a gut.

That my heart does a double beat is inconsequential, nothing more than a muscle twitch. Adoration in its death throes.

Smiling back defiantly, I let him know I have as much a right to be in this class as he, though inwardly I curse my mother. This is all her fault. If she hadn’t guilted me into going, I could be somewhere else, at a movie with Em or out to drinks with Arnie and the guys from work. But as I have no other choice than to be in the same room with
him
, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him act superior.

All I have to keep in mind is that I have done nothing wrong. It was Michael who was wrong, asking me to hold off on the story, berating me for doing my job. I was right.
Remember that, Julie
.

“You must be the one remaining student?” Chef D’Ours says. “Julie Mueller.”

As he steps down from around the raised cooking area, he diminishes to about my height, with high cheekbones and sandy blond hair pulled into a ponytail. What’s Liza talking about? He’s a shrimp.

“So sorry I’m late,” I say. “I had to drive a friend to the airport and Friday night traffic and there’s absolutely no parking anywhere.” I’m only making things worse. “I mean . . . sorry.”

He lets out a pained sigh and drags another stool to the far end of the counter, away from You Know Who. “You can wash your hands and grab an apron while I continue my demonstration. Next time, please try to be punctual.”

Is it just me, or is it frosty in here? Waving my hand under the water, I tie on a green BOSTON COOKING SCHOOL apron, maintaining my happy face as I go to my stool. Everyone has a glass of champagne except me.

I try catching the eye of a woman with a nose ring and purple bangs cut straight across who seems to be D’Ours’s assistant, but it’s no use. She’s too busy slicing fresh strawberries to be bothered filling my glass.

Willing myself not to sneak a peek at Michael, I concentrate on what D’Ours is saying about strawberry crème brûlée being a dish that sounds elegant but is actually so simple we can make it for guests between dinner and dessert. Easy for him to say. It’d take me an hour just to slice the strawberries, not like Purple Bangs, who works rapid fast, dealing the strawberry slices into cobalt-blue ramekins like she’s working the blackjack table in Vegas.

The strawberry, he informs us, is a member of the rose family and its botanical name,
Fragaria
, means “fragrance.” And while most people know it is the only fruit with seeds on the outside, it is actually not fruit at all but swollen stems. It is one of the few fruits to contain
ellagic acid,
a compound believed to prevent healthy cells from turning into carcinogenic ones.

My classmates cluck their tongues at this.

“And the best way to cook the
fraises,
” he says in his distinct fresh accent‚ “is to barely cook them at all. Which is why my strawberry crème brûlée is so fantastic. Quick to make, delicious, and the texture of the berry remains firm.”

Combining strawberries in rum, sour cream, and cream plus a dash of fresh lemon juice in a bowl, he tosses the mixture and spoons it into ramekins. Ideally, he says, the strawberry mixture should be refrigerated for several hours to meld the flavors. However, since we’re on a time crunch, he sprinkles each with brown sugar before sliding them under the broiler so the tops turn a crusty caramel in seconds.

Everyone goes, “Ooh,” the kind of “ooh” I might utter if George Clooney had appeared to me naked in a hot bubble bath, raring to go.

The orange-haired woman asks if she can substitute no-fat sour cream and skim milk, seeing as she’s on a diet. D’Ours does everything except roll his eyes. “Dessert is to be eaten in small amounts, as they do in my native France,” he says petulantly. “If Americans didn’t chow down on huge slices of Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie at T.G.I. Friday’s you wouldn’t have the need for artificial entities such as no-fat sour cream.”

He’s right, but that doesn’t make him
right.
Chastised, she bites her lip and slinks back. Her husband the bald man pats her hand and says, “Chris has lost sixty-two pounds.”

I applaud, to give her a boost. “Sixty-two pounds. That’s fabulous.” Everyone else claps, too.

D’Ours says dryly, “Bravo.”

Good choice, Liza. Super-fun guy. Love the ones without senses of humor.

We each get a ramekin to taste. Tapping my spoon against the brittle caramel shell, I am rewarded with the satisfying crunch that distinguishes the great brûlée. Underneath, the slightly tart strawberries remain red, fresh, and firm, bursting with flavor enhanced by the sweet rum and cream. So simple and light and, yet, so rich.

I could linger forever, but already we are on to the next lesson: almond-infused hot white chocolate over iced berries. How bizarre.

“Very popular in England,” D’Ours observes, a tad derisively.

I find myself strangely mesmerized by the melting of white chocolate chunks into heavy cream, a slight almond fragrance emanating as the mixture swirls and warms in the double boiler. I’ve never been a fan of white chocolate. I’ve never seen the point of chocolate without, well,
chocolate
. But I have a feeling I’m about to be converted.

The frowning Angela distributes bowls with red and blue frozen berries slightly thawed. From a little pot, she pours the hot white chocolate sauce over them and it thickens immediately on contact. To top it off, she sprinkles on a few chopped almonds.

“Bon appétit,” she snaps, filling my glass of champagne.

Okay, I may have just passed dying and stepped directly into heaven. This is, hands down, the most fabulous thing I’ve ever eaten. It should be illegal, it’s so good. And the weird thing is, it doesn’t even taste like white chocolate over frozen berries. It’s sweet and perfumed and something else entirely. It’s gooey.

Michael is staring at me with the oddest expression.

He is about to mouth something when the anorexic blonde next to him leans over and whispers in his ear.

They came together.
Naturellement!
Probably he was too afraid of me to come to class alone. Hah.

We are barely done with the berries when Angela whisks away our dishes and we go for a break. I studiously avoid Michael by washing the sugar off my hands with as much thoroughness as Lady Macbeth used to clean off blood. He’s not paying attention to me, anyway. He’s too enraptured by his ex-wife’s stand-in.

When we return to our stools, D’Ours is thickly slicing a huge brioche while Angela is laboring over a pot from which rises the heady aroma of cooking berries and some liquor.

We are making cold summer pudding, another English classic, D’Ours says, punctuating his disapproval with another snort. The beauty of cold summer pudding is that the thick slices of brioche are soaked in a soup of berries and Chambord and compressed so the result is an intense berry dessert that’s both comforting and cool since, unlike most bread puddings, it does not involve baking.

Chris’s husband, apparently not quite over the Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie crack, says, “Another English dish? I thought their food was crap.”

“Did I imply that?” D’Ours asks as he layers the brioche in a purple sauce of simmered raspberries and blueberries. “Well, it would be relative, no? If, for example, meat pasties and bubble and squeak are your idea of delicate cuisine, if sheep bladders seduce your palate, then by all means, dig in!”

I’ve drunk a glass of champagne, so my mind is a bit fuzzy. Sheep bladders? I look to Michael for a clue, but he’s snuggling up to the blonde, her practically sitting on his lap.

Which raises this question: If he’s not here to learn about desserts, then why did he bother coming to class in the first place? He was under no obligation to show. He could have blown it off and avoided me altogether.

The blonde erupts in a peal of laughter and Michael throws his head back, joining her silently.

“Get a room already,” D’Ours mutters. “Why do I even bother?”

I want to reach out and say,
You and me both. You and me both.

Done layering the slices of soaked bread with spoonfuls of sauces, D’Ours explains the next step is to compress the pudding by weighing it down with a pan and two heavy cans. Then it is refrigerated overnight.