The Lost Recipe for Happiness (18 page)

Julian shrugged. “Not such a big deal. The menu is in great shape.”

She nodded, staring into the distance with one hand on her hip. “I’m in love with Ivan’s baklava,” she said. As if in memory, she licked her lower lip. “He’s amazingly talented.”

The unmistakable thrust of jealousy twisted through his gut, and Julian squashed it. “That’s why I wanted to keep him.”

Portia came back into the room. “What can I do to help?”

Julian was startled—Portia help with a household task?—but wisely retreated. “I have to make a couple of calls. Yell when it’s ready.”

“Will do, boss,” she said, putting him in his place.

Where he needed to stay.

Back at her apartment, Elena took some time to rest and read, only walking over to the restaurant in the very late afternoon. Alvin slumped on the porch, enjoying the sunlight. Roberto washed dishes, singing along to the radio, and Ivan scraped a bowl clean with a spatula. He looked fine, and she realized that she’d been worried that the drinking would make him binge. “You didn’t have to come in,” she said.

Ivan shrugged. “I know.”

“Is Hector here today?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” Roberto said. “He has Sundays off when he can. Likes to go to mass.”

“Does he have a sister?” Elena asked.

Roberto raised his head. After a moment, he nodded. He touched his temple.
“Ella es adivina.”

Fortune-teller. “Will you see Hector tonight? Will you tell him for me that I want to see her?”

Roberto nodded. He rinsed the bowl and put it away. From his pocket, he brought out a cell phone and punched in the numbers. Elena left him to it and went to the office. She had paperwork to do.

There was an email from Mia, of course. Ripe anger bloomed in her throat and she was tempted to delete the post unread. Instead, she stabbed the button to open it.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: (no subject)

My darling Elena, I know how angry you are this morning, but please call me. Please don’t see this as a betrayal, because you’ll never forgive betrayal, and it isn’t. I swear. I’ve been trying to tell you for two months that I wasn’t sure, that I might really need to stay with this man, that he’s right for me, and you haven’t been listening.

Babycakes, my dearest, dearest sister, please call me. I want to tell you the story. It was so romantic—Kevin came to the airport with flowers, begging me to stay. I am so in love! It happens to you all the time, but not to me.

Call me, call me, call me.

I love you.

Mia

Elena glared at the page. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she muttered at the email. “I don’t fall in love all the time!”

But with shame, she saw a sudden parade of men—serious love affairs. Christopher and Timothy and George and Andrew and Dmitri. Between them, minor connections—a blues singer in San Francisco, a sturdy businessman in New York, a soccer player in Vancouver.

And Edwin, of course, so long ago. The only lover who visited, over and over, the memory of him unsullied, always sweet. She thought of her dream, of his supple, unflawed eighteen-year-old flesh, his unmarked face and furious passion.

Perfect. And of course, no one could ever measure up to a memory.

But Mia, as her note plainly displayed, knew what the price of betrayal was. She had known Elena would not forgive this, and she had chosen a man over a friendship. “Sister!” she said aloud to the screen. “Some sister.”

Somewhere at the core of her, Elena wanted to put her head down on the desk and wail. She had so been looking forward to having Mia here, a woman, a friend, an ally.

But she didn’t put her head down—because she already knew this truth: people left you. It was the one true thing she knew. Everyone always left you. She could only count on herself.

And she could count on work. Focus on her job. That was where real reward lay. She deleted Mia’s email and pulled up the books and ordering forms. Almost time. She would make a checklist to make sure nothing was missed for this week.

Work.

The first tasting, for the staff on Monday night, went over with wild success, and despite her annoyance at Mia—who called every day to leave apologetic messages on her voice mail, and sent email after email, which Elena deleted unread—Elena felt the first real surge of confidence. Thanks to the long hours of training and establishing the spirit of the kitchen, the evening ran very smoothly.

Elena put Peter on figuring out desserts. He wasn’t happy, and it didn’t help that the other guys in the kitchen snickered over it—pastry chefs were an entirely different realm. Not really chefs at all, in the opinion of the male world. Peter protested, too, said he was a cook, not a chemist. But she’d seen something in his loving attention to detail that made her think he’d do a good job, that he might be more of a pastry man than he knew.

At any rate, it wouldn’t hurt him to do his time at that station. He had a lot of talent and drive and would one day have his own kitchen, she was sure. She told him as much, gave him a raise, and he was mollified.

For the time being.

It turned out, too, that one of the Mexican dishwashers was well versed in tamales. He suggested the upstairs could be a kitchen devoted not only to desserts and tamales, but all manner of prep work, leaving space free downstairs for the actual assembly and cooking.

On Thursday, they would present the tasting menu for the dinner party at Julian’s. It happened to be Halloween, which Elena thought hilarious for a horror director, and she developed a theme of El Día de los Muertos for it.

On Friday night, the restaurant would fling open the doors to members of the community invited in to eat for free. It would allow the staff to do a serious trial run of systems—front and back of the house—and uncover any flaws. On Saturday, they would have their “soft” opening, ready for business.

By day, Elena raced around checking details, testing and retesting menu items, refining the systems in the kitchen, rearranging schedules as personalities emerged. By night, she went over the numbers, the figures, the ordering, and woke up in the middle of the night to write notes to herself about things to check in the cooler.

Three days before the soft opening, the dessert menu still had not been refined. Elena wanted to kill Mia on a daily basis, since of course those who might be qualified had already been snapped up. Peter struggled to get something together, but he wasn’t there yet.

The printer was waiting for their refinements to the menu after the soft opening, but Elena was beginning to despair. She was taking inventory Wednesday afternoon when one of the Mexican youths came into the kitchen.
“Jefa,”
he said. “Can I speak with you?”

“Sure, Hector.” She answered in Spanish. “What’s up?”

“I brought my sister here to talk to you—they said you want to see her?”

A thin girl of about nineteen, wearing clunky shoes and a dress that was too big for her, hovered behind him. “Good, thank you.”

“Also,” Hector said, “there was a fire in Carbondale, at a bakery. The woman who made their pastries was a very fine cook, and she no longer has a job. I thought she might be good. For the desserts, you know?”

“Oh, you fabulous creature!” She squeezed his arm. “When can I talk to her?”

“I can call her. She’ll drive over whenever you want.”

“Today! The sooner the better. Seriously.”

He smiled and nodded. “I’ll call her.” He turned to his sister and gestured her into the office. “This is Alma.”

“Come in, Alma,” Elena said in Spanish. The girl slipped into a chair, hands in her lap. Her wrist bones were highly defined. “Don’t be afraid.”

In Spanish, she said, “I’m not afraid of you,
Jefa.”
There was the faintest emphasis on the “you.”

“What then?”

She looked over Elena’s shoulder. “There is a car accident. A boy—or man?—I cannot tell. Flying through the air. It will change things.”

“That’s from a long time ago.”

The girl shook her head. “Not a long time ago. Still coming.”

Elena scowled. “What good does that do me?”

“It will help you, if you let it.” She looked around the room, and Elena had to tamp down hard on her impatience. The girl was fey and odd, but wasn’t Elena sitting here with her because a ghost told her to?

Who was strange?

Elena sighed, feeling the ache in her leg, in the base of her neck. “Thank you,” she said, and gave the girl two twenties.

She tucked them into her bra. “I’ll come work for you, when you need me.”

Elena blinked. “Uh. Okay. Thanks.”

When the knock came at her door later that afternoon, Elena was peering with grainy eyes at the computer screen in her office, entering the inventory numbers she’d gathered. Not her favorite part of the job, the paperwork and details and numbers, but absolutely essential. More than one brilliant restaurant had failed by neglecting the numbers.

“Come in!” she called, wondering if she needed to get glasses or something. Her eyes were killing her. She raised her head, blinking the sandiness away.

The door opened and a small woman came in. Hard to tell her age—somewhere between fifty and seventy, with the sharp features and leathery skin of a native Westerner and the mouth wrinkles of a lifelong smoker. Her hair was cut short, curling around her head in a style popular in the seventies, and she wore a plain green sweatshirt with the name of a local high school sports team emblazoned over one breast. “I’m looking for Elena Alvarez,” she said.

“I’m Elena,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m Tansy? Hector said I should come apply for the baker position?”

“Oh!” Elena stood up, trying to cover her surprise. “Sure, come sit down.”

“Thanks.” She settled gnarled hands on small thighs encased in black polyester pants. On her feet were ordinary tennis shoes, the kind with a cloth upper and rubber lower and nothing fancy in between. Elena didn’t even know you could buy them like that anymore.

“Tell me about yourself, Tansy. Hector thinks a lot of you if he would recommend you for this position.”

“Well, I did a real good business with those boys.” She twirled her rings around her fingers. “They’re all so lonely, you know, away from home. It makes them feel loved to get something like they’d have at home—churros and the like, you know.”

“Really! Do you do
pan de muerto?”

“Oh, sure! My late husband—he died of a heart attack nineteen months ago, you know—was a Mexican. I learned to make all of his favorites, and now all the boys who come here to work like to eat my baked goods.”

Elena felt a load lightening the slightest bit. “What else do you do? Pies, cakes? What do you think would be a good dessert for a high-end Mexican meal?”

“I can do almost anything you want, Ms. Alvarez. I sold pies and cakes to restaurants for years out of my kitchen, before opening up the bakery. I still bake for the truck stop out on I-70. You know it?”

Elena nodded.

“I haven’t seen the menu here, a’course, but I guess I’d probably come up with something light, something with chocolate. Maybe something caramel.” She inclined her head. “Mexican hot chocolate with some fruit might be enough.”

“Ah!” Elena was unable to stop the smile on her mouth. “I have an excellent recipe for Mexican chocolate. Take a look at this—” She passed the menu over, with some of Mia’s recipes attached. “Can you work with any of this?”

Tansy bent over the page, plucking at her lip with a finger and thumb. “I think so. I can sure give it a shot.”

“Good. You’re hired. We’ll give it a two-week trial, and see how we all work together. What do you say?”

“Okay. Thanks for the chance, Chef.”

TWENTY-THREE

T
ASTING
M
ENU

October 31

Julian Liswood, host

Elena Alvarez, chef

The Orange Bear, Aspen, Colorado

SAVORY CHOICES

Zucchini blossoms stuffed with blue cornmeal dressing and piñon nuts

Assortment of small, savory tamales—elk, duck, traditional pork

Baby corn fritters with chile-spiced honey Bowls of buttered squashes

Samplings of small enchiladas on fresh corn tortillas—goat cheese with tomatillo, chicken, pork

Posole

Baskets of small, freshly cooked tortillas—red, blue, yellow, white

DESSERT CHOICES

Pomegranate baklava

Mexican hot chocolate

Sopapillas with buckwheat honey

BEVERAGE SELECTIONS

Wines

Tequilas

Beer

Mango spritzer

Iced tea