Page 12 of Kept
An early meeting to welcome a new teacher and the new principal has been called, with a request for fresh coffee and croissants. Most mornings croissants are on the menu, but this morning they seem to want a mountain of them. I have been busy stuffing them full of ham and cheese, heating them up and delivering them, tray after tray, for close to an hour now.
Sighing I use the tongs to neatly arrange the next stack and pause to top up the milk as the meeting continues.
My mind is not really here. I am back in my own tiny cramped kitchen, running over in my head why my Velout? lacked flavour. I think I should have added shrimp in addition to the fish – the sauce just wasn’t ‘fishy’ enough, if that is a word.
I’ll try again this weekend and boil some shrimp shells as the basis for the stock.
“Excuse me.”
I ignore the voice at first. I’m just a canteen worker, mostly invisible to staff and students, and I’m happy with that right now.
“Excuse me.”
Turning, I realise I am being spoken to and meet the dark brown eyes of the new History teacher. He is tall, well built for a humanities teacher, and his eyes radiate interest.
“Oh, I’m sorry, yes?”
“I was wondering if you had any plain croissants, I prefer them plain, I like to dip them into my hot chocolate,” he adds the last almost as an apology.
I smile and nod, “I like them that way too, yes. I’ll bring you some.”
“Three?”
“Of course,” I laugh as I walk away. I like a man with a healthy appetite and wide shoulders, but he was staff, and I’d been burned by a relationship with a teacher before – I didn’t want to have to leave another school due to a broken heart.
Still, I watch him more than the others during the rest of the morning. He seems quietly spoken, but when he talks those around him listen.
“I wouldn’t go making calf eyes at that one,” Margarita says, snacking on one of the left-over croissants as we prepare the lunches.
“I wasn’t,” I snort.
“Yeah, sure. If you must know, his name is James Hunter. I heard he was a History professor who got kicked out of his last college for screwing a student.”
“Eww, how did you hear that?”
“I get around,” she shrugs.
“Oh, I know that.”
She punches me on the arm playfully as the teachers begin leaving the cafeteria, their meeting and welcome over, but the new teacher lingers.
I cringe as he approaches – I think of people who have affairs with students as child molesters, even if it was adult students; they were still technically in his care.
“Thanks for the croissants, they were perfect.”
“Just doing my job,” I shrug.
“I’m James,” by the way.
“Josephine.”
“A beautiful name, French ancestry?”
I don’t want to answer him, after all, he’s a child molester, but I don’t want to be rude to a staff member either. I cut the information down into bite-sized chunks, and clip my words, hoping he will see I am not interested in a conversation.
“My mother was a cordon bleu chef; she loved all things French.”
“Well, thanks again for the croissants, Josephine.”
