Page 30 of From Paris, with Butter
Tired and demoralized, I gave up even trying to force conversation. Instead, I went back into the kitchen to wait for the tarte tatin to finish baking.
Just this final course and this meal would be over. Then I could go back to giving Laurent polite, formal greetings when we occasionally passed each other in the hallway.
Dinner had been a full-blown disaster and the conversation even worse, but, for some reason, the thought of this being the only time I ever really spoke to Laurent depressed me.
The timer buzzed, jolting me from my reverie. I pulled the tarte out and set it on the counter. While I waited a few minutes for it to cool, Laurent came over and tried to get a conversation going about our hobbies, but it fizzled out. I wanted to ask him about cooking and running a restaurant, but I was too embarrassed to even mention food after this subpar meal I’d served him.
As soon as I judged enough time had passed, I inverted the tarte from the skillet onto a serving platter, so that the apples were now on top. I leaned in closer to appraise my work.
It looked good. It looked beautiful, actually. I’d taken my time to carefully arrange the apples, and now they spread across the pastry like a glossy golden flower. It smelled good, too, the caramel mixing with the scent of crisp apples and buttery pastry.
“That looks wonderful,” Laurent said, peering over my shoulder.
I cut us each a slice and topped them with a dollop of freshly-whipped sweet cream. Without waiting for Laurent, I grabbed a forkful. Pausing with the bite of tarte right before my lips, I wished with everything I had in me that it would taste alright.
I took a bite, trying to discern any flaws. Too much sugar? Too much salt? Underbaked crust?
But…no.
I glanced at Laurent. His eyes were closed, and his fork dangled limply from his hand as he chewed slowly.
I stared at him as the seconds ticked by, awaiting his verdict. He was wearing a new button-down shirt, and this one also stretched tightly over the thick muscles in his arms. He had the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and I saw a shiny pink scar on his forearm, probably from some long-ago cooking mishap. I took in his dark blonde eyelashes and his carved cheekbones, which moved slightly as he chewed. His hair was beginning to dry in the heat of the kitchen, returning to its usual tousled state.
Finally, Laurent opened his eyes. He smiled at the tarte, then at me. His mouth quirked, and I thought I’d get another half smile, but he kept going, his grin stretching wider and wider until he was laughing in delight.
“It’s perfection on a plate.”
With that, the floodgates opened.
With me so relieved at one of my recipes finally working out and Laurent no longer pressured to drown me in compliments to make me feel better, we suddenly had a thousand things to talk about.
He wanted to know exactly how I’d made the tarte, what other things I’d learned to cook from my mother, how I’d liked living in Martinique, what my favorite dish from Le Jules Verne was, how I’d gotten my puff pastry to come out so light and airy, and on and on and on.
I poured us each a new glass of wine, then pulled him back into the kitchen where I made a new puff pastry right then and there.
“The trick is to use light, even strokes to roll it out. Then you want to do book folds, turning it ninety degrees after each fold,” I told him.
“Hold on; I need to write that down.”
Laurent pulled out his wallet and opened it to reveal a small leather notebook.
Seeing it made me smile. “I keep a notebook on me, too. For recipe ideas and such.” I laid mine next to Laurent’s. Mine was quite a bit more battered than his (which was, of course, in pristine condition), but seeing the two little notebooks together filled me with an inexplicable happiness.
“I can’t go anywhere without mine,” Laurent admitted.
“People always tell me to just use the notes app on my phone, but it’s not the same.”
“Absolutely not,” Laurent agreed. “Plus, what if there’s an extended power outage? The phones will lose power, and we’ll be the only ones with scrawled ideas for (Laurent flipped through his notebook) Japanese duck à l’orange and some concoction of celery and scallops that I had a dream about but now sounds horrifying.”
He turned his notebook to a blank page and, in perfect, tiny handwriting, copied out what I’d told him about making puff pastry. As he wrote, I looked at what else was visible from his open wallet. There was his ID, a punch card for a gelato store and, in the clear photo window, a picture of Minerva glaring down the camera, a catnip mouse between her paws.
“May I see what else you’ve written?” I asked Laurent. He passed his notebook to me. I flipped through the pages, smiling at what I saw. There was a page labelled “Dinner Menu for Mom’s Birthday” with the note “nothing too spicy!” and another page labelled “Healthy, light breakfast menu for Noelle.” I flipped the notebook shut and grinned at him.
“Laurent Roche, I’ve discovered your true self. If I’m a secret grump, then you, Monsieur, are a secret happy person.”
Laurent’s eyes widened. “I’ve never heard anything so offensive in my life. My entire personality is built on being a grump. I’ll have you know that today alone I’ve complained to two shops about the quality of the fish they’re selling.”
“That’s just, like, a normal Thursday for a French person,” I said with a shrug. “No true grump makes thoughtful menus for birthdays, or visits a gelato shop enough to have (I paused to pull out the card) one purchase left before hegets a free scoop, or keeps a photo of his cat in his wallet. I didn’t even know people still printed out photos.”
