Page 67 of From Paris, with Butter
It was the owners. They were being impossible, he told me. They were grinding the staff to the bone, always wanting more with less. Laurent’s best sous chef quit abruptly one day from the stress. Laurent redoubled his efforts to make up for the loss.
Now, when I talked to him, Laurent sounded joyless and half dead. He had no time to think up innovative recipes, not to mention that every idea hesuggested was shot down. His hours were spent making the same fussy, uninspired dishes that had been on the restaurant’s menu for decades.
“They’re trying to get me to replicate the exact cooking style of chefs I’ve ever met,” Laurent said during one phone call. “Any change I make, down to the garnish, gets criticized. I think I’ve already made schnitzel a thousand times.”
“As long as you’re not mixing lavender with it. This might be divine schnitzel intervention,” I said. He didn’t even bother faking laughter at the joke.
All our conversations had become like this: me listening while Laurent miserably recounted his workplace slights, day, after day, after day.
“Can I tell you about the passion fruit tart I made for Luc’s birthday? The filling was tricky but—”
“Margot, can it wait until tomorrow?” Laurent sounded utterly spent.
“Oh. Of course.”
But the next day Laurent pleaded exhaustion and again cancelled our call.
Just as long as you aren’t sleeping in the restaurant,I texted back. I added a winking emoji, but really I was terrified.
Don’t forget about me,I wanted to text him.Don’t forget what you promised. You said you wouldn’t go back down that path. You chose me. You can’t leave me alone.
I felt Laurent slipping away from me, bit by bit. Our calls were reduced to every other day, and even then, Laurent missed plenty of them. When we did talk, it was always about the restaurant. How the restaurant was doing, Laurent’s plans for it, how Laurent’s plans were being thwarted, why he was certain a breakthrough was going to happen any day now.
“Just hang in there,” he told me. I did my best. But then he had to cancel his next visit back to Paris. I’d coordinated my schedule around his and ended up spending the three days he was supposed to visit alone and depressed. Sabine’s voice kept creeping into my thoughts:Get used to this feeling.
I hated her for the growing truth of those words. Even worse, I was afraid I was starting to hate Laurent, too.
Exactly one month before the gala, I visited Laurent in Berlin. It’d taken a fair amount of finagling and begging to again get several days off, but it was worth it. As soon as Laurent and I reunited, everything would be alright. We’dtalk through our problems, get back on the right track.
That morning, we spoke on the phone.
“I can’t pick you up at the station,” he told me, sounding exhausted. “I have to go into work now to confirm orders from our suppliers.”
“That’s OK,” I said, keeping my voice cheerful. “I’ll just meet you at your apartment.”
Laurent had pan bagnat sandwiches wrapped and waiting for me in the fridge when I arrived, but they did little to improve the several hours I spent alone in his apartment, contemplating the empty walls and shelves.
“At least you’re living your best life,” I told Minerva as I read through Laurent’s minute instructions for how to prepare her lunch of chicken livers and sweet potatoes. She stared fiercely at me until I set the completed meal in front of her, then set to work devouring it.
As soon as he got home, Laurent rushed to take me in his arms. “Mon amour, I’m so happy to see you,” he breathed into my hair. “Thank you for being patient with me.”
Seeing him again, touching him again, was enough to dispel most of my bad mood. We tumbled into bed, and I drank in the sight of Laurent’s taut, tanned body. He’d lost a bit of weight in the weeks since we’d last seen each other. He was still as attractive and eager as he’d always been, but there were differences in our lovemaking now: His hipbones were sharper when they pressed against mine as he moved in and out of me. His breath came in ragged gasps from the start, and I worried it was genuine tiredness that made him sound that way, and not just a building orgasm. When he ran a hand down the soft, sensitive skin of my inner thigh, I could feel new calluses on his fingertips. In the moment, they only increased the pleasurable sensation, but later I wondered how hard he’d been working to tear up his hands so much.
Afterward, we lay together in a tangle of sheets, cool spring air wafting over us through the open window.
“It’s still early,” I said, glancing at my phone. “Want to get an aperitif then walk around Viktoriapark? I read it has great views.”
Laurent tensed. “We can grab a drink,” he said slowly, “but then I have to head to the restaurant. They need me for the dinner shift tonight.”
“Laurent.” My voice broke over his name. “You were supposed to have today off. I made my schedule work with yours, I came here on the train, I sat alone in your apartment for hours, I fed your cat. Now you’re telling me you’re leaving to go to work?”
Laurent scrubbed a hand over his face. For the first time since I’d met him, he had several days of stubble growing across his cheeks. “I know. I’m sorry, but I only just found out this morning that one of Berlin’s biggest papers is sending a journalist over tonight to review the restaurant. I have to be there.”
He reached for my hand beneath the sheets. “You know I wouldn’t do this if I could possibly avoid it.”
I teetered on the brink of saying it: assuring Laurent that everything was fine, that of course this was beyond his control, and I’d find some way to occupy myself until he had time for me. But my anger was growing stronger than my patience.
“What about the rest of the time I’m here?” I asked. “Will you have to be at work then, too?” He looked away, and something hardened inside me.
