Page 23 of From Paris, with Butter
I flipped the quiche over. The crust was cooked nicely, not soggy or underbaked. I broke a piece off and tasted it.
Eh. Not much flavor, and the dough had been overworked. I went to pinch off another piece, then froze.
What was I doing? Eating food that had been abandoned on my doorstep by who knows who? What if it was trash that had fallen out of a garbage bag? No, it’d been too nicely wrapped for that.
What if it was poisoned? Frantically, I tried to make a list of potential enemies. The guy from the winter I’d declined a second date with because he’d been rude to the waiter? The diner from last week who’d been inordinately angry when I was unable to magically whip up a side of macaroni and cheese (which was not on Le Jules Verne’s menu and never would be)? My cousin Timothée for that time I’d trounced him at tennis in front of all our relatives when we wereteenagers? None of those warranted murder by quiche.
Right??
With rising panic, I pawed through the quiche’s wrappings. There, tucked into the paper, was a notecard, neatly folded in half. I opened it, hoping for a pleasant greeting (or at least an antidote recipe).
Instead, I blinked in surprise. The note was written in elegant cursive, although the effect was somewhat marred by a splattering of grease across the card.
Mlle Delcour, just wanted to get your opinion.-Laurent
Oh. Well, then.
I read the note several times despite understanding it perfectly. Unconsciously, I’d begun to eat the quiche again. It really was delicious, despite the crust.
Maybe Laurent Roche didn’t actually despise me? Maybe he was simply having a bad day every single day that I’d seen him? Maybe our run-in today had thawed some of his frostiness?
I read the note through again. He wanted my opinion on his food. This Michelin-starred chef wanted my opinion. I took another bite of quiche. Well, I’d give it to him. But I’d provide it along with a gift.
My mother had always impressed upon me the importance of having fresh bread available for whenever unexpected guests dropped by. I hadn’t baked anything today, but, fortunately, I had a round of pain de campagne sitting in my tiny freezer. It only needed to be thawed and warmed. I took it out.
It was such a small thing, a single scribbled sentence, but I was strangely excited. It was as though my entire perspective had been shifted back into alignment. Laurent Roche didn’t hate me after all.
I was hugely impatient for the bread to thaw, so I sliced the loaf to hurry things along. Once it was ready, I spritzed it with a bit of water, then put it in a hot oven for a few minutes so the crust was crisp and golden.
Now, what to write back? Something clever, but not too clever, lest he think I was trying hard. I pondered it while the bread cooled on the rack, then ripped a page from my notebook and dashed off my message.
Quiche: excellent. Crust: store-bought? -Margot
I tied twine around the sliced loaf and tucked the note in, then went and stood in front of Monsieur Roche’s door.
Here, I encountered another conundrum. It was late, nearly midnight. I would normally never consider bothering someone at this hour. But if I didn’t knock, Laurent probably wouldn’t notice the bread until morning, when it’d no longer be at its warm, fresh-from-the-oven peak of deliciousness.
I never liked giving people food that was less than its best, and the stakes felt unusually high here.
Obviously, the sane thing to do would have been to wait until morning to do the baking, when I could have left the bread at a normal hour. But no, in my eagerness to respond, I’d cooked through the night, like a flour-dusted Dracula.
I stood in the darkened hallway, shuffling from foot to foot as I tried to decide what would be the least-bizarre course of action. I had just decided to leave the bread in the doorway and was bending to lay it down when the door swung open.
I came face-to-face with a pair of shiny shoes. Very shiny shoes. They were so shiny I could see my reflection in them. I looked scared out of my wits.
Slowly, I lifted my head. Laurent stared down at me. He’d ditched the suit jacket I’d drenched with coffee and was now wearing a polo shirt with a perfectly-starched canary yellow apron over it. There was a smudge of flour on his cheek, which I swear only enhanced his cheekbones.
I can only imagine how I appeared, crouching in his doorway with my floury clothes and hurriedly pinned-up hair. Probably like a sewer troll who’d decided to take a stroll in the aboveground world and be really creepy about it.
I scrambled up quickly. “Hi! I mean, good evening? Why are you up so late?” I demanded, as though I wasn’t just as wide awake as he was at this hour.
Laurent had taken a half step back when he’d opened the door—probably because he hadn’t been expecting to find his neighbor skulking in front of it—but he recovered quickly.
“Good evening,” he said politely, as though this was a completely normal meeting we were having. “I was just about to take out the trash.”
“Oh. Well, I saw the quiche you left. I wanted to give you this.” I thrust the pain de campagne at him. “I made it.”
Laurent put the trash bag down so he could take the bread. “Thank you,” he murmured, turning the loaf in his hands. “And a note?”
