Page 8 of From Paris, with Butter
I heard Yasmine’s tiny, sharp intake of breath. Mechanically, I smiled again.
“Have my colleagues been gossiping about me?” I asked, lightly, like we were all sharing a joke. “It’s true I was born in Austria, but no matter how many times I ask, the chef still won’t put schnitzel on the menu!” My laughter rang out across the silent restaurant.
“None of the rest of the staff hold it against me, though. Even though they were all born in France.” My smile danced the line between friendly and ferocious. “Every. Single. One.” I gave the Peacocks a final glance, then grabbed Yasmine by the shoulder and turned away.
In the privacy of the staff room, I seethed while Yasmine watched.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Yasmine said, following my progress as I paced back and forth. “Those comments stopped bothering me years ago.”
“It’s just that it’swrong,”I spat. “Youwereborn in France, you’re a native speaker, you’ve lived your whole life here. What more do they want?”
Yasmine smiled sardonically. “You know. They want their vision of aParisian waitress, not a Franco-Algerian.” Her face hardened. “This is why I can’t wait to get out of here.”
Ever since I’d known her, Yasmine’s dream had been to go into the hotel industry and eventually open her own inn. After talking about it for years, she’d finally saved enough money to enroll in a hospitality program and make her dream a reality. She was applying widely, and her top choice was the prestigious EHL Hospitality Business School in Switzerland.
“When I have my own hotel, I’ll just throw out anyone who speaks like that,” Yasmine said, her eyes blazing. “Right on the street, I don’t care if it’s midnight. No more being polite and crawling back to see if they’re enjoying the dessert course.”
“Colette will take care of their table; don’t worry about that,” I said, waving my hand as though brushing the problem away.
“I never understood why you love this job so much,” Yasmine said softly.
I smiled. “Because I’m a hopeless romantic who lives for making people’s wildest proposal dreams come true. It makes it easier to forget about the bad apples. Now, come on. I bet Paul will take pity on you and give you a glass of champagne before you head back out there.”
The Peacocks had refused their desserts and made a great show of announcing that they wouldn’t be leaving a tip—which may have hurt servers in some parts of the world, but not in France, and certainly not at Le Jules Verne, where staff was compensated quite decently.
The rest of the service had gone by smoothly enough, with all us servers making apologies for the distraction and offering extra meringues on the house.
After final diners had left (on their own time, of course. The staff at Le Jules Verne would rather impale themselves on the top of the Eiffel Tower itself than hurry a guest along), I was about to shrug on my coat when Le Jules Verne’s imposing head chef appeared in the dining room. Immediately everyone froze, except for Luc, who actually dove under a table.
I’d been standing in the middle of the dining room, so there was nowhere for me to hide. Taking long, heavy steps, Chef Jean-Baptist La Croix planted himself directly in front of me. I was centimeters from his clenched fists and bloodstained apron. He seemed to blot out the evening’s feeble light.
“I’ve created a new chestnut soup,” Chef La Croix declared, taking the same tone I expect a dictator would use to announce the construction of a new nuclear warhead. “I need taste testers. You will come,” he said, pointing right between my eyes, “And you,” he said to Yasmine.
“Hurry up,” he added, as Yasmine and I slunk together behind him. As I walked past, Colette reached out to clasp my hand, as though I was being shipped off to war.
Towering, with a baritone voice and a formidable gaze, Chef La Croix was the kind of personality stories always swirled around. I heard a new one nearly every week: that even as a student he’d been so intimidating that it’d beenhewho’d struck fear into the august teachers at Le Cordon Bleu rather than the other way around. That he’d turned down the chance to be the private chef to the Sultan of Brunei at a salary of five million euros a year because he would have had to bow to his new boss. That he’d served as a cook in the military before becoming a restaurant chef and, during one particularly intense firefight, had climbed out of the bunker and shouted at everyone to be quiet while he iced his cinnamon rolls (and quiet had duly ensued).
“Sit down,” Chef La Croix said once we were in the empty kitchen. It wasn’t immediately clear where he meant, so in my nervousness, I took a seat on the floor. Chef La Croix raised an eyebrow.
“The kind of people we hire these days,” he grumbled, but he didn’t suggest where I could sit instead. Nervously, Yasmine folded her legs and sat on the ground beside me.
“Take it,” Chef La Croix said, pushing bowls of soup into mine and Yasmine’s hands. “And have out with it. What’s wrong with it? There’s something flat in the flavor.”
Even in my terror at being so close to Chef La Croix (well, his feet) I was curious about this new dish. I took a spoonful of soup and let it rest on my tongue before swallowing. “It’s excellent,” I squeaked, admiring the velvety texture, the layers that built on each other.
“I agree,” Yasmine piped in.
“Yes, I know,” Chef La Croix growled impatiently. “But it’s short of perfect.It’s missing a layer.”
I took another taste and frowned, trying to frame my thoughts in the way that would cause the least amount of rage from Chef La Croix. I didn’t even consider trying to sugarcoat it. The only thing that elicited Chef La Croix’s wrath faster than unwarranted criticism was unwarranted praise.
He turned toward me, eyes boring into mine.
I quailed under that gaze. “Well, I, um…
“Spit it out,” he growled.
I quickly swallowed a mouthful of hot soup. Chef La Croix watched impassively as I choked for several moments, my tongue scalded.
