Page 1 of Prelude To You

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ISABEL

Tonight my life was going to change. And for that change to come about, a very specific series of events had to be perfectly aligned, each falling into its preordained time slot, within a fraction of a millisecond. If one small occurrence didn’t take place, like say I wasn’t fired from my job, or my Uber didn’t get a flat tire, or I didn’t decide on a whim to go to the bookshop to soothe my troubled mind, this story wouldn’t exist. At all.

But of course I didn’t know any of that when I found myself on a rainy night, at the age of twenty-five, in a dark alley behind Le Petit Chateau, one of the trendiest restaurants in Newport, Rhode Island, with a shattered dream pooling at my cold wet feet.

I clutched my big coat around me for a smidgen of comfort and warmth. Five minutes ago I was still the pastry chef at Le Petit Chateau, until one Buck Lawrence, Texas oilman, and his wife were invited by restaurant manager Jean-Rene to sit at the chef’s table in the kitchen for their five-course meal.

Only special guests had that honor, and you had to be a model, a celebrity, or very wealthy. Buck Lawrence was nocelebrity and certainly no model, but he was rich, very rich, and wore his crudeness and lack of class like a badge of honor.

To top it off, the man had the gastronomic credentials of a housefly. He complained about small portions, and attacked delicate dishes with all the finesse of a starving vulture on a rotting corpse. Sauce dripped from his chin, and wine bottles lasted all of twenty minutes each.

Every time I looked up he was leering at me where I worked at the pastry station, his bloated face gleaming with sweat and…what was that? Lust? Please, kill me now. A grim feeling invaded me, nausea mauling my insides. And as if it couldn’t get any worse, his wife seemed oblivious or immune to what was happening.

The second his wife left to powder her nose, Buck Lawrence bellowed across the kitchen. “Hey you, honeypie, Buck is ready for his dessert.”

When I served the chef’s table, Buck waved away his wife’s dessert. “She’s too fat, no cake for her,” he said with a slimy wink. By now the fool had wound me tighter than a snare drum, so I glared at him and put her dessert on the table anyway. “That’s for the lady to decide, isn’t it sir?”

His sweaty paw patted my back in an overly familiar gesture. Hardly gross misconduct, and I opted to suffer his touch for the five seconds it would take before I could return to the relative safety of my pastry station.

“Don’t call me sir, honeypie,” he grunted lasciviously. “To a pretty lady like you, I’m Buck, or Daddy Starbuck, whatever you prefer.”

Assholecame to mind.

He patted my back again. I gritted my teeth.

“Tell me more about this cake then,” he went on, his beady gaze boring into mine. “I watched you making it… I like towatch.” He let out a lecherous chuckle, and I almost threw up in his lap.

I summoned fake enthusiasm from somewhere deep inside. “This is a pastry calledParis-best,” I said. “Achouxpastry filled with hazelnutpraline mousselinecream.”

“Is this Paris, Texas, or Paris where they eat those damn frog legs?” he asked with an outrageous laugh.

“This would be Paris, France, sir.”

And then his hand snaked up my leggings and cupped my behind.

“Ooh, tight, sweet little ass you have there, honeypie,” he said, spit raining down on hisParis-best.

My tolerance for Buck’s bullshit ran out. I glared at him. “You need to take your hand off me,” I hissed with a stiff smile. “I’m counting to one.”

He took that as a challenge. “Pretty and tough, there is a God. How about you meet me in the restroom? Let me work out some of that bitchiness.”

And, yes, I lost it. And, no, it wasn’t my proudest moment. And sure I could have just walked away, but I didn’t. I grabbed the pastry and pushed it into his face and chucked the glass of ice water on his lap.

The blustering creep was outraged. The last thing I heard was, “You fucking bitch. Consider your ass done in this town!”

Imagine the spectacle that ensued with everyone staring at me, the guilty one, dead-center in the eye of the storm. Needless to say I was promptly fired by Jean-Rene, and told I’d be blacklisted. There was no hearing my side of the story, because that wasn’t how real life worked.

So there I was in the alley behind the restaurant, waiting for Uber to text me that they were out front. Patrick, the sommelier, rushed out the back door of the restaurant. “Oh Isabel, I heard what happened,” he whispered dramatically. “I can’t believeJean-Rene fired you! I swear he’s working my last gay nerve sucking up to these vulgar nouveau riche assholes.”

He handed me a bottle of champagne. “It’s Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle, your favorite. Don’t let anyone see. It’s better to drown in good champagne than tears is what I say.”

I nodded, refusing to let tears dethrone my dignity. “Thank you, Patrick.”

He planted a kiss on my cheek. “Listen, text me. We’ll go for brunch, okay. And please, get a new coat. You’re too pretty to wear that rag.”

As he slipped back through the door, sous-chef Marguerite brushed past him and traipsed out into the wet, chilly air. She had an animated air about her, with a bit of rashness mixed in. But she was dutifully morose as she handed me a small confectionary box.

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