"Are you the cook?"
"Chef," Julian said. "Executive "Executive chef." chef."
"Yes," Elena said, directly.
She only nodded. "I can babysit him sometimes if you want."
"I"m going to be here next week to cook. Do you want to start then? He obviously loves you."
"Okay! He can watch movies with me!"
Looking at Portia, Elena realized she was painfully, deeply starved for the company of females. Over the years, she"d grown used to working in such a male-dominated environment, but she had grown up with sisters. She needed other women in her world.
Mia, she thought, she thought, where are you? where are you?
APPETIZERS AND S SMALL P PLATES CARNE EN SU JUGOsteak and bacon swimming in savory citrus and chile broth CHILE TASTING PLATEan a.s.sortment of roasted chiles, served with fresh flour tortillas and sliced avocados ROASTED PORK TAQUITOSon blue corn with tomatillos and onions AUTHENTIC POSOLEstew with pork, chiles, and hominy MANGO AND AVOCADO SALADlight, zesty, and beautiful STUFFED ZUCCHINI BLOSSOMSdelicately fried blossoms stuffed with blue corn bread and pinon nut stuffing ROASTED ONION TARTmildly spicy dish, thinly layered with mild chiles and manchego cheese CHILE VERDEvery spicy stew with chiles and pork and cheese, served with white tortillas
FOURTEEN
When she worked at her first San Francisco restaurant, Elena had lived above a shop owned by an eccentric black woman, who had traveled to America with a lover from one of the islands when she was a young girl. The lover was long gone, the islands only a memory in her faint accent, but her shop was an explosion of jars and pots and potions, a narcotic blend of scents that went straight to Elena"s head when she walked in. The woman, perhaps sixty, was called Marie, and she had a statue of the Black Madonna surrounded by red flickering candles on an altar at the back of the store. She put fresh flowers and offerings of food out and lit tall candles with the seven saints on the wrapper to the dark carved beauty. The altar comforted Elena, a symbol she could understand in a city that was very unlike any place she had ever been.
Marie shouted out when Elena first arrived in the store, "Get, get!" She waved her dark bony hands toward the door, and, startled, Elena had turned to go.
The woman caught her arm, gently. "Not you, child. The ones you brought with you. We don"t want them here. You can take a break, huh?"
The old woman made cups of strong, exotic teas, sometimes spiked with rum, and told Elena stories of men she had known and the dishes she had cooked for them. She was a sorceress, a snake charmer, a voodoo priestess, perhaps, and she knew the secrets of seasoning in a way Elena instinctively understood was her true magic. Starved for a daughter of her own, Marie adopted Elena for the two years she lived there, and taught her the secret language of spices, the way saffron sparked a dish to life, the cleverness of nutmeg, the sharpness of ginger. Marie taught her how to pinch and taste and measure spices, how to blend hot and sweet, bitter and bright, savory and salty.
Now, Marie was in her mind as Elena and Julian ate a spicy fusion of Indian and Caribbean at an Aspen cafe. The ReNew Cafe had been open for more than three years to great success. An organic vegetarian restaurant with an eclectic menu, green practices, and a hip, youthful setting, it had surprised everyone-especially the owners-by taking off. They"d had to move once to accommodate the in-flux of customers, but the owner insisted they wouldn"t move again. They couldn"t handle a hundred covers and still cook the way he wished, with authentic, organic, vegetarian food made to order.
"How you folks doing?" the server asked. He was lanky and dazzlingly young, his upper body twice as long as the lower.
"It"s fantastic," Elena said of her stew. "Excellent spices."
"Good," he said. "Let me know if you want more tea."
That was the other thing-no alcohol was served. The owner was Baha"i.
"The music is good, too," Julian said. "What"s playing?"
"Some kind of world-beat thing," the boy said. "I"ll check for you."
Elena smiled as the boy ambled away. Julian"s disguise had turned out to be remarkably simple-and effective. The curls were tucked beneath a Rastafarian-style knitted hat, and he wore black horn-rimmed gla.s.ses and a long-sleeved black T-shirt with wooden beads around his neck. He looked like a weird professor of some esoteric thing, like the history of the Congo or Sufi poetry. "You do nerd really well."
"Yes, ma"am-lots of practice."
"You mean, in disguises?"
His grin turned rueful. "Nyet. "Nyet. As a real nerdy guy. When I was seventeen, I played Dungeons and Dragons As a real nerdy guy. When I was seventeen, I played Dungeons and Dragons and and chess." chess."
"Horrors!"
He lifted a finger-wait. "I also had an entire collection of all of Stephen King"s novels, and could quote, word for word, Edgar Allan Poe"s "Raven.""
Elena"s nostrils quivered with laughter. "I"m getting this picture of a very skinny, intense boy. Virgin?"
"Oh, yeah." He waved a hand. "To have s.e.x, you"d have to actually talk to a woman. I couldn"t seem to connect."
"With that array of interests? Imagine!"
"I know. Go figure."
"So what changed it?"
"I made a movie," he said, lifting a shoulder. "Suddenly, there were a lot of beautiful girls who wanted to talk to me." me."
Something about that pierced Elena. "Was it hard, trying to figure out who wanted you for yourself?"
"At that point, I didn"t particularly care."
Elena laughed appreciatively.
"You, on the other hand," he said, "were probably the queen of your high school, weren"t you?"
"Hardly. I was odd woman out, too. Not a nerd, though-I was just different. If it hadn"t been for-" she paused, but only for a second, "my boyfriend and my sister, I would not have had any friends, I"m sure."
His dark eyes glittered. Focused. Interested. Interested. "Why?" "Why?"
"Well, for one thing, I stood out because I was so white looking, you know." Isobel suddenly appeared and settled into the chair to Elena"s left. She shot her a glance, but Isobel folded her hands, blinking in total innocence.
"Go on," Isobel said. "We"re both listening."
"Um." She rarely showed up when there were other people around, and telling the story felt suddenly self-conscious. "There were other white kids, but I wasn"t in their camp, since I was an Alvarez."
"Lucky for you," Isobel said.
"Lucky for me," Elena repeated. "So I was in between. And," she said, spearing a lovely cube of roasted sweet potato, "I was totally totally a bookworm and I got straight A"s." a bookworm and I got straight A"s."
"Boring," Isobel said. She reached for a crust of bread, but Elena shot her a look.
""Boring" is the word," Elena said.
"Oooh," he said, grinning. "Not quite chess, but n.o.body likes a smart girl, either. Were you valedictorian?"
A cold, salty wave of memory doused her pleasure. Isobel vanished. "No. Things...got in the way."
"Things?"
She shook her head.
He let it go, taking a sip of green tea. "I"ve been working on a soundtrack for the Orange Bear."
Grateful for the change of subject, she said, "Spoken like a director."
"And for the same reason-music creates a mood."
"I"ll buy that. Are there soundtracks for your other restaurants?"
"Every one."
"What"s the soundtrack for the Blue Turtle?"
"Let"s see-the CDs are about four hours long, and I usually end up mixing about five or six. For the Turtle, there is some French, some Canadian indigenous music, some East Indian influences. Other things, but those are the basics."
"I never noticed."
He shrugged. "You"re in the back. You"d never hear it."
"True." She stabbed a chunk of roasted red pepper from the stew and examined it. "This is really very good," she commented. "So what"s on the soundtrack for the Orange Bear?"
"It"s better to play it for you."
"You"re not doing a bunch of old ranchero favorites, are you?"
His smile was secretive and slow, his black eyes suddenly darker, more intriguing. "Not at all."
She inclined her head. "When can I hear it?"
"Whenever you like."
"Tomorrow?"
"In the evening. I"ve got a lot to do during the daylight hours." He met her eyes, lifted his gla.s.s of water, and paused. "Your place or mine?" Again that slow, playful smile, a glitter dancing on his fathomless irises. A jewel in a ring on his right hand caught the light, a contrast to the Rastafarian hat.
Not this one, she said to herself. Not this one. Not this one. "I have a lot to do, too. Let"s make it at the restaurant." "I have a lot to do, too. Let"s make it at the restaurant."
"No problem."
The server returned. "The music is Lhasa de Sela," he said, fingers resting lightly on the tabletop as he leaned in.
"Thank you," Julian said. As the boy departed, he said, "I think we should steal it, don"t you?"
"Absolutely."
"Is our pastry chef here yet?"
Elena sighed. "No. Next week. She said."
"That"s leaving us pretty short, isn"t it?"
"Not really. We"ve been working through email, so she"s in the loop. I have her absolute promise that she"ll be here on Thursday. We don"t need her for the first tastings."
"You sound pretty confident."
"There is no one like Mia, trust me. Her almond cornmeal cake is like something you remember from another life. Seriously."
He settled back in his chair. "And if she doesn"t arrive?"
"She will." Elena touched her lips with the napkin. "I"m going to find the ladies" room and see if I can get a peek at the kitchen."
While Elena was gone, Julian let himself drift into the music, letting it call up images and stories and colors. He saw green jungles and elephant feet on very black springy earth, and men with loose shoulders and women with hips swaying side to side. Mixed with the scents of nutmeg and cardamom in the air, it lent a powerful flavor to the mood. Very smart.
He caught sight of Elena weaving her way toward him through the candlelit room, her hair shining on her shoulders, that astonishing mouth moving slightly, as if she were talking on a BlackBerry. Her gait was more p.r.o.nouncedly uneven, and he wondered if she ever used a cane. Her hips swayed. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
As she sat down, he said, "You talk to yourself a lot."
A flicker of alarm and surprise crossed her face. "Do I?"
"It"s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of creative people talk to themselves."
She nodded, her eyelids dropping to hide her expression. Hide something, anyway. She speared a vegetable from her dish and held it out to him. "You should try this."
He had the strongest sense that she was distracting him, but he leaned in to take it from her fork. As their eyes met, something arced between them. He felt it in the middle of his chest, and in the base of his skull. The vegetable, a square of roasted orange squash, burst in his mouth, and still he let himself drift in Elena"s mysteriousness. A room of their own opened suddenly, empty and inviting, a place with white walls and dark, polished wooden floors and a view of some blue vista through the cas.e.m.e.nt windows.
He saw a thousand details of her face, all at once, her surprisingly robust eyebrows and thin, long lashes and a scar the size of a fingernail on her forehead.
She looked down first.
"How much do you hurt on a daily basis?" he asked quietly.
"What makes you think I hurt?"
He raised his eyebrows, waited.
She shrugged. "Some days a lot. Some days not very much." She carefully put her fork down on her plate. "You don"t have to worry that I"ll be unreliable. I"ve lived with it a long time."
"I know," he said. A p.r.i.c.k of howling sorrow touched him. "G.o.d, Elena, I wasn"t criticizing. I read about the accident when I called up your name on Google."
An icy mask stiffened her pale face. Violet shadows showed beneath her eyes. "I don"t want to talk about that."