Add Spice to Taste (3 page)

My feet throbbed from standing all day and I pushed my shoes off. I needed to get totally relaxed so I could wallow in my self-pity in comfort. I got up and made my way toward the bedroom
and tripped. I caught myself on the doorknob before I fell. On the floor, just outside the threshold of the room, was a shoebox. I had thought it was Brenda’s when I’d put it with the others, but looking at it now, I didn’t see her name in black marker that denoted all her other boxes. I didn’t recognize it, though, so I picked it up and removed the top. It held a bunch of photos of Brenda and me. She must have sorted through them, picked out the ones she wanted, and put the rest back.

Wow, that was harsh. She didn’t want any of these? It’s not like we hated each other or anything. I took the box back to the couch and flipped through them. Who knew
, when I was grinning for these photos, that I would one day be looking at them in a box as the discarded memories of a fractured relationship and broken heart?

Looking back, I couldn’t blame Brenda for cheating on me. I hadn’t been there for her and she had needed someone. She was the kind of person who didn’t do well on her own. The funny thing was, I had tried to make a success of the café for
both of us. I wanted her to be proud of me. I wanted her to be able to say that her partner had accomplished something.

But I guess I wasn’t a very good businessperson. I just couldn’t make the café work. The whole time I had it, I barely broke even, and after
three years, I still wasn’t making a profit. At least not enough to make the intense work and long hours worth it. In the end, I couldn’t even say that we were financially secure.

Brenda was
n’t a bad person—flaky, yes—and she deserved someone who could make things happen. I, evidently, wasn’t that someone. I put the shoebox on the upper shelf of the closet and grabbed some sweats. And she sure was taking her sweet time getting her shit out of here. A year and a half. Who leaves her stuff in someone’s apartment for almost two years? It wasn’t urgent stuff but it was still her stuff. And no matter how many times I’d asked her to come get it, she’d tell me she would, and then wouldn’t.

I should’ve burned the shit.

Back in the living room, I finished the wine and sat in silence for a few minutes. Then I got up and grabbed my jacket. I needed pizza. Right now. Brenda could let herself in—if she remembered the key—and, hopefully, she’d be gone by the time I got back.

When I returned
to my apartment, I heard noises through the door and my stomach lurched. Shit. She was still here, though I hadn’t seen her car on the street. The thought of losing that delicious pizza I’d just eaten so soon troubled me almost as much as having to face Brenda. But unless I wanted to spend the rest of the evening outside on the stoop, I had no choice. I steeled myself and went in, noticing right away that some of the boxes had been removed from the hallway. Very quickly, I realized why I hadn’t seen her car—she’d come in her girlfriend’s Beemer. Jocelyn the Adulterer came out of the bedroom. “Oh, hey,” she said, as if we were pals. “Sorry that we had to let ourselves in. You weren’t home.”

“Yeah, I know that.” Brilliant deduction, Golda Meir. I called her Golda Meier because she was older—older than I thought Brenda would want—and what they called women like her years ago: handsome. She also liked to take charge of things and rule her domain. Golda Meir.

My keys hit the kitchen table with a jingle just before I opened up the refrigerator. I didn’t know what for, since I’d just eaten. It was just something to do. There was a full bottle of iced tea and I decided I needed some. The pizza had been salty. Besides, the night had turned sticky and still and I felt that I could use something refreshing.

Brenda appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “I’m almost done. I’ll be out of your way soon.”

I shrugged. “Fine.” I’d learned to make my face impassive. She hated that.

“Is there something you want to say?” she asked defensively.

“No. What? I’m just standing here drinking iced tea. What do you want from me?”

“See, this is it.” She
gestured in my direction. “This is what I’m talking about. This is the problem.”

“What?”

“This shutting down and not talking to me.”

“Oh,
that’s
the problem? Not the fact that you cheated on me. The fact that I don’t spew my feelings all over the place.”

“Okay, I started seeing someone else—”

“Cheated.”

She paused, glaring at me, then sighed. “But you know that cheating is a symptom of other problems.”

“Oh, spare me your psychobabble. It doesn’t change the fact that you fucked around on me.” I was tired of this. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you. What’s done is done and it’s over. That’s it. So just finish what you were doing and drop it.”

Brenda walked away without another word. Within half an hour, they were both gone. And so was
any possibility of tranquility. I sat down with my recipes and lesson plan for the next day, but I couldn’t focus. Brenda always managed to rile me, but after six years together, it was hard to just let things go, even after all this time.

I put the glass in the sink, threw
some papers into my satchel, and went to bed. Not that I slept. Lying there, all I kept thinking about was my inability to make relationships work, no matter how much I wanted them to.

My mind reeled back to my girlfriends before Brenda
—Mindy, Trish before that, and Sylvia before that. None of them stuck around, and looking back, I knew that it had been because of me. Well, maybe not all me, but mostly me. The time I had to put in for my career and to make ends meet had just been too much for them. Although I didn’t think it was right for Brenda to cheat on me, I couldn’t help but feel that I had driven her to it.

Whatever.
Right now, I needed to get some sleep, so I closed my eyes. When I woke up a couple hours later, it was really hot, even though I had the A/C on. “Shit,” I muttered and threw the covers off me. Tossing and turning didn’t help, as it only made me hotter. My skin burned from my mounting frustration, except that I no longer knew who I was angry with, my exes or myself. All I’d done was work hard to achieve my goals—shouldn’t they have supported me? Shouldn’t they have been glad that I wasn’t some slacker, content to sit on the couch all the time and do nothing? I got up to adjust the air conditioner and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, that was really what they had wanted. Not completely perhaps, but to a certain degree. Somebody who didn’t work all hours of the day and night.

Well, I had worked hard
, and for that, I deserved better that being cheated on. Would there ever be any woman who would appreciate me for who I was?

Behind my closed eyes, Julianna’s face appeared and I wondered what she would think of it. Would she have stuck around
if I had been a relationship with her at the time?

The air conditioning finally
started cooling the room down. After a while, a chill crawled up my legs. I pulled the covers back over myself and curled up, thinking about Julianna’s shoulders and how nice they must feel under the sheets. Finally, something pleasant. Sweet sleep finally took me.

Day 2

I surveyed my
workstation to make sure everything was ready to go. My class started in fifteen minutes. Several full-time culinary students in the chef program hurried past my doorway, talking excitedly, and a few came into my room and retrieved extra pots and pans. Evidently, they were preparing for one of their presentation meals and needed more equipment than was available in their kitchen. They looked at me apologetically and I waved them on.

I was still a little cranky and irritated from Brenda’s visit the evening before.
I tried to study my recipes, but I was finding it difficult. The measurements floated on the page, and the ingredients that I’d become so familiar with suddenly seemed ludicrous. Rosewater? Really? Who the hell thought to make rosewater? I put the recipes aside for a while and focused on the spices, which were lined up along the front of the counter. In front of each jar was a tiny bowl containing a mound of that spice. My students would come to learn about the flavors of Moroccan cuisine and the spices that give it its unique flavor profile. I’d pass each around so that the students could smell, touch, and, if they wanted, taste.

The sweet cinnamon and heady cardamom scented the air deliciously, and the bright hues of red, green, brown, and yellow were like vivid dreams of caravans and camels. It
reminded me of the souks in Marrakech, where countless merchants peddled their wares. The spice dealers, in particular, were like drug pushers, enticing you to come closer and peek at the conical mounds of powders, pods, and threads, to inhale the earthy, musty, sweet, and pungent aromas, to breathe them in deeply until they seeped into your lungs, addicting you upon first contact. To indulge in their vices. Spice—the drug of the gourmand. Soon, I would draw others into my underworld of lurid spice sniffing and unseemly finger sifting and pod squeezing . . .

I
chuckled softly and willed myself to stop feasting on the colors in front of me and instead prep my other ingredients. I set basmati rice in a bowl and couscous in another, and cut my vegetables into uniform pieces. I was scooping up my onions and placing them in a bowl when Julianna walked in. She waved and smiled and I waved back, suddenly feeling foolish. Her dimples were really cute. I forced my attention back to my ingredients.

“Hi,” she said. She
placed her hands on the counter and leaned forward. “I’m really stoked about today’s class. I really want to learn to make Moroccan food.”

Enthusiasm for cooking always got me excited, and I nodded. “
That’s great. That’s why you’re here, right?”

“Yeah. The thing is, I’m planning this dinner party and I want to make a Moroccan meal, but I want it to totally rock. I want my dinner guests to swoon. I want them to taste my food and be transported to another world. In short—” She paused and looked at me with a
n I’m-totally-fucking-serious look, her eyebrows pitched and her mouth in a “fuck yeah” purse. “I want to rock their worlds Moroccan style.”

I laugh
ed. “Well,” I said with a dramatic flair, “I guess I’d better deliver.” I started to slice garlic.

“Yeah, you’d better,” she said with mock sternness.

“Or what?” Sure, I’d play along.

“O
h, I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll think of something,”
she replied. Her voice had dropped an octave. Although I was enjoying the banter, I was focused on my chopping and it took me a moment to register her comment. The moment I looked up, she turned and walked away. Back at her spot at the table, her face flushed, she didn’t look at me again until class began.

For a few seconds, I was flustered and, again, I had to force myself to focus.

“Today we’re going to start with an ingredients lesson,” I said when everyone was present. I held up various vegetables and other items typically used in Morocco.

After I’d given my little oration about the importance of spices in Moroccan cuisine and the role that they played in history, I introduced each spice individually, explained their flavors and aromas, how they
were used, and the difference between toasted and untoasted.

“You’ll find that toasting brings out the flavor and aroma and makes the final product much more complex. Now, I need a few volunteers from the audience to do some toasting. And I don’t mean the kind that involves a beverage,” I added wryly.
“Although, maybe later.”

Five people stepped up. I handed them each a bowl of spice, instructed them to grab a small sauté pan off the rack on the wall, and positioned them at the stoves. Each of them turned on the flame and set a pan on their respective burners. Soon, the fragrance of cumin, cardamom, coriander, anise, and cinnamon enriched the air around me, making this particular class an aromatic experience for everyone.

I moved around behind them and peered down into their pans, reminding them to stir, which would ensure that they didn’t burn their spices. Then I addressed the rest of the class.

“While they’re doing that, I’m going to make up a batch of
ras el hanout
, which is an essential spice blend commonly used in Morocco. Meanwhile, why don’t you all flip through your handouts and familiarize yourself with some of the other ingredients you’ll be using?”

When the students in the kitchen were done toasting the spices, I asked them to place the spices in clean bowls
. When they had taken their seats, I passed the spices around, along with the untoasted versions.

“
Smell and taste the spices—the toasted and untoasted—and tell me if you notice a difference.”

“Wow,” said a few.

“That’s intense,” Julianna offered. “But in a good way.”

I
nodded. Students were always stunned at how the flavor and aroma of the spices bloomed after toasting. They passed the bowls back, and Julianna brought up the last one. She placed it on the counter and stole a peek at me before returning to her seat. A delicious chill bubbled up my spine.

“All right, let’s start our first recipe. This,” I said, gesturing at the
couscoussier
I’d purchased in Marrakech, “will help us make authentic couscous.” I moved it to the stove. “This is how they do it in Morocco. You all are going to cook couscous the Western way, but I just want to demonstrate the Moroccan method, just so you can see how it’s done traditionally. Then you’ll compare my couscous with your couscous. Why don’t you all come up here so you can see?”