Hungry Woman in Paris (17 page)

“I’m sorry about the other day—” I began to apologize.

“No sweat,” she cut me off. “You’re funny thinking you did something bad. I’ve been in New York City kitchens and the kind
of shit men do to you…” She drank her wine. “I’m used to getting shoved and mistreated. It comes with the territory.
I know, I could be doing something else with my life, but it’s hard getting chosen as a female firefighter, so this is the
closest thing,” she admitted, almost laughing.

“You want to be a firefighter?” I asked, not sure if she was joking.

“When I was younger and liked playing with matches,” she replied, mellowing down and letting the wine soothe her nerves.

“So you want to be a chef?” I inquired, trying to see where that would take the conversation.

“Of course, don’t you?”

“I just want to own a restaurant. Manage it, let someone else do the cooking in my kitchen,” I lied. Then I felt bad about
it and figured that over Bordeaux you should tell the truth. “Actually, I’m just killing time. Maybe I’ll be a food critic,
since I can’t go back to being a real journalist.” I stuffed myself with cheese so I wouldn’t reveal more.

“It’s a pretty expensive way of killing time. Why don’t you just hang out at cafés pretending to be a writer like all the
rich kids I know?”

“Because this way I get my papers to stay in the country and at the end I get a diploma, so I won’t feel like I wasted my
time.”

Sage got real close to me and whispered, “Hey, that guy behind you is a famous author. He has a book on the best-seller list
at W. H. Smith. He wrote a novel about stepping on dog shit for a whole year in Paris, or something like that.” I turned carefully
and studied his face.

Sage whispered, “You would think the first few days after stepping on dog shit he would have looked down.”

I was not about to add blood as a thickener to my rooster sauce. I didn’t mind eating cooked blood if I found out afterward,
but the mere thought of blood in the sauce brought back many memories. Like the red mole we had that included my pet rooster
back when I was eleven. My friends hated it when I admitted to growing up with chickens and roosters in my backyard in East
L.A., but some stereotypes are true. Of course not everyone had chickens, or a sweet rooster like Ricky, in their backyard,
but we did and the day Ricky went from pet to plate I sobbed. I might have to make rooster again now, but I draw the line
at adding blood.

Chef Fournier, the first female chef I had ever encountered, came up to me and inquired why I wasn’t working. I liked her
very much and from the rumors I had heard about the last female chef at Le Coq Rouge, I truly admired her for whatever bullshit
she had to put up with to be there, so I didn’t want to give her a hard time. She was about to tell me something when the
fire alarm went off and she commanded all her students to take everything off the burners and leave the practical room immediately.
We all marched down to the street level and walked across the street and watched students pour out of the building. Some of
the pastry students had flour on them and were annoyed at having to wait outside, knowing that their soufflés were disasters
by now. Two American girls from Intermediate, Cynthia and Persia, were happy about leaving the building so they could take
a cigarette break. I caught bits and pieces of their conversation.

“She is so stupid, I don’t know why they put her in our group. She’s only studying cuisine and isn’t pursuing a
grand supérieur diplôme
like us.”

“I think it’s because Trevor left.”

“What a loser. I can’t believe he left because he couldn’t handle a chef calling him a fag,” the tall girl said to the Indian-American
girl.

They enjoyed their cigarettes more than food. These were the two students in demonstration who never ate the samples afterward.
They would instantly leave and talked about how they were determined to lose weight; they were going to win this fight. After
Chef Sauber complained to the students that they were required to taste the demonstration as part of their training, Persia
was forced to eat, and during the break she was so disgusted she vomited. Once I was waiting by the bathroom door when she
did it. When she came out of the bathroom she avoided looking at me. I thought it was a one-time thing, but I soon discovered
it was a regular ritual. I made it a point not to go to the restroom after her because the smell of acid was overpowering.
How could you be bulimic and in cooking school? I tried to picture myself as a bulimic or anorexic, and I’m sure there is
a Mexican-American woman out there who is, but I couldn’t imagine being Mexican and having an eating disorder. Just like I
couldn’t conceive of being Mexican and on a diet. I was used to fighting with my nine siblings so I could get my share of
food to eat. I would eat as fast as I could so I would get seconds and feel satisfied. The thought of wasting food in that
manner made
me
want to vomit.

Their cigarette smoke in my face also made me nauseous, and I was about to tell them to point their poisonous smoke elsewhere
when Chef Sauber escorted Bassie out of the building, giving her a lecture, in front of Sélange and Françoise, about cuisine
being a very serious business. I walked closer to them to listen in as Bassie tried to explain how she was not an arsonist
who’d intended to burn up the trash can. It was an accident. She had poured too much cognac into the lobster and when she
stuck in the lighter it practically exploded in her face and she stepped back. She probably ignited the paper towels in the
garbage can next to her by accident. Poor Bassie looked like a little girl surrounded by upset family members telling her
to stop playing with matches. Bassie lowered her head and nodded every time they told her that she was going to be on probation
and no more special treatment for whatever disorder or disease she had.

The students were allowed back in and the grades for that day were nullified. I was at my locker when I saw Bassie come in.
I tried not to laugh at the image of her setting the garbage can on fire. Poor Bassie; I knew she was trying her best. I’m
so glad I had her as a friend because we could both commiserate. I asked her if she wanted to get a drink and, much like her
lobster, Bassie’s face lit up.

We went to C’est Ma Vie and no one was there except for Jérôme, reading up on his wines. He welcomed us and we ordered two
glasses of red. Jérôme recommended the house wine and read off from a book the region it came from. He showed us a map and
located the winery.

“They want me to quit,” admitted Bassie, holding back tears. “They are willing to give me back my money, but I am going to
finish,” she said with the determination of an ant.

“Don’t they understand what you have?” I asked compassionately.

“I’ve explained to them that I have ADD and all my allergies, but their answer is that I just shouldn’t do it. People like
me shouldn’t be in the kitchen.” Bassie went on to describe all the mistakes she had made and I started recognizing myself
in her. Maybe I have whatever she has, just not as bad, I thought to myself.

“The other students are all doing both cuisine and pastry and they think that makes them special. They resent the fact that
I am merely a cuisine student and they have to share their kitchen with me. They want me to quit so they can have the extra
space and not have to censor themselves with their stupid jokes about the cuisine students in front of me.” The more wine
Bassie poured into her mouth, the more her frustrations poured out of it.

“I heard Persia and her friend mention you,” I revealed.

“Those bitches are mean. They threw a party for our cooking group and didn’t invite me.” Bassie sulked.

“Can you ask to be moved?” I suggested.

“Yeah, I already tried, but I think this is the administration’s way of showing me how incompetent I am by putting me in a
class with competitive students who all want to be the next celebrity chef.” We both laughed at them, but I secretly imagined
myself with my own cooking show. My show would be for single women: how to make a meal in fifteen minutes or less with enough
leftovers for the cat.

Jérôme came by and poured more wine into our glasses.

“Merci,”
we both said. We took a sip of the wine and let out a deep sigh.

“I’m so lonely. Paris is the worst city to be in when you’re lonely… I actually broke down and called my ex-boyfriend,”
confessed Bassie.

“I thought you said he was a jerk?” I asked carefully.

“He’s gotten better,” she replied in between swallows. I thought about Armando and wondered how he was doing. On occasion
I thought about calling him. When you’re dating you think it’s so wonderful that your boyfriend is also your best friend.
When you break up it sucks double. I knew loneliness very well. Now that Luna was gone and Armando was becoming a distant
memory, I only had me; but I wanted to run away from me.

The next day I woke up hungover, again, and quickly threw on some clothes. I couldn’t miss the chartered bus to the Loire
Valley for my wine tour.

“In my family the first sons always inherited the wine business, but because I was born female it went to my younger brother,”
Marie-Anne, a translator from Australia who’d joined us on the wine excursion, translated for the winery owner, Véronique.
“So I decided to go to school to study winemaking; that’s where I met my husband and we decided to start our own winery. We
focused on sweet white wines and we are very happy that our business is in continual growth.” Véronique then explained how
they made their wines and escorted us into their caves. I was not prepared for the cold and crossed my arms and massaged them
to generate more heat. Yves handed me his scarf. I looked up at him and was touched by his chivalry.

“Merci,”
I said, looking him up and down. He nodded with a smile and walked ahead to catch up with Véronique and continued asking
questions for the benefit of his wine class.

At lunchtime we tested each of their six wines. I’d had a croissant and tea for breakfast, but by then my stomach felt pretty
empty. I drank the wine and kept looking around for the meal that had been promised. I’m not good on an almost-empty stomach.
I’m worse when I have wine or cheesecake on an empty stomach.

“Are you warm now?” Yves turned to me. He surprised me by speaking a heavily accented English.

“Yes. Thank you so much.” I took off his scarf and offered it back to him.

“No, no. Keep it as long as you need it. Have it if you like,” he said with a flirtatious smile.

“The wine has made me warm now,” I replied, returning a coquettish smile.

“Do you like the wine?” Yves asked me.

“I actually love it.” I smiled and batted my eyelashes.

Yves got close to my ear and whispered so Véronique would not hear: “I don’t like sweet wines too much, but it’s not bad.”
He tickled my ear in the process. He looked around to make sure no one noticed him whispering. We both swallowed together
and stared at each other. We were silent for a few seconds and although we said nothing, I knew he didn’t want to leave my
side.

“What is the best wine you have ever had?” I asked, attempting to continue our conversation.

“There is no such thing as the best wine, because it may go well with one dish, but not another. It may go well in summer
and not in winter. It’s all relative.”

I rephrased my question: “In your opinion, what is the best wine you have experienced?”

“Well, it wasn’t so much the wine, but the food and the woman I had it with,” he confided. I smiled and continued with my
journalistic probing.

“What wine, which meal, and what woman?”

Yves took a second to reflect, looking at me as if wondering why this was so important for me to know. “The wine was a red
1987 Châteauneuf-du-Pape with beef bourguignon in winter, and the woman was the woman who became my wife and now is my ex-wife,”
he declared. I looked at his hand; there was no wedding ring or a suntan line revealing there had been one not long ago.

We smiled at each other as we drank. I’m pretty sure I was no longer sober, because he looked like the most handsome man in
the world and, without hesitation, I whispered the line to top all lines—the one handed down to me by a saucy Latina friend
who swore it would work on any straight man with a pulse. “I wonder what you look like when you come,” I whispered into his
ear and walked away without a care in the world. I loved how it felt to come on to a man instead of waiting for him to hit
on me. Besides, he probably didn’t understand my English anyway.

After our liquid lunch we boarded a bus back to the school. When we arrived all the students walked out, and I made my way
down the aisle. I was giving the scarf back to Yves when he pulled it to him. I didn’t let go of the scarf, so I almost fell
on top of him. He caught me.

“Where do you live?” he asked. “Why don’t you stay on the bus and the bus driver will take you and me home.”

Yves and I hid out in the bus and the driver dropped both of us off at his place. He offered to personally drive me home after
making up a story about getting his car keys from his apartment. I followed him like a bad girl, knowing what was to come
… or who was to come. Yves escorted me into his voluminous white apartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower—the kind of
place that made it clear he didn’t need to teach.

“Why do you teach?” I asked, assessing his wealth like an Ugly American.

“So I can meet interesting people like you.” Yves grinned.

“But you don’t know anything about me. How do you know I’m interesting?” I wanted to tease him, first with words, and later
…

“Oh, I know you are,” he assured me. “Would you like me to make you dinner?”

I suppose getting to the sex without dinner would be crude, but food wasn’t what I was hungry for. Still, I played along.
“Yes, that would be nice.” A man was going to cook for me; it made me feel special.

I walked around, studying his library and his art collection, until Yves asked if I wanted to see his wine cellar. I knew
he was proud of it, so I obliged.