The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier (15 page)

“I like talking to your father about immigration.”

“The history of it in the 19
^th
Century?”

“O.K., that part can be a little dull, but when he gets into the contemporary issues, it’s fascinating.”

“To you maybe. I was glad to get away today. I’ve heard more about the new Arizona Immigration Law than I can stand.”

“Maybe you need to develop more of a sense of Yuma.”

I was the only one who laughed.

Emilio spotted us when we turned off the highway and was standing out in the cold to greet me with a warm abrazo. He bowed when I introduced Dolly, and we went in to see Consuela who was standing by her favorite chair with her hand on its back for support. The house smelled freshly cleaned.

Dolly’s brown sugar skin and the last name Aguirre prompted Consuela to welcome her in Spanish and tell her how happy she was that I had brought my girlfriend to meet them.

I couldn’t tell whether Dolly’s blush was because she didn’t speak Spanish or because she recognized the word novia.

“Lo siento. Yo no hablo español,” said Dolly.

“If you want to learn, Consuela is a great teacher,” I said as I hugged her.

We made small talk until Emilio said he needed my help with the barbacoa. When we got to the back patio he said he just wanted to leave the women alone to chat. Just what I need, I thought. Oh well, they had to meet sooner or later. I could only hope Consuela wouldn’t quiz Dolly about whether she wanted to have children.

Emilio and I went for a walk along the irrigation canal towards the river.

“She grows weak, Uberto.”

“I know. Perhaps she will need a transplant.”

“What she wants is for Ninfa to return home and have a child.”

I nodded. We walked on in silence.

“Tengo una pregunta, pero quizás no es apropiada.”

Emilio often switches to Spanish when he thinks the topic is serious.

I told him in Spanish that nothing he could ask would be inappropriate. After some hesitation, he asked me how I felt about the fact that my parents had died before I had children.

By this time we were approaching the bosque, so we turned back east. “My father was a man of abstract ideas. My mother was a social activist. They were good parents, Emilio, but your wife raised me. I don’t remember my father or my mother ever discussing grandchildren.”

“But they have you, Uberto. And Consuela and I have Ninfa. We must all leave a child for the world. Is it not so?”

I thought about it as we walked along in silence. My parents had a happy marriage. But would it have been less felicitous had I never been born? Miss Gladys had a long and presumably happy marriage to Guy Claiborne. Would not having children have changed that? Susannah’s mother obviously regarded the single life as a step or two down from death and dismemberment. Even the confused runaway Kaylee who had shown up on my doorstep eventually married her fellow pot scrubber, Arturo, and the two of them were having a child they probably couldn’t afford. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it.

Would Dolly and I join the insect world and procreate? Was it too late for that?

I have a series of theses I call Schuze’s Anthropological Premises or SAP, which is what my cynical friends say you have to be to believe them.

My SAPs deal with evolution, culture, ethnicity, and a host of other related issues. Oddly, none of them deal with marriage and children. If I ever have any insight on those topics, perhaps I’ll add a new SAP to the list.

We took the meat inside. A lace tablecloth I had never seen was under the plates. A vase of flowers sat where the salt and pepper normally resided. We had a pleasant but somewhat formal lunch.

As we left, Consuela said to me in Spanish that she thought Dolly would be a wonderful wife and she was honored I brought her to meet them. I kissed her goodbye but made no reply to the wife comment.

Dolly gave me a sly smile once we were on the road. “Are you going to tell me what Consuela said as we were leaving?”

“She said you look sexually frustrated and told me I should do something about it as soon as possible.”

She hit me with her left arm.

“You didn’t understand any of it?” I asked.

“You know I don’t speak Spanish. The only thing I know how to say is ‘I don’t speak Spanish’, and I learned that only because it comes up so often.”

“I thought maybe you caught the word novia when we first arrived.”

“Yeah. I know a few other common words that everyone in Albuquerque knows because you hear them so often. One of those common words is esposa. It was the only word I picked up there at the end.”

“You want to know what she said?”

“Yes.”

“She said you would make a wonderful wife.”

The twenty seconds of silence that followed took about ten minutes.

“This is awkward, Hubie.”

Another twenty second of silence. A few more and we’d be back in town.

She looked out through the windshield. “I don’t know what your thoughts are on the subject of marriage. It hasn’t worked for me in the past, so I decided I wouldn’t try it again. I don’t presume you would ask me or not ask me, but—”

“I—”

“Let me finish. I like my life. I enjoy my independence. I enjoy decorating the house and having it look just the way I want. I have my dad to look after, but I enjoy that, and he’s never demanding. He’s good company when I want it and he keeps to his books when I don’t. I like to cook. I like to garden. In short, I’m content.”

She turned to look at me. “When you knocked on my door, romance came back into my life. Now my life is even better. I might even say complete. I like the way things are now. I’d like to keep it that way.”

I let that soak in for a while. “So what now?”

“I hope we continue to see each other. I’m too content to be the jealous type. What you do when we’re not together is none of my business.”

“I meant now as in now, this afternoon.”

She smiled at me. “I thought that was obvious. We go to your place and see what you can do about that sexual frustration Consuela says I have.”

38

I stopped by Feats of Clay a few days later and discovered their kiln master was out sick, and they were as badly behind schedule on my plates as the Highway Department is on the widening of Interstate 25. Since they weren’t receiving tax money, I decided to forgive them.

Only half the plates had been formed, and none of the edelweiss overlays had been cut. The glazing was merely a vague intention.

I felt bad again for the delay. I felt even worse when Alain Billot called me at eleven at night on the next Saturday and asked me to attend an emergency meeting of the staff of Schnitzel the next afternoon.

When I asked what the emergency was, he said he didn’t want to talk about it on the phone. I told him I didn’t want to make another trip to Santa Fe, but when he said it was important for me to be there, I relented.

When I arrived, Billot scooted me into the bar.

“Kuchen has not been seen since the grand opening.”

“I noticed he wasn’t there the next night, but I figured maybe he was sick.”

He smiled. “You thought perhaps he had the bad review disease?”

“Well, yes.”

“It is not unknown. But it usually lasts one night only, like the flu for a day.”

“We call it the twenty-four hour flu. Anyway, the restaurant functioned fine without him on the second day. You can easily do his job.”

“It is one thing for the chef de cuisine to disappear. It is quite another when the customers disappear as well.”

“But Tuesday was crowded even after the bad reviews.”

“Yes, and Wednesday less so. Thursday was even worse, and each day the number of covers grows smaller. This week was terrible. Last night we had only four.”

“For the whole night? On a Saturday?”

He nodded.

“I don’t think Kuchen coming back can help.”

“Ah, precisely so. I am glad you understand this. It is not the chef that must change. It is the menu.”

“So this meeting is about changing the menu?”

“Non! This meeting is about closing the restaurant.”

His angular head was canted to the side in an unnatural way, causing him to look like one of the figures in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. “You must help. It will not be easy, but you are the one. You must help us.”

“You want me to help close the restaurant?”

“Sacré bleu, non. You must help us keep it open.”

Before I could figure out how to respond to that strange request, M’Lanta Scruggs called us into the dining room.

We were the last two to be seated. All of the staff were there except Kuchen. Even the assistants from the kitchen and scullery were there. Scruggs, whose duties evidently included delivering messages and gathering people together, went to the kitchen and returned with Santiago Molinero.

The sight of his copper-tinged skin brought Moulin Rouge to mind, although I know that rouge means red, not copper. Maybe he looked like one of the bar flies in a Toulouse-Lautrec poster. Or perhaps his face was flushed because he was facing an unpleasant task.

“I suspect most of you have figured out why I called this meeting,” he began. Juan the bacon chopper whispered a translation for his compadres who didn’t speak English.

Santiago looked around the room. “Schnitzel has failed.” There were no gasps. He looked around again. He rubbed his beard. He seemed to reconsider his words. “Actually, it is I who have failed. I saw Santa Fe as a great restaurant town, which it is. I asked myself how a new restaurant could succeed against all the competition, and I thought the answer was to bring a cuisine not represented here. I sold that idea to the investors. They knew a restaurant that succeeds in Santa Fe would make money. They agreed that a new cuisine was the best plan. Obviously, Austrian cuisine was a poor choice. So too was my choice of Gunter Kuchen who deserted us after opening night. But I cannot blame him. I can blame only myself. You have all worked hard and done your best. I apologize.”

“So what happens now?” asked Helen Mure.

“I will file bankruptcy papers. In cases such as this, the stockholders will get nothing. It is the risk of investment. The judge will declare their stock worthless. You will be treated better than they. An auction company will sell off the equipment. The money will go into an escrow account to pay your salaries and our creditors.”

“How long will it take?”

“A few weeks, perhaps a few months.”

Alain stood up and looked around the room, his angular chin pointing to each of us in turn. “I have rallied the staff. We agree that Schnitzel has failed. But we are not Schnitzel. We are a compagnie. Say what you must about Kuchen, but he welded us together in the forge of his temper. We will resurrect this restaurant under a new banner. The public will know we have thrown off the shackles of tradition and embraced innovation. We will turn the Austrian eagle into a phoenix in the desert. We will rise from the ashes!”

I thought I heard strains of La Marseillaise in the background.

“Bravo,” bellowed Dorfmeister.

“Allez,” cried Machlin Masoot.

“C’est magnifique,” shouted Raoul Deschutes.

“What a load of bullshit,” barked Helen Mure. Everyone glared at her.

“What do you have in mind specifically?” asked Molinero, uncertainty washing over his face.

“We will be the first Austrian/Southwestern fusion restaurant in history,” he proclaimed proudly. “We cannot abandon totally the beginnings. We have the training and the supplies. Also, we are known. Perhaps badly, but even that is a start. As we say in France, the woman without a questionable past has no chance to reform.”

We all turned to him with quizzical looks.

“Perhaps it does not translate well into English. But the diners will want to know what is this upstart that fell so badly on the nose and now dares to reinvent itself with the local flavors.”

Alain sat down.

“It is an interesting proposal,” said Molinero, “but we are in no position to carry it out. We are out of money. We cannot continue.”

“Sure we can,” said Rafael. “It doesn’t cost anything to keep the doors open. Even if we can’t pay the rent, it will take at least a couple of months for the landlord to have us evicted. The utility companies don’t shut off service until you’re behind several months. By then, we may be making money. And we already have enough food to last us for a couple for weeks.”

Mure said, “So you want to stiff the landlord and the utility companies and operate like squatters in the building?”

“They’re going to get stiffed anyway if we close. I want to stay open and try to earn enough money to pay them.”

“But there is no money to pay you,” said Molinero.

“So what is different about this?” replied Alain. “We have food. We will not starve.”

“What I get paid,” said Scruggs, “it’s no big loss not to get it.”

“Not getting paid is the story of my life,” said Arliss Mansfield.

“I refuse to work for free,” Mure hissed.

“We want only those who believe in our plan,” said Alain.

Maria Salazar said, “I believe in it. If Helen leaves, I’ll volunteer to take her station.”

“Forget it, you little tart. Nobody’s taking my station.”

Maria stared at her but made no comment.

“It just isn’t possible,” said Molinero.

“And how do you propose to stop us?” asked Jürgen.

Molinero took a step back as if Jürgen’s question were a blow. “I beg your pardon?”

“We have keys to the building. We know our equipment. We have a plan. We will have a grand re-opening on Wednesday night.”

“This is preposterous,” shouted Molinero.

“It is rather odd,” Arliss noted, more or less to himself.

“I say close up and go home,” said Mure.

“No!” shouted most of the others.

Molinero seemed to regain his composure. “What is your plan?”

Alain said, “For simplicity, we will invent six new dishes, three starters and three entrées, all in the new style of Austrian/Southwestern fusion. Our menu will be prix fixe, nineteen dollars.”

“Nineteen dollars? You will lose money.”