Vanilla Salt (27 page)

Annette’s barely heard his last words, because she’s distracted by someone ringing the doorbell. Eric, the fish boss’s son, has arrived for his first day of work. If the father was a caricature of the self-made man, the son is a parody of the obtuse sixteen-year-old, for whom life consists of body piercing, tattoos, discos and motorbikes. Looking him up and down, Annette thinks that the difficulty won’t be teaching him, but getting him to let himself be taught, and he doesn’t seem in the least willing in that regard. There’s no question about it: this kid isn’t going to save work, but will create more.

“What do I have to do?” The boy seems to think this is a greeting.

“Work hard,” Annette tells him. “Àlex, the chef, he give you the work dress and you do what he say. He the head and you the legs.”

“What time do you knock off here?”

The boy’s an expert in insolence. Annette chooses not to answer his question, but shows him the restaurant and explains how things work. They go into the kitchen and she introduces him to Àlex. Eric’s in luck, because Àlex is in a good mood and very absorbed by what he’s doing. Otherwise, the boy wouldn’t last five minutes.

Annette has to make cakes, and Àlex is preparing most of the dishes they’ll serve at the party. There’s not a second to waste. They give Eric a box of anchovies to clean, meaning he’s got to remove the heads and gut them. He gripes and grumbles that if he’d known he had to clean fish he would have gone to work with his dad, where the underlings at least treated him with all the respect due to the boss’s son. But in the end he gets down to the job.

Concentration is the order of the day in the kitchen, where all three of them are busy with their tasks. Sometimes Àlex breaks the silence with an order. Graça arrives mid-morning and immediately launches into the considerable amount of work involved in setting tables, polishing glasses, arranging flowers and fine-tuning every detail in the dining room for the party.

“You got blacks working here too?” Eric asks disdainfully. “There are lots of them working for my dad and I don’t like being around them. They’re thieves.”

“Thieves come in all colours,” Àlex retorts, containing his urge to thump the boy. “Here people work. Some have dark skin, or are thin, Annette has freckles and I have a terrible temper. Graça is the wife of Frank, the distributor who works in your father’s company. They are very good friends of ours, and if any idiot does anything to upset them, then we’ll get very angry.”

“That black, that Frank doesn’t work for my dad any more. My dad kicked him out about a month ago. He was nicking stuff. A box of fish
disappeared every day and my dad found out it was him. He’s a thieving bastard,” Eric declares with appalling serenity.

Annette and Àlex look at one another in horror. They knew nothing about this. Graça has said nothing. Maybe she doesn’t know. A box of fish every day… a box at the door of Roda el Món every day. True, they haven’t had any fish from Frank for more than a month, but they assumed that Frank had decided that the charity season had come to an end.

14

CHOCOLATE

The
Dia i Nit
journalist turns up just after lunch to find Àlex in the kitchen dealing with some sea urchins, which he’s going to cook in cava, the traditional way. They’re really delicious done like that. He’ll put them under the grill till they’re just cooked, taking on a golden hue, but without losing their characteristic deep-crimson colour. Chef and journalist sit down at one of the tables in the dining room. They have to get started at once, because the guests will be arriving in a few hours and there’s still plenty of work to do.

Àlex opens a bottle of cava to help the flow of the conversation. The journalist seems to be a very pleasant man and, moreover, he likes cava. They talk about Àlex’s career, his culinary philosophy, his taboo foods, the restaurant’s change of direction and, in fact, all the usual things that are discussed in a typical interview with somebody who is eminent in his or her field. Àlex barely sips at his cava, because he’s doing the best he can to come up with intelligent answers to the usual questions. However, when he goes to top up the journalist’s glass for the seventh time, there’s not a drop left. Bloody hell, this guy’s drunk a whole bottle all by himself! They crack a second bottle.

“Thanks very much Àlex. It’s been most interesting being able to talk with you. I think I have enough now, except for one detail. What was that you said you wanted to do with Annette? Set up a business of aromatized salts?”

The journalist wants to keep chatting, as he’s settled in very comfortably at Roda el Món. In fact, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Yes, we want to create a new line of products so that people cooking at home can enjoy the aromas of my specialities and of Roda el Món in general.”

“That’s really interesting. If you want a hand, give me a call. I’m available.”

Available? What does he mean by that? This question buzzes round Àlex’s head after the journalist leaves. He returns to the kitchen, turns over some caramelized almonds and mulls on the journalist’s words. “I’m available.” Àlex doesn’t like the way he said it, because there was something desperate there, the tone of someone clutching at straws.

He expects anything from Carol but ingenuousness. She’s as sharp and cunning as a fox. Very perceptive too. He finds it strange that she hasn’t turned up for the interview to make sure he’s done what he promised, namely condemning Annette’s way of running the business and insinuating that she adulterates the food for fatter and faster profits, which was supposed to be the sensational exclusive: Roda el Món was guilty of fraudulent practice, because Annette’s only concern was money. He’d also been ordered to say that he had no longer had any connection with the restaurant, he’d been sacked and he hadn’t cooked any of the dishes that were being served at the dinner.

That was what Carol had decreed, but he’s gone along with his own plans, following the dictates of his heart, telling the journalist that the Roda el Món food is wonderful, made with the region’s best-quality products and that Annette is an exemplary boss. To add insult to injury,
he’s also let the cat out of the bag by talking about their future project of producing salt aromatized with spices, because this will bind him to Annette for ever, God willing.

He’s got work to do, but he can’t let this go. He sits down at the computer, goes to Google, types in the journalist’s name and that of the newspaper. There are hundreds of pages, thousands of articles, interviews and reports he’s signed. Yes, he’s prolific. He looks at the dates. There’s no recent article. The last one is from the 20th of last month. A journalist who writes nothing in a month? Àlex smells a rat and calls the newspaper, asking to be put through to him. The very helpful receptionist informs him that this man no longer works there. They’ve cut back on staff and the man’s now unemployed. Unfortunately she can’t give contact details.

Àlex’s head goes into overdrive. An out-of-work journalist comes to do an interview for a newspaper where he no longer works. What’s this all about? It can only be something nasty cooked up by Carol. “Now I get it!” It’s so devious it’s like the worst kind of B-movie. She knows he won’t stick to the plan, so she’s paid a fake journalist, a hatchet man who won’t publish the interview in which he so highly praises Annette.

Carol had foreseen his reaction and was determined to thwart him at any cost. She might have saved herself the comedy of the journalist and interview, but she probably thought she’d be more certain of his trust by putting on the show. But her crystal ball hadn’t shown the journalist downing almost two bottles on an empty stomach and letting slip, with childlike naivety, that he no longer works for
Dia i Nit
, or that, in consequence, Àlex would deduce that Carol wasn’t honouring her part of the bargain. Knowing that the interview is never going to appear, Àlex feels lost. He can’t begin to imagine what kind of plot Carol is hatching. He’s going to have to be extremely watchful. And the whole night long.

*  *  *

Carol’s very pleased with herself. That loser of a journalist has told her that the idiot cook has fallen into the trap and has been more than willing to waffle on the whole interview, because he’s so thrilled at the idea of having the centre spread all to himself in a newspaper with such a big circulation. Her subterfuge couldn’t have worked better. After that night when she’d registered how much Àlex and Annette secretly fancied one another, she’d correctly guessed that Àlex had no intention of doing anything that might harm his precious freckled redhead.

Carol was incensed when she realized that her sentimental plans were just a pipe dream. Rage boiled in every cell of her body, building up an insatiable thirst for revenge in her brain. She wasn’t going to wipe out Annette alone. Àlex would go down with her. Carol wanted both of them dead. There were many ways she could annihilate them, but the most painful and effective one was to make them see their darling Roda el Món project in ruins. This would be lethal for them both, economically and emotionally speaking. She could burn the place down, but that would be too unsophisticated. It wouldn’t be much fun either and, worse, people would feel sorry for them. She could just see the newspaper reports:

Chef Àlex Graupera is distressed by the fire in his beautiful restaurant in Bigues i Riells but says, “We’ll come out of this stronger than ever and shall build up Roda el Món all over again, with the very latest in technology and tremendous commitment.”

No, she doesn’t want to give them any chance to tug at society’s heart-strings with their misfortunes. She wants to destroy them by killing the restaurant’s good name.

“Hi, lovelies!” Carol sweeps into the restaurant, a jabbering tornado swirling in all directions at once. “My God, what an incredible amount of work.
I can guarantee this will be a huge success. Everyone’s dying to find out about what Roda el Món’s up to and what you’re offering. Talk about great expectations! Oh, Annette, what beautiful flowers you’ve got in the dining room. Congratulations. And Àlex, how did the
Dia i Nit
interview go?”

“Very well, thanks Carol! Thanks very much for setting it up. That journalist was very thorough,” he says, without looking up from the veal fillet he’s getting ready to roast. “Sorry, I can’t attend to you now. Time’s running out. But do help yourself to a glass of cava.”

“Hallo Carol!” Annette calls from the other side of the restaurant. “It too long since we see us. I want to call you, but I run out all time very much.”

“Run out? What have you run out of? I’m perturbed to hear this.” Carol feigns interest.

“Annette still gets her idioms mixed up. Her Catalan’s impeccable, apart from not knowing the gender of things or set phrases. I think she means she’s been running around a lot,” Àlex says, adding: “And that’s indeed the case, as we’ve been running around non-stop these last couple of months. What about you?”

“Hmm, so she doesn’t know the gender of things,” Carol mutters to herself, “but I bet she knows the gender of your dick when it stands up to salute her. The bitch may not know about gender but she knows plenty about sex.”

“What was that, Carol? I can’t hear a thing with this beater turned on.” Àlex looks up from the mayonnaise he’s now making.

“Nothing, sweetheart, nothing at all. I think I’ll take you up on that glass of cava you just offered me. Come and keep me company for a moment. I want to tell you a juicy bit of gossip about one of your colleagues. People for miles around are pissing themselves laughing.”

“Wait for me. It like me to hear also.” Annette starts taking off her apron.

“No way, darling. You’re such a delicate little thing and some things are not for your ears. You’d probably faint, and I’m sure there are no smelling salts in this very modern establishment. Off you go. Get yourself upstairs. Go and make up those cat’s eyes of yours because you have to look gorgeous tonight. You’re the star, after all.”

Annette obeys Carol, as she feels indebted to and guilty about her. She hasn’t phoned her once and neither have they chatted on Facebook, but Carol’s helped them so much by phoning up all the journalists to make sure they’ll come to the party.

Carol makes the most of her absence to show Àlex the dose of poison he has to put in the casserole, just enough to give the journalists an upset – slightly upset – stomach.

“Don’t worry, they’re not going to kick the bucket, but they will have a nice belly ache. Imagine, that journalist you saw will be writing up his interview now and tomorrow all the online newspapers, which are must faster than the old-style ones, will be talking about it and highlighting the food poisoning. We’ve got the whole thing under control, and the result will be perfect. Did you tell the journalist everything we agreed on?”

“Yes, yes, I did.” He averts his gaze.

The first guests are starting to arrive and the place is filling up with TV cameras, microphones and notebooks at the ready to jot down statements made by Àlex and Annette. It looks like a kitchen set for a film. Annette’s nervous. She wants everyone to have a good time and feel well looked after. She wants the dishes to be served hot and perfectly cooked, doesn’t want anyone to end the night still hungry and, most of all, she doesn’t want to die of embarrassment when she has to make her speech. Oh, and she doesn’t want to forget any of the acknowledgements and the messages she wishes to convey. If it all goes well, she’ll sleep like a log tonight.

Òscar comes in puffing.

“Sorry I’m a bit late, Annette. I wanted to come and give you a hand, but I had a lot of work,” he apologizes.

“Don’t worry. Graça and I we can to do dining room because Àlex he have now helper in kitchen.”

“A kitchen hand? Great. That must mean that things are going well. I’m happy about that, because it also means you can start paying back what you owe me…”