Vanilla Salt (38 page)

The whole thing’s like an absurdist comedy.

Today they have a meeting with Frank to go through the Vanilla Salt orders. The business is booming. Although there aren’t many online sales to individuals, a range of small businesses all around the country, from gourmet shops and village bakeries to small supermarkets, are starting to sell their products. The little book of recipes with ideas about how to use the flavoured salts is quite an attraction. In brief, they’re happy with the way things are going.

It was a good idea. Frank happily accepted the job as a Vanilla Salt salesman, not so much for the money he expected to be paid because,
to start with at least, he didn’t have a fixed salary. Basically, he was tired of hanging around doing nothing all day. Àlex and Annette were generous. They gave him a share in the business – their way of thanking him for the help he gave them in the form of boxes of fish on the doorstep all those months.

“Good morning, family,” Frank calls as he comes in the door. “I’ve got a big delivery today. Have you got it ready? That family in La Garriga loved the meatballs and now they want sautéed black-eyed peas and veg. Two servings.”

Annette has had the good idea of offering home-cooked dishes on the Vanilla Salt website. Once they’d got through all the upheaval of finding somewhere to live, moving into a house on the Maresme coast and settling in, Àlex started to get restless. In other words he was being a pain in the neck. He needed some action and wavered between starting a vegetable garden in the backyard, which was impossible, because there was only enough room for one tomato plant, or setting up a couple of tables in their tiny dining room to have a miniature restaurant of sorts. An inactive Àlex is like having a full butane gas cylinder right next to a blazing fire. Annette was terrified that if she didn’t find a way of calming him down, she’d find customers at a table in the toilet. But no bright ideas occurred to her.

Then, one day, she was clearing the table after lunch, in despair because she couldn’t find a space in the fridge for the enormous quantity of marinated salmon with apple and ginger that Àlex had prepared. All of a sudden her brain lit up. Yes! She didn’t have to look for ways to amuse a retired Àlex. She just had to get him working as a chef again.

Àlex can’t live without cooking. He went off to the market early every morning and came back loaded with supplies, after which he spent all morning in the kitchen cooking their lunch. But when he sat down at
the table he wasn’t hungry and hardly touched his food, while Annette was piling on weight. Her trousers were tight. She felt terrible about throwing food out, but there was no way she could finish what he served. Impossible! Àlex cooked for ten. The fridge was groaning under the weight of cooked delights: bits of this and that, bowls of leftovers and near-full saucepans. Seeing the fridge in this overstocked state gave her the brilliant idea.

On the Vanilla Salt website she added a section of accessibly priced takeaway dishes cooked by the great chef Àlex Graupera. “Take Àlex Graupera’s art and skills into your own home,” her slogan urged. “Luxury meals at everyday prices,” she promised. The response was more than satisfactory, with orders flooding in as soon as they posted their new products. They had to rush out to buy takeaway containers and the fridge was now liberated… and Annette even more so.

In their small house by the sea Àlex is now cooking up the customers’ orders, plus a little extra so they can have a stock of dishes. They’re getting plenty of work. The only investment they’ve had to make is a vacuum-packaging machine, so the dishes will last a little longer. They’ve designed some labels for “Àlex Graupera in Your Kitchen” and Annette works hard, writing up the ingredients in every dish, the use-by date and how to serve the dish at home. Now they’re preparing Frank’s order for La Garriga. They also have to deliver some Vanilla Salt packs in the village and takeaway dishes to several homes.

“Bye, my friends. This is going great.” Frank sets out again.

Now is Annette’s time. She sits down at the computer. She likes surfing the web, reading her friends’ blogs, looking for ideas for her cakes and new flavours for the salts. Best of all is having time to write her book on the history of food. Àlex has finally convinced her to share her anthropological knowledge and she’s enjoying herself enormously. She hasn’t
found a publisher yet, but that doesn’t matter. The most important thing for Annette right now is that she’s having fun writing it. In order to make her account more appealing, she’s embellishing the text with recipes by the chef she loves most: Àlex Graupera.

As she writes, she takes a break to gaze out the window. She can see a tall cypress tree and, behind that, the dark-blue spread of the Mediterranean. She feels privileged, aware that sitting by a window overlooking the sea is a huge gift and, more than anything else, that she’s here by the skin of her teeth…

The phone interrupts her musings. Òscar. They’ve been trying for days to find time to meet up. They’ve invited him to dinner several times, but he’s too busy. Now he says he has some good news, but they’ll have to meet up this weekend if they are to see each other at all.

Àlex and Annette are intrigued and also delighted that Òscar’s coming to see them. They plan an exquisite dinner. Àlex gets into the car and goes off on a pilgrimage (as he puts it) to find the best products in the region. He buys the vegetables from a farmer friend and lamb at the Mataró market, then heads off to the fish auction, to get the fish straight off the boats.

He comes home as happy as a sandboy. This is going to be a memorable dinner, worthy of a five-star restaurant and with no skimping on ingredients: teardrop tomatoes from Girona, ratte potatoes, bell peppers… they’ll lack for nothing. He’ll also make guacamole to go with the salt-cod salad. It’s a complete menu with all the ingredients that Annette has helped him to rediscover and love.

MENU “In Celebration of Òscar”

Salt cod salad with watercress and guacamole
Vegetable and foie gras terrine with black chanterelles
Marinated fresh anchovies with green-olive hollandaise sauce
Oven-baked baby monkfish
Powerhouse chocolate and hazelnut cake
Soupçon of sublime carrot cake
by Canada’s best pastry chef

They’ve spent all afternoon working together, calmly, without stress and with all the time they want. Just the two of them, cooking whatever they feel like. Àlex is concentrating on his black chanterelles, treating them like the jewel in the crown. Annette, making her
sablée
pastry, which has to be done by hand, is touched to see how tenderly he deals with every single mushroom. Her hands are coated with the butter-and-sugar dough, which is unavoidable. Like a serial killer, she sneaks up on Àlex from behind and wipes her hands all over his face.

Àlex yells and, when he turns round to get his revenge, sees her running upstairs. He races after her, yelling, “You’ll regret this, really regret it!” He corners her in the bedroom, hurling himself on top of her, and they fall on the bed. Annette struggles in Àlex’s strong arms and then gives up. Their eyes meet.

Annette uses the only muscle that she can work at present. She starts licking the sweet dough off his face. Happy, loved, cherished and serene, he lets her. He adores this bloody woman who likes playing such childish games as covering your face in
sablée
dough. He raises her floral skirt and starts caressing her. She whispers, “What about your black chanterelles? You haven’t finished cleaning them.”

“Don’t you worry about the black chanterelles. They can wait.” Àlex, very aroused, has other priorities now, and they make love, coated in sweet, buttery dough.

They whisper, as if keeping secrets from the spider watching them from its corner of the ceiling. They’re in heaven in their small, bare, inconspicuous room. No one knows that they’re here, in this
tranquil, humble oasis, decorated only by two naked sweaty bodies, ecstatic at having found, after so many years of struggle, someone with whom to share a double bed three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.

“We’re two loners cohabiting for the sake of convenience,” Àlex often says, to annoy Annette. Certainly it suits them to live together, but it’s about finding themselves, being fully human, and recovering all the self-esteem that was lost in all those difficult years.

They don’t notice the time passing. They can no longer see the sea. It’s dark outside. The doorbell rings.

“Shit, Òscar!” Annette shrieks, as she throws on some clothes.

“Your skirt’s inside out,” he warns, too late, as she’s already running downstairs.

The superb dinner is only half ready. They wanted to receive their friend with a beautifully set table, candles lit and a well-chilled Godello in the fridge. The dining room’s a mess. The shopping basket’s on the floor in the middle of the room with its haughty pedigreed vegetables peering over the edge. The kitchen’s completely topsy-turvy, with the sink full of half-cleaned chanterelles, a chocolate cake waiting to go into the oven and the hostess with her skirt on inside out.

“Well, well, well, so this is the glorious dinner you promised me,” Òscar smirks.

Judging by his hosts’ appearance, he imagines that only two things could have happened. Either someone’s beaten them up or they’ve been wallowing in sensual raptures, and since there are good vibes everywhere, he opts for the latter explanation.

They look at each other and burst out laughing. OK, no problem, they’ll have the over-the-top dinner tomorrow. Today they’ll open up a few servings of “Àlex Graupera in Your Kitchen” and enjoy a good drop of Penedès red, a Mas Comtal Petrea.

They sit at the unset table, onto which they’ve thrown a few pieces of cutlery, the uncut bread on its board, the unopened bottle, paper napkins and vacuum-packed takeaways fresh from the microwave, all scattered round the table.

Annette and Àlex are keen to hear Òscar’s news, but he makes them wait till dessert, a few slices of watermelon and a half-eaten box of chocolates which Annette produces from a drawer. Now, at last, he’s ready to talk.

“So, I’ve come to tell you that I’m going to work in Cupertino, in California. I’ve got a job with Apple, an IT man’s dream. I’ll be working in their research department. The best of the best. I can’t believe it. Next Friday I have to show up at the office of Jonathan Ive, the boss of the department where I’ll be working.

“That’s amazing, Òscar! Congratulations. But… you don’t speak a word of English, so what are you going to do about that?” Annette asks.

“They’re arranging a teacher for me and I’ll be doing an intensive course. I’m not going there on some scholarship, you know: I’m going in big-time. Jonathan Ive himself sent me an email. But here’s the most incredible thing about this story… It’s all because of the fuss we kicked up when we showed that Carol had poisoned the journalists. They heard about it at Apple, and now they see me as a possible hacker, someone worthy of their respect.”

“A hacker? But you didn’t hack anything. You did a great job sending out the news, of course, but you didn’t do anything fraudulent,” Àlex says.

“Well, it was a bit… mmm, well… very fraudulent actually. Àlex, do you really believe that anyone would have taken any notice of the story if I’d sent it out from my computer? Of course the video proved that Carol did it. There’s no doubt about that. But the whole thing could have been a home-made set-up job.”

“What did you do, Òscar?” Annette sounds like a teacher who’s ticking off some wayward boy in her class.

“Please don’t be cross with me, Mademoiselle,” he mocks. “I got into the office of the Spanish News Agency.”

“What! What do you mean you got in there? How? Are you mad?” Annette screeches.

“You don’t always need keys or a picklock to get into an office. You need a key, yes, but a virtual one. I got in through the Agency’s software, working from home, take note. Nice and warm, with the heating on and in my pyjamas. The news was sent out as if it were coming from the Agency, with all the authority attached to it,” he explains.

“But that’s serious fraud. They’ll get you for this. They’ll get all of us!” Annette is really alarmed.

“Don’t worry. There’s no problem at all. The news was signed ‘E.D.’ Who the hell is that? Esther Duran, maybe? Or Elena Dorca? Or Eva Donadeu? Or Eugenia Díaz? All of them work in the Agency, but not one of them sent out the item. And, anyway – the logo that heads the news, guarantees it and testifies to its authenticity – wasn’t the exact logo. One letter was missing. It’s practically imperceptible. So no one noticed. I fiddled with the logo and also the name. If you look carefully, you’ll see it says ‘Spansh News Agency’. Just one little i is missing. No one can blame them, and they’ll never find us, since I worked through their computers. The police won’t come looking for us because no one’s reported it. But the guys in Apple did find me. They know all the hackers and they like the ones who aren’t delinquents, as in my case. They see us as highly skilled and daring.”

Annette gets up from the table heaving a big sigh of relief. Phew. She’s always unwittingly getting caught up in something illegal. She’ll just have to get used to it, she thinks. What else does life have in store for her?

She comes back with something to go with the coffee. Àlex is still chatting with Òscar about his American adventure, and they’re so carried
away with the subject they don’t notice what Annette has served them. They munch away automatically. This is something sweet, crunchy and tasty. After polishing off quite a few, Àlex asks, “What’s this, Annette?”

“Caramelized sunflower seeds. From the beautiful, spectacular flower that greatly impressed the Spanish. They planted it in their gardens for show. But many, many years passed before they planted it as a crop. Today it is the most important industrial crop of all the foods that came from the Americas. The edible seeds are just a little bit of the story. They make oil from them, and people consume quite a lot more of this than olive oil.”

Àlex gets militant. “Not here. This house uses olive oil, and will use only olive oil!”

“Don’t worry, we don’t have one single bottle here. Òscar will have to get used to it though. In the United States, olive oil is more expensive than Périgord truffles.”