Vi’s team was the best. The life of them, raucous and heated on the terrace, relaxed Vi, and she grinned at them as she ordered them another round of drinks.
That was right. Who the hell did care if their reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor were now down to an average of two stars out of five, thanks to all the trolls who had found it hilarious to go online and laugh at the “food poisons the president” thing? (Even though the American president was still sitting in Washington, DC, and hadn’t even boarded his stupid Air Force One for Paris yet.) Who cared what idiots thought?
She took another sip of beer, just to help her not care what idiots thought.
Her second, Adrien, a dynamic twenty-two year old with a passion for food and theater and art that blended well with hers, and a young man whose sense of command wasn’t predicated on sexism like Quentin’s had been, leaned forward, gesturing, his black hair flopping over a high forehead as he articulated every way the idiot trolls could go choke on their fast food burgers and die.
Amar, chef de partie, scraggly beard and hair caught in a small ponytail but nevertheless escaping in frizz in all directions, gesticulated, forgetting his beer glass and then sipping the beer that spilled off the back of his hand while everybody laughed.
Lina slouched back in her chair, amused at something Mikhail had said, but not quite as easily laughing. The pressure might not be as acutely on Lina’s name as it was on Vi’s, but nobody knew where the damn salmonella had come from yet—if it even existed, which Vi still refused to believe—and if it came from the pastry kitchen, the guilt would feel horrible.
If there was salmonella, Vi would really rather it came from her part of the kitchens. Nobody else to blame. The buck stops here.
She squared her shoulders. Because these shoulders could take it.
Beyond Lina, Vi could glimpse the great statue of Marianne in the center of the Place de la République, where very, very recently she and everyone here had left flowers in memorial, weeping. Dozens of huge protests for all kinds of issues had filled République since then, of course, a sign of how the city pulsed with life no one could put out. Right now, a group in roller skates was dancing to a boom box from which, occasionally, a particularly loud sock hop refrain reached them.
Lights played with the dark everywhere—the red lights of cars braking, the warm lights spilling out of cafés, bouncing off red awnings to pick up additional tones, gleaming in shades of warm and dark off paving stones, and glowing from street lamps against the great white marble base of Marianne and over the skaters, the people watching the skaters, the groups passing and crossing, heading toward home or stopping at the cafés and bars.
Vi loved this quarter. The kind of place where students and young people just starting their careers could still afford to go out, where the theaters were full of music and comedians and small, quirky plays.
Screw the critics. She had her faithful. They’d come back.
She didn’t cook for the critics of the world anyway. Nor for the president of the United States and his First Lady, however nice that would have been. She cooked for the people of this quarter. The workers and the children of immigrants and the artists and the actors, the young people with good jobs starting to move in as the quarter got more and more expensive, the people who came here to hang out because the other side of Paris was too pale, too fake, too BCBG and bourgeois for them. They wanted to keep it real.
“Thanks, guys,” she told her team. “It’s nice to have you on my side.”
Up on the rooftops, she caught a glimpse of four silhouettes running and leaping and smiled a little. Des traceurs de parkour. It was always fun to catch a glimpse of them. Like a glimpse of luck. Of energy. Movement without rules. She should do some kind of dish that evoked parkour. Height and vertigo and no limit to the lines of movement.
No limit. And if you had a bad fall, you picked yourself back up.
And avoided the kind of man who pushed you down mid-leap.
She nodded to herself firmly. Avoid him.
And let that be a lesson to you: the next time you catch a burglar red-handed, don’t sleep with him. As ways of meeting men go, the fact that he’s breaking into your kitchens is never a good sign.
Chapter 14
“What part of go away do you not understand?” Vi demanded, keeping the chain on the door.
“I brought something.” Chase held up a small backpack.
“Did you do something to Quentin?”
“Quentin?” Chase looked vague. “Small guy, kind of scrawny?”
“He always seemed big to me,” Vi said dryly.
“It’s funny how many different perspectives there are on size and power, isn’t it?” Chase smiled at her happily.
“He called me, screaming about me siccing criminals on him.”
“Must have a guilty conscience if he’s that paranoid.”