Felix mumbled to himself as he walked away. I was sure there was a nice peppering of French expletives in there, but I kept my eyes on the work of prepping the mousse. While the gelatin softened in a bath of champagne vinegar, I whisked egg whites and sugar to high, stiff peaks. Irresponsible? Sloppy? A teaspoon or so of egg white sprayed onto the backsplash, and I was nearly manic in my attack of the mess.
I’d folded the egg whites into the strawberry purée, incorporated the whipped cream, and was carefully spreading the mixture into twelve waiting pecan crusts when Felix reemerged from whatever vermin’s hole he’d been inhabiting. I didn’t look up from my work, just trained my eyes on the soft pink mounds of mousse, thinking words like uniformity and precision and true revenge would equal prison time.
I sure wasn’t going to turn around and look, but it sounded as though Felix was getting started on some prep work, perhaps portioning the gold leaf or garnishing the first few rhubarb tarts. He was quiet, anyway, and when I’d filled the final crust, I straightened, feeling my spine resettle into an upright position. I picked up the baking sheet, nice and easy so as not to upset the perfectly formed crusts and quivering mousse, and I turned slowly to go to the fridge, but the tip of the tray bumped into Felix’s girth. He had appeared out of nowhere.
He looked down his nose and over his glasses at the desserts.
I lifted my chin, daring him to say anything about the beauties before him.
To my horror, he stuck one fat finger right into the center of one crust. The finger emerged, cloaked in strawberry mousse, and then made its way to Felix’s mouth. He rolled the filling around his mouth and then pursed his lips before spitting it out onto the floor.
“Needs more sugar,” he said in a disconcertingly serene voice. Only his eyes betrayed his spite. “Do them all again.” He wiped his finger on a clean towel and nodded to the puddle of his spit on the floor. “And clean that up.”
Little stars floated at the edge of my vision, and I made a concerted effort to keep breathing. Felix was watching me with a bemused expression, and I saw Alain approach from the periphery, his countenance serious. I let my chin drop to look at the beautiful, photograph-worthy tarts I held before me. I looked up again, my eyes searching Alain’s face, waiting for him to come to my defense, shred Felix for his behavior, say anything.
He set his mouth into a thin, straight line.
And he said nothing.
One by one, I released all ten of my fingers and watched a ribbon of pale mousse and silver metal go clattering to the floor. A wide arc of pink sprayed upward, but one tart remained pristine. From some part of my brain, I could hear Felix shouting about the mess on his shoes, but I told that part of my brain to just pipe down for a minute. I had one more thing to do. I crouched to the floor, cradled the only remaining, perfect tart, unfolded myself to my full height, and smiled at Felix.
“I quit,” I said, pushing the tart into Felix’s face, giving one extra turn of my wrist into his nose before the empty tart pan clattered to the floor.
Carlo and Danny were whooping it up around the corner while I shivered into my still-damp coat. I walked on unsteady legs to the back of the kitchen and stepped around Alain.
“Charlie,” he said.
I shook my head once, hard. “Too late,” I said and kept walking, pausing only to push open the door and venture back into the rain.
Halfway down the block, I noticed a smear of mousse sheltered on the inside of my thumb. I licked it off and shook my head.
Delicious.
And it most certainly did not need more sugar.
I slept the better part of two days after the Tart Incident. I have never loved Egyptian cotton like I loved it for those forty-eight hours. A few times, I stumbled to the kitchen and forced myself to eat a dollop of Greek yogurt or a slice of whole wheat toast, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I just trudged back to my little slice of five-hundred-count heaven and went back to sleep. After two days of this, I lay in bed, willing my eyes to stay shut but feeling them pop open anyway. The Chihuahua said it was just after noon.
Sitting up on the side of my bed, I felt light-headed and ridiculously well rested. Was this how normal people began a day? Without the pounding headache and the feeling like one was swimming through molasses on the way to the coffee pot? I picked up my phone from the nightstand and turned it on for the first time since I’d given Felix’s face a mousse mask.
I shoved a tart in Felix’s face. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, what had I done? I swallowed hard and felt my pulse quicken. What had I been thinking? The weight of my five seconds of glorious retribution weighed heavily on me, and I let myself fall back again onto the bed.