“None of the above, thank you very much.” I heard one of Manda’s three progeny scream bloody murder in the background. “Oops. I have to go. Might be blood. I’ll call you later. He said he’d call you after work tonight. Don’t forget one word! Remember every part of the conversation.”
I used the edge of the couch to do some tricep raises. “Who’s going to call?”
I could hear the smile in Manda’s voice. “Avery Malachowski.”
“Whaaat? Why? How? Where did you see him?”
“He’ll tell you all that.” I was losing her, I could tell. The duration of an average phone conversation prior to Zara’s birth five years before was two hours, twenty-one minutes. Since the onset of lactation, the average call was down to four minutes, thirty-four seconds. “Bye! Everyone say ‘Bye, Auntie Char!’”
She clicked off in the middle of the kids’ warbling, and I held the phone, still breathing hard from my workout. I hadn’t thought about Avery Malachowski in nine years, though I’d thought plenty about him in the months leading up to those years. He and I had lost touch after finishing culinary school together—he disappearing into the shiny, happy restaurant scene of southern California and me diving into the shark tank of New York City. We’d toyed with the idea of continuing our relationship, one of us piggybacking on the other’s opportunity and looking for a job on the coast we didn’t want. But we’d parted ways, not too sadly, as I recalled, as we were both fiercely ambitious and primed to conquer the culinary world.
I took a ferocious pull on my water bottle. Avery Malachowski, I thought as the water level dipped. The last I’d heard of Avery, he was working as a sous chef on a cruise ship. I wrinkled my nose, remembering all the news reports of cruise passengers being pummeled with stomach viruses. I untied my laces and walked barefoot into the kitchen to grind some fresh coffee beans. I put the fine grind into the waiting glass carafe, and, as I watched the coffee brew, it occurred to me that Avery might be in town. Maybe he was fishing for a date or a drink when his ship docked or whatever it was that cruise ships did. Did cruise ships even dock in Manhattan? That kind of behavior sounded distinctly New Jerseyish.
My phone vibrated to announce a text. Manda had taken a screen shot of her Facebook exchange with Avery and had typed above, “See! He’s dying to see you! Yearning! I think the word is yearning!”
The Facebook conversation merely showed Avery’s request for my number, nothing about a marriage proposal or running away together. Manda was not getting enough sleep if she seriously thought a few words on social media meant promises of undying love.
I did a double take as I looked at the clock. I cursed as I sprinted to the shower, leaving my French press to over-steep and my dirty socks on the kitchen floor, two transgressions that would bother me throughout my hasty shower.
By the time I had my hair swept into a work chignon and my workbag slung across my winter coat, I had only a second to scoop up my phone and tuck it into my pocket, where it would sit, neglected, until after midnight.
2
I pulled the last ramekins from the oven and inhaled deeply. I could be wrong, but I doubted it: no more perfect smell existed than that of beautifully baked chocolate cakes.
“Dang, lady, those look like love in a dish.” Carlo tsked and shook his head.
I smiled at my little cakes. “Thank you. I’ve been tweaking this one for a while, and I think I finally have it. I added just three more grams of raw sugar per cake when greasing this time, and the cacao content is up from 68 percent to 70 percent—”
“Aaaand, I don’t care, honey. Sorry.” He took the tray from me and nodded toward the swinging door that led to the front of the house. “Me savory, you sweet. Plus, everybody’s here for family meal, and Chef is itching to start. A hungry restaurant staff is an angry restaurant staff. You go first.” He paused by the swinging door. “I’ll follow you.”
I stood before the chilled bowl of just-whipped cream. With my spine curved over the bowl, I sifted a fine dusting of Valrhona cocoa onto the tallest peaks of the cream, then stepped back to evaluate.
Carlo groaned. “Restless natives, Garrett. Restless French natives. Get a move on.”