Sugar: A Novel Part 1

Sugar.

a_novel.

Kimberly Stuart.

To Marc, always.

1.

WITH another shift almost completed, I wondered for the millionth time if the restaurant business attracted a disproportionate number of insane people. I glanced at the oversized clock on the wall and saw the hands reaching for one in the morning-dawn would be creeping into Manhattan in a matter of hours.

Folding a damp towel into a precise square, I took a look around my pastry station. After the scrub job I'd just done, I needed a postintimacy cigarette. I narrowed my eyes and inspected the corners and crevices of the pastry station, looking for any remaining streaks or stains, and then ran my set of scouring toothbrushes under scalding hot water. Satisfied, I turned off the faucet with my elbow and stacked the toothbrushes in rainbow order on a drying rack. Five more minutes and I would be on my way home. The sweat p.r.i.c.kling the back of my neck was just starting to cool, and I could practically feel the hot shower that beckoned me from my apartment three subway stops away.

The waitstaff had finished serving the second seating, tidied up, and clocked out. Hours ago, Executive Chef Alain Janvier had abandoned the kitchen of L'Ombre, one of New York's most prestigious restaurants. Embracing the perks that came with being the boss, he slid home in the comfort of his vintage Corvette. Even many of the line cooks had finished prepping their stations for the following day and had begged off, figuring any loose ends would keep until the next shift. I remained, tottering on exhausted legs and looking like every "before" picture of every TV makeover show, but remaining behind nonetheless. I wouldn't leave until the job was done. Done and gleaming.

But in one moment, my fantasies of the new body scrub that smelled like pomegranate and jasmine; the promise of a few hours' sleep in a clean T-shirt that had never seen the inside of a commercial kitchen; the room-darkening shades of my tenth-floor apartment in Soho-all that disappeared. My boss, the talented but unstable pastry chef Felix Bouchard, began yelling his head off. He was on the hunt for blood, and I was unlucky enough to be the first person he saw as he rounded the corner from the storage room.

"Who took my baby?" He spoke with the intoxicating sensitivity of a French serial killer.

Felix Bouchard had graduated with high honors from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. Before coming to L'Ombre, Felix had worked as pastry chef for a slew of Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe. He had served his famous apple b.u.t.ter crpes with marsala-laced vanilla sauce to the former president of Yugoslavia. He had been honored twice with a James Beard Award and had been nominated for it many times. Felix was unmarried, had no family to speak of, and hadn't been to a movie theater in seventeen years. But Felix was not a man without love. In fact, Felix's love for one particular object was unparalleled.

"Who took my baby?" he said again.

I peered through the metal shelving separating the pastry prep area from the rest of the kitchen. The dishwashers were barely visible in the fog of steam rising from the industrial sinks. The humidity was fierce, and the few of us who remained looked as if we'd survived a tropical Armageddon.

"She is gone," Felix said. His comb-over had dislodged from under his toque. No amount of Aqua Net could defend against the air of the kitchen.

I snapped shut a container of spindly vanilla beans, marked the container with my trademark yellow painter's tape, and cleared my throat. "What are you missing, Chef?"

Felix narrowed his eyes at me. In my early days at L'Ombre, before I'd earned the right to boss around a few underlings myself, I'd once saved Felix's ample a.r.s.e during a Valentine's Day disaster by running down the block to Sal's Grocery to buy a box of sea salt. This was the first in a long line of logistical rescues I had performed on his behalf throughout the many years that followed. His present sneer suggested he had no memory of these events, or of the indentured servitude I offered him every single day.

"Charlie, I am missing my knife. My best knife. My favorite knife. The one gifted to me from the great Jacque Pepin, may G.o.d bless his soul!" Felix bowed his head on those last words.

"Did Pepin croak?" Only I heard the m.u.f.fled voice of Carlo, my favorite and most irreverent of the line cooks as he emerged from the fog over by the dishwashers.

"Chef Bouchard," I said, "we don't have your knife. Right, guys?" I turned to the guys on the line. Rudy looked like he wanted his mom. He shook his head of red hair with vigor.

"Not a chance, dude," Rudy said. "I'm way too scared of you."

Felix was almost distracted by the compliment. "Thank you. But where is the other line cook? The new one. Blond. Pale. Pimples."

I turned as Danny came whistling down the hall. He stopped by my side when he saw everyone staring at him.

"Chef Bouchard has lost his knife."

"I do not lose my knives!" Felix erupted, jowls flushed and quivering. "Someone has stolen my baby. She is six inches long. Nothing is her equal for slicing stone fruits and scoring pte sucree!" He started to panic, rummaging around people's stations, provoking complaints and exhausted tempers.

Danny cussed quietly. He looked shaken. Then he spoke, his voice low and struggling to compete with the noise from Felix's scavenger hunt. "Chef Janvier asked me to run to the walk-in for b.u.t.ter at the end of the second seating. The carton was sealed ... and I wanted to get right back to Chef ... I was in a hurry, so I-"

The kitchen had grown quiet. Felix stepped so close to Danny, he could have hugged him, though that would have violated his personal code of avoiding tender human interaction.

"Why are you whispering?" Felix spoke sotto voce, eyes trained on Danny's.

Danny pulled a knife from the pocket of his ap.r.o.n and handed it over. "I'm so sorry. I was going to-"

Felix moved too fast for anyone to stop him. His cut was clean and shallow, across the inner, fleshy part of Danny's forearm.

"Do not touch the baby," he said, already wiping the knife clean.

A tide of protest enveloped Felix as he ambled back to his corner. The staff was so vocal in their disapproval, no one heard Danny drop to the floor.

I scooped the b.u.t.terfly bandage wrappers into a neat pile and dropped them into the rubbish bin under my counter. Standing over the pastry sink, I scrubbed up again, washing off the smell of the Band-Aids, an objectionable odor that reminded me of the murky depths of public swimming pools. I watched as Danny, still looking pale and squeamish, inspected my handiwork.

"The wound is shallow," I said. I snapped a paper towel off the roll above the sink. "It should heal fine. You don't need st.i.tches, but I'd still keep it covered, especially when you're working."

Danny looked up, his lower lip quivering. "I cannot believe him. What kind of a freak slices open someone's arm because he wants his toy back?"

I sat on a stool opposite Danny. "The man spends fifteen hours a day crimping and whisking and performing odd rituals, all in the name of pastry perfection. I know it's no excuse, but conflict management isn't exactly high on Felix's list."

Danny shook his head. "No one in culinary school tells you that the restaurant business can be so ... so violent!" The poor kid had started at L'Ombre just a few months ago, but already he had developed some sort of heat rash on his neck. Stress, I guessed. I had been out of school for almost a decade, but I might as well have been the kid's elderly grandmother. Grandmothers had seen it all, and so had I. Right then, I was more impressed with the blister forming underneath one heel of my new chef's clogs than I was with Danny's rose-colored view of the world.

Danny inhaled shakily, eyes still on the bandages on his arm. "Psycho. I'm telling Chef Janvier tomorrow." His eyes sparked with defiance. "I know they're friends, but he has to see reason. People shouldn't be able to stab other people at work and get away with it."

I pondered that statement, my gaze scanning the exposed ceiling pipes above us. "Hypothetically, all of what you say is correct. But unless you can make forty-five covers of sixteen different desserts by tomorrow night, I'm guessing the best you'll get is a pat on the back and a free pack of cigarettes."

"You coming, Nurse Garrett?" Carlo called from the back door. "I want to get home before I have to be back in this place."

"Be right there," I called back.

Danny frowned as I pulled on my coat. His eyes were somber. "Chef, have you ever been stabbed at work?"

I restrained myself. My first instinct was to laugh at Danny's question. "No, I have not." I began b.u.t.toning my emerald green wool coat, a recent and indulgent purchase made in an effort to survive the last dregs of this interminable New York winter. "But I have a lovely collection of burns up and down my arms. And once I saw a chef have a nervous breakdown during rush and strip down to a pair of nasty, raggedy red underwear while he sang 'The Macarena' to a pot of squid."

Danny's eyebrows had lodged up north of his fringe of bangs.

I tugged my bag from my locker and pulled on my mittens. "And, one time during a practic.u.m in culinary school, my favorite pastry prof got so frustrated with a slow student's pace that he took a ball of kitchen twine and started running circles around her. He had her arms totally pinned before he was discovered by the headmaster and fired on the spot." I shook my head. "Too bad, because that man made the most exquisite phyllo I'd ever tasted."

When I looked down again, Danny was slumped over my counter, his forehead planted on the stainless steel. I lifted his head with careful hands and slipped a tissue underneath before letting it rest again on my clean countertop. "Go home and get some sleep. Things will look much better tomorrow."

"It already is tomorrow," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled by his arms.

I sighed and felt the arches of my feet object as I walked to the back door where Carlo was waiting. Danny was barely of drinking age and he still had neck acne, but he would learn, just as we all had.

Carlo and I forged through the cold edge of early morning, and I was grateful for my warm coat. He was headed to the BM5 bus to Brooklyn, and I was catching the 6 train to my apartment in Soho.

"Poor kid," I said after walking a block in silence.

Carlo grunted. "Hazing. Just part of the game, mami."

I nodded from within the coc.o.o.n of my woolen scarf. "We have weird jobs."

Carlo's laugh sounded more like a bark. He punched me on the shoulder before turning into the wind and walking toward his bus stop. "That is an understatement. Hasta lueguito, amiga."

"Say hi to Lupe for me," I called, but I was pretty sure my words were lost in the gust of wind that lifted them away.

A scant few hours later, my alarm clock sounded, and I awoke under protest. As I extracted one hand from under my down comforter and reached for the snooze b.u.t.ton, I remembered again how much I hated that clock and its Chihuahua-like chime. I shivered and then plunged my hand back under the covers. My eyes felt glued shut, and I was certain I had bags under them.

"I'm too young to have bags," I groaned and turned onto my side. The Chihuahua stared at me with its sleek front piece and cool blue numbers. "You can't possibly understand."

It was time to get up. The day needed a jump start. Wasn't an active lifestyle supposed to keep a girl alert and stave off senility?

And, I thought as I slipped out from under the covers and slid my feet into my waiting slippers, a date wouldn't hurt. Half my queen-sized bed remained pristine and untouched after my night's sleep. I pulled my side taut, tucking the sheets exactly six inches from the headboard and covering that with my favorite Supima cotton blanket, then the down comforter, which had cost me dearly but had retained its shape and gave me four seasons of perfect temperatures. I tugged one of the throw pillows toward the center of the bed and felt the familiar thrill of perfect symmetry. I padded over to my dresser for my first costume change of the day.

I opened the top drawer and scanned through the drawer separators left to right before selecting one item from each section: sports bra, tank, running capris, and socks. My mother's voice intruded my thoughts as I dressed and laced my shoes.

"You need to worry less about perfection and more about your future. Let's talk about your eggs, honey," she'd said on the phone recently. "I'm concerned about your eggs."

"My eggs? I prefer organic, large, free-range, thanks. And I have at least a week until they expire."

She'd scoffed. "The eggs in your ovaries, sweetheart. You're thirty-two, and that is a dangerous age in terms of fertility."

"Mom," I tried again, "things are different in New York. I know Amber Murphy just had her fourth-"

"Eight pounds, two ounces. Beautiful baby girl. White-blond hair, just like James."

"Fantastic, but I don't live in Minnesota. I live in Manhattan."

"Well, la-di-da and congratulations," she said, still completely unimpressed a decade after her daughter had defected from the Midwest to an unknowable and sprawling city with high rent and a rat problem. "I'm just trying to warn you, Charlie, that's all. I heard a report on Dr. Oz, and I think your eggs are getting crusty."

I straddled my treadmill and pulled my hair into a pony while waiting for the machine to power up. "Crusty eggs," I said aloud and then louder, to the Chihuahua, "I have crusty eggs!"

I started running at a faster pace than normal, irritated with the world. I should not have started the day with a pity party. After years of toil and self-denial, my career was finally gaining momentum. Executive Chef Alain had started talking me up to the other cooks. When Chef Andersen from Aqua had visited a week ago, Alain had introduced me as "the formidable and brilliant Charlie Garrett." Over coffee the previous week, he'd a.s.sured me again that Felix was on the cusp of retirement, and that his long-ago promise to me that I would take over as head pastry chef at L'Ombre was just around the bend. Of course, after last night's debacle with the knife, I might have fallen a notch, but, in general, work was good.

Most days, I could reconcile the fact that I was ticking along in my thirties, nary a man or family in sight, but enjoying the pa.s.sion and thrill of a job I loved. Of course, there had been sacrifices, I acknowledged as I took a grade 8 hill for a two-minute interval. I gripped the heart rate monitor, noted an excellent anaerobic number, and kept running. One had to sacrifice things like romance and dating and marriage proposals if one was going to go anywhere in the restaurant world.

"It's totally been worth it," I panted to the heart monitor, which rewarded me with an increase in beats per minute.

With each stride, I glimpsed the top half of my face in the mirror by the front door as I bobbed up and down. I was going to need a serious Estee Lauder intervention before heading back to the restaurant at noon. Circles under the eyes, sallow complexion, eyebrows in need of disciplinary action-and that was only the top half of my face. I ran faster, watching the numbers on the display pad arch upward and feeling a lovely layer of smugness descend over my foul mood.

"Can a woman with elderly girl parts do this?" I puffed, feeling sweat run between my shoulder blades and down my back. My abs contracted and I felt another swell of victory. Women with supple, baby-making eggs had s.h.i.tty abs. And they had to work twice as hard for legs that looked good in a miniskirt, right? Of course I was right. I had my abs and my legs, and one day soon I would wear something other than chef's whites in public and then show off those legs and abs. Maybe I'd put my crusty eggs to work after all.

"Gross," I said aloud.

I slowed to a jog for a three-minute cooldown and walked on jelly legs to the rug in front of my couch and sat down on my yoga mat. I tucked my feet under the linen fabric of the couch and started crunching. There! See! I exclaimed as I exhaled with each crunch. The couch was one tailored and Scotch-guarded example of what a little sacrifice can garner a girl. While my job at L'Ombre was not about to afford me a house in the Hamptons, I did fairly well. Well enough to be able to buy a linen couch and six accent pillows with real down inserts. I noted all this as I completed my forty-fifth crunch. And, I also had a complementary, but not matchy-matchy, set of armchairs in a midnight blue chevron, thank you very much. Not to mention a spot in a neighborhood that was still up-and-coming. I had shed the woes of my closet-sized studio three years prior, and my linen couch and I were doing very well with the adjustment to s.p.a.cious clean lines and exposed brick.

One hundred. I lay back on the yoga mat, listening to my heavy breathing. My hands rested on my midsection, and I was pleased to feel how flat things remained after taste-testing fourteen variations of our new eclair a few days prior. I rolled onto my stomach and pushed up into plank, then started in on my push-up regimen. I watched the timer on my iPhone count down as I started my first set of twenty in thirty seconds. I couldn't imagine this was doing me any favors in the bust department as I glimpsed my schoolgirl offerings flattened by my sports bra. I was deliberating over the relative advantages of having Mich.e.l.le Obama arms over b.r.e.a.s.t.s that would need something more than a training bra when my phone rang. I startled, dropping to the floor and fumbling for the phone. I picked up when I saw the ID.

"Hey," I said, turning on speakerphone and going back to plank position. "I'm doing push-ups."

"Dang," Manda said. "I was hoping you were having s.e.x."

"I don't do that anymore. Plus, I would never answer the phone under such conditions, not even for you." Fifteen, set two, sixteen, set two ...

"You're panting. Stop panting and talk to your best friend."

"No," I said. "Twenty-four push-ups to go."

"How about stopping early just this once?" She was quiet while I ignored that ridiculous suggestion. "Okay, then. Well, I won't keep you, but I thought I'd call before the day ran off its tracks, as it most certainly will ..." I could hear commotion in the background and then heard Manda again. "Wait-hold on-Zara, no! Rubber cement is toxic. No! ... Dane, honey, keep your diaper on until Mommy can help you. Clean hands are happy hands. Come on, ruffians, let's have breakfast."

I made a face when I considered exactly what was on Dane's little hands. If the past was any indication, they were things that might eventually start to sprout or mold. I stared at the phone, momentarily worried that such virile germs could pa.s.s through a telecommunication system like little, super-smart terrorists.

"Wait." I let myself drop to the mat and glanced at the clock. "Why are you calling me so early? Isn't it like 5:30 a.m. in Seattle?"

Manda sighed. "Oh, to be young and frivolous with time once again."

"We're the same age."

"But you are single and childless. And frivolous with time. Nevertheless, you have to make time for a very special phone call today." Her voice had taken on the sing-song quality all humans adopted when getting ready to set up their lonely single friends with other lonely single friends.

"Who is it? Bald? Divorced? Yoga instructor?"

"None of the above, thank you very much." I heard one of Manda's three progeny scream b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sengers 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 gla.s.s 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.