by Nadia Gordon
“Is that what’s in the alcoves?”
“That, and the rare wines that the sommelier handles. Some very old vintages, cult wines like Screaming Eagle and Harlan Estate, a bunch of terrific old Sauternes, older Burgundies. Anything too valuable to leave around where somebody might trip over it. And some exotic stuff. He has a case of hundred-year-old Venezuelan rum that’s about the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wine collection this extensive,” said Sunny.
“There’s nothing to compare with it on the West Coast. There are places in New York that have legacy stock that is harder to find, and certainly there are places in France with cellars that make this look like a closet, but they wouldn’t have any of the California wines.”
They heard the door open and turned to watch a man walk toward them with brisk steps. He was slender, with taut, slightly hawkish features and slate gray hair. He stopped a few feet from them.
“Can I help you find something?” he said.
“Speak of the devil,” said Andre. “Remy Castels, this is Sunny McCoskey. I was just telling her about our wine collection.”
Remy stepped forward and placed his hand in hers. “Pleased to meet you.”
They stood in the half light without speaking. After a moment, Andre said, “We were just on our way out.”
Remy gave them a clipped smile and they walked toward the door in silence. Sunny felt his eyes follow her. She and Andre climbed the stairs and emerged into the dining room, its high ceiling and warm light a welcome change from the cellar. Andre cleared his throat and gave her a look.
“Are we in trouble?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. Besides, I can’t be in trouble, I’m the boss, kind of.” He gave a smile of false modesty, lacing his fingers and extending them to crack his knuckles. “However, Remy can do pretty much whatever he wants. He’s one of about forty Master Sommeliers in the country. That’s pretty good job security.”
“Is he always like that?”
“You mean the human iceberg? He’s been more aloof than usual lately. We had a weird thing happen last week. A magnum of Champagne burst in the cellar. Good stuff, too. I’ve never heard of it happening before. Remy said it’s bad luck, like when a mirror breaks, only worse because you’re out the Champagne.”
“What do you mean it burst?” said Sunny.
“It built up pressure for some reason and the cork blew. There was Champagne everywhere.”
“What would cause that?”
“An impending brush with evil, according to Remy.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “He doesn’t really believe that, does he?”
“I don’t think so. Or at least I hope not. But he has definitely been grouchier than usual lately. He’ll warm up when he resurfaces. The cellar brings out the inner wine troll.”
They stood quietly, Andre ruminating on some thought, Sunny watching a haze of dust motes roll in the afternoon light.
“He’s not all bad,” said Andre at last. “He’s incredibly knowledgeable. The guy can tell Côtes-du-Rhône from Côte de Brouilly from fifty paces without reaching for his corkscrew.” He looked behind him to see if Remy was there. “He’s just overly territorial.”
2
Sunny was in the locker room at Vinifera buttoning up her chef’s jacket when Rivka Chavez walked in, her cheeks flushed with the cold. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a suede welding jacket that didn’t look very warm. Rivka didn’t like winter and never seemed to dress for it, as if ignoring it might make it go away. Two long braids hung down her back from underneath a navy blue bandanna. Rivka had been working at Wildside with Sunny since she graduated from culinary school a couple of years earlier.
“Fancy,” Rivka said, looking around at the sage green lockers and the row of gleaming shower stalls. “I’ve been to spas that didn’t have dressing rooms this nice.”
“It’s okay,” said Sunny. “It doesn’t compare to changing in the office at Wildside, of course.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Rivka dryly. “It also doesn’t compare to hosing off in the garden when it’s thirty degrees out.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“Is that supposed to sound like a perk?”
“Cold water is good for the circulation. The Inuit have known that for years. Helps prevent varicose veins.”
Rivka snorted and perused the rest of the amenities. There was a long mirror with a counter in front of it arrayed with an arsenal of blow-dryers and hair products. There was even a pitcher of ice water with slices of lemon floating in it. Rivka picked up a blow-dryer and held it like Angie Dickenson aiming a pistol. “Freeze, scumbag! Hair police!”
Sunny gave her a look.
“Have you seen the resident stud, I mean chef?” said Rivka, putting the dryer down and taking off her backpack.
“Affirmative.”
“And?”
“Three words: total monster babe,” Sunny said, trying not to blush.
“I like the sound of that.”
Rivka stepped out of her jeans and took a pair of ugly cotton pants printed with a black-and-white houndstooth pattern out of her backpack. She swirled her hands, amassing imaginary thunderheads. “The clouds are gathering, I can feel it. The great McCoskey love drought is about to end.”
“It’s about time. I’m pretty tired of doing the rain dance.”
“A bit of advice. Don’t wait six months before you kiss the guy this time. Remember the Charlie Rhodes phenomenon.”
“I know, we’ve been over it,” said Sunny. “Besides, that was different.”
“The man was different but your style stays the same,” said Rivka. “You are a notoriously slow mover. The guy gives up from exhaustion before you give him the green light. You’ve got to let things happen more quickly. On the other hand, I wouldn’t sleep with this guy right away. He’s obviously an overachiever hotshot type. This is a man who likes having the best of everything, and he knows the best doesn’t come easy. He wants to work for it.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about that quite yet,” said Sunny. “I hardly know him.”
“You’ve known him for a year.”
“I’ve known of him for a year.”
“You’re being defensive. That’s a good sign. For tonight, I recommend the middle course. Have a good snog and say goodnight. It’ll be like you’re sixteen again.”
“Hello? Rivka Chavez? If you’re still in there, stamp your foot twice. Sleeping with him tonight is not an option. Snogging with him is not an option. As far as I can tell, I’ll be lucky to have coffee with him.”
“Whatever you say,” said Rivka, giving her a knowing smirk.
“I can’t hook up with him tonight, anyway. I need time to get comfortable. I have trust issues,” said Sunny.
“You have mortality issues,” said Rivka. “You’ll be seventy-five by the time somebody passes all your tests. Trust me, Andre Morales is a good guy.”
Sunny looked around to make sure the locker room was empty. “What do you know about Andre Morales? You’ve never even met him!”
“I know he’s been on your radar for months, and he’s the chef at the snazziest joint in town, and Monty worships him.”
“What? I didn’t know Monty even knew him.” Monty Lenstrom was a local wine merchant who had been a mutual friend for years.
“He doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop him from going on about how Andre Morales was at this party and Andre Morales was on television and Andre Morales says cauliflower is today’s most underrated vegetable. He even told me about seeing him playing tennis at Silverado and how he has just the right amount of hair on his legs,” said Rivka, making air quotes and blinking meaningfully.
“He said that?”
“Could I make something like that up? Only Monty would analyze the amount of hair on a man’s legs. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t just go ahead and turn gay. It’s not like it wo
uld surprise anyone.”
Rivka finished getting dressed.
“There has to be something wrong with Andre Morales,” said Sunny, stuffing her street clothes in a locker and shutting the door.
“Nope, he’s perfect,” said Rivka. “I say go for it. No credit check, no trunk and glove box inspection, no web searches, no best-friend character references, no phone calls to the parents. This guy is pre-approved for the night.”
“You’re giving pre-approval to someone you’ve never met.”
“I’ve never met Sting, but he’s pre-approved.”
“This is all very interesting, but we have about three hours to make enough pasta to feed a hundred and forty hungry socialites. On y va?”
“Vamanos.”
They found the kitchen a noisy hive of activity, with white-jacketed cooks busy at every station. Since Sunny’s tour, the kitchen had taken on a buzz of controlled urgency. Andre made brisk introductions all around, then went back to managing the flurry of tasks. Sunny and Rivka got started, and were quickly absorbed in the wordless familiarity of cooking. Within a few minutes they were cranking out pasta and simmering an assortment of wild mushrooms, including the ones Sunny had collected that morning.
Everything was going smoothly until she added dried morels to the mushroom sauce. She found a gallon jar of them in the pantry, shook a good-sized mound into a saucepan, and covered them with boiling water. When they were soft, she drained the liquid into a saucepan where a batch of chanterelles was simmering and started chopping the reconstituted morels, which she then added to a large stockpot full of mushroom sauce. She repeated the process with a second heap of morels. She was nearly finished chopping the second batch when she noticed something funny about one of them. The shape looked slightly wrong. Morels ought to be honeycombed. This mushroom looked wrinkled. She pushed it aside and sliced it open. Inside, membranes formed several chambers. Morels are hollow, with just one chamber. She poked through the morels until she found another wrinkled one and sliced that open. Again, multiple chambers.
She turned off the heat on the saucepan and covered it, then did the same with the stockpot. She dumped the morels on the cutting board into a pot and put the lid on.
She sighed and stood looking at the cutting board with her hands on her hips, fuming.
Rivka looked over. “What’s up?”
“False morels. Not so good,” said Sunny. She caught Andre’s eye and waved him over.
Andre concurred without hesitation that all the sauce and all the mushrooms should be discarded. He thanked Sunny sincerely for noticing the problem, said they should send a runner out for more mushrooms, and then moved on to talk with another chef who was signaling for his attention.
“He’s pretty calm for someone who almost served toxic mushrooms—his toxic mushrooms—to a restaurant full of his best customers,” Rivka said.
“He did the right thing and he did it authoritatively and gracefully,” Sunny said with appreciation. “All we can do now is wait. I don’t know what they’re going to find at four o’clock on a Sunday, but we can’t get by with just these.” She poked at the few remaining chanterelles she had picked.
All the runner brought when he returned was a few pounds of supermarket mushrooms and a dank bag of shiitakes. Sunny held up a button mushroom to Rivka.
“This is not good,” Rivka said.
“Hang on, I’ll bet they’ve got a few cans of cream of mushroom soup in the pantry,” said Sunny sarcastically. “That’ll fix it up!” She felt like she was going to laugh or cry, maybe both.
“Let’s just hope they keep the wine flowing out there,” said Rivka.
Sunny went into the pantry and came back with a bottle of white truffle oil. “White gold to the rescue.”
Three hours later, they put up the last serving of fettuccine, upending the stockpot and scraping it to get at the sauce. A waiter came by with glasses of wine. Rivka ticked hers against Sunny’s and drank. Her face glowed with sweat.
“Who are we doing this for again?” she said.
“The Napa County Open Space Coalition.”
“Let’s just write them a check next time.”
“Done,” said Sunny. She smoothed her bangs to the side with her fingers. “You didn’t happen to bring the evil fire sticks, did you?”
“I did.”
“Let’s go. I can definitely justify one after that ordeal.”
They walked through the kitchen to the back patio and pulled up chairs at a long plank table under a tree. A heat lamp hissed overhead, warding off the chill.
“Do you think we pulled it off?”
“Maybe,” said Sunny, striking a match. “It was not our best work, that’s for sure. But you can get pretty far on heavy cream and butter.” She exhaled. “Not to mention truffle oil. I’m just happy we didn’t poison anyone. I can’t even think of it.”
“What if you weren’t the one handling the morels? What if nobody noticed before it was too late?” said Rivka. “Somebody could have died, right?”
“Probably not. The potency varies. I’ve never heard of anyone dying from them, but I certainly wouldn’t want to take the risk. Apparently people eat them in Sweden and Norway all the time, but I’ve always been told they’re highly toxic. They actually have the same chemical as rocket fuel. Plus the poison builds up in your system, so maybe you’ve been eating the occasional false morel mixed in with your regular morels your whole life without a problem, then one day you take a whiff of the steam while they’re cooking and drop dead.”
“Rocket fuel in your fettuccine,” said Rivka, shaking her head.
Sunny sat back, watching the smoke trail up from the cigarette and feeling the short, sweet wave of relaxation wash over her. She called it the squeegee effect, the way nicotine passed through her mind, wiping it clean for a minute or two before a rain of thoughts pattered over it again. They listened to the muffled clatter of pots and clink of dishes from the kitchen. Their dish might have been a disaster, but at least it was over. At least nobody was going to get sick. And who knows, maybe no one noticed that there were hardly any mushrooms in the mushroom sauce.
“I think I might try out one of those showers before dinner,” said Sunny.
“What, and waste a perfectly good layer of kitchen funk?” said Rivka, stubbing out the last of her smoke. “I feel like I’ve been dipped in duck fat.”
3
Family meal, as the management called staff dinner at Vinifera, started late and went later, often transitioning into a poker game the waiters played until the early hours of the morning. On Sunday night, after service wrapped up for the fundraiser, the staff, both front and back of the house, slowly gathered around the plank tables out on the patio and drank wine. Wide dishes of polenta, grilled vegetables, and roasted meat and fish arrived and were passed around. After an event like Night of Five Stars, there was plenty of good wine left over from tables that had ordered far more than they could drink, leaving bottles standing open and full, ready to be spirited out to the back patio.
Family meal was well under way when Andre Morales finally joined them. Of the several places to sit, he chose the one next to Sunny.
“It’s cold out here, aren’t you freezing?” he said, rubbing her shoulders briskly before he sat down.
They began a hushed conversation about magical outdoor suppers they’d been to, and how at the good ones everyone would linger, talking and sipping wine, tethered to the table in the failing light and unwilling to go inside even when it got cold and dark. When he turned to talk to her, his face was very close. At those moments, her whole field of vision was his eyes. The rest of the table would bubble up with laughter and rowdy voices, then subside into small, quiet conversations, but it was all background noise.
Remy Castels, the sommelier, appeared periodically, carrying a bottle in each hand and walking up and down the two tables, filling glasses. Once he came out with a magnum of ten-year-old Nuits-St.-Georges in one hand and a tasty six-ye
ar-old Bandol red in the other. He seemed to have gained weight and color since Sunny had met him in the wine cellar that afternoon. Now his face was almost cheerful as he went around the table urging people to finish off their glasses so he could fill them with something else. Across from Sunny, a woman with short, spiky hair dyed electric blue at the ends leaned forward to light her cigarette from a tea candle. She exhaled and caught Sunny’s eye. “I understand you ran into some false morels,” she said.
Sunny nodded. “Dried ones. Mixed in with the others in that big glass jar.”
“First the Champagne bottle jinxes us, then there are poison mushrooms in the pantry. This place is getting pretty scary,” said the woman. “I’m Dahlia, by the way.”
“Sonya McCoskey,” said Sunny. She turned to Andre. “Do we know where they came from yet?”
“They would have come from our usual supplier,” he said. “A guy up in Portland. I left him a message about it.”
“I’m not an expert but I can tell the difference between a false morel and a real one,” said Sunny. “It would surprise me if a person who makes his living selling mushrooms would make that kind of mistake.”
“Yeah, but who knows who he has working for him,” said Andre. “He certainly doesn’t pick everything himself. Most of the suppliers get their mushrooms from the seasonal crews that come through town every winter. I’ve always wondered how reliable they are.”
“You mean the mushroom gypsies,” said Dahlia.
Sunny sipped her wine. “I learned to cook from a woman who said you should always know exactly where every ingredient comes from. That ideally, you would be familiar with the actual place it came from. We always visited the local farms and orchards. She liked to see exactly where everything was grown. She would taste every ingredient before she used it, and taste every dish before she served it. Of course, you can’t do that in a place this big.”
“Are you talking about Catelina Alvarez?” said Rivka.
