Hungry Woman in Paris

by Josefina López

  Then I looked up and saw the vagina—I mean the purse—of my dreams. It was a black leather bag with a gold zipper standing high and mighty all by itself. I approached the counter and stared at the bag. Yves told the unoccupied LV saleswoman to bring it down for me to look at. I immediately opened the bag and inspected the suede interior. It was so brand-new, not a scratch or a speck of dust. Just holding it made me feel like a virgin again. The gold zipper looked like a garden snake with a gold line, all curved. Yves saw the genuine excitement in my eyes until I saw the price: 695 euros… almost a thousand dollars!

  “Can I buy it for you?” Yves asked. I took a moment to absorb his question.

  “You want to buy it for me?” It didn’t feel like a gift to celebrate our lust for each other as much as a good-bye present. I guess I’d done such a good job of convincing him how much I cared for him that he was now afraid I had serious feelings for him and had to say good-bye.

  “Yes. Let me buy you this bag,” he insisted.

  “Yes. I would love that. Merci, chéri,” I said, accepting that whether he bought me the bag or not, whatever we had was over. Yves gave his French ID to the LV saleswoman and she quickly found his account. I took a peek at the monitor when he wasn’t looking and saw he had made so many purchases of bags that either his mother was getting an LV purse for Mother’s Day every year or he was a serial purse giver and this was his M.O. for getting rid of women. I guess American men take you on a romantic weekend getaway and then break up with you, and Frenchmen give purses. Hey, at least he didn’t take me to a Dodgers game to break up with me, like some Latino men do.

  Yves’s platinum card cleared and the transaction was complete. We were given a receipt and told to wait for our merchandise at the main counter by the entrance. Yves held my hand and told me I was beautiful. Now he was being so sweet. Yves was going to break up with me or not call me again and this was the way he did it. He’d started out as a fine wine and ended up being just fermented grape juice.

  Close to us, an American tourist grabbed a purse that a Muslim woman was considering buying. The Muslim woman reached for it and took it away from the American woman. She was shocked by the American’s rudeness and pulled it out of her hands.

  “Don’t you be pulling it out of my hands when I’m looking at it!” screamed the American tourist. The Muslim woman yelled back in Arabic or bad French and a tug-of-war ensued. The LV “CIA” agents quickly escorted the American woman out while she shouted, “You fuckin’ French bastards, why aren’t you kicking her out too! Kick the veiled rich bitch out too!” Everyone watching shook their heads and silently thought to themselves, “Stupid Ugly Americans.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Eat Woman Drink Man

  Cooking is too serious a job to leave to women,” Chef Sauber said via the translator at a demonstration. Sage turned to me and rolled her eyes. That comment was almost as bad as one of Chef Tulipe’s—“That is why women should be in the kitchen; for those special jobs that require little delicate hands”—and Chef Plat’s—“You have to be strong to be in a kitchen because it requires a lot of stamina and strength, ladies.” Chef Chocon was the worst with his comments: “This is the kind of steak that keeps your husbands happy” and “Handle the quail the same way you would handle a young bride.”

  “Have any of the chefs ever called you ‘Chef’?” asked Sage. I thought about it. “You mean refer to me as ‘Chef’?” I asked for clarification.

  “Yeah, especially after they grade you. I’ve only heard the chefs calling the men in my group ‘Chef.’”

  I took a few seconds to wonder why I’d never heard the chefs telling the male students, “This is the kind of fish that keeps your wives happy so they won’t do the plumber.” Or “When you graduate from here you will go home to your girlfriends and your wives and make them very happy and satisfied.” It was clear to me, and to many of the women, like Sage, who were serious about becoming chefs, that for the French chefs the women were there to become better cooks for their husbands. The men were there for a career; the women, for self-improvement.

  “There is only one woman who owns a restaurant with a Michelin star in all of France, and she inherited it from her father,” revealed Sage. I saw how upset she was and sympathized with her. She had worked as a cook and was tired of the sexism she personally experienced in the culinary industry.

  “What does it matter if you are talented and ambitious if you are a woman?” she lamented, shaking her head. “It’s just not fair,” muttered Sage.

  “All the nuts in this school have a rancid smell; even the chefs,” Henry once said when he was being a naughty translator. That joke summed up everything. All the chefs who taught at the school, with the exception of Chef Plat and Chef Frédérique, were in their fifties and came from a different generation, one in which sexist comments were perfectly fine; or maybe “politically correct” had no translation or place in France. Henry had also jokingly informed me, “Didn’t you know, Le Coq Rouge is the place where old French chefs come to die?”

  Nobody studied for the written exam. It was ridiculous to study so hard for a test that didn’t matter. In a professional kitchen no one will ask you which fish has four fillets; they will just want to see you filleting them and doing it right. So when the woman giving the test turned around to talk to Françoise, everyone would whisper to his or her neighbor for the answer. I rushed through it and finished it quickly.

  I sharpened my knives and went over the ten recipes in my head. Bassie and I were taking turns describing all the steps we had to memorize. Becky came up to us and told us that someone who worked in the kitchen had seen the ingredients and the recipes for pavé de boeuf or the blanc de barbue poêlé, the beef and the fish dish. Bassie and I disregarded the eight other recipes and focused on those two instead. Sage came over and sat next to me and began sharpening her knives violently.

  “So what are the two recipes again?” she asked me.

  “It’s the pavé de boeuf and the blanc de barbue poêlé… Man, I hope I get the beef recipe because the fish one has so many steps and we still have to have enough time to make the hollandaise sauce by hand, which is the extra recipe to prove our technique,” I admitted.

  “If you get the fish recipe, I’ll exchange with you. I like the fish recipe,” Sage said while scraping her chef’s knife against the sharpening steel.

  “Thanks,” I said, touched that she would do that for me.

  Chef Plat came down to the courtyard and asked Group D to come up; they were ready for us. We marched upstairs and waited in the hallway, as was the routine. The chef informed us that a red chip signified beef, and blue indicated fish. When my name was called I said a silent prayer, stuck my hand into the pot, and pulled out a red chip. I smiled triumphantly, knowing I would have more time and could make fewer mistakes.

  Pavé de Boeuf

  Beef Steak

  4 rump steaks, 140 grams

  peanut oil

  CELERY PUR´EE

  600grams celery root

  500milliliters milk

  salt, pepper, nutmeg

  CELERY FLAN

  400grams celery purée

  20grams butter

  100 milliliters to 150 milliliters heavy cream

  2eggs

  salt, pepper, nutmeg

  Decoration for flan: carrot, celery, and the green part of 1 leek

  GARNISH

  1 kilogram potatoes (waxy type) turned anglaise style

  150grams goose fat

  Decoration: 1 bunch chervil

  SAUCE

  100 milliliters Madeira wine

  400milliliters veal stock

  15grams butter

  1 truffle

  Chef Plat opened a small tin can with no label and took out the truffles for the beef dish. He handed me a small truffle as carefully as if he were passing me the baby Jesus.

  “Take care of your truffle,” he advised. “If you lose it or it’s stolen you will not
get another one.” I cut the truffle in half and used half of it for the sauce and the other half to make thin strips for decoration.

  Half an hour before the exam was to be over, my flan was still not fully cooked. It had been in the oven for almost fifty minutes and it was not cooked! The toothpick I stuck in came back moist. I checked the oven to see if it was at the correct temperature; there were no signs that it wasn’t working. Perhaps I added too much cream or maybe the oven was not functioning properly. I quickly seared the meat and made one piece rare, another medium rare, another medium, and another well done to show that I knew how to cook meat. I grabbed a pan for the meat to rest on, but I dropped it and it made a thunderous noise. Everyone stopped and looked at me. My hands were trembling so much I couldn’t make them stop. Chef Plat yelled, “Relax” in French. I had never been that nervous before. On many occasions my life had been threatened, but I had never felt scared; here I was merely trying to make food and I was mortified.

  With ten minutes left I started the hollandaise sauce for my technique test. I placed the metal bowl with the eggs over the bainmarie and whipped away like Minutemen were chasing me in the desert. I was dehydrated and dying to get to the finish line. With two minutes left I poured the failed hollandaise sauce into the presentation saucer and added salt and cayenne. It tasted watery and I knew my eggs weren’t cooked. I felt like such a failure: not only had I failed to fertilize my eggs by my societal deadline, but I also couldn’t even cook them on time. As my mother would say, “¡Ay, que vergüenza!” How embarrassing. What a disgrace.

  “C’est fini!” yelled the chef, announcing that time was up, ready or not. Sage yelled and begged for more time: “Une minute, s’il vous plaît!” I handed him my platter with my beef and my deformed celery flan. I swear I’d done everything I was supposed to do and yet it had turned out like dog doo-doo. Even the beautiful bird of paradise I had painstakingly designed on my flan looked like a cockroach. The chef covered my sauce and platter with clear plastic and wrote a number on it for the judges. Next to the other beef platters my dish looked mediocre. I sucked at turning potatoes and shaping them into perfect little oval things. No matter how hard I tried, I did not have the coordination to get them to look even or professional. This was not one of my talents, and it was painful to accept that even Benino, who was not the brightest guy, could turn out potatoes that could be served at a three-star restaurant.

  At the graduation ceremony the graduates of Intermediate Cuisine were called in alphabetical order and their ranking announced after. When they called Miyuki’s name, Sage made a face.

  “I knew she was going to come in first! It’s not fair,” Sage whispered angrily into my right ear. Bassie said a little too loudly that Miyuki had originally gotten the fish, but she didn’t want to do it so she smiled at the chef in charge of the exam and asked for the beef, and he happily obliged. This only added fuel to the fire. Sage had gotten the fish and was still pissed off at herself for being so nonchalant about the exam and finishing five minutes late.

  A snooty British guy named Jason got second place. “He’s such a jerk,” Bassie whispered in my other ear.

  My name was called and I was just grateful that I’d passed the exam and wondered who was whispering things about me. About one hundred students got their diplomas that day; everyone applauded because the ceremony had finally ended. I got my diploma, but I refused to look at my scores on my final sheet. I gave myself a consolation speech in the ladies’ room when I looked in the mirror: “I’m proud of you, Canela. For someone who never cooked a day in her life before cooking school, you did good.” If that didn’t help, two glasses of champagne would make me want to celebrate this and all the other small accomplishments. Bassie had also sought comfort in a bottle. She had already had too much wine, and was rambling about Henry being such a great lover.

  “What did you say about Henry?” I asked her, trying to make sure I hadn’t imagined what she’d said.

  “Ooops. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.” Bassie covered her mouth like a little girl who had just said a bad word.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to show her how nonimportant the whole Henry thing was to me.

  “I’m sorry. I know you were with him and—”

  “And you fucked him anyway… It doesn’t mean anything to me,” I assured her.

  “I see the way you look at him,” Bassie said, too serious for my comfort. Was she accusing me of something?

  “I don’t care. Have fun with him. He’s… fun,” I said to her nonchalantly.

  “You sure that doesn’t bother you?” she asked me.

  “No. There was nothing serious. Henry doesn’t get serious,” I confessed, showing too much emotion.

  “Ah! See, I can tell you still have feelings for him,” Bassie said, proud of her detective work. She giggled like a little sister having caught her older sister kissing a photograph of her latest crush. Although I liked Bassie most days, sometimes I wanted to treat her like a little sister and lock her in the closet or tape her mouth shut.

  “No… Look, let’s talk about something else. I know how lonely it gets in Paris, so I’m happy you have a new friend . . . with benefits.” I was trying to get the image of Bassie and Henry in sexual positions off my inner movie-theater screen. Bassie was not bad-looking, but I couldn’t imagine her being his type. I bet they were drunk.

  “Look. They brought out the macarons,” I announced and made a run for the dessert table to get away from the conversation. I grabbed a burgundy macaron and forgot my problems; the five-second sweet high I got from a few bites was enough to make me forget Henry. It was so delicious and sinful I couldn’t stop till I’d finished all the burgundy-colored macarons. Miyuki came up to the dessert table.

  “Are they good?” Miyuki asked in her British-accented English.

  “Yes. They are amazing. I must leave the table now or I’ll eat them all.”

  She tasted one and giggled. Miyuki was so pretty and petite, with white pearl earrings to go with her outfit. Chef Guillaume, the pastry chef, came up to her and told her he’d made the macarons himself, smiling like the big flirt that he was. She complimented him and laughed at his stupid jokes. I left the dessert table and looked around to see all the various groups and cliques; it was like high school again. Sélange came up to me and said that the administrator needed to talk to me; it was urgent. I left the celebration and went into the office. The administrator asked me to sit down, and that’s when I knew it was serious. I was expecting her to tell me that I had not passed and I was going to get kicked out or something bad like that when she started apologizing.

  “I don’t know how this mistake happened, but for some reason you are not registered for Superior Cuisine.”

  “I paid for all three courses at the same time,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, that’s why it’s unexplainable. But you’ll just have to wait fifteen weeks until the next course starts.”

  “Fifteen weeks!” I said, raising my voice. I couldn’t hide my anger. Fifteen weeks meant that I would be alone with my suicidal thoughts.

  “Well, why can’t you just register me back in?” The solution seemed so obvious I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t already done it.

  “Because it’s all full. There is absolutely no room left… Wait a minute. There is a class starting in ten weeks.”

  “Great. Then register me for that class.”

  “It’s an intensive class. Is that okay?”

  I had sworn to myself never to do another intensive class again, but the prospect of spending fifteen weeks away from cooking school with no real friend in Paris made me reconsider my promise. “Yes. It’s all right.”

  “Maybe you can work on your French in those ten weeks because Superior Cuisine is not translated,” she reminded me. I nodded, left her office, and went back to the reception. An hour later I went to clean out my locker. Sage walked into the locker room lost in her thoughts. She was smiling and I asked her w
hat she was scheming.

  “Who? Me? Why do you ask?” she said with a big smile.

  “You’re smiling. Two hours ago you were pissed off and bitter.”

  “What are you doing tonight?” she asked me, changing the subject.

  “I have no plans. As a matter of fact, for the next ten weeks I have no plans.”

  “What do you mean? You’re continuing with Superior, aren’t you?”

  “No, they screwed up and didn’t register me for Superior. Now I have to kill time on my own until Intensive Superior Cuisine begins, ten weeks from now.”

  I had agreed to meet Sage by the metro next to her apartment in the Maraïs. Sage had urged me to wear something sexy, so I was anticipating a blind date or some kind of setup. I was not prepared for her plans.

  “I got an invitation from Chef Sauber to come over to his apartment. He wants to cook dinner for me.”

  “He wants to cook dinner for you? Why do you want me to come along if he invited you?” I asked.

  “I started telling him about how much I wanted a stage at a three-star restaurant and how disappointed I was that I hadn’t placed. I worked so hard and I didn’t place. I practically cried in his champagne, so he felt sorry for me and invited me to dinner to talk about it.” Sage seemed a little too eager for me to believe her.