The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What was he, a skinhead or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did you say about his suggestion?”

  “I ignored it. I didn’t think he really wanted a swastika on the plates.”

  His stare suggested I was being less than totally forthcoming. Or maybe I just read that into his stare because I was.

  “Then why did he suggest it?”

  I didn’t want to implicate anyone. I did want to tell the truth. “The head chef had criticized him rather severely in front of the whole staff. Barry was just venting his anger.”

  “They have a bad relationship?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve only been there two days.”

  “Maybe they had a confrontation.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he looked at me as if he expected me to confirm or deny the confrontation.

  “The only time I ever saw them interact was when the chef scolded him.”

  Duran stared at me a few seconds more.

  “You see him since Saturday?”

  “Yeah, I saw him at work yesterday, but we didn’t speak.”

  “So the only time you ever spoke to him was Saturday for a couple of minutes?”

  “Right.”

  “So how do you suppose he ended up dead in your vehicle?”

  I shook my head. “I started thinking about that after I made the 911 call and calmed down.”

  “And?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He stared at me. He was good at starring because he didn’t blink. He chewed his gum. Chomp, chomp.

  Finally he said, “Any theory?”

  “Maybe someone put him in my Bronco because the window was down.”

  He stared at me some more. Then he looked down at his note pad but didn’t write anything. He was reading his notes. “Don’t tell anyone that Stiles was found in your vehicle.”

  I wanted to ask why, but all I said was, “O.K.”

  “And don’t leave town.”

  “I live in Albuquerque.”

  “O.K., don’t leave the state.”

  18

  I walked to Schnitzel and discovered the police had been there and everyone knew about Barry Stiles. Presumably they didn’t know where his body was found, so when the saucier, Maria Salazar, told me he was dead, I said that was terrible and went looking for Jürgen Dorfmeister.

  I found him at his station cleaning the grills.

  “I need to talk to you. Outside.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I need a smoke.”

  We went to the loading dock, and I asked him if he’d actually slept in my Bronco.

  He exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Only for an hour. I was freezing when I woke up. But that was good because I was sober. So I walked home.”

  “When was that?”

  “About one o’clock.”

  “Did you see anyone around the truck as you left?”

  “No. It was the middle of the night.”

  “No one outside the garage maybe?”

  “Why all the questions?”

  I lied. “Something is missing from the Bronco.” Yeah, an explanation for why a dead man was in it, I thought to myself.

  At that point, Scruggs stuck his head out and told us everyone was gathering in the dining room.

  Molinero announced that the police had informed him that Barry Stiles had passed away. No one gasped. Molinero told us the cause of death had not yet been determined. An investigation was ongoing. He asked for a moment of silence. When the moment had passed, he said we would close for the day in honor of Barry and be back at work the next morning.

  As people began to rise from their chairs, I blurted out, “Excuse me” more loudly than I had intended. When everyone turned to me, I said, “I’d like to say something.”

  They sat back down. Molinero looked perplexed.

  I cleared my throat. “The Titanic had thirty two cooks. When it sank, thirty one of them died. They were not fellow employees of Auguste Escoffier, but he published their pictures and biographies in his magazine. He also raised money for their families. I think we need something other than a moment of silence for Barry Stiles.”

  They were staring at me as if I were an idiot. I didn’t blame them – I felt like one.

  “What do you propose?” asked Molinero.

  “I don’t have a specific proposal. You knew him better than I did. Did he have a family? A favorite charity?”

  Dead silence.

  Alain Billot said to Molinero, “If you like, I could look into the matter and make a recommendation.”

  Molinero looked relieved. “Thank you, Alain.” He looked around the room. “Does everyone find that satisfactory?”

  A few heads nodded. A few faint yeses were murmured.

  “Fine,” said Molinero, “see you all in the morning.”

  As people dispersed, I went to my workplace. I put the test piece with my experimental glaze in the kiln and stared into the kiln as the elements began to glow.

  “That was very nice of you.”

  I turned to see Maria Salazar in the doorway.

  “It felt awkward,” I said.

  “But you spoke up. That’s the important thing. I don’t think people liked Barry very much, but he was a colleague, and we should do something.” She hesitated. “I don’t know what.”

  “Me neither. Maybe Alain will come up something.”

  “Maybe.” She took a couple of steps into the private dining room. “I saved you a seat next to me when I saw you had been trapped by M’Lanta at the first few meals. But then you sat next to Jürgen. Maybe you two are pals?”

  I laughed. “I guess we are now. Last night…”

  I remembered I was not to tell anyone Barry was found in my Bronco, and telling her about last night would lead in that direction so I changed course and said, “Actually, I sat by him because he’s Austrian, and I figured he could explain what we were eating.”

  “I could do that, too. I have to know all the dishes. I’m the saucier.”

  She said it like she meant it.

  “What will you do with your day off?” she asked.

  “Well, I can’t go home because my truck …”

  Oops. Can’t go there either, I thought. She must be thinking I have early Alzheimer’s and can’t finish sentences.

  She smiled. “Won’t start? I noticed you walked to work this morning.”

  “I like walking, although it’s cold today.”

  “But the sun is out. Would you like to go for a walk with me?”

  “Sure. Let me get my jacket.”

  We walked to the Plaza, our hands in the pockets of our jackets. She asked me how I knew about Escoffier and the cooks on the Titanic, and I told her I’d been reading his memoires. She asked me about my work. She didn’t know anything about Indian pottery, so I pointed out some of the pots in the store windows and told her about them.

  She pointed to a shiny purple jug with an iridescent glaze. “What about that one?”

  “That’s called a raku glaze. That’s all I can tell you about it. I only know Indian pottery.”

  “But it was made by an Indian. It lists his name and pueblo on the little sign there.”

  I squinted to read it. “So it does. But it’s not traditional.”

  “Is that bad?”

  I shrugged. “People are free to make whatever they like. I stick to traditional designs.”

  “You sound like Gunter,” she said teasingly. “I wanted to do creative new sauces for some of the dishes, but he said, ‘We must use the traditional sauces’,” she said, trying to imitate his voice. “Did I sound like him?”

  “No,” I said, “but you did sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

  She laughed and placed her hand inside the crook of my elbow. I escorted her around the rest of the Plaza like a gentleman. When we finished our lap, she said, “Would you like to have lunch?”

  We ate at La Casa
Sena, no doubt one of the reasons Santa Fe was on Alain Billot’s list of best restaurant towns in the United States. Maria had the poblano chile relleno stuffed with saffron quinoa, yellow squash, crimini mushrooms, asadero cheese, and something they called red chile tropical sauce. Her professional opinion as a saucier was that the sauce was perfect. She gave me a taste and I agreed. She offered me a taste of the stuffing, but I declined because it had quinoa, the eating of which I suspect explains why the Incas never developed the wheel. Quinoa has become popular in New Mexico recently, perhaps because it’s related to the tumbleweed. The main difference is the tumbleweed tastes better.

  I had the New Mexican trout which came with grilled asparagus, cucumber and lemon salsa, achiote and sweet pea rice and Cuban mojo. I rarely eat in restaurants. I enjoy my own cooking and don’t like crowds.

  La Casa Sena is crowded for good reason. The food is great. The crowd didn’t bother me because we had a corner table, and I was too intent on the food and Maria to pay much attention to anything else.

  I ordered a split of Gruet.

  Maria countermanded my order by telling the waitress, “We’ll have the full bottle.” Then she looked at me and said, “Half bottles are for work days.”

  We talked about food. She asked if her poblano chile was the same thing as a chile she had seen in a grocery store labeled as a pasilla. It was, but only because the one in the store was mislabeled. I was happy to show off by explaining that a true pasilla (“little raisin” in Spanish) is a dried chilaca which is used only to make sauces. It is long and narrow whereas the poblano is short and wide. Confusingly, many grocery stores and even some restaurants use the words poblano and pasilla interchangeably.

  We also talked about pottery, and of course we gossiped about Schnitzel’s workforce.

  I tried to get the check, but Maria insisted we split the bill. “It’s lunch with a colleague,” she said. “If it were a lunch date, I’d let you pay.”

  She smiled and my knees went weak. Maybe it was the champagne.

  19

  Santa Fe was at its best. Dry snow flakes floated through piñon scented air. The shops were gaily lit and full of holiday shoppers, some of them residents, most of them tourists taking a break from the skiing.

  No one on the street knew that Barry Stiles had died. Even the people at Schnitzel who knew it didn’t care. They had a restaurant to open.

  So why did it bother me? Did Barry Stiles care that his passing left no void? Do the dead have cares?

  I decided the last question was beyond my metaphysical powers, so I turned to one I might have a chance of answering. Why do we hope people will miss us and speak kindly of us when we’re gone? Why do we secretly want to play Tom Sawyer and listen to our own eulogy?

  The answer, I concluded, is that our concern about how we are remembered is not really about that. It’s just a surrogate for caring about how we are regarded in the here and now. We don’t want to be spoken of badly when we are dead because that means that now – while we are still alive – people don’t like us.

  I reached this profound conclusion just as I reached La Fonda. It was four o’clock. But it was five o’clock in Texas. That was only about 180 miles east.

  Close enough. I went to the bar and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. I was in a brown mood.

  An Anasazi pot sat on a flagstone mantel above the fireplace. I thought about the woman who made it. If she walked into the bar, she would recognize only two things, humans and her pot. Metal stools, glasses, lights, doorknobs, written words and books would be no more than strange shapes to her. The same sort of thing would likely happen to us were we to return in a thousand years.

  I think she would be happy to see the pot. She would ask why we have it. I would tell her we treasure it because it is a thing of beauty and because it makes us feel connected to her. I would invite her to my shop. I would ask her to make a pot in my workshop.

  By the second bourbon, I had imagined the whole thing as a sequel to Back to the Future.

  I was expelled from graduate school for digging up and selling three Anasazi pots. It wasn’t illegal back then. The University thought it was immoral. I think it’s immoral to leave treasure in the ground. Like Tom Sawyer, the ancient potters would love to know what we think about them. We honor them when we display their work. We dishonor them when we make modernist adaptations of it.

  I was thinking of ordering a third bourbon when Jürgen Dorfmeister walked in.

  “I thought you might be here,” he said as he sat down next to me. He looked at my glass. “You are drinking scotch?”

  “Bourbon.”

  “Barman,” he shouted, “another bourbon for my friend and a Glenmorangie for me. Make it a double. I have some catching up to do.”

  When the drinks came, he lifted his and said, “To the memory of Mr. Barry Stiles, garde manger extraordinaire.”

  I drank to that. I felt a little better.

  “Did you know him well?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you really think he was an extraordinary garde manger?”

  “He was a man. He had feelings. He deserves a proper toast. The facts are irrelevant at such a time.”

  We stayed in the bar enjoying a dinner of bar foods – pistachios, salsa and chips, peanuts, and some strange hard sausages. In Spain, I suppose they would have called the snacks tapas and charged accordingly. In the La Fonda they were free to their good customers, a status Jürgen and I had earned by purchasing multiple rounds of expensive beverages.

  I enjoyed my time with Jürgen. He didn’t ask me to drive him home. He didn’t ask to sleep in my vehicle.

  I left at nine-thirty to check my kiln because that was when I expected the test firing to be complete. It was cold out but I had plenty of antifreeze inside me and a good jacket outside me. I enjoyed the late-night stroll to Schnitzel which took only twenty minutes. I unlocked the front door and entered. Light came from the kitchen.

  Even though I had a key and every right to be there, I suddenly felt like an intruder. I walked quietly to the twin swinging doors and peered through the little window in the right one, the door we were all supposed to use as an entrance only.

  I didn’t enter. I tiptoed to my work area and hid behind the table. The low reflected light went out. I heard footsteps. I saw a figure move silently towards the front door, open it and leave. I knew it was M’Lanta Scruggs because the light had been on in Molinero’s office. It was the sight of Scruggs leaving that office that kept me from entering the kitchen and sent me scurrying behind my table.

  I gave him plenty of time to vacate the neighborhood. Then I checked the kiln, decided the firing was complete and turned it off.

  I went to Molinero’s office and tried the door. It was locked. I tried my front door key in the lock. It didn’t fit.

  I went back to the hotel to think. My first thought was that Scruggs was up to no good. My second though was not actually a thought. It was a feeling – guilt at suspecting a black man of ill-doing.

  So I asked myself if I would have formed the same conclusion had the person leaving Molinero’s office been Arliss Mansfield. I answered myself that I would. People in someone else’s office at ten o’clock in a dark and locked building arouse suspicion no matter what the color of their skin.

  But on second thought, Scruggs might have a better reason for being there than Arliss. Maybe M’Lanta had janitorial duties in addition to his scullery work and had just finished cleaning the office. A chef is less likely to have cleaning duties than a pot scrubber, so it would have been more suspicious to see Arliss in the office.

  My machinations on racial profiling weren’t helping me answer the one practical question confronting me – what, if anything, should I do?

  20

  The completion of the test firing provided an excuse to visit Molinero’s office.

  I found him there Wednesday morning and knocked on his door. It had a window through which I saw him as he stood up. I pr
etended to take his standing as permission to enter and turned the knob hard enough that it clicked.

  It was locked. Molinero walked to the door, placed a key in the slot, and unlocked the door.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize your door was locked. Maybe I should come back later.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I keep the office locked at all times because the personnel files are in here.”

  “And the safe,” I noted. It was a big one, built into the wall.

  He laughed. “Yes, for keeping the hordes of cash we’ll rake in starting on Monday. I see you have the charger.”

  “Actually, it’s only a test piece.” I handed it to him. “This is the background glaze I propose.” I handed him a piece of paper. “This is a sketch of an edelweiss that would be in bas relief.”

  He looked at the clay and the paper. “Excellent.”

  “You don’t want to study it for a while or talk it over with anyone?”

  “No. I like the drawing. I like the glaze.’’

  I was surprised at how easily he gave his consent for the design.

  I took a deep breath. I hate delivering bad news. “I can probably have four real chargers ready by Monday, so you’ll have a set for one table. But it will be at least a week and maybe even two before we’ll have the full one hundred.”

  “Even with the commercial place doing them?”

  “They aren’t the problem. They can glaze and fire a hundred plates in two or three days. The bottleneck is me. It will take me a long time to form the plates.”

  “Can’t that place – clay feet? – form them?”

  “Yes, but that would add to the cost. And I kind of wanted to do them myself to make sure they’re right.”

  “I’m sure they can follow your prototype. And don’t worry about the cost. We need everything to be here as soon as possible.”

  I was grateful he wasn’t upset about the delay or the additional money. I felt guilty about the negative opinion I had formed of him.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “No. I’ll start work right now on the prototype. I’ll be sure to finish in time for the place to be cleaned up before we open.”