Dying for Chocolate

Was I staying after the party? Ha. I didn’t answer, but carefully put the cake down on the countertop. My arms ached. Then I rummaged through a cupboard until I found, miraculously, a crystal serving plate. That feeling of irritation, of being intruded upon, was creeping up. I needed to be alone to work. Never mind that it was his kitchen.

I said, “I’m staying to clean up, that’s it. Does Mrs. Harrington have a salad bowl she wants me to use tonight? I really need to get to work in here.”

“Oh, sure. It’s probably around here somewhere.” He didn’t move but eyed me steadily with a suggestive half-smile.

I pursed my mouth into my best imitation of a displeased schoolteacher and put my hands on my hips.

Brian Harrington raised his eyebrows again and said, “Am I being dismissed?”

“Sorry. I need to be alone while I work.”

He remained immobile while I began the hunt for a bowl. He said, “You were going out with Philip Miller, weren’t you?” I slammed cabinet doors and nodded curtly. He went on, “Did you hear his sister say something about giving his body to science?”

I found a salad bowl on top of the refrigerator and began to line it with paper towels. “He didn’t talk to me about being an organ donor. If you don’t mind, I’d really rather not talk about it.” So saying, I rattled through drawers looking for serving utensils.

“Aah. . .” he began.

What in the world was the matter with the man? I sighed to let him know I was put out and said, “Now what is it?”

He smiled. “Will Sissy Stone be coming tonight?”

“If I tell you, will you let me do my work?”

“Yes, you cute little thing, you.”

I picked up the cake and walked quickly toward the refrigerator. I said, “Sissy is coming tonight.”

I could feel him moving in my direction. He murmured, “That cake just looks good enough to eat.”

I hrumphed and opened the refrigerator with my elbow and knee. If I hadn’t been concentrating so hard, I would have realized how close he was. Suddenly there was a small nibble of cool lips on my neck.

He was kissing me.

I dropped the cake.

Crystal shattered with an ear-splitting crash. The mousse fillings splattered wildly, like cream and mud flung all over the floor. Clods of cake skittered in every direction. The tempered chocolate broke like bricks.

“You idiot!” I yelled.

Brian calmly surveyed the mess. “Sorry, dear,” he said mildly. “You should have been more careful.” He glided out of the kitchen.

I looked around. I think I was looking for a rope. The kind you strangle people with. I shouted after him, “Now what am I supposed to serve for dessert?”

10.

After twenty minutes of mousse, crystal, and cake removal, I traipsed back toward the Farquhars. The last thing I needed was more cooking.

I was so angry I was beside myself. I struggled to focus on André, my mentor in food matters. When I apprenticed with him at his restaurant in Denver, his shelves creaked under their loads of dense Callebaut chocolate and fragrant African vanilla beans. Each of his cooks received a five-pound block of butter at the beginning of the workday. All he would say was, “Use it up.” Andre insisted on making Italian meringue for each batch of fudge. “Essential,” he would shout over the roar of the mixer. On our lunch break he would expound. “Let the dieters be responsible for their own willpower. Their health is not your concern; your income is not theirs.” He would demand, “Do you know the significance of the last course? It is what will linger in the memory and on the tongue.”

What does that best?

Chocolate. In spite of my fury I smiled, remembering. Beneath my feet the ground was cold and spongy. Chilly fingers of grass swished against my heels. I came through the security gate and made a graceless leap onto the Farquhars’ driveway, sidestepped rivulets of melting snow, and thought about the most important thing.

Even before Weezie insisted on it, I knew serving clients chocolate nurtured them emotionally. I’d read an article that said people crave chocolate, gorge on it in fact, when they have been let go by a lover, boss, or spouse. Weezie had told me that ingesting the food of the gods, as the Aztecs named it, produces an enzyme that creates sensations similar to sexual pleasure. I couldn’t believe that with Brian, something similar was all she got.

I stomped back into the Farquhars’ house feeling like one of those cartoon characters with steam issuing from his ears. I wet a clean hand towel and slumped into one of the oak kitchen chairs. Compromises, I told myself as I scrubbed the area on my neck that Brian Harrington had smooched. I threw the towel down, stood up, and tried to think sweet.

Tentatively, I reached into the cabinet where the fudge Julian had offered earlier was stored. I didn’t have two hours to make another whole mousse cake. Serving a dessert I had not made was a compromise, but it was one I couldn’t help. At least I hadn’t compromised myself.