The Art of Love (3 page)

I don’t know what it is about Sue that irritates the hell out of me, but she’s just so annoying. There’s this stink of pathetic about her, always trying to please everyone, always trying to be so nice with her simpering little face. “Can I help you with that? Can I do this for you? Can I tie myself up in knots to please you? Can I contort myself into any shape possible just so you’ll like me?” It really gets on my nerves.

What makes a grown woman grovel that much? I bet she was the girl in high school that was always baking brownies to share during lunch and offering to help the popular boys with their homework. What she doesn’t get is that the more you do for a guy, the more he’ll just sit back and let you do all the work. You have to demand performance from a man if you want to be treated well. Otherwise, he’ll just get lazier and lazier, expecting you to do everything.

The thing is, by being such an accommodating doormat, she makes things harder for the rest of us. Guys think, “Well, Sue was always happy to cook me dinner and clean my apartment and wipe my butt. This must be the way all women should behave.” Well, I’m not buying into that sucker’s game. If a guy wants me to treat him nice, then he’s got to treat me nice. Those are the rules for dating. Why the hell doesn’t some groveling simpleton like Sue realize that? Sometimes, I just want to shake her by the shoulders and yell, “Grow a spine, already!”

Chapter 3

I really don’t want anyone to see that I’m upset, so I pull it together the best I can before hurrying through the kitchen to the employee locker room. I can feel
June’s, Aspic’s, and Paolo’s eyes on me as I rush past. They are still prepping food, and I hate that a part of my brain tries to calculate if I have a spare twenty minutes to lend a hand.

June calls after me with, “
Sue? Is everything okay? What did Escoffier want?”

I slow my steps because I don’t want her following me into the locker room again and pressing to see if there really is anything wrong. “
Nothing, really,” I half mutter. “He made me the temporary chef de cuisine while               he's treating his gout.”

I hear gasps of surprise from Aspic and Paolo. June exclaims, “
That's fantastic! Congratulations!”

“Yeah, really good, Suzannah,” Paolo adds.

I try to shrug it off. I’m too ashamed of why I was given the position to take any satisfaction in it. “It's only temporary,” I tell them. “And I’m not going to get more money or anything.”

“
Suzannah, I am so glad,” Paolo tells me. “We were worried.”

“Worried?” I wonder. “Why were you worried?”

“We thought maybe you were getting the old eighty-six,” Aspic adds, his voice low and rumbly from infrequent use.

I can’t conceal that I’m surprised by his comment. “Really?” I exclaim. “
Why would he fire me?”

Paolo gestures
toward Aspic with his thumb. “It is Bouche.” He usually takes over and does the talking for the big man when there are more than a few words to be said. “She no do so good. Aspic, he hear Mr. Trent say Bouche no make good money.” Trent Winchell is the great grandson of the man who started the Winchell way back in the day.

“
Oh...” This surprises me a little. I knew Bouche wasn’t exactly booked to maximum capacity every night, but I didn’t think we were to the point where it was necessary to lay off staff. We all contemplate the impending loss of our jobs.

“
Hey, let's not worry about that now.” June tries to brighten the mood. Turning to me she enthuses, “Congratulations! You're going to be chef de cuisine. That’s huge. Think how good that’ll look on your résumé once we’re all kicked out of here.”

Paolo turns to Aspic, lifting his chin at the giant, “Aspic, where you have your flask?
We will have a toast, yes?”

Aspic always keeps a rather large flask concealed on his person. I have no idea what he keeps in the flask. It’s clear in color and reminds me vaguely of lighter fluid. I’m not a big drinker to begin with, so I try to avoid partaking from Aspic’s flask whenever I can, but this doesn’t feel like a time when I can bow out graciously from imbibing.

June gathers up the cleanest of the employee glasses from the locker room. When a coffee mug is cracked or a water glass gets a chip but isn’t quite broken, it’s moved to the employee water cooler in the locker room, where we lowly employees are allowed to drink from them. Of course, no one ever washes what they use.

Pulling the sizeable flask from his hip pocket, Aspic pours a healthy dollop of whatever it is into all four cups, and we each take one. Everyone is smiling at me and looking happy. I suddenly feel better. So what if Chef Escoffier thinks I’m a trained dog that he can manipulate? I like working at Bouche, and I like my work friends. I’ll make the best of things. Besides, June’s right, being the temporary chef de cuisine will actually look quite good on my résumé.

June raises her glass, and the rest of us join her. “To Sue. Happy birthday.” We all clink cups, but before we can drink, she adds. “And to us. Soon we may be out on our rears and standing in line for unemployment, but for the next couple of weeks, with Sue in charge, we're going to have a blast.”

The smile melts from my face. The warm and fuzzy feeling I’d had only a few seconds ago evaporates. They don’t care about me. They care nothing about my temporary promotion. All they care about is that with Escoffier gone, they’ll be able to goof off and not work as hard. They think working under me means a mini-vacation.

Everyone swills down what’s in the mugs but me. I only pantomime doing it. Not that anyone notices. I head for the locker room explaining, “I’d better hurry up and get changed, or I’m going to be late for Elliot.” On my way, a quick flick of my wrist neatly disposes of the foul-smelling liquid into a handy sink.

I’ve busted out my green floral dress, applied far more makeup than I normally wear in real life, squeezed my feet into heels, and accented myself with jewelry. I’m about as fancy as I can get using the limited resources available from the closet back at my condo. I sit at the Bouche bar by myself nursing my drink for the longest anyone in history has ever nursed a drink. It’s a good thing I know the bartender. The far end of the bar is crowded with people having an extended happy hour, but the two seats next to me are open like a social DMZ, providing a protective barrier so that my solo loserdom doesn’t infect anyone’s good time.

I check my watch for the hundred and sixty-third time. It’s almost eight o’clock. I am literally going to strangle Elliot as soon as he gets here. This time I mean it. It’s my birthday. He promised he wasn’t going to pull this crap anymore, and he’s over two hours late. I hate him.

Some fool, unaware that he is putting himself at risk of contracting a strong case of loser, sits in the vacant chair two away from me. Next thing I know, a wrapped bottle about the size of a pint comes rolling along the bar in my direction. I look up to gaze into the eyes of one of the handsomest men in Chicago, if not all of North America. It’s Aziz, Bouche’s sommelier.

“Aziz,” I say in surprise, stopping the rolling bottle with my hand before it reaches the edge of the bar.

He switches seats to the one next to mine, not at all concerned about being infected by the social pariah. He’s got dark skin and a shaved head, chiseled cheekbones, and large brown eyes that border on golden. His eyebrows are well-defined and very expressive. I’m not normally into eyebrows, but his are hard to ignore. I know he’s American, but his heritage is possibly North African or somewhere in the East. He’s always wearing a well-tailored suit and could easily be cast as Adoni Maropis’s younger brother in some Lawrence of Arabia–type epic adventure. He is swoon worthy—if women still swooned over handsome men. And for whatever reason, he’s decided we’re friends.

“
Isn't today your birthday?” he asks, once he’s settled on the stool next to me.

“It's supposed to be,” I say, barely suppressing a sigh.

The eyes of every woman in the bar are glued to the man sitting next to me. He doesn’t notice or, at least, doesn’t give the appearance of noticing. Even Kiki does a walk-by with raised eyebrows, trying to figure out why such a handsome specimen would give little old me the time of day.

Aziz furrows his brow. “If it’s your birthday, t
hen why are you sitting here all alone?”

I can feel my face turning red, and I add this to the long list of reasons I have for killing my boyfriend once he finally decides to show up. “
I'm waiting for my date. He's running late.”

“
How late?” Aziz wants to know.

Humiliation piled upon humiliation. “
Two hours,” I admit. “But, you know... he's busy.”

“
Oh...” Aziz does his best to act like my excuse is plausible. “What does he do for a living?”

Now I want to die. I seriously want to die because I have to admit, “
Well... He’s a computer programmer, but he’s kind of... uh... unemployed.” My cheeks are on fire, and if we were anywhere near a pile of sand, I would bury my head in it just so I wouldn’t have to see Aziz struggling to control the expression on his face.

“Well, that explains it,” Aziz says, and I can tell he’s doing his best to suppress a look of pity or disgust—or maybe both.

I have to remind myself that not all of us can date ridiculously handsome sommeliers. Some of us have to look a little lower in the barrel. Some of us are forced to search somewhere quite close to the bottom. Actually, I’m being too harsh. Elliot might not be good looking, and he might not have a job, and he is chronically late no matter how much he promises to be on time, but he doesn’t hit me or cheat on me or anything like that, so I’m really just dating in the lowest quadrant of the barrel, not the very bottom.

Aziz nudges the wrapped bottle
toward me. “Open your present.”

I feel warm all over, and there is a tingling in my toes. It’s so very nice to have someone remember my birthday. Especially if I don’t have to remind him a zillion times. I don’t even know how Aziz has figured out it’s my birthday, but it really makes me feel good that he has. “
Aziz! This is for me?” I ask just to make sure.

“
Of course.” He gives me one of the sexiest smiles ever to have been smiled. “It's your birthday.”

Gingerly, I pull off the bow and begin tearing away at the shiny wrapping paper. I can tell from its texture that it’s not the cheap stuff picked up at a drugstore on the fly. This is the good stuff. Maybe even from one of those Japanese specialty shops. Beneath is a brown-glazed clay bottle. The black and gold label reads Riga Black Balsam. I’m surprised and definitely intrigued. I’ve never seen this kind of liqueur before. “
Wow! What is it?” I exclaim.

“It's from Latvia,” Aziz tells me.

I’m totally excited, and Aziz knows it. “What's in it?” I ask.

Catching the bartender’s eye and giving him a nod, Aziz leans over the bar and snags two small glasses. “You tell me,” he says, cracking the seal on the bottle and pouring us both a healthy taste.

The liquid is dark and thick. I hold it to my nose, close my eyes, and just kind of let the scent fill my nasal passages. People frequently make the mistake of smelling hard alcohol or a glass of wine like they are sniffing a rose. That’s not how it’s done. That only overpowers your sense of smell. Instead, you take it in slowly, savoring the scent. It’s especially important if you’re trying several tastings of wine in a close amount of time. If you take in a big snort on the first glass, your nose will cling to that odor, and you won’t really experience the other samples properly.

The sharp flavor from the glass floats into my nose making it twitch. It’s immediately obvious the drink is vodka based and I say so. “T
here are blackberries, maybe cherries... elderflower?” I guess. 

Although I don’t open my eyes, I can feel Aziz smiling and nodding his head. “Taste it,” he encourages in a low, intimate voice that makes me blush. I have long been under the impression that Aziz has no idea how good looking he actually is, or he wouldn’t get all sexy and purring with a girl like me.

Pushing all thoughts of a flirtation out of my head, I lift the glass to my lips and let a small amount of the balsam roll over my tongue. It’s not a sweet taste, nor even a pleasant taste, if I’m being honest. It’s harsh and bitter but also complex in a way that my taste buds find new and intriguing. “Mmmm... lots of herbs...,” I conclude, “an oaky undertone. Probably prepared in an oak barrel...?”

I peek out of the corner of my eye at Aziz, and he is leaning in toward me, totally focused on my experience. His face is beaming. “
You have an incredible palette,” he exclaims. “It's amazing. We really should talk more about food pairings. In fact, I don't see why Escoffier doesn't just put you in charge of the whole restaurant.”

That’s what I love about Aziz; he’s never stingy with the compliments. He’s kind of like a gay man that way. I guess because he’s so good looking, he doesn’t have to worry about women like me thinking we have an actual chance with him.

I figure it won’t hurt to tell Aziz about my temporary promotion. Two hours of sitting by myself at the bar has given me plenty of time to think it over and, in the big picture, being the temporary chef de cuisine will probably be good for me. “Well, as a matter of fact...” I begin.

That’s when I see him out of the corner of my eye—my boyfriend, Elliot, and he’s looking pissed.