“Oh yeah? Good for him.” Josh was Ember’s uncle and Shawn was her dad who had moved from Philly to the Bronx to be closer to his daughter and granddaughter. “Maybe I’ll give them a call. It might be nice to give Dad closure on what happened to those two. I’m not sure how much he was entitled to hear while in jail.”
“Josh is working on a few things for me already. Do you want me to ask him the next time I talk to him?” Lucien asked.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Trace signaled to the waitress before changing the subject, “I’m interviewing for a new pastry chef at Clover.”
That’s not something you hear every day. “How the hell do you interview for a chef?”
“They have to feed me.”
I had never seen one so big and so perfectly formed. I was ruined for all others, nothing could compare to the perfection before me. My fingers itched to touch it, feel it. I wanted it in my mouth, wanted to feel the texture on my tongue, the burst of flavor sliding down my throat would surely have my eyes rolling into the back of my head.
“Oh, Avery, your soufflé turned out perfectly.”
Hunching down, getting eye level with the masterpiece, I couldn’t help the grin because Mom was right; I totally rocked this.
“Is that what you’re preparing for the interview?”
Interview, just thinking about it had my stomach quivering. Pastry chef, I was doing it, reaching for my dream, and even being deliriously excited, there was a healthy dose of fear too. After graduating high school, I’d worked at the local bakery and I enjoyed it. In the beginning, I liked the routine and the familiarity of what the customers wanted—vanilla and chocolate, cupcakes and birthday cakes, éclairs and donuts. After a while it got old. I wanted to do more, wanted to express myself through my desserts, so I made the move I’d wanted to but feared I wasn’t good enough for. At twenty-four, I enrolled in classes, four years studying baking and pastry arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. I did well in school, really well, picking up on the techniques with ease. I graduated with honors and still I was floored when I had a few interviews lined up before the ink had dried on my diploma. The interview I was preparing for now was pastry chef for Clover—a posh restaurant in Manhattan. The executive chef went by the name of Chef but his real name was Francois Moree. He was a legend, anyone who was anyone in the culinary world knew of him. He studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, most notable for his mastery in spice infusions. The fact that someone of his reputation would be sampling my desserts was surreal. In preparation for my interview, I did a bit of research on the owner of Clover, Trace Montgomery, since he too would be sitting in on the interview. I didn’t know anything about him—thank God for the Internet—and discovered he was a self-taught chef who owned a cooking school called Everything. And with the possibility that he was a hands-on boss, a fair assumption since he planned to be present at the interview, my sister and I were enrolled in one of his classes so I could see firsthand how the man worked. In the meantime, I practiced for the upcoming interview in my mom’s kitchen, reworking my recipes. I had to prepare three different desserts to wow their palettes.
“I’m practicing technique, but the soufflé is a bit cliché.”
“With the chilies and cardamom, it’s hardly cliché.”
I could bake butter cookies and Mom would think they were the tastiest cookies ever made. The thought brought a smile. Looks were deceiving when it came to Anna Collins now Green. Petite and unassuming, she really was a force to be reckoned with. She was like the flour in a recipe, a staple. Mom and Dad divorced almost fifteen years ago and both had remarried. Dad to Dolly, her name now was Dolly Collins, no lie. Half my dad’s age, Dolly had the IQ of a twig and the personality of an enraged badger. Now she was like the powdered sugar on top, without it the dessert may not look as pretty, but you’d likely not miss it. For whatever reason, she didn’t like my sister or me. My fifty-year-old father married a twenty-four year old—one year older than my sister—who had more hair than sense, but she didn’t like us. And it wasn’t insecurity or low self-esteem that fed her nastiness. She was just a bitch. Twelve years later, they now lived in Manhattan. That was the one downside if I got the job at Clover, I’d likely see Dolly more often. She’d insist on it so she could look down her nose at me. She didn’t work, and though Dad wasn’t crazy loaded, he was very well off, enough that Dolly could dress in designer clothes and get her hair and nails done every week…huge life ambitions that one.