Page 160 of Boss of the Year
“I won’t stop, Marie!” he shouted down the alley. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily!”
I held up a hand in a vulgar gesture straight from my siblings’ handbook.
His laughter followed me back to the boulevard.
I wasn’t sure if it was out of spite or eagerness. But I did wonder if it wasn’t out of pride.
32
MILLE-FEUILLE
*protect the fragile puff pastry with a layer of coconut oil to keep the crisp.
“Oh là là, what have we here?”
The next morning, Louis brought up a package from the lobby, where his landlady had informed him someone had left it at about six this morning.
Both of our heads were aching after last night, but it wasn’t anything a good espresso couldn’t fix.
Well, at least the hangover part.
Somehow, I found my way back last night through the crooked streets of Montmartre until I reached Louis’s quieter side of the neighborhood. Had it been my imagination, or perhaps the absinthe, that made me see a Lucas-shaped shadow following me the last few blocks?
By the time my friend returned, wrapped in his favorite silk kimono, box in hand, I had set two espressos on the little table by the kitchen window as well as toasted sourdough bread, butter, and fresh blackberry preserves.
“Package for you?” I asked as I poured us both some water.
“No,ma puce, a package foryou.” Louis looked up, his dark brows furrowed. “FromLa Belle Fleur. You have an admirer so soon? I’m jealous. Celeste hasn’t gotten flowers in months.”
“Poor love. I’ll get you some when I get my first Michelin star.” Playfully, I stuck out my lower lip as I took the large box from him and opened it up while he enjoyed his coffee, bread, and morning cigarette out the window.
There were indeed flowers inside the box. Expensive ones. A tall, exquisitely blooming white orchid suspended in tissue—the kind that had to have been shipped from Bali or Singapore or some place equally obscene.
I frowned. The carbon emissions alone made a gift like this ridiculous.
I took out the note.
Not quite a ghost orchid, but still rare, like you. Clearly, you can bloom for more than one night. I feel lucky to see it every time.
—Lucas
I stared at the note for a long time, then at the flowers, now blinking in the sunlight.
“From your money man?” Louis waved his cigarette toward them.
I scowled at them. “Yep. He’s feeling guilty after last night and for the last month. I don’t really know anything other than flowers aren’t going to cut it, and I have better things to do than take care of a finicky plant.”
I picked up the orchid and took it to the trash bin under the sink. Louis raised his cigarette and espresso toward it in a parody of a salute as I tipped the plant, pot and all, into the bin.
“It’s a pity, though,” he said as I returned to our breakfast. “The flowers, they were quite beautiful.”
The next day,after I spent most of the afternoon compiling a list of restaurants I thought might be willing to take me on, either tostageor as a line cook, I returned from the market to find another big box waiting for me in the lobby. This one was much smaller than the flower box and bore a Japanese logo that put a heavy stone in my belly. If the gift was what I thought it was, there was no way I could accept it.
“What is this?” Louis stopped practicing a concerto as I walked in, the box in one hand, a bag of fresh lemon sorrel and delicata squash in the other. “Another mea culpa?”
“Looks that way.” I set the box on the counter and let him open it while I put away the produce.
“Marie,” Louis started reading from another note tucked inside with the gift.
