Martinez is breaking down a case of heirloom tomatoes at the next station, Sofia is organizingmise en placefor the cold line, and Tomás is reducing stock that'll become the base for tomorrow's sauces. Everyone is locked in.
Alex disappeared an hour ago and hasn't been back. Hedoesn't have an official role in my kitchen, my father's arrangement notwithstanding, but over this past week I have regrettably come to value his palate during tastings and his annoyingly accurate instinct for when a dish needs one more element I haven't identified yet.
So I keep glancing at the door, because I want his read on this velouté before I finalize it. That is the reason. Theonlyreason.
Though the way my pulse picked up two minutes ago when I heard footsteps in the corridor and they turned out to be Tomás coming back from the walk-in is becoming harder to file under professional concern.
I adjust the velouté again, whisking it like it has personally wronged me, like if I just work it hard enough I can whisk away this inconvenient awareness of Alex Midnight that's been building all week. Because there is no point in going down that road with him.
We live on opposite sides of the country. My father would destroy his career without a second thought if he even suspected something, and I can't pretend I'd be able to stop it. So better to keep this whatever-it-is in the category of collegial respect and leave it there.
But I glance at the door again.
And as if summoned by the sheer force of me trying not to think about him, it swings open and Alex strolls in carrying a wooden crate covered with a small towel. He crosses the kitchen and sets the crate down on the empty station at the far end.
I abandon the velouté and my good sense along with it, and walk over to investigate, wiping my hands on my apron as I go.
"Where have you been?" I ask, peering at the crate with what I hope looks like professional curiosity rather than the fact that I've been tracking his absence like some kind of Alex Midnight surveillance system. "You've been gone an hour."
"The Windfall Farm delivery guy was here," he says, looking absurdly pleased with himself. "He had a ton of produce in his truck for the other restaurants on his route, and some of it was too good to let drive away."
"Too good how?"
"See for yourself." He pulls back the cloth to reveal a crate of Black Mission figs, two dozen of them nestled in damp paper, the skins a purple so dark they're nearly black, still carrying that faint white bloom of sugar that means they were picked this morning.
The scent reaches me before I even step closer and suddenly I am eight years old in my grandmother's garden in the south of France, barefoot in the dirt with fig juice on my chin andGrand-mèrelaughing at me from the kitchen window.
"Ooh, figs are one of my favorite things ever!" I exclaim, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice, all my carefully maintained professional distance evaporating at the sight of perfect produce.
He laughs, nodding toward the crate and I pick up a fig eagerly, turning it in my fingers. The skin is warm and velvety and up close the smell is even more concentrated, almost intoxicating, and I press the base gently with my thumb to test the give. The flesh yields exactly the way it should, the sugars concentrated to the point where the inside will be practically liquid.
"My grandmother had this fig tree near the south wall of her house," I say, bringing the fig up to my nose and inhaling deeply, the scent triggering a cascade of memories so vivid I can almost feel the summer heat on my skin."I'd snack on themallday, and she’d make this incredible roasted fig and honey galette with lavender. The figs would caramelize against the pastry and the whole house would smell like butter and burnt sugar for hours."
"Nothing beats a grandmother or a mother's cooking," he says. "I didn't really know my grandparents well, but my momwas a wonderful cook. She used to make these incredible blackberry jams and pies in the summer with the berries we picked off the bushes on our property. I still can't smell a blackberry without thinking of her."
"Food does that," I say, smiling. "My father is the reason I do Michelin cooking. ButGrand-mère, she's why I fell in love with cooking in the first place. Sometimes I wish I still cooked like her, instead of with tweezers and ring molds and a timer on every course."
I'm surprised that the last part slips out of me, that admission of something I haven't even fully articulated to myself before this moment. But he just nods like he understands exactly what I mean.
This conversation is starting to feel strangely intimate, no longer about figs but about the way food can hold your whole history inside it. And as someone who hates vulnerability and closeness of any kind, I definitely need to put a stop to that.
"So," I say, clearing my throat and trying to reestablish some professional distance. "How did you even talk the delivery guy into giving you these if they were for someone else? Who were they even for?"
"Well, they were supposed to go to that place down the road." He leans back against the counter. "But I can be very persuasive when the produce warrants it."
"So you charmed a man out of someone else's figs."
"I prefer to think of it as redirecting them to a kitchen that would appreciate them more." He winks at me and I hate that I laugh, but I do, the sound escaping before I can stop it.
The image of Alex sweet-talking a delivery driver out of someone else's figs at nine in the morning is so perfectly him.
He picks a fig up too, holding it close to his nose and inhaling with his eyes half closed like he's savoring expensive wine. When he opens them, he catches me watching him, and I look away too quickly, caught.
"Is there anything better than that?" he asks.
I look down at the fig in my hand. "No. I don't think there is."
He smiles, warm and a little crooked. "I figured they were one of your favorites, because of that perfume you wear."