a restaurant, the upper as a pub, so the food choices were a little different.”
Elena made notes. She wanted to have cohesiveness through both floors. The upstairs would be the pastry kitchen; downstairs, the main. Upstairs could be a warming and assembly kitchen. “How well does the dumbwaiter work?”
“Fine.”
“We need a list of anything that’s not working or inefficient in the kitchen as it is.” She waved the pen at the trio of boys, too. “Everybody. Anything you can think of that’s a pain. Obviously, we’re not moving the major equipment, but what else could be better?”
They looked at each other for a while, then tentatively offered suggestions. She wrote them down. “By next week, I want everything you’ve thought of, all right?”
Nods.
“What’s the menu?” Peter asked.
“That’s what we’re going to do here, brainstorm.” She patted a folder filled with copies of the list of possible ingredients that she’d assembled, and a paragraph about her philosophy. “First, I’d like to get a feeling for where you all are with your own flavors. Take a second and think about the best food you’ve ever eaten. Alan, you want to go first?”
He narrowed his small eyes even more. “That’s hard.”
Elena speared a forkful of fresh spinach and tomato. “Take your time.”
“Can we narrow it down? Best meat dish, maybe?”
“Sure.” She wanted a feeling for what each one felt toward food. Was it a job or a passion? “But not everybody has to pick the same category.”
He stared into middle space. “One thing was a trout cooked over a campfire.”
Rasputin groaned, and Alan looked abashed, like a dog reprimanded by a beloved master. His eyes even looked a little moist.
Elena held up a hand. “Best is best. Go ahead, Alan.”
“The other was a lobster bisque in a San Francisco diner. So creamy and rich you had to eat it in tiny, tiny bites.”
Around the table they went. Barbecued pork, a chicken masala eaten late on a foggy London night, a piece of pecan pie at a diner in Georgia.
When his turn came up, Rasputin put his sandwich down and delicately wiped his fingers. “There are three,” he said. Immediately the air in the room shifted subtly, his voice filling the space like a strummed cello, priming them all for his revelation. The young cooks leaned forward. Alan took a bite of his sandwich as if he were watching a movie. Next to Elena, Patrick sat utterly still, a ripe plum in his hand, washed but not eaten.
“The first,” said Rasputin, “was a duck breast roasted with wine and cherries. Those plump, hot cherries with shreds of slow-roasted, tender meat and just a hint of nutmeg…” He swallowed in memory, and everyone swallowed with him, mouths watering. “…spectacular.
“The second was a lemon cake from a bakery in Paris.”
Elena allowed herself a very small smile—she’d smelled the lemon on him at their first meeting. She would get Mia on it.
“It was a very fine crumb,” he continued in his rumbling voice, his hands feathery in the air. “Three weightless layers, bright pale yellow, like fresh egg yolks, and a very, very light zesty lemon icing between layers.” He closed his eyes in memory. “It was like sunlight.”
The table was rapt as he opened his eyes and looked at each person in turn, lingering on Patrick and Elena, telling them his story. Perhaps reeling them in. “The third was a mango, when I was twenty-two, fresh from a market on the street in Mexico. I’d never eaten one. It was big, red and yellow, and just that exact firmness, you know, like a young breast, like a boy’s lower lip.”
Juan ducked his head, embarrassed, muttered a curse in Spanish.
Rasputin only lifted his mouth in a bare half-smile. “I took it to the beach and sat there in the sand, peeling the skin away with my teeth, and ate it whole, the juice running down my face and hands, and I didn’t even care because it tasted like that first minute you meet somebody you’re going to fall in love with, that first minute when you know.”
Even Elena was leaning forward, seduced by that sexual voice, the sensual pictures he drew, and his magnetic eyes, which were focused on her mouth, then on Patrick. Boldly.
Patrick sat without moving, his aristocratic nose cocked upward, as if trying not to smell something a little impure. His cheeks were quite red.
“Thanks, Ivan,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
He blinked, lazily. “Anytime.”
Flipping open the folder, she passed around her notes. “Let’s get