The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,71
might be more of a pastry man than he knew.
At any rate, it wouldn’t hurt him to do his time at that station. He had a lot of talent and drive and would one day have his own kitchen, she was sure. She told him as much, gave him a raise, and he was mollified.
For the time being.
It turned out, too, that one of the Mexican dishwashers was well versed in tamales. He suggested the upstairs could be a kitchen devoted not only to desserts and tamales, but all manner of prep work, leaving space free downstairs for the actual assembly and cooking.
On Thursday, they would present the tasting menu for the dinner party at Julian’s. It happened to be Halloween, which Elena thought hilarious for a horror director, and she developed a theme of El Día de los Muertos for it.
On Friday night, the restaurant would fling open the doors to members of the community invited in to eat for free. It would allow the staff to do a serious trial run of systems—front and back of the house—and uncover any flaws. On Saturday, they would have their “soft” opening, ready for business.
By day, Elena raced around checking details, testing and retesting menu items, refining the systems in the kitchen, rearranging schedules as personalities emerged. By night, she went over the numbers, the figures, the ordering, and woke up in the middle of the night to write notes to herself about things to check in the cooler.
Three days before the soft opening, the dessert menu still had not been refined. Elena wanted to kill Mia on a daily basis, since of course those who might be qualified had already been snapped up. Peter struggled to get something together, but he wasn’t there yet.
The printer was waiting for their refinements to the menu after the soft opening, but Elena was beginning to despair. She was taking inventory Wednesday afternoon when one of the Mexican youths came into the kitchen. “Jefa,” he said. “Can I speak with you?”
“Sure, Hector.” She answered in Spanish. “What’s up?”
“I brought my sister here to talk to you—they said you want to see her?”
A thin girl of about nineteen, wearing clunky shoes and a dress that was too big for her, hovered behind him. “Good, thank you.”
“Also,” Hector said, “there was a fire in Carbondale, at a bakery. The woman who made their pastries was a very fine cook, and she no longer has a job. I thought she might be good. For the desserts, you know?”
“Oh, you fabulous creature!” She squeezed his arm. “When can I talk to her?”
“I can call her. She’ll drive over whenever you want.”
“Today! The sooner the better. Seriously.”
He smiled and nodded. “I’ll call her.” He turned to his sister and gestured her into the office. “This is Alma.”
“Come in, Alma,” Elena said in Spanish. The girl slipped into a chair, hands in her lap. Her wrist bones were highly defined. “Don’t be afraid.”
In Spanish, she said, “I’m not afraid of you, Jefa.” There was the faintest emphasis on the “you.”
“What then?”
She looked over Elena’s shoulder. “There is a car accident. A boy—or man?—I cannot tell. Flying through the air. It will change things.”
“That’s from a long time ago.”
The girl shook her head. “Not a long time ago. Still coming.”
Elena scowled. “What good does that do me?”
“It will help you, if you let it.” She looked around the room, and Elena had to tamp down hard on her impatience. The girl was fey and odd, but wasn’t Elena sitting here with her because a ghost told her to?
Who was strange?
Elena sighed, feeling the ache in her leg, in the base of her neck. “Thank you,” she said, and gave the girl two twenties.
She tucked them into her bra. “I’ll come work for you, when you need me.”
Elena blinked. “Uh. Okay. Thanks.”
When the knock came at her door later that afternoon, Elena was peering with grainy eyes at the computer screen in her office, entering the inventory numbers she’d gathered. Not her favorite part of the job, the paperwork and details and numbers, but absolutely essential. More than one brilliant restaurant had failed by neglecting the numbers.
“Come in!” she called, wondering if she needed to get glasses or something. Her eyes were killing her. She raised her head, blinking the sandiness away.
The door opened and a small woman came in. Hard to tell her age—somewhere between fifty and seventy, with the sharp features and leathery skin of a native Westerner and the