Lumi raised an eyebrow. “Um . . . these are not for Julien. They’re . . . for . . . the . . . guests,” she replied as slowly and deliberately as she could, hoping Esme would get the hint and leave her in peace.
Esme’s nostrils flared. “Right,” she said, turning toward the door.
“Lord, those heels!” Gloria leaned in to say once Esme was out of earshot. “Doesn’t look much like a pastor’s daughter, does she?”
“Huh?”
“Her mother is the pastor of a church in Harlem,” Gloria said. She gave Lumi a pat on the shoulder and then walked back to her pastry station.
Lumi thought back to the conversation she heard in the bathroom. And then she shrugged. She now had only twenty-five minutes to get the soufflés ready, since she had lost five talking nonsense with Esme.
“Lumi, are the soufflés ready?” Fallon called, poking her head inside the kitchen door.
“What? No! I just put them in.”
“Shit! Give me something else to put on this table.”
Lumi snapped back to the present and cast her gaze around frantically. “Where the hell are those salad greens?”
“They already went out and the guests already finished them,” Fallon said, resting her hand on her hip.
“Shit, shit, shit. Here.” She started slicing oranges as fast as she could. “Plate these and pass them out as a palate cleanser in the meantime.”
“What? Those are for the duck, they’re not supposed to be a palate cleanser.”
“The guests don’t know that, Fallon.”
Before Lumi knew it, the soufflés were done and the waitstaff was sprinting them out to the tables. Julien had hired extra staff for the event, and she was glad he did because it allowed her to focus on the dishes. She baked a second and third duck and made more soufflés while Julien greeted the guests. As far as she heard, all the dishes got rave reviews, and she worked quickly to keep them coming out to the diners.
At the end of the night, Lumi was wiped. She let her body fold into one of the hard metal kitchen chairs and watched as Julien and the waitstaff wrapped up the dinner. Plate after plate rolled in on metal racks. They were all mostly cleaned, which was a good sign. It was evident to her that the evening had gone quite well. The staff seemed relaxed, and Julien was beaming.
He seemed to have forgotten all about the sour notes at the beginning of the night, until he surveyed the disarray of vegetable cuttings, knives, and plates that still festooned Lumi’s counter. She caught his disapproving gaze sweeping across the mess and bit her lip. In the rush of the night, she hadn’t had a chance to clean as she went.
She eased herself out of the chair and gathered the vegetable cuttings into a small pile. The waiters and dishwashers loaded the plates into the industrial dishwasher and swept the kitchen. Lumi was still sorting out her space.
Julien had draped his tall frame over the metal chair where Lumi had been sitting and watched as she discarded empty egg cartons, recycled empty glass bottles, and wiped down the counter, trying to make sense of the mess that had been made. Lumi felt his gaze burning her, and it rankled her nerves to think that he would stay behind to supervise her and make sure she cleaned her space well.
Finally, he spoke.
“I’m surprised. I know you went to the same school as I did, so I know you learned mise en place. ‘Mise en place, mise en place.’ My kitchen management teacher would always say that. Makes things a lot easier at the end of the night.” He tsk-tsked under his breath. The playfulness of his tone was lost on her.
Lumi eyed him sideways.
“I’m sure this is not how you kept your kitchen at Caraluna,” he added.
The mention of her defunct restaurant was enough to make her blood boil, and suddenly all the aggravation of the past several weeks came to a singular inflamed point.
“You know what, Julien,” she snapped. She stood up and threw her dish towel on the floor. “I don’t think this is working out.”
His eyes had been on the unwashed cutting boards, and he turned his gaze squarely to her. In one step, he closed the distance between them and stood a few inches from her face.
“That’s funny,” he murmured, “I thought things were working out quite well.” His eyes shone as he gazed into hers. “Besides, with your formidable talent, you certainly bring a ray of sunshine to my—to this kitchen.”
Lumi pressed her lips together to keep her mouth from hanging open. A compliment? From him? Interesting. His proximity to her was making her skin tingle. The space between them buzzed, and they were both aware of any minuscule movements between them.
As she looked around the kitchen, she saw some of the dishwashers watching them, and she cringed. She quickly walked to her station, shoved the vegetable cuttings into a trash can and piled the dishes into the sink.
There was an abrupt slamming of the dining room door into its jamb, and she looked up to see a flash of straight honey-colored hair in the round window. Esme? She checked the wall clock. What would she be doing at DAX at 11:00 P.M.? No, it couldn’t be her. She finished work at 7:00.
“I’m done,” Lumi said, “and it’s eleven, anyway. I have to go.”
She ran for her coat, feeling eyes on her. She wanted to get out of the kitchen as fast as she could.
“Lumi, wait,” Julien said.
She kept walking and he followed her to the elevator.
“Wait,” he called.
“I can’t,” she replied, pressing the elevator button as fast as she could. “I need to get home.”
“At least let me order you an Uber,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“I’m okay. I can—”
“Can what?” he asked, his eyes thoughtful. “Take a plane, train, and automobile to get home?”
She glanced up at him. He had read her text after all. She sighed. He was right. She watched as he ordered an Uber for her, feeling chagrined but also secretly glad to not have to take the subway, bus, and shuttle home.
Later that night, safely ensconced in her bath, Lumi thought back to her close encounter with Julien and her entire body shivered. Her ears rang as she recalled his words. The memory of the electrified space between them brought chills up and down her spine.
She hadn’t expected that at all. This was the man who had made her feel furious, and ashamed, and a million other things. And, if she admitted to herself, intrigued. But she worked for him, and that in itself was challenge enough. It could only lead to disaster.
What would Inés say if she thought Lumi was cozying up to her boss?
Lumi thought back to when she was a child. There was a neighbor in Miami who asked Inés and Anahilda if she could have a job at their salon. The woman was looking to make ends meet after being dismissed from her position as a secretary at a Miami Beach law office.
Lumi didn’t understand all of their conversation, but she heard something about the lawyer’s wife discovering jewelry hidden away in her husband’s briefcase. “Only cueros sleep with the boss,” Inés had muttered under her breath to Anahilda when the woman had gotten up to use the restroom. Nevertheless, they had given the woman a job washing hair. At Salon AnaInés, there was no danger of the woman sleeping with the boss.