Our walk back to the tea shop had given Aunt Evelyn time to work herself into a froth. She stormed to the sink and began to scour her hands. Drying them, she threw the used towel against the backsplash, and then broke two madeleines in transferring them from the box to the plate. I rescued the rest by volunteering to take over the task.
“It’s going to be all right, Auntie.” I placed the final cookie on the plate.
“Why? Because you’ve had a vision?”
She parroted my words back to me. Instead of being irritated, I laughed. “No, because we can do more than observe.”
Thirty
After the frustrating morning, late afternoon proved no better. Aunt Evelyn, disappointed, allowed me to cheat and use tea to ensure I could still produce a vision. I predicted an unexpected visit from a grandfather from Manila, which tasted like a cinnamon-sugar-dusted churro fresh from the fryer. I hadn’t made any progress since yesterday, to my aunt’s annoyance.
Aunt Evelyn busied herself with phone calls all evening. With my lessons suspended for the night, she focused on saving her business and seeking aid from the fortune-teller society. While she rallied her contacts, I finalized my breakfast date with Marc, caught up with the cousins’ group chat, messaged the aunties, and called Ma.
The cousins were envious of my sudden Parisian trip. Auntie Faye and the others had pooled their resources and hired a private investigator. Auntie Ning let it slip that it was standard procedure for anyone marrying into the family. In Girard’s case, it acted as a protective measure. Ma updated me on what was happening at the firm, and I spoke with Dad. I missed them both.
I deflected the questions concerning my lessons. Being so far away, they couldn’t do anything to help. I treated my sense of helplessness as a potent, communicable disease, which I kept to myself. No need to worry those I loved back home.
I went to sleep with a single selfish worry: Would Aunt Evelyn’s focus on stopping Girard’s boycott distract her from teaching me?
* * *
* * *
Marc and I had agreed to meet at our usual spot. Seeing him waiting for me near the top of the stairs, leaning against the metro sign, banished the chaos swirling in my life. He wore his leather jacket with another dark tee underneath and distressed jeans. His dark hair appeared still wet from an early morning shower. As my thoughts traveled in that direction, I tugged on my blouse’s collar to let out a small swell of steam from the heat growing inside me.
Marc noticed and grinned. “The forecast for today is supposed to be cool.”
I stepped into his open arms and stood on my toes to kiss his cheek, but he turned his head, our lips meeting in a deep, passionate kiss. The breeze swept in, enveloping us in its embrace like a translucent veil. It dissipated once the kiss ended.
I reached up and ruffled Marc’s now-dry hair. “Better than any blow-dryer.”
He laughed. “Agreed. How are your lessons going? Doing well I hope.”
“I’m tanking. Aunt Evelyn says I’m an odd case, and now she’s preoccupied with the store. Hopefully she won’t forget why I’m here.”
We took the metro to an Australian eatery Marc said was known for its pancakes. It was packed with tourists, so we squeaked into a cherry-red vinyl booth. I selected a stack with seasonal fruits, chocolate, and crushed hazelnuts for us to share. He insisted the portions were generous.
Marc handed me a sheet of paper from his messenger bag. “Have you seen this?”
“The boycott notice, yes. My aunt is furious, with just cause.”
He creased his brow. “I’m disappointed in him. This isn’t the man who offered me a position in his kitchen. This is coded, racist language from someone I consider a mentor. So I did a little digging.”
“I hope you found something.”
“I did. This garbage,” he said, tapping the paper, “wasn’t written by him. This came from the desk of Claude Chirac. Claude is a xenophobic kiss ass who hangs around my boss. Vivianne, the kitchen manager, told me she overheard them talking. This might be a case of Claude trying to gain Monsieur Renaud’s favor.”
“When I asked my aunt, she said that this didn’t sound like the man she once knew. She’s rallying her supporters to counteract the boycott. Did you find out anything about their past relationship?”
Marc shook his head. “No one in the restaurant has been there longer than fifteen years.”
“Auntie Faye found a picture of him from an old roommate. He looked like how I saw him at the restaurant.” I showed the picture on my phone to Marc.
He whistled. “That looks like a photo she took of him.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know the saying, about a picture having a multitude of meanings? It was probably taken by her. It’s in the way he’s looking at the lens, that this is for her, that he’s giving a piece of himself, that he loves her.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket, tapped, swiped, and then placed it on the table for me to see, a photo of me laughing while holding a pistachio ice cream cone in Montmartre.
“I look at this and remind myself that there’s so much more to look forward to,” he whispered.
I bit my lower lip. “That’s not fair. I don’t have one of you.”
“That can be easily remedied,” he said, grinning.
Before we could take a picture together, the pancakes arrived with their decadent aroma of butter, syrup, and sugar. They were drenched in maple syrup, and crushed hazelnuts mingled with spears of tart strawberries and slices of bananas at the top of the stack. The hotcakes themselves were liquid gold captured in suspended animation and pressed into fluffy disks. My fork sank into them as though they were marshmallows.
“These are so good,” I declared in between bites. “Like unreal good.”
He lifted a piece with his fork. “After Guill brought me here to eat, I keep coming back trying to figure out how they’re made. It’s the baking powder and shortening ratio, and some sort of secret ingredient the chef is adding. The air pockets resemble sponge. I also haven’t ruled out the flipping technique—that can also make a difference.”
The way he spoke about pancakes reflected his passion and innate curiosity. The more time I spent with him, the more I realized how much I needed to find a way to outwit destiny’s desire.
Thirty-One
Marc and I scheduled a late-night dinner at the apartment for him to meet Aunt Evelyn. He told me he’d need to request half a night off from work, but that it shouldn’t be an issue.