Prime Cut

We can order in some doughnuts.”

Andre folded his arms across his copious stomach and glared. Rufus reached for a glass from an old wooden cabinet and ran water into it. He offered the drink to Andre. Andre ignored him.

“Did you hear me, Andre?” Ian demanded loudly. “Can you hear me?”

“I may be old, but I am not deaf!” Andre shouted at Ian. When Andre swiveled away from Ian, he knocked the glass of water out of Rufus’s hand. Miraculously, the glass clattered to the tile floor without breaking. Andre directed his fury at the carpenter. “You imbecile! Why did you put that there?” he bellowed, then glared at the two of them. “Didn’t you hear the medical people say I was fine?” He caught sight of me. “Now look what you have done! Made my student worry!” He batted Rufus Driggle away with a fleshy palm. “Go spray rocks! Move furniture!”

Ian ran his strong fingers through his thick gray hair, rolled his brown eyes, and tapped his foot. His sensitive features pinched as he worked his mouth slowly from side to side. He was more attractive than I remembered from the first day of the shoot; perhaps then I’d been overwhelmed by the models’ good looks. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but then changed his mind and merely shrugged.

I said, “I’m here now, Andre.” I tried to make my voice comforting rather than condescending, which would have made him more upset than he already was.

“Yeah,” Julian piped up unexpectedly as he appeared at my side. “I’m Julian Teller, her student, Mr. Hibbard. I hope it’s okay that I came. Goldy was so worried about you. She’s always talking about her teacher,” he made his voice appropriately awestruck, “‘a real master,’ she says, ‘that’s Andre Hibbard.’” With great seriousness, Julian perused the oak island: a rack of cooling muffins sat neatly next to containers of flour, unsalted butter, brown sugar, and eggs. “Are you doing a coffee break cake? It looks super. Goldy was working on one this week. Is it okay if I stay and help?”

Andre nodded at him and beamed at me. He threw a haughty, I-told-you-so look at Ian and Rufus. Ian wordlessly slammed out of the room, clearly irritated beyond control. I breathed relief.

“I need this scrim adjusted!” he shouted from the Homestead interior. Andre hrumphed and raised a silver eyebrow. Rufus hustled out the door.

“The coffee break is at ten,” said Andre without moving from the stool. He sighed. “Thank you for offering to help. The Santa is allergic to strawberries and needs a separate bowl of fruit. There are three shots this morning, for three children’s outfits.” I shook my head: so much work. Why hadn’t he asked me to come at eight? “Before you scold me, Goldy,” Andre went on, “let me tell you, I was not having a heart attack. When they asked if I had pain down my arm, I told them to go away. And when I told them to leave me alone, I was gasping. So they told the medics that I was short of breath! Nonsense.” He inhaled deeply, as if to prove his point.

“So how are you now?” I asked.

“Fine! The only reason I placed my hand on my chest was because I was listening to the curator’s terrible tale … she is quite upset with your husband,”—he wagged a finger at me—“about that robbery by the security guard. I was being sympathetic, not having an attack.”

“Aha,” I said. Upset with my husband? About that robbery by the security guard? You mean, the security guard who was murdered five days ago? I said, “Why is she upset with my husband?”

Andre wafted a hand. “She had to go down to the sheriff’s department. I invited her to our coffee break. She will be back later, do not fear, and you can ask her all about it.”

Andre assigned Julian to trim the fruit bowl components while I prepared the baked snack. Lucky for me, there were apples in with the fruit Andre had brought, and he’d thought to bring extra aprons, which we donned. Perched on his bar stool, sipping a fresh espresso, offering a wide range of commentary and directions, Andre appeared not only healthy, but entirely in his element.

“So how are you doing with the fashion models?” I asked him as I tried to recall how I’d put together the apple cake earlier in the week. “Have they been eating the food you’ve prepared?”

“Phh-t. I do not understand why people with no talent earn twelve hundred dollars a day to model clothes, while I struggle to pay my bills.”

“But they struggle too, don’t you think?” I ventured.

“Listen, and I will tell you.” Oh, boy, here we go, I thought. Andre’s lectures, I was convinced, energized him. And his strongly held, vehemently expressed opinions proved to him that he was not old, after all. He rapped on the island with his espresso cup and waited until Julian and I had put down our knives and given him our full attention.

“You cannot become a model the way you become a chef,” he began, “through work and talent. A woman needs only a skinny body and a pretty face. And what destruction this wreaks! What I used to see at my restaurant was hundreds of teenage girls who would not eat. Why would they not eat? Because they wanted to be like the models in the magazines. But they could never become models because they did not have pretty faces.” He sipped his espresso thoughtfully. “Do you know what I have observed this week?”

“Pretty faces?” I said. “May I finish chopping the apples while we listen? So we can offer the snack to those who will eat?”

He nodded. “The male models are strong. They work out and have big muscles.” To demonstrate, he flexed the arm not holding his espresso cup. “The women may do some exercise, but when they come in to model, they are half dead, always begging me for caffeine.” He held up the cup. “How can I converse with these women, when I give them coffee?”

Uh-oh, I thought as I set about mixing melted butter with eggs, brown sugar, and chopped apples. To Andre, converse usually meant you listen; I’ll talk.

Andre went on: “And so I ask you. What is the message of this Christmas catalog?” He raised his voice. “‘Look like this and you will be happy.’ But this is not true. You can only be insecure. You can only be hungry.” He sighed and finished his coffee.

“They won’t be hungry with you around,” Julian supplied.

“Yes, young man.” Andre slid off the stool and began to lay out the platters.

“Goldy told me that before you were a chef, you were in the Resistance in the Second World War.” Julian’s voice was filled with awe. “Can you tell me about it?”

Mercy! Now Andre would love Julian forever. I dropped an egg into the batter. Andre launched into his tale of the secret network he’d helped build to keep Jews from being deported from Clermont-Ferrand during the Vichy regime. I did not disbelieve my teacher when he talked about this work he claimed to have done fifty-some years before. But if you did the math, Andre was only eleven while he was helping to build the network he referred to. Still, I would not dare interrupt him.

“They had to avoid contact with police,” Andre said matter-of-factly. “They had to have places to hide, and our network would send messages when the deportation trains were arriving.” His tone turned boastful. “The Nazis would come expecting to get two hundred Jews for a work camp. They would leave with a handful, very angry.”

Listening attentively, Julian trimmed fresh pineapple, papaya, banana, kiwi, and grapes for the fruit bowl. While I stirred together the thick cake batter and prayed that I’d remembered all the ingredients from my experimentation earlier in the week, Andre cast appraising glances at Julian’s prep job. Mindful of the stories of French chefs lashing the fingers of kitchen helpers who did not slice, dice, and julienne properly, I felt a bit nervous. But Julian, precision-slicing the fruit, appeared to take no notice of Andre’s scrutiny.

Within twenty minutes, a delicious aroma completely filled the room. We made coffee, arranged the muffins in pyramids, and filled the bowls. I iced the apple cake with a creamy citrus frosting, and dubbed the creation Blondes’ Blondies—in honor of the models. The treats weren’t truly blondies, but then again, some of the models weren’t truly blondes.

“Are you really feeling all right?” I asked Andre as we prepared to serve the food.

“Goldy!” he admonished me. “When will you learn to believe me? My doctor says I am fine, much improved now that I have begun to work again. What am I always telling you?”

“Let the mood fit the food,” I replied promptly.