I nodded to Rufus Driggle, whose neon-orange sweatsuit hung in wide folds from his lanky frame. The carpenter sidled over to Julian and me.
"Goldy, we're so glad you're here," he whispered, as if we were old friends. I blinked: Despite the crisis atmosphere, I couldn't help noticing how the orange suit clashed painfully with please-call-me-Rufus's orange hair and pale skin. "We were kind of worried about old Andr‚ here - "
Ian Hood was giving Andr‚ a thunderous, impatient look. "Listen, old man," he reprimanded Andr‚, "I saw you grab your chest." I cringed. "Maybe this work is too demanding for you. Maybe you should go home and rest. We can order in some doughnuts."
Andr‚ 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 Andr‚. Andr‚ ignored him.
"Did you hear me, Andr‚?" Ian demanded loudly. "Can you hear me?"
"I may be old, but I am not deaf!" Andr‚ shouted at Ian. When Andr‚ 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. Andr‚ 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, Andr‚." 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 Andr‚ 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. Andr‚ hrnmphed 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," Andr‚ 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?"
Andr‚ 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."
Andr‚ assigned Julian to trim the fruit bowl components while I prepared the baked snack. Lucky for me, there were apples in with the fruit Andr‚ 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, Andr‚ 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. Andr‚'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 Andr‚, converse usually meant. you listen; I'll talk.
Andr‚ 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." Andr‚ slid off the stool and began to layout 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 Andr‚ would love Julian forever. I dropped an egg into the batter. Andr‚ 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, Andr‚ 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," Andr‚ 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, Andr‚ 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 Andr‚'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 mod els weren't truly blondes.
Blondes' Blondies
2 cups peeled and diced Granny Smith apples
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
« cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 egg
1 « cups cake flour (high altitude: add 1 tablespoon)
1 teaspoon baking soda
« teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
« teaspoon ground nutmeg
« teaspoon allspice
« cup chopped pecans or walnuts
« cup raisins
Creamy Citrus Frosting (recipe follows)
Preheat the oven to 325øF. Butter a 9 x 13-inch metal (not glass) pan. In a large mixing bowl, mix the chopped apples with the brown sugar. Set it aside while you prepare the other ingredients. In a small pan, melt the butter and set it aside to cool. In a small mixing bowl, beat the egg slightly. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.
Whisk the melted and cooled butter into the egg; stir this mixture into the apple mixture. Stir the flour mixture into the apple mixture, mixing just until incorporated. Stir in the nuts and raisins. (The batter will be thick.) Spread the batter in the prepared pan.
Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, or until the blondies test done with a toothpick. Cool in the pan, then frost with Creamy Citrus Frosting. Slice and serve.
Makes 32 servings.
Creamy Citrus Frosting
2 tablespoons (¬ stick) unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 to 1 « cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
Beat the butter with the orange juice until the butter is very soft (they will not mix completely). Add the sugar until the desired consistency is reached. Spread on the cooled blondies.
"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.
"All right, then," my mentor fumed as he readjusted his tray. "Stop thinking all the time about death."
9
Just before ten, we carried the frosted blondies, the platter of Andr‚'s sour cream muffins, the tureen of yogurt, and a silver bowl piled with fresh kiwi, pineapple, cantaloupe, and a variety of berries to the mahogany table in the Homestead dining room. The dining room was a high-ceilinged space that had been added to the original 1866 ranch house by later occupants. Bright sunlight filtered through the row of wavy-glassed windows and shone on polished dark wood paneling. Along the opposite wall, light glinted off glass-fronted hutches displaying Old West artifacts. Unfortunately, the shelves of two battered cabinets lacked their glass and had gaps where the missing cookbooks had been displayed. Yellow police ribbons cordoned off the space.
This room, I thought with a shudder, was where Gerald Eliot had been attacked and probably killed.
"Won't it bother the Ian's Images folk to be eating in here?" I asked Andr‚ in a low whisper. "It seems sort of, well, macabre."
"I asked Hanna myself," he replied with a sniff "She said the contract with the models says she has to provide the coffee break food in a suitable area and this is what suits her. She also said the models today probably do not know about Gerald Eliot's death, and they most certainly will not care."
"Nice folks," commented Julian with a wry smile. "Shall we do the coffee, Chef Andr‚?"
On the far side of the dining room, Julian and Andr‚ carefully poured steaming coffee into the gleaming silver urn. I inched up to the cordoned area and looked at the cabinets that I had shown to so many Homestead visitors during my docent days. The shelves of the undamaged display cases were chockful of holsters, knives, and cowboy hats, as well as photographs of early cabins, camp stoves, and other utensils brought across in covered wagons. The cookbooks had occupied the top shelves of the two vandalized cabinets.
I leaned in close to the first cabinet and read the forlorn, skewed label showing the former placement of American Cookery. Hanna had put the exhibit together with great care, coupling the cookbooks with old letters that mentioned them or their use. A letter next to the empty spot for American Cookery was from a founding member of the German-American Foundation of Colorado, who rhapsodized about his great-grandmother using the book when she first came to Colorado. Dear Great-gran had struggled more with the language than she had with the recipes.