The Lost Recipe for Happiness (14 page)

Elena groaned. “I should have seen that coming.”

“Achiote,” said Alan, and Elena nodded, a dozen ideas arriving at once.

Juan went last. He grinned, his liquid black eyes twinkling, and brought out several bottles of tamarind-flavored Mexican soda. “Jarritos,” he said.

“That’s cheating,” Cody said. “That’s a brand name, not an ingredient.”

“So?” He shrugged.

“I’m cool with it,” Elena said. “Rasputin?”

“It’s all good.”

Juan looked at his watch. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Elena said.

“Ready,” Ivan agreed.

“Go!” He brought down his hand. Ivan raced for the walk-in. Elena went to the table and looked at the ingredients, letting her left brain go blank while the colors and scents and textures of the food mingled, swirled. She opened the honey and smelled an English summer afternoon. The buzz of bees, heavy and lazy and deep, the delicacy of rose petals and hearty shortbread and Earl Grey tea. She opened a bottle of Mexican soda and took a sip, delicately rolling it through her mouth like wine, picking up traces of mango and lime, which would pair with the pomegranate and—she narrowed her eyes—pork. Pork sausage? Yes, pork sausage grilled with onions and then stewed in the soda and pomegranates. Baked into a rustic crust, English-style. And shortbread cookies with candied rose petals and rose water. A very light appetizer, then. How to work in the corn?

Ugh. She’d think about it while she got the pie going.

At the back of the house in Espanola had been a one-car garage, converted in the late sixties to a poker room. A big round table sat in the middle of it, and cast-off kitchen chairs made of chrome and vinyl lined the sides. The smell of a million cigarettes and ten thousand cigars clung to the unfinished walls.

Serious poker was played in that room. With beer and tequila, Jack Daniels if somebody was feeling flush. Men played, not women. Never a woman, though sometimes there were women sitting on the sidelines, dressed up for the evening, cleavage showing, eyes lined thickly in black.

But as with everything, Isobel had been driven to be as good as a boy, and she wanted to learn to play poker like the men. She badgered Edwin to teach them. On long summer afternoons, they learned to play, finding relief in the thick shade cast by an ancient cottonwood whose leaves clattered softly overhead in the odd breeze. The Rio Grande lazed by, coppery and clear.

Isobel was too impatient to be a good poker player, in the end, but Elena, who had spent so much time observing the behavior of others, keeping track of what a roomful of possibly dangerous strangers might be thinking, proved to be very, very good. Edwin took such pride in her that he let her tag along to his games sometimes, and even play with the guys once in a while.

Of all the things she’d learned, those poker games had been the training that stood by her best as she struggled to survive as a woman in kitchens. Poker had lent her steely nerves and an ability to bluff, and an ability to hold her liquor. Tonight, in the kitchen, she played her ace. She slid her pies in the oven and glanced toward Ivan’s side of the kitchen. He was dancing to his own music, chopping and bouncing and humming under his breath. As he felt her gaze, he looked up and winked.

“Juan,” she said, “we need some tequila, and two shot glasses.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked in Spanish.

She wiped the counter. “I’m sure.”

When he brought the bottle into the room, there was a murmur from the guys. One tucked his hands under his armpits. “Go, Chef!”

Ivan sauntered over, drying his clean hands on a fresh white towel from the stack on the counter. His eyes glowed turquoise beneath the hooded lids, and he cocked a brow as he lifted the shot glass. “May the best man win.”

“Most
huevos,”
she said, and Ivan chuckled.

They knocked back a shot, then one more, and went back to cooking. Ivan had a beer at his elbow the whole evening, but even when goaded, he didn’t drink as many shots as Elena would have liked. And it took a while for her to realize why—he eyed the door every now and then. Hoping for Patrick.

As she cooked, she tried to keep her mind on her task, but the busy hands left a wandering mind. Over and over again, she saw a flash of Julian, leaning in to kiss her. His hands on her face, his black lashes floating down to the high angle of his cheekbone, the feel of his tongue against her, sliding in and out of her mouth, dragging across her lip—

Over and over, desire blistered through her, carrying with it a powerful and peculiar heat she kept nudging like a secret. Lips, tongue—tingling in the small of her back, the nape of her neck. His hand on her jaw—her throat flushed red and she could feel her nipples standing at attention beneath her baggy shirt.

Oh, I get it,
Dmitri had written,
he just wants to fuck you.

She breathed in. No, she definitely wanted to fuck
him.
Julian. Her desire had teeth, violence in it. As he’d sat there in front of her in the kitchen, wearing a neat, discreetly striped shirt in white and palest purple and palest blue, she thought of his chest, and wanted to tear at the fabric. She wanted to bite his neck like a cat, mount him, ride him, scream a lot.

Stop.

Focus.

Obviously, she needed to find a friendly buddy for sex. The stress of working so much was making her horny, and sex would ease some of the aches and pains, too. Nobody in the kitchen, of course, but maybe once Mia arrived, they could go out sometimes, meet some new people.

Ivan stepped out to have a smoke, and Elena ducked into the break room. Her eyes were red and she squeezed some drops into them, blinking the sting away. Settling on the bench, she pulled out her cell phone and punched in Patrick’s code. It rang, a lilting piano piece, but went to voice mail. He was still driving, then. Maybe on his way.

She stood up straight. Inhaled long and clear. Gave herself the eye in the mirror. She wished for company, for the comfort of her ghosts, but nobody came. They never did when she wanted them. Only when they felt like it.

“Fuck you then,” she said aloud. Easy for them, on the other side. She unbound her hair, combed it, put it back in a ponytail. A depth of regret and resistance pushed through her—weariness. She didn’t want to have to keep fighting for her position forever. She was sick of coming out of her lonely corner, fighting, going ten rounds, coming back to the lonely corner again.

And yet, what choice was there? You could sit down on the side of the road and cry, or you could keep fighting.

In the vastness of the great room, Julian balanced his laptop on his legs and tapped quickly, a rush of inspiration moving through him at last. Outside, the night swirled with fat, cottony snow against a soft pink sky. Pines arrowed into the pastel softness like sentinels protecting the property. It was vastly, unbelievably quiet—the thing people either loved or despised about the town. He drank it in like a drug. All of his life, he’d lived in noisy cities. This silence felt like a benediction, a blessing.

A fire flickered in the fireplace, logs burning with yellow and blue, the crackle of exploding sap sending a spray of sparks out every so often.

He wrote of a man isolated and lonely, a writer perhaps. No, that was too clichéd. A—what? What kind of a person lived the life of a recluse? He wrote fast:
writer, scientist, researcher, naturalist, forest ranger.
Hmm. Naturalist. Botanist. Forest ranger. Yeah, one of those. A guy who lived in the mountains, alone. His company was the landscape, the animals. His name was…Julian narrowed his eyes, reached for the first thing that came to mind.
Paul, Peter, Matthew, Jake.
Huh. Jake, yeah. Manly name for a guy with a broken heart. Matthew McConaughey–style, that Texas jaw and strong blue eyes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good.

He sipped a cup of hot, strong spice tea, his only beverage when he worked. The wine with supper had lubricated his thinking a little, but he didn’t really like drinking much anymore. It slowed his brain down, which was probably why some people liked it.

And if he were honest with himself, he was thinking of checking on Elena and crew later.

Jake in the mountains. Maybe Jake was too clichéd, too. Think about that.
Jack, Mack.
No, Jake for now. Fix it later.

Putting his cup down, he typed:
brokenhearted Jake in a cozy snowfall. A fire. A blanket in front of the fire. He’s waiting, but we don’t know for what. A woman appears, wearing a diaphanous robe that reveals and hides all at once. A beauty, sexy and strong, and she slides down behind our hero and begins to kiss his neck. A knock comes at the door. Camera zooms in on Jake’s face, showing nothing. He glances over his shoulder, gets up to answer the door—

There was a sudden bump against his leg. Julian, heavily engrossed in his writing, startled. He looked around the laptop screen to see Alvin.

“Oh, it’s you, Dog,” he said, reaching out to scratch the red-gold head. It was as silky as it looked. “Where’s my daughter?”

Alvin leaned back, throat exposed, a most obvious invitation. Julian grinned and kept scratching the side of his face. Alvin reached up and put a paw on his wrist:
lower.
He licked his jowls, looked over his shoulder toward the stairs to the basement, and worriedly looked back to Julian.

“Problem?” Julian asked.

Faintly, he heard Portia yelling. Into the phone, probably. “You don’t like yelling, do you? You want me to go check on her?”

Alvin leapt up and pranced toward the stairs, watching to see if Julian was smart enough to actually follow. They went down the stairs, and as Julian always did, he passed his hand through the strings of water falling in perfectly straight lines from the ceiling two stories above.

As they got to the bottom of the steps, Alvin slowed. Portia’s voice, slightly hysterical, came to him clearly. “Mom, you can’t just keep doing that! I can’t go from school to school, back and forth, it makes me crazy. You won’t even be there—you’re always on some stupid movie.”

Julian paused. This was a new angle. He squatted to put a gentling hand on Alvin’s back. The dog stopped agreeably, waiting for a cue.

“If you miss me so much, just come visit me. How hard is that?”

Another pause. His heart lifted.

Portia’s voice was absolutely solid when she said, “I will not come live there. Plain and simple. I like it here.” The sound of something hitting a wall. He suspected it was a phone.

Julian trotted the rest of the way down the stairs, coming around the corner just as Portia let go of a growl of aggravation. Alvin rushed over to lick her fingers. “Your charge doesn’t much like shouting,” he said mildly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, honey!” She dropped down to her knees and kissed Alvin’s face all over, scrubbing his neck, the fluff of thick hair around his neck. On the floor, her phone began to trill. “Don’t answer that,” she warned her dad. “My mother is a selfish, clueless
…child.”

Julian lifted his index finger. “Watch this.” He picked up the phone and punched the green button. “Hello, Ricki. How are you tonight?”

“Julian. I’m fine. Do you have a new movie yet?”

“No. Listen, Portia is settled and happy in the school here and I want her to stay put for the whole school year.”

“I miss her, Julian. It’s not fair that you have her all the time.”

“There’s plenty of room here. You’re welcome to come visit any time you like.”

“But I’m living with someone now, you know that.”

“There’s room for him, too.”

Ricki paused. “Really?”

“We’re adults. There’s seven thousand square feet in this house. Doesn’t he ski? We’re getting our first snow tonight.”

“Well, I suppose that’s one answer, isn’t it?” She sounded hopeful, if a bit perplexed. “I’d love to, Julian, if you really mean it.”

“I really mean it, Ricki. In fact, I’m sure your daughter would love to see you, so why don’t both of you come next week? I’m having a little business gathering. You can come for the dinner and stay a day or two after.”

“Business?”

He knew she’d not had as many offers these days. “I’m making a new movie.”

“I see. Well, let me talk to Jake.”

“Jake?” Julian echoed.

“Yes. You’ve met.”

“Right. I forgot.” Scratch Jake as the hero’s name, he thought. Scott? Alex? James? Maybe he didn’t really have a name. No, that would be stupid.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, realizing he’d blanked her out completely.

“May I speak to my daughter now?”

“Of course,” he said. “Here you go, kid.”

Portia grinned, her eyes as luminescent as morning. The director side of him knew the camera would love that face. The father side of him would do whatever he could to prevent her from going into the business. “Thanks, Dad.”

He thought of the treatment for his script. Maybe the hero wasn’t a man. An aloof man was one thing, obvious, easy. An aloof woman, more interesting. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” he said.

“He’s writing,” Portia said to the dog, clasping him close to her. “You see that look on his face? That means he’s disappearing into his imagination.”

Julian barely heard her, his synapses clicking as he dashed up the stairs and back to his computer. Settling the computer on his knees again, he wrote,
Blue eyes in a Mayan face. Haunted by the ghost of a dead lover, killed in a car accident that left her scarred for life…

At the back of his mind, he heard her say, “I am not going to be a story.” But this wasn’t about an accident. It was about a ghost. About—

He paused, a sudden shiver on his neck. Did he want to take that chance, of alienating her? He thought of kissing her on the mezzanine, of the way she tasted like possibility. What if this flare between them had the potential to be something real?

The cynical, so-often-disappointed side of him said,
Yeah, right. Real for how long?
He didn’t believe in soul mates anymore.

He did, however, believe in stories. What if the reason she was in his world was to give him the kernel of a new ghost story, something he’d been wanting to write for years? And what if he gave up the story for some possibility of—