On the Right Side of a Dream Page 3

  “I almost feel bad getting paid to do something that I enjoy so much,” she said in a quiet voice that was hard to hear over the banging of pots and pans and the yelling in the kitchen.

  “Almost,” she chuckled. I could hear the flat ranch lands of Texas in her voice.

  “How did you make this?” I asked as she put the finishing touches on another sculpted dessert that looked as if it had come from an architect’s drawing board.

  She shrugged her shoulders as she gently placed a plump raspberry on top of a swirled dome of whipped cream that looked as if it was really made of white marble.

  “It isn’t that hard, really,” she said as she drizzled thin lines of chocolate syrup around the plate in a design that looked like a tasty spider’s web. “You could do it. You draw it out, get it down on paper. Then you calculate. You have to measure everything, make a formula. That’s the most serious part of what I do, the measuring. Especially since I can’t eat what I make.”

  “Why not?” I asked, remembering the taste and richness of the last should-be-illegal dessert. I tried to lick my fingers without looking too much like a pig.

  “I’m diabetic,” she said simply. “Sugar and I get along fine but only from a distance. I have to be careful.” She gestured toward one of the other chefs who was working at the opposite end of the kitchen. “Larry helps me with the tasting when I’m not sure or when I’m experimenting.”

  I stayed by Wendy’s side for another hour. Peaches left me to run the truck through some diagnostics (something about a rotor, or maybe it was a radiator) and to fill up the gas tank. I could have stayed in Yancey’s kitchen a week, just watching.

  Wendy and her creations had me feeling like a kid in Toys Us. I listened to her talk about the cakes and the crusts for pies and tarts and flans and brulées and white chocolate and dark chocolate, berries, nuts, and sprinkles and extracts of this, and drops of that. There were influences from here and shades of there and sometimes Wendy sounded like Mr. Dinos in my painting class at the community college. And when she’d finished, she had a work of art rising from a plain white dessert plate.

  I knew how to cook and I knew how to bake. I could pinch a pie crust around the edges and ice a cake pretty good. But Wendy’s desserts were millions of miles from the ones that I made. I never gave my stuff much thought, just whipped ’em up and threw ’em in whatever pan or plate they needed. Turned the oven on to 350 degrees and wiped my hands. There weren’t any complaints. There weren’t even any crumbs left when I made a sweet potato pie or a yellow cake with chocolate icing, especially if Mountain was around.

  But watching Wendy got me to thinking about cooking in a different way. New words sneaked into my vocabulary like “artistry” and “technique” that didn’t come from the last novel I had read. And one more new word: credentials. Could I sculpt a confection onto a plain white plate? Could I craft a pyramid out of chocolate or make custard lighter than clouds and decorate it with a dollop of cream that looked like a marble statue? Could I learn to do that?

  Wendy had several framed pieces of paper on the wall of the crowded little corner of a back room that served as her office. These pieces of paper were diplomas and certificates from cooking schools and competitions. She had a row of medallions hanging from red, white, and blue ribbons. She’d baked quiches in Santa Fe and whipped up puddings in a hotel in British Columbia. She had stirred soup in Taipei and baked chocolate confections in Edinburgh. She seemed to have been everywhere and had credentials coming out of her ears.

  The question that I wanted to ask got caught in my throat. I had a high school diploma and knew how to use measuring cups and turn on the oven to the right temperature. I knew salt from sugar, cayenne from cumin. I could match the right pot or pan to the recipe. I could stir up fudge in a pan. In other words, my list of “culinary” skills could be added up on five fingers. But I couldn’t do puff pastry. I hadn’t baked bread or created a soufflé. And I would never think of sculpting whipped cream or cutting out pieces of paper-thin chocolate the way that Wendy did.

  I was just a cook. But could I be a . . . chef? I hadn’t realized it but I said this aloud.

  Wendy laughed.

  “Why not?” she said. Without breaking a sweat, she formed a two-inch-high Babylonian tower of whipped cream on top of strawberry shortcake. I sighed. It was the most beautiful food I’d ever seen. “Sign up for a program. It’s as much talent as it is training. You can’t have one without the other.”

  “But I can’t speak French!” I exclaimed, remembering the two certificates on her wall from a gourmet academy in Paris.

  Wendy shook her head.

  “I’m from Tyler, Texas, honey. How much French do you think I spoke when I started in this business? You’ll pick up what you need along the way.”

  Easy for her to say.

  I saw chocolate pyramids and white icing skyscrapers in front of my eyes nearly all the way south. I remembered lighter-than-air lemon cake and a dense chocolate cake with a liquid center. I had always stopped to watch Jess work, doing what I called “fancy” cooking as he blackened this, terrined that, or created a pale- and delicate-looking sauce that was packed with flavor out of a little cream, a splash of wine, and a handful of crushed herbs. And I wondered if I could ever transform my homegrown recipes into works of art.

  But me? Back to school? I couldn’t do that.

  You won’t know if you don’t try, I said to myself. But where would I go? The thought of Juanita Louis and her one-word French vocabulary of “oui” taking cooking lessons in Paris, France? Girl, I don’t think so. But then, I remembered something. Something stashed in the back of my mind beneath balled-up grocery receipts and my grandmother’s pound cake recipe. It was one of those “ruby slippers” moments—the answer was right in front of my face.

  One day, late last summer after my painting class at the community college, I waited to hitch a ride back to Paper Moon with Mignon, who had stopped in to see one of her teachers. I had passed the time by reading the flyers on the bulletin board. It had all kinds of stuff on it: ads for roommates (“Alternative lifestyles OK”), apartments (“ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING AND NO PETS,” “Vegans only”), David’s Tattoos and Laundromat, and diet pills, contacts for marijuana for medicinal purposes, piercing studios (“Tongues are our specialty”), and the schedules for the next term. The “Food Services Management Department” announcement was copied onto hot-pink paper. There were courses in restaurant administration, institutional food management, and banquet coordination. A deadline for applications to the culinary arts program was set out in bold, black letters. Mignon tapped me on the shoulder, I picked up my portfolio, and we left.

  Now the official-looking words on that bulletin board came back to me: “The Culinary Arts Program is accepting applicants for its eighteen-month program. Applications may be obtained . . .”

  Peaches and I left Los Angeles heading south. It was beautiful but I don’t think I saw a damn thing. All I could think about was cooking. Real cooking. And school.

  Being a chef was for Jess, it was for Yancey and Wendy. Not for me. The whole idea scared me. Going to school. Real school where I would probably be at least a hundred years older than everyone else. Where I would be at least twenty years stupider than everyone else. I talked myself out of the idea as I stared at the road ahead.

  Then, Peaches’s voice floated into my consciousness. And I said, “Yeah.” I have no idea what she said.

  “Juanita, are you all right? Is something wrong?”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m fine. Just daydreaming,” I said.

  I imagined a delicate swirl of whipped cream rising above a perfectly cut slice of bourbon sweet potato pecan pie that I had placed in the center of a plain white dessert plate. A plate of perfect little bite-sized somethings tartared in a puff pastry shell, a fairy-sized dollop of mousse on top of each piece. Ah, yes. Horse doovers from Juanita Louis, Chef. You know, that sounded pretty good.

  Chapter Three


  * * *

  Heroines in romance novels have a few things in common. They’re beautiful, which is probably a good thing. Otherwise the romance part would go out of the window. They are also nineteen years old, but we’ll set that aside for now. They’re sexy, that goes along with the beautiful part. And they’re smart. That’s how they figure out how to get out of those situations they get themselves into. But as a newcomer to the romantic heroine game, there’s one more thing that I’d like to add to the list: flexibility. If you’re going to be a heroine, you have to be able to change course quickly. Make sure your house slippers have rubber soles because you never know when the road will get rocky or the flying carpet you’re on will change its direction. Life may turn out the way you’ve planned—just be ready to change the plan a few times along the way.

  We were south of San Diego and headed toward Mexico. Peaches had a few days off after a delivery and wanted to roast on a beach blanket drinking Coronas and listening to Jimmy Buffet. That didn’t appeal to me but visiting Mexico did. I wanted to see the colors and taste the peppers. I wanted to go to a bullfight, catch a peek at some Mayan ruins, and listen to the music. You can tell a lot about folks through their food and their music. I’d been reading a book about Mexico. And I wanted to try out my Spanish. I had been practicing.

  “A kind of Spanish,” Peaches said, frowning after she listened to my attempts. Peaches was decent at conversational Spanish. She knew all the curse words. But she was having a hard time getting a handle on Spanish—Juanita-style.

  “Spanish with a spot of central O’hiya mixed in with . . . what is that accent?” Peaches scrunched up her face as she tried to figure it out. Then she grinned. “Oh, of course,” she said. “West Virginia.”

  “Yes, by God,” I’d told her proudly. My dad is from West Virginia and I still have a bit of that twang in my speech. It sticks to your vowels like caramel sticks to your teeth. Mix it up with Spanish, though, and you have quite a sound. It’s like putting beef gravy on salmon. It sounds interesting but it doesn’t work.

  “Better listen to the tapes again,” Peaches said, quickly pushing the button on my Walkman. “If you pronounce the words like that, you might get slapped. People will think you’re sayin’ something vulgar instead of ‘buenos dias.’ ”

  But there was a sudden change in plans. Paul, one of Peaches’s coworkers, had come down with pneumonia and was in the hospital. It happened right in the middle of a job, leaving a shipment in Gila Bend to be picked up. Peaches checked her maps and turned the Purple Passion east toward Arizona.

  “I’m sorry, Juanita, I know you wanted to see Mexico. Maybe we can go next month if you want. Bring Jess along, too.”

  “I’m not worried about it,” I told her, and I wasn’t. Instead of seeing Mexico, which I’d never seen before, I was going to see Arizona, which I’d never seen before either. I was still coming out ahead.

  “When I’m finished in Gila Bend, I’ll go north through Phoenix to Utah,” Peaches added. “You got the urge to see a salt lake?”

  Well, not really, but I did want to see what was so grand about the Grand Canyon and Peaches had said that there were red rocks in Arizona. Since I was used to the brown and gray rocks of Montana that sounded good to me. And that’s how I ended up juggling crystals and channeling positive energy in Arizona instead of sipping on a lime in Monterrey. Heroines have to be flexible.

  We drove west from San Diego and headed out on I-10, then picked up State Route 85 toward Gila Bend. After the truck was loaded, Peaches’s route took us north through Phoenix then into the desert. Along the way, a car the size of a soup can switched lanes without using a turn signal or making sure that there was enough room between it and the semi.

  Peaches shifted gears quickly, and then pushed the loud horn of the Kenworth. It sounded like the bellow of a herd of angry elephants. “Son of a bitch! I hope you’ve got big bumpers on that damn Civic because you’re about to get slammed!” she yelled at the tiny little Honda. The engine roared as the truck picked up speed.

  I held my breath because that little car had squeezed in with barely six feet between its trunk and the front end of Peaches’s rig. Then, the boy flipped her the bird and took off, jumping lanes again to zip past an ancient Ford truck that was struggling along.

  “Damn kids,” Peaches grumbled. “If you weren’t in the cab, I’d . . .”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I cut her off. “You’re too conscientious a driver to go after that young fool. He’ll get his, don’t you worry.”

  “Always seems to take too damn long. Where are the Mounties when you need them?” Peaches muttered, pushing the Purple Passion to a few points higher than the legal cruising speed. “Enough of that. Look out the window. Peaches Bradshaw’s travelogue is about to begin.” She pointed to the right. “That, Miss Juanita, is a bona fide, real, genuine living cactus. Probably a hundred years old or more, which means it’s one of the few things older than Millie Tilson.” She grinned at her joke. “It’s a Saguaro. Pretty neat, huh?”

  “Neat” was an all right word but it wasn’t enough to describe the cactus. Not nearly enough. There were hundreds of them, all different, something you had to see up close, not ten feet up in the truck cab. When Peaches stopped for gas, I got out to get a better look. There were skinny ones with spidery branches and short fat stubby ones. Some of them looked like little cabbage heads with spikes and others were small and delicate with tiny orange and gold flowers that were too delicate for such a spiky, sharp, little plant. There was also a spindly one with thin branches and lots of spikes. Sometimes, it looked as if it had . . . well, as if it had moved. Or, maybe I’d been in the heat too long and was seeing things. When I mentioned this to Peaches, though, she didn’t seem surprised.

  “Jumping cholla,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Folklore says that the plants can move but I wouldn’t put much in that.”

  I hopped away just in case. Didn’t want any souvenirs in my butt.

  And then, of course, there were the Saguaro, fifty feet tall. Old and majestic with arms raised toward a sun that always shines. I studied each one as we flew by, trying to keep the images branded on my brain. I wondered what dramas these strange giants had seen in their two-hundred-year life spans. The world has surely changed since they first lifted their branches skyward. They watched without expression as folks rode by on horseback, then, in wagons. They watch now as little metal containers whiz by; their expressions still haven’t changed. But some of them look gray near the bottom of their trunks. I wonder if we are making them sick. But a hundred years is a long time. Maybe they’ll survive us, too.

  Thought I’d make myself a cactus garden when I got back to Paper Moon. I would set it up in the south-facing window of the diner. No way was that as much sun as they would get in the desert but cacti are no quitters. They have faith, those plants. They believe in living life in whatever soil or sunshine you find.

  When you first see the Sonoran Desert, you think to yourself, “I’m on the moon!” The land seems drab and stark. And empty. It is none of those things. And I didn’t expect to like it so much.

  It was more colorful than I could have imagined, considering that most of the colors were shades of each other. It was light brown and light tan and dark tan and gold. It was beige and the few spots of fauna were the shade of evergreens and some of the rocks looked white in the sun that never stopped shining. There were pockets of deep mustard yellow and slate gray. Up close, there were dots of white: tiny little flowers that had the nerve to open their faces to heat that could scramble eggs on asphalt. And all of this beauty was set off by a sky that was bluer than turquoise and as bright as a sapphire. The countryside was flat up close and nearly as far as my eyes could see but way off in the distance, I saw a mountain, Humphrey’s Peak, it’s called, wearing a white cap accessorized by wispy clouds. It looked so cool. I could feel the frost even though I was miles away and it was a hundred degrees in the shade. If there had been any shade. The heat
was incredible. Five minutes in this 400-degree oven and I was done.

  “It’s a dry heat.” Peaches repeated the sentiments of every fool I’d ever met who had been in the southwest.

  “Dry, my ass,” I snapped back. “I don’t care how dry it is, Peaches, it’s hot!”

  Every drop of moisture in my body was gone; even my tear ducts were empty. You don’t sweat in Arizona. You just turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife. The water is sucked out of your body the second you step outside. That’s why everyone carries a water bottle around. You have to; otherwise you’d have folks passing out on the sidewalks. But it is beautiful. Sculptured and sanded, tough and delicate at the same time. Every plant, animal, and rock are as tough as nails. They have a beauty that is hard to describe. In the heat of the day, the land is quiet and all you hear from the highway are the distant sounds of cars whizzing by on the interstate, the occasional honk of a car horn, and not much else. It’s too hot to breathe.

  Night is a different story. North of Phoenix, just outside Canyon City, we spent the night in the truck cab. Peaches is like a turtle; she carries her house with her wherever she goes. There are two bunk beds in the back and a small TV. She was trying to drive straight through but her allergies were bothering her and she needed a nap so we stopped. I had already grabbed four or five hours of sleep and once I’m awake, I’m awake. It was four in the morning so I just stayed up, drank a cup of iced coffee, and listened to the sounds of the desert. I was surprised that there were so many.

  It is dark out there.

  Unless the moon is full, you can’t see anything but the stars in the sky. And, except for the occasional passing car, it is quieter than King Tut’s tomb on a Wednesday night, as far as human movement goes. But any critter with more than two legs is very busy.

  There is constant rustling and the sound of little feet scurrying here and there across the desert floor. Occasionally, you’ll hear a yelp and that means there has been some serious trespassing. There’s also a squeak now and then and a few yodels. But the scratching and sound of the dry earth crumbling and rocks scattering across a well-worn path are everywhere in the dark. Owls hoot. Once I thought I heard the howl of wolves far off in the distance. The coyote yip and yap then slink away. I know that there are snakes and spiders out here, too, but I try not to think too much about them.