Hungry Woman in Paris (26 page)

The fact that six of the students in our tiny class were Spanish speakers made most of us close, like a community. We joked
in Spanish and cussed in Spanish, and whenever we needed something everyone in our little group would share. Craig mostly
kept to himself, feeling completely left out. I spoke to him in English and tried to help him along. He kept burning his food
and I couldn’t believe he had actually placed number one in his Intermediate class. Later, when he got to know me better and
trusted me, he revealed that there had only been five students in his class.

“I’m a food whore. I’ll do anything for caviar, truffles, and champagne,” Craig said, and I knew we would be friends for life.

I befriended everyone in class and realized that, in this group, I had no chance of placing, so I might as well enjoy it and
not stress out about my scores or the things the chefs told me. I was determined that no matter what the chefs said I was
going to finish and get that diploma and relish the experience. I decided I would laugh at how bad my food was instead of
taking it personally.

I tried to be Dick’s friend, until I realized that he was a Republican who’d voted for “W” and that he wasn’t interested in
being friends with anyone. We were making a dish that required us to stuff spinach inside phyllo dough. Just like in Basic
and Intermediate, we would not get enough ingredients, but at the end of the day everyone shared. I was busy frying something
when I realized I had forgotten to get my spinach. Everyone else already had theirs and there was no more left.

“Where’s the spinach?” I asked Pepa.

“There’s no more,” she replied. I turned around and saw a bowl overflowing with spinach on the counter next to Dick. I assumed
it was available, so I went back to my station and reached over to get some. Dick snapped, “That’s mine!” like a two-year-old
in day care. I was stunned at first, then tried reasoning with him like an adult.

“Clearly that’s not all for you because there’s none left. You don’t need that much. We’re only going to need four or five
leaves and you’ve got like—”

“They’re mine,” he insisted and turned back to his stove.

“But you’re not going to need all that. There’s no way you could possibly use all that spinach,” I said in a loud voice so
he would respond.

“Well… after I get my spinach you can have some, but you have to wait,” he snapped. I was actually shocked that an adult
male didn’t know how to share. People kind of noticed and Blanca leaned over and said in Spanish, “Don’t worry, we’ll find
some for you.” But I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t going to get some; I was flabbergasted that someone could be so thoughtless
and selfish. By now I should have gotten used to it, but it took me several minutes to get over it. Dick couldn’t care less
about sharing; he wanted to come in first. Suddenly I felt sad for Dick, that he had to win to feel good about himself. He
wasn’t bad-looking; his thinning hair and thin body were not unattractive. Maybe he had been an abused and neglected child
left in the closet, or maybe he was a repressed homosexual (also left in the closet), even though he claimed to be married.
Stop it,
I told myself. “Just because someone has been mean to me doesn’t give me the right to think bad thoughts,” said the angel
on my right shoulder. The devil on my left shoulder insisted that Dick had tortured animals before coming to cooking school
and was someday going to shoot up people at the post office.

The spinach incident was just the tip of the iceberg lettuce. As the weeks progressed, his passive-aggressive ways also scared
Blanca and Craig. He was like a poodle with fangs. Every time I would eye him stealing herbs from people’s trays like a sneaky
squirrel, I would debate whether I should tell him what a jerk he was. Chances were he already knew it and didn’t care. I
knew he was not just competitive but rotten too.

During a practical class Blanca finished cleaning her stove and moved to the sink to wash her knives. I was about to call
Blanca’s name when she looked at her stove and noticed a small pot on it.

“Who put this pot on my stove?” she asked. Dick was stationed next to her and said nothing. She grabbed the pot by the handle,
then yelled and dropped it. The pot had come straight out of the oven and had burnt her hand. I turned to see Dick’s face
at that second and caught his eyes sneaking a peek. He remained emotionless and continued packing his knives. Everyone else
stopped what they were doing to sympathize with Blanca and to ask how her hand was doing. Craig almost hugged her, feeling
her pain. Dick snapped shut his tool case and left without looking back.

“It was probably Dick who did it,” I said to her in Spanish and described his look. Any conscious and kind human being would
have reacted with sympathy or even admitted that they were sorry they had accidentally left the hot pot on her stove. The
fact that he’d left made him evil in my eyes. Blanca practically cried as she passed her hand through cold water for several
minutes. Her hand was badly burnt and she had trouble cutting for the rest of the day.

The next day Blanca was missing celery from her tray and I told her I’d seen Dick take it, which he had.

“Dick, did you take my celery?” asked Blanca.

“No,” he responded without blinking or taking the time to consider her accusatory question.

“Dick, are you sure you didn’t take my celery?” she asked. He denied it again. I no longer wanted to find a reason to feel
sorry for Dick. I wanted to kick his ass, but we were stuck with him until graduation.

I was so stressed out already by being thrown into a competitive environment that I wondered whether I wanted to choose that
battle. I just kept telling myself to ignore Dick. When it’s over I’ll just laugh at his pathetic existence.

I woke up at three in the morning to catch a taxi and pick up Blanca at her apartment. We arrived at a spot near the metro
stop by the school and got on the chartered bus to Rungis, the world’s largest food market. It hadn’t been on our schedule,
because our class was too fast-paced, but I’d insisted and we’d been given the same opportunity to visit Rungis that the regular
Superior cooking classes got. We were made to wear white lab coats and hairnets in order to enter the food markets. I had
never seen so many gutted pigs and cows in my life. There were cheeses the size of tractor tires, weighing over two hundred
kilos, a large selection of rotting cheeses, and roosters and poultry of every shape and size. After about two hours of this
food tour I was ready to fall asleep, but this was just the beginning of our day.

We were supposed to have a nine-hour day, but by the middle of the practical I was brain-dead. When I said good-bye to everyone,
Pepa couldn’t believe my audacity. She wished she could do the same; she had no choice but to finish her classes. Pepa had
started the intensive courses thirteen weeks ago, and she was burning out. She desperately needed the diploma because she
was planning to open a cooking school in Spain.

Bassie invited me to her graduation and I debated whether or not I should go. On Fridays the last thing I wanted to do was
go out. I told her I would attend her graduation because I heard in her voice that it meant something to her if I went. She
had no family coming and Henry was history. I promised I would be there and would try not to fall asleep. I bought flowers
for Bassie and congratulated her on passing her final exam. No matter how incompetent they wanted to claim she was, she’d
finished the exam on time and her food was actually good.

“Henry still has feelings for you,” Bassie admitted.

“No. We just had fun,” I said.

“I’m sure you did, but he kept bringing up your name. I just know he still cares about you and I feel like a jerk for being
with him,” she confessed.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t feel right being with someone who I thought had feelings for someone else,” I concurred, then added, “But
you are not a jerk, Bassie… I know how cold a bed can be in Paris.”

Bassie shrugged. “I’m returning to the States next week. My ex-boyfriend wants me back.”

“Not the guy who was a jerk to you, then became nice, then went back to being a jerk?”

Bassie shrugged again. “Same one.”

“Has he changed?” I had to ask.

“No, I have.” Bassie looked up proudly and smiled.

Sunday night, when I was sleeping, I heard a knock at the door. It was only nine p.m., but I’d been exhausted and had gone
to bed early so I could be ready for my practical class. I got up and answered the door wearing my skimpy see-through camisole.
It was either that camisole or no clothes at all, because I can barely sleep with clothes on. If an earthquake ever happened
I would run out naked, I don’t care… Besides, I figured it was probably just Marina, since she was the only person in
the building who would talk to me. All the other immigrants, like the Filipina housekeepers or the African chauffeurs, just
smiled but never spoke.

I pulled open the door and found two police officers. They looked at me, and simultaneously their eyes headed south, where
my nipples were saying hi to them. I slammed the door like a criminal and they pounded on it, demanding that I open up right
away. I’m sure they threatened to break down the door in French, but I threw on a robe and opened my door again before they
had a chance to kick it in. They began to ask me questions in French, but I asked them if they spoke English. They said they
spoke a little. My other neighbors, as well as Marina, had surrounded my door, wanting to know what was going on. I asked
the police officers to come in so the neighbors would stay out of my business. I offered them chairs, but they preferred to
stand. They took in my room and asked me for identification. I handed them my
carte de séjour
and they asked me what I was doing in France.

“I’m studying cuisine at Le Coq Rouge,” I said, but they had never heard of the school. I wondered how that was possible if
it was supposed to be so famous. They told me they wanted to ask questions about the robbery. I told them I knew nothing about
it except that it had happened to Madame Bodé. I sat down on my bed and looked up at them. They went on to say that Madame
Bodé had filed a police report and on her report she’d claimed that she’d seen me with a young Arab male a few days before
the robbery.

“Madame Bodé claims she saw you with a man one night on the stairway having sex. Is that true?” Officer Sansgene asked. His
question surprised me and I regretted letting Mohammed convince me to do it on the stairway. But what the hell had Madame
Bodé been doing on the stairway at three a.m.? She lived on the first floor and there was never a reason to come upstairs
… unless she’d been visiting her chauffer in the middle of the night… Hmm, so she’d caught me and I’d caught her.
Must be why she’d seen us and, yet, said nothing to me. I would have expected her to chastise us and make a scene, but she’d
quietly passed us and slipped away into the night.

“Yes,” I said, trying to reveal as little as possible.

“Was this man a
maghrébin
?” Officer De la Corbeille asked.

“What is that?” I said, feeling so ignorant for not knowing.

“An Arab.” Officer Sansgene slipped in.
Maghrébin
was their P.C. term.

“Yes,” I said, wondering what kind of trouble I was in for having sex with an Arab.

“Who was this man? Is he your boyfriend? Does he live with you?” Officer Sansgene continued his probing.

I didn’t want to give them any information because Mohammed would think it low of me to do so. “No. He is not my boyfriend
and he does not live here. I was seeing him for a few weeks and then we had a fight and I kicked him out and I have not seen
him since,” I said, trying to imagine the officers naked. It was a technique I’d used so often to keep from being intimidated
by people in positions of power who I was interviewing that it had become automatic. As soon as they began their interrogation
I saw them naked and imagined the shorter one with a huge penis to explain his inner confidence. I recalled making love to
Mohammed on the stairway… then I fantasized about the two naked officers joining us. They would handcuff me and take
turns penetrating me as I—. I shook my head and smiled, trying to erase that image. God, why do I have such inappropriate
thoughts at the most awkward times? They stared at me with more seriousness and continued with their questions.

“How long ago did you stop seeing him?” Officer Sansgene asked. They took turns drilling me with questions. Reluctantly, I
gave them all the information I had on Mohammed and hoped that was the end of it.

“Who was that Muslim woman staying with you?” Officer De la Corbeille asked. Madame Bodé was so nosy; why did she have to
tell them about Altair? I should tell her husband about the chauffeur, I thought. Of course, he probably visits the nanny
at night too.

“She was a friend who was visiting, but she went back to her country a few weeks ago,” I said, casually fighting my tears.
They nodded their heads, satisfied, and the short officer gave me his card. He wrote his cell phone number on the back of
the card just in case I remembered any other information, no matter how small. I assured him I would call him if I wanted
to be handcuffed—I mean, if I had any more information for him. They said
“Bonne nuit”
and apologized for scaring me. I turned off the lights and debated in the dark whether I should have told them about Altair.
Maybe they could have given me the information necessary so I could confirm for myself if she was dead or had been deported.

That night I had a nightmare. I woke up crying when I saw Altair’s corpse being pulled out of the Seine. In my dream she had
been wandering by the Seine, searching for her children, and when she lost hope she drowned herself. In my dream I ran to
her body and when I kneeled to look at her face it was Luna looking back at me, with sad eyes full of tears and water drops
from the Seine. It took me an hour to recover from the nightmare. I felt ashamed for not having tried harder to find Altair
or given her hope. I cried myself to sleep and woke up feeling like crap on Monday morning.