She was making bœuf bourguignon for her first dinner party in Paris.
Since their afternoon together at the Orangerie, Genna and Marsha had shared three lunches after French class. With Colin at work during the day and not inclined to socialize when he got home, Marsha admitted to Genna that she was lonely.
After their latest lunch that stretched to an entire afternoon and included a wander through the Louvre’s cavernous rooms of decorative objects from the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries, Marsha had agreed to come to Genna’s for dinner the following week and to bring the elusive Colin.
The day before the party, Genna had visited the Musée Delacroix on Rue de Furstenberg around the corner from her apartment. The idea for bœuf bourguignon came to her as she was touring rooms that once housed Delacroix’s living quarters and studio. When she thought of Delacroix, she thought of clutter and heat, of fallen soldiers and distressed maidens densely painted in browns and ochers and reds. Delacroix’s large canvases were too big, too full, too heroic—and a good match for the richness of a well-cooked bœuf bourguignon.
Genna hummed as she chopped. The day would end well with the apartment filled with the fragrant red wine scents of the stew and, she hoped, the laughter of her guests.
During one of their lunches, Genna had told Marsha about Pierre Leblanc.
“He’s interested in you,” Marsha said. “Why else would he ask you to dinner?”
“Pity?”
“Oh, please. You have to stop thinking of yourself as some dried-up middle-aged matron.”
“Aren’t I, though?”
“Bollocks, as Colin would say. You’re lovely looking and you’re funny and you’re interesting. And to Pierre Leblanc, you’re quite exotic.”
“About as exotic as a cheeseburger.”
“Stop it! Pierre will show up again, and when he does, you’re not to turn him down.”
“I’m not looking for romance.”
“Everyone’s looking for romance,” said Marsha.
Genna scooped a mound of chopped onions onto the mise en place and started on the carrots—slim and crunchy from the market. Marsha was wrong about everyone looking for romance.
A year ago, after four months on her own and with her anger at Drew still carving her heart like a hot knife through marzipan, Genna had agreed to go on a date with Gordon Wadsworth.
When Nancy set her up, she insisted that an evening with Fun Gordon was just what she needed, that an evening with Fun Gordon would take her mind off Drew and the house and the money and her future. Genna hadn’t been on a date since the year before she married Drew almost three decades ago.
According to Nancy, Fun Gordon sold luxury cars by day and had been married twice. “You’ll have plenty in common. When he’s not selling Ferraris to gangsters, Fun Gordon is an avid bird-watcher.”
“I don’t know anything about bird-watching.”
“So what? You can learn. And Gordon also likes food.”
“Everyone likes food.”
“You know what I mean. He and his second wife used to take foodie tours to Europe. You’ll have tons to talk about.”
“Why’s he called Fun Gordon?”
“You’ll see!”
The evening started well enough. Gordon (Genna refused to call him Fun Gordon, even in her head) chose a seafood restaurant in Vancouver overlooking the boats moored in Coal Harbour. Knowing she wrote cookbooks, Gordon gallantly suggested she order for both of them. She chose the West Coast Platter for Two, which consisted of a tasty selection of lobster, snow crab, scallops, prawns, and wild sockeye salmon served with pico de gallo and drawn butter.
Drew was terribly—life-threateningly—allergic to seafood. Eating seafood while on a date with another man wasn’t as satisfying as force-feeding it to Drew, but it would have to do.
Genna savored the first few bites of butter-slick scallops and was starting to relax when Gordon morphed into the Birdman of Alcatraz, but without the table manners.
He talked nonstop—often with his mouth full—about his latest foray to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, an hour’s drive south of Vancouver toward the US border.
“Being April, a lot of the birds are starting their mating rituals. You have to see it! Did you know that sandhill cranes mate for life? Well, they do, and there’s a residential pair at the sanctuary that have been together for years. Of course, they’re not mating anymore, but at this time of year they’re naturally protecting their nest.”
“Naturally.”
“Exactly! And they can get incredibly aggressive. You really want to see them.”
Genna smiled tightly. The sandhill cranes yielded to the mallards and then the Canada geese and the robins and the woodpeckers and the chickadees and . . .
Eventually, she gave up trying to listen. Fortunately, Fun Gordon didn’t appear to notice, which left her plenty of time to inwardly curse Nancy.
When Genna complained over coffee the next morning, Nancy told her she was being too picky. She needed to give Fun Gordon another chance to show how, well, fun he was. Genna said no. Offended, Nancy never again arranged a date for Genna, which suited her just fine. For almost another year, she lived alone in her basement suite, lying low on some days with such deep loathing of both herself and Drew that sometimes she wondered about the point of doing anything.
Thankfully, she also had good days and on one of them she put together the proposal that brought her to Paris.
Genna hoped Colin wouldn’t be a bore. Someone as smart and engaging as Marsha was bound to have an interesting boyfriend. She hated to think he’d be one of those fair-haired, carelessly aristocratic Brits with a cutting sense of humor and all the right opinions.
* * *
“You say that this dish . . .” Colin drawled.
“Bœuf bourguignon.”
“Quite. You will pair it with the Musée Delacroix? You mean his studio—the one around the corner?”
“Yes. I went there yesterday.”
“And thought of bœuf bourguignon.”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
“It’s not an exact correlation,” Genna said. “None of the pairings are.”
“I think it’s fascinating,” Marsha said. She was smiling, but the knuckles of the thin fingers holding her wineglass gleamed white.
“I can imagine the correlation must sometimes be exceedingly slim.”
“Right, well, it’s all in good fun anyway.”
Genna was determined not to let Colin get to her. He couldn’t be more than a few years older than her daughter, Becky.
“The cookbook is designed to be a kind of amusing homage to Paris,” she said. “I combine a bistro-style recipe with a specific Parisian site, such as the Eiffel Tower or the Tuileries Gardens. I guess you’d call the book a crossover—a cookbook within a guidebook, or vice versa.”
“How very postmodern,” Colin said.
Genna said nothing, but refrained from taking a sip of wine, fearing she’d snap the glass with her teeth.
“But it’s a gimmick, right?” Colin persisted.
“If you want to call it that, but in my business, gimmicks sell, which I’m sure is true in any business.”
“Not in the case of my business.”