Bliss

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Neither here nor there
Albuquerque airport, present day

P
auline Wilde didn't look like a woman in mourning. Unless by widow's weeds one envisioned a lemon yellow and sky blue broomstick skirt studded with what had to be at least half a quarry's worth of turquoise and intricately worked Native American silver disks, topped with a ratty, oversized T-shirt proclaiming, in half-faded but still defiant lettering, “Orgasms Aren't Just for the Young!” Add to that a fiercely pink headscarf barely binding a wild-and-woolly extravaganza of hip-length salt-and-pepper hair and a pair of ancient gardening clogs with roses and kittens hand-stenciled on them in flaking acrylic paint, and you had the very picture of a woman
not
suffering the loss of her beloved life partner. But then, Serafina thought, that was Pauline—she didn't believe in catering to societal expectations. Never had, never would.

“Bliss! Helloooooo, Bliss! Over here, kiddo!”

Her aunt's voice was exactly as it had always been—warm, slightly fruity, like a cross between Julia Child and Jane Goodall, blended with a dash of throaty Kathleen Turner for good measure. Sera smothered a grin at the sight of her impatiently elbowing past the rest of the folks waiting for friends and loved ones at the terminal. Only Pauline ever called her by her ridiculous middle name—a name Pauline herself had gifted her, and which was now echoing through the boarding area to the amusement of the other passengers disembarking from Sera's flight.

The Albuquerque airport was surprisingly posh, Sera saw as she took her first gander around at the fabled Southwest.
Not at all what I imagined from the place where Bugs Bunny made his wrong turn.
Airy, clean, and decorated in pinkish earth tones and expensive native pottery, it was a far cry from the chaos she'd left behind at JFK just a few hours earlier. But she didn't have much time to absorb her surroundings—her aunt was treating the place like a linebacker in a championship game, barreling past all obstacles to get to her objective.

Nothing had ever stood in Pauline Wilde's way. Not for long, anyhow. Ever since Sera could remember, Pauline had been pushing boundaries, defying convention, sticking her middle finger in the face of anyone who told her she couldn't do something she wanted to do. She was a woman utterly estranged from the concepts of shame, modesty, and deference. In comparison, Sera, raised by stolidly conventional yuppie parents until she was thirteen, had always felt somewhat small and apologetic, though Pauline had done her utmost to yank her niece from beneath her towering feminist shadow and lend her some chutzpah when her own wouldn't take Sera the distance.

It hadn't worked, even when Sera had gone to live with Pauline after her parents' sudden deaths. If anything, the contrast between Sera's shy, repressed thirteen-year-old self and her ballsy aunt had made Sera shrink down even smaller, despite her deep love for the older woman. She knew Pauline would be horrified if she realized her efforts to toughen Sera up had done more to make her squirm than make her strong. She admired Pauline's ideals of striving for self-fulfillment, even as she doubted her own ability to advocate for her deepest needs and wants. She simply didn't feel she had the
right
to happiness the way Pauline so obviously did.

Shaking herself firmly, Sera reminded herself she was nearly thirty, and had been self-supporting since college. She'd faced—and conquered—some extremely tough demons, particularly in the last year. She'd seen a bit of what her inner mettle was really worth, and learned to trust her instincts more and more. Pauline's support had done a lot to set her on that path. Now it was time for Sera to do the supporting.

Her aunt's frantic call had come just yesterday.

Hortencia's gone. I need you, Baby-Bliss.

Sera's heart had sunk. Pauline and Hortencia had been inseparable for the last few years. Her aunt must be devastated.
I'm coming, Aunt Paulie,
she'd assured her aunt over the phone.
I'm on the next flight.
And she had been.

Before Sera could so much as set down her carry-on, Pauline had wrapped her arms around her niece and was squeezing for all she was worth. Instantly, Sera was swamped with that familiar Pauline smell: part musky herbal—mugwort or pot, she'd never been sure—part fairy godmother. Tears sprang into her eyes.

“Fuck, it's good to see you, Aunt Paulie.”

“Ditto, kid-bean. Aren't you a sight for sore eyes, too.” Pauline took her time eyeballing her niece, flipping the short, chin-length ends of Sera's new bob approvingly, putting her hands on Sera's hips and turning her this way and that. “Lookin' good, kiddo! I see all those sweets you bake aren't hurting your sweet figure any. You've still got a tush on you like a couple of hot cross buns. You didn't get that from me, that's for sure. Tuchas like a freakin' pancake, that's what I've got. A crepe even, these days. Ah, but what am I babbling about? Baby Bliss, let's get your shit and blow this taco stand. I can't wait to finally show you what heaven's all about.”

Bemused, Sera trailed after her aunt down the long, wide ramp that led to the baggage claim. Had grief made her loopy? Er… loopier than usual? Because she'd expected sorrow-stricken. Wan. Shaken. All the sad emotions the joyful, fearless Pauline Wilde had never seemed susceptible to, but surely must be feeling after the death of her life partner.

At least, that had been the impression she'd given Sera when she'd called to tell her that Hortencia was suddenly gone.
I'm devastated, Bliss. Utterly wrecked,
she'd said. Could Sera please drop everything and fly to New Mexico to help her deal with her loss?

Given that Pauline was, quite simply, Sera's single favorite person, she hadn't hesitated for a second.
After all the times she's saved my bacon,
Sera thought fondly,
she'd be within her rights to ask for a kidney. Hell,
both
kidneys.
In any case, considering how little anchored her to New York these days, taking time out was no great hardship. And she'd been missing Pauline a lot lately.

“So how's your love life, kid?” Pauline asked—loudly—over her shoulder as they headed for the bag claim. Her skirt jingled in counterpoint to her strides. “You getting any?”

I didn't miss
this
part,
Sera thought with a mental wince. She avoided the smirking glance of the college-aged bohunk trotting down the ramp to meet his gloriously tanned, crunchy-granola girlfriend, her arms outstretched as if to announce to all and sundry, “Now you…
you're
getting some.”

“Um, I'm doing okay,” she said weakly. “Not dating anyone seriously right now. Mostly trying to keep the catering business out of the red, keep myself on the straight and narrow. That kind of thing.”

“That wasn't what I asked,” Pauline said, huffing a little as they made it to the conveyor and started scanning the bags. “I asked if you were getting
laid.
Don't really need a boyfriend for that, though of course, it never hurts to know where your next O's coming from. One of the benefits of a steady relationship, I s'pose.” Her face clouded over momentarily.

“I'm so sorry about Hortencia, Aunt Paulie,” Sera jumped in, eager to change the subject, and also to comfort the woman who'd once been
her
sole solace after her parents' deaths. “It must have been quite a shock, her passing so suddenly. I had the impression she was healthy as a horse, with all that hiking and mountain climbing you two were always doing. I'm just sorry I never got to meet her. From everything you've told me, she must have been a really special lady.” Sera patted Pauline on the shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

Was it her imagination, or did her aunt flush, just slightly?

Pauline made an impatient, fly-shooing gesture. “Don't get me started with the wailing and weeping just yet, kiddo. I need these eyes to see. It's a long drive to Santa Fe, and we have a lot of catching up to do. So,” she finished, briskly clearing her throat and pointing at the luggage rattling around the conveyor, “I'm gonna guess yours is the one that looks like a giant pink cupcake with rainbow sprinkles on the front?”

Sera had to admit it was.

“Great, let's get that cupcake to go.”

As she stepped out into the sunlight, Sera took her deep first breath of New Mexico's thin, dry air. Goose bumps rose along her arms, but somehow she didn't think the cool September breeze was to blame. She sensed a weightlessness, a sense of potential—as if destiny had taken a vacation and left her with a wide-open fate. She couldn't say how she knew, but she had a feeling her life—her very being—was about to change.

And considering the woman she'd been until recently, that might be a very good thing.

Because
that
chick had been a real fuckup.

The Maidstone Club, East Hampton, New York
One year and two months ago
June
Saturday
3 p.m., give or take

T
he Anderson wedding was tanking.

It wasn't because the bride was a 'zilla, or the groom had cold feet. It wasn't the work of an obnoxious mother-in-law or a spiteful stepsister. No meddling ex-lovers were waiting in the wings, ready to spill salacious secrets during the best man's toast. Even the weather was idyllic, and the twelve-piece band stood ready with the perfect playlist to get the whitest of the white practicing their funky chicken. The ceremony was at this very moment going off with precisely the proper amount of hitching, the happy couple sniffling sentimentally through vows they'd written themselves as their friends and loved ones looked on, beaming beneficently.

But though they weren't yet aware of it, the whole honking show was sinking faster than the
Titanic
upon hitting a
Love Boat
–sized 'berg.

And it was all the fault of one person.

The pastry chef was drunk as a skunk.

She was also, apparently, in a meat locker.

With Lorenzo the busboy.

And very little clothing on.

Helluva time for one of my blackouts,
Sera thought woozily.
Worse time to come out of one. How did I get myself into this mess?

She remembered snagging a bottle of vodka from the service bar. She remembered drinking to her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend's ill health—more than once. More than five or six times, probably. And she remembered catching sight of the teenaged Enzo, who had been making eyes at her ever since signing on to their catering company a couple months back. She had a vague image of herself crooking a finger at the kid, like some floozy in a Mae West movie. After that, things got a little hazy. But clearly, there'd been some disrobing going on. And some hanky-panky, if the tongue currently licking her left earlobe was anything to go by. But this was no place she'd ever have chosen for a seduction, if the booze hadn't been doing the choosing for her.

Holy frozen buns, Batman, it's cold as the center of a Baked Alaska in here.

The brushed steel walls were rimed in frost. Trays of
hors d'oeuvres
, tubs of sauces, and carts of canapés practically shivered on the shelves. Her breath was coming out in puffs of eighty-proof steam, and her increasingly exposed skin was all gooseflesh. Her meat locker
compadre,
however, was quite obviously not chilling out. In fact, he was rather on fire, if his hot hands and hotter lips were any indication.

Oh, God. What if my boyfriend finds us?
she thought. Horror sobered her up, and fast. The door didn't lock… and half the food for the wedding was stored in here. Any second someone from the staff was sure to walk in, if not her boyfriend himself.

Said boyfriend, however, had other priorities.

“Where are my shrimp cocktails? What the
fuck
did you clowns do with
four hundred
shrimp cocktails? And why the hell didn't anybody warn me the avocados were hard as a stone?”

The person so politely inquiring was celebrity chef and society caterer extraordinaire Blake Austin.
He
was not drunk. But boy, was he pissed.

“Who is responsible for this atrocity!” Austin wheeled around in the country club's gleaming industrial kitchen, his glare hotter than a
brûlée
torch. As executive chef of a Manhattan restaurant so sophisticated one's taste buds needed a graduate degree to properly appreciate its cuisine, as well as a frequent guest on the Food Channel's
Hot Chef!
, he inspired instant obedience in any kitchen he commanded. A dozen frozen faces were caught in his headlights, like deer in chef's whites.

The tall, reedy
chef de partie
piped up timidly, “Ah, Chef, I think you put Serafina on shrimp-and-guac duty since she was done with the cake and desserts.”

“Then
where
is Serafina?” roared Austin, glaring about. “Produce Serafina Wilde before me in the next ten seconds or explain why you cannot!” He waved a filleting knife with reckless abandon to emphasize his point. “Why can none of you troglodytes accommodate this simple request?” he mused, taking his wrath down a degree from rolling boil to simmer. He shook his leonine head in disgust. “Why do I bother? I might as well ask Paula Deen to cook without Crisco as expect you twits to give me a straight answer.”

“Um, Chef?” squeaked the quaking
commis
chef, raising his hand.

“Um,
yes?
” mocked Blake. “Have you found the balls to speak up, peon? Because you're clearly not wearing them.”

The unfortunate
commis
gulped, wavering on his feet as though debating whether to bolt or pass out on the spot. “I… ah… I think I saw her headed for the walk-in with that new busboy Lorenzo, um… a few minutes ago?”

“Well, then, why have none of you worthless fart knockers seen fit to fetch her lazy arse? And no, that wasn't a rhetorical question!”

A snide, rawboned girl (who had endeared herself to no one with her attempts to seduce Austin into advancing her from her lowly position in vegetable prep) stepped forward. “Chef, she didn't exactly look like she'd appreciate an interruption, if you know what I mean.” The girl crossed her arms over her chest and smirked, ignoring the glares from the crew for her disloyalty to a fellow cook. Especially when that fellow cook was Blake Austin's long-suffering girlfriend. No one liked a kitchen snitch.

Even if the snitch was right.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaa!”

With one Godzilla versus Tokyo collision, Sera's half-frozen derriere obliterated the fish-shaped savory sculpture it had taken the
poissonier
hours to perfect. Cold, rich puree of smoked salmon squished between her cheeks, and behind her, Sera heard a crash as an enormous platter of
hors d'oeuvres
went down. The close metal walls of the walk-in rang as if they were under artillery fire as cutlery and trays flew. But it was what loomed above her that had really gotten out of control.

Lorenzo was in the zone. And if Sera couldn't intercept him, he was about to score. Enzo groaned, mashing both of them deeper into the carnage of the carefully arranged appetizers atop the locker's small prep station and grinding for all he was worth. Hot, adolescent kisses were raining down on her neck and shoulders, her heavy cotton chef's blouse was unbuttoned halfway down her chest, and her bra was migrating south alarmingly quickly under the direction of his busy fingers.

Clearly, she'd been rather persuasive when she'd invited him in here.
Wish I had that kind of charisma when I was fully conscious,
Sera thought ruefully. “Enzo… we need to stop before someone walks in,” she panted, trying to catch her breath and simultaneously capture Lorenzo's hands before they could denude her further. But Enzo's English wasn't so hot, and in any case he wasn't in much of a mind-set to hear about her change of heart just now. “
Esperar…
basta, basta!”
she pleaded breathlessly, wondering if she even had the Spanish words right.

Maybe if I was a better lover, a better girlfriend, I wouldn't be in this situation to begin with,
she thought with a rush of panicky regret. Sera's breath caught in a sudden sob.
Maybe Blake wouldn't have…

But he had.

She'd stumbled on the pectorally enhanced blond hostess of the Food Channel's
Hot Chef!
going down on her boyfriend in the storage pantry of their flagship restaurant last night, and she hadn't been sober since. Last night, she'd drunk to ease her hurt. Hell, she'd drunk because drinking was her go-to pain reliever in pretty much every situation. This morning, hungover and humiliated, being forced to work with Blake—looking fresh as the proverbial daisy and smug as shit—had had her reaching for another bottle, and damn the early hour. But it didn't seem to matter how much she guzzled—the sight of that skank sporting one of Sera's own chef's caps as her head bobbed rhythmically with her oral ministrations was a bitter gall that wouldn't wash away.

Worst of all, Blake had merely shrugged when she'd confronted him later that night, humiliated and furious. “What did you expect, Serafina?” he'd said with a philosophical shrug. “Someone with your…
issues
… could never keep a man like me satisfied for long.”

The last of Sera's illusions—that Blake was all bluster, a demanding perfectionist but more driven than truly cruel—died in that moment.

Hot Chef?
Stone-cold bastard was more like it.

And I think… maybe I'm being a bit of a bitch myself right now—to poor Enzo if not to Blake,
Sera realized, suddenly shamed. It was coming back to her now. She'd invited the eighteen-year-old Lorenzo, who had made no secret of his crush on her these past couple months, to this chilly rendezvous out of some vague notion of payback.
If Blake can make out in the kitchen right under my nose, why shouldn't I do the same? Serve the chef some of his own sauce; see how he likes it,
she'd thought with a spurt of juvenile spite. But all the time another part of her had been thinking, wishfully…
Maybe he'll be jealous; regret what he's done?

Dumb ploy, Sera. Really, magnificently, dumb.

Enzo didn't seem to think so. Her pants, thanks to his efforts, were puddled around her ankles, and the lusty busboy had only his jockey shorts going for him at the moment. Smashed salmon paste caused Sera to slide precariously atop the marble-topped prep station, threatening to topple them both to the floor in fishy disgrace.
As if this wasn't enough of a mistake,
she thought, wincing.
Nothing says “oops” like your naked ass skidding in the salmon mousse.

She'd met Blake over mousse, as a matter of fact, though it had been chocolate, not salmon, back then.

It was Sera's final semester at the French Culinary Institute, and she was just a credit or so shy of graduation. She was also deeply, alarmingly in debt and facing a future of pitiful pay and ungodly hours for the next several years—a purgatory known in the industry as “paying your dues.” She'd made her peace with that, though it meant putting off her dream of starting her own line of custom cakes and confections until she was more established. But in order to
get
established, she'd have to land that all-important first job.

Blake Austin had the power to offer her that. Those who worked in his kitchens… well, they could write their own tickets—if they survived the experience. It was whispered that not everyone did.

“He looks like Gabriel Byrne,” her friend Mindy murmured in her ear as they held up the wall in the institute's test kitchen, making themselves inconspicuous. “With a little Colin Farrell mixed in.” She said this with none of the sighing or breathlessness such an observation might be expected to engender. Rather, her tone was clinical.

Mindy was a butcher. Big, burly, with a nostril ring and short, spiky bleached blond hair, she was prone to wearing T-shirts with logos like “Meat Is Murder… Tasty, Tasty Murder” under her bloodstained aprons. She could butterfly a veal chop in seconds flat, make you a sweet Italian sausage fit to weep over, or cut you a chateaubriand that would have your guests offering you sexual favors for life. But she couldn't care less about sweets. She was only in this class to fill out her requirements. Thus, she alone among the twenty or so students assembled in front of their final projects failed to tremble at the palate of the great Blake Austin, who had deigned to drop in on this class—on the condition, it was rumored, that he got to poach the best student for his newest restaurant venture.

“Shite!” A fork ricocheted from the nearest sink. “Absolute shite. You call this a torte? My aunt Sally could shit a better torte, and she's been dead seven years! Get out of my sight.”

One by one, her classmates were dismissed and humiliated. By the time it was Sera's turn to be critiqued, she was sweating, nauseated, and not at all sure she wasn't about to faint. When Austin's spoon dipped into the deceptively simple triple chocolate mousse she'd concocted, it felt like he was delving into her soul. But would he find it wanting?

“Hm,” he grunted. “Hm, hm, hm.” Cunning black eyes skewered Serafina, and she felt herself grow warm unexpectedly. “Is that… cardamom I taste?” One arched brow cocked itself, as though almost too weary to complete the gesture, but was making a special exception for her.

Sera nodded, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. She'd added the spice to the white chocolate layer at the last second, wanting just a hint of the exotic to linger on the tongue.

“And do I detect a
soupçon
of… what, is that, orange essence… in the bittersweet?”

“Ah… yes, Chef.”

There was a pause, during which Serafina died several times.

“Bloody brilliant,” he proclaimed. “I don't mind telling you, when I caught sight of that mousse, I thought I might perish from sheer boredom—I mean, really, who makes chocolate mousse anymore? But you've surprised me, and that doesn't happen often. Damned if you haven't completely reinvented the dish. It's like you've perfumed the air
around
the mousse, the spice is done with such a light touch. And yet it adds ten dimensions to the taste. And the
texture.
Fuck me, but I've never had a mousse so bloody delightful. It's like getting blown by a thousand-dollar hooker, that mousse is. Makes you beg for it. You—what's your name, little bird?”

“S-S-Serafina, Chef,” Sera stuttered, oblivious to both the envious glares of her classmates and Mindy's alarmed gaze.

“Sera-fucking-fina. Bloody brilliant. Well,
Serafina
”—he drew her name out like he was licking it off the spoon he still held—“they're going to be begging for you at my new restaurant. So what do you say, girl? Are you in?”