Pish Posh (7 page)

“That woman in the kitchen..., ” Ms. Blurt said. “What do you know about her?”

Clara shrugged. “Hardly anything. She's worked at Pish Posh since it opened, and she lives in the apartment above the kitchen. But that's all. Ms. Blurt, what is this about?”

Ms. Blurt's large blue eyes looked at Clara carefully. She seemed about to say something, but then simply shook her head and smiled apologetically. “Pay no attention to me, Clara. My imagination sometimes gets the better of me. ”

Clara went to bed that evening feeling strangely at odds. Though she lay still for a good hour in the silent apartment, she was unable to sleep. Her thoughts kept tumbling restlessly over the mystery of Ms. Blurt's reaction to Audrey. Was this part of the strange and peculiar thing that Dr. Piff had talked about?

Finally, when she could no longer stand lying there in the dark and staring up at the ceiling, she jumped out of bed. A good, strenuous climb and the night air might tire her out, she reasoned, and she headed toward the Tree Climbing Room. But once she opened the door, she realized that she had been secretly hoping to meet up with Annabelle again.

How ridiculous! Clara thought, shaking her head. What are the chances that Annabelle will be on the roof again tonight? And why should I even care? The girl is a Nobody from head to toe.

Angry at herself, she stepped back out of the room and slammed the door. She walked back down the hallway restlessly, finally pausing in front of a room that she hadn't visited for a long time. It was the Neighborhood in Brooklyn Room. When she was younger, she used to visit this room quite often, but as she got older, she had simply lost interest. She hesitated a minute, then turned the doorknob and walked in.

The room was completely dark, which made her wonder if her parents had “retired” it. They did that sometimes when they thought a room was bad for Clara in some way, like the Blueberry Picking Room, which they retired because the blueberries stained Clara's fingers to the point where she could not be seen in public.

But then she remembered the way that the Neighborhood in Brooklyn Room worked. You had to walk in, close the door, and wait—which she did. After a moment she began to detect the odor of bacon frying and coffee brewing. Then the streetlamps began to light up very slowly—a morning in Brooklyn—and she could make out the shapes of low buildings with stoops and tiny, fenced-in gardens in front of them, and a street sign that said AVENUE U and EAST 7TH STREET. There was the bakery with the heaps of pastries and cookies and cakes displayed in the windows. And there was a pizza shop, with its tall red-and-white-striped tables and stools for customers. None of it was real—not the pastries, which were made of glazed ceramic, and not the gardens with their silk flowers, or the shellacked slices of fake pizza. But the smells were real, even if they were pumped through an exhaust system.

And now the sounds—the
burrr
of cars passing, people calling to each other in rough, loud, rude voices, dogs barking. It was all somehow delightfully soothing. She climbed the stairs to one of the houses and sat down in a lawn chair on the front porch, leaned her head back, and shut her eyes. Before long she felt herself drifting off to sleep.

“Mais oui!
There you are!” Pierre Frankofile burst into the room, still dressed in his chef's uniform. His entrance awakened Clara, and she sat bolt upright in the lawn chair.

“Oh,” she said, rubbing her eyes, “hi, Papa. What are you doing here?” It was very strange for her father to visit her in her apartment.

“I just wanted to see what happened with your friend... Ms. Bloat...”

“Blurt. She's fine.”

“Is she?” He rubbed his hands together. “Did you slap her?”

“No.”

Her father looked disappointed, and Clara realized that that was probably what he had come to find out. And, in fact, it did appear that he was about to leave, but he suddenly changed his mind, walked up the stairs to the porch, and sat beside Clara in a lawn chair. The light from the streetlamps was still dim, an early morning light, even though it was actually nearly midnight outside. But it was very convincing, and Clara really did feel like the day was just beginning, rather than ending.

“Nice room,” her father said. “Makes one feel homesick somehow.” He turned to her and smiled. “It reminds me of the little village in France where I was born—you know, the smells, the sound of
les enfants
playing. One day, when I have the time, I'd like to take you there to see it, to meet your
grand-mere
... He shut his eyes and seemed to drift off in his own reverie.

“Papa,” Clara said.

“Mmm?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“What do you know about Audrey?”

“Audrey Aster?” His face lost its dreaminess, and he frowned. “I know she makes a tolerable soup, when she isn't lazing around like a bespectacled sloth.”

“What do you know about her, though? Where does she come from? Does she have a family? Things like that.”

“How on earth should I know?” Pierre looked at his daughter with bewilderment, as though she had asked him what he knew about earthworms.

“Where did she work before you hired her?” Clara persisted.

“Where, what, how?!” Pierre's voice had reached its usual restaurant boom by now. “I have no idea! It was Dr. Piff who brought her to me.”

“Dr. Piff?” Clara sat up.

“Years ago, when we first opened. He said that she needed work and that she would not disappoint me—oh, what a lie! They are a lousy, putrid lot, the whole bunch of them. If I had my way, I would tie them all to a tree and...”

Clara sank back down in the lawn chair. Once her father began on a rant, there was no stopping him. He bellowed on and on, drowning out the taped neighborhood noises, making the lawn chair squeak every time he threw up his hands to show how he would throttle the busboy or tear the pastry chef into a thousand pieces, until, finally exhausted, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the bottom of his chef's jacket and stood up.

“Well,
bon soir,
Clara, I'm completely done in.” He gave her a quick peck on the top of her head and left her alone. Well, not quite alone. Now she had some new ideas to keep her company.

Dr. Piff, huh? ...

T
hat morning Clara passed the dining room, eyed the stack of waiting newspapers on the table, and decided that they could wait.

“No breakfast today,” she called hastily to the cook as she passed the kitchen and headed directly to Pish Posh.

Lila Frankofile was sitting at the restaurant's bar, deep in thought. Lila wasn't generally there that early, but she had a touchy situation to deal with: the princess of Macedonia was to be there that evening at the same time as her sister, the empress of Bulgaria. The two of them were known to detest each other, and whenever they were in the same place at the same time, a fistfight invariably erupted. Lila scratched at her head as she stared at the reservation book, trying to figure out the best way to keep the two sisters from getting within sparring distance of each other.

When Clara walked in, Lila looked up briefly and commented, “A bit early today, aren't you? Did you happen to see today's edition of
Hither
&
Thither?”

The newspaper was on the bar, its cover featuring a large photo of several women with no eyebrows. The headline read “Jousting Match Will Benefit Medieval Costume Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ” Clara started to read the article out loud: “All of society's most glamorous ladies have ripped out their eyebrows—”

“Not that,” Lila interrupted. “Look at the article below.”

The article below read,

“How idiotic.” Clara rolled her eyes.

“You must bring your friend back to dine,” Lila said decisively.

“But she's just an art teacher.”

“Don't be a snob, dear. Some Somebodies are born and some Somebodies are made. If
Hither
&
Thither
has made an art teacher into a Somebody, who will know the difference? ”

“I will!” Clara was shocked that her mother could accept an imposter. She threw the newspaper down and went into the kitchen. It was empty, too early for the workers, or her father, to be there. Everything looked peaceful. The stoves were gleaming, having been scrubbed the night before by the workers. The massive dishwasher, which usually spewed out a thick wall of steam and sounded like a hundred electric pencil sharpeners all going at the same time, was now simply a quiet metal box. In just a few hours, it would be chaos here again.

Clara opened a metal door in the back of the kitchen and went up a flight of stairs, a side entrance to the apartment on the second floor. At the landing was a short hallway, and at the end of the hallway was a door. Clara pushed the buzzer and waited. There was no answer, but she thought she could hear someone moving around inside. She pushed it again, three times in a row, and then knocked loudly.

Finally, the door opened and Audrey the soup cook stood there in a pair of jeans, a sleeveless white tank top, and white canvas sneakers. She was wearing her glasses as usual, but her red hair, which was always pulled back into a tight ponytail at work, was loose. She squinted at Clara for a moment, as if she had trouble making out who she was.

“Oh, hi,” she said. “Do you need something?”

Clara did not like the way she said that, as if Clara were inconsequential, or worse, simply a child.

“I would like to talk to you,” Clara said.

“What?” Audrey asked, tilting her ear toward Clara.

Clara repeated herself, something she hated to do, and Audrey replied, “I'm a little busy at the moment. Can you come back later?”

“No.”

Audrey sighed, and then stepped aside. “All right. Come in. ”

The room was fairly large, but it was the only room in the apartment, besides a small bathroom off to the right. To the left, in a nook, was a teeny tiny kitchen, and it was the only modern-looking thing in the apartment. The rest of the room was furnished with what looked to be antiques. There was a tremendous bed, its wooden headboard beautifully carved with leaves and flowers, a pair of chairs whose mahogany legs were carved to look like an animal's claws, and a mahogany vanity. Placed near the room's one window, which faced Washington Square Park, was an elaborately carved rocking chair, its rockers terribly worn, and a sketch pad lying on its seat.

An old fireplace had been boarded up, but its mantel was covered with pencil and charcoal sketches. They all looked somehow similar and yet different. It took Clara a moment to realize that all the drawings were of the view outside the window.

“Did you draw those?” Clara asked.

“What?” Audrey asked.

“I said,” Clara repeated in a loud, irritated voice, “DID YOU DRAW THOSE?”

“Yes,” Audrey replied.

“They're not very good,” Clara said.

“Not very, no,” Audrey agreed. There was something very dignified about Audrey, a fact that Clara hadn't noticed before. She didn't like it either. A soup cook should not be dignified.

“Then why do you continue to do it?”

Audrey picked up the sketch pad, placed it on the floor, and sat down heavily in the rocker, as if she were suddenly exhausted. After a minute, she replied, “Have you ever felt that if you focused on something long enough, you would find what you were looking for?”

“On occasion,” Clara said, thinking about the times when she tried to recall memories from her childhood.

The sunlight from the window washed across Audrey's face, and Clara looked at her carefully for the first time. Funny, although she'd seen Audrey nearly every day for years, she had never noticed that she had an odd scar that crossed her chin and angled up, like a check mark. Perhaps she'd never noticed because the kitchen lighting was dim, or maybe it was simply that Clara had never bothered to look at Audrey too closely. Yet, now that she did, she noticed something else. This Audrey was made of fine stuff. Her features were smoothly molded, almost aristocratic. Her hands were slender and her neck was long and elegant. Clara thought of her own mother's hands, which were thick and lumpy at the knuckles. She frowned, annoyed at herself for being so distracted. After adjusting her sunglasses and folding her arms across her chest, she asked Audrey what she had come there to find out.