“I doubt I can make it,” Sera hedged. “I’m going back to New York tomorrow. I have a lot of things to wrap up back East. I’ll be packing and shipping not only my personal stuff but my catering and baking equipment as well. At least, what I don’t leave behind for my assistant Carrie,” she amended. “Then I have to deal with my apartment, and there are a lot of people I need to say good-bye to. I’ll be gone all week, up until Friday,” she said apologetically. “Maybe next time.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Aruni said brightly. “Friday means you’ll be back just in time. And it’s a lucky thing, too, because believe me, you don’t wanna miss what’s going on next week! It’s Zozobra, and there’s no better way to experience Santa Fe than to rock out at the big Z-fest.”
“Zozo-wha?” Sera asked.
Aruni just shook her head mysteriously. “It’s something you have to see to believe. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Just meet us at P-HOP—well, I guess it’s Bliss now—next Friday evening and you’ll find out. Oh, and bring your dancing shoes.” She gave a little shoulder shimmy, as if she just couldn’t wait. “Ooh, here comes Janice with dessert. Awesome.” Aruni bounced in her seat, utterly enamored with the world.
Sera had the urge to lean over the booth and give her new friend a squeeze for being so cute, but she contented herself with a smile and mental promise to herself to bake the yogini something special, first chance she got. Perhaps a matcha green tea mousse, with a white chocolate base and a marzipan yoga teacher performing warrior pose on the top… Her mind drifted happily with sweet visions of custom confections until the reality of their dessert landed with a clink of china and the rattle of a fork before her widening eyes.
Pie.
Glorious pie.
Her nose told the tale before her taste buds even got involved. Tangy, sweet, and buttery engaged in a naughty ménage à trois upon her senses, first wafting to her nostrils in sinful delight, then seducing her eyes as Sera took in the airy lightness of the crisscross crust, the perfect crystallization of sugar and caramelized filling oozing through the latticework cracks. And when she tasted the pie… The things the flavors did to her tongue were positively unspeakable—and utterly unforgettable.
Mama, I’m home, Sera thought, and dug in with a will.
After the ludicrously nummy slices of heaven they proceeded to consume—strawberry rhubarb for Sera and cherry with crumble crust for Aruni—Sera thought perhaps she’d need not just dancing shoes but a full day at the gym to work off the unexpected midday calories. More important, she had decided that pie had to be on her bakery’s menu. She rubbed her tummy and sighed.
“I forget how awesome a good old-fashioned slice of pie can be,” Sera commented. “Pastry chefs in New York are always trying to one-up one another with new techniques. I’ve seen cooks concocting desserts with everything from liquid nitrogen to cigarette-smoked salt crystals. Half the time you can’t figure out whether you’re taking a bite or dismantling a fusion reactor, at some of the places I’ve worked. But this… This really hit the spot. The crust isn’t quite as flaky as mine,” she said ruminatively as she stared at the last delectable bite on her fork, “but man, that filling is just ridiculously tasty. It’s not easy to get rhubarb to cooperate this nicely, the way it just practically melts under your fork. And the strawberries. Damn, they’re good. So fresh, so tender. I wonder if I could have a word with their pastry chef…”
Aruni choked on a sip of her decaf tea. “Um, I don’t think you’d want to do that.”
“Really?” Sera asked, popping the last morsel in her mouth and closing her eyes to savor the taste. “Why not?”
“Well, I happen to know they get their pies from an outside vendor and he… well, he’s not…”
“Not what?” Sera asked when Aruni seemed reluctant to continue.
“Not… er… nice,” Aruni finished lamely. Sera could tell she was uncomfortable bad-mouthing anyone, farkackte ex-boyfriends notwithstanding.
“Is that right?” Sera mused, thinking of the pastry chefs she knew. Contrary to popular opinion, bakers weren’t all sugar and spice. Some of them were fire and brimstone. A bit of an attitude in a fellow pastry chef wasn’t going to put her off. “Well, I’d still like to meet the guy, talk shop for a couple minutes. Maybe I can get his name and number from the waitress…” She started to look around for Janice.
Aruni looked alarmed, but she didn’t try to stop Sera. “I guess it can’t do any harm, but don’t say you haven’t been warned. The guy’s on a really bad karmic streak. But I suppose it may be your only chance to get a taste of these pies again, if what I heard from Janice is true.”
Sera arched an eyebrow in question.
“Janice told me the pie whisperer is getting fired—that’s one of the reasons I suggested we come here particularly, so we wouldn’t miss our last chance to get ’em. Apparently, he’s insulted one too many customers, and the management is sick of soothing ruffled feathers all the time. He has a bakery nearby and he caters out of it, but he keeps scaring all the customers away, and now most of the local restaurant managers are tired of his attitude, too. I heard his whole operation’s shutting down. Everything’s going up for auction next week.”
“Huh,” Sera mused. “This pie whisperer wouldn’t be named Malcolm, by any chance?” she inquired.
“Yeah, how’d you know, girl?” Aruni was round-eyed. “You psychic or something?”
Sera shook her head. Santa Fe really is just a small town at heart, I guess. “Asher told me about a restaurant auction he thought I should check out. Said I should look for a guy named Malcolm, but not to take anything he says too personally.”
“Yup, that’s the one, I’m pretty sure. Malcolm the Meanie’s putting it all up for sale.” Aruni shrugged. Then her eyes twinkled as her train of thought switched rails. “So I guess you’ve met our sexy landlord, eh?”
“He’s your landlord, too?” Sera didn’t have to ask if they were talking about the same person.
“Asher owns our whole placita, pretty much. At least, the buildings are his, and he leases all the shops.”
“Wow,” Sera said. “He must be well off.” Sexy, wildly talented, and wealthy. Women must hunt him down with a spear.
Aruni nodded. “I heard he was a world-class whatchamacall it, that instrument-making word… loo, lute-something, back in Israel.”
“Luthier,” Sera said. “I had to ask him what it meant, too.”
“Well, it must be pretty lu-crative, because Pauline told me one time that his violins used to go for, like, fifty K a pop.”
Sera smiled to herself, noting Aruni sounded a bit more hard-nosed Chicagoan than woo-woo Santa Fe head. “Wonder why he gave it up,” she mused.
“I heard it had to do with his wife,” Aruni said, looking suitably somber. “We think he’s probably divorced, or maybe even a widower. None of us really knows the story, but we all suspect there’s some terrible tragedy there.”
Sera felt a pang, thinking of what Asher must have lost. Given the way he’d reacted in his shop earlier when she’d asked if Lupe was his wife, she had to agree—something awful had happened in Asher’s past. “Who is ‘we’?” Sera wanted to know.
“Oh, us Back Roomies. Asher comes up in conversation at our shindigs quite a lot, as you can imagine. I mean, seriously…” Aruni drew the word out like a veritable Valley Girl. “Who wouldn’t have sexual fantasies about that guy? I don’t care if you’re happily married, gay, or stark stone dead, one smile from Asher Wolf and your libido will sit up and howl.” Aruni flapped her hand as if to cool it off.