24
It was only a telephone call, but it had grave consequences. Andrea was shopping in the household section of a department store. She was choosing cloths, cushions, candlesticks and a few other decorative items. Not because Love Food urgently needed them, but simply because it was Indian Week at the shop and business was good.
Her mobile rang and the display said it was Esther, the therapist.
‘Hi Esther!’ Andrea said, exaggerating her delight. ‘So nice to hear from you!’
Esther was abrupt and came straight to the point. ‘It’s my job to solve couple’s problems, not create them. And so I’m ending our business relationship forthwith.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Andrea’s voice had become serious and soft.
‘Mellinger’s wife found out about his affair. He mentioned you. How could you?’
‘He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’m really sorry.’
‘Me too.’
That is when Esther terminated the conversation. Andrea put back the things she had chosen. Although Love Food had a good number of bookings for the next fortnight, there were no other reservations after that.
Esther had meant it seriously. Andrea tried to get her to change her mind, but to no avail. ‘You know what?’ Esther had said. ‘I’ve got my reputation to think of. If Love Food is going to be that underhand, I might as well send my patients straight to a brothel.’
Andrea had suspected that Esther was happy to have an excuse to end their relationship, and she made the mistake of telling her so. ‘Sure,’ she remarked, ‘if your patients come directly to us rather than to you, you’ll be left with nothing.’
Had there been the slightest chance of making Esther change her mind, Andrea had blown it with this comment.
She did not inform Maravan of this development immediately. It was he who finally asked, ‘Have we had fewer enquiries or are you not accepting them all any more?’
Only then did she make her confession.
He listened calmly, then said, ‘So I can finally cook something else again.’
‘And where am I going to get the customers for normal dinners?’
‘My dinners are never normal,’ Maravan answered.
Andrea was right. Without the erotic element, Love Food was merely another small catering firm, with the handicap that it was operating illegally and dependent on word of mouth for business. But who would put the word around for a firm that nobody knew about? They needed a way in.
Andrea tried in vain to get their first commission. It was Maravan who had the obvious idea: ‘Why don’t you just invite people over? And if they like it you can tell them that we can also do it at their homes.’
She put together a list of those people she knew who were most active socially, most comfortable financially, most willing to experiment and most communicative, and came up with twelve names. Not a single man among them.
They set a date for 15 November. In Washington, the twenty leading industrial and emerging nations met at a global finance summit and decided on a reorganization of the world’s financial markets. The Sri Lankan army continued to shell the city of Kilinochchi. And the Swiss Defence Minister was bullied out of his post by his own party.
Andrea was decorating the dining room and setting the table. They had decided to use cutlery and not eat on the floor. Maravan had even allowed her to play some Indian background music. He had only vetoed the incense sticks.
He was standing in Andrea’s kitchen, finally able to cook to his heart’s content. He did not have to pay any attention to the aphrodisiac effect of the dishes, his arsenal of kitchen gadgets had grown and now his eagerness to experiment was almost limitless. He had been busy preparing this dinner for two days.
The menu consisted of his experimental versions of classic Indian dishes:
Cinnamon curry caviar chapattis
Baby snapper marinated in turmeric with molee curry sabayon
Frozen mango curry foam
Milk-fed lamb cutlets in jardaloo essence with dried apricot purée
Beech-smoked tandoori poussin on tomato, butter and pepper jelly
Kulfi with mango air
This may have been slightly shorter than the classic Love Food menu, but it was more work because each course had to be given the finishing touches just before serving. Six times over for twelve people.
Maravan was as nervous as a sprinter before the start of a race. And the fact that Andrea kept on coming in every few minutes did not make it any easier.
The milk-fed lamb cutlets were cooking in the digital water bath (one of Love Food’s new acquisitions) at exactly 65 degrees, along with the tandoori poussins, another of Maravan’s new creations. He was working on the curry sauce that would form the basis for the molee sabayon; the onions, which he was lightly sautéing in his tawa in coconut oil with chillies, garlic and ginger, had just turned a honey-yellow when Andrea came in.
‘I’m amazed you don’t freeze with that window open.’
He did not reply. He had told her often enough that he could not work in a jumble of smells. He always had to air his kitchen in order to separate the aromas and work with precision. He did not cook his curries by measuring amounts; he cooked them by using his nose.
And this nose was now telling him that it was exactly the time to add tomatoes, peppercorns, cloves, cardamom and curry leaves.
‘When you’ve got a moment I’d be grateful if you could come into the sitting room.’
He must have looked irritated because she said, ‘Please, I’ll be quick, really quick.’
She waited for him to follow her.
They had carried the suite which made the room into a dining-cum-sitting room into the office; otherwise there would have been no room for the table for twelve. Together with the chairs, they had borrowed this from a former employer who ran a trendy pub with a garden on the edge of town. Now it was covered with a variety of Indian tablecloths which she had bought in the end from the department store that had the Indian Week. Along the entire length was a centrepiece of two white tablecloths folded lengthways. On top of this was a garland of orchids, of the sort that could be bought cheaply in Thai shops, interrupted by candles. They had stuck with the idea of candlelight.
‘Well?’ Andrea asked.
‘Lovely,’ he replied.
‘Not kitschy?’
‘Kitschy?’ Maravan did not know this word. ‘Very lovely,’ he said again, and went back into the kitchen.
He retained the mini chapattis as the amuse-bouche. But instead of drizzling the curry leaf, cinnamon and coconut oil essence with a pipette, he took off the fat and poured the essence into calcium chloride water until it formed caviar pearls. These were then rubbed in coconut oil and used to decorate the warm mini chapattis.
He had to leave making the fake caviar to the last minute, so that the tiny balls did not set. They should be liquid inside and burst between tongue and palate. Andrea came back in again. She had her telephone in her hand and a smile of incredulity on her face. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’
Maravan continued working without looking up.
‘Someone’s just called and said, “Are you the ones who do the sex dinners?”’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That he’d got the wrong number.’
‘Good.’
‘“This is Love Food, isn’t it?” was his reply.’
‘Where did he get the number from?’
‘A friend of a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘He said that was irrelevant. “So do you do sex dinners or not?”’ Andrea said it with a deep voice and in a broad, rather common accent.