Chapter Text
Ava and Mary each have a rolling suitcase which is filled with their knives, favorite utensils, a selection of spices, and a few little appliances that they don’t expect the competition to be supplying. Mary is already in her whites, but Ava’s are folded up carefully in a backpack on her shoulders, because she wisely doesn’t trust herself to keep them clean, and doesn’t intend to put them on until it’s time to compete.
“Ohhh, crepe stand!” Ava exclaims, and starts to veer away from the main door of the Paris Convention Center, drawn away by the promising smells of savory crepes from a small sidewalk stand.
Mary slaps her shoulder gently and puts her back on track. “Focus. Jesus.”
“But the sign says they have saucisson sec,” Ava gripes, but keeps walking.
They apparently shot all of Iron Chef Paris here, and so there are a dozen or so temporarily installed kitchens in the main convention space. The competition is thirty chefs from around the world, mostly French. There’s one or two Brits that Mary is aware of, and as far as she knows, somehow, she and Ava are the only Americans.
Mary stops near a ladies’ room. “Go change. You’re not walking out on the floor without your whites on.”
Ava runs inside.
Ava is a frustrating sous chef; she doesn’t always retain directions, she improvises too much, and Mary has lost count of the number of times she has “surprised” her with a few extra ingredients in her mise en place. But, she has a gift. She can identify any spices in any dish with a single taste. And even her mistakes taste good.
Besides that, she’s a good wingman.
After they check in, they walk onto the floor and look for the space they’ve been assigned. This morning is just going to be about meeting the judges, going over the schedule, and letting the judges and staff inspect what they’ve brought to make sure it’s all allowed, according to the rules.
As Ava unpacks their knives, Mary inspects the drawers at their station to see what they’ve provided already. It’s a respectable arsenal. But she prefers her own tools, so she probably won’t need much of it. Her grandmother’s recipes have been shaped by years of American Southern cooking, which has its own ways, and then perfected by Mary’s own introduction of new ingredients and different tools, and techniques she’d picked up from French cooking. You could call it high-end soul food, but it’s more than that. It has to be, to earn two Michelin stars and an invitation to the French Culinary Institute’s International Cooking Competition.
Ava comes over and nudges Mary. “Hey,” she whispers, not particularly subtly. “Isn’t that the chick from the wine bar last night?”
Mary glances up to where Ava is pointing. There’s a tall, dramatic-looking woman in whites at the stainless steel counter a few stations down, having a very intense conversation with her sous chef, a shorter woman who listens intently and seems to only need to interject occasionally.
Mary groans. “Shit. I think it is.”
She and Ava had gone out last night in the Oberkampf to hear some music and blow off a little steam before the big day. Mary had her eye on a woman, and tried to get Ava to distract her friend so she could make a move, but neither of them had been terribly receptive. They had both been serious; Mary thought it was a little weird that they were out at a place like that at all if they weren't there to have fun.
Mary can handle no, she’d heard it plenty of times in her life, but it had been a little disappointing. Maybe she didn’t like Americans?
“I bet she knew who you were,” Ava says quietly, pretending to go back to the inventory. “I bet you she went and found all the competitors and memorized their names and faces before she even got here. I bet she saw you coming last night and recognized you, and that’s why she was such a frostybox.”
Mary chuckles. Is anyone really that competitive?
She returns to unpacking, and pulls out two bottles of California Chardonnay. She intends to compete cooking American food and using American wine. It’s risky. She knows how to cook French food; though her pedigree is not Le Cordon Bleu, like many of the chefs here, she went to a cooking school in Atlanta that was decent, and learned what she needed to.
“Mary Lefusil, isn’t it?” someone says over her shoulder.
She turns around, expecting it to be one of the judges, but it’s the woman from last night. “Where’d you come from?”
“Sneak up on you, did I?” Her eyes are gleaming, in a way they weren’t last night.
“Clocked you when I got in,” Mary responded. “Been a little busy.”
“I see.” She looks at the wine. “California Chardonnay? For cleaning your utensils?”
Mary gives her a slow smile. “You memorized everyone’s names and faces a week ago, didn’t you? You that worried?”
“Not worried at all. Unlike some people here, my pedigree is perfectly sound.”
So that’s what this is about. This chick wants to know how Mary, who did not graduate from a high-end French cooking school, managed to open a restaurant with two Michelin stars and get herself invited to an international cooking competition in Paris. She looks like she intends to devour Mary whole, and Mary can’t quite tell whether it’s in the fun way or not.
“And your name would be?”
“Lily Bardsfield-Chapman.”
“You got a license to carry that many names?”
“I was going easy on you, actually.”
“Oh, don’t ever do that.”
“In that case, Lilith Castañeda Bardsfield-Chapman.”
Mary has questions. Why does she need to sneak that Castañeda in there, like it's a secret? She looks like she ought to be a member of the Spanish royal court, with her dark, shiny eyes, golden brown skin and those dramatic cheekbones that go on for days, so why is she running around with this … this name? This name that sounds like the the wife of a pompous British explorer? Lily Bardsfield-Chapman? There are choices going on here, signs that this is someone who is desperate to define herself and her success in a certain way.
Lily is a mess. A tall, gorgeous mess. With a giant chip on her shoulder. Well, Mary wouldn’t be here in Paris right now if she didn’t like a challenge, she supposes. She looks Lily up and down. “Nice names,” she says with a little smirk.
Lily seems angry for a moment, thrown off by Mary’s mild flirtation. She was clearly expecting this to go down a slightly different way.
“Well, I best get back to it,” Mary says. “Good luck, Lily.”
“I don’t need luck,” Lilith responds tartly. She glances over at Ava, who is testing their immersion blender to make sure it didn’t get damaged in traveling. “Your sous has some saffron on her whites.”
She walks away.
Mary shakes her head and walks over to Ava. Sure enough, there’s a smudge of yellow on her shoulder. “You mind telling me how you managed to get saffron on your whites when we haven’t even started cooking yet?”
Ava looks down. “For fuck’s sake!” She shakes her head. “Whatever, I have a lot of extra.” She looks at Lilith, back at her own station. “So, what the hell was all that?”
“You called it. She knew exactly who I was.” Mary gazes at her intently for a moment. “I’m gonna wreck that chick.”
“You mean wreck her as in, defeat her soundly in the noble art of competition, or wreck her as in, bend her over the back of a sofa and give her multiple orgasms till she can’t make words anymore?”
Mary shrugs. “Either. Both. I’m not picky.”
Ava cackles. “I knew Paris was gonna be fun.”
“Yeah, yeah. Finish unpacking and go change your damn jacket.”