“It’s more than good black. It’s good genesandhealthy living.”
“You’re right about that,” she agreed. “I try to work out several times a week. If I move here I’m going to have to find a sports club, because the food down here is like crack. One bite and you’re instantly addicted.”
Throwing back his head, Gage laughed, the low, rich sound reverberating inside the vehicle. “I suppose it would be to someone not used to eating it. I’ve grown up eating Creole and Cajun dishes all my life, so there are times when I don’t want to see or eat it.”
Tonya wanted to tell Gage that it was obvious that he did not overeat because of his slim physique. “What do you eat instead?”
“I’ll prepare a coq au vin, or if I want something light it will be salmon salade niçoise.”
Slumping back against the leather seat, Tonya realized Gage had mentioned preparing a traditional Provençal salad from Nice, which is traditionally made with tuna. “You’re a chef.” The query was a statement.
“Guilty as charged.”
“You’re a chef and a musician?”
Gage nodded. “I’m part-time chef and part-time musician. I help Eustace whenever he has a catering event, and I’m committed to playing with Jazzes’ house band on the weekends. I wanted to make it to St. John’s wedding, but unfortunately I had a prior engagement at the club.”
“Are you going to assist Eustace today, because he told me he has to cater a party later this afternoon?”
“No. The party is too small. A book club alternates holding monthly Sunday afternoon meetings at a different member’s homes, and a few months ago they had Eustace cater the event for the first time. They started out with only ten members, and now they’re up to eighteen. Cooking for eighteen is like child’s play when compared to more than fifty. That’s why I don’t understand why my brother would ask you to assist him today unless he wants to give his kids a break after last night’s wedding reception.”
Tonya stared out the windshield at the passing landscape. They had left the Lower French Quarter and entered Tremé. “He’s offered to show me how to prepare some of Chez Toussaints’ more popular dishes.” Gage came to a complete stop in the middle of the street; the motion was so abrupt that if she had not been wearing a seat belt, there was no doubt she would have hit the dashboard. “What are you trying to do? Give me whiplash?”
Gage managed to appear contrite. “Sorry about that. Did I hear you correctly when you said Eustace is going to give youourfamily’s secret recipes?”
Tonya hid her annoyance behind a polite smile. “He didn’t say he was going to give me anything.”
“Show or give. It’s all the same,” he countered angrily.
There was one thing Tonya was not going to do with Gage—and that was argue with him. That he could do with his brother. “I suggest you talk it over with your brother,” she said.
“You can bet I will,” Gage said under his breath. Two minutes later he maneuvered into the parking lot behind the freestanding building housing Chez Toussaints.
Tonya did not know what she expected the restaurant to look like, but it was not the one-story, clapboard structure sorely in need of a new coat of paint. However, it did sport a new roof and windows, and that indicated some recent improvements to the building. Gage did not shut off the engine before he came around the Audi to help her out. There were two white vans in the parking lot with the name of the restaurant painted on the sides.
“Aren’t you coming in with me?” she asked when he unlocked the restaurant’s back door and held it open for her. They were standing in an area with floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with jars of canned fruits and vegetables and a number of tin containers labeled flour, rice, grits, and differing types of sugar. A walk-in refrigerator-freezer and a trio of freezer chests took up two walls in the artificially air-cooled space.
Gage massaged the back of his neck. “No. I’m going home to get some sleep. Eustace will call me when it’s time to take you back to DuPont House.”
Suddenly it dawned on Tonya that Gage had come to get her when he probably had not had much, or any, sleep after working at Jazzes. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll call DuPont House and either LeAnn or Paige can bring me back.” She had taken an instant liking to Hannah’s cousins, who had regaled them with stories about their involvement with the civil rights movement in the late sixties and early seventies. They told of marches and sit-ins where they risked being clubbed by police or bitten by their dogs. They also had lost count of the number of times they were hauled off to jail for unlawful assembly.
“Don’t bother them. All I need is a few hours, and I’ll be good as new.”
“But . . .” Her words trailed off when he turned on his heel and walked out.
“Est-ce que tu, Gage?”
Tonya recognized Eustace’s deep voice. She had noticed during the Toussaint-Baptiste family reunion that many of them spoke to one another either in French or Haitian Creole. “No, it’s not Gage,” she called out as she made her way into the restaurant’s kitchen.
Eustace stood at the preparation table chopping green onions, bobbing his head in time to the music flowing through speakers from the radio on a shelf. Again, she was taken aback by the lack of space in the kitchen, from which came some of the most delicious dishes she had ever eaten. The entire restaurant, with a wood-burning brick oven, was a little larger than the beachfront bungalow where she vacationed as a child with her parents and grandparents.
He smiled, dimples winking at her from rounded cheeks. “Good morning. You got here just in time for me to show you how to make boudin balls. There are some aprons on a table over in the corner.”
Tonya washed her hands in a deep stainless-steel sink, drying them on a towel stacked next to the aprons. She approached Eustace, watching intently as he removed a pot from an industrial stove and poured the mixture through a strainer, reserving the liquid and meat separately. “What’s on the menu?”
“Boudin balls with a rémoulade sauce. Fried chicken wings, red beans and rice, seafood pasta salad, jalapeño-cheese cornbread, and bourbon whiskey bread pudding.”
“Should I assume no one will be counting calories?”
