“She means that you’re tight with him,” Adam says helpfully. “You know, like the two of you are…buddies? Or maybe lovers?”
Mebel’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline. “Lovers?” she cries. “Pah, such rubbish! No, of course not. I am marriedwoman! Alain and I are friends.” Though as she says the word “friends,” Mebel realizes that she hasn’t ever had male friends. Oh, she has plenty of connections who happen to be men—people she knows from the country club, her friends’ husbands, Henk’s business partners, and so on. But none that she could call an actual friend. In a circle as traditional as Chinese-Indo society, that would be highly inappropriate.
“Is he single?” Gemma says.
“How I know? Or care,” Mebel adds, though funnily enough, she can feel her cheeks warming up even as she says it.Stop that, you hussy, she tells herself.
“Girl,” Gemma cries. “He is hot as sin and he’s wealthy? Why wouldn’t you be interested?”
“I am married,” Mebel says simply.
Gemma rolls her eyes. “Your husband doesn’t sound like all that.”
“Rude,” Adam says.
Gemma shrugs. “I’m just saying!”
Just as well, their server comes back with a bottle of chilled Chardonnay. He pours a splash into Mebel’s glass and presents it to her.
“I think maybe has mistake. We did not order this,” Mebel says.
“Monsieur Moreau has requested the best bottle we have for your table, madame,” the server says. “Is it to your liking?”
Somewhat dazzled, Mebel raises the glass to her lips, feeling the weight of her classmates’ stares on her. The wine is refreshing and crisp, the kind of thing Henk would have easily paid upward of five hundred dollars for. “Is very good,” she manages to the server.
“Very well,” he says, and pours them all a generous portion. “Monsieur Moreau has also requested that the chef prepare a special meal for you and your guests tonight. It will be a four-course meal, and of course, if there is anything you’d like to add from the menu, it would be our pleasure to serve.”
“Oh!” Mebel looks down at the menu, flustered, then says, “Four course is a lot. I don’t think I can eat more than that, so I won’t order anything else.” She hands the menu to the server, and the others follow suit. Bruce looks like he’s torn between appreciation and having a conniption fit, and Mebel would be lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying his annoyance.
When the server leaves, Gemma leans forward and says in a low voice, “Okay, Mebs, it’s official: this Alain dude has the hots for you.”
Mebel laughs, shaking her head, but Bella leans forward and says, “Oh yeah, totally. He’s trying so hard to impress you.”
Bruce rolls his eyes. Mebel takes another sip of wine. It really is very good wine. “Is he…what you kids might call ‘flexing’?”
Gemma, Bella, and Adam burst out laughing. “Yes, Mebs,” Adam says. “He is totally flexing.”
“Showing his rizz,” Bella adds.
Mebel’s eyebrows knot together. “Why would he show me his risoles?”
“What?” Bella says. “No, Mebs, ‘rizz’ is short for charisma.”
“Ah.” Mebel takes another sip of wine to keep from having to explain that her treacherous mind had jumped to “risoles,” which is a phallic-shaped Indonesian dish, the thought of which had both excited and scandalized her for a moment.
All thoughts of risoles are wiped away from Mebel’s mindas the meal begins. They open with a starter of truffled Comté gougères—choux pastries filled with deeply rich Comté cheese custard flavored with white truffle oil. The cheese puffs are so delicious that Mebel’s eyes flutter closed as she bites into one.
“Are you liking the amuse-bouche?” Alain says.
Mebel’s eyes fly open and she hurriedly swallows, flustered at having been caught with what is probably an orgasmic expression on her face. Dabbing at the corners of her lips, Mebel nods. “Is delicious.”
“We bought the truffle oil from a farm in the Cotswolds, only about a one-hour drive from Oxford,” Alain says. “Have you ever been?”
Mebel, a true city dweller, never bothered to venture outside London when she did visit England. She’s heard of the Cotswolds, of course, but never even considered going there. Painfully aware of Adam, Bruce, and Bella’s eyes on her, she shakes her head.
“Oh, Mebs,” Gemma says, “you’ve never been to the Cotswolds?”
Mebel shrugs. “England has so many places to go to, I go to Cotswolds for what?”
