Read Online The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier by J. Michael Orenduff - Free Book Online Page B

is not really about that. It’s just a surrogate for caring about how we are regarded in the here and now. We don’t want to be spoken of badly when we are dead because that means that now – while we are still alive – people don’t like us.
    I reached this profound conclusion just as I reached La Fonda. It was four o’clock. But it was five o’clock in Texas. That was only about 180 miles east.
    Close enough. I went to the bar and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. I was in a brown mood.
    An Anasazi pot sat on a flagstone mantel above the fireplace. I thought about the woman who made it. If she walked into the bar, she would recognize only two things, humans and her pot. Metal stools, glasses, lights, doorknobs, written words and books would be no more than strange shapes to her. The same sort of thing would likely happen to us were we to return in a thousand years.
    I think she would be happy to see the pot. She would ask why we have it. I would tell her we treasure it because it is a thing of beauty and because it makes us feel connected to her. I would invite her to my shop. I would ask her to make a pot in my workshop.
    By the second bourbon, I had imagined the whole thing as a sequel to Back to the Future.
    I was expelled from graduate school for digging up and selling three Anasazi pots. It wasn’t illegal back then. The University thought it was immoral. I think it’s immoral to leave treasure in the ground. Like Tom Sawyer, the ancient potters would love to know what we think about them. We honor them when we display their work. We dishonor them when we make modernist adaptations of it.
    I was thinking of ordering a third bourbon when Jürgen Dorfmeister walked in.
    “I thought you might be here,” he said as he sat down next to me. He looked at my glass. “You are drinking scotch?”
    “Bourbon.”
    “Barman,” he shouted, “another bourbon for my friend and a Glenmorangie for me. Make it a double. I have some catching up to do.”
    When the drinks came, he lifted his and said, “To the memory of Mr. Barry Stiles, garde manger extraordinaire.”
    I drank to that. I felt a little better.
    “Did you know him well?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “Do you really think he was an extraordinary garde manger?”
    “He was a man. He had feelings. He deserves a proper toast. The facts are irrelevant at such a time.”
    We stayed in the bar enjoying a dinner of bar foods – pistachios, salsa and chips, peanuts, and some strange hard sausages. In Spain, I suppose they would have called the snacks tapas and charged accordingly. In the La Fonda they were free to their good customers, a status Jürgen and I had earned by purchasing multiple rounds of expensive beverages.
    I enjoyed my time with Jürgen. He didn’t ask me to drive him home. He didn’t ask to sleep in my vehicle.
    I left at nine-thirty to check my kiln because that was when I expected the test firing to be complete. It was cold out but I had plenty of antifreeze inside me and a good jacket outside me. I enjoyed the late-night stroll to Schnitzel which took only twenty minutes. I unlocked the front door and entered. Light came from the kitchen.
    Even though I had a key and every right to be there, I suddenly felt like an intruder. I walked quietly to the twin swinging doors and peered through the little window in the right one, the door we were all supposed to use as an entrance only.
    I didn’t enter. I tiptoed to my work area and hid behind the table. The low reflected light went out. I heard footsteps. I saw a figure move silently towards the front door, open it and leave. I knew it was M’Lanta Scruggs because the light had been on in Molinero’s office. It was the sight of Scruggs leaving that office that kept me from entering the kitchen and sent me scurrying behind my table.
    I gave him plenty of time to vacate the neighborhood. Then I checked the kiln, decided the firing was complete and turned it off.
    I went to Molinero’s office and tried