Margaret looked around the office in a panic, trying to figure out what she should do next. Her shoulders, I noticed, were tensed and bunched under her dress, but then abruptly dropped in defeat. And then she was standing to say good-bye, clutching her Kelly bag for balance. She smiled, but her lip was trembling a little.

“I am sorry to have troubled you, Hassan. I hope you won’t hold it against me. But you see, you are the only restaurateur I know in Paris, and I didn’t know whom else I could—”

“Sit.”

She looked at me like a frightened girl, her crucifix dangling from between her lips.

I pointed at the seat. “Nah?”

Margaret sank back into her chair.

I picked up the phone and called Chef Piquot.

“Bonjour, André . . . Hassan ici. . . . Tell me, did you fill that cold-kitchen opening? . . . He didn’t work out. . . . Yes. Yes. I know. Terrible, the way they carry on these days. Such prima donnas. . . . But you know, it’s excellent news the fellow didn’t work out because I have the perfect candidate for you. . . . Yes. Yes. Not to worry. I worked with her at Le Saule Pleureur. First-rate sous chef. Hardworking. Very experienced. I tell you, my friend, you will be thanking me. . . . No, I don’t think so. She’s just moved to Paris. . . . I will send her right over.”

When I put the phone down I discovered, much to my horror, Margaret was not joyous that I had found her a position at Montparnasse, but was sobbing into a tissue, unable to talk. I did not know what to do, where to look, as the office filled with her weeping. But then, still shaking with emotion, head still down, Margaret’s left hand reached out across the table, fingers blindly searching the air for contact.

And that’s when I understood she had had a very hard time.

That this was the best she could do—for the moment.

So I reached over with my right hand and we silently met halfway.

Chapter Eighteen

March’s feeble sun retreated behind the city’s rooftop guttering. It was that time of day when the restaurant was brooding in its dismal place, that strange twilight between matinee and evening’s curtain call. The returning members of the staff were exhausted and snappish after the two-hour break, unsure whether they could once again pull themselves together for the late performance. And the dining room itself, so lively in the bright lights of the evening performance a few hours hence, appeared shopworn through the stale haze left over from lunch. It was difficult not to become despondent. Late winter shivered in the folds of the velvet drape; a bread roll, like a dead beetle, lay on its back under a chair.

I was in the kitchen as usual, sweating onions and garlic in a skillet, sliding into that trance that overtakes me when I cook. But for some reason, on this dark March evening I did not surrender myself completely, but hovered at the edge, halfway between here and there, as if I knew something momentous was about to occur.

Through the kitchen’s swinging doors—as I shook the spitting skillet—I heard the returning waiters stamping their feet in the hall. I heard the Hoover’s drone and the banging of the espresso machine as it was knocked free of old grounds by an apprentice. Bit by bit, din and duties stepped into the cold space that had occupied the restaurant just moments before: knives were sharpened, fresh linen was snapped, we heard the industrious back-and-forth of the accountant’s printer coming from upstairs. And before long, the gloom was gone.

France Soir, the evening paper, came roughly through the letter flap, clapping to the mat. It was an old habit that Jacques stubbornly would not part with, even in the digital age, and he picked the paper up and took it to the back table where his front-room staff was sitting down to a quick dinner of grilled andouillettes before the evening service began.

Newspaper under his arm, Jacques took his seat in the back, among the others. He helped himself to a portion of the chitterlings with rice, and tomato salad, reading the paper as he ate. But suddenly there was this odd gurgling in the back of Jacques’ throat and he violently dropped his fork. Before the others could find out what was the matter, however, he was up on his feet, through the door, and dashing across the dining room. And the scoundrels, enjoying nothing more than a good fight, jumped up and ran after him, hoping to witness what was looking like a first-rate row.

That was how they arrived in the kitchen: out of breath, highly agitated, slamming through the swinging doors. We in the kitchen were innocently shelling peas and dicing shallots and trimming fat, but now we froze in midchop and looked carefully about us as Jacques thrashed the air with the evening paper and bellowed.

I thought, Oh, hell, not again—for the previous night Jacques and Serge almost came to blows, as each had blamed the other for a botched order. And from the corner of my eye I could see Serge gripping the end of a lamb joint like it was a club, quite prepared to wallop Jacques or any other member of the front staff foolish enough to provoke him. I was, I don’t mind admitting it, utterly exhausted and at the end of my strength; I could not take another fiery confrontation between staff members.

“Maître! Maître!”

Jacques accusingly pointed the rolled-up newspaper at me.

“The third star! Michelinhas just given you the third star!”

The first roars of excitement subsided and the staff stood three-deep around the butcher block, clinging to my every syllable as I read aloud the five-paragraph story. It was all about who was up and who was down. And then it came—the half sentence—informing le tout Paris Le Chien Méchant was among just two establishments in all France elevated to the third star.

I was stunned, numb, while a kind of Bastille Day raged all around me.

The staff banged pots and yelled and leaped about the burners. Jacques and Serge were in each other’s arms, almost like lovers in a passionate embrace, and there were tears and back-clapping and hoots of joy, all followed by more rounds of the most heartfelt handshakes.

And what was I thinking?

I cannot tell you. Not rightly.

My emotions were stirred up. Jumbled. Bittersweet, you know.

The excited staff stood in a line—the black jackets of the front room and the whites of the kitchen, like chess pieces lined up in a row—each wanting to personally congratulate me. But I was not warm, not effusive in my thanks. It might even have appeared as if I didn’t care as I observed all this joy unfolding about me from a great distance.

But consider: only twenty-eight restaurants in all France had three stars, and my journey to this point had been so long and arduous that I could not rightly believe it had finally arrived. Or, at least, I could not believe it simply on the basis of a half sentence in a mass-market evening paper. And Suzanne, near the end of the line, appeared to read my mind, for she suddenly said, ‘What if the reporter got it wrong?’

“Merde,” Serge yelled from across the kitchen, angrily pointing at her with a wooden spoon. “What is it with you, Suzanne? Always something bad to say.”

“That’s not true!”

Fortunately, at that moment we were distracted by Maxine descending from the upstairs office, wringing her hands, informing me Monsieur Barthot, the directeur général of Le Guide Michelin was on the phone and urgently wanting a word. My heart thumped as I took the spiral stairs two by two, the staff’s cries of good luck ringing in my ears as I disappeared up the turret.

I took a deep breath and picked up the phone. After the usual feigned politesse, Barthot asked, “Have you read the evening paper?”

I informed him I had, and asked straight out whether it is true we were to get the third star. “Damn papers,” he finally said. “Yes, it is true. Congratulations are in order.”