Scrumptious by Amanda Usen Page A

bakeshop that he was right. Her almond roulades were done, maybe even overdone. She dropped her dishes on the table and pulled her cakes from the oven in the nick of time.
    “Thank you,” she said formally, when all her cakes were safe.
    “You’re welcome,” he said, just as politely. Marlene heard amusement ripple in his voice and barely controlled the urge to heave a hot half-sheet pan of cake directly at his head. Instead, she picked up the dirty bowls again and made her way to the dish room.
    Olivia was coming in the back door.
    “Are you all right?” Olivia asked, giving her a worried look.
    “Perfectly fine,” she responded calmly. “But I need you to sterilize a knife. Quickly. I’m either going to kill Joe or slit my wrists.”
    Olivia’s laugh echoed behind her as she swept out the back door to run home and let Samson out to pee.
    ***
    In spite of her agitation, or perhaps because of it, the hours flew by after she returned from doggy duty. Marly cooked white beans with fresh rosemary and thyme and made sauces and mashed potatoes while she filled the almond roulades with caramel mousse and baked a new batch of chocolate cheesecakes.
    Tonight’s special dessert was a crème brûlée infused with star anise, basil, and ginger, and spiked with a bright green herbal liqueur called Chartreuse. The customers loved it. In fact, they had sold so many brûlées last night that the waiters had burned more on the fly. This morning, she had walked in to a huge mess in her reach-in because the no-good slackers hadn’t bothered to finish caramelizing them all.
    Marlene pulled the leftover brûlées, covered with thick piles of white sugar, out of her fridge. She lit the propane torch and tipped it toward the first brûlée. The sugar on top sputtered and burned, spitting hot, black flecks onto her hand. “Ouch!” she yelled. The sugar must have been damp from spending the night in the cooler.
    She opened the bin under her table and sprinkled another thin layer of granulated sugar on top of what was already there. She touched it with the torch. That’s better, she thought, as the sugar turned amber and rolled toward the edges of the ramekin.
    She topped the rest of the custards with extra sugar too, and waved the torch back and forth, covering each custard with a thick, hard sheet of amber sugar.
    Joe was right, she thought. She did have something against chefs.
    She had been crushed when Olivia brought Keith home and put him in charge of the line, the line Marly had been guarding while Olivia got her pretty piece of paper that declared she was a real chef. At first, Marly had tried to work with him, but there was only so much she could do to cover his mistakes. She’d lasted a year and a half and then hoped his inability to cook good food would be revealed when she quit the hot line. Instead, Olivia had taken over the job of babysitting her husband’s plates. Marlene had retreated to the bakeshop to make desserts and pray Olivia would come to her senses. And she had.
    But did Olivia give Marly her old job back? Nope, she sure didn’t. Instead, she called her buddy Joe in to pinch-hit, and then she put an ad in the fucking paper. Seriously, what did it take to get some respect around here? The torch hissed as Marlene shut it off. She stored it under the table, making sure the hot tip wasn’t touching anything remotely flammable.
    When she stood, Jacques was peering over the top of the waiters’ station. “You let your mama get near your head again, kid?” he asked, grinning and scratching his gray braid.
    “Mom’s never wrong about hair, Jacques. It will calm down.”
    “You got a little cake for me?”
    Jacques was the best, a solid gold dishwasher with a sweet tooth, which she kept well supplied. She handed him the uneven first slice from the end of the last almond roulade on her table. The rest were tucked in the freezer for the week.
    He licked the caramel cream cheese mousse oozing from the spiral of