Chương 188: Celebration in Paris

The press conference after the presentation ran for nearly two hours. Chris, Ethan and Kira sat behind a wall of lenses and answered everything. What the competition had done to them. The thinking behind every dish. What they meant to do next. Chris handled it easily. Ethan was excited enough to say more or less anything that came into his head. Kira kept her answers short and stayed quiet for most of it. By the time they got out from under the press it was past midnight.

The Paris night had a cool wind in it that took the heat of the arena off them, and the last tension out of them with it.

"I'm starving to death." Ethan had a hand on his complaining stomach.

"We won a world championship and nobody fed us."

"What do you want?" Chris was smiling.

"Anything. I could eat a cow." Ethan spread his arms.

"Or — we could go and have a proper French dinner. We're world champions. We could walk into any Michelin place in this city and not queue, right?"

"I don't want Michelin," Kira said quietly.

"Then where?" She lifted her head and looked down the block at a small bar on the corner with warm light in the windows. A typical Paris bistro, a few little tables outside, people drinking and talking, everything easy.

"There," she said. Chris and Ethan looked at each other and understood. After a victory that size and that loud, what they needed was not more lights and more applause. It was somewhere they could put it down and be ordinary people again.

"Good idea," Chris said.

"There." Sarah caught up with them. She'd put away her notebook and her recorder, and she looked relaxed.

"Count me in? Champions — it's on me tonight."

"Absolutely not." Ethan objected immediately.

"I said it was on me."

"We'll split it," Chris ruled. The four of them went in laughing and shoving each other, under a sign that read Le Petit Coin — the little corner. There weren't many people in there. The owner was a heavy middle-aged man with a large beard. He clearly hadn't recognized the young people who'd lifted a trophy on television a few hours ago. He simply found them a quiet table by the window, cheerfully. They didn't order anything complicated.

An enormous charcuterie board heaped with French sausages and hams and terrines. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. A cheese board that ran from mild brie all the way to a blue with a smell that could clear a room. And a big basket of baguette, crisp outside and soft in the middle.

"I want champagne. The most expensive one you've got," Ethan told the owner, magnificently. The owner looked him over and came back from the cabinet with a grower champagne, reasonably priced and very well regarded.

"Try this one, young man. Champions should drink what victory tastes like." He winked. So he had recognized them after all. The cork went, and gold bubbles came up the glasses.

"Right! To the champions!" Ethan raised his.

"To the champions." Four glasses came together and rang. Ethan tipped his head back and drank the whole thing. It was the first champagne of his life, and the sharp cold fizz of it set him coughing." Hh — this stuff. It's fizzy pop with a bitter edge on it." He was frowning at his glass. Chris and Sarah both laughed. Kira picked up her glass and copied them, taking a small sip. Color came up in her face immediately, and it suited her.

She watched the bubbles rising with a slightly unfocused look, and the small smile at her mouth stayed there. Chris took a piece of baguette, loaded it thickly with terrine, and bit into it. Wheat and salt and fat, straightforward, and completely satisfying. He thought suddenly that it was better than anything he'd cooked in that arena. Because there was rest in it.

"Chris." Sarah looked over.

"What are you going to do next?"

"Do?" He hadn't thought about it once. Every part of him had gone into this competition; the space labeled afterward was blank.

"Go back to the States? Open your own restaurant? Or keep competing?" Chris was quiet. He picked up his glass and drank.

"I don't know," he said honestly.

"Maybe rest for a while first. Find somewhere quiet, cook a bit, think about things."

"And you two?" He looked at Ethan and Kira.

"Me?" Ethan said around a mouthful of ham.

"I'm going home. I'm putting this trophy in my dad's rotisserie. I'm telling him his son is a world champion. Let's see him call what I make garbage after that." His eyes had gone red while he said it. Everyone at the table knew what he actually meant was that he missed his father.

"Kira?" Sarah asked. Kira thought about it.

"I want to go to Normandy."

"Normandy?"

"Mm." She nodded, and there was real longing in it.

"I want to see what the apple trees there look like." Something warmed in Chris. The girl who had lived entirely inside her own world had started, at last, to be curious about the one outside it. The four of them ate and drank and talked. About the stupid things that had happened during the competition. About their childhoods. About wild, unfounded fantasies of what came next. It was easier and happier than anything had been in months. They weren't Team USA carrying a country's honor.

They were four ordinary young people sharing good food under a Paris night. Somewhere in the middle of it Chris remembered something. He took the brass tasting spoon out of his pocket and set it carefully on the table.

"Hey, old man." He lifted his glass to it.

"You should be in Paris too. Have a drink." Ethan and Kira both saw the spoon. They knew what it meant to him.

"To Philip." Ethan raised his glass.

"To Philip." Kira and Sarah lifted theirs. Four people and a spoon drank together. Outside the window, Paris at night was gentle and impossible not to love. The lights on the Eiffel Tower flickered in the distance like an enormous diamond. Chris looked at Ethan and Sarah, deep in an argument about whether a blue cheese was edible. At Kira, chin on her hand, smiling at nothing. At a brass spoon on the table throwing back warm light. Something enormous settled over him — happiness, and the feeling of having enough.

The competition. The win. The glory. The trophy. All of it, right then, mattered a great deal less. What mattered was the people at this table. The people who had cried and laughed and fought beside him. He picked up the bottle and filled every empty glass.

"Hey," he said, grinning.

"One more."

"To what?" Ethan asked. Chris thought about it.

"To the little corner."