The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier by J. Michael Orenduff

threw his arm around my shoulders. “Then let us go.”
    I didn’t see any way to say no, and he was an interesting guy whose company would be preferable to an empty hotel room. And since the bar was non-smoking, being with him would not be a hazard. Or so I thought.
    When we got in the Bronco, he flipped a cigarette out of the pack, rolled down the window, and reached for the lighter only to find it was missing. Then he started looking in his pockets, I assumed for his own lighter.
    “You can’t smoke in my car,” I told him.
    “What if I sit in the back with the window down?”
    I hit the button that lowers the rear window behind the back seats.
    He turned when he heard the noise and saw the window’s location. “You expect me to sit behind the seats?”
    “If you’re going to smoke.”
    “The bar in your hotel allows smoking?”
    “No.”
    “I feared as much.”
    He exited the vehicle, walked around to the back, lowered the tailgate and climbed in. “For this humiliation, you must buy the first round.”
    He lit a cigarette. I drove us to the La Fonda. As we made our way from the parking garage to the hotel, he squeezed in one last cigarette.
    I ordered a glass of Gruet. Jürgen ordered Glenmorangie single malt scotch neat – no ice, no soda, no water. According to the label, the stuff was handcrafted by the Sixteen Men of Tain. Judging by how much the bar charged for it, all sixteen of them must be millionaires.
    “Why did you call Kuchen a pompous ass? Didn’t you come here with him from Austria?”
    He downed half of his scotch in a single gulp. “No. My father died when I was four. I scarcely remember him. When I was ten, my mother married a minor functionary at the American Embassy. A year later we moved to Washington.”
    “The man your mother married was named Dorfmeister?”
    He laughed loudly. “No, his name was Duncan. He never adopted me, so I remained Dorfmeister, which I prefer.”
    After the initial large slug of scotch, Jürgen switched to sipping. I asked him if it bothered him that Duncan hadn’t adopted him.
    “I knew nothing of these things. He was my mother’s husband. He paid the rent and provided the food, and she seemed to like him. Looking back, she had no skills, so landing an American was good for her. We lived a boring middle class life. My mother’s only interests were domestic, and my father seemed to have no interests at all. I suppose his work may have occupied him well, but he never spoke of it. I wanted to do something, so I started cooking at home. It was the only thing my mother and I ever had in common. I left on my sixteenth birthday, and my cooking has been a passport to see the world.” He turned to the bartender. “Barman, another scotch please and some snack worthy of my friend’s champagne.”
    The bartender brought another glass of amber liquid for Jürgen and two bowls of pistachios. These strange green nuts have become all the rage since several enterprising individuals began growing them in the Tularosa Basin in the southern part of the state. I popped one in my mouth and discovered it had green chile flavoring. I wondered if there was anything New Mexicans wouldn’t put green chile on.
    We enjoyed an evening of multiple rounds and wide-ranging conversation. When the tab came, we each gave the bartender a credit card without looking at the total and told him to add an appropriate tip. Jürgen was too drunk to read it, and I didn’t want to know. We signed our respective tabs, and Jürgen said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to take me home.”
    “I’ve had too much champagne to be your designated driver.”
    “Then give me the keys to your vehicle.”
    “Jürgen, there is no way I will allow you to drive my vehicle in your condition.”
    He gave me a hurt look. “I’m not going to drive it. I’m going to sleep in it.”
    “The back window is open. Be my guest.”

17

    Parking garages unnerve me. Their sterile concrete environment almost