Vanilla Salt Read Online Free

this tiny, gloomy dump into a sanctuary for memories of her beloved Quebec.
    “Remember, you’re here to cook, and we open the dining room in two hours. I’ll wait for you in the kitchen. I’ve got to go and check the kid in the oven.” Àlex’s hospitality comes to an abrupt end.
    Annette needs a moment to get her emotions under control and decides to open up her suitcase and take out a couple of things. It’s a way of giving herself time to digest Àlex’s behaviour. After the few blunt words they’ve exchanged, it’s clear that this relationship’s not going to be easy. Àlex isn’t willing to make it easy but, on the contrary, wants to set off the spark that will ignite the conflagration, after which he can watch her leave. Out the door. Lugging her heavy suitcase.
    What Àlex doesn’t quite understand is that Annette literally has nowhere to go, which is a powerful reason for her to put in some timedecorating the unwelcoming room to make it her own, as a kind of declaration of intent. Like the Canadian maple, she wants to put down deep strong roots in Antic Món. Photos and books come out of her suitcase, and also a Mayan rain stick, an album of pressed flowers, a box full of all kinds of spices, a Quechuan mate gourd and a peanut necklace. The most highly prized item of all is placed on the rough-hewn table: the computer with which she can connect up with her friends all round the globe, follow the most interesting food blogs and chat on Facebook. The computer is her window onto the world, and the anonymity afforded by the screen is her way of amusing herself. Hiding behind keyboards and pixels, she is Madame Escargot. She’d love to connect right now, but she has to go down to the kitchen.
    The kid’s been slowly browning in the oven for the past hour and a half. The most important part is the marinating process, with garlic, onion and mustard, which took all last night. Then it is condemned to solitary confinement in the oven, where all the aromas blend together. Àlex watches over it adoringly. Seeing how the colour keeps changing reconciles him with the world. The kid perfectly expresses his idea of the way things should work. There are certain determining factors: kid, oven, time. And an evident result: beautifully browned kid. If everything was so wonderfully reasonable, so empirically simple and logical, life would be comprehensible and he’d learn to love it. But things don’t work like that. Even if he invests the necessary factors, his milieu is hostile and consequences are unpredictable.
    Àlex is so absorbed by the kid that he doesn’t hear Annette silently entering into the kitchen.
    Àlex jumps. “Shit a brick! You scared the wits out of me,” he yells.
    “Sorry, Senyor Àlex.”
    “And don’t bloody call me senyor. Just call me Àlex,” he grumbles.
    Then he bursts out laughing. What the fuck is she wearing? What a sight she looks! What the hell does she think she’s doing dressed like that?
    Annette’s wearing her cooking apron, the one she wears at home. It’s patchwork with frills. She looks like a country singer disguised as one of the Tatin sisters. He’s never seen a woman in such a ridiculous get-up.
    “Er, excuse me, this thing you’re wearing… is it some kind of traditional dress in your country? Hang on a minute, I’m going to get my shepherd’s pouch, clogs, sash and red cap and we’ll dance the sardana while you sing country. This is a joke, right? You don’t really think you’re going to cook like that, do you? For Christ’s sake, this is a high-class kitchen!”
    Annette hasn’t understood much of the tirade, but Àlex’s face says it all. It seems he doesn’t like the apron she’s brought from home. He throws a white chef’s apron at her saying, “Go back to your room, take off that gaudy rag and come back in jeans and a clean T-shirt if you’ve got nothing better. I’ll lend you my chef’s gear, and as soon as you can you’ll have to buy your