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House of Blues

House of Blues

Titel: House of Blues Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Julie Smith
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thin, thin, thin
with a tool called a mandolin, then dry them, then toss them in
boiling oil, very hot. He'd let them float to the top, then take them
out and pop them in another pan of boiling oil, even hotter than the
first, smoking this time—45o degrees. I'll never forget how proud
he looked when he told me that.
    The thing I never could understand, and never will
understand is that the flat slices miraculously puff up into little
pillows, as if two pieces of potato have been glued together around a
bubble of air. How one slice of potato can do this is beyond me.
    The oil makes the pommes puff up, but they aren't
perfect unless they're crisp, somewhere between french fries and
potato chips; in other words, they don't crunch when you bite into
them, but they aren't soft and soggy either. Only Albert could
accomplish this miracle. I've had the potatoes at every restaurant in
town, and nobody then or now can make them like Albert.
    This is all Albert did—all day, every day, day in,
day out. A lesser cook would have been bored to tears, but Albert
took great pride in the perfection of each potato pillow he turned
out. On his day off, Hebert's didn't even serve the pommes—nobody
else's could come close to Alberts
    I could watch Albert do this for hours, and sometimes
I did. The best part, of course, was that I was free to nibble now
and then, especially when he spoiled one.
    The day of The Thing, Albert barely had a word for
any of us. The restaurant was working at full capacity, and two of
the line cooks had the flu. Everyone was flying about looking like
speeded-up film.
    In fact, Albert was entirely out of character that
day. Perhaps he was angry at Dad for some reason; perhaps it was just
the heat and the pressure.
    " Albert! How're ya doin'?" I shouted
gleefully.
    Without looking around, he said, "Grady? That
you, boy? You chirren shouldn't be here today. Too much goin' on; you
better get out of the way."
    Crushed that my idol had spoken harshly to me, I
withdrew against a wall. After a while I noticed Evil Evie picking
cherry tomatoes from the salad plates. Reed, too young to know this
was forbidden, was watching too. Next thing you know, she had joined
her. They were systematically denuding all the salads, already made
up and waiting to be ordered, of their round red fruit.
    Wanting to strike out, I grabbed Dad's hand. "Daddy,
Evie and Reed are stealing the tomatoes." At the time, he was in
conversation with someone, I couldn't have said who—if it wasn't
Albert, I didn't care much—and he shook my hand off. I'm quite sure
he didn't hear what I said, because to this day I believe he'd have
minded that his salads were under attack. "Don't bother me now,"
he said, and then I had been rebuked twice.
    There was nothing to do but charge.
    I came up behind the girls and pinched each of their
arms simultaneously, which so startled Evie that she knocked to the
floor four or five of the nearest salads. Furious, she turned around
to hit me, but I ran away.
    "Reed! Get him!" she shouted, and tiny
Reed, ever-obedient Reed, came after me. I looked over my shoulder,
laughing, and ran smack into Albert, who fell forward, hitting the
handle of his first pan of grease. Sensing disaster, he hurled
himself toward Reed, but he wasn't fast enough. He landed on top of
her, but she had already slipped on the oil and her legs had
straightened as she went down. That in itself wouldn't have been so
bad except that Albert, in his leap, had knocked over the second—and
hottest—pan of grease, and its entire contents poured onto Reed's
feet and legs.
    I missed the first part, but turned around just in
time to see the second pan of grease empty its contents on that tiny,
innocent, inoffensive child. Evie, half crazed with fear, ran to our
end of the kitchen, and I guess all our parents saw was that blur of
motion.
    But none of that is what is most horrible to me. It
is two other things: first, what happened later—in the hospitals,
the burn hospitals, before the skin grafts, and after them—knowing
the way she suffered. And yet, I didn't know. Later, in that way that
we are fascinated by what horrifies us, I read a magazine article by
a man who'd been badly burned, and I really had had no idea. I threw
up after reading it; I dreamed about it four days running.
    I didn't know the details, but I knew what her face
looked like. I saw the happy child replaced by that pinched little
mask.
    Her face, remembering her face, is why I

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