I became obsessed with interviewing her. At least that’s what I said in my email inquiry, which I sent care of Peaches and Pork. What I really wanted was for her to . . . I don’t know. Adopt me.
Not really, you know, but if I’m honest, really honest, that’s what I wanted. I wanted the sun of her smile to warm me. I wanted to be her.
She’s also a bit of a mystery.
A copious amount of material has been penned about Augustus, with his big personality and notable charm. In my mind, he was far less interesting than Meadow, whose history was shadowed and not at all clear. Where did she grow up? Why was there so little about her early life? In my reading she appeared to be the impetus for the success of Peaches and Pork, the woman behind the throne, as it were. I had noble, powerful thoughts about elevating her to queen. Empress, perhaps.
Meadow was in Australia when I reached out, so my email was read by Augustus, who invited me to visit the restaurant.
So it was that on a hot, windless day in September, when the threat of fire hung like a portent in the shimmery weight of the sky, I parked a rented compact in the lot of Peaches and Pork and got out, pulling my blouse away from my sweaty back. I’d left my hair down because the sheer volume of it covers my ears, but now I regretted that decision. Better ears that stuck out than sweat soaking my neck.
Too late. I locked the car and approached the front door of the restaurant. In the full light of day, age showed in the ocean-weathered wood facing and the outdated font on the sign. None of that mattered, of course, because the windows and decks all looked over the ocean, the beach sparsely populated on a Tuesday.
I’d read a lot about Augustus, and much was made of his charisma. By then he was well into his sixties, decades older than me, and I was just going through a formality, a stop on the way to Meadow.
The restaurant was not open until dinner during the week, and I had to blink in the dimness as I walked in, pushing my sunglasses up on my head to hold back my hair. The air within was cool and smelled of margaritas and sautéing onions. Music played from somewhere back of the house, and I followed it.
“Hello?” I called, waiting in the dining room for a minute. I’d learned the hard way that some chefs were very particular about strangers entering their kitchens, so I was wary of pushing through the doors to the inner sanctum.
The music was something with a bluegrass flavor. I heard chopping, fast chopping, and the sizzle of something being dropped in a hot pan. A man sang along with the music. Maybe not bluegrass, I thought. Maybe zydeco. I wasn’t that familiar, but one version of Beauvais’s story had him born and raised in New Orleans. There were many backstories for him, actually, which he seemed to move between at will—the New Orleans childhood, the Montreal years, the French cousins. He seemed like a conjurer, making things up to suit whoever was asking the questions.
I didn’t think much of him, to be honest, before I finally pushed open the kitchen door.
He stood in front of a long stainless-steel counter, chopping something that took some effort, effort that showed the sinew of his biceps and shoulders beneath a thin white T-shirt that clung to his chest and smooth belly and showed off the waist of a man much younger. It stopped me, the elegance of his body, the fitness. His skin was a reddish sienna, warm against the white sleeves, and his hands were unexpectedly compelling.
He paused at my entry, raised his head. His pictures had not done him justice. At all. “Hello,” he said. “You must be Norah.” There was the faint accent, vaguely French, vaguely something else. The voice itself was remarkably deep. Musical.
He wiped his hands on the apron tied around his waist and came around the counter. He was tall, which I’d known, but 6′4″ is really quite something in person, and he moved with a kind of loose ease that stirred things in all sorts of places in my body. He engulfed my outstretched hand with both of his, and I stared up at the face that did show signs of his years, but only in the most artful of ways—fans of sun lines at the corners of his eyes, a wrinkling of his brow, white curls overtaking the black in his beard, and of course the famous hair, thick and curling, now salt and pepper.
His aura swept me in, seduced me in seconds flat. He looked down into my face as if I were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and we stared at each other for a full, silent minute. “Have we met?” he asked quietly. “I feel I should remember.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, feeling his hot hands around mine. He smelled of chocolate and coriander, of something so delectably sinful that I would eat it no matter the cost.