Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction! (52 page)

What
my outfit lacked in fancy, it made up for in quick.  I went downstairs and
found Vinnie and Vito curled up on the sofa reading the newspaper.  Vito
sported a non-coffee streaked pink Oxford shirt.

“Well,
what do you think about that?” Vito asked Vinnie.  Vinnie nodded back and
continued reading.

“What’s
up?” I asked.

Vito
looked up.  “You gotta read this article,” he said.  “You won’t believe it.  It
turns out that it wasn’t just your old boss behind the burning Bent-A-Lots.”

“Really?”
I asked.

“Yeah.
Did you know some guy named Myron?” Vito asked.

“Yip.”

“Turns
out, he did some sneaky computer stuff to steal information about Buy-A-Lots,
through some hack outfit in Bangladesh.”  Huh.  So Norman was right. “Anyhows,
he was selling the information, for a profit, to a big competitor of
Buy-A-Lots; Världen Vänder.”

“Världen
Vänder?” I asked.

“They’re
in Sweden,” he said.

“Why
would a Swedish company want that kind of information?” I asked.

“Competition,”
Vito said.  “I remember reading a couple months ago about how they beat
Buy-A-Lots out of a bid for a store front in the Pretzel Nuggets Mall.”

I
remembered.  Wow.  Vito was right.

Världen
Vänder was the oddish bulk grocery store that made you ‘rent’ your shopping
cart for a quarter.  You could only get a shopping cart if you put a quarter
into the slot to release the lock to the next cart.  You got your quarter back
when you put your cart back.  And they don’t provide grocery bags – just
packing boxes.  Odd.  But they do sell a very nice brand of lingonberries.

Vito
stood looking out the living room window and waved.

“Hey,
Toots, I gotta go.”

I
peered past him. At the bottom of Mt. Driveway was a yellow Cougar, Miriam
seated behind the wheel.  She wore a Doris Day kind of sheer headscarf with
Elton John type sunglasses, and was waving paddy fingers at Vito.

“I
got a bunch of, ummm… errands… I gotta run before me and Miriam meet you at
church,” he explained.

“Church?”
I asked.  “I thought you’re Jewish?”

Vito
shrugged.  “Miriam and me talked it over.  We figure it’s okay, since we’re not
too kosher,” he answered, and patted Vinnie on his noggin and hustled out the
door.

I
shrugged, gulped the last of my coffee, grabbed Vito’s keys and my pocketbook,
and headed out to Squirrel Run Acres.

I
made the right onto Running Pump and drove through the residential section that
leads to the mini-commercial warehouse buildings.  I slowed down at the speed
trap, and saw that a police car had pulled over another victim ahead of me.  It
had pulled over a black SUV and an irate driver who was wearing a white cotton
jacket and banging his head on his steering wheel, while the officer smiled and
wrote out a speeding ticket.   Where the heck would anyone be speeding to at
seven-thirty on a Sunday morning?

I
shrugged and continued and eventually pulled into the parking lot for Squirrel
Run Acres.  The small employee parking lot was packed.  Luckily, the space
closest to the kitchen door was empty.  I sighed with relief; I wouldn’t have
to double-park Vito’s car to load the brunch trays.

I
walked up the back steps and peered in through a screen door.  A guy wearing
black pants, a white shirt and an apron bounded out past me with a cigarette in
his mouth.  He lit it in the parking lot.  He looked at me and nodded.

“Go
ahead,” he puffed, pointing his head toward the screen door.

“Uh,
thanks,” I said brightly.

I
guessed I was supposed to go in and sort of help myself.  I walked into a small
back room, where a couple of stressed bleach-blondes were ripping lettuce with
a vengeance onto individual salad plates.  They looked at me.

“Finally,”
one of them said.

“About
time,” said the other, ripping another leaf.

I
looked blankly at them.

“Well,
go on,” said the first one.

I
shrugged and entered the kitchen.

I’ve
never seen the inside of an ant colony, but I imagine a commercial kitchen
provides a pretty accurate likeness of one.  There were dozens of workers
crisscrossing each other, carrying plates and bowls and supplies, pushing
carts, carrying trays and dumping leftovers into large trash bins.  Others were
mixing, frying, washing and sautéing.  No one stood still.  Everyone sweated.

I
looked around, and found some large take-out platters on a stainless steel
trolley with ‘St. Bart’s’ emblazoned in large black capital letters on them.
There were eight of them.  Yikes. Clearly, I’d be making several trips.

I
heard the screen door slam, followed by shouting.

A
nerdy kid with red hair and freckles and streaky eyeglasses thrust a large
white plastic bottle labeled ‘Ranch Dressing’ at me.  “Here, look busy!” he
whispered.

“What?”
I asked.

“You
do not want to irritate Chef Jacques!” he instructed.

“Oh,”
I said smartly back and stood there, holding the half gallon of salad dressing.

“Fill
the pitchers!” he hissed, and pointed me toward a rolling cart with about a
couple dozen small empty creamers.

“These?”

He
rolled his eyes and nodded and zipped past me on his mission.  I shrugged and
started dolloping dressing.

I
heard more screaming and more banging as a tall, dark, handsome and irate chef
strode into the kitchen.  He had curly black hair, dark blue eyes and the vein
on his neck throbbed handsomely beneath his scarlet skin.  It was Sir Speedy –
the driver I saw pulled over at the speed trap on Running Pump Road.  He was
waving his hands in the air and screaming, “Where’s my filet? Where’s the
turkey?”

One
of the two salad girls came running in after him.   “We put them in the walk-in
last night, like you asked us to,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“The
freezer?” he cried.

The
manager rolled her eyes again.  “The refrigerator,” she answered.

“Oh,
sorry,” he said.  She shrugged.  He leaned on the stainless steel counter and
muttered.  “Great.  I’m late.  Get pulled over at the stupid speed trap on the
stupid shortcut.  And someone parked in my stupid parking spot,” he mumbled.

The
manager stared pointedly at me.  Chef looked at me.  “What are you doing?” he
asked.

“Dressing?”
I answered.

He
shook his head. “We don’t need that now.”

He
had incredibly deep blue eyes.  In fact, he looked pretty handsome, when he
wasn’t acting all pre-seizure like.

“Can
you prep celery?” he asked, folding his arms and looking down at me.  I looked
up.  This was a nice change. Chef was easily well over six feet tall.

 “Sure,”
I said.

He
nodded.  “Good. This way.”

He
directed and had me follow him to the back of the kitchen, over to a large
stainless steel counter that fed into an industrial size steel kitchen sink.

“Here,”
he said, plopping a bunch of celery on the counter in front of me and walking
away.

I
shrugged, rolled up my sleeves, picked out a knife and set out to help.  I
guessed Vito was right.  Instead of exchanging pleasantries, it seemed Squirrel
Run Acres preferred to exchange services.  It was a good thing I had some time
to spare before getting to St. Bart’s.  Well, you know what they say.  There’s
no such thing as a free brunch.

I
just finished and dried the celery and set it to one side, and started to walk
over to get the donated brunch trays.  “Not so fast,” the manager advised me. 
She looked over at my cleaned and cut celery.  “Not bad.  But you’re going to
have to work a lot faster or you’ll be here until Thanksgiving.”

“Huh?”

“Here,”
she huffed, pushing a large tub that held about fifty bunches of celery.

“Are
you kidding?” I asked.

“No,
I’m not!” she said and walked off, shaking her head and muttering.

The
nerdy red-haired kid came up to me.  “You don’t want to irritate our manager,
either,” he whispered, and started throwing bunches of celery into the sink to
get washed.

“I
wasn’t trying to,” I answered.

He
shrugged. “It’s okay. My first day was pretty bad, too,” he said.

“First
day?” I asked.

“Sure,”
he said, throwing more celery in the sink for me and walking away with the tub
full of celery leaf crumbs and dirt.

I
shrugged and turned the faucet on.  A few minutes later, the manager came up
behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.  I turned around.  Her face was beet
red.

“I
just picked up a voicemail from SNAP Employment,” she began.  “They said the
temp kitchen worker they assigned us for today called in sick.  So who are
you?” she asked.

“I’m
Mina,” I answered, washing.

“What
are you doing here?” she asked, hands on hips.

“I
came to pick up the brunch trays for St. Bart’s.”

The
manager clapped her hand to her forehead.  “Harry!” she shouted.  The nerdy
red-haired kid appeared.  “Finish up here,” she instructed, and led me away.

We
walked over to the trolley with St. Bart’s brunch.  The manager started rolling
the trolley toward the kitchen exit.  “Ira! Rich!” she hollered.  A very old
man in kitchen scrubs and a thirty-something guy wearing a white t-shirt and a
full-arm tattoo appeared.  “Load these up in this young lady’s car,” she said.

They
both nodded, and Rich pushed the trolley out as Ira followed behind. Chef looked
up from a large cast iron skillet that held a couple of sticks of melting
butter.

“What’s
going on?” he asked the manager.

“This
is Mina.  She came to pick up the donations for St. Bart’s.  She’s not our SNAP
temp,” she answered.

Chef’s
eyebrows flew to the top of his head and his jaw dropped.  I smiled stupidly
back at him.

“Bye!!”
I said, and wiggled my fingers at Chef and skipped out the door.

I
drove to St. Bart’s with Vito’s car full of brunch trays and my head full of
questions.  My first foray into a commercial kitchen wasn’t so bad.  Especially
considering my mistaken identity and all.  And now that I knew how short-handed
they were, maybe I could get a job?  It wouldn’t be exactly unpleasant working
with Chef Jacques, either.  That thought made me feel tingly where I hadn’t
felt tingly for a long time.  I blushed.

I
pulled off of Mulberry and into the parking lot of St. Bart’s.  I walked into
Fellowship Hall and found Aunt Muriel fussing with setting up coffee and tea
and juice dispensers.  Plates and napkins and utensils lay all lined up on
another big table, with a vast empty space where the brunch platters were
supposed to be.

“Mina!”
Aunt Muriel and Ma screamed happily.  “Where are the trays?”

I
told them, and in a few minutes a couple of teenagers were roped into unloading
Vito’s car.

“We’ll
have to hurry; the service will be out soon,” Aunt Muriel said, checking her
diamond-crusted wristwatch against the first chorus of the recessional hymn
floating over from the sanctuary.

“What
kept you?” Ma asked, unwrapping platters.

“Oh,
they needed a little extra help,” I said.

Auntie
shook her head.  “If I’d known that, I would have sent you there a lot
earlier,” she stated.  I sighed.

Ma
looked at me.  “You look tense,” she said.

“Do
you want another massage?” Auntie asked.

“Maybe…”
I answered, shifting gears between tall, dark and angry to blonde, muscular and
chilled.

“Mina?”
she asked, waking me back to reality.

“Did
Massage Man ever tell you he used to be an investment broker?” I asked.

Auntie
nodded.  “And after all poor James went through to get the massage training to
help his girlfriend,” she added.

I
sighed again.  “She’s pretty lucky,” I said.

“Well,
I don’t know about that, but I guess she’s happier,” Auntie said.

“It
sure can’t hurt to have a boyfriend who’s a masseuse.”

“Oh
for heaven’s sake, she certainly does not have a boyfriend.  She dumped poor
James for another lingerie model.”

“You
mean a girl?”

“Do
you know any men who model lace panties?”

I
didn’t and hoped I never would.  Ticker tape thoughts ran across my mind. James
not gay.  James single. James attractive.  Huh.  I looked at Auntie.

“And,
he’s very, very nice,” she added.

“And
so is his portfolio?” I asked.

Auntie
shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with a good investment,” she answered.

A
tag-line Amen at the end of the hymn, a benediction and the good-natured
stampling of feet across the courtyard arrived, and Fellowship Hall was full of
hungry Episcopalians.  And Evelyn.