When in Doubt, Add Butter (18 page)

“Well, they didn’t cancel the party,” Makena said carefully. It was obvious she’d gotten stuck with the job of delivering news she didn’t want responsibility for. “They just canceled you.”

“They’re canceling me.”

“I’m afraid so. They’re going with someone else instead.”

“Why?”

She took a breath and, I could tell, held it for a moment before saying, “I’m not sure.”

“Come on, Makena. I can tell that’s not true. What happened?”

“I really don’t want to get in the middle of this.”

There is little I hate more than finding myself in the midst of some sort of conflict that is not of my own making and having someone say,
I don’t want to get in the middle of this.

“Makena, there is no
middle of this.
I just want to know what’s going on. This is my livelihood we’re talking about, not a seventh grade squabble.”

“All I know is that they said they heard some negative things about your menu and your cooking, and since this is their first big blowout like this, they wanted to be really sure it was the best it could be.”

“But they sampled everything I made,” I argued. “I offered five different variations of—” I stopped. This wasn’t Makena’s fault, and it certainly wasn’t her decision; she was just the messenger. “Never mind that. Do you know who they heard this from?”

“No.” This time she sounded like she meant it. “But it had to be someone pretty powerful because there’s been a huge scramble to replace you. In fact, I need to get back on that now. Do you remember the name of that pit barbecue company that works out of Chevy Chase?”

I sighed. “Trilling Farms.”

“That’s right! Thanks a million, it’s been driving me crazy. And sorry about the party.”

There were so many more things I wanted to ask, but it was clear Makena didn’t have the answers.

“Thanks, Makena,” I said, forcing cheer I didn’t feel. “Let me know if you hear anything else. And especially if another job comes up.”

“You got it!” she said, and clicked off.

What on earth had happened? I felt shell-shocked. I couldn’t afford to lose
any
work, much less staple jobs like this! Who on earth could have been “powerful” enough to influence the Fouty company’s choice of caterer? The only person I’d had any conflict with lately was Marie Lemurra, and she didn’t have any significant social influence. In fact, she wasn’t even a member of the country club.

Angela Van Houghten came to mind, but surely she didn’t know anything to hold against me. It felt more likely that the problem was coming from one of the competitive caterers who wanted to take over the jobs. That sort of subversive trickery happened all the time in this business.

Feeling completely defeated, I went in to Mr. Tuesday’s apartment hoping to feel calmed by the normally soothing atmosphere.

Instead, I was surprised by his note:

G—

Please make tonight’s very simple. Bland even. Thanks.

—P

I stood there for a long time, unmoving. Make it simple. Bland. What did this mean? I thought back on the last week’s meals I’d made and tried to remember if there had been anything insanely spicy, but it was all the usual stuff.

Was he suddenly put off by my cooking as well?

Was this the first move in another job loss?

I took out the ingredients for dinner. Chicken Francese over rice pilaf. Not exactly Spicy Bang Bang Chicken to begin with, but I supposed I could make it even more bland by making plain white rice and going light on the lemon.

He was the boss, after all. I don’t know what it was about him that made me feel so belligerent sometimes. Probably the fact that he was usually pretty jocular with me, and fun. We had a rapport, even though we’d never met.

But something about this instruction seemed cold. It was a lot to infuse into seven little words, of course, but I really didn’t think I was wrong.

My mind grew chatty, my emotions taking on a crazy life of their own. All at once, I could imagine losing everything. How long could I subsist on my ever-dwindling cash flow, and what would I do when it completely ran out? Should I be contacting temp agencies about doing freelance administrative work? Did I need to find a regular job and somehow work what was left of my cooking around it?

I put on my Bluetooth and called Penny.

“I think Mr. Tuesday is going to sack me and I’m going to lose everything and end up living in a cardboard box under the Fourteenth Street Bridge,” I said the minute she picked up.

There was a pause, then an alarmed little, “Hello?”

Charlotte.
Shit. “I said I think Mr. Tuesday is on the Fourteenth Street Bridge,” I improvised, badly. “Wait a minute, is this Penny?”

Giggle. “No, it’s
Charlotte.
”

“Oh, my gosh, Charlotte, you sound older every day! This is Gemma. Is your mom around?”

“Yes, just a minute, please.”

I waited, taking chicken breasts out of the Costco packaging, and laid them out on the cutting board. It smelled … funny. I lifted a piece and sniffed it. It smelled like chicken. That was all, just a very chickeny chicken scent.

I was getting too sensitive. If I was going to start thinking my chicken smelled too chickeny, I was sliding onto a path of paranoia I’d never get off of.

“What’s going on?” Penny asked when she got on the line a couple of minutes later.

“Oh, nothing.” I sliced the breasts into cutlets, still wondering why it smelled so strong to me. “I just told Charlotte that I’m going to be moving into a cardboard box under a bridge.”

“What?”

Slice. “The Fouty construction company just canceled a big job I had coming up for them.” Slice. “And I just got to Mr. Tuesday’s, and he left me a really chilly note.”

“How can you tell how warm he’s being or not being in a note?”

“I just … can.” I sliced the last bit of chicken and piled it on the rest, then moved to the sink, knocking the faucet on with the back of my hand. Because I am scrupulous about cross contamination.

“You’re nuts. You’re PMSing or something.”

“I’m not.” I scrubbed with soap. “That’s the problem. I think I’m right about this.”

“Hang on a minute, Gem.” She covered the receiver with her hand, and I heard her say, “Get a piece of fruit, Char. That’s all you can have for dessert. You barely touched your broccoli.”

“I hate fruit!”
Charlotte wailed in response.

Penny really needed to be careful not to give Charlotte major food aversions that would last a lifetime. Charlotte needed to know that fruit was her friend. Instead, she was going to be one of those weird adults with fussy food habits.

Like Angela Van Houghten.

“God, she can be a pain in the ass,” Penny whispered when she came back on the line. “It’s just
broccoli,
for Pete’s sake. You’d think she’d
want
to be healthy. She’s so stubborn, it’s unbelievable.”

I started to give her my philosophy on creating food-phobic adults but thought better of it. Now probably wasn’t the time for me to be lecturing anyone on anything. Granted, I hadn’t done anything wrong, certainly nothing criminal, but as long as this uncertainty hung in the air like a big, sticky cobweb, I was probably better off keeping my mouth shut.

“We all are sometimes” was all I said, shaking some flour onto a plate and seasoning it with salt and pepper. “You, for example. Are you in labor yet?”

“Not as far as I know.”

I laughed. “Hurry
up
!”

“Yeah, I’ll do that for you.”

My call waiting beeped, so I stepped toward my phone to glance at the screen.

“It’s him! It’s Mr. Tuesday. Let me call you back.”

“Go!”

I clicked over. “Hello?”

“Gemma.” He sounded grim. I thought. I mean, it could have been my imagination, but he definitely didn’t sound friendly.

“Yes?”

“Did you get my note?”

“Y-yes—?” I wanted to ask what was going on. If he was planning to fire me. “Is something wrong? Do you have some … concerns I should know about?”

“My brother’s coming into town tonight,” he said, then expelled a tense breath. “He’s allergic to
everything.
Going to a restaurant with him is fucking murder. It takes forever for him to go through the list of possible ingredients with the server.”

Relief flooded through me. “I understand. “What, in particular, are his allergies to?”

“Flavor, I think. He hates just about everything I like. So just do the opposite of what you usually do.”

“So pick something up from McDonald’s?” Ugh.

“Not with those reckless sesame seed buns they serve.” He gave a dry laugh. “Actually, he’s allergic to a few spices, but I can’t remember which ones, so if you stick with salt and pepper, we should be all right.”

“That’s it?” I asked, extra cautious. “Wheat, eggs, and milk are okay?”

“If he can’t have bread, eggs, and milk, he’s going to have a hard time surviving at my place.”

“Are you
sure
that will be okay?” I took out a bowl and cracked two eggs into it. “Food allergies can be very serious.”

“It will be fine.”

I poured a little milk in with the eggs and whisked with a fork, worrying more by the moment. “You know, just to be sure, I’m going to write down all of the ingredients, just in case he has sensitivities you’re not aware of.”

“Excellent idea,” he said, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “If he gets there before me, just tell him to help himself to whatever. He can find his way around.”

“All right.”

“Thanks.” He hesitated, then asked, “Hey, has anyone called the house phone?”

“I haven’t heard it ring since I’ve been here. But that’s only been a few minutes.”

“Okay. Well if someone calls … can you just answer and take a message? I want to make sure I don’t miss the call, and sometimes people don’t want to leave voice mail.…”

“True.”

“And can you be sure you say you’re the chef?”

I gave a laugh and asked, “Expecting a call from a girl?”

“Good-bye, Gemma.” But I thought I heard a little bit of embarrassment in his voice.

I felt better, having had a normal conversation with him. If I’d left after just seeing that note, I probably would have chewed on it all night, making it bigger and bigger in my mind until eventually I decided he was about to fire me and that I should preempt him by quitting.

I worked quietly for the next forty-five minutes, dredging the chicken through the flour, dipping it in egg, then sautéing in a pan with butter and lemon. They were simple ingredients. Hopefully, Mr. Tuesday was right and there was nothing potentially harmful there.

Nevertheless, once the dinner was made and in stoneware in a warm oven, I took down the pad of paper and wrote down everything I could think of about the ingredients I’d used, including—again—where I’d bought them: Kirkland brand chicken breasts (Costco), Gold Medal flour and large brown eggs (Giant), salt and pepper (Costco), 365 brand long-grain rice (Whole Foods), bagged lemons and generic salted butter (Trader Joe’s), and Shenandoah’s Pride 2 percent milk (7-Eleven) (it had been an emergency run). It took three pages of the small paper to write it all down, and I went over it three times before I was satisfied that I’d covered everything. Then I went to the reusable Trader Joe’s bag I’d brought it all in and removed the bag of Mr. Tuesday’s favorite chips. I put them in the pantry with a note.

P—

I am very sure you will need these tonight.

—G

That was just luck. I’d picked them up before I knew I’d be cooking a bland meal.

With that done, I gathered my tools, piled them on the counter, and gave the sink area a second go with hot soapy water, just to make sure there was no raw chicken juice anywhere.

All in all, the meal took about three times as long to make as it normally would. But once it was done, I felt confident that it was 100 percent safe.

Since he’d only mentioned tonight as the problem, I assumed the rest of the week’s meals, which I’d put in the freezer, were okay, but just to be sure, I hastily went back and added that to the note.

I was walking through the living room when I heard a key at the front door and it opened.

Mr. Tuesday.

He looked just like he did in the picture: tall, dark, and unbelievably hot. Really hot. Even hotter than he looked in the pictures. He was probably six feet tall, with gorgeously unkempt black hair, unlined tan skin, and just the shadow of a beard, which served to make him look even darker and his blue eyes look even bluer.

He smelled delicious.

But you could tell just from looking at his pictures that he would.

“Hey!” I shifted everything into my left arm and reached out my right. “We meet in person at last. I’m Gemma.” A flush rose in my cheeks. “Obviously.”

He smiled and it made his face even more handsome. Great smile. Perfect teeth. “The cook.”

I nodded, because what else could I do? Yes, I was the cook. “There’s food ready in the oven if you’re hungry.”

“Good.” He came in and set his bag down by the sofa. “Thanks. I’ll wait for my brother, though. It’ll be okay in there for a while?”

He sounded different. Less playful or something.

“Yes, sure, it’s just warming.” I headed for the front door. “Also, I wrote down everything that’s in it, so you can be sure there are no hidden allergens. I wasn’t sure what to worry about, so I detailed it all, including the sources.”

He gave that movie star smile and headed for the kitchen, doing a double take at the many pages of notes I’d left. “You really went beyond the call of duty.”

I shook my head. “It’s just my job. So is there anything I can do for you before I leave?” That sounded dirty. “I mean, do you have any questions?”

“Nope. Smells good.” He opened the oven and looked in. “Looks great.”

“Good. Well, it was nice meeting you. I hope you have a good visit with your brother.”

“Thanks.”

Okay, he was somewhat lacking in the personality department in person. Maybe he was just shy. I mean, he was such a smart-ass in all his notes, but here and now, he was just so … meh.