Читать книгу A Catered Christmas - Isis Crawford - Страница 11

Libby looked down at her watch. It was only five minutes after four. If someone had asked her, she would have sworn it was six o’clock. At the very least. To distract herself, she studied the buffet set out on a table alongside the far wall of the green room.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting in the way of food but it certainly wasn’t this. What you had here was breakfast food and bad breakfast food at that. And then there was the table. It was cliché city.

The bright red tablecloth, the green paper plates, the red plastic knives, forks, and spoons, and the napkins with giggling Santas on them. And then there was the tired-looking poinsettia someone had plunked down in the middle of the table. At least someone should have taken the price tag off. From anyone else, this might have been acceptable but not from Hortense Calabash.

Libby tapped the fingers of her right hand against her chin. What would she serve in this situation? Something filling but light. Something that could stay at room temperature. Something that would give people energy. Something they could nibble on if they were nervous.

Perhaps bowls filled with different varieties of olives, a nice cheese platter, and a bowl of Marcona almonds. Then she’d add some good, sliced Italian semolina bread, as well as a basket filled with Cortland and Gala apples and some perfectly ripe pears.

For those who wanted something sweet, she’d put out a platter of assorted, bite-sized cookies and another platter of mini cupcakes. Libby was thinking that she’d decorate the cupcakes with little icing wreaths when Bernie appeared at her side.

“This food is awful,” Libby said to her.

Bernie looked down at the table and shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? It’s your standard green room buffet spread. You’ve got your classic bagels on steroids, your little containers of disgusting-tasting concord grape jelly, other slightly larger containers of cream cheese preserved with enough gum to turn it into a good substitute for paste, bad eight-hundred-calorie muffins, stale donuts, and brown-colored water in place of coffee.”

“That’s a fairly accurate description,” Libby allowed.

“It should be. I’ve seen enough of them. They probably have the prototype of this in the Smithsonian in an exhibit labeled ‘classic bad food of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century,'” Bernie mused. She gestured toward the table. “Have you ever noticed that the farther away you get from something the more faux it becomes—even in food. Take bagels, for instance.”

“Must we?” Libby said, knowing a food rant was coming.

Bernie ignored her. “From what I can gather,” she said, “bagels originated in southern Germany and migrated to Poland before coming over to this country.”

“Did they have to get passports?” Libby asked. “Or did the people on Ellis Island let them in with nothing?”

Bernie shot her a dirty look. “Funny. Did you know the word bagel comes from the German word beugel, which means ring or bracelet. Some people have suggested that the bagel’s shape, a circle, is symbolic of the continuity of life. Don’t you think that’s cool?” Bernie asked.

“Fascinating,” Libby said dr yly.

“Did you also know that bagels are the only bread that is boiled before baking? When they were first made in New York City, they used to be small, dense, and chewy. In fact, if you didn’t eat them that day, you could use them as missiles. Of course, their shape made them popular because they were easy to sell.

“Peddlers stacked them on wooden dowels and walked through the streets. But as they got more popular, they morphed into the big pillowlike things we have today. Cranberry-orange bagels? Blueberry bagels? Apple cinnamon?” Bernie shuddered. “Awful. What was wrong with sesame and poppy seed? Or how about cream cheese? You know it was first developed in 1872. By law it has to contain thirty-three percent milk fat and—”

Libby held up her hand.

“What?” Bernie said.

“Enough.”

“Aren’t you interested?”

“Not at this moment, no.”

“Fair enough. But I did distract you,” Bernie said.

Libby laughed. “Yes. You did do that.” She shook her head and turned and surveyed the other people in the green room. She noticed that none of them were eating anything either. “I just thought that Hortense Calabash would do better,” she said, returning to the thought she’d had before Bernie had started talking.

After all, Hortense was the woman who advocated making your own butter, the woman who had intimated on her last month’s show that knowing the pedigree of the chicken you were getting your eggs from would be, in Hortense’s words, “a highly beneficial thing, because when it comes to food you can never be too picky.”

“She’s all show,” Bernie said.

Libby shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get,” her sister replied. “If Hortense doesn’t have to impress someone, she doesn’t make the effort. In her mind, she’s doing us a favor having us here; we’re not doing her a favor by being here. The buffet is strictly a pro forma gesture. Everything she does is guaranteed to advance her career.”

Libby thought about how the set was decorated versus how the green room was decked out. Her sister was right, she decided.

She’d seen furniture in the Salvation Army that looked better than the couch and chairs in here did. She was thinking about the disparity when a little blond woman with thinning hair muscled her way past her and began rearranging the bagels on the bagel platter.

“Don’t mind me,” she told Libby. “I just like everything to be neat.”

As Libby watched, the woman gathered up all the bagels, sorted them into piles of plain, sesame, and cinnamon raisin, then carefully arranged them by type on the platter.

“There. Don’t you think that’s better?” she asked Libby.

“Absolutely,” Libby agreed. What else could she say?

The woman nodded her head vigorously and began on the muffins.

“By the way, I’m Pearl Wilde,” she told Libby and Bernie as she repositioned the muffins so that each one was exactly a quarter inch apart from the others.

“You own Top Table, right?” Bernie said.

Pearl nodded while she contemplated the containers of grape jelly. “We’re known for our comfort food.”

Expensive comfort food, Libby almost said. Mediocre, expensive comfort food. She’d been in the store once with Bernie. Top Table was located on the corner of Lexington and Seventy-fifth Street and catered to the Park Avenue crowd. The rice pudding had been twelve dollars a serving. Then there’d been the meat loaf for twenty dollars a pound, and the mashed potatoes for fifteen. She’d bought the smallest serving size possible of chocolate pudding and had thrown it in the trash after one taste. The stuff they sold in the vending machines was better.

“I have OCD,” Pearl chirped.

“Overly compensating divorcée?” Bernie asked. “Or is it operational communications disorder? I forget.”

“She’s kidding,” Libby said as Pearl drew herself up. “I’m a little obsessive-compulsive myself.”

“Most people in this business are,” Pearl observed before she went back to rearranging the jelly containers into a perfect pyramid.

Watching her, Libby decided that Pearl should probably be on medication. She might be bad, but Pearl had definitely crossed over the line.

“I just think it’s important for presentations to be geometrical, don’t you?” Pearl commented as she moved on to the donuts.

“Personally, I try and arrange everything in circles,” Bernie was saying as the door opened and a very large man waddled into the room. “It makes more sense feng shui wise.”

He looks like a ball, Libby thought, albeit a ball dressed in black. His skin was so pink and shiny it practically glowed. Libby noticed he had tiny feet, or maybe, she reflected, they just looked tiny because of his girth.

Bernie leaned over. “That’s Joe Estes, the producer,” she whispered in Libby’s ear.

“How much do you think he weighs?” Libby whispered back.

“Four hundred pounds. I heard that he got his start producing porn. You know, Angels and the Devil?”

“No.”

Bernie gave her an incredulous look. “You’ve never seen it?”

“No.” Why did Bernie make her feel totally clueless? “I don’t watch that kind of thing.” She was about to add something to the effect that she never had when Estes clapped his hands.

“People, let’s get this show on the road.”

Everyone in the room stopped talking.

“Better. Much better.” Estes rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Now, the first thing I’d like to do is have you people sit down at the table over there"—he pointed to an oblong table on the other side of the room—"and have everyone introduce themselves, not that you’re not familiar with each other. But I always like to observe the formalities.”

“This is what they call a meet and greet,” Bernie explained to Libby.

Libby didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to meet anyone; she didn’t want to greet anyone; she just wanted to get back to the store so she could finish making her mincemeat pies and start on her butternut squash and apple bisque. As she looked at the people around her, she cursed Bree again. Why was she here? What was the point? There wasn’t any as far as she could see, except that Bree wanted her to do this.

Even the twenty-thousand-dollar prize didn’t seem like a good enough reason to participate in this. It wasn’t as if they were going to be getting the money. They were going to be donating it to their favorite charity. Then Libby felt guilty about that thought. That was a good thing. But still. As far as she was concerned, A Little Taste of Heaven had a lot to lose and very little to gain by participating in the contest.

Estes clapped his hands again. “All right, chickees, gather round,” he said.

“Chickees,” Libby muttered under her breath to Bernie. “Give me a break.”

“That means you three,” Estes said as he pointed to Libby, Bernie, and Pearl.

Bernie and Pearl moved forward with Libby trailing.

“Very good,” Estes said. “That wasn’t so painful was it, dear?” he asked.

It took Libby a few seconds to realize that he was talking to her.

“No,” she mumbled. She hated people calling her dear.

“Good, honey.” Estes sniffed. “Damn allergies. We’re going to do a quick meet and greet, so I want each of you to stand up and say your name clearly and tell everyone a little about yourself.”

Libby watched as Bernie rolled her eyes.

Estes pointed to himself. “And I’ll start with me. Or is it I? Oh, who gives a damn. As you can see, I have a problem with my weight. It’s a glandular thing.” Libby heard some titters around the room. “But that aside, I’m forty years old and in perfect health. Hortense and I have been working together for four years with, I think, good results. If you have any problems, any at all, just tell me and I’ll do everything I can to resolve them. That’s what I’m here for.” And then he pointed to the black man sitting down beside the woman with the long red hair.

The man stood up. He had a shaved head and a gold earring and was dressed in a white suit. A black Mr. Clean, Libby couldn’t help thinking.

“My name is Jean La Croix,” he said. “I’m from Haiti. I run a shop in New York City called La Bon Food. We specialize in authentic Haitian food as well as Creole and Cajun cuisine. My shop has been written up in both Food Styles and the food section of the New York Times. I’ve catered parties at Trump Towers and the Royal. My gumbo is famous from Maine to California.”

Libby suddenly became aware that Bernie had pushed a napkin in front of her. She looked down. On it Bernie had written, “Full of himself, isn’t he?”

“Just a tad,” Libby wrote back as Jean shot the cuffs on his shirt.

“So,” La Croix said to Estes, “where can I put my pans?”

“Your pans?” Estes asked.

“Yes. I assume I am allowed to use my own pans.”

Estes looked nonplused. “I … I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean you don’t think so?”

Libby watched Estes backtrack. “I’ll have to talk to Hortense about that.”

“How can you not know?” La Croix flung his arms out. “Not allowing me to use my sauté pan would be like not allowing Da Vinci to use his paintbrush. If I cannot use them, I will have to withdraw.”

“How precious,” Consuela said. “And by the way, I thought you were from Brooklyn. So is your shop. I heard you got your accent working in the kitchen of Le Mer.”

“Like you got yours from New Jersey,” La Croix shot back.

“Actually,” Pearl Wilde interrupted, “I brought my knives.” And she opened up her backpack and laid a boning knife, a paring knife, and a cleaver out on the table. “I always carry them with me,” she confided.

“That’s very nice, sweetie,” Estes said uncertainly.

“I would like to be able to use them as well. I think of them as my little helpers.”

Libby noticed that there were beads of sweat on Estes’ forehead. “I’m not sure that will be possible,” he told her as he extracted a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his jacket and mopped his brow.

“Well, you said you’d help out any way you could.”

Libby could see from Estes’ expression that he was deeply regretting those words.

“And I have something else I want to clear the air about,” Pearl continued. “I think it might be useful if you moved the glasses to the left of the sink on the set. All things being equal, that seems to me to be a more proper placement.”

“Why to the left?” Jean said.

“Because it will balance things out.”

“You are crazy,” La Croix said.

“Me?” Pearl pointed to herself. “I’m not the one who got myself arrested for—”

Estes hit the table. The glasses on it bounced. “That is enough,” he bellowed. “We will iron out these little details later. Right now, I just want everyone to introduce themselves.”

“When is the divine goddess gracing us with her ineffable presence?” a man Libby recognized as Reginald Palmer asked.

Libby had been in his store a couple of times. It was two towns over and did things like clotted cream and scones with strawberry jam. Palmer did a fairly pleasant high tea three days a week, but she’d been told that the store’s real money came from catering Bar Mitzvahs and weddings.

“Reggie,” Estes was saying when the sounds of “Disco Duck” filled the air.

Consuela began snapping her fingers in time to the music while the redheaded woman sitting next to Jean La Croix started rummaging through her bag.

“Sorry about this,” she said. Finally she pulled out her cell. “Hello, Ronnie,” she said into it. “I’ll call you back later. I’m in a meeting. My publisher,” she explained as she clicked her cell off and dropped it back in her bag.

Right, Libby thought. Now she knew where she’d seen her before. Her picture was on the cover of a well-reviewed cookbook on how to throw a party for twenty people in a half hour or less. However, two cooking teachers who Libby knew and respected had pronounced it not worth the money it would cost to recycle it.

She brushed back a strand of her red hair and stood up. “I guess I’m next. For those of you who haven’t seen my book yet, I’m Brittany Saperstein, and I own Kugle to All.” At which point her cell rang again. She went through her bag till she found it. “Yes, Evelyn, I think you should go with the gold on the walls. Sorry,” she said again.

“Could you turn that thing off?” Estes told her as it rang a third time.

“Hello, Judy,” Brittany said into the cell. “I’ll have to call you back.” She dropped the phone back into her bag—a Fendi, Libby noticed. “There’s no need to yell,” she told Estes.

“I wasn’t yelling,” Estes told her.

“Well, then raising your voice,” Brittany countered.

“It’s difficult to conduct a meeting when that thing of yours keeps going off.”

“It’s not my fault if people need to speak to me,” Brittany said.

“Are you going to have it on, on the show?” Estes asked.

“Of course not,” Brittany said.

“Then turn it off now,” Estes thundered.

“Joe, Joe. It’s not good to be losing your temper like that,” Reginald Palmer said. “Not good at all. Especially for someone of your size.”

“Let’s leave my size out of it, shall we?”

“Fine,” Reginald said. “I just don’t want you to drop dead of a heart attack.”

“Thank you for your concern. Now can we get back to the matter at hand? We have a lot to cover before the show.”

“Which is why I want to know when we are going to get a chance to speak to Hortense.”

“You’re not,” Estes said.

“What do you mean?” Reginald demanded.

“Exactly what I said. She doesn’t want to talk to the contestants before. You’ll speak to her on the show. She never speaks to anyone before airtime.”

“What utter rot. She talked to me before.”

“That was then. Now she likes to meditate and prepare herself.”

“You mean have a couple of cocktails,” Libby could have sworn she heard Pearl Wilde mutter under her breath.

“But I have something to say to her,” Reginald insisted.

“You can tell me and I’ll tell her.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not possible.”

“I can get her assistant in here if you’d like. You can speak to him.”

“What nonsense. I need to speak to Hortense.”

Estes folded his arms across his chest.

“I’m afraid that that’s not going to happen,” he told Reginald.

Libby was slightly alarmed to see he was beginning to get red in the face.

“But what about my pans?” Jean La Croix demanded.

“What about them?” Estes asked.

“I want to talk to her about those.”

“I’ve already told you I will relay your request.”

Jean La Croix slapped the table with the palm of his hand. “That’s not good enough.”

Suddenly Libby became aware that she was hearing something other than Jean La Croix’s voice. She turned to listen. A noise seemed to be coming from the other room, the room next to Hortense’s office.

“What’s that?” Reginald said.

Estes didn’t say anything.

“That’s Hortense, isn’t it?” Reginald demanded. He began rising from his chair. “She’s in the test kitchen, isn’t she?”

“I already told you, you can’t go in there,” Estes said.

“The hell with that,” Reginald replied.

Libby watched as he pushed his chair back and strode across the floor. Libby reflected that for a man of his girth, Estes could move when he wanted to because suddenly he was blocking Reginald’s path.

“I meant what I said,” he told Reginald.

Reginald opened his mouth to speak but Libby never heard what he had to say, because the blast coming from the second kitchen drowned everything out.