Adventures with Max and Louise (17 page)

“This,” Mrs. Bullitt announces excitedly, “is my dinner club.” She turns to me. “We’ve been together fifteen years this summer. Here’s our scrapbook with all the menus we’ve done. We started out with Europe cuisine and worked our way south. Now we’re doing Africa.” She plops a fat leather scrapbook on a side table with a thud.

A silvery blond woman adds, “We cook everything ourselves.”

“From scratch,” says a chubby woman in pearls.

I balk, shivering with the effort of facing these women, answering their questions. Liz pushes me forward. “Go ahead,” she whispers. “I promised Mrs. Bullitt a forty-five-minute Q and A about Diner X, recipe testing your book. Don’t forget to plug it. It’s good practice for tomorrow.”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“A local TV spot,” she says serenely. “Eight o’clock on
Good Morning Seattle.
” She lowers her voice. “We’ll have to be up at the crack of crow shit for that one. I hate morning TV.”

“We’re going to be on the telly!” Max sings out with delight.

I am hit with a wave of nausea.

Chapter Eighteen

W
HILE WRITING
THE
Evolution of Eating
, I dreamed of the photo shoot for the eventual book. It would be the dinner party from heaven. My friends would be charming, witty, and urbane. I would have lost those ten, okay, fifteen, pounds. I would feel beautiful and enchanting; the camera would prove it. The photographer would eat and shoot, exclaiming enthusiastically, “So delicious,” as he moved in for a close-up. I would crack jokes, and everyone would laugh. We’d talk food. Pleasant aromas would fill the air.

The reality is nowhere near as picturesque. Fang sees to that.

The stylist, whose name I cannot get straight, argues with Liz the whole time about clothing choices. Every outfit the stylist zips, tugs, and even sews me into, Liz despises. The black outfit is too sophisticated; the white, too innocent. A moment later she reverses herself, and the stylist marches back to the racks of clothing, her face growing increasingly grim.

While the food stylists spray glycerin and water on pans of cold food to make it look hot, I try on summery outfits in the pool room, listening to the stylist gripe about Liz.

“God, what a nightmare. She’s one of those people who, if there was order in the universe, would be unemployed. The only problem is she is so good at her job that people put up with mountains and mountains of attitude. It’s like she’s got this insane sixth sense about what people are going to like. I mean, she clearly hates most people, but when it comes to the unwashed masses, she knows exactly what will sell. It’s so unfair.”

She hands me a white suit, which I tug on over a red camisole. The price tag, taped to the inside, reads $2,100.

“In American dollars?” I gasp, holding the suit in front of me, terrified of getting it dirty.

She laughs. “It ain’t pesos, honey.”

I slip on the suit and run, shivering, to the outdoor kitchen, where Liz directs the photographer, a craggy, dark-haired man in his fifties. They stand near the edge of the slate wall, where the photographer has set up several large filters and a few outdoor lights.

“I want springy light,” Liz insists, waving her hands around theatrically. “Airy, fresh; think
Real Simple
with sex.”

“This is a good, soft light.” The photographer waves his hands at his complicated setup of light boxes and umbrellas.

Liz stomps into the middle of the lights and scowls. “It’s summery light. I want springy. You know,
Real Simple,
with all that Martha-looking light. I want the same thing but slightly shadowy, so it’s clean yet sexy.”

The photographer crosses his arms, scowling back at her with his craggy brow. “That means nothing to me. Explain, please.”

“Move that filter there, and we’ll all be happy.” She points to a spot farther down the stone wall.

“No!” The photographer puts his hands on his hips. “I have been doing this for eighteen years, and that will not work. It will make shadows. Shadows are not springy. I want clear, clean light. It looks beautiful that way. The filters stay.”

I shiver in the $2,100 pantsuit, while Liz, pausing to take off her high heels, climbs onto a poolside rockery to adjust the giant filters herself.

“I don’t f-ing have time to do everyone’s job for them,” she grumbles.

The photographer knits his heavy brows together, looking as though he’s contemplating pushing her right off the wall, down to the woods below.

She jumps back to the ground, sees me, and stops short. “No one wears a white pantsuit to cook,” she snaps at the stylist, who has followed me with an armful of clothes.

“You told me she’s presenting,” the stylist says through clenched teeth.

“In every shot she’s cooking,” Liz says crisply. “I shouldn’t have to tell you this. It’s a cookbook, for God’s sake.”

The stylist whips out a starched white-and-red apron with a saucy frill at the hem. “Fine. She pushes up her sleeves.” She demonstrates on me as if I am a lifeless mannequin. “She serves the food. Any woman would die for this suit.”

Liz marches over and lifts the lapel on my suit as if it’s on a coat hanger. “A real cook would never wear that in the kitchen.” In the car Liz boasted that the most efficient utensil in her kitchen was the phone.

“But you told me the whole point was not to make her look like a real cook. You wanted glamour in red, white, and black, which is exactly what I delivered.” The stylist seethes, waving her hand at me, the living proof. “This isn’t reality, it’s a book. You told me your goal was to make cookbooks so gorgeous they end up on coffee tables.”

I push out my chest. A fringe of red lace puffs out from the open suit top. “I like the suit. I’d wear it,” I say meekly. Why are we all tiptoeing around Liz when the entire crew wants to push her in the pool and go home?

Liz puts her arm around me and coaxes me back to the dressing room, a poolside cabana. “It’s not right for the book. Where’s the red dress?” The stylist snatches the dress off the rack and thrusts it at Liz. “Let’s try this.” She opens the tiny bathroom for me. I change once again, while Liz paws through the racks of clothes.

Don’t you just love your hair?” Liz calls to me through the slats on the white door.

“Yeah,” I call through the door. “I suppose. It’ll take me a while to get used to it.”

“Don’t you think her highlights are just going to pop on camera?” I hear her asking the stylist.

“I don’t know what the hell you hired me for, Liz. You’re just going to do it all yourself, aren’t you?”

“This is collaboration. You know that. I get ideas, and I go with them. It doesn’t mean I don’t value the work you do.”

“But you’re not using any of my ideas.”

“That’s collaboration, honey, recognizing when someone else’s ideas are better and going with it. I’ll give you credit in the book if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Screw the book.” As I open the door, I’m just in time to watch the stylist dump her armful of clothes on top of a shaky clothing rack and roll it toward Liz. “You can take all this crap back to Barneys yourself. I quit.”

Liz stops the rack with one pointy-toed shoe, remaining utterly still and calm. The shaking stylist shoves clips, makeup, clothespins, and a blow-dryer into her bag, then stomps out of the cabana. A moment later we hear her heels crunching around the side of the garden. Liz coolly lights a cigarette. Exhaling, she watches the smoke drift out the door.

“Some people,” she says, shaking her head, “have no work ethic.”

B
Y SIX O’CLOCK,
the last shot of the day is set up. I slouch in the barren garden in front of a small table of food surrounded by potted red roses, wearing a dramatic white halter dress that Liz bullied me into wearing. When I’d told her that I wasn’t comfortable with the plunging neckline and great scoops of exposed cleavage, she’d narrowed her eyes to slits, informing me she didn’t have time for this prima donna act. I wasn’t letting her do her job. I’d backed down, leaving me exposed and furious.

Everyone is exhausted, hunkered down in drab parkas, sucking on paper cups of coffee for dear life. Even the food, marginally fresh and alive this morning, now seems cold and mucky. A food stylist paints the color back onto the tomatoes with food dye, while the other replaces yet another wilted spring salad. The only sign of life is Liz, flying around the garden, adjusting a button here, a piece of bread there, pestering the photographer, and calling out, “Come on, people, step it up!”

A photographer’s assistant makes devil horns behind her head, which makes everyone crack up in loud, nervous laughter.

“I saw that,” Liz says calmly, rubbing her nose with her middle finger toward the assistant.

Bored out of my mind, I fiddle with a pot of tomato soup, watching the red liquid spill back into Mrs. Bullitt’s lovely French Provençal tureen. I feel a hand gently part the back of my hair. Someone kisses my neck. It tickles.

“Ahhhh!” I squeal, spinning around, ladle in hand, dousing Chas’s suit and my summery white dress with soup.

Chas wipes a chunk of tomato off his jacket and sticks it in his mouth. “Good soup.” He grins. In his three-button navy suit and dove gray tie, he’s even more handsome than I remembered. When I called him from my cell phone, he said he’d cancel meetings to join me. “Are you kidding? This is the best offer I’ve had all week.”

Liz comes up behind us, seeing my dress before she notices Chas. “Oh no! The dress! The cover shot!” She glances at the sun and turns to the photographer. “Do we have time for her to change?”

The photographer squints at the pinkish clouds scattered across the skyline and shakes his head. “Nope. We have to shoot now.”

Liz frowns hard, staring at my stained dress with intense concentration.

“I’m really sorry, it’s all my fault.” Chas offers his hand to the suddenly fluttery Liz. “Chas Bowerman.”

“The pleasure’s mine, Chas,” she purrs, eyeing him as if he’s a juicy steak. “You’ve just given me a fabulous idea!”

She sprints to the deck, where Mrs. Bullitt’s dinner club congregates in their fur coats. From the flush on their faces and the mugs in their hands, I can tell they’ve moved from tea to something stronger. Two of them cuddle little dogs.

“How would you like your dogs to be famous?” Liz asks the two ladies, who willingly hand over their pups.

Liz places the two mutts, one miniature schnauzer and one Lhasa Apso, on the table. The Lhasa jumps off the table and runs back to his mistress. The schnauzer daintily licks at the puddles of soup staining the white tablecloth. Liz kicks one of the chairs down and spills the food on one half of the table, leaving the other half pristine.

It looks as though a fight has taken place during dinner. Liz pours wine into a glass on the messy side and knocks it over. The stain spreads down the table under the dog’s feet. Stepping back, she studies the effect like an artist. Deciding something’s missing, she tosses a few pieces of silverware on the gravel and drops a folded linen napkin. It flutters to the ground, while the crew, bewildered, watches.

She smiles, delighted with her vision. Taking Chas by the hand, she leads him to the table. “How would you like to be on a book cover?” she coos.

“Don’t like this one bloomin’ bit,” Max growls.

“ ’Course you don’t. ’Cause you know what he’s gonna say. If ever a man wanted to be famous, it’s Charles Matthew Bowerman,” says Louise. “Didja hear him on the phone? Photo shoot? Fancy mansion? Man ’bout peed hisself. Probably knocked down six old ladies on his way over here.”

I don’t have time to think about what Louise is saying. I am transfixed by the sight of Liz ushering Chas into his chair, letting one heavy brown lock of hair brush his shoulder as she whispers directions in his ear. Chas laughs at something. She giggles delightedly, playing with her hair.

“See that old slimy eggplant salad? Dump it on her uppity New York head!” Louise urges.

Wishing Chas had seen Liz’s curt nastiness with the stylist, I step forward uneasily. The red soup soaking through my thin dress makes me shiver. Chas crosses his legs and languidly pours himself a glass of wine from the open bottle as if we are the only people in the garden. The ladies on the porch chatter excitedly, wondering what Liz has planned.

“Now you.” Liz crooks her little finger. “Stand over here with the ladle.” She spoons tepid tomato soup onto my chest, dribbling it down my cleavage.

I inhale deeply, utterly shocked. The soup is thick, cold, and puddles in my bra.

“Echhh. Yuck. Cold tomato slime. For this she must die!” Max screeches.

“You just lift up that ol’ bowl and dump it!” Louise reminds me. “Let her have it!”

The photographer, peering through his lens, lifts his head and stares. He is the only one who saw my breasts quiver and shake as the soup hit. Liz paces back and forth like a panther, preoccupied with her vision.

“Now drape yourself around him and give him a kiss on the cheek,” she says.

I wipe a bit of soup from my dress. “You want me to kiss him—like
this
?”

“Come on, it can’t be that bad, is it?” When I don’t say anything, she swoops in, planting a swift kiss on Chas’s lips. “Like that.”

Louise and Max both howl for blood, but I’m frozen with rage. Before she can see the thunderstorm brewing on my face, Liz turns to the photographer. “We won’t see his face, only the back of his head. But even from the back of the head we can tell he’s handsome.”

“Get that woman some glasses,” Chas chortles, delighted. He takes out a handkerchief, making a big show of wiping off her lipstick.

Everyone turns to me, waiting to see what I’ll do. If I make a stink in front of all these people, I’ll seem petulant, silly. What would I say? “How could you kiss him?” The way she did it made it seem like every good publicist has a full range of kisses in her arsenal, ready to demonstrate technique. It’s all in the service of the book, right?

She’s strutting around as if nothing happened, taunting me. “Your turn.”

“We’re losing light,” the photographer reminds me.