Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (17 page)

“You know, I don’t know much about American baseball, but it occurs to me that I should have talked to that baseball player about the game.”

“Why’s that?”

“He might have had a few tips about what to do when you keep striking out.”

I cocked my head and smirked at him. “You get benched.”

“For how long?”

“That’s up to the coach.”

He took the last bite of bagel and grinned. “Well, that’s good, because I think the coach is really hot to put me in the game but just won’t admit it.”

I might have told him he was wrong, but I think my body’s sexual receptors would have reached out and slapped me. They wouldn’t understand that at the moment, I was brokenhearted and vulnerable and no matter how charming this man was, he
was not the answer to my problems. I was grateful that Mae and the Tonys returned before I had to say anything.

It was super having the extra pair of hands in the kitchen; we moved along at record speed. As Danny worked, he chatted and charmed the others, even Jonathan, who told him his lamb dish was going to be fine. “You won’t believe what I can do with parsley,” he told Danny, without looking at me. He probably knew I was squinting daggers at him. As for any more suggestive advances, Danny kept them in check except for the times when I passed him on my way to the sink. He had figured out that unless he scooted way in I was either going to skim my breasts against his back or face the other way and risk a summit of our backsides. He made it harder by backing up every time I had to go by him.

By about ten-thirty, we had finished just about all we had to do.

“Well, I’d better get back to the restaurant,” Danny said, taking off his chef’s coat and laying it on a stool. “They’ll be well into lunch prep by now.” He patted the Tonys on the back and thanked them, shook hands with Jonathan, and gave Mae a big hug and told her she was the best. I was next, and I figured I came under the hug category, so I was trying to determine if I should just hug him back or kiss him on the cheek, as I often do with the guest chefs I know and like. Before he came to where I was standing by the door, he picked up his coat and tool kit, which meant that there wasn’t much arm left for hugging. What’s that all about? One minute he’s all over me and the next he’s planning on squeezing me in between his dirty laundry and used chef’s tools. I felt as though I’d just been voted off the island. He can forget the kiss on the cheek.

“I’ll be seeing you, Casey,” he said and bent down and kissed me. Just like that. On the lips. Not a long kiss, but one
that felt so passionate and intimate that my toes curled and I was speechless. He walked out the door without saying another word.

I didn’t say anything either until I noticed Mae grinning at me with raised eyebrows.

“What?” I said.

“It sure looks like you two have got it going on.”

“No way, Mae. Flirting is just an extracurricular activity for him. It has no effect on me.” Liar. Liar. Pants on fire.

I
MET
M
ARY FOR
lunch at a small burger joint on a side street near where she works. The smell of burgers, bacon, and onions on the grill was so strong that I was sure people wouldn’t notice that I smelled of hamburger, onions, and chilies. Mary was already sitting in a booth when I walked in.

“I could smell you the minute you walked in,” she said. Hey, what are best friends for if not to tell you when you smell? The waiter came over and we both ordered cheeseburgers and Diet Cokes.

“What were you cooking?”

“Calzones and five-alarm chili. Danny was in this morning to help.”

“So?” Mary raised her eyebrows at me. “How did that go?”

The waiter delivered our burgers and we greedily took big bites, letting the grease drip over our hands and ooze toward our elbows.

I told her about the trip through the passageway and then the kiss before he left. I finished by saying that I was
not
interested. She put her burger down, wiped the grease off her hands with several flimsy paper napkins, and put her elbows on the table.

“Casey, ever since the fifth grade when Bobby Morgan dumped you for Carla D’Angelo—”

“Carla D’Angelo was a skank.”

“Whatever. Since then, you only go out with guys that
you
go after. Anytime anyone the least bit aggressive shows an interest in you, you write him off as insincere. The problem is, eventually you aren’t happy with the predictable guys you pick. You want spontaneity, excitement, a little bit crazy. That’s the forward, aggressive type, Casey. That’s a Danny.”

“That’s a dangerous thought, Mary.”

“
That’s
what’s so appealing about it. What are you afraid of?”

“Well, for one, my guess is he’s just interested in a quick fling. Probably has them in the walk-in all the time.”

“So you have a quick fling with him. He’s pretty damn hot.”

“You know, Mary, sometimes I think you’re as bad as your mother thinks you are.”

“Probably worse.” She started to sing, “‘I want to get to heaven before I die.’”

“Nathan Moore,” I said, identifying the singer.

“With the Slip at the Iron Horse. You were in the front row, screaming ‘me too.’ Remember?”

“I remember, but I have a feeling a fling with Danny would put me in the opposite afterworld.”

“So, Dark Cloud, is there a number two on your list of reasons for turning your back on that gorgeous hunk? And if you mention anything about being in mourning over Richard, I’ll throw up.”

“It’s not about Richard. I don’t want to be in a contest with women like the hotties at the restaurant who were throwing themselves at Danny.”

“Why not?” she said, finishing her last bite of burger. “You’d win.”

Hot mama.
—Trace Adkins

S
ally breezed into the studio at six the next morning. After greeting me as though she couldn’t believe her eyes that I was here, she said she’d arrived in New York late last night after spending a delightful weekend with friends north of Baltimore. She was in a very up-beat mood.

“I’d like to sit down and look over the cookery books first,” she said. “There’s nothing much for me to remember for the chili spot.” Since the firefighter would be making the recipe, all Sally had to do was be entertaining and charming and act interested. She could do that in her sleep.

I piled the cookbooks on Romeo. “Do you have the scripts with you or do you want mine to ignore?” She gave me her sheepish grin. Scripts were merely guidelines for Sally; she’d do and say whatever came into her head and it would be better than anything we could have spent weeks writing.

Since we had gotten so much done on Tuesday, our work for the chili segment was pretty much a snap. Because it was a live show, we didn’t need backups, and although there were a few
swaps, we’d gotten them done the day before. Mae pulled a number of containers out of the refrigerator and transferred the contents to pans so she could reheat them. Jonathan came in and when he saw Sally, he quickly removed his pout and replaced it with a smile. He said nothing about the color of the chili but proudly showed her the flowers he had brought to decorate the cookbook set. “I’m going to put them in one of my special copper pans. A vase would be just too common. What do you think of that, Mrs. Woods?”

“I think it’s a fine idea, Jonathan.” I knew that Sally didn’t care about decoration at all. As long as the food looked good, she was happy with a setup.

“Make sure the copper finish is dull, Jonathan,” I said. “We don’t want the lights to create a glare on the metal.”

“I didn’t start here yesterday, Casey.”

I gave him a sarcastic smirk. “CYA” was all I said.

Before long, Sonya arrived flanked by a brigade of six strapping firefighters looking sharp and snappy in dark blue dress uniforms with double rows of shiny brass buttons. Only one of the men would be cooking with Sally—they chose him by picking his name out of a firefighter’s boot—but they had developed the winning recipe together and they all wanted to meet her. Each had his hat tucked under one arm and something in the other hand for her to sign. If I were ever to be famous, I’d want to be just like Sally. She has such a genuine warm appreciation for her fans. They left the kitchen beaming and I knew she had made them feel that they were the special ones, not her. John McGuire, the firefighter who’d won the boot lottery, stayed behind so we could go over the script with him and give him tips on what to do and not do. John was a big burly man with a red complexion that I knew makeup
would be hard-pressed to cover. He was chatty and full of the devil and would be great on the show.

In the segment before the commercial break that preceded the chili cooking, Karen and Jim introduced the six fire-fighters and showed footage taken of them cooking in their firehouse. We broke, John changed into a dark blue T-shirt and an apron, and when we were back on air, he was standing with Sally in the kitchen set.

“So, John, you have developed your own secret recipe for the best chili ever,” Sally said with the camera shooting a close-up of her and John. Makeup had toned down his complexion considerably.

“I guess it won’t be a secret after today,” he said.

“Why, honey, I won’t tell a soul. Where do we begin?”

The cameras moved in close to pick up several strips of crisp bacon inside a large pot on the stovetop. John said that the recipe began with bacon fat, so first you cooked bacon, then set it aside to be crumbled for the topping. He used long tongs to transfer the bacon to paper towels and Sally picked up a piece and took a bite. “What’s next?” she asked.

John picked up a bowl that held small cubes of beef and, remembering our instructions, tilted it toward the camera and held it there for a few seconds. “Now we add the beef.”

“And you’ve cut it up yourself. You don’t use ground beef.”

“No. The cubed beef is much hardier.”

“Always good to have something you can really sink your teeth into,” Sally said, taking another bite of bacon.

John put some of the meat on a paper towel and said, “You have to make sure the meat is dry or it won’t brown. And you have to work in batches.” Sally let him tell her that as though it were the first time she’d heard it. “And don’t crowd the pan,”
he went on. The meat sizzled in the pan, John stirred it around for a second, and then he and the cameras switched to a twin pot that held chopped onions and jalapeños. “After all the meat is browned and out of the pan, you cook a couple of large chopped onions, six cloves of garlic, and some chopped jalapeños.” The camera went in close to show that the onions and garlic were translucent.

“Now it gets a combination of these spices,” Sally said, sweeping her hand by several jars. “This is your secret that won you the prize.”

“That’s right,” John said.

“What was the prize?”

“A year’s supply of chili powder.”

“Very practical.”

John poured dried oregano into his hand and crushed it between his palms before adding it to the pot. Sally added cumin and cayenne pepper according to his directions, and then he poured in a heaping half cup of chili powder.

“Goodness,” said Sally. “That’s a very large amount of chili powder.”

John grinned at her and said, “We like our chili just like our women—hot and spicy.”

Sally gave him her own twinkling grin and dumped in another quarter cup of chili powder. I’m pretty sure that much heat would make an inedible bowl of chili, but it was very funny.

John stirred the spices around and then poured in beef broth, water, crushed tomatoes, and a cup of coffee.

“I guess you always have coffee brewing at the station.”

“Sure do,” said John, “and most of it is only good for the chili pot. You let that cook for a couple of hours . . .”

“While you polish the truck and the fire pole,” Sally said.

“Right,” said John as he moved the unfinished chili aside and slid a finished pot to the burner in front of him. He stirred in about four cups of red beans and said, “Now stir in the beans and heat it up. We serve it with the crumbled bacon and these other toppings.” The camera moved to a Jonathan still life of diced avocado, sour cream, lime wedges, cilantro sprigs, tortilla chips, and a small bowl of crumbled bacon. We had fried and crumbled more in the kitchen because we’d figured Sally might eat the whole slices and, indeed, she had somehow managed to consume two of them during the spot.

John ladled chili into two bowls and both he and Sally adding toppings and tasted. Sally declared it worthy of the prize and thanked John.

When the show was over, Sally went up to change her blouse and have her makeup tweaked while the Tonys cleared the set to ready it for the cookbook spot. We have a shallow wooden box that fits over the stove so that the whole peninsula becomes a counter. A Tony put it in place and then Jonathan did his thing, making a handsome arrangement of cookbooks and a dulled copper pot filled with flowers. We positioned a stool at the counter so Sally could sit high.

Jim and Karen had a few promo spots to shoot, so they changed and returned to the set and the crew began taping spots of one or the other of them telling the audience what was coming up this week and next and encouraging them to tune in. Sally returned to the studio, and we sat on the side and watched. We spoke only during the shooting breaks.

“So where are we going for lunch?” Sally asked.

“Oran Mor. Mary’s going to meet us there.”

“Perfect. I was hoping to get back there soon.” She was quiet while Karen told the camera audience, “On Friday, the problem of bed-wetting will be solved.” Karen made it sound
so tantalizing that I made a mental note to tune in even though I didn’t know anyone with the problem.

When the cameras stopped, Sally asked, “How are you getting on with Danny?”

“We’re getting on fine.” She gave me a devious, questioning look. “Sally Woods! If you’re asking if I’m getting
it
on with him, the answer is
no
. And that’s the way I want it.”

“Huh!” she said.

We obeyed the quiet-on-the-set call, and listened to Jim tell us that tomorrow they would have an exclusive interview with a woman who had witnessed the mystical appearance of a weeping Madonna on a windowpane in New Jersey. I could miss that one; Nonna witnessed such things all the time.