City Kitty and Country Mouse

by Alyssa Linn Palmer

  “Lucy, hey.”

  “We have so much interest!” Lucy sounds almost breathless with excitement. “At the farmers’ market today, we collected emails, and we have over fifty people interested in the next evening for Ming Kitty.”

  “Fifty? Really? That’s amazing.” I hadn’t even considered marketing the restaurant at a farmers’ market. But we should have. It’s exactly the sort that would be our customer base. I feel like an idiot but try to push those feelings away. “We really should figure out our next dates after the opening.”

  “What if we did it every Saturday?” Lucy suggests. “One night a week, and then if we keep having steady interest, we can expand. Beatrice says she hasn’t had much interest in the storefront, and she’d rather we pay her for each use rather than have it always sit empty.”

  “I don’t know how often I could do it,” I say. Cindy’s been a godsend with my schedule, making sure I have free time, but she’s not a miracle worker.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Lucy says. “But I wanted to ask you about the list for the opening—are your parents coming? I didn’t see them on the list.”

  I pause. I don’t know what to answer, or how to explain. Lucy’s mom is so involved with her life, but mine…? Well, I see them, but we’ve always had our own lives. I decided not to invite them to the opening. Knowing them, they’d be busy or out of town.

  “Kitty?” Lucy asks.

  “I wasn’t sure they’d be able to make it, so I didn’t ask.” It’s a half-truth, kind of.

  “Ask them,” Lucy says immediately. “I want to meet them. And I’m sure Mama would love to as well. And Alice.”

  “All right,” I say, though I’m dragging my feet.

  “If they can’t make it to this one, there’s always another,” Lucy reasons.

  “I know.” I just don’t want them to turn me down. The shadow of too many school events with just a nanny loom in my mind, dredged up from the depths.

  “They’ll be so impressed,” Lucy says. “Their little girl, running her own business.”

  “They might.” Or they might not. Lawyer is impressive. Chef, not so much. Mom made it pretty clear when I was working during my degree that being in a restaurant was a temporary thing.

  “Of course they will,” Lucy says. “Call them.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  I hear a knock on my door, and I rise to get it. Cindy’s outside. “I have to go—looks like I have more work.”

  “Call me tonight,” Lucy says. “Tell me what your mom and dad say.”

  “I will.”

  Cindy comes into the office as I hang up. “Jack has socked us with another client,” she says.

  I drop back into my chair behind my desk. Suddenly I feel tired. So tired.

  Cindy sets a file on my desk. It’s not gigantic, but it’s definitely bulging. “I’ve pushed back the meeting until tomorrow morning,” she says, “but there’s background information for review.” She pats the file. “If you take it home, you can put your feet up and read it while you eat dinner.”

  Putting my feet up. Dinner. That sounds brilliant. And it might be the last time I get to do it before our big night.

  “I’ll get everything else sorted here for tomorrow,” Cindy says. “And I’m so, so looking forward to the opening.” She does a funny little excited hop. “It’s almost time. And I want those delicious, delicious meals. I’m thinking of ordering one of each.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “I don’t think we do combos.”

  “That’s your next market,” Cindy says. “Trust me on that.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I feel like I hardly slept last night, the last night before our big day. Even with Kitty beside me, her warmth and breathing a comfort, I still couldn’t sleep. I kept picturing all the things that could go wrong. Not enough rice. Scorching the fish. Burning the tofu. Tofu crumbling into bits. Spilling the rice. Serving raw chicken. Breaking the bottle of truffle oil. Running out of dishes. Heck, breaking dishes.

  I rub my eyes and stretch, trying not to wake Kitty as I carefully move to the edge of the bed and sit up. The bed rocks a bit anyway, and Kitty’s eyes flutter open.

  “Morning already?” She looks a bit tired too, but nowhere near what I’m feeling. I didn’t know I could feel so anxious. Even when Alice and I were first starting out with the farmers’ markets, I still slept fine.

  “It is. How’d you sleep?”

  Kitty shrugs. “I’ve had better. But I’ve had worse.” She smiles and wraps a hand around my forearm. “Don’t get up, Lucy.” She glances at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “We have a bit of time yet.”

  I glance over. It’s not quite seven.

  “All right.” I pull the blankets back and slide in next to Kitty, who lays a leg over mine possessively. We face each other, and she rests her hand against my cheek.

  “You look tired,” she says.

  “I am.” I try to stifle my yawn.

  “Worried?” Kitty asks. “We can do this, Luce. We’ve got it. It’ll be a little rough as we smooth out the edges, but we’ve got this. You are an ace cook. I’m an ace cook. Alice and your mom are the sweetest ever, and all the customers will love them. I know we’ll be fine.”

  I take a deep breath. We’ll be fine. I repeat this to myself mentally, once and then again. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now, if only I could get more sleep.

  Kitty snuggles closer, her hand sliding up under my tank top, cupping my breast, her thumb brushing over the nipple. A frisson of desire goes through me, right down to my toes. My tiredness is still there, but it’s muted slightly. Kitty nudges me to my back and then rises over me, pushing the blankets down, and my tank top up over my breasts to rest just below my chin. I reach for her, but she moves away from my hand.

  “Just for you,” she says, then dips her head, her tongue teasing my nipples, one, then the other. She sucks them into her mouth, letting her teeth gently scrape the tips, and I shudder. This isn’t enough—my need for her grows. I lift my hands, and she lets me put them through her hair, stroking as she works her way down my chest, over my belly, pausing at the waistband of my flowery bikini briefs. She kisses the skin just there above the band and looks up at me, her gaze hot with desire. She inches the briefs down, bit by bit, pressing kisses all the way. I lift my hips and she tugs harder, moving them down to my knees, then farther, and off. I’m not sure where they end up, but I don’t care. I part my legs and her mouth comes down on me, nibbling at me, her tongue flicking my clit, tasting me, teasing me. Her touches are light, then firm, then light again, never consistent.

  “Spread your legs,” she murmurs, and I follow her direction, letting my legs fall open. She bends, lifting my buttocks in her hands, her mouth covering my sex, and there’s no more teasing. She’s on me and in me, licking and sucking, and I struggle to stay still, but I can’t. I’ve never been able to. My hips arch against her, and she murmurs against me, the vibration another delicious sensation. I’m getting closer already.

  Kitty shifts her grip and a finger slides into me, curling up, stroking my G-spot, and I can feel the orgasm fluttering, hesitating, waiting for that one touch to take me over. And she does, her mouth on my clit, her finger pressing into me. The shiver, the shuddering, the full-body sensation, takes over, and I lose every thought but her, her touch, her feel, and the orgasm.

  She takes her mouth off me as I come down gasping, dropping kisses on my belly as she makes her way back up to my mouth.

  “Better?” she asks, her satisfied grin looking impish.

  I pause. The tiredness is still there, but it’s like it’s been quieted, almost fully muted. I’ll probably notice it later in a bad way, but right now…I feel like I could climb mountains.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Serotonin,” she says, surprisingly serious. “And I’ll keep it up later if you need another shot.” She laughs. “You look gorgeous in your chef’s whites, you know. And there’s a staff bat
hroom that needs christening.”

  I can feel my cheeks heating, but I can totally imagine us in there, blowing off steam. “Maybe once the evening’s over,” I say.

  “Maybe,” Kitty says. “Or maybe before it starts.” She kicks the blankets the rest of the way off the bed and goes to get up.

  “Not yet.” I catch her, pull her down to me, my hands sliding into the back of the cute boy shorts she likes to wear to bed. “I’m not awake enough yet.”

  “No?” Kitty chuckles. “If you say so.” Her hand slides between my legs.

  * * *

  Everything feels like a rush, a blur, but I have my list on my phone, and we’re on our way. All our food is in Lucy’s van, and though my stomach’s roiling with nerves, I know we’ve got this.

  We’ve got this.

  I keep repeating it to myself, but it’s not stopping that roiling.

  “Kitty,” Lucy says, reaching over to take my hand. I’ve been fiddling with a loose thread on my jeans, and just having her hand on mine starts to calm me down. “We’ve got this.” She winks at me, and I smile back.

  “I said it aloud?”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Lucy assures me. “We have enough food for thirty plus a bit, which is all the space can hold, and we know what we’re doing. We’re awesome chefs. And if for some reason something bad happens, we’ll handle it. It’s not like we’re going to burn the place down.”

  Just the thought of that happening makes my stomach roil even more, and I’m sure my face has gone pale.

  Lucy squeezes my hand, hard. “Forget I said that. Everyone is going to be happy, we’re going to make a bit of money, and we’re going to ace this.”

  “We are going to ace this,” I repeat. I mentally shove all my worrying thoughts away. We are both fully capable, fully sensible adults who can cook, and do it well.

  Fortunately, I don’t have too long to ruminate, as we hit the first set of lights in town, and from there it’s not long until we’re behind the shop, our restaurant for the day. Everything is quiet. There were a few people walking along the main street, but not many. We’ll have a bit of peace in which to prepare.

  I get out on my side and Lucy on hers, and she opens the back of the van. She hands me several boxes of produce, then accompanies me to the door, unlocking it with her key. She props it open with a rock that was left nearby, likely for that very purpose.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” she says as I head inside.

  The restaurant is silent, dark but for the light streaming in through the open door. I walk through into the kitchen, my sneakers barely making a sound on the standard red tile. I place the boxes on one side of the kitchen on the counter and head back to the door. Lucy has the boxes of chicken she ordered from the local Hutterite colony, and I take them from her.

  “Thanks,” she says. “I’ll get the fish too.”

  I put the chicken in the fridge under the counter, though I know we’ll be sorting it out soon. I run into Lucy on my way back out, and she slips past me with the fish, purposely bumping my hip with hers as she goes.

  “Sauces and oils are in the box labeled moving,” Lucy says. “And the tofu and rice are in another box.”

  “Got it.” I pick up my pace, jogging back out to the van. I grab both boxes, carefully stacking them. They’re heavy, but doable. I head back in and pass Lucy one more time. Once I put down these boxes, I find the light switch and turn on the overhead fluorescents. I blink into the sudden glare, the gleam of the light on the stainless steel.

  “Beatrice told me there are some Cambros upstairs,” Lucy says as she joins me in the kitchen. “We can run those through the dishwasher and use them for storage.” She pushes her hair back from her forehead. “We have a lot to do.”

  I check the time on my phone. It’s eleven in the morning, and the restaurant opens at five thirty.

  “We’ve got this,” I say, yet again. “Six and a half hours for prep.”

  “And food for us,” Lucy adds.

  “Want to make a doughnut run while I set up?” I ask.

  Lucy’s stomach growls. “I guess that answers that question.”

  “I’ll find the Cambros if you get the doughnuts. Chocolate with chocolate icing for me.”

  “You’ll have a sugar crash,” Lucy teases, “but all right. Coffee too?”

  “Black,” I reply.

  “No double-double?”

  “Then I’d really crash.”

  “I’ll be back.” Lucy blows me a kiss as she leaves. I look at all the food, mentally plotting our day. I have a list, but seeing it all in front of me, I know what to do.

  * * *

  I’m back from the doughnut run, coffees in a tray in one hand, a box of doughnuts in the other, and when I walk into the kitchen, I’m blown away by how much Kitty’s done already. I glance at my watch, double-checking the time. I wasn’t gone that long at all. But from the looks of things, I might as well have been away for an hour or more.

  “I thought we were doing this together,” I tease as I come in and set down the coffee in a clear spot.

  “Oh, we are,” Kitty says, laughing. “This one mine?” I nod and she grabs the coffee cup and takes a long drink. “That totally hits the spot,” she says when she puts it back down. She looks utterly professional in her chef’s whites, even more at home than seeing her in her lawyer’s office and her skirt suits. She’s more vibrant somehow, cheerier, and even though we have a lot of work to do, her energy level is off the charts.

  “Go get changed,” she says, “and stop ogling me.” She comes over from where she has been chopping green onions and leans in to me. I loop an arm around her waist, and my lips meet hers. She tastes of coffee, lots of coffee, and when we part, I take a long drink from my own cup. I’m going to need the caffeine and sugar to keep going today. I’m nervous—in a good way—but I know that once I get started, I won’t have time to worry about anything.

  I change in the bathroom. Before I leave, I glance in the mirror. There I am, midforties, my rounded face under the toque, my hair looking even blacker than usual, my cheeks tinged with pink against the tan yellowish undertone. My eyes are animated, and I grin. I’m here, I’m cooking, and Country Mouse will move into a new era. It’s not just about produce anymore. I can share my family’s recipes, and in some ways, I’m carrying on the family business.

  I hurry out to the kitchen, where Kitty is putting a huge pile of chopped green onions into a Cambro.

  “The chicken’s out. Want to get started on the marinade?” she asks as she sweeps the onions into the plastic container.

  “Absolutely.” I take up my knife and a nice big cutting board and get myself set up with a large Cambro, nearly a foot square, and open the box of chicken. The Hutterites have given us a box of chicken thighs, and while they did piece them out, they’re not skinned or deboned. It’s going to be a bit of work to get these ready, but I can do it. It brings me back to cooking with Mama when I was younger, when she taught me how to peel off chicken skin and to make the quick cuts to part the flesh from the bone. We used to save the remains for Alice’s dogs, but today I’ll just be putting them into the compost bin.

  Kitty starts humming, and I can’t quite make out what song it is. Something familiar, yet not. “What are you humming?”

  “‘Born This Way,’” Kitty says. “Apparently, a really crappy attempt at it.”

  “Why hum when you can sing?” Kitty grins and I want to tackle her. Instead I turn back to my chicken and picture Lady Gaga when I saw her in concert. Kitty hums again and I recognize the first bars. In a few moments, we both break into song. There’s nothing quite like deboning chicken, tapping your foot, and singing along to Lady Gaga with your lover on a Saturday morning.

  Until, that is, our memories falter.

  “What other songs do you know?” Kitty asks when we both run out of lyrics.

  “Madonna?” I grew up the geekiest Ch
inese Madonna fan ever.

  “‘Into the Groove’?” Kitty suggests. She’s cleaning the frisée now, and I stop with the chicken, watching her dance in place as she hums the chorus. I chime in with the lyrics and then we’re off. When I’m done with the chicken, I mix the marinade and shake it up in the Cambro before putting it into one of the fridges below the counter.

  Time flies when you’ve got a lifetime’s worth of Madonna songs in your memory and a companion who knows almost every one of them.

  “Next time we do this, we need to bring in a radio.”

  “But it wouldn’t be as much fun,” Kitty says with a laugh. “Next song, your turn.”

  * * *

  “We’re here,” Alice calls out from the front of the restaurant. Lucy comes around the corner from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. I have a bin of clean cutlery in front of me and I’m rolling it into paper napkins like I used to do during my previous job. Back then, it was a hostess’s job to roll cutlery, but I used to help out when things were slow. It was a good chance to sit down without taking a real break, and that’s a bit of what I’m doing right now. All our food is prepped and ready to go, and I feel like I’ve been on my feet for way too long. By the end of tonight, I’m going to be exhausted. Somehow this work is harder than being a lawyer, although it’s also a lot more fun. I’ve never been able to sing Madonna’s greatest hits during a deposition.

  “This looks great,” Alice says, coming to hug me and then hug Lucy. Michelle is carrying a large bundle in her arms, wrapped in paper.

  “We stopped at the florist,” she says, “because I wanted to give you both a little something to help brighten up the restaurant.” She sets down the bundle and unwraps it, revealing two beautiful summer bouquets in slim glass vases. They are brilliantly colored, bright with daisies, baby’s breath, carnations, and other flowers I’ve never learned the names for.

  “Mama, that’s perfect.” Lucy hugs her mom, and I wish suddenly that I had that sort of relationship with my mother too. They’re coming tonight after all, if they can make it. They said they would, but they’ve often missed engagements due to emergencies or last minute work things. More often than not, Mom’s got an emergency at the hospital. I don’t begrudge her, but every now and again, I wonder if she could just find a night off. I take a deep breath, pushing those thoughts aside. Whether or not they come, tonight will be amazing.