Love Caters All

by Nicci Carrera

  A new catering gig had come along at just the right time. Ironically the job had fallen into her lap on the day Maya felt the closest to Rick, at Bobby’s birthday party. Then again, the rift between them had opened wide at the birthday party. Their fight started with her overreaction to the pre-nup. If you could call her silent treatment an argument.

  Rick hadn’t given her a chance to explain, but she also hadn’t given him a chance either. Now it was too late.

  Tears pricked at her eyes. Her throat tightened in a chokehold.

  ****

  Rick flew out of Boston, with the East Coast shrinking behind him like a fading contrail. A string—no, an elastic—anchored somewhere inside him, was stretching all the way back to Lobster Cove, attaching inside a certain log cabin. Or food truck. The band stretched further, at jet speed, destined to snap sooner rather than later.

  The image of Maya in her driveway, tears on her face, was burned in his brain. What if he was wrong? What if she really was sincere? If the tears were real? What if she wasn’t just another gold-digger? Then he’d really hurt her. He’d done the same thing as the last rich bastard in her life.

  An image of Maya’s face when they made love branded his heart with pain.

  He opened the door to his flat. The tension in the rubber band tethering his heart to Lobster Cove broke with a vicious slap. Rick set down his bags under a black cloud. There was a word for the knot in his gut.

  Shame.

  Rick had hurt his ballerina. Maya was all set to fly. He knocked the support out from beneath her wings. He did that.

  Their relationship was over. He was left with this. Dark wide-planked hardwood floors so new they still shone. Black stools parked in front of a white counter. Copper pans neatly tucked out of sight in slab-faced drawers. The scent of cleaning solution hanging in stuffy air. Nothing had changed since he’d been gone. The place wasn’t even dusty because the housekeepers came in once a week whether he was there or not.

  Oh well. At least he still had his work.

  ****

  The food truck was hot despite the fans. Maya wiped away a stray hair that tickled her face. With one finger, she pushed the strand beneath her chef’s cap. With a gulp of sticky air, she thrust her hands under the open tap.

  “This is a big gig.” Jason leaned his chin, which had several day’s growth, on tanned hands wrapped around the top of his broom handle. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Maya. I am super happy for you. For us.”

  Was Jason distancing himself from the business? Maya’s stomach tensed. What would she do without Jason? It surprised her he needed to do this kind of work, but she’d come to rely on him.

  “The restaurant at The Country Club will handle the institutional food, Jason. We just need to bring in our specialties.”

  Jason snorted. “Institutional food, eh? I’m sure The Country Club would love to hear themselves described like that!”

  Maya snickered. “I guess I’m a snob.”

  “Just a little. But you’ve earned it.” Jason swept the floor. “We’ve still got to quadruple our usual output. Want me to order more supplies?”

  Maya nodded. Thank goodness, Jason was back to calling Love Caters All “ours.” He provided so much support. She never should have interfered between him and Cara. Rick was right. She wasn’t Cara’s mother. What’s more, Mama had the sense not to interfere.

  Jason seemed to sense the chaos in Maya’s mind. He ordered not only more food supplies, but more pots and pans. He called in her usual college students plus two high-school students to help with the cooking. Maya wasn’t so sure about the high-school students, but they worked for minimum wage, which was nice. She was starting to trust Jason in more areas though, including hiring good people. Why did she over-control Cara? Maybe because she wanted Cara to be exactly like Blanca. Cara should make the most of the opportunities given to her.

  Guilt knifed at her stomach, because Maya hadn’t done enough with her own opportunities. Maya always had the excuse she needed to make money to pay for the twins’ education, but that was baloney. She had come straight back to Lobster Cove, because she was scared.

  She eyed Jason, who was hard at work, as usual. The time had come to make things right between Jason and Cara.

  ****

  Rick jammed the plug for his electric sports car into the charger at his GameCom parking spot. The day was cool for Silicon Valley in June, only 75 degrees with clear blue skies. A hint of sulfur came off the mucky edges of the San Francisco Bay. The acrid scent matched the dark mood that had hung over him since he left Lobster Cove. The air here differed from the constantly fresh breezes and forest scents of Lobster Cove.

  GameCom filled a two-story building in North San Jose. They shared a neighborhood dominated by Netco, a computer networking company. His secretary, Anna, a dark-haired Latina and single mom who reminded him too much of Pilar Cruz, looked agitated.

  “What’s got you rattled?” he said.

  “Frank Maligren is here.”

  The corporate raider’s name sent a shock through Rick’s system. He forced himself to continue to flip through the messages with a poker face.

  “He’s in the bathroom,” Anna said.

  “Good. Go ahead and lock it from the outside, then.”

  A giggle burst from Anna which she quickly suppressed. “You’re terrible.” She looked relieved, though.

  Rick handed her back the messages. In the conference room, board members surrounded the table. Rick took his position at the head. Nobody else knew what they had in store yet, but they knew Rick. He kept quiet instead of joining the pre-meeting banter, and people took their cue. The room fell silent. Good. He didn’t want the atmosphere to look jocular or complacent for Maligren.

  Maligren, a short wiry guy with thin light hair, opened the door. He slinked in just as the meeting was about to begin. Everybody watched the man cross the room to stand behind an empty chair.

  Maligren leaned over the high-backed chair. A manila folder flew from his hands and landed on the table with a thud. “This certifies I have beneficial ownership of twelve-and-a-half percent of the outstanding shares. I control proxies for another 30 percent.”

  No hello, no nice-to-meet-you, just straight to the point. Quite a lesson in how to win friends and influence people.

  Rick matched Maligren’s posture, resting his hands on the back of his chair. “While that doesn’t represent a majority, it certainly entitles you to a voice. Please have a seat, Mr. Maligren.” Rick took his seat.

  Maligren followed suit.

  “Shall we start the meeting?” the chairman of the board said. “Adam, please begin,” he directed the board secretary.

  The tension was thick, but Adam did a yeoman’s job with the agenda. There was some back-and-forth about the topics to be discussed until they all agreed to move on. The meeting proceeded without incident until the open-floor part.

  “I think you need to cut back on R&D expense.” Maligren directed this at Rick. When Rick remained silent, he continued. “Lay off ten percent of the engineers.”

  “No,” Rick said.

  Heads snapped around in unison to face Rick.

  “Look, the business model of this company is all wrong,” Maligren said.

  The hackles on Rick’s neck lifted.

  But Maligren wasn’t finished. “You spend too much on R&D and not enough on marketing. You should be selling twice what you currently sell for the expenses you have. You need to bring your margins up. Look at Packer Howler. They only spend one point five percent on R&D. You guys are at 14 percent.”

  Gee, where is Ripper when I need him? This would be a great time to clear the room, although Ripper smelled sweet compared to this asshole. “The difference between us and Packer Howler is that we actually make things.”

  “This is a publicly traded company,” Maligren said. “You have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to maximize the return.”

  Okay, off with the gloves. “I don’t need t
o be lectured by the likes of you about fiduciary duties to the stockholders. My company has done very well by its shareholders over the long term. We are in it for the long haul. At least I haven’t left a trail of broken companies behind me like you have.”

  “You don’t care about the shareholders because you already made yourself rich off of them.”

  “Don’t you lecture me about the shareholders. You don’t give a rat’s behind about them. All you’re looking for is greenmail. If we laid a hundred million dollars on you right now, you’d walk away, and the hell with the stockholders. If you think you’re going to come in here, kill my company, and ruin the lives of thousands of people, many of whom are my friends, you’ve got another guess coming.”

  The infamous board meeting was on Friday. By Friday night the internet money stations were on fire with the showdown. The business news on cable television covered the meeting in detail thanks to a leak by an “anonymous” somebody on the board. At nine a.m. on Saturday, Rick worked his way through his third newspaper at his favorite café. He set down his coffee and unfolded The Wall Street Journal. The Maligren incident was on the front page.

  The problem wouldn’t just go away. Maligren would continue to be a thorn in Rick’s side. Over time Maligren would erode confidence in the company unless they paid him a hundred million dollars. Rick could not do that.

  He flipped the page of the newspaper, blowing a ripple across the top of the hot liquid. How would his little firecracker Maya handle this situation? He chuckled remembering how his advice sparked some well-deserved ire, but how Maya had listened. Like him, Maya was committed to doing what worked. Unlike him, she didn’t have a huge ego to consider. She always managed to think of others even as she succeeded. She bartered her services to help a neighbor, ran a great business, and took his advice when she saw its value. She relied on her employee, Jason, and on her family.

  Maya cared so much about her community. Well, GameCom was his community. A lot of people’s livelihoods depended on defending against the corporate raider who would destroy the company for short-term gain. Normally, he was a go-it-alone guy, but he’d learned some things from Maya.

  Even though it was the weekend, Rick headed into the office to make some phone calls. His top people came in to help him plan a counter-attack. Once Rick had the plan ironed out with his team, he paid a visit to each of the offices of the largest institutional stockholders of GameCom. To impress these investors, the CEO was needed. Rick took one person from the team but always presented the case personally.

  “You guys think Friend Finder is big?” Rick asked the fund managers. “They’re going to beg us to partner with them. Virtual reality is the next big thing. We have that technology in prototype right now. Our corporate culture is to hire the best engineers and treat them right. We’ve never had a layoff. Trust is woven into our culture. As a result, our personnel are the best in the industry, and they are highly motivated. Because of these things, GameCom is in the perfect position to run with this opportunity. GameCom can be at the forefront of this new technology. Everyone else will have to chase us. By the time they catch us, we’ll have already made billions. Haven’t you always wanted to be invested in the right company when a trend takes off? This is that company. This is that time.”

  Their arguments began to have some sway, though of course there was push-back. The investors were skeptical. “You’ve lost all perspective,” “You’re too close to the company,” “Maligren has done great things.” Yada yada yada. But once Rick slowed down the stampede Maligren had started, he produced his ace argument. “Why pay this guy a hundred million dollars in greenmail? Especially when a hundred million dollars is exactly what we need to finish developing this product and build a factory to manufacture it?”

  The heads began to nod.

  ****

  Once again the country club had to put up with Maya getting a cut of the catering gig, this time for Hugh Yates’ big party. The restaurateur was on a “business-development” vacation. He’d seen her do the appetizers at the Oil and Water reception and wanted to work with her on a trial basis. He had to use the club’s services, but the club had to let her do the appetizers, because Hugh Yates had pull.

  His party was jammed with people from all over the place. From all walks of life, or nearly. Maya struck up an interesting conversation with a young woman from Kittery. They made plans to go shopping together at the outlets there. Of course there were fancy people too. Including a UN ambassador. There were people from California where Hugh was from and chefs from New York and Boston.

  It would’ve been a lot better not to be numb during the most pivotal moment of her career. At least Maya had used the disappointment to throw herself into her work. Her standard cure for a broken heart led to a well-planned menu. Word spread about her interesting new offerings. The food-truck business also grew.

  After the party wound down, Hugh Yates approached. “I’ve come to commend you on your excellent menu.” He clasped the wrist of his left hand in his right.

  “Thank you.” Butterflies of excitement fluttered in her stomach, but disappointment hovered below her breastbone. This could be her second chance, but it might not happen.

  Hugh gushed, if you could describe such a polished urbane man as a gusher. “I’ve got a restaurant in Berkeley.”

  Oh, wow. Where was this headed? Maya’s stomach dropped.

  “I really like what you’ve done. The fusion you created between Latin American cuisines is brilliant. This menu would be perfect for the restaurant I’ve got in Berkeley.” Hugh kissed his fingertips, his green eyes glittering like jewels. “The place has been languishing. However, it has all the required licenses. All it needs is the right manager. I’d love you to be the managing partner. I would be the silent partner. We would just re-grand-open the restaurant with the new name and new menu.

  Just re-grand-open the restaurant with her menu, with her being the managing partner. In Berkeley. She could live with Cara and Blanca! Maya’s heart beat a drum solo in her chest. She’d be near Rick. Maya caught hold of the bar, forced herself to take a breath. “Why...I would be very interested, Hugh.”

  Chapter Nine

  More than three months had elapsed since Rick left Lobster Cove. He missed Maya. He missed Lobster Cove. Hell, he even missed the flatulent Labrador. How many times had he been about to call her? Maybe he could never do it simply because when he thought of calling Maya, his fingers started to itch for a wall phone, the only kind he’d been able to use at the time.

  Sure. That was it. No, he hadn’t called because he’d wanted to put the whole affair out of his mind, which had turned out to be impossible. Instead, he thought about Maya all the time.

  Mama had been right. He needed to court Maya properly. But now it was too late.

  Their fight had been stupid. She was right. He never gave her the benefit of the doubt. The more he thought about it, the more he realized his baggage had colored his interpretation of what he had overheard.

  A realization had settled in Rick’s belly. Had he been a jerk in all his serious relationships with women? He had loused up his engagement to Loraine. Thank goodness, though. Because if he hadn’t lost Loraine he wouldn’t have met Maya.

  Maya was an angel. Except when she was in the bedroom…

  He had to get her back.

  He left message after message on her answering machine at home, cursing himself for not getting her mobile number. Of course, he hadn’t had a cell phone at the time, so he’d never stored her number. Rick almost caved and called her at work but caught himself in time.

  Nearly four months had passed. This called for a grand gesture.

  ****

  Rick slowed to a crawl before entering Maya’s driveway. Something was different about the place. The sound of his footfall on the steps was somehow hollower.

  A guy, looking to be in his fifties, wearing a tool-belt and a sweaty sawdust-encrusted T-shirt, answered the door. He eyed Rick with suspicio
n. “Ayuh?”

  “I’m looking for Maya Cruz.”

  “Ayuh?”

  “May I speak to her?”

  “Moved.”

  As in moved? “Where?”

  The guy snorted. “Who’re you?”

  “Rick Nordan.”

  The guy’s expression slowly changed from belligerent to comprehending to comical. “Rick? Rick Nordan?”

  What the hell?

  “Poor lovesick Rick?”

  Oh shit. Maya’s answering machine.

  The guy laughed so hard he spit. He wiped his mouth on the back of his forearm. Such a lovely sight in the morning. “I guess I should have told someone about it, but it was just too damn funny. I figured since you built this ugly railing, I guess we could call it even. Me and my buddies really enjoyed listening to the lovesick fool who built the shitty railing grovel while we were remodeling.”

  “My ugly railing? You had a death trap in there.” What was he doing being insulted over the railing? Not relevant. Just forget it. He stormed away.

  Later, in the lounge area of the Sea Crest Inn, Rick caught up on emails. A news item in an ad for a trashy tabloid site caught his eye. There was a picture of Hugh Yates. The headline said, “Top 100 Bachelor Comes Out of the Closet.”

  Rick had been jealous of a gay man.

  Perfect. Abso-frickin-lutely perfect. Rick had done everything wrong. He shook his head. For a smart guy, he’d been incredibly stupid.

  The next day Rick timed his arrival at the hospital parking lot to fall after the lunch rush. He took a spot a bit back from the food truck. Maybe it was the unseasonably warm day, but for October there was a lot of business at Love Caters All. He hung out by his car for another hour until things tapered off.

  He approached the truck, his throat constricted, his hand in his pocket fingering the ring box. The distance of fifty yards felt like five miles. His body resonated with the vibe of the truck’s generator. Going back to a food truck could feel like going home? Now there was a twist.

  The truck window didn’t show anyone moving around inside. The lights were on but no one manned the truck?