The taxi ride to Sixty-third and Fifth Avenue was short. I even let the boys take turns jabbing at the touch screen controls of the TV that some nitwit decided should sit in the back of every yellow cab. These days, instead of looking out the window at some of the finest prewar architecture in America, my children watched restaurant reviews on Taxi TV.
I was just about to give a ten-dollar bill to the driver when Wylie snatched it out of my hand. “I do it b’elf!” he cried, thrusting the bill through the Plexiglas window.
“He always gets to pay the man,” Jasper grumbled.
I opened the door. “Let’s not fight,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “I can’t take grumpy boys to the petting zoo!”
I waved our membership card for the lonely soul in the ticket booth, and the boys sprinted up the ramp ahead of me. I watched them disappear through the concrete entrance gate, which had been molded to spectacular effect into the shape of a hollow tree. I parted the plastic strips that hung down like a curtain, meant to deter the escape of any of the animals, and entered Central Park’s children’s zoo.
Jasper and Wylie were already climbing on the cement bunny sculptures. We’d been coming here since Jasper was a baby. While the animals weren’t exotic—overweight rabbits, waterfowl, and farm animals—the exhibit itself was inspired. It had been whimsically designed by some genius clearly still in touch with his or her inner child. Every sculpture was climbable. There were three-foot turtle eggs from which to hatch and rubberized giant lily pads to leap upon.
The children found their way over to a cave containing a generous tank in which enormous catfish circled. Jamming my hands into my pockets, I found my phone.
Luke answered on the first ring. “What did they say? How did it go?”
“It went well, I think,” I told him, “with Mr. Smith and his sidekick, Mr. Smythe. And now they want to know more. So they told me to ask my lawyer for a nondisclosure agreement, and then they’ll look at the guts of the company.”
Luke whistled. “That sounds serious. So then what would happen? If they like what they see, would they buy the brand? Would you work for them? In their office?”
“I . . . I’m not sure,” I admitted.
“Well, would they just buy a stake in it? Or do they buy the whole company and then hire you back to run it?”
“We didn’t, um, cover those details yet,” I stammered. In retrospect, I realized how little information I’d gotten from the meeting—and how much I’d given. Though I’d done a poor job of explaining it to Luke, the experience had been less a meeting of the minds than a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the state fair, leaving me breathless and sweaty.
“Okay,” Luke said gently. “You can tell me all about it tonight.”
“Perfect,” I said, “because right now I’m at the zoo with your sons.”
“Sounds like fun. Love you,” Luke said before the click.
“Want it goats.” Wylie tugged on my coat. His cheeks appeared even rounder underneath his fleece hat.
“Okay, honey,” I said. I took his mittened hand, and we sidled up next to Jasper, who had pressed his forehead against the aquarium wall. I took Jasper’s hand, too, which he allowed. Together we navigated the rubber lily pads and made our way to the petting area.
Jasper went straight for his favorite feature of the children’s zoo—a giant spiderweb made of fisherman’s rope, where he could climb away and play out his Spider-Man fantasies. I dug in my purse for change to buy some feed pellets for Farmer Wylie. I let him put the quarters into the machine, but then I quickly turned the crank myself, because he didn’t have enough torque to manage it, which usually made him scream.
“Why we not have dis in Vermont?” he asked, patting the shiny red dispenser.
“Well . . .” Because, Wylie, this is an urban construct that only pretends to show you life on a farm. “Because in Vermont we just keep our feed in a bin.”
“Dis one better,” he proclaimed, before marching toward the goats. I sat down on a concrete bench, one that pretended to be a fallen tree.
Predictably, Wylie managed to drop his handful of pellets on the ground in front of the goat enclosure. But that was okay with him. He got down on his knees, pulled off his mittens, and commenced picking up the pellets one by one and passing them through the metal bars to a couple of eager goats on the other side.
This was where the rich Upper East Siders brought their children to experience nature. And it was arguably as tidy and inspired as a children’s zoo could be. But it was also utterly artificial. There was none of the authenticity that stepping over cow pies in a real meadow delivered. That sweet mixture of sunshine and the air tinged with gently composting manure—it was missing from this urban oasis.
Instead, we had a rubberized mat on the ground, so nobody got hurt if they fell down. And there were Purell dispensers on the wall, so we wouldn’t encounter—dear God!—any country germs.
It was November, a gray month when New Yorkers forget about the zoo. There were only a couple of other families around us. One mother encouraged her one-year-old to “Look at the cow! Look at the cow!” I guess she hadn’t looked under the hood. I checked my urge to correct her. That’s actually an arthritic bull, dear.
The only other family was also feeding the goats. I studied them. They were dressed awfully nicely for a petting zoo. The father stood a little apart from the animals, perhaps so his cashmere coat wouldn’t get soiled. I smiled to myself. Cashmere comes from goats, of course, but Cashmere Dad would want to keep their saliva off of the wool. They, too, had purchased some feed pellets from the machine. The well-coiffed mother held them in her cupped, leather-sheathed hands so her own toddler didn’t have to pick them off the ground like Wylie.
My children were happy. So I pulled out my phone again to make the necessary call to my lawyer. The faster she drew up my nondisclosure document, whatever that was, the faster I could unravel the mystery of whether or not GPG could help me.
“Hello, Julia!” Nina Schwartz, Esq., was at my service. And that meant that her meter was running—at two hundred and fifty bucks an hour.
So I gave her a speedy description of my meeting with GPG and the document they’d requested. “So what is it really for, anyway?” I asked her, when I’d finished my download.
“The document I’ll draft, and that they’ll sign,” she said, “will forbid their company from using your proprietary market information to compete against you. It binds them to secrecy about all aspects of Julia’s Child’s business and any future plans and products you disclose to them.”
“Great.” There went another five hundred dollars down the drain. It was a nice idea, this document. But my secrets probably had a wholesale value of approximately zero. Last week I’d stood on the floor at ANKST, blabbing to anyone who would listen about every aspect of Julia’s Child. I was an open book.
The true purpose of the nondisclosure agreement, then, would be to maintain the illusion that I knew what I was doing. I’d show up with my slick little document, play the role of the hard-hitting, successful businesswoman. If that didn’t work, I could always resort to throwing myself prostrate across the GPG corporate logo, begging for salvation.
“All right, Nina. Draw it up,” I said. All the past year’s optimism had been replaced by resignation.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Julia?”
“Yes, but why are you asking?”
“Well, nondisclosure agreements are a good idea. But if this group really wants to rip off your ideas, this won’t stop them. And you won’t find out for months, until you see the competing product on the store shelves. Of course, you’d have grounds to sue them, but that would be expensive and slow. Do you trust these guys?”
I considered the question and its relevance. If I sat down to rank my anxieties about Julia’s Child, the idea that they’d poach my business model wouldn’t even make the top ten. Whether or not they were trustworthy, I would be forced to walk my poor old mare of a bu
siness into the glue factory. “I don’t know if I have a choice,” I told her truthfully.
“Hey!” someone shouted. “Who’s watching that baby?”
I looked up fast. A zookeeper, in his tall rubber boots and uniform jacket, pointed at Wylie. My enterprising toddler had climbed the goat enclosure, thrown a leg over the top rail of the fence, and was trying to figure out how to drop down onto the other side.
“Uh, can’t wait to read it! Gotta go,” I managed to say to Nina. I snapped my phone shut, stuffed it into my pocket, and trotted toward Wylie.
The well-coiffed mother reached him first, throwing her arms around his back, as if rescuing him from the lion’s den. “No, honey!” she said to a startled Wylie. “Dangerous!”
I arrived in time to pluck him off the rail myself. “Sorry, Wylie,” I said quietly. “At the zoo, we’re not allowed in there.”
“You should be more careful,” the cashmere father said.
My neck got hot. I was partly embarrassed but also indignant. After all, Wylie was used to climbing in with the goats in Vermont, thank you. And goats don’t eat toddlers, although sometimes they nibble on them a little bit.
But I held my tongue.
“Me a goat farmer,” Wylie whined when I set him on the ground.
“You’ll have to do your farming from this side of the fence,” I told him. “That’s the rule here.”
My face continued to burn. The other family probably expected me to thank them for “saving” Wylie, but I let the moment pass. They moved off toward the alpacas.
Jasper wandered over. “Whatsa matter, Mama?”
My eyes fluttered. Everything. “Nothing. Now, who wants to go find a hot pretzel with me?”
Chapter 22
If you can’t stand the heat, you’re supposed to get out of the kitchen. I was already sweating through my carefully chosen shirt, and Smith and Smythe hadn’t even arrived yet. “Okay, girls!” My loud voice betrayed my nerves. “Do you suppose we should prop the recipe on the countertop, which will make us appear organized? Or should we make it from memory, like we always do, and appear experienced?”
I fanned myself with a spatula and looked for the five hundredth time toward the double metal doors.
Marta’s cousin Theresa was a young woman of few words. She shrugged. Theresa had expressive brown eyes, but she rarely spoke up.
“Chica, calm down,” Marta ordered. “Stop staring at the door and help me unpack these ingredients.”
I attempted to comply. Marta looked piqued. She was sweating too. And we hadn’t even turned on the oven yet.
“Damn,” she said.
“What’s the matter?”
In answer, she held up an industrial-size bottle of organic vanilla extract. It was nearly empty.
“Oh, shit!” I stared at the empty bottle. “I forgot to order more.” Organic vanilla wasn’t easy to find. And we were supposed to bake pumpkin muffets, which were flavored with a fair dose of vanilla. “I guess we’ll just . . . leave it out? We have to make something when Smith and Smythe are here.” The only other choice was to switch recipes, which would leave us short of some other ingredient.
“But the muffets will taste bland,” Marta objected. “And they are going to taste them, right?”
I sighed. “What are our options? We can make just a small amount, with the last bit of vanilla, or make some more without and then throw them away.”
Theresa looked stricken. “We can’t throw them away! We need eight cases. Mañana.”
“I’m goin’ in.” Marta inhaled. She reached up to the hairnet she wore, removing a bobby pin from over her ear. Then she squared her shoulders and marched toward the back of the building, which contained Zia’s office and the closely guarded storeroom. Marta had told me the lock on Zia’s pantry was pickable, but I’d never seen her do it.
I took a deep, cleansing breath and tried to tell myself that this wasn’t a disaster. A disaster was the Ebola virus. Or a tsunami. A lack of vanilla was an inconvenience—but of the sort with which my life was increasingly peppered.
We’d never managed to screw up in precisely this way before. Cooking—unlike business savvy—was our core competency. Obviously, the stress was getting to us. Inviting the suits from GPG to scrutinize our production facility had made me feel incredibly self-conscious. Allowing them to paw through my underwear drawer might have felt less invasive.
If we had a sufficient amount, I might have helped myself to a swig of organic vanilla extract.
As I stood there, attempting to think Zen thoughts about vanilla theft and my visiting corporate judging committee, Marta trotted quickly back out of the hallway, followed by Zia Maria herself.
“And a-where were you headed, Marta dear?” Zia sang out. Zia stood about four feet eight, the gray bun on top of her head adding a couple of additional inches. In her arms she carried a broad tray, piled high with colorful gift boxes. She swept past us, hoisting her tray onto the workstation in the middle of the room.
“Hello, Zia,” Marta said weakly. “I thought I heard . . . something rustling around back there, and so I went to check. But it was you.”
“Of course it’s me,” Zia snapped, as if we always saw her at that hour. We hadn’t spied her on a night shift in weeks. Now she stacked the shiny gift boxes on the stainless steel worktable. She opened a tin of Christmas cookies and a pastry bag for icing, and then set about arranging all the ingredients on the table.
The unusual incidence of Zia decorating cookies in the Cucina on a weeknight necessitated a whispered conference between the employee-owners of Julia’s Child. “What the hell is this all about?” I hissed. I had never seen Zia making cookies. And the thought of her making gifts—to be given away for free—was almost incomprehensible.
“Hmm,” Marta whispered. “The holidays are coming. I’ll bet she’s greasing the wheels of bureaucracy. Maybe for the borough officials who certify the Cucina?”
I felt my blood pressure soar. “We’re toast! What’s she going to say when Smith and Smythe show up to look around? This is terrible.”
Marta chewed on her lip. “We’ll have to tell her they’re coming. Zia doesn’t like surprises. You want me to do it? She likes me more than you.”
That certainly was true, but I didn’t wish to hide behind Marta. I scrutinized the back of our cheerless leader. Zia’s apron strings were cinched so tightly around her rail-thin body that the two sides of the apron fabric overlapped at the knot in back. Underneath, I noted her typical black stockings, black skirt, and black turtleneck.
I took a deep breath and strode toward her. “Good evening, Ms. Maria. Those are beautiful boxes.”
She didn’t look up at me but rather knitted her dark eyebrows tightly into a knot. She squeezed the pastry bag in her hands, and a bead of perfectly round white icing curled from the metal tip. Even frosting was afraid to cross Zia. “Yes, my dear, presentation is everything, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed as cheerfully as possible, reminded of the attractive way in which my sweaty shirt was sticking to me. “In fact, tonight I’ll be presenting my little business to a couple of men from a food conglomerate. They want to see the spotless kitchen I’ve been telling them about.”
At that, Zia put the pastry bag down, the metal tip clanking onto the stainless steel table. She whirled to face me, and reflexively I flinched. “People coming, tonight? Here?” Her mustache twitched.
“Just two. They won’t stay long.”
“Cara mia! Are you saying that if all goes well, I will have a graduate?”
“A graduate?”
“Your business hits the big time, with my Cucina responsible. This could be big. Mamma mia! This is news!”
“Oh!” It took a minute to adjust my psyche. I had expected to get a lashing. “Well, then, I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Relieved, I turned back to our corner of the room to tell Marta everything was okay. But she had vanished. Instead, her cousin Theresa stood
worriedly in her place, glancing toward the back of the building, her doe eyes heavy with remorse.
“Where’s Marta?” I asked.
In answer, my partner appeared at the end of the short hallway that ran back toward the storeroom and Zia’s office. She peered around the doorjamb, toward Zia’s back, and then scurried over to our table. “Got it,” she hissed at Theresa. “Cover me.”
Theresa positioned herself between Zia and her cousin, and made herself busy with the ingredients on the stainless countertop. Marta slipped a very large bottle of vanilla from under her apron, holding it just beneath the edge of the table, and decanted some of Zia’s extract into our empty bottle.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “That’s not organic!”
“Julia!” a voice rang out from the middle of the room.
“Shit!” Marta said, diving into a crouch near the floor.
I whirled around to find Zia advancing toward me. “Yes?” I chirped self-consciously, meeting her halfway between our stations.
“When those men come to see your production, I will help-a you. Over here. Help you with the muffins. They’ll see you have a big staff, yes?”
“Muffets,” I corrected. “And that’s a kind offer but . . .” I sensed trouble. Zia meant well, but she was prone to making scenes. I was anxious enough about the encounter without adding some forced role-playing to the mix. “There’s probably not enough work to go around,” I said lamely.
“Nonsense! I do your work on the muffins while you talk to the nice men. Where is your purse? We need some more lipstick on you.” Zia gave me a gentle shove toward our workstation.
There was a scramble and a bump. “Ow!” Marta said. She emerged from under our steel table, rubbing her forehead. I was afraid to look, but her hands held only my purse and our own bottle of vanilla. “Here it is,” she said, thrusting the bag at me.
“You!” Zia pointed at me. “Put on some makeup. And you”—she pointed at Marta—“need some ice for that bump. You’re a-going to have a goose egg.” She turned on her heel toward the ice machine in the corner.
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