Too Many Cooks

by Dana Bate

  “What about next weekend?” Harry suggests. “I’m free Saturday night.”

  “Me too. You pick the place, and I’ll be there.”

  “Unless you cancel again,” he says.

  “I won’t cancel—I swear.”

  “Famous last words . . .”

  “I guess swearing is a little risky. For all I know, my boss will ask me to build a replica of Buckingham Palace out of macarons.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “I have no idea. Which probably means she’ll ask me to do it.”

  “Well, if she does, I could always keep you company while you assemble the balcony. Or, you know, make a macaron stick figure of Prince Charles.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “I hope so.”

  My shoulders relax. “I’ll call you next week, okay? We can discuss the details—whether they entail French cookies or not.”

  “Sounds brilliant. I look forward to it. In the meantime, let’s hope you don’t come down with some terrible virus.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I say, wondering if he knows I already have.

  The next day, I start drawing up a menu for Natasha’s tapas party. Apparently the number is now up to fourteen, which wouldn’t be a problem if she had requested something like a roast or a pasta dish, but for tapas, I now have to make a million little things, and I have one day to figure out what they will be. Everyone always assumes hors d’oeuvres or tapas parties are easier because you don’t have to roast a massive slab of beef or braise a huge pot of pork, but really, making lots of little dishes involves infinitely more work, even more so when there are more than a dozen guests.

  I decide to make a massive tortilla española, since that’s something I can prepare in advance and serve warm or at room temperature. I add a Manchego and apple salad to the list, along with a watermelon and tomato salad and shrimp and squid a la plancha. For fourteen people, I will need a few more vegetable dishes—maybe some roasted red peppers stuffed with goat cheese and a green bean salad with apricots and jamón Serrano—along with a few more hot, meaty dishes, like ham croquetas and grilled hanger steak. Once I come up with a list Friday afternoon, I send it off to Natasha, who signs off with a perfunctory “Fine.”

  Later that evening, I return to my messy flat. Laundry from two days ago still hangs on the drying rack, a disorganized stack of magazines covers the coffee table, and my bed is unmade. This would never be the case if I still lived with Sam. He never went to bed without making sure the counters were wiped down, the laundry was put away, and the day’s papers were dumped in the recycling bin. Good old reliable Sam. I miss him. I don’t miss us—who I was when I was with him, who we’d become as a couple—but I miss having him as a friend, the person I could always count on. I could use someone like that in my life right now. Meg said I shouldn’t e-mail him, but it’s been more than two months now. Maybe . . .

  No. Meg is right. It isn’t fair. I should talk to my brother instead. Actually, I should probably clean my apartment, but I’ve been meaning to call Stevie since Tuesday night, when everything with Hugh derailed my plans and, apparently, my life. Stevie picks up on the third ring, much to my surprise, given that speaking on the phone is his second least favorite way of communicating after e-mail. Frankly, the only way he really likes to communicate is in person, through mumbles and grunts, preferably while sitting in front of the TV.

  “Stevie—hey, it’s Kelly.” There is a long pause. “Your sister?” I add, trying to be helpful.

  “Yeah, hey, how’s it going?” He doesn’t sound at all surprised to hear from me, as if I live down the street and am calling for our regular afternoon chat.

  “It’s going fine. A little hectic. A little crazy working for a movie star.”

  “Oh, right, you’re working for . . . what’s her face . . .”

  “Natasha Spencer.”

  “Riiiiight.” He lets out a slow and sloppy laugh. “Man, she’s hot.”

  “Stevie, are you high?”

  “What? No.” He clears his throat. “Barely a joint. It’s cool.”

  “What time is it?” I glance at my clock. “It’s one thirty in Ypsilanti right now. What are you doing smoking a joint at one thirty in the afternoon?”

  “It’s Friday.” He titters. “Friiiday.”

  “Stevie . . .”

  “I told you—stop calling me Stevie. It’s Steve.”

  “Okay, Steve. Maybe you shouldn’t be smoking joints at one thirty in the afternoon, Steve. Maybe you should be studying, Steve.”

  “Studying for what?”

  “What do you mean ‘for what’? For school.”

  “Oh. Right. Nah, I’m taking some time off.”

  “Time off? You mean you dropped out?”

  “For now.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t working out. And I wanted to have the summer off.”

  “Stevie—sorry, Steve. You’re twenty-freaking-five. Why are you trying to draw this out as long as possible? Just get the degree and be done with it.”

  “And then what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—get a job?”

  “But I already have a job.”

  “Cleaning the deep-fryer at Abe’s Coney Island.”

  “I’m beyond that now, thank you very much. I run the entire deep-fry station.”

  “That isn’t the kind of job I’m talking about. I basically had that job when I was fourteen.”

  “Well, excuse me for not being as brilliant and successful as you.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. You’re better than a job at the Coney Island. You’re too smart for that.”

  “I take it you haven’t seen my college transcript. . . .”

  “I’m not talking about grades. I’m talking about smarts.” I click my tongue. “You’re just like Dad.”

  “What did you just say?” His voice is suddenly sharp.

  “I said you’re just like Dad—never wanting to apply yourself, always settling for ‘honest’ work, when really you’re too afraid to do anything remotely challenging because you don’t want to fail at it.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “It is, and you know it.”

  He huffs. “So is this why you called? To check up on me? To harass me?”

  I take a long, deep breath, thinking back to my mom’s letter and her request for me to keep an eye on Stevie. That wasn’t my initial reason for calling, but now that I’ve called, I’m glad I did. Somebody needs to look out for this kid, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be my father.

  “No,” I say. “I called because I wanted to talk to you about Irene O’Malley.”

  He snickers. “What about her?”

  “Did you know she’s living with Dad?”

  “What do you mean ‘living’?”

  “Sleeping under the same roof. Cohabiting. Shacking up.”

  He goes silent. “Wait. Hang on. Dad’s banging Irene O’Malley?”

  “I don’t know that they’re ‘banging,’” I say, trying to dismiss that foul image from my mind. “But she’s sleeping in my old room. And every time I call the house, she’s there. Has she not been there when you’ve visited?”

  “I haven’t really visited.”

  I start. “Why not?”

  “Because Dad has been so weird ever since Mom died. Seeing him like that . . . it just makes me sad. I don’t need that.”

  “Maybe he’d be less sad if you were around.”

  “Because we were always so close . . .”

  Dad and Stevie’s relationship was a little like my mom’s and mine, insofar as it was complicated and layered and somewhat fraught. Stevie was more like my mom—a partier, a social butterfly—whereas I was more like my dad, minus the cynicism and ennui. If Stevie had been the kind of kid who wanted to read X-Men or The Avengers, my dad would gladly have taken him under his wing. But Stevie just wanted to hang with his friends and smoke pot, and my dad had no idea what to do wit
h him. I think Stevie always mistook my dad’s incompetence for a lack of interest, so instead of extending an olive branch, Stevie withdrew from him further.

  “Would you rather have Mom’s nemesis sinking her claws into our father?” I ask.

  “No. Irene is kind of the worst.”

  “Exactly. So you and I need to find a way to get her out of that house. Any ideas?”

  “Other than hiring another chick to stand in her place?”

  “Yes, please, other than that.”

  He hums into the phone. “I don’t know. I’ll think on it.”

  “Great. I’ll do the same. We can catch up some time next week and trade ideas.”

  “Cool,” he says. “And I promise I won’t be high next time.”

  “Thank you.” I pull at a thread on the hem of my shirt. “I mean what I said, by the way. About your being smart.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .”

  “I’m serious. Don’t settle because you think it’ll prevent you from being disappointed in life. Trust me—disappointment finds all of us, one way or another. Better to have—”

  “. . . loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

  Not exactly what I was going for, but okay. “Something like that,” I say.

  “I got it. Message received.” He yawns. “Anyway, have fun in jolly old England. Oh, and do you think you could snag Natasha’s autograph for me?”

  “Probably.”

  “Sweet. Tell her a shot from The Devil’s Kiss used to be my screen saver. I used to jerk off to it all the time.”

  “Stevie!”

  “Steve.”

  “Whatever! Ick! Gross!”

  He lets out a lazy laugh. “I’m your little brother. Grossing you out is my job.”

  I groan and concede that whatever failures Steve has experienced in his life, annoying me has been, and will always be, one of his great achievements.

  Thirty minutes before Natasha’s guests arrive Saturday night, she enters the kitchen, her sleeveless silk duster jacket fluttering behind her. The jacket is a rich cream, and beneath it she wears a plunging sleeveless black top and black cigarette pants. She tosses her long, dark waves over her shoulder as she marches toward me in her black stilettos.

  “Where are you planning to put the stuffed dates?” she asks.

  I freeze halfway through transferring the early makings of a ham croquette to a plate. “What stuffed dates?”

  “The ones stuffed with almonds and blue cheese and wrapped in bacon.”

  This was not one of the recipes we agreed to.

  “There . . . are no stuffed dates. They weren’t on the menu.”

  “Are you on drugs? Of course they were. I’ve literally never had tapas where there weren’t stuffed dates on the menu.”

  I wipe my hands on my apron and pull out a copy of the menu I sent her yesterday afternoon.

  Spanish olives

  Boquerones

  Apple and Manchego salad with toasted walnuts

  Tomato and watermelon salad

  Green bean salad with apricots and jamón Serrano

  Tortilla española

  Croquetas de jamón

  Squid and shrimp a la plancha

  Grilled hanger steak with salsa verde

  Raw sheep’s milk cheese with quince paste, chocolate-fig jam, & fruit-and-nut toasts

  She grabs the paper from my hand. “What is this?”

  “The menu you approved yesterday.”

  She looks at the list, then up at me, her expression just shy of ferocious. “Are you challenging me?”

  “No, I’m just. . . .”

  “You’re just what?”

  Calling you insane.

  “I guess I misunderstood,” I finally say.

  “Perfect. Perfect!” She lets out a dramatic cry as she looks at the clock. “What the hell am I supposed to do now? Everyone will be here in twenty minutes.”

  “I’m sure no one will mind if there aren’t stuffed dates on the table.”

  “You’re joking, right? Have you even eaten tapas before?”

  “I have, actually.”

  “Where? In Bumblefuck USA?”

  “In Chicago.” At some of the best tapas restaurants in the country.

  “Well, I don’t know how they do it in Chi-CAH-go, but in New York and London and freaking SPAIN, they have stuffed dates.”

  I’m tempted to tell her I’m sure they do, but that this is a home-cooked dinner party, not an exhaustive gastronomical tour of a country’s cuisine. But given the fierce look in her eyes, I decide there is no point.

  “Okay . . . well . . . I’m sure there’s something we can do to fix this,” I say, though to be honest, unless the solution involves teleporting or time travel, I’m not sure what that is.

  “There’d better be,” she says. “I want this dinner to be perfect.”

  I hold my breath and race through my mental recipe catalogue. There are no dates in this house—that much I know—because Natasha used the last of them in her kale smoothie yesterday afternoon. But I do have some dried apricots left over from the green bean salad. I could do something with those.

  “What if instead of stuffed dates wrapped in bacon, we served dried apricots topped with herbed goat cheese and a crisped shard of Serrano ham?”

  “Would they be warm?”

  “No. But at this point, it’s the best riff I can come up with.”

  She bites her lip, and after a few moments of consideration, she shrugs in exasperation. “Fine. Whatever. Just do it.”

  She turns to leave, and as she does she grunts. “God, this party is a disaster before it’s even started.”

  She tosses her hair over her shoulder and hurries out of the room, and as the hem of her duster jacket billows behind her, I can’t decide whether it makes her look like a dragon or a queen.

  CHAPTER 25

  The apricot canapés are phenomenal—so good, in fact, they should have been part of the menu all along. I lay them on Natasha’s cocktail table next to the warm olives and boquerones, and, as her guests arrive and begin grazing on a few light bites before I bring out the rest of the tapas, I can hear the ooohs and aaaahs echoing from the overhang above.

  Under Natasha’s strict instructions, I should allow the guests to mingle and graze in the living room for an hour, at which point the dinner party will progress into the dining room, where Olga will bring up the rest of the dishes and, along with another hired hand, fill wineglasses, clear plates, and otherwise attend to Natasha’s guests’ needs. I need to time everything down to the minute, so that there aren’t awkward gaps between dishes or a rush of too many at once. I also need to make sure nothing sits on the kitchen counter for too long before Olga takes it upstairs.

  I pull the apple and Manchego salad from the refrigerator and divide it among three serving bowls, which I will give Olga to take upstairs and lay along Natasha’s walnut dining table. The table itself is a spectacular work of craftsmanship: a twelve-foot slab of raw-edged claro walnut, as if a lumberjack sliced a massive tree from top to bottom and then placed it upon a polished bronze base. The base has been crafted to look like branches, crawling outward from the center across the floor, and Olga set the table with similarly chic but rustic tableware and linens. I won’t spend any time upstairs during the party, but I managed to sneak a quick peek while Olga set up, and the table setting—the entire room, actually, with its Lucite chairs and petrified wood stools and what appeared to be a painting by Robert Motherwell—took my breath away.

  I divide the tomato and green bean salads in the same way I did the apple one, so that the first wave of tapas will feature a variety of cool dishes scattered along the table. The tortilla española will follow, and then Olga and her helper will clear the plates, set new ones, and prepare for the wave of hot foods. That’s when the timing could get a little hairy. I’ll need to fry the croquetas and then immediately get going on the seafood and steak.

  The chatter dissipates as t
he guests upstairs move from the living room into the dining room, and soon there is a hush in the kitchen, nothing but the sound of bowls and serving spoons clanking against the marble counter. Olga and her assistant whisk the salads upstairs, and I swirl my tortilla with aioli, before slicing it into thick wedges. I set them out for Olga to take up when the crowd is ready, and while I wait for her to return, I adjust the heat beneath a pot of oil, not wanting it to boil over and start a grease fire before dinner is even halfway through.

  The tortillas go up, a few empty salad bowls come down, and when Olga gives me the high sign, I fry the croquetas, dropping the breaded balls of smoky ham and creamy béchamel into the hot oil. The oil foams and sizzles as I plop in each ball, and the kitchen fills with the smell of deep-fried bacon. Using a skimmer, I scoop out the crispy croquettes, each one a deep golden brown, and lay them on paper towels to drain while I fire the next batch. Once I’ve cooked them all, I quickly transfer them to platters, which Olga takes upstairs.

  As I root through the refrigerator for the marinating shrimp and squid, I hear Olga reenter the kitchen behind me. “Hey, before you add any more dishes to the dishwasher, could you do me a favor and grab another roll of paper towels from the pantry?”

  A deep voice replies. “I’m . . . afraid I don’t know where Olga keeps them.”

  I whirl around and find Hugh standing on the other side of the island. My pulse quickens. He looks, as always, absurdly handsome, dressed tonight in a crisp white button-down, which he has tucked into dark gray trousers. He carries a glass of white wine in one hand, the other hand tucked into his pocket. This is the first time I’ve seen him since The Incident Tuesday night.

  “Oh,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “I thought you were Olga.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “I’m not disappointed. Just . . .” Flustered, nervous, guilt-ridden. “Surprised,” I say.