by Robin Allen
I stepped onto the wooden sidewalk and inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with the fragrances of dirt, greenery, fertilizer, and humidity, enjoying a peaceful interlude before I had to return to Nina.
And that’s when the screaming started.
Six
The commotion came from the kitchen, and by the time I sprinted inside, every cook under Dana’s command was either perfecting the pitch of their screams or crying or ventilating hard, but it wasn’t immediately apparent why.
No fire or fist fight in progress. All of the dinners had been served, so they hadn’t run out of meals. Perhaps dessert had been ruined. But that didn’t account for their hysteria or why they were staring at the floor in horror. A mouse or a snake? Which, if you can believe it, would not shut down a restaurant kitchen.
“Do something!” one of the females yelled to the room.
I pushed past two cooks to see Dana out cold on the floor, something white and bubbly trickling down her lower lip and chin. I thrust my phone at the yeller. “Call nine one one. Tell them to cut their sirens before they drive onto the farm.” We didn’t need two hundred Friends coming over to investigate the emergency and sucking up all the fresh air in the room.
I could think of no foodborne illness with a symptom of foaming at the mouth, but a million other things crossed my mind: rabies, heart attack, poison, champagne residue, I could die trying to save her, can she be saved, why are those stupid cooks standing around like mooks, they’re drinking from open containers, did Dana slip on this wet floor …
I dropped to my knees and felt for a pulse. Nothing. I pointed to a cook with the most Tarzan-looking upper body. “You. Chest compressions. Thirty at a time with a break for me to breathe.”
I wiped Dana’s mouth with her apron, pinched her nose closed, and began resuscitation on the break. Between rounds of breaths, I said, “All of you dry up and tell me what happened.”
“We don’t know!” one of the girls cried. “She was talking to us about dessert, and we were laughing at a joke she made, then her eyes got wide and she fell.”
Someone else said, “We thought it was another joke at first, but then … ”
I became aware of more people arriving behind me, asking questions that no one answered. “Is she okay?” “Will the restaurant still open?” “Is Randy still president?”
After a few minutes, I heard Perry say, “Give them room,” then an efficient man in a dark blue uniform tapped my shoulder, and the EMTs took over for me and Tarzan. They hooked Dana up to a little machine that confirmed a wobbly pulse.
With all the heat, bodies, and activity in the small space, I felt compressed myself, so I stepped outside into the crepuscular evening, sweating and pumped full of my own adrenaline. My lips felt raw, and my stomach gurgled resentment at its delayed dinner.
The EMTs had crowded out Megan and Brandon, too, and they waited together in the washing shed, all fretting brows and anxious eyes. I figured them to be the latecomers asking questions.
I looked for Megan’s brother, Ian McDougal, but remembered that he was mending a fence. He could have fenced an entire acre for all the time he had spent on the back ten. It was just as well he wasn’t around. Ian thinks he knows everything about everything, a personal trait that’s appropriate and appealing in people like Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci, but it’s not true about Ian and guarantees he’ll make any good situation bad and any bad situation intolerable.
As the paramedics wheeled Dana away, I felt a hand pat my arm. “Nice job taking over in there,” Perry said. “Dana’s going to make it thanks to you.”
“Sometimes my control issues are a blessing,” I said. “Do you know what happened?”
“Another heart attack, I’d imagine,” he said.
Megan and Brandon walked up to us. “What do we do now?” Brandon asked. “Are we going to finish the dinner?”
Perry looked at the cooks loitering in front of the kitchen door, waiting for their next order, then asked me, “What do you think?”
“No reason not to,” I said. “If Dana had cut or burned herself really badly, you’d be in the same situation.”
Perry smiled, apparently glad for confirmation that plans should go forward. No one at the dinner knew that Dana had collapsed, but they would find out when Perry told everyone that she wouldn’t be making the after-dinner announcement she alluded to in her acceptance speech. If he told them the truth, that is. If it were me, I would spin it a little and say that Dana had to leave suddenly for an emergency appointment.
I waved toward the Field. “Y’all go do what you have to do. I’ll get her crew on track.”
Perry and Brandon went to the Field, Megan went to the office, and I went to the kitchen. Dana’s cooks were saying, “I bet it’s from all the stuff with Colin.” “Did anyone tell Herb?” “Do you think we still have a job?”
“Who’s Dana’s sous?” I asked, trying to establish myself as knowledgeable and in charge in case they had ideas about derelicting their duties.
They looked at each other.
“Her sous chef,” I said. “Second in command.”
“We know what a sous is,” Tarzan said.
“Good. Now, do you know who it is? I’ll give you a hint. It’s one of you.”
One of the chicks, Cheri according to her embroidered white coat, said, “He quit a couple of weeks ago. Chef hasn’t replaced him.”
“Who wants to be Dana’s sous?” I asked. Three cooks pointed to Tarzan. “You’re deputized,” I said to him. “Get dessert going.”
The cooks knew what to do, but a team operates better with a leader, if only to take the heat if one of them had forgotten to pack the decaf or if a guest found their molars being flossed by a hair in their casserole. Two of the cooks used large knives to slice several sweet potato pies, placing dark orange triangles on white dessert plates, others emptied coffee pots into tall black service urns.
I didn’t want to chance that the pie was made with real butter, which vegans don’t eat, but coffee never had a face or a mother. I filled a cup, then stepped out of the kitchen and saw a better dessert: Drew Cooper, walking up from the parking lot, smartly handsome in casual black pants and an emerald green long-sleeved shirt. He smiled when he saw me and hurried his pace, the slight limp owing to his prosthetic lower-left leg hardly noticeable.
“There’s my cowgirl!” Drew said when he reached me.
Instead of dressing like a jewel thief in my customary black clothes, ponytail, and natural face, I had worn a dark brown T-shirt, short denim skirt, and old brown cowboy boots. I had also stroked on a little mascara to open up my green eyes and wore my blond hair down, long and straight.
I hugged him. “I was fixin’ to worry about you.”
“Cats and Bats traffic,” Drew said, referring to a fundraiser going on downtown. He placed his hands on my waist and leaned in for a kiss, then pulled back. “Are they serving chicken pox for dinner?”
“What?”
“Your face. It looks blistered.”
I put my hand to my mouth and felt bumps. “Is it bad?”
“It’s not good,” he said. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure.” I relayed the story of Dana passing out, emphasizing my heroics. “It’s probably from the friction.”
Drew made a face. “Maybe if Dana had a beard.”
I felt embarrassed and self-conscious. My appearance is the last thing I concern myself with because I marinate in sweat, grease, and gunk when I work, and I work all the time. But I had made a special effort to look good for Drew. “Let me check this in the bathroom,” I said, then pointed to the archway. “Daisy, Erik, and Nina are in the Field. Go left and they’re at a table by the bar.”
A procession of Tarzan, followed by the two chick cooks, passed by us. They carried large oval trays crammed with plated pie slices and
coffee cups.
“Have you eaten dinner?” Drew asked.
“Not yet.”
Drew headed down the walkway, and I ran to the bathroom behind the washing shed. My face was a horror show. Chalky white welts floated in a sea of inflamed skin around my mouth, which burned now that I laid my eyes on the damage.
After my father’s heart attack, I researched them so I would recognize the warning signs if he had another one. Dana had been foaming at the mouth, which I learned can sometimes happen, but human-produced enzymes don’t burn human flesh. I still couldn’t think of any foodborne illness with that symptom, but there are lots of rare toxins I don’t come across on a daily basis, such as tetrodotoxin that lives in the gonads, liver, intestines, and skin of poisonous pufferfish, ingestion of which results in paralysis and often death.
It seemed unlikely that Dana had consumed pufferfish gonads, so perhaps it was something more mundane, like a food allergy, although I have never had a negative reaction to any allergen, not even to cedar trees, which makes sufferers of “cedar fever” want to scratch out their own eyeballs this time of year. I’ve heard that you can develop allergies later in life, and I could deal with an allergy to green beans, but not to red wine. Please, not red wine. Although, since I hadn’t consumed either yet, I could rule them out for now. An allergy to Nina would be ideal, which is why it would never happen.
Or it was something yet to be discovered! The Centers for Disease Control are always issuing bulletins for a single reported case of an illness. The chances of me being present at the awakening of a so-far-dormant bacteria or pathogen was exciting! As a conscientious health official, I had the duty—and great fortune—to research in medias res. They might even name the illness after me: Poppycoccus markhamicola.
I opened the cold tap and drenched a paper towel, then patted my face with it, but it had no permanent effect on the heat of the blisters. I went into a stall and sat on one of the toilets to wet-wipe the wine stains from my boots and got a look at my knees. They, too, had chalky white welts. Perhaps Dana had suffered a more severe allergic reaction to whatever this was.
I left the bathroom for the Field and made it as far as the washing shed when I saw Nina coming through the archway, her platinum-
blond bob glowing like radiation. I quickly backed into the dirty, smelly safety of the storage pantry and waited for her to pass.
“Poppy?” she called. “Poppy, are you still here?”
What prompted Nina to leave a party full of people giving her attention to seek out someone who can’t stand her? To give me more dietary instructions for her ugly, overindulged dogs while she and Mitch go on their second honeymoon in Venice next month? To ask if I want to contribute a recipe to Ursula’s cookbook? Answer: no, because Ursula has already stolen several of my recipes for which I’m surely not going to get credit.
Maybe Nina wanted to say goodbye.
I came out of storage. “I’m still here,” I said.
“What are you doing in there?” she asked.
“A chicken tried to bite me.”
“I thought you said they were trained—”
“Are you leaving? I can walk you to your car.”
“Goodness, no! I’m having too much fun. Drew Cooper arrived. He is a delightful man.” She giggled. “Do you think he and Ursula—”
“Nina!”
“What?”
“Drew is my—” I stopped. I had started to say boyfriend, but that wasn’t accurate. We weren’t anything until I decided between him and Jamie. “Why exactly were you looking for me?” I asked.
“Your father called and said he’s not coming. He doesn’t like to drive in the dark, you know.”
No, I did not know, but I didn’t believe that excuse. “Thanks for telling me.”
“You’ll have to take me home,” she said, tick-tocking a full glass of white wine in front of my face. Nina doesn’t get drunk, but she likes to pretend to be. Making people take care of her is another form of attention.
“Ursula and Trevor will be here soon, and they can give you a ride.”
“They’re already here,” she said, “but they drove out on Trevor’s motorbike.”
“Okay. Go have fun and I’ll find you when I’m ready to leave.” Or when I can talk Mitch into retrieving his mildly tipsy wife.
“Oh, I also wanted to remind you that Dolce and Gabbana can’t have chocolate,” she said.
“Then they have something in common with all the mangy mutts on the streets of Calcutta.”
She made that sound again, the vocal equivalent of an eye roll, then took off, passing Brandon on her way down the plank path. He carried a large tray piled high with bundled-up tablecloths.
“Are you breaking down already?” I asked when he reached me, hoping he wasn’t, but knowing he was, which meant no dinner for me. At least not sitting down at a table under the stars and using utensils.
“Yeah. The band’s supposed to play in thirty minutes,” he said. “I wish they’d start sooner. Everyone’s drunk and talking smack. I’ve already had to break up a couple of food fights.”
I pointed to the washing shed. “Speaking of fights, was that you arguing with your dad a little while ago?”
Brandon shook his head. “Ask Core. They’ve been going at it a lot lately.” He lifted the tray of dirty linens. “Gotta get these into the kitchen.”
“Sure,” I said, then heard someone call, “Poppy!” and I looked up to see the worst thing I could possibly see.
Seven
Jamie Sherwood walked toward me from the parking lot, effortlessly dreamy in a pair of blue hiking shorts and long-sleeved white T-shirt, his long, dark curls like little smiles all over the place.
I’m a planner. I like to know every little detail about every little thing. When I enter a walk-in refrigerator, I like to know that I’m going to find butter and milk and lettuce, not a flock of unplucked pheasants filled with buckshot hanging from the shelves. When I
attend an event, I like to give myself plenty of time to arrive and greet friends so I can stand at the front of the tour line instead of bringing up the rear because my stepmother called me every five minutes for thirty minutes to tell me that she was two minutes away and to wait for her. But I hadn’t decided what to do with Jamie once he returned from his travels.
In fairness to me, though, he wasn’t supposed to be back for another six weeks.
I started for him, and we met in front of the office. “What are you doing here?” I said.
“What kind of welcome is that, Poppycakes?”
“Sorry. It’s just … I thought you were in Europe until Thanks-
giving.”
“I missed you.” He stepped closer to me and cupped his hand under my chin.
What was this? A kiss from Jamie? After our rough parting a few months ago? After only an innocuous greeting? I closed my eyes and breathed in his familiar scent, turning off my head so I could let my heart feel him, waiting for him to—
“Have you been making out with a cactus?” he asked.
I opened my eyes and turned my face out of his grasp. “It so happens I’ve been saving Dana White’s life,” I said, then briefed him on recent events. “I told Perry I’d keep things going in the kitchen.”
“Where’s Colin Harris?” Jamie asked.
That’s where I knew Randy’s sales rep from! I had only ever seen Dana’s sous chef in a white chef’s coat and beanie. “Dana’s cooks told me he quit a couple of weeks ago,” I said. “He’s working for Randy Dove now.”
“That milquetoast? Hawking beer and wine? I doubt that.”
“I was at the bar when Randy sent him to deliver a bottle of champagne to Dana. Colin tried to get out of it, but Randy insisted.”
“Randy sent champagne to Dana?”
“She’s the new president of the Friends of
the Farm.” I took a moment to process the major revelation being deposited into my knowledge bank now that I knew who Colin was. “Wait, it wasn’t the delivery that was important, but the person delivering it! Right after that, Dana came out to the Field and laid into Randy about playing dirty.”
Jamie picked up the storyline right away. “If Colin quit, it was probably because Randy hired him away from Dana.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “Rough stuff losing a key employee to her sworn enemy.”
“What else did I miss?” Jamie asked.
“Bjorn Fleming asked Dana for a job and she called him a one-trick pony and said she had no use for him. Perry’s son, Cory, is upset that Dana is president. And Randy accused Dana of trying to kill him after he choked on a lamb kebab.”
Oh, and I’ve been seeing Drew Cooper for the past few months, and he’s waiting for me at our table.
Jamie is a professional, so headlines weren’t enough. He wanted to know the five Ws, so I told him what I remembered. Our relationship has always had a high intellectual component, and by the time I finished my stories and answering his questions, I felt back in tune with him.
My decision between him and Drew was going to be harder than I thought.
Jamie watched the guests, cooks, and family waiters moving through the archway on their way to the bar, the bathrooms, or other conversations. “All the players are here tonight,” he said. “I won’t have to track them down for quotes or background.”
“Except for Dana,” I said. “Can you find out how she’s doing? I don’t know where they took her.”
Before Jamie began devoting his articles and opinions to food and foodies, he worked as a newspaper reporter and still has both official and underground contacts in every crevice of the city.
“I’ll make some calls.”
“There’s one more thing,” I said.
Telling Jamie about Drew would be better than him happening upon Drew at our family dinner, but only in the way that telling a neighbor his dog had been run over by a moving van is better than him finding its limp body in the driveway.
