by Dana Bate
“That’s amazing—congratulations!”
“Of course, now I need to up my volume like crazy. But those interns are actually great. I’m working them like slaves.”
I ignore Rick’s special brand of political incorrectness and sidle up to the cashbox. “What does this mean, in terms of profit for you?”
He gives me a snide look. “Well, aren’t you a nosey one. . . .”
“Sorry—I’m looking into an article about the upside for farmers and vendors if this partnership goes through. I figured you’d be a good case study.”
“I haven’t crunched the numbers, but if this pans out, it’ll give me enough pad to pay off my loans. Not immediately, but in the long term.”
I’m about to ask if he can get me more specific numbers when my cell phone rings. It’s Stu Abbott.
“Do you mind if I take this?”
Rick frowns. “You know my policy on cell phones.”
“I know. But it’s important.”
He lets out a grunt. “Fine. But just this once. Understood?”
“Understood. Thank you so much.” I rush behind the truck and answer Stu’s call.
“What’s so important that you needed to text me at 6:45 on a Sunday morning?” Stu asks.
“I have a story for you. A big one.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
I tell him what Jeremy told me about Bob Young and the horsemeat and the frozen dinners made in China and Mexico. When I finish outlining the facts, there is silence on the other end of the phone.
“Hello? Stu?”
“Who told you this?” Stu finally says.
I bite my lip. “A source. I can’t say.”
“Is he or she willing to go on the record?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Have you verified this story with anyone else?”
“Not yet.”
“And have you seen these alleged documents?”
“No.”
Stu lets out a bitter laugh. “Then it sounds to me like you don’t have much of a story.”
My heart sinks. “But . . . assuming my source isn’t making this up, this story is a huge scandal.”
“It is. But I need more than a little anecdote. These are serious accusations.”
I lean against the truck and bite at my thumbnail. “What if I confirmed the story? Got people to go on the record. Got a copy of the relevant documents.”
“Then we’d have a story.”
“Something worth more than a hundred bucks?”
He laughs. “If you can bring me a bulletproof story showing that the new CEO of one of the biggest grocery chains in the country knowingly sold horse meat to his customers when he was COO and covered it up—yeah, I’d say that’s worth more than one hundred dollars. That’s probably worth a job.”
“Seriously?”
“We’ll see. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Bring me a solid story, and then we’ll talk.”
I hang up and slip my phone into my jacket pocket. Then I head back beneath Rick’s tent and wonder how I can make all of my professional dreams come true without ruining all of Jeremy’s.
CHAPTER 29
I need to get my hands on those documents. That is the only solution.
If I see copies of the alleged correspondence, I can prove that what Jeremy said is true without having to involve him in the story. And if Stu asks where I got the documents . . . well, I can just say my source doesn’t want to be named. Woodward and Bernstein had Deep Throat. I’ll have Deep Fryer.
As I sit in front of my computer that afternoon, scheming and outlining and stuffing my face with leftover molasses cookies, Libby’s name pops up on my screen as she calls for a video chat. She left me a voice mail yesterday about her bachelorette party, for which she wants to rent a bright pink stretch Hummer, but I still haven’t returned her call. I wish I were more enthusiastic about her bachelorette, but somehow I cannot muster the appropriate level of interest about an event that will involve feather boas and penis necklaces.
I click Accept, and Libby’s face appears on my screen, her honey-colored hair spilling in thick waves over her shoulders. Growing up, I was always jealous of Libby’s hair—the way it would glitter with gold flecks in the sunlight and never frizzed, even on a hot, sticky August night. Frankly, I was jealous when it came to most of Libby’s physical attributes: her boobs, her button nose, her flawless complexion, her muscular arms. I’ve spent nearly my entire life having friends and classmates tell me, “Wow, your sister is gorgeous,” followed at some point by, “I can’t believe you two are sisters—you look nothing alike.” Our relationship has always seemed a little backward in that way—the older sister envying the younger; the younger knowing it and using it to her advantage. Sometimes I wonder if Libby even respects me, or if I’m just a fact of life she has to tolerate.
Libby beams as my face appears on her screen. “How was your hot date last night?” she asks.
“How did you know I had a date?”
“I talked to Mom. She sounded very excited.”
“I’ll bet she did.”
“She just wants you to be happy. We all do.”
“I’m plenty happy,” I say. “At one time I was happy with Zach, and you didn’t seem too thrilled about that.”
“Zach was a douchebag.”
“No, he wasn’t. Not until the end.”
“Whatever. He’s dead to me. I don’t want to talk about him.”
Classic Libby. To her, everything is black-and-white: good and evil, wrong and right, friends and enemies. She has always had a tight-knit group of girlfriends, and if you aren’t with them, you’re against them. When she was a high school freshman, Libby and her friends turned on a girl named Jess Kline, who had made the cardinal mistake of kissing the object of Libby’s affection at a party. Jess was banished to social Siberia, and they never spoke to her again. They never considered for a second that perhaps Libby’s crush had made the first move or that maybe, just maybe, Jess was an insecure girl who’d been happy to discover someone out there actually wanted to kiss her.
“Then what do you want to talk about?” I say. “Let me guess: your bachelorette party.”
She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “No. I called to hear about your date. I’m interested. Who is this guy? What is he like?”
“He’s . . .” I sigh. “He’s great, actually.”
“Why the hesitation?”
“Nothing. His past is a little . . . dubious, that’s all.”
“Dubious how?”
“He was involved in a journalism scandal a few years back. Kind of a big one, at least in foodie circles.”
She rolls her eyes. “Great. Another shady loser. Just what you need.”
“People make mistakes, Libby. No one is perfect.”
She cackles loudly. “This coming from Miss Perfectionist.”
“Hey—that isn’t fair. I’m far from perfect.”
“Oh, I know. Trust me, I’ve seen your closet.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if Mom took me shopping all the time, my closet would look more like yours.”
Libby shrinks back from the screen defensively. “Mom takes me shopping because we both like to shop. You hate shopping. You always have.”
“Or maybe I never felt welcome.”
“What? That’s crazy. You were always welcome. You never wanted to come.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Libby pulls her hair into a low ponytail. “You always think I somehow get special treatment from Mom and Dad.”
I let out a huff. “Uh, maybe because you do?”
“That’s totally untrue. Like with the wedding? Dad is refusing to pay for those chairs, and he isn’t budging.”
“I’d hardly call that an act of cruelty. They’re chairs. Their main function is to serve as a resting place for your ass.”
“No, their main function is to look beautiful.”
“Perhaps you ar
e unfamiliar with what a chair does. . . .”
“Sydney—stop. The point is, Dad isn’t giving me special treatment. Frankly, I feel like he’s trying to cheap out on this entire wedding.”
I consider how to respond without spilling the beans about my dad’s job loss. “He’s paying for the wedding,” I finally say. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Of course he is paying for the wedding. Who else would pay?”
“You and Matt?”
She recoils. “Uh, no. The father of the bride pays for the wedding.”
“Not always. Not anymore.”
“Well, that’s what’s happening for our wedding. And anyway, Mom and Dad can certainly afford it.”
I take a deep breath and hold it in, trying to keep my dad’s secret from spilling out.
“What’s with the face?” Libby says.
“Nothing. It’s just . . . you know money has been tight.”
“Since when?”
“Since always. Or maybe not always, but at least the last ten years or so. Why do you think I took a job in Washington after college instead of trying to make it as a food writer?”
“Because you’re weird?”
I lean my forehead on my hand. “No, because I knew Mom and Dad couldn’t bankroll my dreams. Not after they’d paid for college.”
“Did they tell you that?”
“No. They didn’t have to.”
“See, that’s your problem,” she says. “You never ask, and then you blame me when I get what I want because I do. I ask for the chairs, and then I’m the spoiled brat because I ask for one little thing.”
“Libby, with you, it’s never just one thing. Next it’ll be the flowers. Or the invitations. Or, I don’t know, live swans.”
“The Rittenhouse doesn’t allow swans. I already checked.”
I massage my temples. “Do you hear yourself? Do you actually hear the words coming out of your mouth?”
“I do, and I don’t care. Maybe if you weren’t so afraid of asking for help, you would have given the food-writing thing a try a long time ago, instead of wasting four years in a job you didn’t even really like.”
“I liked working at The Morning Show.”
“But you didn’t love it.”
I stick out my jaw as I meet her eyes, which stare back at me through my computer screen. “No,” I say. “I didn’t love it.”
“See? So maybe if you were a little more like me, you’d be a lot happier.”
I’m about to tell Libby that I’m just fine the way I am, but I realize there is no use belaboring a point she will never concede. She isn’t accustomed to being challenged, to having anyone prove her wrong, and as far as she is concerned, she is perfect. But as exasperating as it is to listen to her preach about my reticence and insecurity, as much as it makes me want to reach through the computer screen and slap her across the face, what frustrates me most of all, what really burns, is that on some profoundly uncomfortable level, she might actually be right.
Wednesday night, after working Rick’s stand in Foggy Bottom for four hours, I head to Jeremy’s apartment, which lies five blocks north of the market. We are cooking dinner together again, and he asked me to pick up some salad greens and a loaf of something “Italian-ish,” so my tote bag is brimming with bunches of peppery arugula and tender lamb’s lettuce and a half loaf of Rick’s pane pugliese, a crusty Italian peasant bread with a delicate, open crumb and slightly sour, caramel flavor. For dessert, I decided to buy half of one of Rick’s rhubarb crumble tarts—vanilla custard encased in a tender shortbread crust and topped with roasted chunks of ruby rhubarb and a buttery oatmeal crumble—which Rick sold to me at a discount. Working for him does have its perks.
When I reach Jeremy’s apartment, I ring the doorbell with one hand as I grip the white pastry box in the other. He opens the door, and, as he notices my overflowing tote bag and the pastry box, he smiles. “Wow. Looks like you cleaned the place out.”
“I came pretty close.” I glance into my bag. “I traded two oatmeal cookies for the arugula, so you know it has to be good.”
“Two of the best cookies on the planet for a bunch of green leaves? I don’t know—I think you got a raw deal on that one, my friend.”
“Or maybe this arugula will change your life.”
“Will it do my laundry? Because otherwise, I think you got played.”
Jeremy ushers me into the apartment, and I make my way toward the kitchen, where I plunk the tart box on his counter next to my bag of goodies. I rub my hands together as my eyes land on his stovetop, where a tall pot hisses with simmering water.
“What’s on the menu?”
“Nothing fancy,” he says. “Spaghetti carbonara.”
My stomach somersaults as I survey the ingredients lining his counter: eggs, Parmesan, spaghetti, pancetta. I haven’t eaten carbonara since that fateful night with Zach when everything fell apart, and the mere thought of it makes me want to vomit.
Jeremy studies my expression, and his smile fades. “Shit—do you not like carbonara?”
“No. Well, I mean, yes.” I try to compose myself. “It’s complicated.”
“Crap. I’m so sorry. I just figured, with everything else I’ve seen you eat . . . Carbonara is usually a safe bet.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It is a safe bet. It’s fine. I’m being silly.”
“Is it the pork thing? Because I thought about that, but then I remembered you ate the Japanese pork last weekend, so I thought it would be okay.”
“It has nothing to do with pork. It’s fine. Really. I like carbonara.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Because I have other things we could—”
“Jeremy? It’s fine. I swear.”
He holds up his hands defensively. “Okay. Then let’s get cooking, shall we?”
He hands me a hunk of Parmesan cheese, and I begin rubbing it back and forth along a box grater, creating a fluffy pile of Parmesan snow, whose nutty, slightly funky smell fills my corner of the kitchen. Jeremy stands at the other end of the counter, slicing into the pancetta in a crosshatch pattern, creating a bunch of even cubes with a few smooth strokes of his knife.
“Do you come from a family of cooks?” I ask as I rasp the cheese against the prickly grater, trying to distract myself from the familiar smells and sounds.
“Kind of. My grandma used to be an amazing cook. Her mother had emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine, so she knew how to make all of these incredible French-German dishes—curly endive salad with bacon dressing, sausages with sauerkraut, green bean stew with potatoes and bacon. When I’d come to visit for lunch, she’d make me radish sandwiches on white bread with salt and butter.”
“Sounds like the answer is yes, then.”
“Not exactly. That was my dad’s mom. My mom’s mom stored cereal and wine in her oven.”
I laugh. “I see.”
“What about you? You seem to know your way around a kitchen.”
I tap the hunk of Parmesan against the box grater to knock off the excess flakes of cheese. “My mom and sister have always been big cooks.”
“But not you?”
“I cooked a lot in high school. Not with them, though.”
“No? Why not?”
I shrug. “It was sort of their thing. Libby was my mom’s Mini-Me—is her Mini-Me, I guess. They both loved shopping, both loved baking, both loved reading fashion magazines. My mom had been a teacher at one time, and now Libby is a teacher. So whenever they embarked on some cooking project, I felt like the third wheel.”
“Then where did you learn to hold a whisk like that?” he asks, nodding in my direction as I beat the eggs together in a glass bowl.
I glance down at my hand, which grips the whisk handle like a pencil as my wrist flicks quickly back and forth. My uneasy feeling returns. “Zach,” I finally say. “My ex-boyfriend.”
Jeremy hesitates. “Oh.”
“We broke
up a long time ago,” I say. “We dated in high school. His mom was—is—a famous Philadelphia caterer.”
“Ah. Got it.” He places a stainless steel frying pan on the stove and coats it with a slick of olive oil. “How long ago did you guys break up?”
“Almost five years ago.”
He dumps the cubes of pancetta into the frying pan, which shimmers with hot oil. “Oh, wow. So you dated all through college?”
I nod. “We were together eight years.”
“Wow,” he says again. He pushes the bits of pancetta around the pan. They sizzle and pop in the hot oil, the streaks of white fat melting into translucent, bubbling grease. “If you don’t mind my asking . . . what happened?”
My wrist tenses as I beat the eggs, whipping them into a golden yellow emulsion. “He cheated on me.”
“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He wasn’t.”
Jeremy pokes at the crackling pancetta with his wooden spoon. “I just meant . . . that must have been hard.”
“It was.”
He scratches his temple with his free hand. “I guess you guys don’t talk, then?”
“Not since . . .” I clear my throat. “I haven’t seen him since the night I found out about everything.”
“Ah,” he says.
I take a deep breath, and my lungs fill with the rich, smoky smell of frying bacon, and in a flash, the intense aroma transports me back to that horrible night: Zach’s kitchen, his laptop, Georgina’s e-mail, that photo. I tell myself what I’m smelling is here, now, in Jeremy’s kitchen, but the memory of that evening is so entangled in this same smell, these same sounds, that I cannot bring myself out of that horrible memory. All I see are Georgina’s huge, perfectly round breasts and the panicked look on Zach’s face as he realized I’d discovered his secret. I try to push those images from my brain, but I can’t, and the more I try, the more vivid they become—Georgina’s boobs, Zach’s face, his mother’s glistening stove, her cold porcelain toilet. I want to separate that moment from this one, but as the snap, crackle, and pop of the frying pancetta intensifies, my breath shortens, and the walls of Jeremy’s apartment seem to close in on me.
