Gina’s stomach growled again, so loudly she was sure the men could hear it.
Quiet, she thought, patting her tummy. She took a long drink of wine and tried to think of something besides food.
Today, for instance. According to Scott, the taping had gone really well. He was a pig, but he did know television production. Barry Adelman had seemed interested in her concept of fresh, accessible southern food. The prep girls said he’d raved over the shrimp during lunch, and he’d even asked her to e-mail the flounder and slaw recipes to him.
But Adelman had hurried away to watch Tate Moody’s taping before she really had a chance to chat with him.
The thought of Moody made her scowl. Stupid creep. Catfish-frying, gun-toting pseudo-foodie. The idea that she would ever stoop to dirty tricks to win this slot on TCC made her blood boil. And that poor sweet dog, Moonpie, locked up in that trailer all day. She took another sip of wine and wondered, idly, if Moonpie’s invasion really had ruined the taping, as Moody claimed. She really hadn’t let the dog loose on purpose, so if things had gone badly for Tate Moody, it totally was not on her conscience. At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself.
Eventually, she put the wineglass down and felt herself relax for the first time all day. Her eyelids fluttered and then closed.
Such a pleasant dream. She was back at her grandparents’ farm in Alma, Georgia. She’d spent the morning picking strawberries from Gram’s patch. She was barefoot, and the sun-warmed soil squished between her toes as she popped the sugar-sweet berries in her mouth, eating nearly as many as she plunked into her plastic bucket. Gram had baked her a little yellow butter cake in the special tin tart pans she used only for what she called her “pattycakes” while Gina picked, and she was just taking the cakes out of the oven when Gina wandered into the kitchen, berry-stained face and fingers and all.
Gina heard the oven bell dinging as she sat down at the linoleum-topped table to help Gram trim the tops from the berries and sprinkle them with sugar. Now Gram was reaching into the Frigidaire and bringing out the blue bowl heaped full of sweetened whipped cream. She placed each pattycake on one of her treasured pink Depression glass plates, then spooned a mound of berries on top of the cake, ending with big dollops of whipped cream, and then just a few more berries, their bright red juice dribbling down the edges of the cake and pooling onto the pink plates.
Gram and Gina held hands then, and they sang the special blessing they’d learned at Sunday school before digging into their treat.
There would never be anything that tasted better, sweeter, than those cakes. And after they’d cleaned up the dishes, Gina and Gram went out to the porch to play Go Fish.
She was winning, had all the cards facedown on the green-painted porch floor, when someone touched her shoulder.
“Geen?”
Gina opened her eyes. Lisa was standing in front of her, eyes wide. Her mud mask was dried and cracked in about a zillion pieces. In her hands she held a piece of tin foil with a four-inch-long strand of Dingbat Blond hair dangling from it.
“Huh?”
Gina looked down at her lap. Half a dozen more strips of foil were scattered about the tangerine-colored cape, all of them clinging to similar-size strands of Regina Foxton’s very own hair.
Regina shrieked. Lisa shrieked. D’John came running into the dining room, and when he saw Gina, his shrieks drowned out theirs.
Only Stephen, the cute takeout boy, did not scream.
“Dude,” he whispered. “Dude, that is not cool.” He turned and ran for the door.
“OHMYGAWD!” D’John cried. He yanked the hood of the processor into the up position “What happened?” Gina asked.
D’John whipped the plastic from her head and yanked her up and out of the chair in an instant. “Quick. Into the kitchen.” He dragged her over to the sink, stuck her head under the faucet, and started spraying her hair with water.
“Lisa!” he called. “Bring me that bottle of shampoo from the bathroom. And the conditioner. Stat!”
Regina could see nothing. She could feel first the cold, and then the warm, water streaming over her head. Her neck hurt and she wanted to stand up, but D’John kept his hand firmly planted on the top of her head.
“Precious Jesus,” she heard him mutter. “Precious Jesus Lord.”
Then he was lathering her head with shampoo, and her scalp felt oddly cool.
When the water stopped running, he stood her upright. For a minute, she felt dizzy. He wrapped a towel around her head, and tenderly dabbed at her face with another one. Now he was dragging her back into the dining room, pushing her gently down into the chair she’d been sitting in.
“We’ve got to get you conditioned,” he said, squirting a huge glop of conditioner into the palm of one hand. He patted it over her head, gently working it into her scalp, which still felt strange.
“Tell me what’s happened,” Regina said. “What’s happened to my hair?”
She saw Lisa and D’John exchange a shared look of horror.
“Tell me!”
D’John took a deep breath. “The timer,” he said, searching for words. “It must have gone off. But I didn’t hear it. I was just in the kitchen, talking to Stephen. I guess I lost track of time. Because I didn’t hear the buzzer—”
“No,” she said flatly. She stood up and ran into the bathroom. There, in the gold-framed mirror in D’John’s bathroom, she stood face-to-face with the truth.
Her scalp reminded her of her granddaddy’s cornfield come autumn, once the harvest had started. Ragged strands of damp hair stuck up in random hedgerows.
“Precious Lord Jesus,” she whispered, echoing D’John. She sat down on the edge of D’John’s commode and began to cry.
Chapter 17
You absolutely sure you wanna do this?” Tate asked, shaking his head in disgust.
“Absolutely,” Val insisted. “Hit me.”
Tate lifted the cast-iron skillet from the tiny two-burner stovetop and deftly slid the fried eggs onto the stack of pancakes on Val’s waiting plate.
“Thanks,” she said, pouring a stream of maple syrup over everything, and then tucking into it with an energy that amazed him, slicing the eggs with the side of her fork, then curling a whole pancake around the oozing egg and shoving it into her mouth.
It was Sunday morning. Val called this a production meeting. Tate called it a pain in the ass. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat opposite her at the red Formica dinette table in what he called the dining area of the Vagabond IV. It was also, when the tabletop was flipped down across the button-tufted red leatherette upholstered benches, and a mattress slid atop it, the guest bedroom.
She chewed furiously, then sighed. “Heaven.”
Moonpie, wedged tightly beneath Tate’s feet, lifted his snout and whined appreciatively.
“Absolutely not,” Tate said sternly. “If she wants to eat a heart attack on a plate for breakfast, that’s her problem.” He scratched the dog’s ears as a consolation prize.
As Val ate, Tate read over the notes she’d made about the upcoming week’s shoot, pausing occasionally to sip his coffee.
Her plate mopped clean of every vestige of pancake, syrup, and egg, Val brought out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
Tate swiftly reached across the table, took the cigarette from her fingers, and stubbed it out on the plate.
“Hey,” she said.
He got up and rinsed the plate in the minuscule stainless-steel kitchen sink, which also doubled as the bathroom sink, which was why there was a small porthole-sized mirror mounted above it.
“I’ve told you a million times,” he said, scrubbing at the caked-on egg. “You can’t smoke in the Vagabond. This is the original mahogany paneling. The original upholstery. It’s forty-two years old, and it’s pristine. And it’s gonna stay that way.”
She lifted her head and blew out one defiant smoke ring toward the pristine forty-two-year-old ceiling. “You let the dog in here.”
“He doesn’t smoke,” Tate said. “He gets washed weekly with a hypoallergenic shampoo, and I brush him outside.”
“You’re the prissiest damn straight man I ever met,” Val said, fiddling with her cigarette lighter.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Tate said. He wiped the thick porcelain plate clean and slotted it into the wall-mounted plate rack that topped the kitchen’s only cabinet.
“I’ll bet you’re gonna tell me those are the original plates that came stocked in the original damn kitchen,” Val said.
“Nope. According to the owner’s manual, the original plates were green melamine. But they were long gone, and besides, I don’t like to eat off plastic. I bought these on eBay. They’re from a diner in Pontiac, Michigan, called the Chat ’n’ Chew. Same town the Vagabond was manufactured in. The diner closed two years after the factory did, which was 1967,” Tate said. “So, the original owner could have replaced the dishes that were included with the optional kitchen package. I know I would have.”
“And this stuff is of vital importance to you,” Val said, rolling her eyes.
“It is,” he agreed.
She sighed again. She’d had a long e-mail from Barry Adelman after he got back to New York on Friday night. Or Saturday morning, actually. The e-mail’s time stamp indicated it had been sent at 2:30 A.M. Adelman wrote that he’d liked the show, liked what he called Tate’s Q-factor, thought the food was fine. But he really, really loooooved the Vagabond. And Moonpie. Which was a fact she intended to keep to herself.
“All right,” she said, glancing down at her notes. “I had a call from Connie on the way over here this morning. And you’re not going to like what she said.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“She’s gone to every fish market in Atlanta, called everybody she knows. She was able to find some small white fish fillets, but she doesn’t think they look anything like the shellcracker fillets we started shooting with on Friday. I don’t think it’s that big a deal. We’ll just have to make do. BoBo called, and the replacement camera should get here first thing tomorrow. When we reshoot, we’ll just have him cut away to the oil sizzling in the pan, or the already soaked and floured fillets. Once they’re coated in flour, you can’t tell whether they’re shellcrackers or chicken breasts. So that’s what we’ll use. Pounded thin chicken breasts.”
“What? No. Nuh-uh. No way,” Tate said. “No faking. We start that, pretty soon I’m substituting pork loins for venison, and God knows what comes after that.”
“Nobody will ever know, Tate,” Val said. “Or care.”
“I’ll know,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I care.”
“Fine,” she said, tossing her pen onto the tabletop, and matching him glare for glare. “What do you suggest?”
He stood up, put his authentic heavy vitreous china coffee mug in the sink, and rinsed it out.
“Moonpie,” he said.
The dog scrambled to his feet.
“Come on, boy,” Tate said, opening the Vagabond’s screen-fitted door.
“And where do you think you’re going?” Val asked. “We’ve still got the rest of the week’s scripts to go over. We need to decide on a dessert to go with the grilled quail breasts you’re doing for Tuesday’s show, and figure out what you want to do about the shrimp debacle. We really don’t have time for the talent to throw a temper tantrum.”
“Okay,” Tate said. He jerked his head in Val’s direction, and then toward the door. “Like you said, time’s wasting. Let’s roll.”
“Roll where?” she asked, reaching for her purse, patting her pocket to make sure she had her cigarettes. She really needed a smoke.
“Cedar Creek,” he said, helping her navigate the Vagabond’s fold-down steps. “You just said, I need a mess of shellcrackers. Which means we need to get on the creek in the next half hour, before the sun gets too high, and the water heats up too much.”
“But the script,” Val protested. “We’ve got so much work to do—”
“We can talk about it on the drive over there,” he said.
“I don’t fish,” she said. “I’m Jewish. We’re not a fishing people.”
“Whatever. You take notes. I’ll fish.”
An hour later, Tate pushed the twelve-foot aluminum johnboat into the cool brown waters of Cedar Creek. Val sat in the bow, slathered in insect repellent and swaddled in an orange life jacket that seemed to swallow her small frame. Tate sat in the back. Moonpie, panting happily, sat in the middle.
Using the handle of the nearly noiseless electric trolling motor, Tate steered them to a spot half a mile downstream. He cut the motor, sniffed, and nodded his approval. Quickly, he baited a small hook with a worm retrieved from a Styrofoam cup at his feet, and with a flick of his wrist cast the worm into the shadows of a willow tree on the creek bank. The red-and-white cork bobbed brightly on the surface of the water.
Tate sniffed again. “They’re here all right,” he said. “Bedded up good.”
“How do you know?” Val demanded.
“Can’t you smell ’em?” he asked.
She made a face and swatted at a fly. “I smell dirt. And I smell dog. But that’s about it.”
“That’s not dirt you’re smelling,” Tate said, lifting his rod tip gently to set the bobber rocking. “It’s a kind of sour smell, right?”
“It ain’t perfume,” she said.
“Pan fish like shellcrackers bed up in the cool mud on the creek bottom,” Tate said. “It’s a real distinct smell. That’s how you know they’re here.”
“Fascinating,” she said. She reached down to the pocket of her jeans and brought out the steno pad she’d brought along.
“Now what about the dessert for Tuesday?”
“Peaches,” Tate said.
“All right.” She scribbled it down. “Cobbler? Pie? Dumplings?”
“Aaahh,” Tate said. The rod tip bent sharply, and he reeled with one smooth motion. Seconds later, he pulled in a brilliant orange and yellow fish slightly larger than the palm of his hand.
Moonpie’s tail thumped the aluminum bottom of the boat in approval. Wordlessly, Tate slid the fish onto a stringer, placed the stringer in the water, and was soon baited up with a fresh worm.
“You make it look so damn easy,” Val said. “Every time out. How do you do that?”
He shrugged. “It’s only easy if you know what you’re doing. And I’ve been doing what I’m doing now since I was a kid. Anyway, you know how often I go out and come back with nothing. It’s not like this all the time.”
“But a lot of the time it is,” Val reminded him.
“Right time of day, right weather, right bait, right equipment,” Tate said. “After that, I guess it’s mostly about luck.”
“And you’re mostly lucky,” she said with a grin. “That’s why you’re gonna get that slot on The Cooking Channel. Now…about those peaches?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “No pie. Um…I’m thinking.” He flipped his polarized sunglasses to the top of his head, took out a handkerchief, and wiped his face, which was glistening with sweat in the hot midmorning sun. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Oh, yeah. Grilled peaches. With a sorghum rum glaze. And homemade vanilla-bean ice cream.”
“You can grill peaches?”
“Sure,” Tate said. “You split ’em in half, pop out the pit. Leave the peel on. Brush the cut surface with some lemon juice and a little melted butter. Grill ’em for a minute or two, take ’em off, and brush on the glaze.”
Val scribbled furiously. “Sorghum. What’s that?”
“Southern version of maple syrup,” he said. “You could use maple, of course, but since we’re talking southern food…”
“And the rum?”
“Dark rum,” he said decisively. “And you put the glaze on at the last minute, otherwise the high sugar content gives you too much of a char on the grill. And of course, you’re gonna serve it with a scoop of homemade vanilla-bean ice cream.�
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“I dunno,” Val said. “That sounds pretty fancy for a show like Vittles.”
“What’s fancy about it?” he asked, reeling in another fish. “Peaches. Sorghum syrup, or maple if you can’t get sorghum. Rum. And, oh yeah, a little grated fresh ginger goes in the glaze for extra zip.”
Moonpie scooched forward on his haunches to sniff the fish as it flopped around in the bottom of the boat.
“Moonpie!” Tate said sharply.
The dog lifted his snout and fixed his master with a baleful look.
“You think he’d eat a live fish?” Val asked, fascinated and repulsed at the same time.
“Maybe,” Tate said, adding the shellcracker to the stringer and putting it back in the water. “He eats bugs all the time. I’ve seen him eat a live shrimp, and a minnow. But I’m thinking a live shellcracker would put the hurt on his gut. Anyway, we don’t have any fish to spare this trip.”
“I don’t know, Tate,” Val said finally. “Don’t get me wrong. The peach thing sounds delicious, but honestly, it sounds to me kind of like something Regina Foxton has done on Fresh Start.”
“No way,” Tate snapped. “I just made the recipe up. Right here on the spot.”
“I’m not accusing you of stealing it from her,” Val said soothingly.
“Damn straight,” he said, casting out again. “I’ve never even really watched her show.”
“We watched several episodes together yesterday, remember?” Val said.
“Yeah, but she never grilled any peaches,” he insisted. “Anyway, she’s not the only damned person who knows how to cook with fresh stuff. What about that show I did with the tomatoes and fresh basil? And don’t I grill fish with lemon all the time? And chives? Hell, I was using chives before chives were cool.”
“Hey!” Val said, realizing she’d hit a nerve. “I’m on your side, remember?”
“Regina,” he muttered. “Dopiest damn name I ever heard. Probably a stage name. You ever know anybody named Regina in real life?”
“There was a Regina Manoulis in my Spanish class, ninth grade.”
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