The Secret Ingredient

by Kilby Blades

  Tourism was a lifeline and a poison pill to towns like Longport. Without seasonal visitors, there would be fewer people to patronize local businesses. But with tourists came unsustainable uses of water and land. The marina harbored three times as many boats as it had when Max spent summers there as a child. Increasing home values attracted developers with little regard for maintaining the character of the town and the economy had made it so that developers were the only ones with pockets deep enough to buy. When he was away, it was easy for Max to bury himself in his work—to forget everything except what was happening right in front of him. But each time he came home, the town seemed worse for wear.

  It was hard, being gone. He didn’t like that no one had told him about Ed’s heart attack. It confirmed his general suspicion that there were things he shouldn’t be missing back home. When he was away, he checked diligently for messages but never felt in the loop. He couldn’t shake the thought that the place he cared about most was drifting away.

  His visit to Jake’s daughter Evie didn’t help his mood. She had a serious sinus infection. Jake’s wife, Rachel, had been right to be worried sick. Max called in a prescription for a strong antibiotic and sweet-talked Kelly down at the pharmacy to have it delivered within the hour. Max put on a reassuring face for Evie, but Rachel had known him long enough to see that he was thoroughly pissed off.

  “It’s not sustainable,” Max said tersely as she walked him to his car. “A doctor who only comes two times a week?”

  What he wouldn’t scare her with was the truth of how sick Evie was. If that infection had waited, it could’ve gotten bad.

  Rachel crossed her arms and shook her head. “Dee Moran is shitting bricks. She’s thirty-eight weeks along with number three. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do if she goes into labor on a day when that doctor isn’t in the office.”

  Max swept a hand over his face. “Tell her to give me a call.”

  Half an hour later, Max held a stethoscope to Ed Fletcher’s chest. For twenty minutes, he’d grilled the older man about his condition. Max had wanted to know the details of the surgery, the cardiologist’s prognosis, and whether Ed had been taking his meds. Between the way Ed was busting his chops, and strong vitals, Max was confident that Ed would recover. But the man was pushing seventy, and Jake’s take on the matter had been right—Ed was in no condition to return to medicine.

  “You know you’re a plastic surgeon, right?” Ed groused as Max jotted down notes.

  “Out there, I’m a little bit of everything. It’s different in the field.”

  Max’s scheduled surgeries were for those who needed cosmetic work. In order to be seen in the non-profit’s pop-up clinics, patients traveled for miles. But with them came family members and a litany of unaddressed ailments, many more serious than the surgery at hand. Max may have been board certified in plastic surgery, but over there the lines were blurred. He’d had to be everything from a general practitioner, to an OB/GYN, to an ER doc. He’d treated whoever came through his door.

  “I remember,” Ed replied so grimly that Max looked up. “Before you were even a twinkle in your daddy’s eye, kid, I was a medic in Vietnam.”

  Ed’s sharp gaze told Max that the older man knew something of what he’d seen.

  “Where were you this last time?” Ed asked.

  “Bangladesh.”

  “What’d you see?”

  Max flexed his jaw. “Too much.”

  Ed laid back in his bed. Max put down his notebook, pulled the stethoscope from around his neck and replaced it in his bag. He wanted to talk about it. He didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to forget it all.

  “You figure it out yet?” Ed asked gruffly.

  “How not to let it get to me?”

  “No, son. How to walk away.”

  Max shook his head.

  “Well, think about it. That’s not the kind of job you do for the rest of your life. And out there’s not the only place you’re needed.”

  Ed’s unspoken words held thickly in the air.

  You’re needed here.

  “These are turning out really well,” Cella praised from where she sat at Max’s kitchen table, scrutinizing the screen of her laptop. The click of Max’s shutter continued as she spoke. His camera was set up on a tripod and a long cord was feeding her the shots he was taking of a finished plate of gnocchi. Spaced across the raised part of his kitchen bar were other shots they’d set up of the uncooked pasta in various stages of prep.

  “The light’s doing all the work,” Max murmured, still bent over his camera. He’d removed the stools from in front of that expanse of countertop, which was aligned in parallel to the glass wall that ran the length of the kitchen. It opened to his patio and gave the room a wonderful view of the sea. The light at that hour was so ideal that they’d rushed through cooking so they could get some good shots. He was playing with composition in order to give her options.

  “I think we’ve got it. Come see.” He took just a couple more before rising to his full height and strode over to check out his work.

  With his hand on the back of the chair, he bent over to get a better look at what she was seeing. For the third time that hour, her phone buzzed its way across the table. For the third time that hour, she pressed the red button on the screen to ignore the call. Navigating to a dozen or so of her favorites, she scrolled through slowly, and they debated the merits of this one vs. that as they picked their final four.

  “Need a break?” She pushed a plate of arancini toward him after they’d made their picks and motioned for him to join her.

  Max enjoyed the way she said it. Her eyes were alight with teasing, and he knew why. This process was intense. They’d spent another full morning on pasta, painstakingly testing more combinations. They would spend the afternoon on polenta, which was more common in Northern Italy, and if they had time, they’d get to risotto.

  “I may be out of practice, but I’ve got stamina.” He winked and picked up the proffered snack. “Besides, as chefs go, you’re a pretty easy boss.”

  “We are notorious assholes,” she readily agreed. “Did you ever hear how, at The Topiary, they had to remodel the kitchen?”

  The Topiary was a top-rated New York restaurant with Robert Mueller at the helm. Max knew the chef had a reputation.

  “Rob screamed so loudly at the staff they had to reverse engineer the open kitchen and build walls,” she continued. “And he’s not even the worst. You know Avery? Total pussycat on TV. But I’ve worked in his kitchen. The man is a rabid lion.”

  “So what are you like? You know, when you’re not managing amateurs?”

  He smiled impishly and she just shrugged.

  “I take charge. A lot of it comes down to choosing staff who doesn’t think the person they should listen to is the one with the loudest bark and the biggest penis.”

  “I get that,” he commiserated. “At home, Aunt Alex was made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but when it was go-time at the restaurant, she was a force to be reckoned with. Working under a strong chef is a lesson in grace under pressure.”

  He plucked up another arancino.

  “It’s no small tragedy that you never went into cooking, Max. You bend over backwards to call yourself an amateur, but you’re better than you realize.”

  He didn’t let her see how her comment affected him, didn’t mention the ache that formed in his stomach from the recollection of his aunt telling him the same thing. He also didn’t tell her that he had tried to go pro. The relaunch of Piccarelli’s in the wake of his aunt’s death had been a no-go of a disaster. On the eve of the re-opening, he’d attempted a dry-run with a dining room half-filled with regulars and friends. It had been his moment, and Max had completely choked.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, Ms. Dawes.” Max pushed away the memory that haunted him.

  Cella’s phone chose that moment to buzz yet again, and some darkness of her own clouded her eyes. This time she picked it up a
nd rose to her feet, moving to take the call outside.

  “One day, you’re going to tell me the real reason why you didn’t become a chef.”

  6 The Pesto

  “This is really fucking with my vacation,” Cella groused as soon as she saw Liz’s image come up on her computer screen. It was nearly noon in Italy, and she’d hung up from lamenting her sob story about Kevin to Gianna a few minutes before. Gianna had been in this business so long, she’d seen every bit of ugliness twice. She was also of the mind that Cella should save herself the heartburn, and sue.

  Instead of enjoying the sunrise, Cella was sitting at her kitchen counter in her pajamas, convening with Liz for a few minutes before her attorneys would join them on the video call they’d scheduled after a fraught conversation the day before. The other times the attorneys had proposed would have forced her to stop cooking in the middle of the day to take the meeting. But the frustration of the call itself would take her out of her happy place. Cella didn’t cook well when she couldn’t stay in the flow.

  “How’s the cookbook coming along?” Liz looked even less enthused than Cella about the early hour.

  “Really well, actually.” Cella perked up. “The guy who’s helping me is a total pro. He’s better than a lot of the chefs I just spent time with in Siena. Did I tell you he’s doing the photography? Here, lemme send you some of the shots.”

  Putting her coffee cup down, Cella navigated to her backup folder in the cloud and quickly grabbed a link to message over to Liz. When she navigated back to the video screen that would let her see Liz’s face, she could see that her manager’s gaze was focused on clicking through. As Liz’s head nodded in satisfaction, Cella resisted the urge to utter something that sounded like ‘I told you so’.

  “These are good,” Liz admitted. “So this guy’s a photographer?”

  “A plastic surgeon.”

  “Where does he find the time to help you? Shouldn’t he be in surgery or something?”

  “He works for one of those non-profits that takes doctors overseas to help patients in the third world. This is his vacation. In another few weeks, he’ll ship back out.”

  “Sounds like a swell guy,” Liz said a bit drily, still clicking around on her computer. “And pretty hot, too.”

  “You had him checked out?” Cella scoffed.

  “No. But there’s this new thing called Google. And it lets you do an image search. Max Piccarelli isn’t a common name.”

  “You’re completely insane.”

  “I’m covering your ass.”

  “For the love of God, Liz, it’s a cookbook.”

  “Don’t catch anything from this guy.” Liz was looking back at the camera now, and sternly. “And I don’t mean Tuberculosis.”

  The attorneys chose that second to come online. Even if they hadn’t, Cella wouldn’t have gratified Liz with a response. She didn’t want to invite Liz farther into the issue, and the woman was entirely too observant. If she wasn’t careful, Cella was likely to give away her tiny crush on Max.

  “Thanks for meeting with us at such an early hour,” a young attorney named Piper said as if it were they who were inconveniencing her. “Our attempts to negotiate with Mr. LaRue’s legal team after our call yesterday did not go well.”

  All of the lawyers were sitting in the same room, sharing the same wide angle camera. An older man sitting next to Piper chose that moment to chime in. David Webb was the founding partner and, as such, liked to show his face and make sure his big clients got the feeling they were getting the benefit of his experience. Cella had no doubt that it was Piper who did all the work.

  “Officially, negotiations are still in play. They make demands. We counter. The cycle goes on and on.”

  “And, unofficially?” Cella asked.

  “We think there may be another plan. Our investigator found suspicious activity.”

  Cella frowned. “Suspicious?”

  “Other business dealings gone wrong and cases settled out of court. He may have legal reasons to start fresh in LA. For one thing, he’s been banned from obtaining a liquor license in New York.”

  “Doesn’t that make my case stronger?”

  “If it were to play out in court, yes, but now that the IRS is after him, he might not have that long. We’re guessing the reason why he’s playing hardball with you is because he’s got big debts. He figures you’ve got the money, and that if he rides you hard enough, you’ll break.”

  “I’m sorry…” Cella shook her head. “What is it that you’re suggesting?”

  “We’re saying he’s probably not going to take a reasonable deal. There are only two ways he can get out of this: open the restaurant and prove to the IRS that he can pay them back from the proceeds, or get whatever sale price he wants out of you.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the group. Liz was uncommonly quiet.

  “Well, it’s obvious that I can’t be connected to the restaurant in any way.” Cella broke the silence. “I know we’d mutually agreed not to play up the split in the media, but if he won’t negotiate, we have to sue.”

  “Suing him solves nothing,” Liz finally piped in. ““Whoever said there's no such thing as bad publicity was full of shit. Look at Tiger Woods. By the time he slept off his hangover, all of his endorsement deals were gone.”

  “Liz.” Cella shifted her eyes to regard the small square on her screen that showed the video of her agent. “I didn’t get a DUI. I'm pulling out of a restaurant deal. People will get over it. And they'll definitely know the difference.”

  “Winning in court won’t be a victory if it costs you everything else. The reputational impacts alone will put all your other contracts in jeopardy.”

  Liz may have been overstating the threat, but she wasn’t wrong. Any sort of public scandal gave Cella’s publisher and her network, among others, grounds to pull the plug on their deals.

  “What do you think?” Cella looked in at the room full of lawyers.

  “We agree that you should cut ties with him as quickly as possible.” It came from Mr. Webb. “The more desperate he gets to solve his own financial problems, the harder negotiations will be.”

  “So I settle for more than my stake is worth.”

  “It’s the fastest way to get out of this.”

  Cella put on her tough negotiator face. “So get me a price. Let’s get this settled within the week.”

  Cella wanted to look nice. But she didn’t want to think about the part of her that cared about looking pretty for Max. The shapeless pants and ill-fitting tokes that made up the chef’s uniform were unflattering and she’d gladly left her cooking clothes at home. It was a rare luxury, to wear her own things rather than those chosen by some wardrobe manager on a television set. Some of the blouses and skirts she’d picked up here and there still had tags. For their third day in the kitchen, she chose a simple white linen peasant top with loose shoulders and colorful details, and a green linen skirt in a shade close to that of one of the colors in the shirt’s threaded trim.

  “Three cups,” Max said definitively, three hours into their first day on sauces.

  “Two.”

  “Two and seven-eighths,” he argued back.

  They’d been cooking all morning and agreed on everything else, but had been stuck on proportions for the pesto recipe for a good fifteen minutes.

  “Two.”

  “Two and three-quarters.” He pinned her with an intense look that felt gratifying in its familiarity. It held the passion of other Italian men she knew.

  “Two is plenty.”

  “If God didn’t want us to be happy, he wouldn’t have invented cheese.”

  Max’s proportions were far afield of anything Cella had ever seen in a pesto recipe and she wasn’t used to her assistants standing their ground.

  “It’ll overpower the basil. The flavor is too sharp,” she countered.

  “Nothing is overpowering the basil. Your batch has gone too far on the pine nuts.”

&nbs
p; She didn’t tell him he had a point.

  “Here. Taste it again.” He dipped the spoon he had just eaten from in his sauce, holding his hand under it to stop drips from reaching her clothing as he slid it into her mouth.

  God, that’s good.

  When they’d discovered how much their own recipes differed they’d made two. When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her with a mixture of righteous indignation and amusement.

  “My pesto just made you moan.”

  “I did not moan.”

  “Yes, you did. And now you’re blushing.”

  Her face growing even hotter did nothing to help her situation.

  “Do you know why Piccarelli’s was so popular? Because we didn’t go by the book. We went with our gut. We went with what tasted good.”

  She put down her pencil, giving up on the recipe for then.

  “I’ll admit it. Your sauce is amazing. But it’s not a classic representation of the dish. I can’t say I’m writing a book about classic Italian cooking if I go this far off-script.”

  “Real Italian cooking doesn’t have a script. You don’t have to go by the book if you’re the one writing it.”

  Cella turned back to her recipe. She’d jotted it down herself in Siena not two weeks before. At the time, she had thought it perfect. But Max’s was better. Was it possible she’d written down the recipe wrong?

  “If people complain about the pesto recipe, I’m blaming you,” Cella issued the mock warning with a stern look and a playful tone. But something nagged at her. She wasn’t too proud to learn from him. But his ease of intuition hit close to home. It was rare that Cella cooked intuitively anymore. Every word of Max’s advice played on fears that kowtowing to her publishers was making her lose her touch.

  Max leaned against the counter and crossed his arms, his handsome face melting into a satisfied smirk. “And if they rave about it, you know where to send my share of the royalties.”