All Stirred Up

by Brianne Moore

  “You could maybe bring down the smokiness a bit,” the chef suggests.

  “No, I love that! Don’t change a thing,” the presenter counters.

  “Ah, to each his own!” The chef laughs, eating a few more of the chips. “It’s an excellent dish, though I’d say maybe choose between either the soufflé or the chips. Having both tips it a little to the heavy side.”

  “Noted. Ready for pudding?” Gloria asks, stepping back so Susan can present.

  “Our take on a rhubarb and custard,” Susan announces. “Rhubarb sorbet on the bottom, topped with whipped custard and a candied rhubarb sweet.”

  It’s served in small egg-shaped glasses, so you can see the layers: bright pink sorbet on the bottom, rich lemon-yellow custard, whipped to airy delicacy, topped with a wafer-thin, jewel-like disc of rhubarb that’s been roasted, pressed flat, and encased in rhubarb-flavored praline.

  The chef takes two bites of it, then sits back, sighs, and looks at his plate for a while. Susan feels like melting into the floor. He hates it! What went wrong? Is it too simple? She worried about that. Maybe she should have done a tart or a mille-feuille.

  “This tastes of summer,” the chef says at last. “Every bit of it is delightful and delicious—it’s so light and airy and enjoyable.”

  “I totally agree,” says the presenter. “It’s the perfect follow-up to something as heavy as those ribs, and the flavors remind me of rhubarb and custard sweets, which really takes me back.”

  “Yeah, me too.” The blogger nods. “Raiding the sweet shop after school.”

  “Which was what—just last week for you?” the presenter kids him. “It’s lovely, thank you,” she says to Susan, who’s practically exploding from the praise.

  As Susan turns away from the judges, she catches Chris’s eye and beams, so caught up in the moment the smile bursts forth naturally, the way it used to. To her shock, he stares back at her with a look she remembers well from those days long past. It was an astonishing look that always made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. But that’s silly, she thinks, because she knows she’s flushed and sweaty, and her hair is frizzy from the humidity. Still, his expression makes her blush and stumble as she follows Gloria back to their table.

  The judges confer for what feels like a very long time while the chefs pack up their supplies and tidy their stations. The crowd grows restless, now there’s no action to divert them.

  Chris calls to Gloria, “Do you have any of those ribs left over?”

  “Only if you’ve got some of that pasta,” she answers.

  “It’s a deal.” He scoops the last of the kimchi pasta into a pair of bowls and delivers it to Gloria and Susan, who obligingly hand over two servings of ribs and a pudding.

  “You want any?” Susan asks Joe and Dan.

  “We’re fine,” comes Dan’s clipped response.

  Susan shrugs and digs into her bowl. It’s amazing. The delicate pasta seems to dissolve soon after it hits her tongue, melding with the salty-spicy sauce. The crunch of the cabbage and carrots keep the whole thing from feeling like mush.

  “Did you do this?” she asks Rab in between bites.

  “Oh, um, I—” He ducks his head, looking anywhere but directly at her, shying toward the side of his birthmark, as if trying to hide it, “I didn’t come up with the idea, but yeah, I made it.”

  “It was your idea,” Chris counters. He turns to Susan and explains, “He mixed kimchi with some rice noodles for family dinner and everyone devoured it, so I told him to keep at it and see what other pasta shapes he could do. He’s got the touch, this lad.”

  “You do,” Susan agrees, patting Rab on the arm. “It’s amazing!”

  Rab finally looks up at her, as if astonished to receive praise. She smiles warmly, and Chris suddenly says, “Can I ask you something?”

  “All right, everyone, we have our results!” Barbara announces, bounding back onto the stage. Susan finds herself unexpectedly contemplating actual bodily harm at the interruption. It’s not as if she’s short on weapons.

  “After,” she murmurs to Chris, who nods and returns to his station with Rab.

  “Right, this was a close one, everybody. Really, really close,” Barbara continues. “But one team has prevailed. Second runner up, scoring seventy-five out of one hundred points, is … Team Escape!”

  Dan and Joe try hard to look pleased.

  “Escape? That’s what they named their restaurant?” Gloria shakes her head, laughing.

  “And in second place, with eighty-seven out of one hundred points, it’s … Team Seòin!”

  Susan freezes, even as Chris claps Rab on the back, nodding, looking as happy as if they’d won. But they didn’t win. She and Gloria did. They’ve done it!

  “Which means the winner, by two points, is Team Elliot!”

  Gloria shrieks and throws her arms around Susan’s neck, then drags her to the center of the stage, where Barbara and the judges are gathered with their trophy: a glass plate inscribed “Foodies Festival Cook-Off.” Susan is still too stunned to do much more than smile automatically and shake hands. She manages to notice Chris and Rab applauding, and some of her family standing and cheering, while the others (Julia, her father) keep their enthusiasm to a minimum.

  She stumbles back to their station, clutching the plate, as the crowd streams out of the tent. A few women fight their way to the front so they can ask Chris to take selfies with them; he obliges, of course. And then Susan looks up and suddenly Chris is there, saying, “Well deserved. I’m glad you decided to stay now.”

  “Yeah, so are we,” Gloria responds, taking the plate from Susan and grinning at it. “Would it be crass to put this on the wall at the restaurant?”

  “You mind if I ask you something?” Chris asks Susan again.

  “No, of course not.” Her heart begins to speed up.

  “Well, it’s—it’s about Rab.” He glances toward the boy, who’s still clearing away a few things at their station.

  “Oh.” Susan tries not to sound as disappointed as she feels. But, really, what was she expecting? A date? A confession of love? She knows that ship has sailed. Sunk, really.

  “He wants to learn pastry,” Chris goes on, “but my pastry chef—well, he’s not the best teacher. I was wondering if you might …” He trails off as he looks at her. He must sense her distancing herself just a little, to hide her unexpected disappointment. “Forget it, you’re too busy,” he finishes briskly, stepping back.

  “No! No, sorry, I’m just a little out of it still from all this.” She chuckles awkwardly and gestures to the stage. She is too busy, but she finds herself looking at Rab, who glances up and smiles at her, suddenly not so shy, and she looks back at Chris, who seems to be pleading, and finds herself saying, “I can make time.”

  Chris looks relieved and waves Rab over. “Rab,” he announces, “Susan is going to teach you how to do pastry. Make sure she shows you how to do those brownies of hers.”

  “Ah no, that’s a family recipe,” says Susan. “You’ll have to marry me to get it.”

  What did I just say? Susan’s so horrified, she cringes.

  Gloria laughs and announces, “The gauntlet has been thrown, Chris!”

  Thank God, Susan’s family chooses that moment to make their way to the stage. Most of them anyway: William and the boys have long since disappeared.

  Kay throws her arms around her niece. “Oh, Susan! Your mother and grandfather would be so proud. Well done, you!”

  “Yes, well done, my dear. Knew you could do it!” Bernard drops a kiss on his daughter’s flushed cheek.

  “That’ll be some nice publicity,” Julia comments. She turns to Chris and adds in a cool tone, “Congratulations to you too, on today and the restaurant.”

  “Thank you,” he says, sounding surprised at receiving a compliment from her.

  Susan can’t help but notice the way her father purses his lips and only barely manages to give Chris a curt nod.

&n
bsp; “Sorry, the boys got bored,” Meg explains. “William took them to play in the sand pit near the beer garden. It’s nice, this festival, isn’t it? I didn’t really know what to expect—we’re forever getting people from Pilton down to this park, and I was afraid there’d be loads of them here today, but I suppose charging admission really helps.”

  “Eat this, Meg,” Susan says hurriedly, shoving a spare pudding into her sister’s hand. She notices Rab ducking his head again, and Chris is looking daggers at her sister.

  “Is this vegan?” Meg asks, examining it.

  “Yes, Meg, it’s a vegan custard,” Julia says dryly, looking up from a text she’s drafting just long enough to roll her eyes.

  “Such things do exist, you know!” Meg huffs. “Have I told you I’m going pesce-vegan?” she says to Susan, spooning up a bit of the custard. “I’m totally vegan, except I still eat fish. And sausage. And bacon.”

  “Meg, darling, I really must buy you a dictionary for your birthday,” Kay says before turning to Chris. She gives him an icy appraisal, then extends her hand. “I must congratulate you on your new restaurant, Mr. Baker. I hear it’s doing very well. And you are looking quite well. Much better than the last time I saw you.”

  Chris’s mouth tightens as he takes her hand, clamping down a little harder than is necessary. “Thank you. I hear your play is going to be quite something. Seems you’ve found your niche, playing a woman destroying her own family. I wish you well with it.”

  She smiles in a way that suggests she’d love to do him violence. Susan notices Rufus hovering nearby, taking it all in. In a bid to distract everyone, she says to Chris, “Let me give you my number—Kay, do you have a pen?” She scrabbles for a slip of paper, tearing one off the edge of one of Gloria’s prep checklists. “Just send me a text or phone me to make arrangements for Rab.” She nods in the direction of the boy, and everyone glances his way. He notices and blushes at the attention, fumbling a box he’s holding and tipping ingredients all over the table, which makes Susan feel terrible. So does Bernard’s whispered “Good God” at the sight of the boy’s birthmark.

  “Gracious, Susan, how in demand you are!” Kay declares. “A date with Philip tomorrow, and this as well.”

  Susan blushes as dark as Rab. “It’s not a date,” she insists as Julia’s head snaps up from her phone so she can demand, “Philip? Not Philip Simms?”

  “Philip Simms? Really? You kept that quiet, you sly thing,” Gloria laughs, clapping Susan on the back.

  Rufus is practically drunk on this.

  “It’s not a date. He just wants to see the city,” Susan repeats, seeing Chris draw away.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he says, turning his back on her and going to help Rab.

  “Call it what you will. You young people don’t ‘date’ anymore, do you? There’ll be some other term for it,” Kay purrs. “Come on, celebratory glass of champagne in the VIP tent, eh? You too, Gloria, of course.”

  “Thank you,” says Gloria.

  “Susan? You coming?” Kay beckons her niece from the door of the tent.

  “Yes,” Susan answers, slinking after them, wondering how she’s gone from elated to deflated in roughly the amount of time it took her sorbet to melt.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Water, Wander, Wonder

  Reluctant as she is to admit it, seeing Philip the next day definitely lifts Susan’s mood. It’s hard to be glum when a beautiful man is standing on your doorstep with flowers.

  “I hear congratulations are in order.” He proffers a bouquet of gerbera daisies. “Kay said you blew the competition out of the water.”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Susan demurs, accepting the flowers with a grateful smile. “It was actually fairly close.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m going to stand you a celebratory drink. Or cake. Your choice.”

  “Let’s see how we feel after our walk,” Susan suggests. “A wander along the Waters of Leith?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Susan turns and sees Julia standing behind her, wearing a bright, false smile.

  “Hello,” she says to Philip. “Didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

  “Here I am,” he says unnecessarily with a self-deprecating grin and a spread of his hands. “You can’t get rid of me. I just keep cropping up.”

  “Mmm, like a stinging nettle or athlete’s foot.” Julia gestures to the flowers. “Would you like me to put those in water for you?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Susan hands them off and steers Philip back out the door, wondering if she’ll return to a vase filled with nothing but decapitated stems.

  “She seems … nice,” Philip offers.

  “She can be if she’s handled properly.”

  “She sounds like my ex, then.” He chuckles as they cross Queensferry Road and wind down into Dean Village, a quaint collection of old stone mill buildings clustered around the glittering, gushing Waters of Leith. “I’ve decided I’m done with high-maintenance girls.”

  “Oh?”

  “God, yes. No more actresses for me. The demands! The constant need for attention! And the scheduling challenges! My last girlfriend—we dated each other for over a year but were only actually in the same place together for a total of three weeks. That’s three weeks spread out over an entire year. I added it up. She was shooting in South Africa while I was doing a play in London, and then I was shooting in Croatia while she was doing a promotional tour in Asia. We only really saw each other at awards ceremonies, and you’re always on show at those things, so that wasn’t, you know, real.” He shrugs. “I probably could have handled things better with her. But screwing things up now and again is how we learn, right?”

  “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

  They pass St. Bernard’s Well, a circular temple with a statue of Hygieia built over a natural spring that was once said to cure everything from bruises to blindness. They pause to look at it, and Susan can’t help but notice a few people glancing twice at them as they pass. She knows they’re wondering: “Is that the guy? No, surely not; what would he be doing here?” They almost certainly aren’t looking at her, but all the same, she feels conspicuous and suggests to Philip they move on.

  They pass through Stockbridge and pick up the path just opposite Inverleith Park.

  “Tell me about the play,” she suggests.

  “Sure. What do you want to know? Your aunt’s brilliant, of course. You know, I took the role because she was going to be in it. I mean, a chance to work with Kay Ashland? You’d have to be crazy to pass that up.”

  “Even if it means poking your own eyes out on a nightly basis?”

  “Totally worth it!”

  Susan laughs.

  They pass the rest of the walk with anecdotes, mostly his. He talks about the play and the behind-the-scenes mishaps, which leads to more stories of trip-ups hidden from audiences past: a memorable tour with the Cambridge Footlights where the costumes were forgotten, so they had to improvise with bedsheets in a performance of Julius Caesar. A film where, on the last day of shooting some complicated action sequences, the actor playing the villain showed up drunk, which led to some very interesting ad-libbing and almost cost a stuntman his left arm and the director the last, frayed bits of his sanity. A famous actress’s insane beauty rituals, which were apparently based on Joan Crawford’s, “but dialed up to eleven.” An entire film crew sent to a different island than the actors (“At least I had time to get a tan!”) and an actor who threw a fit and held up production for nearly a month when he discovered his trailer was four inches smaller than Philip’s.

  “I mean, I offered to trade with him, of course, because who cares about something like that? But apparently it was the principle of the thing.” Philip rolls his eyes. “Film actors can be so crazy. Give me theater folk any day. They can be divas, but in the end I find we all pull together. It’s the art that matters. Films are so much about ego.”

  “Everything’s about ego,” s
ays Susan, trying to ignore two girls openly staring at them, whispering to each other and pulling out their phones. “We all assume that everyone cares about every little tiny thing we do.”

  “Except you, it seems,” says Philip. “Kay tells me you don’t even do social media.”

  “I don’t have time, and who cares what I’m up to?” Susan shrugs. “I probably should do more of it, for the business’s sake. Start up an Instagram account and post glorious pictures of artfully arranged butter and wooden spoons. But again, I don’t have time for that.”

  “That’s why most people hire someone to do that kind of thing for them. Even I outsource it sometimes.”

  “Really? Philip Simms’s famously hilarious Twitter account is outsourced?” She pulls an exaggerated shocked face. “See, now I have to start up a social media account because I actually have something to report!”

  “It’s not all outsourced.” He laughs. “I promise, some of it’s me. The funniest bits, of course. But when I’m deep into filming or doing a play, I just don’t have time for funny little comments. So, I’ve got this nice twenty-two-year-old kid who does it for me. He works with a lot of well-known actors; it’s his full-time gig. Pulls down more than six figures a year doing it.”

  Susan shakes her head. “We’re all in the wrong business. Well,” she amends, “you’re not. But the rest of us, shuddering along, trying to pull in our average twenty-six thousand pounds sure are.”

  “Never too late to reinvent.”

  “Yes it is. Nobody wants to hire a thirty-something to craft their tweets. All we’d come up with is complaints about the council tax going up or the people next door having more than six people over and it’s after eleven on a Friday night, and OMG, what are they thinking? This is the boring age.”

  “Only if you let it be. I don’t feel particularly boring.”

  “Yes, but you’re famous, and that makes you an exception to the rule. You and your life are glamorous.”

  “You don’t need glam to be interesting. I feel like you’re proof of that.” He cringes, even as Susan bursts out laughing. “I’m so sorry; that came out totally wrong!”