Simmer Down
A Gourmet Girl Mystery
To Meg and Kristen
Praise for the Gourmet Girl Mysteries
“Mystery lovers know a champion when they see one.” —Carolyn G. Hart, author of Death on Demand
Steamed
“All the right ingredients—fresh characters, a dash of humor, and a sizzling romance.” —Elaine Viets
“This delectable collaboration between Jessica Conant-Park and her mother, Susan Conant, author of the Cat Lover’s and the Dog Lover’s mystery series, introduces an appealing heroine.… This scrumptious cozy, the first of a new series, has it all—charming characters, sappy dialogue, and mouth-watering recipes.” —Publishers Weekly
“Famous writer of mysteries involving cats and dogs, Susan Conant teams up with her daughter to write a refreshingly charming chick-lit mystery.… There’s no doubt about it—this is the start of a great new series.” —Midwest Book Review
“Steamed is a gem. It grabs you from the start, as the heroine is witty, down-to-earth, and rolls with the punches. Great competition to anything Diane Mott Davidson has ever offered. Top this winning combination off with some decadent sounding recipes and I can guarantee Steamed will be topping the bestseller list in no time.” —Roundtable Reviews
Simmer Down
“This is a fun Gourmet Girl Mystery.… Readers will enjoy the heroine’s escapades as she risks her life to uncover the identity of a killer. The mother-daughter team provides the audience with a delicious chick-lit cozy filled with lists, recipes, and asides as Chloe takes on Beantown.” —The Best Reviews
“A heaping helping of simmering suspense and just plain fun … Deliciously delightful!” —Alesia Holliday, author of Blondes Have More Felons
“Packed with delicious recipes … the Gourmet Girl Mysteries have quickly become one of my favorite culinary mystery series.” —Roundtable Reviews
“Enjoyable … A pleasant blend of romance, food, and mystery.” —New Mystery Reader
“The writing is breezy yet polished, the plotting adept, the overall tone funny without trying too hard.… The Josh-Chloe pairing is perfect—he loves to cook and she loves to eat.” —Cozy Library
“A delicious new series with engaging characters, a unique pet, a fascinating milieu, the right touch of romance, and lots of fantastic food and recipes—what more could any mystery reader want?!” —The Romance Readers Connection
“The talented authors Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant have created a pleasant blend of romance, food, and mystery. Any fan of romance or mystery will find it an enjoyable read with lots of recipes included. Enjoy.” —New Mystery Reader
Turn Up the Heat
“A delectable treat of a mystery.” —Michele Scott, author of the Wine Lover’s Mysteries
“A delicious murder complete with a sprinkle of betrayal, a generous dash of suspicion, and more than a pinch of danger.” —Leann Sweeney, author of the Yellow Rose Mysteries
“Combines a nicely detailed Back Bay setting with plenty of insights into the restaurant business … Recommend this one to fans of foodie crime.” —Booklist
“The authors serve up another delectable dish of detection.” —Publishers Weekly
“Spiced with mystery, romance, and recipes.” —Kirkus Reviews
Fed Up
“Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant turn up the heat … and cook up another winner! Take a pinch of poison, a heaping spoonful of intrigue, and a dash of romance. Then toss them all into a pressure cooker of a reality cooking show, and the result is another delicious read. You won’t want to miss a bite of this delectable mystery!” —Karen MacInerney, author of the Agatha Award–nominated Gray Whale Inn Mysteries
“Fed Up is the wonderful fourth entry in the Gourmet Girl series, and this reviewer’s favorite so far—and I’ve loved them all. Highly recommended to the discriminating connoisseur of cozy mysteries!” —The Romance Readers Connection
“A pleasant cozy so packed with food tips and appended recipes that it could cause a food frenzy.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Recipes, some by pro chefs, round out this delectable chick-lit cozy, which ends on an emotional cliff-hanger for Chloe.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“Reading Fed Up is like having a four-course meal at a gourmet restaurant. This scrumptious read offers up a mélange of humor and intrigue, including a culinary-based reality TV show gone horribly wrong and a zany wedding scene that will have readers bubbling over with laughter. Prepare to be treated to a cliffhanger ending and recipes that will leave you hungry for more of Gourmet Girl’s antics.” —J.B. Stanley, author of The Battered Body
Cook the Books
“A truly scrumptious mystery that gives readers a glimpse at the dark side of the restaurant business with its bang-bang cutthroat competition as Chloe finds a horde of suspects with strong motives.” —The Best Reviews
“This mystery will make you stand up and take notice.… If you like books with a twisting plot, an unexpected ending, and some goodies added in, this book is for you.” —The Romance Readers Connection
“Another exciting adventure … An enjoyable, suspense-filled story with a healthy helping of humor for their readers to enjoy.” —Fresh Fiction
“Intriguing. And don’t forget the scrumptious recipes at the end!” —Roundtable Reviews
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Endless thanks to Alexa Lewis and David Grumblatt for their tremendous help with proofreading and to Bill Park for his wonderful recipes. We are also grateful to our wonderful editor, Natalee Rosenstein, and to Michelle Vega.
ONE
I hate the week after Christmas.
Or I used to, anyway. When I was growing up, I kept trying to convince my Protestant family that we were Jewish and consequently had to celebrate Hanukkah for a full week instead of Christmas for one short evening and a single all-too-brief day. But this year, I, Chloe Carter, have an actual boyfriend, and everything has changed for the better—even my post-Christmas blues. Now, on December 27, I was not, for once, bemoaning the end of carol singing, and it didn’t bother me at all that I’d have to wait almost twelve months to tear through my presents like a six-year-old and then finish off every Christmas cookie in sight. On the contrary, I was brimming with excitement at the prospect of spending New Year’s Eve with my boyfriend.
So, in the midafternoon, I was seated at my kitchen table pretending to concentrate on work for my social work school internship while actually being distracted by my gorgeous Josh, who was busy cooking. How I got lucky enough to find a chef as the love of my life, I don’t know. What could be better than good food and good sex all rolled into one? Well, not “rolled into one” in the sense that we were smearing food all over each other as foreplay. I mean, ewww! How gross. If I have to watch one more B movie with couples seducing each other with strawberries and whipped cream, or licking champagne off each other, or wagging their tongues in the auto catch dangled tidbits of food, I think I might gag. Still, there’s no denying the food-love link.
I could seriously stare at Josh for hours while he cooked; he was so focused and serious and skilled and … well, so cute, besides. I couldn’t get enough of his dirty-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and slim build. And he was loving and funny and loyal. We’d been together only since September, but we were already spending most nights with each other, usually at my place. The apartment he shared with his roommate, Stein, was, like most apartments inhabited by heterosexual males, messy and filthy. Discarded chefs’ clothes were everywhere, and unidentifiable odors emanated from dark corners. With some justification, Josh and Stein blamed the state of their living quarters on chefs’ hours; in fact, neither of them was ever home for long. Whatever the reason, I seldom went there.
Josh had lost his last chef job right after we’d met and had been struggling to find a new home in which to park his culinary talents. He’d spent the past few months picking up hours by helping out chef friends of his who’d needed him to fill in now and then at restaurant after restaurant. His only steady employment had been at Eagles’ Deli, around the corner from my apartment in Brighton, where he’d been putting in a few days a week. Stein owned the booming deli and always needed the help, so the time Josh put in at Eagles’ gave the best friends and roommates a chance to catch up with each other.
After chasing after every job lead possible, Josh finally hooked up with a man named Gavin Seymour, who was opening his first restaurant, Simmer, on posh Newbury Street, right in the heart of Boston. Gavin knew that if he was going to open a restaurant, he’d need the hottest location possible—and restaurant locations in Boston don’t get much hotter than Newbury Street. So, when the property became available, Gavin jumped right on it and paid what must have been a fortune for the lease. Nestled in the bottom of a brownstone and located among top restaurants and high-end shops, Simmer was strategically set up for success. And with Josh at the helm, there was no way it could fail.
In the three weeks since Josh had accepted the position of executive chef, he had been working more or less normal hours, days only, instead of working until late at night as chefs almost invariably did. Opening a new restaurant was a tremendous amount of work, and Josh had been swamped with hiring a kitchen staff, contacting food purveyors, assisting Gavin and the contractor in remodeling the kitchen, and, most importantly, at least in my book, writing a menu.
I’d been loving his schedule, which meant more time together, but all that was about to change when Simmer opened on New Year’s Eve. For now, though, I’d savor every minute I had with Josh. Technically, I was on winter break from my first year at Boston City Graduate School of Social Work, so I was free to follow Josh around like a lovesick puppy. In fact, although classes had ended, my field placement, as it was called, took no notice of the holidays. Since September I’d been interning at the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace, which I’d taken to calling the Organization, as if we were some sort of Mafia cell. The Organization was headed by my supervisor, Naomi Campbell, who was not, of course, the internationally famous supermodel and, in fact, had only a vague notion of who the other Naomi Campbell was. Naomi failed to find anything amusing about her name or, frankly, about much else. Totally driven to rid the world of harassment, she felt that since harassment didn’t break for the holidays, neither should we. The Organization consisted of Naomi and me plus a bunch of invisible board members who made themselves known only by signing hundreds of petitions and notices that Naomi was forever having me type up. We worked out of a minuscule downtown office, and my primary social work contribution so far had been to address the daily feelings of claustrophobia that came from finding myself trapped in the gloomiest, messiest one-window office in Boston. My other major responsibility was to handle hotline calls from women dealing with office jackasses who thought that attempting to fondle a coworker was acceptable behavior.
Although I completely believed in the work I was doing, Naomi’s extreme dedication and overzealous work ethic grated on me—that and her New Age, hippie, hold-hands-and-tell-me-your-feelings style. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to avoid our morning “staff meetings,” a term that I found ridiculous not only because staff meant Naomi and me, but because meeting meant my being pressured to verbalize some sort of spiritual feeling about what the day would bring. Last week, for example, while gripping my hands in hers, Naomi had closed her eyes and whispered, “Today I will look inside myself to find strength, sensitivity, and courage. I will reach out to my sisters in need and take on their challenges as my own.” Then she’d waited for me to take my turn. I usually snuck in a good eye roll before she opened hers and before I compliantly faked my way through some copycat bullshit.
I liked some of my classes and parts of my internship, but for the most part I was finding that I didn’t fit in with my earnest, do-gooder classmates. I definitely considered myself a liberal, politically correct twenty-something, but I wasn’t all about marching the streets for causes, petitioning against this and that, or engaging in long discussions about oppression and injustice in the world. So far, I’d managed to keep my true character hidden from my peers. In brief, I wasn’t the most devout social work student there was. I blamed my uncle Alan for my being one at all.
When my mother’s brother died a few years ago, his will revealed what I considered to be blackmail; I would receive an inheritance only if I completed a graduate program of my choosing. Uncle Alan’s estate would pay for school and give me a monthly stipend distributed by his lawyer, and if and when I earned my degree, I could collect the rest of the money. In other words, Uncle Alan had no confidence in my ability to further my education on my own. Not that I’d actually had any plans of my own ever to poke my head into a classroom again after college, but I wasn’t about to turn down a lucrative opportunity just because of a few insults about my ability to get my act together and find a career. After rifling through piles of graduate school catalogs, I’d narrowed my choices to two different easy-sounding programs: one in social work, the other in performing arts. Since my most recent acting experience had been in elementary school when I’d played Nana the dog in Peter Pan, I’d figured that a career on the stage was out. Plus that snot-nosed Eric Finley had called me Nana until we’d graduated from high school. Who knows? Maybe I would’ve been a brilliant thespian if it hadn’t been for Eric’s tormenting me.
So, social work it was. I was getting through mostly unscathed and enjoying the advantages of a school schedule versus some dreary nine-to-five job. And having a winter break meant that I could sit at home today and admire Josh as he worked on his food. The new restaurant, Simmer, wasn’t quite finished. As of today, there was still no electricity in the kitchen, so Josh had been working out of my condo to test dishes and feed recipes into his laptop. Although I didn’t exactly have a gourmet kitchen, even my small space was better than the eat-in kitchen Josh had at his apartment. By some act of God, I’d been able to convince my landlord, Chuck, that I’d move in only if he installed a garbage disposal and a small dishwasher. Not realizing that he could’ve rented this condo unit to about a million other people for more money, even without the new appliances, he’d agreed. And with Josh cooking out of here, I was even happier than ever to have those two kitchen accessories. He’d been testing a lot of recipes this month. Three or four times a week, he’d come over with bags loaded with beautiful fresh produce, meat and fish wrapped in white butcher’s paper, wine for reducing in sauces (and drinking), fresh pasta sheets, and packages of aromatic herbs. I’d learned that a chef’s grocery shopping looked distinctively different from mine. When Josh shopped for the restaurant, there was nothing frozen or precooked; everything was fresh and raw and gorgeous. Since Gavin was picking up all the shopping costs, Josh spared no expense in buying the highest-quality ingredients he could from specialty shops around the city. And I was a delighted taste tester.
Today, he was not, however, testing recipes but preparing food to serve at the Food for Thought event going on tomorrow night. The annual charity fund-raiser, which was held at Newbury Street art galleries, paired social service agencies with local restaurants. Inside each of the posh galleries, one agency and the restaurant paired with it got to set up a booth to showcase services and food. When Naomi had first brought this event to my attention, my inclination had been to run screaming from something that was going to interfere with my vacation. I quickly realized, though, that Food for Thought was not some bothersome and negligible event; it was a high-class, high-publicity Boston affair and was the perfect opportunity to promote my boyfriend’s talents. Boston magazine always did a piece on it, and local restaurant reviewers would definitely be there. Gavin and Josh were thrilled to be involved, and the timing coincided perfectly with Simmer’s grand opening. It took only a little conniving to have the Organization and Simmer assigned to each other. Our tables were to be featured at the trendy Eliot Davis Gallery, which was just a few doors down from Simmer. Oh, and, yeah, I could help promote the harassment hotline I was in charge of. I keep forgetting that.
I was much more excited about Josh’s end than mine. Naomi was forcing me to learn about “marketing the agency,” as she called it. So far, the activity mostly consisted of her calling me six hundred times a day to see whether I’d finished making idiotic posters and flyers about the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace.
Speaking of which, the phone rang. One peek at caller ID made me sigh.
“Damn Braids, again,” I grumbled, referring to Naomi. She had the misfortune to think that plaiting her four feet of brown hair into zillions of fat braids that poked out of her head was attractive.
“Hi, Naomi,” I said with resignation.
“Hey, there, partner,” she chirped. “How are the materials coming? Are you just about finished?”
I glanced down at the drawing I’d done of a male stick figure trying to fondle a female stick figure. I drew a big X across the image and scrawled ILLEGAL across the top of the page. “Doing great,” I lied while crumpling the paper up and tossing it into the trash. “I’ll e-mail you something at the office later to print out.”
“Wonderful. You know, this is a significant opportunity for us to really get the word out.”
Getting the word out, I’d learned, was hard-core social work jargon. If I wanted to appear studious, I’d need to start tossing it around. I need to get the word out about the sale at Banana Republic! Or maybe, It’s vital to get the word out about salon-quality hair care products!
“Oh, listen,” continued Naomi, oblivious to my daydreaming, “I have one other assignment for you. I want you to work on a list of things in life that cause you to feel anger. This is an exercise that will really help you get in touch with who you are, where your fears and strengths come from, and how you can best work with your clients. When I was in school, my supervisor had me do it, and I found it incredibly enlightening.” I could practically see Naomi’s face suffused with exhilaration at the prospect of my enlightenment.
“I’ll start on that right away,” I said, turning to my laptop and writing:
Anger-Inducing Experiences
by Chloe Carter
1. Being forced to write stupid lists by psychotic
supervisor.
“You know, Chloe, the holidays are a great time of year to do some introspective thinking and get a good look at yourself. Reassess where you are at professionally and personally, and set goals for next term. In fact, I think I’ll do the same assignment I’ve given you to work on. We can compare them in a few days!”
Oh, Naomi, I’m giddy with excitement!
“Before I forget, I got a message on my voice mail at the office that was for you. The woman didn’t leave a name, but I think it was a follow-up call about a sexual harassment issue at her job. You can call into my messages and listen if you want. I think it’s that same woman I’d spoken to a few times before passing her on to you. Remember?”
I had mastered the basics on handling sexual harassment hotline calls, but some of the callers were in really dicey situations, and my limited experience sometimes left me at a dead end when I tried to help. Also, unbeknownst to Naomi, I frequently jumped outside the hotline instruction manual to suggest slightly radical alternatives. In this woman’s case, I think I may have advised her to chomp on garlic-stuffed olives so she could fend off the man harassing her with her stinky breath. That suggestion, as I recalled, hadn’t gone over too well, and I’d transferred the anonymous caller to the thoroughly professional Naomi.
“I think I know who it is.” Naomi sighed. “I’m glad she called back. I’ve been waiting to hear from her. I’ve been working really hard to put a stop to her situation. Totally intolerable, what that young woman is going through.”
I agreed with Naomi. Every time this caller went to work, she faced her asshole boss and his attempts to maul, grab, and pinch any available body part.
“All right,” Naomi continued, “I’m going to go call her back right away. I am taking care of this situation before the year is done. Enough is enough! And I’m going to check in with Eliot Davis at the gallery. Have Josh there by five thirty tomorrow to start setting up, okay?”
I promised that I would, hung up the phone, and went back to staring at Josh, who’d barely spoken for the past two hours. Under normal circumstances Josh could carry on a full-blown conversation while cooking food good enough to make you shake your head in disbelief that you’d managed to live on anything else. Today was different. The food he was making today would be the public’s first taste of his new menu, and the pressure was keeping him quieter than usual.
He was making Parmesan-panko-encrusted beef medallions served on crisp wafers and drizzled with an oregano vinaigrette. Panko, it turns out, is Japanese bread crumbs and not, as I’d feared, some sort of weird plankton. Because he was forced to work out of my little kitchen, Josh was playing it a little safe with this dish. He had wanted to do smoked bluefish with wasabi vinaigrette, but the odds of successfully smoking enough bluefish out of my beat-up oven were pretty bad. The amount of prep work for this beef dish wasn’t too serious, considering that he had to make three hundred servings. Today he would clean and slice the tenderloins into half-inch-thick medallions, make the Parmesan-panko mix, blend up the vinaigrette, and bake herb focaccia, which is, of course, a somewhat flat and totally delicious Italian bread with olive oil drizzled all over the top crust.
“Hey, Red?” Josh was teasing. Every redhead in the world is cursed with the nickname, and he knew that I loathed it. Why do people think that they have the right to address redheads by their hair color? I spent my childhood cringing every time someone asked, “Red, where’d you get your red hair?” My redheaded friend Nancy used to respond, “From under my father’s armpits!” She often shut people up, but I never had the nerve to answer with the same retort.
I smiled at Josh. “Sure, but if you call me Red ever again, I’ll—”
“Could you take the oregano leaves off these stems for me? I need them for the dressing.”
“No problem.” I took a handful of the fresh herbs from his hand, pulled my chair closer to the table, pushed my computer aside, and began plucking leaves. That was fun for all of eight seconds. Then I realized what an excruciatingly annoying job this was.
2. Removing oregano leaves from stems, even when helping hottie boyfriend.
“I want a different job,” I complained.
Josh came closer and peered at my piddling pile of leaves. “Here, hold the end of the stem in one hand, then pinch it between the thumb and forefinger of your other hand, and glide down the stem to pull off the leaves.”
“What about all these little branchy, twiggy things sticking out the side? Nope. Not doing this. Give me another job,” I insisted.
“Some help you are,” Josh teased. “Don’t worry about it. You should probably finish your stuff for the booth tomorrow.” He turned back to his cutting board. “I can’t believe I finally get to meet the infamous Naomi. She definitely sounds unique.”
Images of granola-crunchy Naomi swirling her many brown braids around, engulfing Josh in hugs, and spouting words about peace and love started to give me a headache. I appreciated her gung ho attitude about Josh and me—she was forever telling me about the benefits of having a loving, supportive partner when working in an “emotionally draining field”—but she and Josh were two very different personality types; he didn’t have a Peruvian-knitted-cap bone in his body.
“Yes, well, she’s excited to meet you, too,” I said truthfully. “She asks about you all the time. Actually, I think she might have something romantic going on herself.”
“Really? What makes you say that?” He began to assemble ingredients for the focaccia.
“She’s been sort of giggly and even more high-energy than usual. She hasn’t said anything, but I just have a feeling … maybe it’s that lady who runs that AFL-CIO thing down the hall from us. She’s always coming in to see if Naomi wants a chai tea from the café.”
“Naomi’s gay?” Josh asked.
“Well, I sort of assumed so,” I said. “You know, she’s always talking about women’s rights and drinking weird beverages and ‘forgetting’ to put on a bra.”
Josh laughed. “And that makes her a lesbian?”
“No. I mean, sometimes I drink chai iced teas or those funny smoothies with ginkgo and protein powder.”
“Yeah, and I know you’re not a lesbian,” Josh winked at me. “And you better not let your classmates hear you talking like that. Aren’t you stereotyping or oppressing or labeling or something?”
“True. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Okay, it’s not those things, but I’ve never heard her talk about any men, and she’s always referring to partners and mates and things. Anyway, the point is, I’m getting love vibes from her, and I think she’s got some sort of romance going on.”
Josh came over to me and grinned. “Well, I’m ready for a break, and I’ve got some love vibes going on, too.” He leaned over and nestled his head in my neck, kissing me lightly.
“In that case, I think I’m ready for a break, too.” I smiled and led Josh to the bedroom.
TWO
Love and food. I’d led Josh to bed, but what hauled him out was the focaccia dough, which really needed to be started. He stayed up late that night baking the bread and obsessing about Food for Thought. When I got up at ten on the morning of the twenty-eighth, he was dead asleep, so I tiptoed out of the bedroom and put on a pot of coffee. Fed up with my inability to brew a drinkable cup, Josh had bought me an ultrafancy coffee and espresso machine soon after we’d met. So far, I’d somehow managed not to break it, but success in steaming milk was still beyond me.
The kitchen was a disaster, so I took my coffee to the living room and sat on the couch to go over the material that Naomi and I were going to hand out. I’d finished preparing it only the day before and was convinced that I’d misspelled something or typed an incorrect phone number. Reading and rereading, I came across no catastrophic errors. Naomi had called me last night to say that she was very pleased with my work, was going to have everything photocopied this morning, and would meet me at the gallery around five thirty tonight.
Waiting for Josh to awaken, I took a gulp of coffee and surveyed the living room, which was almost as messy as the kitchen. Holiday cards, wrapping paper, and unwrapped presents were everywhere. I couldn’t stand the thought of tidying up anything Christmassy until January first, at which time everything associated with Christmas would be banished. Especially the tree. Back when I’d been dating my ex-boyfriend, Sean, I’d made the mistake of becoming so attached to my Christmas tree that throughout January and February and into March, it had still been in my living room, the lights and ornaments pitifully dripping from its dry branches. At that point it was simply too embarrassing to be caught hauling the tree down five flights of stairs. In a two a.m. drunken fit, I’d persuaded Sean that in a stealthy manner suitable for Navy SEALS, we’d lug the beast out of the building. Although the building had an elevator, it seemed quicker just to let the tree surf its way down the stairs. Sean, who’d had about twenty-two beers, had been completely game, so we’d grabbed the tree and pushed it down the steps and into the back alley, where Sean had lifted the dried-up Christmas tree and hurled it into the Dumpster. We’d then immediately raced upstairs and swept every single needle from my hallway and the stairs to give the impression that the tree in the Dumpster could have come from anywhere and that I’d certainly had nothing to do with anything so dumb as keeping a tree up until March. This year’s tree would be gone on the first of the year.
But for now, I didn’t mind the Christmas mess and was comfortably seated next to an indoor herb garden that I’d bought for Josh and then decided against giving him because it struck me as a ridiculous present for a chef. On those and other grounds, I’d also become the not-very-proud owner of a handheld stick blender, a two-year subscription to Real Simple, a bundt pan, and a set of see-through panties and bustier that I’d convinced myself were presents for Josh, since he’d get to see me in them. After realizing that the gift of me was disgustingly narcissistic, I had managed to buy something actually for Josh: a really expensive knife from his favorite store, Kitchen Arts. And since most of Josh’s clothing consisted of chef clothes and of logo T-shirts given to him by beer and liquor distributors, I’d bought him a couple of plain pullover shirts that bore no reference to alcohol. As for his presents to me, I’d spent most of December fearing that Josh would give me something awful and corny, like a charm bracelet with miniature pans and spoons hanging from it. But Josh, knowing me as well as he did, got me a monstrous supply of paint rollers, masking tape, trays, and paintbrushes, and a gift certificate to Home Depot, where I could buy all the house paint I’d ever need. Now, this might not sound like a romantic present, but Josh knew that about every three months I repainted my apartment and was too goddamn lazy to wash the brushes or rollers and consequently left them, soaked in paint, to dry out and eventually end up in the trash. I still had an unsightly, crooked stripe painted across one wall of my bedroom, a wall that desperately needed help. Josh was a dream.
He’d also given me one of the Naked Chef cookbooks, a selflessly generous gift because he thought that most celebrity chefs stank. On Josh’s accepted list were Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Hammersley, and Charlie Trotter. Oddly enough, he’d watch entire episodes of Iron Chef with me, but I could wear my Rachael Ray Yum-O T-shirt only in his absence. If he caught me indulging my addiction to the Food Network, his typical comment was, “What are you doing watching that bozo?” As though I were cheating on him by admiring another chef! But if you ask me, the reason he got all pissy about celebrity chefs was jealousy. His profession was highly competitive and underpaid. If Simmer succeeded, he could remain the executive chef there, have good reviews written about him, and maybe earn enough money to pay the bills. He might eventually open his own restaurant and hope that it survived long enough to make even a small profit, but as the owner, he’d have to deal primarily with the business aspects of the restaurant and would be able to do very little cooking, which was his true passion. If he got super lucky, someone famous might eat at his restaurant and give him his own show or create a line of Josh Driscoll cookware. Highly unlikely.
Impatient for Josh to wake up, I worked on Naomi’s list, which was coming along:
3. Attempting to put duvet cover on duvet without sweating to death.
4. Having shower curtains that refuse to stay on stupid shower curtain hooks and fall off while you are trying to take sexy shower with chef boyfriend.
5. Being given annoying hermit crab pet named Ken as gift from nephew.
I glanced up from papers to stare at my worst present, Ken, who was hanging from the top of his cage as if trying to impress me and make me like him. My sister, Heather, was trying to teach her three-year-old son, Walker, about the “experience of giving” and had foolishly let him pick out presents for Christmas. Walker was in the stage of choosing gifts that he himself would like to be given, and I was pretty pissed at Heather for supporting his inability to take the perspective of another. Yet, who was I to talk? Looking around the room at the mass of gifts I’d purchased for others and kept for myself, I suspected Walker and I shared some sort of genetic family flaw and were therefore blameless. Anyway, I was now stuck caring for a damn hermit crab, one that Walker had already named, for Christ’s sake. Still, I felt an obligation to keep Ken alive and not flush him down the toilet. I promised myself that I’d look up crab care on the Internet.
I grabbed the phone to call my best friend, Adrianna. Ade was an independent hairstylist who was building up a loyal and wealthy clientele. She’d just started representing a makeup line as well, and she was forever giving me awesome product samples. My social work school volunteer day was coming up, a day when students were required to help out at social service agencies other than their own field placements. I was taking advantage of Adrianna’s skills. I’d hooked up with Moving On, a small house in Cambridge that provided temporary housing for women in what were euphemistically called “transitional situations.” The director of Moving On, Kayla, was thrilled with my idea of bringing Adrianna along. The day after tomorrow, Ade was going to give some of the women mini makeovers—and with them, we hoped, boosts in self-esteem. Kayla said that a few of the women had job interviews coming up and could really use help with self-presentation and self-confidence. Besides, these women’s lives were short on fun. New makeup and hairstyles would be a blast for them. Adrianna had even charmed the makeup company she represented into donating some products for her to give out.
I heard Josh open the bedroom door and head to the shower.
“Morning,” I called.
“Hey, babe. Can you turn the oven on for me? To about three twenty-five?” He turned on the water. “I have to bake up the focaccia crisps.”
“Sure.” I went to the kitchen. As I set the oven, I felt proud to make a contribution to Josh’s food. I was so excited about tonight that I could hardly stand it. This evening, Josh would be introducing his food to the rich and famous, and he’d probably become an overnight success and achieve national recognition as the hottest, most influential chef of our time! Okay, I was jumping the gun, but Food for Thought and the opening of Simmer really were excellent opportunities for Josh.
Now what was I going to wear again …?
THREE
At five thirty, Josh and I pulled his yellow Xterra up to the gallery and double-parked so that we could start unloading his food and equipment. Mercifully, it was not snowing or freezing. On the contrary, the weather was unseasonably mild. I hoped the warm temperature boded well for a high turnout this evening. Josh followed me up a set of cobbled steps to the first floor of a quintessential Boston brownstone and into the gallery, which had originally been the first floor of an almost palatial house. A generous and graceful bay window overlooking Newbury Street had been set up as a well-stocked bar. Most of the interior walls had been torn down to create a large front room with an archway that led to the back of the gallery. Everything was brightly lit from the amazingly high ceilings, and beautiful pine floors stretched all the way from the entrance to the rear of the gallery. With the exception of the floors and the artwork, every surface was almost overwhelmingly, even blindingly, white, as if the intention were to impair the vision of those who visited the gallery: white walls, white ceilings, white reception desk. In the case of some of the works on display, the effect was, I thought, a charitable one. A massive canvas depicted what looked like a close-up view of abdominal surgery, blood, guts, and all. An appendectomy gone hideously wrong? Another painting, also large, was probably titled something like Study in Cobalt: blue, blue, and more blue evenly and smoothly spread over the whole surface. Here and there, pieces of sculpture in bronze and stone sat on white pedestals, and under the archway was a monumental hunk of smooth granite in the form of a gigantic egg.
Well beyond the archway and the egg, at the far end of gallery, Naomi was tossing a white tablecloth over what I presumed to be our table. She was being helped by a frizzy-haired, lean man dressed entirely in black who fumbled awkwardly with the white fabric.
“Chloe!” Naomi called to me. “Isn’t this exciting? Please, come meet Eliot Davis, the owner of this incredible gallery. Oh, and this must be your Josh?” She beamed at me in an uncharacteristically giddy fashion. I studied Naomi for a moment, trying to determine what was different about her tonight. Did she have on makeup? Yes, I definitely saw a pink hue on her cheeks and … was that lip gloss? I was even pretty sure that her chunky braids had been rebraided. Their usual stray hairs weren’t visible. It suddenly hit me: Naomi was nervous! I’d seen her before only in the office or at the irritating rallies she was forever dragging me to. She was completely out of her element here in this upscale, sleek gallery where the visitors were going to reek of money and class and Botox. In her effort to dress up for the event, she’d put on a turquoise peasant blouse, what looked to me like karate pants, and seven thousand bracelets—an outfit she must have thought would help her fit in. Her adorned arms kept making a piercing, clinking sound every time she moved. She might as well have thrown some hideous, big poncho over the whole ensemble to complete the look. I couldn’t resist peeking down to see that she had even put on simple brown flats instead of her usual Birkenstocks. Although her attempt at upping her fashion sense had failed, I still felt touched by it and hoped that she didn’t notice the difference in our attire. I had on my most recent purchases from Banana Republic, a shiny brown Empire tank under a yummy off-white crocheted sweater, and dark suede jean-cut pants. I wanted to look good for this evening but knew that I needed to look somewhat conservative since I was, after all, working at the Organization’s sexual harassment awareness booth, and any sort of provocative clothing might send an odd message.
When Josh and I reached the table, I made the mistake of putting down a stainless steel tray of beef tenderloin in front of Naomi. Glancing at the meat, she visibly tried to avoid gagging. I’d forgotten that she was a vegan. Before she could open her mouth to say anything about cruelty to cows, I turned to Eliot. Lord, did he have big bug eyes!
“Hi, I’m Chloe Carter. I’m Naomi’s social work intern. And this is Josh Driscoll, the executive chef at Simmer, which is opening a few doors down from you on New Year’s Eve.”
Josh placed a massive food processor next to the tray of dead cow, and we all shook hands.
Eliot smiled. “I can’t wait for people to start arriving. This is fantastic that I get to help promote an organization like Naomi and Chloe’s, and such a great restaurant with a fine chef such as yourself, Josh. Please let me know if you need anything at all. Consider this your home for the night. Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Nothing right now, thank you,” I answered. Josh and Naomi shook their heads in agreement.
“I need to get moving if I’m going to get food out on time.” Josh clapped his hands together, eager to start working.
“Okay, then. You can set up here.” Eliot gestured to a couple of tables next to the one with the tablecloth. “Josh, I thought you might need two tables for Simmer, and I put you right here next to Naomi and Chloe. There’s a large coatroom behind us, here, and a phone in there. Or feel free to use my office if you need to.” In contrast to the front of the gallery, this area retained its interior walls. Eliot pointed to a room right off a hallway that led to a set of stairs illuminated by an exit sign. “And there are outlets here, too, if you need them. I see you’ve got a big food processor there, huh?” Eliot said, eyeing the industrial-sized piece of equipment, which Josh had put on Naomi’s table. The heavy-duty machine, all steel and black and shiny aluminum, looked like a monstrous version of a Cuisinart.
“This is what we call a Robocoupe,” Josh said. “Thanks to Gavin, I’ve got all new top-of-the-line equipment. And, yeah, I need to hook this up for the dressing. Okay, I’m going to go move the rest of the stuff from the car and find a parking spot, if possible.”
“Please, park in the alley behind us. I own six spaces back there. Naomi’s parked there. You’ll never find a legal spot at this time.”
“You know what? I’ll take you up on that offer. And I’ll just unload from there and come up these back steps if that’s okay with you?”
“Absolutely,” Eliot said.
Josh took off, and Eliot went to open the rear door. With Naomi’s help, I covered Josh’s two tables with the white tablecloths that Eliot had thoughtfully provided. Then, with considerable effort, I shifted the heavy Robocoupe to Josh’s space. After that, Naomi and I worked on setting up the harassment table. Before long, Eliot and Josh returned, each carrying armfuls of culinary supplies, and then Eliot left to go to the front of the gallery to rearrange the bottles and glasses. I looked around the room as I worked, admiring the large canvases on the walls. The paintings here were much more appealing than those at the front, abstract works with bold colors streaked throughout.
Naomi leaned in and whispered to me as we spread out flyers. “Eliot has been extremely welcoming to us. And did you see how he helped out Josh just now? Not all gallery owners would do something like that.”
“He seems very nice. And has very, um, distinctive eyes.”
“He’s really been quite helpful. And Josh seems very sweet, too.”
Seeing Naomi so out of place made me feel more in place than I really was, and I felt determined to try hard to help her tonight. Her idea of art probably leaned toward objects made of gimp or woven on looms. But nutty as she often made me, I didn’t want to see her embarrass herself. For the first time, I saw Naomi as slightly vulnerable.
“Here,” I offered. “I’ll do that.” I took a poster from her and began to hang a list of unacceptable workplace behaviors on the front of the table.