Dishing It Out

“Well, we haven’t really worked out the name yet….”

“The name isn’t important!” she cried. “You just said it’s your most popular segment,” she said in a far more reasonable voice. Though it was a bit high-pitched. “I beat out Patrick and Ivan, for crying out loud. Why in the world do you want to mess with a good thing?”

“Marie?” Simon crossed his arms behind his head, looking at her like she was speaking a foreign language. “Six months ago when you signed on you said you would do anything.”

“And I did, I did everything you asked. I wore a fruit hat, Simon.”

Simon laughed, caught her eye and then coughed uncomfortably. “Right, so why not a cohost?”

“Six months ago I would have wrestled in Jell-O if you wanted me to. But now I have a name and a reputation….” And a very small, very fragile empire to protect, damn it! “And you expect me to just hand it over to Van?” It was ludicrous. Outrageous! And she was beginning to hyperventilate.

Six months ago there was no alternative to being laid-back. Well, there was. It was called homeless, she thought ruefully. She had nothing to lose then. Marie’s Bistro had barely gotten off the ground, she had taken out another loan and was thinking of selling it all and moving to Peru. Soul Food was changing all of that. And now they want to change my show!

“Marie, your interest is our interest,” he told her and Marie almost recoiled in shock at what a used car salesman Simon was turning into right before her eyes. “We just want to…enhance your reputation.”

“How?”

“We’re looking for male viewers and younger viewers.”

“Young?” Marie shook her head, confused for a moment until the lightbulb went on. Simon and the rest of the producers had fallen for the hype. “No, come on Simon…”

“He’s the hip in ‘hip meets homey.’” Simon shrugged apologetically.

“I’m hip.” The adult voice tried to get her under control, but Marie was far too busy beginning a good and honest freak out to listen. “Homey can be hip.”

“Only if you’re fifty.”

Ouch. Marie stood up and began pacing the small area from the bulletin board to the opposite wall. Her blood pressure was climbing through the roof. She put a hand over her heart and felt the hard beat of it against her palm. “Okay, okay I can have a cohost—I can deal with a cohost, but not Van MacAllister. I’ll cook with anybody but him.” That’s good, Marie. Good compromise. Reasonable.

“Trust me, Marie.”

“Ha!”

“I’ve got a good feeling about this, Marie. A good gut feeling.” Like I care about your gut feelings! she thought, beginning to feel sick.

“It’s an awful idea. We won’t like each other,” she told him, grasping at straws.

“Have you ever really met him?”

“Face to face?” she asked, needlessly. She knew she was creeping toward ridiculous but she had actually made a point never to meet Van MacAllister. Call it pride, call it trying to avoid having a criminal record. Whatever it was, she hadn’t actually met him. She could go her whole life hating him from afar.

“My ears are burning,” a deep, sarcastic voice said from the doorway behind her.

Simon shot her a look that clearly said “behave,” as he stood to shake hands with Van as he entered the room.

“Hello, Giovanni,” he said.

“What’s he doing here?” Marie asked, realizing suddenly that this had been in the works for a while and she was obviously the last to know. Marie’s stomach twisted; she could not have felt more betrayed.

“I invited him to this meeting,” Simon answered.

“You’ve been having secret meetings behind my back?” she cried. Nothing upset her like secret meetings. They were childish and she always ended up getting screwed. “Simon, I can’t believe this.”

“Just hear us out,” Simon urged.

Deep breaths. Calm thoughts. Beaches. Waves. Puppies. Babies. None of it was working. And actually being in the same room with Van was filling her head with very unadult and unreasonable thoughts. Like arson.

Van turned and she got her first real look at him.

Marie was not a woman to get knocked off her feet, though for a moment she was taken aback by the sheer injustice done to him by photographs.

He still wasn’t handsome, not by a long shot. But he was just standing there and he seemed to take up the entire room. He was dressed in head-to-toe black, which might explain why he seemed so dramatic. He had a whole brooding, smoldering thing that on any other man would have Marie drooling.

Too bad it’s wasted on this guy, she thought.

But it was more than the way he looked. Van seemed even sharper than he came off in pictures or from across the street when she spied on him through her windows. Sharp and very focused. It was absurd, but in that moment Van MacAllister, man’s man and general all around pig, looked like a pirate.

She hoped, fervently, that Van MacAllister had a small penis. The man deserves a small penis.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said with sarcastic politeness. He leaned in toward her and the air when he got close to her crackled, like a nearby storm. The scent of garlic and rosemary lifted off him. She took a deep breath before she could stop herself.

“I gather that you have a problem working with me?” His eyes were hard and angry, and for a moment she felt like he was seeing right through her. Right into her petty and jealous heart.

“Problem?” She plunked her hands on her hips. “Why in the world would I have a problem with you? Just because you’ve—”

“Van, we’re thrilled you could make it today,” Simon said, trying to talk over Marie.

“Speak for yourself, Simon,” she said, not taking her eyes off Van, the pirate chef. She was mad, not attracted, and just because she had a hard time looking away from those eyes didn’t make her any less angry. In fact, it made it worse. He was a jerk. And he was her type. All of the careful cultivation of Marie’s calm and reason vanished.

“Is this about what was printed in The Examiner?” he asked. “Because it was taken completely of out context.” The look on his face, contrite and apologetic, made his features softer, his dark eyes somehow warmer. But Marie was not going to be fooled.

“Sure it was.”

“It was.”

“I’m not arguing with you.” She crossed her arms, and even shrugged and batted her eyelashes at him.

“Good.” He was looking at her carefully and she could feel him picking her apart to see if she were serious.

“Okay!” Simon clapped his hands together and sat down, but Van remained standing, eyeing her. She eyed him right back. If this was going to be some kind of staring contest, hell if she’d be the first to blink!

The room felt warmer. Simon seemed far away while Van seemed so close she could reach out and touch the zipper of his coat, or the scar on his chin, which was fascinating to look at.

Oh no you don’t, not this guy! She tried to wrestle her wayward hormones back in line.

“So, we’re ready to get to business?” he asked, like they were going to split a cab or go halves on a pizza. For a moment, Marie had trouble breathing through her anger and disbelief.

“You mean your business of taking over part of what I’ve worked so hard for?”

“Marie!” Simon interjected, but Van held up a hand, curtailing Simon.

“I think we should avoid the words ‘taking over,’” Van said calmly.

“Okay, how about this?” she sighed, looking up at the ceiling, pretending to think. “How about the business where I work my ass off for a year and then just when things start to go right for me you get to come along and share. Share? Do we all like that word?” She glanced around, liking the abashed look in Simon’s eyes and the muscle that was ticking in Van’s jaw.

“Right. So I work hard and you come and share in my success. Which, frankly, I’m thankful for because I was having such a hard time handling it on my own.” She took a step closer to him. “If you want to be on TV, Van, go find your own show.”

The silence in the office had an echo. She could actually hear the blood beat through her veins, her breath in her lungs.

Van cleared his throat. “Point taken.” He nodded, his smile tight.

“Good, then…” She made a move for the door so she could show Van out. “I think our business here is done.”

“But—” Van shifted, blocking her way. He crossed his arms over his chest while he pinned her to the wall with his eyes. She felt the sharp popping shocks from the static and animosity surrounding them. “While I certainly appreciate your little speech, let’s understand something—I was approached by the producers. By Simon.”

“Whom I will never forgive,” she threw in with menacing cheer.

“Because your show was missing something.” He raised one of those overgrown eyebrows and Marie’s fingers twitched. “Something,” Van continued, “I can provide.”

“Maybe you’re right.” She resorted back to sarcasm. “Maybe you do have something I need for the show.” Marie would bet a new dishwasher on the fact that Van had no idea what he would be doing on TV, because his was not a face for television. “Do you have lots of experience with live TV? Hmmm?”

“No,” he said in a low voice.

“No, not lots, or no, not any?” she asked, tilting her head and waiting patiently.

“Simon,” Van put his hand on top of a pile of papers on Simon’s desk, “you said that she wasn’t going to have a problem with this.” He jerked his thumb back at Marie. “I call this a problem.”

Marie’s jaw fell to the floor. Such treason from a man she considered a friend.

“Simon?” she asked, dropping the sarcasm for a moment, and feeling marginally naked in front of Van. “Did you really think that I would be okay with this? That I didn’t have any pride in what I had built? In what we had built?”

“I understand that there are—” Simon swallowed audibly “—challenges.” He shook his head at Marie like she was a child who had disappointed him. She knew her behavior wasn’t exactly sterling, but she had nothing to apologize for. Simon suddenly looked small and wary. “You don’t really have a choice.”

For the first time since Simon had brought this up, the changes in her show became real. Van was in the room sucking up far too much air and taking up way too much space—imagine what he would do to her show! This was just like France. Men thinking they knew what was best for her. Underestimating her, brushing her aside. Well, she had learned her lesson two years ago and it wasn’t going to happen again.

“What happens if I say no?” Marie asked.

“You lose half your airtime, the other half goes to Van.”

She could only blink and try to breathe one small mouthful of air at a time. “Wow,” she finally said, which was an awful summation of what she was feeling. She looked down at her feet, at the lovely black boots she had paid far too much for. She had to fight the tears that suddenly sprang up. She laughed ruefully. “Just when you start to feel on top of things…”

“Marie…?” There was something different in Van’s face, a softness around his hard eyes that wasn’t there before.

“Save it, Van. I’ve got to get back to work at my ‘little coffee shop.’” He sucked in a breath and Marie felt the cool victory that comes with saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.

The urge to walk out the door, get in her car and drive away from all of this came over her, but that would have been something the old Marie would have done.

“You have twenty-four hours, Marie,” Simon cut in, ruining her exit. “Twenty-four hours to make up your mind and do the smart thing. The way the world is making chefs into celebrities you could write your own ticket.”

Marie bit her tongue. It was a nice dream. With probably some nice money attached to it. But it wasn’t worth it if she had to share it with Van.

“I’ll call you, Simon,” she said.

She didn’t look at Van, so unsure of what she would do or say to him. But as she left, she walked through the smell of him, rosemary and anger, and her body reacted.

She put her right hand over all five of the bracelets on her left wrist, curling her fingers around the silver.

What the hell am I going to do now?

3

MARIE RAN SOME ERRANDS, trying to strike a new deal with the organic dairy guy, but to no avail, and made it back to the restaurant just in time for the late-afternoon rush.

“I need four caps to go,” Marie called back to Pete, her mostly silent and dreadlocked part-time employee. As long as Pete didn’t have to talk to anybody, he was a fantastic barista. He put together coffee orders almost before they were placed. He nodded at Marie, cranked the steam up on the espresso machine and began steaming milk.

“And a tomato-and-bocconcini salad to go,” she told Jodi, her assistant manager, who stood at Marie’s elbow putting together salad orders and packaging some of the leftover daily lunch specials.

It all seemed very normal. Susan and Margaret from the accounting office next door were having their late-afternoon coffee break and bitch session. Mr. Malone sat in the far back corner nursing his extra-hot milk chocolate over the newspaper.

Marie was her usual smiley and chatty self, but inside she seethed.

Van MacAllister has a small penis was a constant drumbeat in her head.

“Hello, Mrs. Peters.” Marie smiled at the older woman who came in religiously on Tuesdays. Tuesday was clam chowder day and Mrs. Peters, as she frequently told Marie, had been searching for a good clam chowder for years.

Marie was happy to oblige with the best clam chowder in the city, according to Where magazine.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Mrs. Peters smiled and Marie had to bite her tongue from laughing. The diminutive white-haired woman consistently had orange lipstick all over her teeth. “You were lovely this morning on the television.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Peters,” Marie said, but waited for the other half of her compliment. The sharp half.

“But you look tired.” And there it is. “You need to get more rest.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.”

“You need to find a nice man to help you do all this work.”

“Aww…” Marie wrinkled her nose and resisted screaming Men are ruining my life! at the eighty-year-old woman. “Men just get in my way.”

“Well, if I remember it right, sometimes that’s not such a bad thing.” Mrs. Peters winked, and Marie hoped she still wanted to have a man get in her way in that way, when she was eighty.

No, it isn’t a bad thing, Marie thought as she wrapped up the clam chowder and whole-grain rolls. She slipped a few small chocolate-chip cookies in the bag because Marie knew Mrs. Peters liked them and frankly, Marie liked Mrs. Peters.

Men had a purpose that Marie loved. She loved their bodies and their mouths and the things they could do with their hands. She loved monogamous sex in casual relationships, but these days she barely had time to brush her teeth much less find a guy she was attracted to, date a few times, sleep with, and explain why nothing serious would ever come of it.

I like you guys, she would say, but I just don’t trust you. Not with my life or my heart.

Case in point, Simon and Van. Two men thinking they had her best interests in mind.

She spent the next few hours replaying the scene in Simon’s office, but editing in wittier and sharper things to say to Van. The game was ultimately frustrating, but so very satisfying right now.

“Hey, Marie,” Marie shook off the scene in her head where she punched Van in the nose and turned to Pete. “You ah…mind if I take off now?” he asked. He glanced down at his watch. “I’ve been here since six.”

“Oh my God, Pete.” She looked at her own watch. It was quarter past six in the evening. Twelve hours. “Go, go. I can’t believe you stayed so long.”

“Yeah, well, we’re busy.” He shrugged, his green Rage Against the Machine T-shirt wrinkled on his thin shoulders. “See you on Thursday.”

“Good night, Pete. Thanks so much.” Pete grabbed his beat-up backpack from the cabinet under the cash register and shuffled out the door.

Marie followed him and flipped the sign on the door from Open to Closed. She fought the strong urge she had to fall down on the floor for a little nap. Just a short one, right there on the floor until Van’s blues bands woke her up.

“All right, Marie!” Jodi came into the dining room from the kitchen carrying the large rolls of plastic wrap and pushing the full mop bucket across the hardwood floors with her foot. “Let’s clean up and get out of here. I got a date.”

“Oh?” Marie pushed away from the door, feeling a happy lift in her low mood. Her sex life, once something of a legend, had been reduced to the stories Jodi told her while they mopped the floor.

Sad, Marie, that’s just sad.

“Somebody new?” Marie asked, reaching to help Jodi carry the plastic wrap.

“No.” Jodi pushed her funky black glasses up higher on her nose. “I’ve known him for a while, but this is our first date date.” Jodi shrugged, trying to play it cool but she looked far too happy. Actually she was glowing. Marie recognized the glow of the young and foolish.

Be careful, she wanted to say. Please be careful with your heart, Jodi. She was young, about the age Marie was when she met Ian in France. About the age Marie last felt that kind of glow.

“Oh,” Marie teased, “a date date.”

“You remember those?” Jodi asked over her shoulder, obviously taking shots at Marie’s nonexistent dating life.

“You’re hilarious. Get mopping.”

“I don’t understand, Marie.” Jodi started putting the wrought-iron chairs up on tiled café tables and as she lifted the chairs her shirt rode up her body revealing the pretty flowered vine tattoo she had curling around her back. And the dim lighting made her pink hair glow.

How can people say I’m not hip? Marie thought. Look at my staff.

“Every guy in here falls in love with you,” Jodi continued.

“Who?” Marie asked.

“Those two hot cops that come in for lunch on Thursdays. Why don’t you go on a date with one of them?”

“Because they’re gay.”

“No. Really?” Jodi asked, a little crestfallen.

“Words to live by Jodi—when it seems too good to be true, it usually is.”

“But what about…?”

“I’m too tired to date.” Marie closed the subject and yawned so big her jaw nearly cracked. It was mostly the truth. The rest of it had to do with Ian and she didn’t want to think about it.

Marie reached under the cash register and turned up the stereo both to stop Jodi from asking more questions and to stop herself from dwelling on the past.

Soon Jodi was singing along with the old Annie Lennox songs and Marie started covering her salads, deciding what would have to be made fresh in the morning and which had another day left in them. While she covered up her green-apple-and-poppy-seed coleslaw, Marie had one of those moments she had been having more and more frequently.

She looked around at her dimly lit place, decorated with all of her favorite light colors, at the shelves filled with bottles of her salad dressings and chutneys; the antique espresso maker that cost her a small fortune but lent a one-of-a-kind air to the small room, and the tiled tabletops with the mismatched wrought-iron chairs. All of it was hers. And part of her, a little tiny part with a loud voice, wished it weren’t.

We’ve talked about this, Marie, her adult voice piped up. You want to end up like your mother? The answer to that of course was a resounding no!

Her mother, Belinda, moved Marie and Marie’s older sister, Anna, every few months when they were kids, leaving behind bad jobs and worse men only to find new ones in different towns. It was a trend Marie had started following until she found herself heartbroken and penniless in France.

She had run from that broken heart right into the restaurant business.

She was a good boss and a good chef. But, to own so much, to be responsible for so much was new for her. For twenty-seven years she wasn’t responsible for anything. Not a pet, not a plant, not her love life, not her career. And when she took this on a year ago, she really had no idea what she was in for. She kept telling herself it would get better, she was sure it would. She would hire another baker. More staff. And the pressure would be off. But then the dishwasher broke and Ariel ran off with the cash.

And, of course there was Van.

The CD was on shuffle and Annie Lennox faded away, replaced by the quieter Ella Fitzgerald.

“So you really don’t think you’re going to do the show anymore?” Jodi asked, dumping the dustpan out in the trash.

Marie sighed. Do the show, don’t do the show. She was going crazy thinking about it. She wanted to, of course she did. A weekly show. It was a dream come true. But Van MacAllister was really much more of a nightmare.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. She flicked the lights off in the salad case and part of the room went a little darker.

“That guy’s got a lot of nerve, huh?” Jodi asked. She wrenched the handle on the mop bucket, squeezing out water, and she started to mop the hardwood floors. “Talk about piggybacking someone’s success.”

“You’re telling me,” Marie murmured.

“But you can take him,” Jodi said.

“Of course I can take him.” There was never any question in Marie’s mind that she could take Van MacAllister, the glorified barbecue chef.

“So do the show, but make sure it’s on your terms.” Jodi stopped mopping for a second, blowing her pink bangs off her forehead. “’Cause it would be a great show, the two of you. The potential for loads of chemistry and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?” Jodi shrugged and turned to wheel the mop bucket back to the kitchen. “Get it all in writing, Marie,” Jodi yelled. Marie heard the water being thrown out the back door into her herb garden while Jodi’s words resonated in her head.

Get it all in writing. Of course. It was so adult, no wonder she didn’t think of it.

“’Cause a weekly half-hour show is still a weekly half-hour show,” Jodi came back into the dining room, wiping her hands on her low-slung blue jeans. “Right?”

“How’d you get so smart, Jodi?” Marie asked, feeling very fond of her punk assistant manager.

“Don’t let the pink hair fool you,” Jodi smiled, her hands on her thin hips. “Top third of my class at Berkeley.” She exhaled and shrugged. “I’m off. See you in the morning.”

Jodi grabbed her bag and scooted for the door. Marie started counting the totals for the night, wondering if she could actually do the show, handle Van and build her empire at the same time. She was good, but was she that good?

The bell rang over the door as Jodi opened it. “’Night Jodi,” Marie called out as she counted change.

“Good ni…” Jodi trailed off and Marie glanced up. “There’s someone here for you.” Jodi stepped back into the restaurant and Van MacAllister followed her in the door.

It was like having the Antichrist walk in the room.

“We’re closed,” she said.

He had changed from his all-black civilian clothes to an all-black chef jacket and pants. His name and Sauvignon were embroidered in red over his heart.

“I noticed, but I was hoping we could talk.” He took a few more steps toward her and the currents shifted. The air was heavier. It seemed like the entire atmosphere was pressing against her.

“I haven’t decided about the show,” she told him, hoping to get rid of him and his strange energy.

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he was looking around the room, his eyes cataloging everything, measuring their worth in a way that had Marie wanting to run around throwing herself in front of her chutneys.

It was amazing how the inherent femininity of the place made Van seem that much more masculine. Tall, rangy, not quite handsome. Commanding in a mysterious sort of way, he was only more so in the pale blue room surrounded by the very real-looking fake grapevine she had wrapped around the rustic wooden pillars and ceiling beams. He reached up and tugged on the grapevine and a piece fell off in his hand.