Rush Klondike

Mrs. Rovello tried teaching my Little Strawberry Dumplin\' how to cook. Well, really it was how to spill as much flour on the floor as possible and still come out with something resembling cookies. She was teaching me to cook. I never really had that, home cooking. It was weirdly relaxing to take something raw, unfinished, and make something that made Nannette smile out of it. After a few weeks, I stopped needing to follow Carmella\'s recipes. That\'s right, I cooked and did laundry. I was gonna make somebody a good little wife someday.

The best thing about cooking was going where the dragons were, you know, off the map. I made some weird shit just to see if I could make it edible- deep fried, chocolate covered peppers (not real good), salted pineapple tarts (better than you might expect) and chicken walnut casserole with beer as one of the spices (pretty good). Denny stopped by the day I made the last one and showed his bravery by tasting it first. Then he gobbled down half of it and made me promise to make it again for his birthday. I half thought he was yanking my chain until I tasted it myself.

Between cooking sessions (and story times, afternoons in the park, tea parties and laundry days) I tried to work out what I could do job wise. All my previous skills could be used if I wanted to sell something, anything, but selling things meant leaving Little Red and going where there were people to sell to. Plus, sales isn\'t one of those glamour occupations that would impress the James clan, not unless you sold something really expensive and, my sheet being what it was, nobody who sold anything expensive was real interested in having me hanging \'round. I was spending too much time away from Nannette just going to interviews, having a job wasn\'t gonna work.

Then one night, when Denny was over to try my Bitter Peanut Pirogues, he said this really strange thing, \"Rush, do you think you could work up an entire menu of your exotic dishes?\"

\"What, you throwing an April fools party? You\'re about a month late, you know?\"

\"I don\'t understand why you continue to disparage your cooking. Rush, so much of it is really wonderful.\"

\"You mean you aren\'t using \'exotic\' as a euphemism?\"

\"Sometimes, I\'ll admit, you do come up with some doozies, but yes, some of it is excellent. You have a real gift with food.\"

\"You\'re kidding.\"

\"No. Listen, Jamesfoods is looking to expand into other areas, a restaurant chain and perhaps frozen foods. What we really need is a niche, a piece of the market no one else has a stranglehold on. Your recipes might just be the thing we\'re looking for.\"

\"And I would what, run a restaurant? I can\'t leave Nannette for those kinds of hours. I just can\'t.\"

\"No, no, you wouldn\'t be running anything. You\'d be designing a menu- exotic dishes that no one else makes. You come up with the recipes and sell them to the new restaurant division. Once you had the first full menu set, you could work just a few hours a day to come up with new recipes to add to the rotation.\"

\"You really think people who don\'t have to will want to eat my cooking?\"

\"Rush. I\'ll tell you what, you work up one five-course meal and present it to the new head of the restaurant division. If he likes it, you take the job, part time. He hates it, I\'ll not only never bring it up again, I\'ll stop haranguing you to get a job altogether.\"

\"Well, if you put it that way . . .\"

So I spent about a week going through my more successful recipes and working up a couple of new ones to get it all to work together. Then I had Denny taste my test run, which he gave four stars. I took that with a grain of salt because I was kinda thinking he might have been setting this whole thing up, like the fix was on and no matter how bad I did, I was getting the job anyway \'cause he wanted me gainfully employed come hell or high water.

That though was put to rest when he gave me the business card of the guy I was supposed to present my meal to, the head of the restaurant division, Clive Kaminski. Does that name seem familiar? Yes, that\'s right; it was the caterer from the Circus fundraiser who thought I was a sucking horse\'s ass. I contemplated bowing out, I mean I didn\'t really want to do the whole thing in the first place, but I\'d told Denny I\'d try, so I guessed I\'d take my lumps. I scheduled a tasting for three days later and then spent fifteen minutes convincing the Pink Princess that she really didn\'t want to sleep in her swim goggles even though her hair was still wet from her bath.

It would probably make a good story to say that I made a supremely good meal for old Clive and he had shot me down just because he didn\'t like the cut of my jib, or to say I fucked up the main course so badly that he couldn\'t have given me the job even if Denny had had the audition fixed, but that wouldn\'t be what really happened. So anyways, Kaminski was a total professional, I could tell I didn\'t win him over with my boyish charm, but Denny must not have been lying to me about liking the food \'cause Clive said he liked my menu. Then he proceeded to tell me what I\'d done wrong with each dish. We spent three hours talking shop about how if I blanched the tomatoes and used extra virgin olive oil instead of margarine and blah, blah, blah (stuff that only interested Clive and well, me too a little bit), my recipes would be great instead of just good and, by the way, I got the job. And shit, now I was gonna have to do the job because I\'d promised Denny.

We worked out a schedule I thought I could live with, twenty-five hours a week working in the brand new test kitchen in the Jamesfoods headquarters building. Denny worked in the same building and I\'m not sure, but I think he might have chosen to have it be where he could easily stop in a check on me on purpose. Though, to tell you the truth I didn\'t really know what Denny\'s job description was, so I didn\'t know if he had that kind of pull. It was kind of odd that I didn\'t know that. Hell, I didn\'t even know what he was a doctor of and, didn\'t the esquire at the end of his name mean he\'d passed the bar? Once I thought about it, he was only twenty-six, how was he both a doctor and a lawyer at that age? Then I really got to thinking and I realized something; the threat by Peg\'s cousins to take Nannette away from me so they could get her trust fund never materialized. In fact, nobody in the family even mentioned anything remotely about it except Denny. So, one day, I called him on it.

\"Ah, I was wondering if you were ever going to ask.\"

\"So, I\'m asking. What gives? They still planning their attack? \'Cause, I gotta tell you, they\'re taking there sweet time.\"

\"Peggy loved you, but more than that, she understood you. Yes, I know. What does that have to do with the price of rice in Singapore? She left explicit instructions for me concerning the issue.\"

\"Which said what? Take care of it and keep me out of the loop? What the hell happened?\"

\"Nothing has happened and nothing will. Yes, most of the cousins are overly concerned about material wealth, but Nannette\'s trust was never in danger and no one would dream of suing for custody from you. She\'s thriving.\"

\"Still not getting how this all connects, Den.\"

\"As I said, Peggy knew you. She knew you liked, no- needed challenges, so she made me promise that I\'d make sure you had one.\"

\"She had you lie to me so I\'d be challenged?\"

\"Otherwise she feared you\'d grow complacent or bored or both and you and Nannette would be unhappy.\"

\"And you went along with this because?\"

\"It was her last request. She realized she made the wrong choice keeping Nannette away from you, passing up what you would have offered her had she given you the chance in the hopes of something better. She wanted to make it up to you by helping you find your place, forcing you to find it, really. That and she wanted to make you zealous about safeguarding Nannette\'s money for Nannette so you would never let yourself gamble with it. She really and truly hated that you gambled so much as you did when you and she were together.\"

\"So what you\'re really saying to me is that you and Peg set me up?\"

\"Quite admirably, I should say. You taught her well.\"

\"And she taught you pretty frickin well too. You conned a con. I\'d\'ve never believed it of you, my friend.\"

\"It\'s my clueless, innocent face I imagine.\"