by Jill Winters
"Okay, I wouldn't die," Dana amended, "but I'd kiss him, or at least... embrace him or something."
"On your first day?" Gretchen said, squinting incredulously. "In front of everyone?" Surely her cousin was all talk. "Anyway, I have no idea if or when I'll meet him. I don't know if Susanna and he even interact; I'm sure they tape at different times, too."
"Hmm," was all Dana said to that. There was no question that she, unlike Gretchen, had a "thing" for Romeo Ramero, the super-cute star of TCN's live cooking show Brooklyn Boy Makes Good... Food!
In fact, ever since Dana learned that Gretchen would be working as Set Supervisor for Susanna Tate at the same network, she'd been encouraging her to seek Romeo Ramero out and maybe start some wild affair with him. (What did Dana care if the scenario was totally out of character, as long as Gretchen gave her lurid details?)
So far, Dana had already asked Gretchen to find out if Romeo was a good kisser, a "generous lover" and, oh yeah, if he was well hung and could go all night. Typically, her cousin was not weighted down by realism.
Though Gretchen had to admit: The idea of meeting such a big celebrity in the flesh was exciting. He had to be one of the most well-known television personalities right now, with his cookbooks everywhere and his camera-ready face popping up in magazines beside his recipes. He saturated the daytime talk-show circuit with guest appearances. He had a charming guy-from-the-old-neighborhood way about him; one of his claims to fame was that he'd never had formal culinary training, but had learned everything he knew about cooking from his father and grandfather.
Undoubtedly, Romeo Ramero's "star quality" came from several things. One, he was cute. Two, he was extremely fit—as evidenced by his tight black shirts and snug ribbed sweaters. Granted, his circular muscles and super-trim waist were too bodybuilder-like for Gretchen's taste; she'd prefer a guy who wasn't so carved and sculpted. But Romeo's looks plus his charisma gave his show a real dynamism, and the live audience only added to the verve and energy of each episode. And another thing that gave Romeo star quality: The guy seemed to love the attention.
As Gretchen shimmied into stockings, she realized her cousin was still talking. "I can't believe the casting call was changed again, but okay, I'm over it... Basically, I crashed at Lolly's for no reason last night."
Last night! Of course—how had she forgotten? "Speaking of last night," Gretchen interjected. "I could kill you!" She went on to tell Dana exactly what happened with the candles, including the part about getting yelled at by a very pissed-off fireman.
"Oh my God!" Dana exclaimed. "I can't believe I did that! Shit, shit, shit!"
"I guess it could've happened to anyone. But you seriously have to be more careful."
"Oh, G,... I am so sorry," she said, her voice drenched with guilt.
"That's okay. I just felt so bad about it. The fireman seemed really put off by the whole thing. Of course I tried to blame you, but he seemed less than interested."
"Why should he be put off?" Dana asked, then scoffed. "It's not like he doesn't see fire on a daily basis—oh, I just realized! Can you imagine if we'd burned down that beautiful apartment? Marcia would've killed us!"
"What's this 'we' business?"
"She could've sued me for everything I had!"
"What do you have?" Gretchen asked, confused.
"Or she could've had me blackballed in the industry!"
Gretchen rolled her eyes. "Well, maybe if she found out you'd killed your cousin in the process she would've taken pity on you."
"God, I am so sorry.... Please don't be mad at me."
"I'm not—really, it's okay," Gretchen said.
"I'll make it up to you, I promise. How about I make a special dinner for us tonight?"
"No, no, that's fine," Gretchen said quickly.
"No, I insist," Dana said. "I want to make dinner. I want to say I'm sorry."
"But then you'll have to say you're sorry twice."
Dana laughed in spite of herself, and Gretchen laughed, too. There was no point beating it to death at this point. Then Dana remarked, "You know, I can't believe the fireman gave you a hard time. Are they even allowed to do that?"
"I guess. I mean, he thought I was a menace to everyone in the building, and I really can't say I blame him. Not that he had to be such a jerk about it. But hey, at least I never have to see him again...."
"Was he cute?"
Cute. Interesting question. Well... Gretchen had to admit to herself that she had felt a strange, fleeting attraction to him. For a few crackling moments, the air between them had felt thick with tension. How much was annoyance and how much was sexual was tough to say, especially now that the moments had passed and, oddly, seemed far away.
But cute? Somehow cute didn't fit him. Intimidating, yes. Pushy. Strong. Potent.
"I'll take that as a yes," Dana said, snapping Gretchen back to attention.
"Oh... well..."
"C'mon, how long does it take to say someone's dog-meat?" she teased.
With a surprised laugh, Gretchen said, "I never plan to find out."
"That cute, huh?" No. Gretchen just wasn't the type to call someone "dog-meat"—but of course, Dana knew that. After she apologized again about the candles, they hung up. With her lime green dress waiting on the bed, Gretchen headed to the shower.
Chapter 3
The taxi ride to TCN was bumpy—and not as in a gravelly road, but as in bumper cars. Every few feet it seemed, the driver stopped short and sent Gretchen's upper body hurling forward, then slamming back. To gain more balance, she scooted over closer to the window and rested her hand on the door.
Gazing out the window, she felt the chill of winter air seeping through the glass, which was partially misted over. Sleet spilled sideways from the sky. Sliding onto the tops of cars, it smeared down windshields and pattered onto the slushy street.
Gretchen couldn't remember the last time she'd seen so much traffic. She'd lived in California for the past three years, at a resort in Carmel that was as much an idyllic paradise as was possible to simulate. The DeLuxe Resort was a sprawling six-story estate with violet colored flowers climbing up its corners. It was surrounded by a hundred acres of rolling hills, with emerald-green grass and lush groves of pear trees and orchids. The thing Gretchen hadn't realized when she'd taken the job as a chef there, however, was that this luxury resort was also a health spa, and therefore she would be expected to prepare succulent, impressive dishes that were also low fat, low calorie, low sodium, and low whatever-else-made-things-taste-good.
And since DeLuxe catered to the fabulously wealthy, the clientele expected to be comfortable. Which meant full. Sure, they wanted to be chain-smoking skinny, but they also wanted food and plenty of it. When Gretchen had started there, she'd been thrown into the pit with a bunch of other confounded cooks, trying to figure out how, exactly, Oprah's personal chef did it. It hadn't taken long, though, for Gretchen to rework her oeuvre of recipes, to experiment and create dishes of her own, to learn health food lingo, all of which moved her quickly up to the role of Assistant Head Chef.
By her third year, she'd become restless with DeLuxe and with California. Of course, her tense breakup with her boyfriend, Tristan, a personal trainer at the resort, had played a part. Shutting her eyes now, Gretchen tipped her forehead to rest lightly on the cold, dewy glass of the window. Briefly she thought about Tristan, about their split. Now that had been awkward. But she supposed breaking up with someone wearing three plaster casts was never easy.
For now, she pushed those thoughts aside. While the details of her relationship with Tristan—including its bitter end—were perfectly clear, that era of her life became more irrelevant all the time. It was strange how quickly memories, taken as a whole, lost their visceral weight and gained instead a surreal, detached kind of quality.
Despite Gretchen's passion for cooking, her brief tenure as Chef had taught her that no matter how upscale or serene a place might seem, the facade was dropped the minute you walked
through that swinging kitchen door. It was pure stress, sometimes chaos—yelling and dropping dishes and pointing fingers and managers breathing down the chef's neck, who, in turn, made his kitchen staff a nervous wreck half the time.
Gretchen had maxed out on the frenetic atmosphere, and she'd begun to miss the northeast more acutely than ever. After growing up in a pretty Connecticut suburb, she'd gone on to Johnson & Wales in Charleston, South Carolina, then spent two years at a prestigious Cordon Bleu program in Minnesota, and then headed to California. Then, abruptly, it was like homesickness had hit her all at once.
It was the seasons she missed the most. In wintertime, the evergreens that wrapped around the house were weighed down by frosty bunches of snow. And even sunny days were bluish, and nights were spent reading under the blankets or lying in bed watching tiny flakes drift past her window. (Funny the things she'd done to amuse herself when she was younger and alone.)
In spring, the air in Connecticut smelled like fresh-cut grass and the dogwood trees bloomed like frilly pink umbrellas, and then there was the blazing hot, bright yellow of summer, the scary excitement of an impending rainstorm, and most of all, Gretchen missed the golden blanket of autumn.
So when she'd learned about the open position at The Culinary Network in New York City, it had almost felt like a sign.
"Here," the taxi driver mumbled as he swerved to a stop in front of a brick-front building with the number 75 marked on it in black lettering. Excitement fluttered in her chest. This is it, she thought, as she climbed out onto the sidewalk. She stepped through the front doors into a warm, cavernous interior. The inside was like a long, wide corridor that stretched the length of half a block. Soft spotlights lined the red brick walls. The air was thick with the aroma of fresh-baked bread. Gretchen's heels clicked loudly on the stone floor as she passed a bakery on her right, then a small cafe on her left, then a few more shops and vendor carts, until she got to a line of people waiting restlessly behind a gold rope.
To the right was a glass door with T C N emblazoned across it. Gretchen moved past the people waiting—ticket holders there to see a live taping of Romeo Ramero's show—and approached the guy guarding the door.
Once she got clearance into TCN's reception area, her heart beat faster as she approached the domed white desk, which was set up high from the sea-green carpet. The receptionist was a pretty woman in her thirties with layered brown hair and a straight white smile like a commercial for Crest White strips. "May I help you?" she said.
"Yes, I'm here to see Lila Mendal." Lila was the human resource director who had hired Gretchen for the job; even though Gretchen would be working for Susanna Tate, she hadn't actually met her yet. Presumably she was too busy and/or famous to spend her time interviewing candidates.
The receptionist glanced down at her appointment calendar. Then her smile widened. In fact, her face lit up as she said, "Oh, you must be Gretchen Darrow. We've been waiting for you!" Gretchen couldn't help feeling a surge of pride by the woman's reaction. They were waiting for her—as though she were someone special. "I'm Denise," the receptionist added brightly as she hopped up from her seat and came down from her perch. "May I take your coat?"
"Yes, thank you." Gretchen shrugged off her long black jacket, still glistening with the thawed rain that had streamed down it in rivulets.
She couldn't help feeling important as Denise reached for her jacket, hanger in hand, as if Gretchen was not to be kept waiting. She tried not to let it go to her head, but she couldn't help it, especially when Denise added, "We're so excited for you to join the TCN family. Um, so to speak..." she added strangely.
But Gretchen didn't focus on that; rather she thought: Only two months ago she'd been getting bitched at for grating an onion instead of mincing it, and now here she was, at a major television network, treated like one of the "family."
"Let me show you around," Denise suggested.
First she took her to the kitchen, which seemed an odd place to start, but maybe she figured that Gretchen wanted a cup of coffee to kick off the day. "So this is the kitchen," she said, then gave a laugh. "Obviously. And let's see... over here we have two main sinks... two microwaves, one on that end and one over there," Denise explained, continuing to point out the obvious. "A lot of counter space, which things tend to pile up on, and let's see, what else?" She seemed to be thinking it over, but really, Gretchen wondered, what else could there be? So this was the office kitchen area. Good to know, but it wasn't like she planned to spend a lot of time in here.
"Oh, and we have three trash cans that get emptied twice a day," Denise added. Gretchen held back a confused look. Trash cans? Who cared about trash cans?
"Now, Lila has a chart made up to make it easier... let me find it..." Denise looked around, before pulling out a laminated sheet from between the toaster and the coffeemaker. "Here it is! This will be your guide, you know, until you get your whole routine down."
"Oh, great," Gretchen said, nodding, wondering why the guidelines for her job were in the kitchen. And while they were on the subject, why had the tour of TCN still not advanced beyond this point?
"So each day is listed here, and beside each are the tasks required from you," Denise began, running her eyes as well as a French-manicured nail down the laminated page. That's when Gretchen strained her eyes to try to get a look herself. The page was turned toward Denise, but even at this skewed angle, Gretchen could see it was a bullet-point list of instructions that included the following:
*CLEAN MICROWAVE
*WASH COFFEE POT
*EMPTY TRASH
*HOSE DOWN GARBAGE PAILS (TWICE A WEEK)
What the hell? There had to be some mistake here. Gretchen's pulse quickened as she debated whether or not to say anything—to question—just yet. But then Denise interrupted her stream of thoughts, which were fraught with panic. "Now I know your supplies are around here somewhere." She bent down and opened one of the cabinets beneath the sink. "Oh, here's your bucket!" She pulled out a bulky rectangular container with a handle that stretched across the top. It looked exactly like something you'd see a handyman carrying around. Except, whereas a handyman's box might hold things like hammers and screwdrivers, this one was plastic and contained bottles of cleaning products all crammed together. Lysol, Pledge, Soft Scrub (holy shit, wasn't that for toilets?), Windex and a roll of paper towels.
The crunched-up black garbage bags flapping over the side of the bin did little to alleviate Gretchen's sense of doom. She felt her breath come up shorter. Without much success, she tried to swallow down her mounting distress. Was this some kind of joke? "Here you go," Denise said, thrusting the heavy carrier into Gretchen's hands.
Her stomach sank. She'd moved to New York for this? How could she have been so wrong? She'd thought she'd landed a dream job that would present a surfeit of opportunities and connections—maybe even lead to a cookbook of her own someday—and now it all started to trickle away, as the reality of the situation set in: she hadn't been on the verge at all. She'd been hired as the cleaning lady.
Chapter 4
"Don't worry," Denise assured her, obviously sensing something was wrong, "if you need more supplies, we can order whatever you want!" She'd clearly misinterpreted Gretchen's pained expression. More Soft Scrub was the last thing on her mind.
Okay, there was nothing wrong with cleaning for a living, but it was not what she'd studied for and worked for; she hadn't had years of culinary training so she could better clean exploded Hot Pockets from the microwave. "I'm really confused here," Gretchen said. "I thought I was going to be working for Susanna Tate. On the set of her show—"
"Gretchen?"
She and Denise turned. They saw Lila Mendal, the HR director, entering the kitchen. "There you are. I was afraid that maybe you got lost on your way over. The subway system can be so confusing," Lila said, approaching Gretchen with an outstretched hand.
Gretchen was so relieved to see a familiar face, she had to resist the urge to run into Li
la's arms and call her "mommy." Instead, she took the handshake, smiled, and said, "Hi, Lila! It's great to see you again."
"Um, Lila, apparently there's some kind of miscommunication?" Denise said apprehensively. "I was just giving Gretchen the rundown," she added, holding up the laminated page from hell.
Furrowing her light eyebrows, Lila reached for the sheet, then let out a short laugh. "Oh, no, no. This is for a different new-hire. We've been without a cleaning woman for a week already," Lila explained to Gretchen. "Come on, let's go upstairs. I'll introduce you to Susanna."
Thank God! For a few moments there, the prospect of hosing down garbage pails had seemed like a particularly cruel fate, even if it was only twice a week.
After that Gretchen got the rest of the tour. She and Lila did a quick walk-through of the first floor, past Denise's desk, revealing more of the tranquil sea green and silver decor, full of cubicles and private offices. Then they went to the second floor, where Lila pointed out the office of Marjorie Bass, producer of Sinful Temptations, which was next to Joel Green's office. That one had the door closed and a garbled man's voice coming from the other side. "Joel is Brett's producer," Lila explained as she continued on.
"Who's Brett?" Gretchen asked curiously. Before moving to New York, she'd thought she'd memorized facts about every show on the network, but the name Brett didn't ring a bell.
"Well, you know him as 'Romeo,'" Lila said, then grinned. "Our resident stud here at TCN, Romeo Ramero. Ever seen his show?"
"Yes, many times. I just didn't realize—then Romeo's a stage name?"
"Yes... but a fitting one, I'd say."
Next Lila showed her where the ladies' room was and pointed out a vacant office right beside it. "Technically that's Susanna's office, but she never uses it. If she's here, she's usually on the set or in her dressing room."