There was a muffled banging on the front door.
“It’s me, it’s me! Hallo! I got here! Where am I, the Himalayas? Let me in, I gotta use the facilities!”
Julian heaved the muffin tins into the oven, flipped on the full wattage of his smile, and strode in the direction of the banging. Leaving him to play host, I closed the box of vegetables and turned back to the dieters’ delight. There is a reason why weight-loss cookbooks have you serve everything dripping with hot mustard, streaked with Tabasco sauce, or speckled with chopped peppers or red pepper flakes. They want to convince you you’re actually eating something. Forget your appetite, see if this doesn’t make fire come out of your ears! Of course no one can consume much of these spicy lowcal concoctions. Why willingly engage in electroshock therapy for the mouth?
In any event, I had my own Macho Jalapeño Theory of Lowfat. Men heartily dislike diet food, but will eagerly engage in I-can-eat-hotter-stuff-than-you contests. No wonder diet experts recommend spicy foodstuffs when women are trying to wean their menfolk from their beloved meat and potatoes. On the other hand, nobody cared about my philosophy, and I was defying my own jalapñeo theory today by offering classic cuisine to the Mignon Cosmetics people. But the recipes they had supplied left much to be desired. So now I was having second thoughts. I groaned again.
I decided to stash two dozen individual peach cobblers and an equivalent number of chocolate-chip-dotted brownies into zippered bags underneath the corn rolls made with—-forgive me, Escoffier—nonfat sour cream. After giving me instructions about the banquet, Harriet Wells had had the guts—skinny, washboard-ab guts—to give me her lowfat muffin recipe. I had ignored it because it called for okra. The emergency supply of brownies and cobblers was an insurance policy, I reflected, in case someone came up to me today and demanded real, honest-to-goodness comfort food.
“This is Goldy!” a smiling Julian announced as he held the door open for Claire Satterfield to step haltingly into my kitchen.
For someone who had thumped so vigorously to herald her arrival, Claire, suddenly demure, sidestepped uncertainly toward the counter. Although I’d heard a great deal about her, I’d never actually met this wonder. So I was unprepared for what I saw. Claire Satterfield was surely the most gorgeous creature on the planet. Or at least, she was the loveliest female I had ever seen. About four inches taller than Julian, the girl was svelte yet shapely, in a way reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. Her black hair was arranged in long, shiny ringlets that brushed her tanned shoulders. Bangs framed a striking face that featured breathtaking cheekbones. With her dewy skin, irresistible face, and glossy hair, this vision resembled a landlocked mermaid. She gave me a frightened glance and mutely opened her mouth.
HOISIN TURKEY WITH
ROASTED PINE NUTS IN
LETTUCE CUPS
½ cup pine nuts
1 pound ground turkey
1 teaspoon cornstarch
7 ounces hoisin sauce
2½ cups cooked wild rice
8 iceberg lettuce leavesPreheat the oven to 400°. On a rimmed cookie sheet, toast the pine nuts for 5 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Set aside.In a large skillet, sauté the ground turkey over medium-high heat, stirring, until it changes color and is cooked through. Drain well and return to the pan. Stir in the cornstarch and hoisin sauce. Heat and stir over medium heat until bubbly. Add the pine nuts and the rice and stir until heated through.Spoon ⅓ cup of the hot turkey mixture onto each lettuce leaf.Serves 8 as an appetizer
GRAND MARNIER
CRANBERRY MUFFINS
1¼ cups orange juice
¼ cup Grand Marnier liqueur
¼ cup canola oil
2 cups chopped cranberries
2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
½ cups sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1½ teaspoon salt
1½ tablespoons chopped orange zest
4 egg whitesPreheat the oven to 400°. Combine the orange juice, the Grand Marnier, and the oil; set aside while you prepare the batter. In a large bowl, combine the all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and orange zest. In another large bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy. Combine the juice mixture with the beaten egg whites. Add the egg mixture and the cranberries to the flour mixture, stirring just until moist. Using a ¼-cup measure, divide the batter among 24 muffin cups that have been fitted with paper liners. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown and puffed.Makes 24
“And this is Claire,” added Julian, blushing. Blushing, I imagined, with lust.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, and meant it Claire had been the one who had recommended me to the Mignon folks as their banquet caterer. Even though the food preparation for the event had been a mixed blessing, I very much wanted Julian to be happy. My young friend had made several false starts in the social-life department, including one with a Mignon sales associate who lived down the street. But now he had settled on Claire. Actually, he had not so much settled as fallen for her, the way a Rocky Mountain skier can plummet into an oncoming avalanche and try to swim with the wave. And I had enjoyed watching this loveswept delirium. Despite Julian’s planned departure this fall for Cornell, I fantasized about becoming the catering-trainer-landlady-of-the-groom after he got his degree. To my amazement, I had become something of a marriage booster. Maybe I’d even cater their reception.
“Pleased t’meet you,” Claire said demurely. The Australian accent hung heavily over her high, babyish voice, a voice that did not go with her sophisticated image.
While Julian and Claire conversed in low tones, I whisked together the sherry and miso for the grilled vegetable dressing. Sometimes you can put unusual ingredients together, and they work. That was certainly true for me. At age thirty-two, I had remarried just over two months ago. My new relationship was as good as my first marriage—begun at age nineteen and ended at twenty-seven—had been dreadful. So I’d decided the first time around had been an aberration. Marriage was great, I’d proclaimed. Just like stopping smoking, everyone should do it. This analogy had not gone over in a big way with my new husband, Tom Schulz. In fact, while he was trying to refurbish my hopeless garden, Tom wore a custom-made T-shirt that read: BETTER THAN A CIGARETTE.
I set aside the salad and smiled. Now that Tom and I were wed and Julian and Claire were enjoying each other’s company, the idea of romantic harmony sweeping our little household was extremely appealing. Certainly more attractive than an endless buffet table of food without fat….
“I need to talk to you about parking,” Claire announced loudly and without preamble. It took me a second to realize she was talking to me.
“Parking?” I echoed. I heaved a vat of chilled asparagus soup out of the walk-in refrigerator. “I’ll be parking by the nightclub.”
“The nightclub?” Julian sounded confused. While he was good with the cooking for these affairs, and he was a whiz in the classroom, the logistic details of catered events frequently escaped him.
I said, “This luncheon buffet is at the Hot Tin Roof Club.” Julian frowned, still not understanding. I explained, “It’s unusual to have a nightclub in a mall, but that was the only bid the mall owners got for the old Xerxes’ Magic Shop. Anyway, the Hot Tin Roof Club is geared to upper-crust single types. Since it’s not nighttime,” I continued with unswerving logic as I turned to Claire, “there shouldn’t be a parking problem.”
“Sorry.” Claire’s frowning lips were colored a purplish-tan. I wondered what color the Mignon folks had christened it: Passion Plum? or Torrid Tan? “Expecting a bit of trouble, I’m afraid.”
“A bit of trouble?” I shifted the vat uncomfortably. “Parking trouble? Or some other kind of trouble? And who exactly is doing the expecting?”
Claire closed her eyes. Her lids were shaded in a pure powdery wave of purple and brown. I was in awe. One moment she looked and sounded like a girl, the next she was a sensuous woman. “Right. See this c
olor?” She pointed.
“Yes.” I shot a glance at Julian. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. The connection between parking problems and eyeshadow eluded him too.
Claire opened her eyes wide. Her irises were dark violet. I wondered how many males besides Julian had gotten lost in their mesmerizing depths. “Right. According to the most recent Beastly Bulletin, Mignon Cosmetics blinded albino rabbits testing Sensual Midnight eyeshadow.”
“Beastly Bulletin?” I said faintly.
“Animal rights newsletter,” Claire announced crisply. “So the way we heard it, the BB folks have organized a task force. They’re starting a protest against Mignon.” She shrugged. A shiver went down her exposed shoulders and through her short-skirted black sheath, the kind of dress not usually seen at luncheons, the kind of dress I haven’t had the figure for since I was sixteen. “Word from store security is, they might be causing problems at the banquet. Sorry ’bout that,” she added with a nod at all the vegetables.
“Causing problems? Demonstrators? Because of albino rabbits?” I was still trying to get my footing in the cosmetics universe. “These people are protesting at today’s banquet?”
“Yeh, we think so. Their campaign’s called Spare the Hares.” As this came out speh the hehs, it took me a few beats to translate. “Yesterday,” she went on, “the animal rights people were outside the department store. Demonstrating. Y’know, Prince & Grogan carries Mignon exclusively in the Denver area. So we’re the target.” We’h the ta-get. “The demonstrators even had a picket line. Today we heard they might be made up as freaks. They could be swinging rabbit carcasses at each person who comes in—”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” I shrieked. I banged the vat down on the counter. “I give to the Sierra Club! I give to the National Wildlife Federation! I don’t even wear eyeshadow! Can’t I get some kind of safe passage or something?”
“Y’don’t know the kind of person y’dealin’ with here,” Claire observed. Her slender body slid over in the direction of the steamer. “They see you carrying in that fish over there? They’ll mark you as the enemy. A fish murderess. They’ll scatter your food trays from here to kingdom come. All for rabbits.” She giggled. “Rabbits—the scourge of Australia! My folks wouldn’t believe this one, I can tell you that.”
“Just tell us where to park,” Julian interjected placatingly before I could erupt again. “We’re not into carcasses.”
“Okay.” She puckered her painted lips. “You know where the entrance to the garage is?” We nodded. “The mall has that aboveground parking garage,” Claire explained, “and the entrance to the Hot Tin Roof Club is on the first level. There’s a glass door at the entrance, but we’re supposed to ignore that. The club’s service entrance is an unmarked door inside, next to Stephen’s Shoes. You walk through the shoe store, then come into the club.”
I had the sinking feeling I should be writing all this down. The Beastly Bulletin. The service entrance by the shoe store. A picket line. Carcasses.
“Prince & Grogan’s head of security,” Claire was saying, “has told all the Mignon people not to park by the department store or the nightclub, because of the demonstrators. We’re supposed to scatter our vehicles, but not to use the garage roof, because they’re getting ready for the food fair. Y’know. What’s it called?”
“A Taste of Furman County,” I replied dully. Starting day after tomorrow, I was supposed to be at that food fair. Starting day after tomorrow, I prayed the demonstrators would not be at that food fair.
“We just park and come into the club through the service entrance next to the shoe store,” Claire concluded triumphantly. The maneuvers in this particular war appeared to please her immensely. “The head of security will be in the garage. Name’s Nick. He told us they’ve called the police in. Just in case things get messy.”
So that was where Tom was going today. Although his official title was Homicide Investigator, there weren’t enough homicides in Furman County to occupy my new husband full-time. So he was kept more than busy analyzing robberies and assaults and going out on special assignments, like today. When I’d asked what today’s assignment was, he’d answered mischievously, “Shopping.” And more than that he wouldn’t say. He didn’t want me to worry, and I didn’t want to be intrusive. In the two months of figuring out what it meant to be married after extended periods of being single, we were both treading carefully around each other’s privacy. But honestly, the man was impossible. We could have planned a late lunch. Real lunch too, with vichyssoise and pâté, maybe a little hasenpfeffer …
“Goldy?” queried Julian. “Are you going to steam that sole up here or down there?”
“I’m going to start it here and finish it there,” I said. “It’s the last thing I have to do.” The steamer was full of water. I flipped on the burners, lowered the vat of asparagus soup into a box, and packed up the crudités. Within moments, steam bloomed plentifully and I laid the sole fillets close together on a rack above the bubbling water. When I turned around, Julian and Claire had disappeared. “What the—”
I knew Julian couldn’t, wouldn’t leave without helping me pack the supplies into the van. Buffet for forty was still just that, and it was not possible for one caterer to do all the hauling, setting up, and serving. But, I reminded myself as I vaulted out the back door to check the van, love had made Julian forgetful in the past few weeks. First he’d neglected to bring two out of three desserts to a fund-raising picnic for the ACLU. As a result, I’d survived endless jokes about no freedom of choice and had given the ACLU a hefty discount on their final tab. Julian, embarrassed, had offered to take the docked pay off his own. Of course I wasn’t heartless enough to do that. The kid was saving money to take to college, But I did promise him the next time he screwed up for the ACLU, I’d punish him with a John Birch Society barbecue.
I checked inside my detached garage. Julian’s Range Rover—inherited from former employers—sat stolidly next to my van, but neither Julian nor Claire was in evidence. I peeked around the back of the garage and remembered another example of Julian’s recent spaciness. Just last week he had managed to get into a car accident with a new client, Babs Braithwaite. Three days after Babs had booked me for her Fourth of July party, she and Julian had crashed into each other. Usually a careful driver, Julian had managed to be rear-ended by Babs in her Mercedes 560SEC. Babs said he’d stopped in the middle of an intersection. Julian said he thought he had his turn signal on. He admitted he’d been only half watching though, because moments before the collision, a giggling Claire had tried to cool off by putting her shapely feet out the window of the Rover. But it had been no joke when Julian had been judged at fault. The Mercedes had sustained a thousand dollars worth of damage, and Julian’s savings would be sorely depleted paying the deductible. It seemed that even when I tried to save him money, he ended up losing it anyway.
I touched the Rover’s bruised bumper, left the garage, and stepped onto a new flagstone path laid down by Tom. Even if finances were a little tight for proud, independent Julian, he would manage. He was rich in love, I reflected as I walked down the path. It led through a lush garden of perennials that Tom was somehow managing to coax out of what had been my barren yard. Julian had enthusiastically helped Tom compost, rototill, and plant. And owing to relentless spring snow, we were having a one-in-ten growing season. The magnificent show of yellow columbine, tiny blossoms of white arabis, and sky-blue bellflower campanula were Tom’s pride. But at the moment it was a floral display empty of Claire and Julian.
I pushed through my back door and ran upstairs. Julian really wouldn’t have brought Claire to his room, would he? I knocked gently and then peeked into the boys’ bedroom. Empty. Where in the world were they? I felt sweat bead my brow. Julian was becoming so forgetful that I was considering reneging on my promise to let him take over the catering business for the next few days while I prepared for and ran the booth at the food fair. But if Julian continued to mess up bookings, the cater
ing business would be kaput. And I’d worked too hard for financial autonomy to allow my business to be threatened. No matter how blissful we were as newlyweds, I was not about to start depending on Tom’s paycheck. I clattered back down the staircase, removed the steamer cover, and turned off the burners. The sole had just begun to change color, but was not yet done. I headed down the front hall.
Julian and Claire were entwined on the living room couch. They were wrapped in a deep, silent kiss. Longer and leggier than Julian, Claire did not so much hug him as drape herself around his body. Embarrassed to be witnessing such passion, I hastily retreated to the kitchen.
“Okay!” I hollered diplomatically once I’d lifted out the steamer basket filled with sole fillets. “Let’s get this stuff into the van and see if we can avoid Speh the Hehs!”
After a moment the lovelorn pair sheepishly reappeared. Claire’s makeup, I observed, was miraculously intact, although Julian looked a trifle rumpled. He handed Claire a covered bowl of (lowfat) hollandaise, then hoisted the first box containing the soup. I suppressed a grin and picked up the container of turkey with hoisin. Ten minutes later the three of us started out for the forty-minute trip to glorious, newly refurbished Westside Mall, still nestled, as the recent advertisements relentlessly screamed, at the foot of the Rockies!
Children were already out riding their mountain bikes and kicking soccer balls against the curbs when our vehicles chugged out of my driveway. When we reached Aspen Meadow’s Main Street, windblown dust shimmered in the morning light, forming a translucent veil between the town and the peaks of the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. The snow on the mountaintops had shrunk to uneven gray caps that would not completely melt over the summer. As Julian and I followed Claire’s white Peugeot in the direction of Interstate 70, we passed stores whose entrances were clogged with summer tourists seeking Aspen Meadow’s higher altitude, cooler temperatures, and claim to quaintness. Enterprising merchants had landscaped the area between the sidewalks and the street with a tangle of dianthus, daylilies, and bleeding heart. Below the stores’ intentionally rustic signs swayed hanging baskets of white petunias, red ivy geranium, and delicate asparagus fern. Nearby Vail had used this Garden-in-Disneyland-type decoration to great effect in attracting tourists, and our little burg was following suit. The Chamber of Commerce seemed to feel that the less our place looked like a real town, the less tourists would feel they were spending real money. Still, it was home, and I loved it. I usually do not enjoy heading “down the mountain,” which is how Aspen Meadow folk refer to the physical and spiritual descent into Denver and environs.
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