Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction!

by Lizz Lund

  “I’ll take care of this, Toots; don’t you worry,” Vito assured me. “You just act like business as usual.”

  I agreed, left Vito’s and walked back across to my side of our homes. I had my hand on the front door knob to my house when I heard Vito’s garage door open, and saw his car backing out quickly and quietly before heading down the street. I locked my front door and thunked my head against it.

  I was about to head upstairs when the phone rang. My eyes rolled ceilingward of their own volition while I answered.

  “Sorry, dear,” said Auntie. “I thought you might still be awake. I just wanted to make sure you wore something appropriate for coffee hour tomorrow.”

  “Appropriate for delivering leftovers?” I asked.

  “And for serving, of course, dear,” Auntie answered.

  Oh. I hadn’t figured Auntie had volunteered me as a coffee hour server too, but I should have.

  “Okey dokey,” I said. I did a mental shrug. I was going to be there anyway, right?

  I hung up, refilled my mug and went upstairs. I made sure Marie got tucked in properly. Vinnie chattered away at me about how happy he was I was keeping his hours now that I was unemployed, and how much better the daytime really is for sleeping. I washed my face, and filled the tub with cool water. I sat on the edge of the tub, soaked my mutilated tootsies and sipped my wine, convincing myself that tomorrow was a new day. Then I fell into bed.

  Sunday morning I woke up to the alarm radio blaring ‘Manic Monday’ and sat bolt upright, petrified I’d slept through the church brunch thingy. I bolted upright smack into Vito, a mug of coffee and Vinnie all at the same time. Luckily the floor caught the brunt of the coffee.

  Vinnie and Vito shook themselves off. I stared at them.

  “Jeez, Toots, it’s like you have post dramatic tress disorder,” Vito said, wiping at the graffiti-like splotches of coffee across his once white shirt.

  I thought about my bad perms of days gone past. Vito could be right.

  Vinnie trilled in agreement and wiped his paw on his forehead to clean off the splatters of coffee he received. His eyes brightened and got bigger. Mental note to self: cats get decaf.

  I looked at the clock: it was six-thirty. I drummed my fists and feet on the bed. I glared at Vito.

  “I had my alarm set for SEVEN-THIRTY!”

  “That’s what I figured,” Vito said, holding up an apologetic hand, “that’s why I’m here. I kinda overheard you.” I looked at Vito. He handed me what was left of my coffee. “Here, drink this. Squirrel Run Acres is out in the country like.” I gulped at the coffee, and frowned at Vito. “You don’t think you can just goes in there and pick up brunch platters and all, without a little chit-chat, right?” he asked. I looked at him. “Look, if it was a normal pickup, that was paid for, you probably could. But this here’s a donation,” he explained. “You can’t just kinda eat and run, if you know what I mean. You gotta be complimentary about it.

  I hung my head. “Got it. Right. Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Hey, why don’t you get yourself moving, and I’ll take care of Vinnie and Marie?” he asked. I looked at him. “Feed and clean them. Sheesh. You been watching too much TV.” And he sauntered out.

  Vinnie shook a back leg at me in agreement while hopping off the bed to follow Vito.

  “Traitor,” I muttered.

  Vinnie called something back to me about slaggards and absentee breakfasts when he was absolutely famished. Well.

  I got up and found my feet were not very happy about starting the day either. I looked at them and surveyed the damage. Ugh. I heard Vito rummaging around in the kitchen and promised myself again to change the locks on my doors.

  I showered and dressed quickly, opting for my white shirt from last night, black pants and a pair of extremely worn but comfortable black Crocs. I had to; they were the only shoes that wouldn’t re-gnaw my feet. Not exactly a fashion statement, but I was only serving at church, not going out on a date, right?

  What my outfit lacked in fancy, it made up for in quick. I went downstairs and found Vinnie and Vito curled up on the sofa reading the newspaper. Vito sported a non-coffee streaked pink Oxford shirt.

  “Well, what do you think about that?” Vito asked Vinnie. Vinnie nodded back and continued reading.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  Vito looked up. “You gotta read this article,” he said. “You won’t believe it. It turns out that it wasn’t just your old boss behind the burning Bent-A-Lots.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Did you know some guy named Myron?” Vito asked.

  “Yip.”

  “Turns out, he did some sneaky computer stuff to steal information about Buy-A-Lots, through some hack outfit in Bangladesh.” Huh. So Norman was right. “Anyhows, he was selling the information, for a profit, to a big competitor of Buy-A-Lots; Världen Vänder.”

  “Världen Vänder?” I asked.

  “They’re in Sweden,” he said.

  “Why would a Swedish company want that kind of information?” I asked.

  “Competition,” Vito said. “I remember reading a couple months ago about how they beat Buy-A-Lots out of a bid for a store front in the Pretzel Nuggets Mall.”

  I remembered. Wow. Vito was right.

  Världen Vänder was the oddish bulk grocery store that made you ‘rent’ your shopping cart for a quarter. You could only get a shopping cart if you put a quarter into the slot to release the lock to the next cart. You got your quarter back when you put your cart back. And they don’t provide grocery bags – just packing boxes. Odd. But they do sell a very nice brand of lingonberries.

  Vito stood looking out the living room window and waved.

  “Hey, Toots, I gotta go.”

  I peered past him. At the bottom of Mt. Driveway was a yellow Cougar, Miriam seated behind the wheel. She wore a Doris Day kind of sheer headscarf with Elton John type sunglasses, and was waving paddy fingers at Vito.

  “I got a bunch of, ummm… errands… I gotta run before me and Miriam meet you at church,” he explained.

  “Church?” I asked. “I thought you’re Jewish?”

  Vito shrugged. “Miriam and me talked it over. We figure it’s okay, since we’re not too kosher,” he answered, and patted Vinnie on his noggin and hustled out the door.

  I shrugged, gulped the last of my coffee, grabbed Vito’s keys and my pocketbook, and headed out to Squirrel Run Acres.

  I made the right onto Running Pump and drove through the residential section that leads to the mini-commercial warehouse buildings. I slowed down at the speed trap, and saw that a police car had pulled over another victim ahead of me. It had pulled over a black SUV and an irate driver who was wearing a white cotton jacket and banging his head on his steering wheel, while the officer smiled and wrote out a speeding ticket. Where the heck would anyone be speeding to at seven-thirty on a Sunday morning?

  I shrugged and continued and eventually pulled into the parking lot for Squirrel Run Acres. The small employee parking lot was packed. Luckily, the space closest to the kitchen door was empty. I sighed with relief; I wouldn’t have to double-park Vito’s car to load the brunch trays.

  I walked up the back steps and peered in through a screen door. A guy wearing black pants, a white shirt and an apron bounded out past me with a cigarette in his mouth. He lit it in the parking lot. He looked at me and nodded.

  “Go ahead,” he puffed, pointing his head toward the screen door.

  “Uh, thanks,” I said brightly.

  I guessed I was supposed to go in and sort of help myself. I walked into a small back room, where a couple of stressed bleach-blondes were ripping lettuce with a vengeance onto individual salad plates. They looked at me.

  “Finally,” one of them said.

  “About time,” said the other, ripping another leaf.

  I looked blankly at them.

  “Well, go on,” said the first one.


  I shrugged and entered the kitchen.

  I’ve never seen the inside of an ant colony, but I imagine a commercial kitchen provides a pretty accurate likeness of one. There were dozens of workers crisscrossing each other, carrying plates and bowls and supplies, pushing carts, carrying trays and dumping leftovers into large trash bins. Others were mixing, frying, washing and sautéing. No one stood still. Everyone sweated.

  I looked around, and found some large take-out platters on a stainless steel trolley with ‘St. Bart’s’ emblazoned in large black capital letters on them. There were eight of them. Yikes. Clearly, I’d be making several trips.

  I heard the screen door slam, followed by shouting.

  A nerdy kid with red hair and freckles and streaky eyeglasses thrust a large white plastic bottle labeled ‘Ranch Dressing’ at me. “Here, look busy!” he whispered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You do not want to irritate Chef Jacques!” he instructed.

  “Oh,” I said smartly back and stood there, holding the half gallon of salad dressing.

  “Fill the pitchers!” he hissed, and pointed me toward a rolling cart with about a couple dozen small empty creamers.

  “These?”

  He rolled his eyes and nodded and zipped past me on his mission. I shrugged and started dolloping dressing.

  I heard more screaming and more banging as a tall, dark, handsome and irate chef strode into the kitchen. He had curly black hair, dark blue eyes and the vein on his neck throbbed handsomely beneath his scarlet skin. It was Sir Speedy – the driver I saw pulled over at the speed trap on Running Pump Road. He was waving his hands in the air and screaming, “Where’s my filet? Where’s the turkey?”

  One of the two salad girls came running in after him. “We put them in the walk-in last night, like you asked us to,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “The freezer?” he cried.

  The manager rolled her eyes again. “The refrigerator,” she answered.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said. She shrugged. He leaned on the stainless steel counter and muttered. “Great. I’m late. Get pulled over at the stupid speed trap on the stupid shortcut. And someone parked in my stupid parking spot,” he mumbled.

  The manager stared pointedly at me. Chef looked at me. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Dressing?” I answered.

  He shook his head. “We don’t need that now.”

  He had incredibly deep blue eyes. In fact, he looked pretty handsome, when he wasn’t acting all pre-seizure like.

  “Can you prep celery?” he asked, folding his arms and looking down at me. I looked up. This was a nice change. Chef was easily well over six feet tall.

  “Sure,” I said.

  He nodded. “Good. This way.”

  He directed and had me follow him to the back of the kitchen, over to a large stainless steel counter that fed into an industrial size steel kitchen sink.

  “Here,” he said, plopping a bunch of celery on the counter in front of me and walking away.

  I shrugged, rolled up my sleeves, picked out a knife and set out to help. I guessed Vito was right. Instead of exchanging pleasantries, it seemed Squirrel Run Acres preferred to exchange services. It was a good thing I had some time to spare before getting to St. Bart’s. Well, you know what they say. There’s no such thing as a free brunch.

  I just finished and dried the celery and set it to one side, and started to walk over to get the donated brunch trays. “Not so fast,” the manager advised me. She looked over at my cleaned and cut celery. “Not bad. But you’re going to have to work a lot faster or you’ll be here until Thanksgiving.”

  “Huh?”

  “Here,” she huffed, pushing a large tub that held about fifty bunches of celery.

  “Are you kidding?” I asked.

  “No, I’m not!” she said and walked off, shaking her head and muttering.

  The nerdy red-haired kid came up to me. “You don’t want to irritate our manager, either,” he whispered, and started throwing bunches of celery into the sink to get washed.

  “I wasn’t trying to,” I answered.

  He shrugged. “It’s okay. My first day was pretty bad, too,” he said.

  “First day?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, throwing more celery in the sink for me and walking away with the tub full of celery leaf crumbs and dirt.

  I shrugged and turned the faucet on. A few minutes later, the manager came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. Her face was beet red.

  “I just picked up a voicemail from SNAP Employment,” she began. “They said the temp kitchen worker they assigned us for today called in sick. So who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m Mina,” I answered, washing.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, hands on hips.

  “I came to pick up the brunch trays for St. Bart’s.”

  The manager clapped her hand to her forehead. “Harry!” she shouted. The nerdy red-haired kid appeared. “Finish up here,” she instructed, and led me away.

  We walked over to the trolley with St. Bart’s brunch. The manager started rolling the trolley toward the kitchen exit. “Ira! Rich!” she hollered. A very old man in kitchen scrubs and a thirty-something guy wearing a white t-shirt and a full-arm tattoo appeared. “Load these up in this young lady’s car,” she said.

  They both nodded, and Rich pushed the trolley out as Ira followed behind. Chef looked up from a large cast iron skillet that held a couple of sticks of melting butter.

  “What’s going on?” he asked the manager.

  “This is Mina. She came to pick up the donations for St. Bart’s. She’s not our SNAP temp,” she answered.

  Chef’s eyebrows flew to the top of his head and his jaw dropped. I smiled stupidly back at him.

  “Bye!!” I said, and wiggled my fingers at Chef and skipped out the door.

  I drove to St. Bart’s with Vito’s car full of brunch trays and my head full of questions. My first foray into a commercial kitchen wasn’t so bad. Especially considering my mistaken identity and all. And now that I knew how short-handed they were, maybe I could get a job? It wouldn’t be exactly unpleasant working with Chef Jacques, either. That thought made me feel tingly where I hadn’t felt tingly for a long time. I blushed.

  I pulled off of Mulberry and into the parking lot of St. Bart’s. I walked into Fellowship Hall and found Aunt Muriel fussing with setting up coffee and tea and juice dispensers. Plates and napkins and utensils lay all lined up on another big table, with a vast empty space where the brunch platters were supposed to be.

  “Mina!” Aunt Muriel and Ma screamed happily. “Where are the trays?”

  I told them, and in a few minutes a couple of teenagers were roped into unloading Vito’s car.

  “We’ll have to hurry; the service will be out soon,” Aunt Muriel said, checking her diamond-crusted wristwatch against the first chorus of the recessional hymn floating over from the sanctuary.

  “What kept you?” Ma asked, unwrapping platters.

  “Oh, they needed a little extra help,” I said.

  Auntie shook her head. “If I’d known that, I would have sent you there a lot earlier,” she stated. I sighed.

  Ma looked at me. “You look tense,” she said.

  “Do you want another massage?” Auntie asked.

  “Maybe…” I answered, shifting gears between tall, dark and angry to blonde, muscular and chilled.

  “Mina?” she asked, waking me back to reality.

  “Did Massage Man ever tell you he used to be an investment broker?” I asked.

  Auntie nodded. “And after all poor James went through to get the massage training to help his girlfriend,” she added.

  I sighed again. “She’s pretty lucky,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but I guess she’s happier,” Auntie said.

  “It sure can’t hurt to have a
boyfriend who’s a masseuse.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, she certainly does not have a boyfriend. She dumped poor James for another lingerie model.”

  “You mean a girl?”

  “Do you know any men who model lace panties?”

  I didn’t and hoped I never would. Ticker tape thoughts ran across my mind. James not gay. James single. James attractive. Huh. I looked at Auntie.

  “And, he’s very, very nice,” she added.

  “And so is his portfolio?” I asked.

  Auntie shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with a good investment,” she answered.

  A tag-line Amen at the end of the hymn, a benediction and the good-natured stampling of feet across the courtyard arrived, and Fellowship Hall was full of hungry Episcopalians. And Evelyn.

  “Why, this is marvelous,” Evelyn congratulated Auntie, waving both eyebrows.

  Auntie gazed at her. “Thank you, Evelyn. So glad you recovered,” she said evenly.

  Evelyn held up a manicured right hand wrapped in mummy-like gauze bandages. “Yes, I’m so sorry I couldn’t be of any help to you.”

  “You could pour the juice.” Evelyn started to open her mouth to protest, but Auntie finished, “I know you’re a south paw.”

  And that was how Evelyn was roped into pouring.

  I was about to leave when I ran into Ed. Who’d shaved his head.

  “So what do you think?” he asked, eyes akimbo.

  I looked around and saw I was the only one within conversational range, so I figured he was talking to me.

  “Very urban,” I said, and hoped it sounded like something he wanted to hear.

  Ed nodded enthusiastically. He chirped the mayor’s downtown slogan at me: “Lovin’ Lancaster! Lucky for me my hair burned off, or I wouldn’t be the fashion statement you see before you!”

  Burnt hair?

  “Hey, quit stealing my girl,” eyebrowless Ernie joked, joining us.

  Henry came up from behind. “So who’s going to seed the kitty?” he asked. I know it sounds dirty, but he meant who would throw some dollar bills into the donation basket to encourage real donations for the coffee.

  After a mini-version of ‘Once! Twice! Three! SHOOT! between Ernie and Ed, Ernie ponied up $1.58 and a cough drop. I shook my head, patted backs and went for a stiff cup of Joe.