Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched

by Kim Barnouin

  “You mean by just accepting it?”

  She glanced out over the rows of carrots. “Sometimes—the small stuff, as they say. But most times, you’ve got to fight for what matters. And you should.”

  How great was she? “Should I confess that one of the reasons I want to marry Zach is so I can call you my aunt?”

  She laughed and we headed back to the house, just in time to catch the tail end of Harry’s trying to argue-whisper with the model by the buffet table. Nadia shot him a look of pure disgust and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Now there’s a couple I don’t see lasting,” Jocelyn whispered.

  When the party started winding down, I was finally able to sneak my dad, who took his host duties seriously, out the back door and over to the barn.

  We walked in, and my heart started booming in my chest—that’s how right this felt, how juiced I was about it. Right now, the building was used for equipment and wheelbarrows and my mother’s huge baskets. Six months from now: the Outpost. “Dad, I’ve been thinking about something. I want to open a second restaurant right here on the farm, in this barn, with you as executive chef. Clementine’s No Crap Outpost, farm-to-table. What do you think?”

  “Executive chef,” he repeated, a smile breaking out on his weathered face. “That’s always been my dream.”

  “I know. You made mine come true by teaching me everything you know. Now I want to pay you back.”

  He hugged me. “And you really think this is doable? I assume you’ve done your research?”

  “I have. And it’s definitely doable, thanks to the work you’ve already done here over the past thirty years. You’ve built a base of customers, Dad. Even Elizabeth thinks it’ll work.” I went over all the details, the logistics, the numbers, the potential menu—and backup for those times when he wouldn’t be up to standing on his feet.

  “Well, then, sign me on,” he said, his voice almost breaking. “I can’t wait to tell your mom.”

  Awesome.

  I waited until we were almost back to Santa Monica before I told Zach I was going ahead with my plans for the Outpost. I ran down the list of checkpoints, as I’d done for my dad, but I went more in depth for Zach, since he was in the business.

  “You should have seen my dad’s face. He’s so happy.” Just the thought of how my father had looked when I told him made me so happy.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have told him yet, Clem,” Zach said, both hands on the steering wheel, not as usual with one on my thigh. “Why get him excited about something that may not happen?”

  “I just told you all the reasons why it will happen.”

  “Clem. What sounds okay on paper and what works in reality are two different things. You know I believe in you. But two restaurants—three hours apart—both needing you on a daily basis, especially a brand-new one? And a month after the novelty wears off a farm-to-table meal, the Outpost will very likely stall.”

  No, it wouldn’t. Not if the food, service, and experience were incredible. Marketing power, publicity, and word of mouth would take care of that. The Outpost would fill a niche. I knew it.

  Still, I wanted his support. His hellz, yeah. Was he just going all conservative on me? Or did he think I couldn’t pull it off? If I believed in me, shouldn’t he?

  I glanced at him, ready to say just that, but I could tell he was dead set against the Outpost.

  Shizz.

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree on this, Zach,” I said, using one of his expressions. “I’m going ahead with it.”

  He put his sunglasses on and didn’t say a word until “Bye” when he dropped me off at my apartment.

  19

  Keira had been doing her homework. When I arrived at the restaurant on Monday at just before noon, she was already hard at work on her red sauce for the lasagna, sautéing onions in coconut oil. In a neat line at her station were the other ingredients: minced garlic, the tomatoes, basil, oregano, fruity red wine, and my secret weapon—a pinch of agave nectar. She picked up the little bowl of garlic.

  “Add the garlic only when the onions are tender,” I said, glancing into her pan.

  She wiped her hands on her apron. “Oh, right. There are so many steps. I practiced making the sauce last night, and it didn’t taste right.”

  “Your sauce will be perfect by the time you get on that Eat Me stage. You’re gonna bring the panel of judges to their knees with your lasagna. Half of making sure that happens is about confidence.”

  “Dominique told me I was going to make a fool of myself on national television, that I could forget about any culinary school accepting me afterward. ‘You’ll make them look bad,’ she said.” Keira bit her lip and added the garlic to the pan, halfheartedly pushing the bits around.

  I put my hand on hers. “First rule of the kitchen—and beating Joe Johansson’s ass—don’t cook unless you’re one hundred percent there. You have to focus every second. On what you’re doing, what you have to do next, what you have to do three steps later. Let go of everything else—Dominique, the show, school—and just focus on the red sauce and getting your big pot of water prepared to boil for the noodles.”

  Kind of like how I had to ignore Zach’s reaction to the Outpost and just do my thing.

  Something shifted in her expression and light came into her eyes. “Yes, chef!”

  “Right now, you’re the chef, Keira. Go to it.”

  She shot me her trademark huge smile and stirred in the crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, increasing the heat exactly when she was supposed to.

  She just might pull this off.

  Alanna and Gunnar arrived together, Alanna sniffing at the air. “That smells amazing. Good thing I didn’t eat lunch.”

  Hmmm. Because she was too busy lip-locked with Gunnar? Had they ever arrived together before? I didn’t think so. They kept shooting little smiles at each other. Something was definitely up with them.

  Gunnar eyed the lineup of ingredients that Keira hadn’t yet used. “That oregano needs to be more finally chopped.” He went over to his station to select the right knife. “This one. And chop it like this.”

  “Ah, got it. Thanks, Gunnar.” She glanced at him. “Didn’t sleep much last night?” He looked tired, his hair was more mussed than its usual blue-black mop, and dark shadows were under his eyes. Something in those eyes was different, a glimmer of . . . sadness instead of his usual sparkly grumpiness.

  Maybe no hot kitchen romance was going on.

  “Are we making lasagna or talking about me?” he asked, turning away.

  Huh. Had his daughter’s solo attempt at Choctastic Cake for her school fund-raiser come out so meh and she’d gotten all sulky again?

  “I’m gonna have to do both when I’m cooking on the Eat Me stage, though,” Keira said. “I watched at least twenty episodes of Eat Me on Netflix over the weekend. The chefs get flustered because Joe is up their butt the whole time they’re cooking. And the audience gets in on it too. I have to be able to cook and dish it back to him, while endearing myself to the audience.”

  She had done her homework. And she was right. She would have to deal with constant harassment, shouting from the audience, and Joe in her face.

  “Did the Eat Me producer say you could bring an assistant to help you out?” I asked. I’d planned to ask my friend Alexander, terrific vegan chef, to assist me, but at the time he hadn’t been taking my calls (I’d made a huge mistake and almost blew our friendship), so I’d asked Sara. She ended up with a job and a fiancé out of it.

  “Yes. And I wish I could ask you, Clementine, but there’s no way I’m going to jeopardize your relationship with Dominique. You don’t want a war with your future mother-in-law.” Keira tasted the sauce, then added the pinch of agave nectar. “The producer said I should choose someone ‘mouthy’ who could give it back to Joe and the audience.”

  “How about me?” Gunnar said. “No one’s mouthier than me. Except maybe Clementine’s friend Sara. And just barely.”

>   Interesting. Gunnar was the most private person I’d ever known. For him to want to go on a TV show was unusual.

  “I thought you hated TV. And especially that show,” Alanna said. “Didn’t you say you saw it once and that it was the bottom of the barrel of cooking shows?”

  “It is. But my daughter loves it. It’s her favorite show. And I’m . . . kind of in the doghouse again right now. I need to do something, and there’s not much I can change. If I can appear on her favorite show, she’ll flip.”

  “Why are you in the doghouse?” Alanna asked. “Don’t tell me her cake made everyone sick? Or the kids took one bite and gagged or something?”

  Gunnar set down his knife. “No. Actually, the cake was a hit. And we ended up having such a great time together this past weekend that she got all upset about my having to go to work and leave her with a sitter. I don’t even get to see her before she goes to sleep on my weekends with her. Saturday and Sunday, from three to when she goes to bed at eight thirty, she’s with a sitter.”

  “But a lot of working parents use sitters,” Keira said. “And it’s not like you’re going to the movies or something. You’re working.”

  “I know. But it cuts into our time. She wants me to take off weekends so that we’re together. But I can’t do that. That’s not how restaurants work.”

  Gunnar was the only one of my employees who had a child. I hadn’t even considered how his schedule might impact him and his relationship with his kid. Yeah, I needed Gunnar on weekends—the busiest and most profitable nights of the week. But I also needed one of the best vegetable chefs I’d ever worked with to be in a good place when he came to work, not wishing he were back home reading to his daughter on their weekends. “You can,” I said. “If you work for a chef who knows how important flexibility in the workplace is. How many weekends a month do you spend with your daughter?”

  “Two. And I see her every Monday after school for an overnight since we’re off Mondays.” He glanced at his watch. “Speaking of which, I need to leave at two thirty to pick her up from school on time.”

  “So maybe during your weekends with your daughters, you take off Saturday and Sunday. I’ll be vegetable chef those nights.”

  “And I’ll pick up any slack, you know that,” Alanna said, looking between Gunnar and me.

  “Maybe I can apprentice with you so that eventually I can cover for you on those nights,” Keira said. “You train me, seriously train me, and you can be my assistant on Eat Me.”

  Gunnar perked up considerably. “Deal.”

  Keira reached into the canister of organic whole-wheat flour and added two cups to a bowl, then added water, salt, and olive oil. She floured a board and began mixing the dough by hand. Clearly, she’d read up and watched videos on the proper way to knead without overdoing it.

  “Think it needs more water?” Keira asked.

  “Looks perfect to me,” I told her.

  She beamed her megawatt smile and set the dough aside, then headed over to the refrigerator for the tofu, which needed to be braised to optimize its flavor for the lasagna.

  Keira set down the tofu, sliced it perfectly, and reached for the bottle of sesame oil and soy sauce. “So I dredge the tofu slices in seasoned flour, then sear it, then simmer it on low heat in broth, a little soy sauce, and sesame oil. Covered pan.”

  “A-plus,” I said.

  She beamed and got to work.

  “So gimme some tips on dealing with Johansson,” Gunnar said to me.

  I’ll never forget how he’d tried to rattle me and how Sara had kept telling him to suck it. The audience had loved her.

  “You have to win over the audience by dishing it back to Joe, but making them think you’re one of them. Look out at them a lot. Get them on your side. Make exaggerated faces at them every time Joe calls you a skinny turd. And he will.”

  “I’ll prep you tomorrow night during dinner service by berating you and calling you an idiot.” Gunnar glanced at me. “If chef approves, that is?”

  I’d have to watch Keira like a hawk to make sure she didn’t screw up what she was working on.

  “Okay by me,” I said, “but if it starts affecting the rush too much, turn back to your usual sweet self.”

  Alanna laughed. “Gunnar, sweet? Ha.” She shot him a smile that said she did find him sweet.

  “You have to beat that dickhead,” Gunnar said to Keira. “We lose and my daughter will think I’m a lightweight.”

  “Oh, we’ll win. My entire future depends on it.”

  Been there, done that.

  That night, Sara and I were watching Eat Me so I could give Keira some extra pointers. What I was looking for, and what I didn’t tell Sara, was patterns of weakness. Cases when Joe himself got flustered, what was said, what got to him.

  Not much. No matter what was thrown at him, he either shrugged it off or zinged it back.

  “Ugh,” Sara said, her feet up on the coffee table. “See how in the last episode I was looking good, and then in this one I’ve gained back like ten pounds? You can see it in my face. I liked how I looked before.”

  She put down her bowl of frozen yogurt (ickeroo), which had as much fat as ice cream and didn’t taste as good. I’d tried to get her to eat my homemade strawberry sorbet, but the “chocolate attack” frozen yogurt was Joe’s favorite, and apparently they stuck two spoons in the carton and pigged out on it in bed every night.

  “How am I supposed to stay motivated to cut the crap out of my life when Joe encourages me to eat all my favorite crap foods? We split a family-size bag of sour-cream-and-onion chips yesterday. I have your recipe for homemade potato chips using vegan yogurt and onions, but it’s so easy to just buy a bag in the supermarket.”

  “You can have your supermarket chips, Sar. Maybe just not every night.”

  “I’m so bad at moderation.” She pushed the bowl of frozen yogurt away from her. “Okay, that’s it. I’m back on the no-crap plan. Yeah, I like it that Joe doesn’t seem to care what I look like. But I care. I loved how I used to feel. And my skin looks like hell.” She dipped her spoon into my sorbet. “Mmm. So good. I’m back.”

  Yeah! I slid the sorbet over to her.

  “Oh, hey, did I tell you that Joe and I went over the list together?” Sara asked. “He was totally into number seven.”

  “Which one was that?”

  She grabbed her bag from the coffee table and rummaged through it and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Number seven: ‘Ask him why he loves you and then jot the reasons down on paper. Reread when you’re arguing.’ Wanna hear what he said?”

  I nodded.

  “ ‘Because when I’m with you, I feel more like myself, the real me, whoever the hell that is. Because you make me think. Because you make me want to be a better person, not that I probably will be. Because you’re smart and funny and speak your mind. Because you have big goals for yourself. Because you’re so damned beautiful and I can’t stop thinking about you all the time. Because you tell me to screw myself when I deserve it. Because you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’ ”

  Okay, was that my brain exploding? Did something inside me just shift? I went from hating Joe Johansson to actually kind of . . . liking him for all that. A lot.

  “Sara. Holy shit.”

  “I know.” She scanned the list again. “The guy loves me for some pretty good reasons.”

  “Really good reasons.”

  “I’ve asked him before why he loves me, and he’s always grabbed me and given me an annoying noogie and said, ‘Because you’re fucking awesome,’ and changed the subject. But something about having Jocelyn’s sixty-year-old list made him take it seriously. Plus, I think he likes her.”

  I smiled. “I’ll bet if your mother read what Joe said, she’d change her mind about him.”

  “You think? Maybe I’ll call her later and read it to her. So how do you really think Keira’s going to do?” Sara asked. “Can she handle Joe? I’ll have her back, but still
.”

  “I honestly don’t know. She’s still a newbie cook, and he might get to her. Gunnar’s planning on berating her tomorrow in the kitchen during prime dinner service to give her full Joe Johansson treatment.”

  “Think Gunnar will be able to deal with Joe? He seems like a cool guy, but he’s the kind of hipster-looking dude in skinny jeans and dyed hair that Joe loves to rip to shreds.”

  “Gunnar’s pretty tough, I think.”

  “What about Dominique? Has she backed off about Keira being on the show?”

  “She texts me like five times a day: ‘You’re not really going to let her go through with this?’ That kind of thing. She texts Zach the same thing, harassing him to talk some sense into me. As if I could stop Keira anyway. Dominique has this crazy notion that people can be controlled.”

  My iPhone pinged with a text. Of course it was from Dominique. Darling, still counting on you to talk Keira out of that Godforsaken show. P.S. Veil fashion show Wednesday at ten thirty. My house.—D.

  I was dying to text back a simple No on both counts.

  My phone pinged again. Speaking of that awful show, I recommend nixing your friend Sara from the bridal party. Wouldn’t want to be upstaged by “celebrity,” no matter how faux.

  Grrrr. She was driving me insane. I grabbed my phone and typed back, YOU’RE FIRED, YOU IMPOSSIBLE SHREW. Then, of course, Zach’s face popped into my mind, and I deleted it. But it felt danged good for a second.

  20

  Zach was doing it again. Disappearing. Not responding to texts. Telling me he was working late.

  Enough was enough. That mini-devil stabbed me in the shoulder with the pitchfork. Told you, Cooper. Everything is falling to shit. You’ll never impress the New York Times reporter now. Not with Zach and his disappearing acts messing with your head. Clementine’s No Crap Café will be history this time next year. You’ll be walking into a day spa in this location.

  The mini-angel pointed a finger at the devil. Shut it, you. Whatever Zach is going through, they’ll get through it. But right now, go work on your rustic-vegetable potpie. Now, she screamed in my ear.