I stared at the creamy concoction. My supplier had recently delivered several quarts of fresh strawberries. I decided to cut them up and use them to top each cookie, for the red and white effect. The things a caterer is called upon to do. I rolled dainty half-tablespoonfuls of dough into spheres, thumb-printed the lot, and then put a half of a strawberry, seed-side up, in the little indentations. I slapped the cookie sheets into the oven, set the timer, then fixed another espresso.
Fifteen minutes later I was munching on the luscious results. They were like tiny cheesecakes, something you would have at an English tea. I decided to dub them something catchy. Red ‘n’ Whites, maybe. And speaking of something catchy, I decided then and there to beg Julian to let me help him with the SAT drill-questions, if he was still interested. How hard could it be? I already knew the opposite of tranquil: today’s lunch.
Two hours later, toting three doily-covered trays and a wrapped package of six dozen Red ‘n’ Whites, I pulled into the parking lot of the Aspen Meadow Cafe. The Dawsons had tried hard to make their restaurant appear as continental as possible. There was no question that the cafe’s sleek, glassed exterior was a far cry from the more casual health food and Western barbecue spots that peppered Aspen Meadow, places where tourists or construction workers or psychic massage practitioners could grab a noontime bite. No, the folks who frequented this cafe were, for the most part, not the kind who had to go out and work for a living, at least not full-time. Or they belonged to a growing group of professionals who could put on cowboy hats and wander out for a two-hour lunch.
I eased the van between a Mercedes (license plate: LOIR; I guess ATURNIE was already taken) and Buick Riviera (URSIK; now, how was that to inspire confidence in an M.D.?). The cafe was sandwiched in the dark-paneled, turquoise-trimmed shopping center known as Aspen Meadow North. There was Aspen Meadow Florist, whose blossoms Schulz had recently decimated, and Aspen Meadow Interior Design, with its perennially southwest window display. Tasteful Halloween decorations adorned the windows of upscale boutiques. Next to the cafe was the undecorated window of Aspen Meadow Weight Control Center. Ah, irony!
I entered the cafe and passed the baskets of braided breads and puffed brioches, passed the cheese case with its Stiltons, Camemberts, and buffalo mozzarellas, and came up to the glass case of desserts. Luscious-looking apricot cream tortes, multilayered chocolate mousse cakes, and all manner of truffles called put for attention. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the exclamations of delight that would greet my Happy Endings Plum Cake when it held a prominent place in front of the displayed concoctions.
Audrey had already arrived with Heather, whose pouty expression and slumped posture next to the Stiltons did not indicate happy-camper status. Audrey, utterly oblivious to her daughter’s funk, sidled up to me and warned, “I made the mistake of asking the Dawsons if Greer had anything to impress the Stanford rep with. They went into a fit of preparation. Greer hightailed it into the bathroom and changed into a red and white outfit. Now they’re all awaiting your presence in the kitchen for the big taste test. Oh.” She lifted one eyebrow in her wide, humorless face. “The jam’s putrid. Better say you’ll make the Linzertorte they want at home.”
Too much. I said, “Any sign of the Marenskys? Or Miss Ferrell?”
She pressed her lips together. “Ferrell’s in the kitchen. I don’t know about the Marenskys.”
I said wishfully, “Is the jam just tart? Would it be better with some sugar mixed in?”
The smile she gave me oozed smugness. “Believe me, Goldy, you could take the sugar made by every beet farmer in eastern Colorado and put it in that jam, and it would still taste like solidified vinegar.”
“Thanks, Audrey,” I said dryly. “I trust you didn’t let your opinion show.”
“I had to spit it out. Either that or throw up.” “Great,” I said as the Dawsons approached. They were like a human phalanx.
“Hey, Hank! Great game Sunday.” His face turned even more grim at my greeting. “They were lucky, you know that, Goldy. Washington’s going to be tough. About as tough as this Stanford guy. We’ve just been talking about how to play him.”
“I don’t know why the Marenskys are even bothering to bring Brad,” said Caroline primly. “Everyone knows Stanford is as demanding as the Ivy League schools. They never take anyone below the top ten percent.”
I murmured, “But in a school as small as Elk Park Prep “
“Never!” she interrupted me, her small dark eyes glowing. “Didn’t you hear me?”
I was saved assuring her that my hearing was fine by the cheerful jingle of the bell hung over the cafe door. Stan Marensky came through, wearing a fur jacket, then Rhoda strutted regally past the bread baskets in a full-length fur coat, not the raccoon thing. She was followed by a diminutive fellow, presumably the Stanford rep. He wore blue jeans, a bow tie, and no coat. Bringing up the rear was Brad Marensky, a broad-shouldered boy who wore shorts and an Elk Park Prep varsity tennis T-shirt, despite the fact that it was about thirty-eight degrees outside.
The diminutive fellow glanced around the cafe. He did ‘not look so very powerful to me. Yet beside me, Audrey Coopersmith was visibly trembling. “Audrey,” I said in as comforting a tone as I could muster, “please relax. This is simply not as important as you make it out to be.”
Her look was chill. “You just don’t get it, Goldy.” The Marenskys were chatting in loud, possessive tones to the Stanford rep. They seemed extraordinarily pleased with themselves, and acted as if some very important business had been resolved in the ten-minute car ride from the 1-70 exit. It occurred to me that while the Marenskys, who were both as thin as models, ignored me, the short, rotund Dawsons were always curious about my every word or thought.
Hank Dawson leaned in close. “They sure seem smug. I wonder what they could have told him about Brad? That kid’s only number five in the class, hell never make it. I need to get that guy away from them. Punt or go for it?”
“Go for it,” I said without hesitation.
“Welcome to our little restaurant.” Caroline Dawson’s lilting voice pronounced restaurant with a French accent. I cringed. The Marenskys turned into two skinny ice sculptures as they watched Caroline Dawson waddle forward in one of her trademark crimson suits.
“We’d like to take you into the kitchen,” Caroline Dawson declared. She grasped the young man’s arm firmly. Once she had him in tow, she indicated with a move of her head that she wanted me to follow her into the kitchen. “Our daughter, Greer, who is third in her class, is by the Hobart,” she said with great sweetness.
“I’m so glad you came out on an early ski trip,” she added as if she and the unfortunate rep were old chums.
“Should I kneel and kiss his ring?” I asked Audrey Coopersmith, who had timidly followed me in while tugging Heather’s sleeve to bring her along. The Marenskys, trying to appear cool and unruffled, marched out into the kitchen to see what the Dawsons were up to with the rep.
While we were all assembling in the kitchen, Caroline engaged the Stanford rep in lively, empty conversation. Miss Ferrell, drinking coffee and leaning against a sink, had a pained look on her face. Well, that ought to teach the college counselor not to host unexpected reps. She click-clacked her way over to me on her tiny heels.
“I have a teachers’ meeting in Denver the next couple of days, Ms. Bear,” she said under her breath. “But I would like to talk to you about Julian as soon as I get back. Can you free up some time? He came to see me this morning, and of course he’s very upset about what happened to Arch… but he also has a number of questions about Keith. Oh, this all has become so dark ” She jerked back abruptly, suddenly aware that Audrey, Hank Dawson, and the Marenskys were all keen to hear what she had to say.
“What questions about Keith?” I asked.
“He was having some problems ” she began in a low voice. She looked around. The Marenskys began to whisper to each other. Hank reached for a cabinet door while Audrey pr
etended to be intensely perusing a menu she had found on the counter. “Some problems with this college thing,” Miss Ferrell whispered.
“How about chatting Saturday morning before the tests?” I whispered back. I sneaked a sidelong glance at Audrey, but to read the menu she had put on her usual blank expression. It was hard to tell whether she was listening. “I’ll be setting up that breakfast out at the school.”
Miss Ferrell nodded and turned on her heels and click-clacked back to the Stanford rep. Greer Dawson had made her appearance from the back end of the kitchen. As Audrey had predicted, the teenager was ‘wearing a red and white striped shirt. The skirt matched. Her golden hair curled angelically around her diminutive heart-shaped face. I was reminded of the Breck girl. Daintily, Greer reached for a utensil and spooned a mouthful of the raspberry jam into the rep’s reluctantly open mouth. Apparently, Greer didn’t want me to preempt the rep in the tasting. With startling suddenness the rep’s face took on the look of a two-week-old kiwi fruit.
He said in a high, uncertain voice over the expectant hush in the room, “What? No sweetener?”
Everyone immediately began bustling around, trying to make up for this faux pas. Everyone, that is, except Audrey, who leaned in to my ear and jeered, “Nanny-nanny-nana.”
“Ah, well.” Hank Dawson hustled forward. “This jam is still in development, I mean, this is a new batch, and Greer’s just a rookie chef, after all, you can hardly judge “
“We’ll let Goldy decide,” Caroline Dawson announced imperiously. “After all, she’s the one Greer’s been studying with.”
Oh, blame it on the caterer! Well, excuse me, but the only thing Greer had studied while she was with me was whether you served pie with a spoon or a fork. Up until now, the girl had never shown even the slightest inkling of interest in rood preparation. Of course, I knew what this setup was all about. If I pretended to love the jam, I’d get a Linzertorte job in addition to the plum cake assignment, and I’d show up Miss Ferrell and poor Audrey. Not to mention the Stanford guy. If I screwed up my face in disgust, I could forget about a Stanford tailgate picnic, and I could go elsewhere to peddle my plum cake. I also had the discomforting premonition that Schulz might walk in at any moment on this ridiculous scenario. The things a caterer has to do for business.
I stalled. “Fresh spoon?”
“In there.” Audrey motioned to a wooden drawer. I pulled the drawer open. It held one of those plastic four-part silverware trays. Each section bulged with utensils. I reached toward the spoon section, desperately attempting to imagine sweet jam.
“I’ll get a big one,” I said loudly.
But I wasn’t going to taste jam that day. I should have looked more closely at the small object in the spoon section, the shiny black round form, the red hourglass on the bottom of its dark belly. But by the time I had the sense to draw back my hand, I had already been bitten by the black widow.
10
“Omigod!” I screeched.
The Dawsons, the Marenskys, Miss Ferrell, Audrey, all pressed forward with urgent queries: What happened? Are you all right? A spIder? Are you sure? Where?
I backed up, my left hand clutching my right wrist. The stinging crept up my finger and into my palm. Furiously, I thought, Why did it have to be my right hand? I backed hard into Stan Marensky. When I whirled around, he appeared stunned. Involuntary tears filled my eyes.
Hank Dawson ran to the phone, Caroline Dawson began comforting a screaming Greer, the Marenskys demanded of one another and of a gaping Brad what the hell was going on, Miss Ferrell splashed cold water over a paper towel. Audrey was on her knees, looking for the spider, which she was convinced I had shaken out onto the floor. The poor Stanford guy was standing stock-still, his mouth gaping. You could see his mind working: This place is weird.
“Uh-uh,” I said to the familiar person lumbering fast into the kitchen: Tom Schulz.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. He reached out for my forearm and examined the spot I was pointing to on my right index finger. It was swelling up and reddening. And it burned. I mean, my hand was on fire.
From the floor, Audrey hollered up at him: “Do something, take her to the hospital, she’s been bitten by a poisonous spider, do something…”
Tom Schulz gripped my shoulders. “Goldy,” he said, demanding my gaze. “Was it small and brown?”
Isaid,“Uh…uh…”
“Would you know a brown recluse?”
“It wasn’t… that wasn’t…”
He seemed relieved, then raised his eyebrows. He said, “Black widow?” and I nodded. To each of his questions ” Are you allergic? Do you know?” I shook my head and gave a helpless gesture. I hadn’t the slightest idea if I was allergic. How often does one get bitten by a poisonous arachnid?
Hank Dawson trundled rapidly back into the kitchen. His voice cracked when he announced, “Oh, God, all the ambulances in the entire mountain area are tied up! Is she going to be all right? Should one of us take her to a hospital? Is she gonna die? What?”
Schulz hustled me out of there. Amid the siren, lights, squeal of tires, and Schulz’s inability to get his cellular phone to work, we hightailed it out of Aspen Meadow North and got onto Interstate 70. As the dun-brown hills whizzed by, I held my hand by the wrist like a tourniquet. I tried to think of the spider venom as a toxic black ink that I was willing to stay in my palm and not travel through my veins into the bloodstream.
Once we were on I-70, Schulz’s cellular phone kicked in and he announced to Dispatch where he was going. Then he called the poison center. Through the crackle of interference they directed us to Denver General Hospital. It had the closest source of antivenin, they told Schulz. My hand burned.
Cursing the welling tears and my shaking voice, I asked, “Isn’t this supposed to go away or something? It’s not really poisonous, is it?”
He kept his eyes on the road as we whipped past a truck. “Depends. Brown recluse wouldve been worse.”
I cleared my throat. “I have to be able to take care of Arch… .” I was beginning to perspire heavily. Each time I took a breath, the bite throbbed. It was like being in labor.
Schulz said, “Feel nauseated?” I told him no. After a minute he said, “You’re not going to die. I don’t know why you go into that damn cafe, though. Last summer somebody pushed you into a glass case there. I’m telling you, Goldy, that place and you don’t mix.”
“No kidding.” Perspiration trickled down my scalp. I stared at my swollen finger, now overcome with a dull, numbing pain. Strangely, I also felt a hardening pain developing between my shoulders. I took a breath. Agony. “I’m beginning to hurt allover. How’m I going to cook? Why did it have to be my right hand?”
He flicked me a look. “Why did it have to be you at all?”
Headache squeezed my temples mercilessly. I whispered, “Good thing you came along when you did.”
“The posse,” he said impassively. In the emergency room a bleached-blond nurse asked in a clipped voice about allergies and insurance. A dark-complected doctor asked about how long ago this had happened and what I had been doing to make the spider bite me. Some people. While the doctor examined the bite, I closed my eyes and did Lamaze breathing. The childbirth experience, like the divorce experience, can give you a reservoir of behaviors to deal with crises for the rest of your life.
The doctor finally decreed that invenomation had not been severe. I did not, he said, need to be hospitalized. He checked my vital signs, then told me to take hot baths this afternoon and tonight, to relieve the muscular pain in my back. When I asked about working, he said I might be cooking again by tomorrow, that I should see how I felt. Before he breezed out he said tonight was for rest.
“Oh, gosh,” I exclaimed, suddenly remembering, “the red and white cookies for the school! I don’t know if Audrey remembered them!”
“Goldy, please,” said Schulz, “why not let somebody else “
“I can’t, I worked all morning
on those things,” I said stubbornly, and scooted off the examination table. Dizziness rocked me as soon as my feet hit the ground. Shaking his head, Schulz held my arm as we walked down the hall to a pay phone. He punched in the number of the cafe and tried to cut through the barrage of frantic queries from Hank Dawson. Finally, sighing, Schulz handed me the phone.
Hank’s inquiries about whether I was okay were immediately followed by a volley of questions designed to ascertain whether I was going to sue him. No, I wouldn’t contemplate legal action, I promised, if he would retrieve the platters of cookies from my van and get them over to the prep school. Hank said Audrey had left in her “usual high-strung state” and had forgotten them, but that he would make sure they were delivered. Somewhat ruefully, he added that the Stanford rep had worried aloud about hygiene conditions at the cafe. To add insult to injury, Hank informed me, the rep hadn’t even stayed for a free lunch. Greer’s future at Stanford didn’t look so hot.
After what seemed like an interminable wait I couldn’t decide if the doctor was waiting for me to die, get better, or just disappear the blond nurse reappeared and announced that I could go. Schulz drove me home. I felt embarrassed to have taken so much of his time, and said so.
He chuckled. “Are you kidding? Most exciting lunch I’ve had all week.”
Audrey Coopersmith’s white pickup truck sat in front of my house. Audrey got out, and with her shoulders rolled inward, marched with her long duck-walk stride up to my front porch: the first official greeter. Bless her, she had brought a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of carnations. As Schulz and I came slowly up the walk, she stood, feet apart, hands clasping the flowers behind her back. Her face seemed frozen in anxiety. Schulz still held me gently by the right elbow, but he lifted his chin and squinted his eyes, appraising Audrey.
Under his breath he said, “Have you introduced me to this Mouseketeer?”
“Dont.
When we got to the front door, Audrey wordlessly thrust the flowers at me. Then, seeing my bandaged hand, she awkwardly drew the bouquet back and blushed deeply. I mumbled a thanks and reluctantly asked her to come in. It took me a minute to remember my security code. Put it down to spider toxin fuzzing the brain. After some fumbling we all stood in my kitchen.
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