by J. M. Snyder
Spencer laughed.
“I’m sure that’s not the turn-off it kind of sounds like it should be,” Carter assured his friend. “It doesn’t seem like it exactly got in the way last night…”
Spencer smiled. “No, I guess not.”
“Besides,” Carter said, dropping Spencer’s tennis shoes on the floor at his feet. “Even if it’s the worst idea in history, you signed a contract.”
“You always know just what to say.”
“It’s a gift.”
Knowing that Carter’s work didn’t need double-checking, Spencer nevertheless ran once around the house before he consented to be driven to the park and to his televised fate. All the ribs out of the basement fridge? Check. Jugs of sauce out of the kitchen fridge? Check again. He pulled the back door shut behind him and gasped. “Carter!” he cried.
“What?” Carter whined from behind the wheel of the van.
“The trailer? What are we gonna cook on if we don’t bring the grill?”
“I don’t know, the glamorous made-for-TV outdoor kitchen they set up for us at the park? Will you please trust me that everything’s under control and get in the van?”
“You got the sauce?”
“Spencer! Am I the worst employee in the world or the best thing that ever happened to you?”
“Is there a third option?”
“There is. It’s the one where I drive away and leave you stressing in your yard while I go become a reality TV sensation. Everything is under control.” He revved the engine. “Now get in the van.”
Spencer complied.
Carter affected great disappointment as he eased the van down the narrow driveway. “So much for getting my own show,” he pouted.
“I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t air ‘Carter Lickers’ anyhow,” Spencer joshed. “Even on cable.”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t watch it.”
Claudia was wedged into a director’s chair under a colorful Crosstown Smackdown umbrella when Carter turned the van into the parking lot. A young producer scrambled to move a sandwich board on which she had scrawled Reserved, and then she directed Carter into his parking spot. As Spencer climbed down, Francesca Marconi-Hollenbeck materialized at his side in an oversized sun hat, toting her trusty clipboard.
“And not a moment too soon,” she chided by way of welcome. “I won’t say I was stressing, but I will say a forfeit doesn’t make for very gripping viewing.”
“Hey, at least he would have had a chance of winning,” Spencer quipped.
“Oh, okay.” Francesca pulled a frown in false admonition of Spencer’s attitude. “Sounds like it might be time for the pre-game interview.” She took him by the hand and made to lead him over to a cluster of cameras.
Spencer turned to Carter. “You got this?”
“I got this. Go make us famous.”
Francesca piped up. “Tyler!” she hollered skyward. A young man with a dress shirt ruthlessly tucked into a pair of razor-creased khakis scrambled across the lawn in response to this summons, a mop of honeyed curls bouncing every which way in his wake.
He breathlessly presented himself before Francesca, his hair still bobbing on the wind. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Be a dear and help young…” She looked to Spencer and snapped her fingers in Carter’s general direction.
“Carter,” Spencer dutifully supplied.
“Be a dear,” she said again to Tyler, “and help young Carter here unload…I don’t know, whatever sorts of things people unload. Meat and whatnot.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carter made a show of admiring Tyler’s miniature ass, then said to Spencer, “Oh, I definitely got this.” Whereupon Spencer allowed himself to be led away.
Francesca—or, well, Tyler and her other lackeys, Spencer supposed—had set up quite the little cook-off coliseum in the small scenic park at the base of the purplest of Colorado Springs’ mountains majesty. Each competing side would enjoy a spacious and camera-friendly kitchen area, complete with oversized barbecue utensils and watermelons and prop bowls of potato salad. These kitchens angled towards a set of bleachers, pre-packed both with high-spirited hecklers and sign-waving supporters.
“‘Lick Your Own Bone,’” Spencer read, aghast, from an audience member’s sign. “Surely you can’t show that sign on television? Has that person even tried my food?”
“Relax, darling, they’re extras. The gay-looking ones with frosted tips were paid to root for you, the women in calico and braids were paid to root against you. You gotta give the people at home what they want.”
“And that’s calico?”
“Fine, we give ‘em what I want. Never mind that now. Come on over here, we’ll see if makeup can do anything about that sheen on your forehead.” She scrutinized his face, then asked, “Have you considered eighty-sixing the beard?”
“No…”
“Hmm. I don’t know how that’s gonna play on camera.”
“What difference does it make? Isn’t this a cooking show?”
Francesca chortled sunnily. “Yes, dear, everybody tunes into a show with ‘Smackdown’ in its name for the recipes. You’re priceless. Let’s see…the beard, the gee-whiz attitude…maybe we can Duck Dynasty you up a little bit.”
“Cuz that show’s so gay?”
“Duck a l’Orange Dynasty, then. Just play up the Innocent Underdog angle in your interview and we’re all gonna get rich today.” She situated him in front of a camera with his back to the mountains, gave a tug on his T-shirt, then jumped out of the shot calling “Action!”
Spencer was completely unprepared. “Um, what do I do?”
“Wipe that deer in the headlights look off your face, for starters,” Francesca counseled. “Keep rolling, Carmine. Spencer, just relax. I’ll lob a few easy get-to-know-yas from off-camera, you just look handsome and answer them, K?”
Spencer nodded.
“Great,” Francesca said. “Carmine, are we getting this?”
The crusty cameraman grunted, and Francesca sallied forth. “Spencer Worthington, it’s a big day for you,” she said in a heretofore unrevealed announcer-type voice. “You’ll finally have the chance to answer the question faithful foodies have been asking since the Bible’s first barbecue, namely: Is being gay a sin, or just sinfully delicious?” Spencer doubled over laughing through eight takes before Francesca muttered to Carmine, “Sheesh, forget it. We’ll save that for voice-over. If you can get a shot of him not peeing his pants, please do, but we don’t have all day. I’d like to get the hell out of here before the park bursts into flames.” She stalked off.
Such a combustion was by no means imminent, but nor did this remark soothe Spencer’s forest fire paranoia. The grills were both blazing away already—more atmospheric for establishing shots, he supposed—and Lord knows nothing got his mouth to watering quite like the smell of hot coals—besides maybe the sight of Ethan, whom he now perceived diplomatically plopped in the center of the stands—but the smoke from the fire that had started overnight in the mountains was not eager to be outdone. It coated the sky in an unpleasant layer of insulation, obscuring the sunshiny blue while locking in every additional perspiring degree in an unwelcome reminder that in the years it didn’t rain, they all lived like flint in a drawer, tempting every spark to level the town.
“People, people!” Francesca clapped for the attention of the assembled, which she was eventually granted. Camera operators whirled around her in search of the perfect angle; others swooped into the kitchens, to which, Francesca announced, the action would soon decamp.
“We’re just gonna do a quick face-off here,” she said, putting one hand on Spencer’s shoulder and gesturing frantically for Ethan’s father with the other. He lumbered over and Francesca pulled him into the huddle. “Okay, so you’re just gonna glower at each other, gimme your best You’re Going Down face—yikes,” she told Ethan’s dad, taken aback, “That’s a good one. Spencer, you gonna take that from him?”
“He can scowl
all he wants, he’s not gonna win.”
“Okay there’s no sound from the contestants during this part, but let’s use that sassy face. In three, two one…”
Spencer was certain he looked like an idiot, but Ethan’s dad was all-in. Did he just growl at me?
“Spencer, you wanna try to keep a straight face here, please?” Francesca called out. “Embrace the melodrama; it’s television, for Heaven’s sake. On second thought, give me that good gay face from a second ago.”
Spencer pursed his lips and raised an Oh no you didn’t eyebrow.
“That’s the one. In three, two, one…”
Urged to “Bring the energy!” by the handsome young Tyler, the crowd broke into rowdy applause and set their signs to waving. Ethan made a show of supporting his dad, although when Ethan shot him a surreptitious wink, Spencer couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t poured himself into last year’s size-too-small Adam’s Rib T-shirt for his benefit. As if he weren’t sweaty enough.
Francesca set the scene. “And the announcer does his intro—gays in the military, pizza at gay weddings, barbecue is the straight man’s last refuge, today will it be breached?”
“Won’t be the first straight refuge I ever breached,” Spencer said with his best menacing laugh.
“See, now where was that during the interview?” Francesca chided. “Never mind, we’ll shoot another one in a bit. For now we’re gonna do a little marks-get set-go, and your both gonna scurry over to your team, make a big show out of what hard work it is to get meat on the grill, yell at one of your helpers, and light the fuse on some ratings dynamite. In three, two, one…go!”
Startled by the force of her voice, Spencer jumped, then scampered over to where Carter was running in circles around Claudia behind the grill at Tyler’s behest.
“What are you doing?” Spencer asked with a laugh.
“He’s ‘creating urgency,’” Claudia explained with an eye roll. She wasn’t the running-around sort.
“He’s gonna make himself dizzy,” Spencer said.
And indeed, if there was to be urgency for the cameras, it would need to be fabricated. As Adam’s Rib had also done in accordance with Francesca’s rules—”I’m one of the judges,” she’d said, “and we’re not trying to eat anybody’s tacky no-flavor barbecue”—Spencer had marinated and rubbed his meat for days; there was little more to the actual competition than sliding it off of the pans onto the grill and letting the fire do its job. Carter did a couple of laps around the little kitchen with pans of meat hoisted above his head, then the camera operator practically climbed into the coals in his eagerness to capture Claudia’s tong technique. Every time he turned around he collided with a camera or a cord or Carter—No wonder those chefs on TV always look so hassled, Spencer thought. Can a guy move three feet?
Spencer knew his way around a mortar and pestle, and his garlicky coffee-and-pepper rub would knock the socks off even the savviest spice snob, but what got them licking the bones—as he supposed Ethan could attest—was his red-hot sauce, whose vinegar base tenderized the meat even as it drenched it in flavor. It wasn’t a ketchupy, sugary paste like the ninety-nine-cents-a-bottle grocery store variant, but he figured Francesca and her camera folks would appreciate the dramatic smoke effects that ensued when he slathered it on. When Claudia had the grill loaded and stepped back to let “her babies” sizzle, Spencer went to grab a jug of sauce.
Which had to be around here somewhere.
He moved prop watermelons and lifted prop potato salad without turning up a jug, and so he called out. “Carter?”
“Yeah, Boss?” Carter ran dramatically to Spencer’s side, which Spencer supposed was a mildly impressive effect for someone who hadn’t traveled ten feet.
“Sauce me, buddy.”
“Sure thing, Boss.” Carter ran off. Then he ran back. Then he ran around in circles. Then he said, “Where’s it at?”
“What do you mean, ‘where’s it at?’ You unloaded the van. It was in the van?”
Carter was flustered. “Sure, Boss. I mean, it must have been, right? So it’s gotta be somewhere…”
Spencer fought to maintain his cool; nobody was as boy-crazy as Carter, but Spencer certainly understood what made his friend tick. “Think,” he said. “Tyler helped you unload, you might have been distracted. But there’s sauce somewhere, right? Maybe ask Tyler?”
“Right.” Carter said. He removed his sunglasses and checked his hair. He made a kissy face at his own reflection, then toddled off, cooing, “Oh, Tyler…”
Spencer rolled his eyes. If Carter wasn’t back behind the grill in five minutes, he’d send someone off behind the Port-A-Potties to splash the two lovebirds with a bucket of water; he must have that sauce.
Shortly Carter returned with Tyler in his wake. “If it was in the van, it’s here in your kitchen,” he was saying. “That thing was empty when we—” He shot Carter a lusty look, and Carter tittered in what Spencer knew he imagined was his best impression of a giggling geisha. Cuz taking a total stranger up the ass in the back of one’s work van was so demure. Tyler recovered. “When we, you know, um…closed the door.”
“But it isn’t here,” Spencer said. “And it wasn’t in the fridge when we left the house, I know it wasn’t. I checked. Didn’t I…?” He had a specific memory of checking both refrigerators. Even if Carter had missed something as integral and obvious as two jugs of sauce when he’d loaded the van—and Spencer knew he wouldn’t have—there was no way Spencer would have then overlooked them himself. He may well have had stars in his eyes this morning, but he wasn’t so Ethan-dazzled that he would have dropped a ball like this one.
And what about Ethan? Spencer glanced over his shoulder at the audience. Ethan was riveted to his cell phone, paying not the slightest attention to the goings on at either grill. Hadn’t he told Spencer he had no investment in the outcome of this silly contest other than to keep his church’s name as far away from his wacko dad as possible?
No. “It’s gotta be around here somewhere,” he said, but after ten minutes he’d flat-out ransacked the prop kitchen twice, to no avail.
“Carter! You’re sure it’s not in the van?”
“I’m sure,” Carter said.
“Well, go make sure,” Spencer snapped. He hurled his wallet at his right-hand man. “And if it isn’t there, go to Safeway and get the shit to make more. Vinegar, cayenne—you know how to make it.” It wouldn’t be as good—he always gave it three or four days to settle—but he wasn’t going to take any amateur-hour effort at sabotage lying down, either.
“Can Tyler come with me?”
“Tyler most certainly may not. Now go!” Carter was halfway across the park when it occurred to Spencer to call out, “Please” as an afterthought.
“Ooh, a snag.” Francesca had magically appeared at Spencer’s shoulder. “Reality TV loves a good snag,” she said. “What’s going on?”
Spencer leveled a look at Ethan over her head. If he thought he could tiptoe away into the morning with two jugs full of Spencer’s chance at opening his own restaurant and have that be the end of it, then he should have been in the shower with Spencer this morning—this wouldn’t be the first time today Spencer produced barbecue sauce out of his ass.
“Cheaters never prosper,” Spencer told her. “That’s what’s going on.”
“Ooh, them’s fightin’ words,” she said, rubbing her hands gleefully together. “Do go on.” She gestured frantically at the nearest camera operator, whose intrusive proximity Spencer welcomed for the first time.
“Okay, fine,” he said, right into the camera. “You wanna know what’s going on, I’ll tell you what’s going on. I had sauce. Lots of sauce. Yummy, yummy sauce. For reasons I won’t get into on television, namely someone took me home last night and fucked me stupid—”
“No, we won’t get into that on television,” Francesca said with a disappointed expression, “but go on.”
“Anyway, these cheaters knew I had sauce. They k
new it was good sauce. They knew it was ten thousand dollars’ worth of sauce, apparently, cuz I had a fridge full of it when we went to bed last night, and I got a whole great big jug full of nuthin’ today. Like that’s gonna stop me?”
Francesca was jazzed. She nodded eagerly. “What is gonna stop you?” she asked at camera-friendly volume. “Say nothing,” she then stage-whispered to Spencer.
“Nothing!” he crowed. “That’s what’s gonna stop me: nothing! I could spit on this meat and it would make better sauce than what they’re gonna have.”
Francesca pulled a face. “We might not leave that in,” she told Spencer. “Also, please don’t do that. But mad is good. This, we can use.”
Claudia monitored the meat on the grill with her ever-vigilant tongs; Carter had been dispatched on his save-the-day mission; Spencer was turning in circles and starting to stress. He didn’t know whether he was more annoyed that Ethan had so clumsily seduced him just to get his hands on a couple jugs of barbecue sauce, that he had let himself be clumsily seduced like a virgin on prom night just because the guy was fine, or that he even cared about winning or losing this trumped-up competition and had to process these feelings with Carmine the cameraman in his face. It didn’t help that he wanted to barf from the heat. “Could somebody please get me some water?” he screamed.
He must have looked like he was coming unhinged—Francesca’s gonna love this in editing, he thought. He saw Ethan intercept Tyler and commandeer the oversized bottle of water he’d produced, then make his own way to Spencer on the edge—literally and figuratively—of his competitor’s kitchen. “You okay?” he asked.
Spencer grabbed gratefully at the bottle of water. He calmed some at once just feeling its clammy sweat in his hand. The mere promise of relief was refreshing; the cold splash of it over his fire-roasted forehead more so.
“Thanks,” he begrudgingly grumbled. Okay, the guy was like insanely hot—”being seduced” was not the part of this equation he was having a problem with. As downfalls went, he figured, there were surely worse ways to go.
“Yeah, of course. I saw your little buddy run off, saw that producer chick talking to you—is everything okay? What’s going on?”