Spicy Pickle (Fake Engagement)

by J J Knight

  Dru, who does most of the prep work, empties a vat of onions on the cutting board. His dark forehead creases with concentration as he chops madly to keep up.

  I head to my office to drop off my coat and keys, switching out the black apron for a bright green Boulder Pickle one.

  By the time I cross the kitchen again, my manager, Marie, is waiting by the door to the dining room, her plastic-gloved hands clasped tightly in front of her matronly chest.

  “The lunch rush is underway, as you can see,” she says. “But I wanted to ask about the show.”

  “A disaster. I’ll brief everybody later. Let’s get through lunch.”

  She nods curtly and lets me by. I lose myself in the work for an hour. I fill in wherever I’m needed, manning the register, clearing tables, or fetching ice for the overburdened drink machine.

  Only when the steady stream of customers has reduced to a trickle do I head back to my office. The incessant buzzing in my pocket is no doubt my family, wanting to know how my segment went.

  Time to deal with it.

  I scroll through the notifications. Texts from my brothers Max and Jason. Two from dad. One from Grammy Alma.

  I set the phone down. I haven’t taken time to compose myself and figure out what to say.

  There’s no telling what Milton Creed might do. I’m not sure if I should warn everyone or downplay the possibilities.

  I wish I had someone who could feed me information about what happened after we left. Hopefully they caught whoever took the cell phone footage. Probably the best scenario is if it’s an inside job, they catch the culprit, and everything is kept quiet.

  I’m about to start replying to everyone, but I remember the pickles. They were tampered with, and Magnolia suggested it happened here. I have no doubt that a disgruntled member of the show’s crew is to blame, but I ought to make sure before I talk to everyone.

  In the kitchen, several staffers load the mountain of plates and plastic cups from lunch into the dishwasher. I slip into the industrial walk-in refrigerator unnoticed.

  The back right corner is devoted to pickles. In addition to jarring the original flavors for this location, my staff also provides the specialty pickle of the month to the other three franchises, Jason’s in Austin, Max’s in L.A., and Dad’s in New York. Well, I guess the New York one is mine now, but it’s hard to think of it that way. It was always Dad’s.

  Each shelf is carefully marked with the flavor and date of pickling. I locate the rows of ghost pepper pickles. Boulder is the only deli offering it right now. I didn’t want to burden the others with the complications of that flavor going viral, plus I wasn’t sure we could even find enough ghost pepper to keep all four delis stocked.

  The jars that I took to the show early this morning were pickled last Wednesday. This particular batch I did myself, knowing I would be using them on air.

  I pull one out. The seal makes a bright pop as I turn the lid.

  I sniff it first, wishing I had taken a moment to examine the tampered one more carefully. There might’ve been a chemical trace if I hadn’t been under too much stress on the set to sense it.

  These smell the way they always do. The rosewater looks perfect. There are no utensils in here, so I take the jar out into the kitchen and pull a fork from the bin.

  A few staffers glance my way as I stab the pickle and place it on one of the cutting boards.

  Dru pauses as he chops sweet gherkins at the other end, prepping relish for the dinner run. “Everything okay, boss?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Probably.”

  I tug a knife from the magnetic strip at the end of the metal table and cut several slices from the pickle. Nothing looks awry.

  I tentatively place the slice in my mouth.

  The fire of the ghost pepper sears my taste buds, but it’s nothing like the burning sensation I had this morning.

  This pickle is fine.

  My shoulders relax. It wasn’t me. I quickly slice the rest of the pickle and place it in the bin to go out on the line. Dru pauses beside me on his way back to the fridge. “I’m going to slice a lot more of those. We went through more than expected today. That TikTok challenge is going strong.”

  “Thanks for handling it.”

  I head to my office and close the door. It’s time to talk to my family.

  Two o’clock in Boulder is one in L.A., three in Austin, and four in New York. We’ve got every time zone covered.

  I fire up my video chat and send invitations to my dad and brothers.

  Dad shows up first, pulling his apron off over his gray head. “Anthony! I’ve been dying to know how it went this morning. How was Milton Creed?”

  “It was a mixed bag,” I say. That’s the truth.

  Jason pops on next, his feet up on the desk in his office. “The famous bro,” he says. “Tell me all the ways you screwed this up.”

  He has no idea how close he is to the truth. “Enough to make you happy.”

  His face flickers. “Really?”

  Now Dad looks concerned. “Did something go wrong?”

  I wait a moment to see if Max will pop in. It could still be the lunch rush there. When he doesn’t show, I decide to get it over with.

  “The pickles were chemically altered, and they burned Milton’s mouth. We’re not sure who did it.”

  Both Dad and Jason start talking at once, and I can’t make out what either one is saying as the chat switches from one to the other in rapid succession, leaving both voices garbled.

  I wait until they both pause. “Only one of you can berate me at a time,” I say.

  Dad goes next. “I’m getting our lawyer on the line.” His gaze drops to his phone.

  “This sucks,” Jason says. “Although, watching Milton in pain might have been gratifying to all the people he’s crossed.”

  “That part will never air. He had the cameras shut off.”

  My screen pings with the join request from Lance, our family’s lawyer since I was a kid. I patch him through.

  “So, what happened?” Lance asks.

  Dad speaks up. “Someone doctored the pickles and burned the host.”

  Lance’s expression shifts to astonishment. “Is he going to sue? Have we heard from anyone on his team?”

  “Let me go back a step,” I say. “There’s more you need to know. I wasn’t the only one on the show. They brought in Magnolia Boudreaux.”

  “Who’s that?” Jason asks.

  I picture Magnolia’s perfect face. She was something. “The daughter of John Paul Boudreaux, who owns a family deli here in Boulder.”

  Dad nods. “I know him.”

  The lawyer chimes in. “Do we have a good relationship with him?”

  “Not particularly,” Dad says. “The family was not thrilled when we opened in their territory, but that’s where Anthony wanted to stay. There was no other place to put his restaurant.”

  “How did she end up on the show?” Jason asks.

  “It appears that featuring both of us was the plan all along. She added tomatillo sauce to my ghost pepper pickle to make it more flavorful, so the show was in on it. They wanted a challenge between our two pickles.”

  Jason looks incredulous. “How did she get access to your pickle to add tomatillo?”

  “Apparently someone escorted her in, and she took the spare from the refrigerator. I was the only one who was clueless.”

  The lawyer scrawls a note on a yellow pad. “Should I reach out to Milton’s legal team?”

  I shrug. “Maybe? Because to add to the fun, someone took some rogue footage on their cell phone and may have escaped with it. They kicked me and Magnolia out of the set before we knew what happened with that.”

  “Dayum,” Jason says. “What didn’t happen today?”

  Dad rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “So where did we leave things?”

  “I checked the pickles when I got back. They are fine. Clearly someone tampered with them on the set.”

 
; Jason perks up. “Was it old man Boudreaux, then?”

  “His daughter insists she didn’t. And she had an escort who claims Magnolia only doctored her own jar.”

  “So somebody set both of you up,” the lawyer says. “Did Milton express his thoughts?”

  “He’s blaming me and Magnolia. He thinks we tried to embarrass him. But I got word from the crew that he can’t keep staff. He’s a tyrant. It makes sense to me that someone took an opportunity to get back at him and recorded the whole thing.”

  “Sure sounds like it,” Dad says.

  I nod. “I think it’s an inside job. We were collateral damage.”

  The lawyer sets down his pen. “I would recommend hiring a social media cleanup team. We should have them on retainer in case this blows up.”

  “Agreed,” Dad says. “Anthony, did you get any indication from the Boudreaux clan what they were going to do about this?”

  “I spoke to Magnolia briefly in the parking lot.”

  “Is she hot?” Jason asks.

  “Not relevant,” Dad says.

  But Magnolia invades my thoughts again, her blond hair blowing in the wind outside the studio.

  “Ah ha,” Jason says. “Look at baby bro. She’s hot.”

  I lift an eyebrow to make him shut his trap. Not that it’s ever worked before. “She’s concerned, but we both felt Milton would cover it up. He does have a lot of footage of us, though. And we signed agreements that he could use it however he liked.”

  The lawyer frowns. “I told you guys to insist on prior approval of the segment.”

  “He wouldn’t do it,” Dad says. “You know that. He would have walked on the whole deal.”

  Lance makes another note. “At this point, the best-case scenario is that they don’t use anything at all.”

  That makes everyone somber.

  Dad sighs. “I’m sorry you had to go through this, son. The whole business can be unpredictable. Milton was a crapshoot. We knew that going in.”

  I nod.

  Max’s request to join the meeting pops up.

  His face is eager for news. “How’s my famous brother?”

  I sink into my chair. “Trying not to become infamous.”

  As the days pass, I assume the whole thing is over.

  But I’m wrong.

  The day the pickle hits the fan, Marie and I are working on a new bread to send out to the other Pickle delis. The stainless-steel counter is covered in flour. She and I are both wrist-deep in dough.

  There’s a commotion in the dining room, which is odd, since it’s normally dead mid-afternoon. Marie and I look up to spot Kennedy dashing through the door from the dining room, his mini dreads flying behind him.

  “Anthony, you gotta get out here. People with news vans and cameras are camped on the sidewalk out front.”

  I peel off my gloves. “Marie, would you mind getting on my computer and doing a quick check of America’s Spiciest Chef’s social media? See if anything’s gone down referencing the show I did.”

  It’s been almost a week since the recording session. I never told the staff everything that happened, only that the taping had not gone well, and I wasn’t sure they were going to air any of it.

  Marie hurries toward my office. I untie the flour-encrusted apron and set it on the counter. “Stick to your duties, everyone. Don’t talk to anyone if they come in. I’ll handle this.”

  In the dining room, two of my employees stand near the windows, peering out the blinds. The only exterior view is through the glass door, but I don’t see anything from my current angle.

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  My cashier Michelle lets go of the blinds. “Two news vans. Three miscellaneous photographers. Looks like they’re setting up to do an interview.”

  “Are the doors unlocked?” I ask.

  Michelle’s eyes grow big beneath her fringe of black bangs. “Should I lock them?”

  “No. I was curious if they could waltz in here.”

  “They seem happy to set up outside. Nobody’s approached the door.”

  I glance around the room. Two tables have diners, all craning their heads to watch us. I don’t want them to think a crime is happening.

  “I was recently on a cooking show,” I say. “This is probably to do with that.”

  They relax and return to their sandwiches.

  I pinch the collar of my green Boulder Pickle polo to make sure it’s straight. I’m about to approach the door when Marie hurtles into the room. “Anthony, you’ll want to see this before you go out there!”

  She thrusts a phone in my face. “It’s a brand-new Twitter account, and this is the only post.”

  The video is vertical, like a cell phone makes. The still frame shows the set of Milton’s show. All three of us are there, Milton, me, and Magnolia.

  This is it. It’s out there.

  I press play.

  Milton says, “You sure are pushy about that.”

  So it’s skipping to the good part.

  He puts the pickle slice in his mouth. The footage zooms in, although the quality isn’t great. But you can make out that Milton is in distress as he yells, “Cut, cut, cut!”

  Unlike the official cameras, which all stopped at this point, the cell phone footage goes right on showing him blasting water on his face under the faucet.

  I watch it all the way. It goes through the accusations, first me suggesting that Magnolia had done it. Then her saying that I had screwed up both jars. It doesn’t cut off until Shelby shouts, “Who is that?” and the footage blurs for a second before blacking out.

  It’s only been up for a few hours, but the comments are racking up quickly. There are already over three thousand.

  I glance up at the rest of the staff, who are glued to their phones. “So, what’s everyone saying? Positive? Negative?”

  Michelle swipes her finger along her screen. “It’s starting to be called the Battle of the Pickles,” she says. “All the entertainment sites are picking it up. They think you two hate each other, and Milton got caught in the middle of your feud.”

  I’ve heard enough. “Lock the door.”

  “We’re closing?” Michelle’s face is full of shock. “We have six more hours!”

  “You’ll get paid,” I assure her. “I need to talk to my family. Our lawyer. I don’t think I should speak with reporters until I know what to do.”

  Lance said last week that we should hire a social media expert in case something happened. Had Dad done that? I had no idea. Technically, I’m in charge.

  I pat my pocket and realize I don’t have my phone on me. I must’ve left it in my office. I hurry through the dining room. “Let the diners out the back door when they’re done,” I call. “Don’t let anybody in the front door.”

  By the time I get my phone, it’s already buzzing.

  I’ve missed a call from my dad. The current one is from Lance. I greedily pick it up.

  I skip the greeting and go straight to, “What do I do?”

  “There’s a live broadcast in front of your restaurant,” Lance says calmly. “Have you talked to anyone?”

  “No. We locked the door and shut down the deli.”

  “That’s probably the wisest course for now. I’m going to patch you through to a social media person. Her name is Charity. She’ll coach you through a prepared statement. Are you ready?”

  I nod, realize I’m on the phone, and say, “Yes. Thank you.”

  A cheery female voice comes on. “Anthony Pickle?”

  “That’s me.” I sink into my chair. I don’t like that my deli is closed. Or that there are news vans outside. I don’t like any of this. “What do I do?”

  She laughs, and the fact that she can be amused in the face of my disaster makes anger rise in me. This isn’t funny.

  “First, don’t worry. We can help you through this. We will turn this all around so that it’s a positive experience for your business. I’ve done this a long time. You’re in good hands.”


  My heart slows down a notch. It is good to have an expert on board.

  As I drag a notepad across my desk to take notes on Charity’s talking points, I think for second on Magnolia.

  I wonder how she’s holding up.

  She seemed more poised on camera than I did. She’s obviously not easy to rattle.

  6

  Magnolia

  The Tasty Pepper is deathly quiet this afternoon. Mom and Dad left to meet with a distributor about supplies for the upcoming holiday season.

  The manager is in the kitchen with the crew, finishing the lunch cleanup and prepping for dinner. My line manager Shane is manning the sandwich station alone.

  The only customers in the dining room at this hour are an elderly couple, quietly talking in the back corner. I decide to take a moment to do some inventory of the paper goods stored in the cabinets beneath the drinking station. It’s impossible to do any other time of day, and I don’t want to stay after closing.

  Shane comes up behind me. “Can I help?”

  I bang my head on the way out. “Ouch.”

  Shane stands above me, tall and lanky with an overly bright expression. I suspect he has a crush on me. But he’s still in college, a good five years younger.

  “I’m good, Shane. It’s just inventory.”

  He gets down on one knee. “I can count them for you.”

  “That’s sweet, but—”

  The door jingles. I’m saved.

  “You’ll want to get the customer,” I add.

  He nods and moves to the sandwich line.

  I duck into the cabinet. Sixteen packages, although a few are squashed. I start reloading them, then realize a pair of ankle-breaking black heels are directly by my knees. Did she order already?

  I’m blocking the soda fountain. “Just a sec. I’ll get out of your way.”

  Her voice is like a purr. “I’m here to see you.”

  Great. It’s probably somebody here to peddle a new coffee or try to sell cleaning supplies. With my parents out, I’ll have to handle her.