“Mayonnaise?”
“A spoonful of mayo helps the burning go down. Otherwise, the burning lasts for weeks. People have died from it. The CIA wants to use it to fight terrorism.”
Valentine loped into the kitchen, dressed in running shoes, spandex, a Windbreaker, and enough sweat to fill Sunset Reservoir.
“Good run?” Gershwin said.
Valentine gave an out-of-breath nod before dropping a stack of mail on the table. “Zoey, the one on top is for you.”
While Valentine scoured the fridge for something cold to drink, Zoey picked up the envelope. No return address. Huh. She tore open the envelope, took out a one-page letter, and read aloud:
Dear Zoey Kate,
THIS IS A BILL
Loan origination fee: $4,000
Pre-interest fee: $2,000
Post-interest fee: $2,000
Shipping & handling fee: $2,000
Total Amount Due: $10,000
You must pay the amount due immediately or incur the wrath of Mulberry Bank.
Warmest regards,
Miss Canela Lemon, Loan Officer
Mulberry Bank
272 Bay St., San Francisco, CA 94106
The letter trembled in Zoey’s hands. “This can’t be right. Miss Lemon said the first payment wasn’t due until January and it would only be five hundred bucks.”
Twisting the lid off a jug of orange juice, Valentine shook her head, saying, “I knew something like this would happen.”
“This is why you should never do business with someone named after a fruit,” Gershwin said. “One time I went to a chiropractor named Dr. Grape. I still can’t turn my head all the way to the right.” He turned his head twenty degrees. “See?”
Zoey shoved the letter into her pocket. “I have to get to the bank. Who can give me a ride?”
“Not me,” said Gershwin. “I’m teaching an orchestration workshop at nine thirty. CCSF, other side of town.”
“Mom?”
Valentine finished a long swig of orange juice. “Can’t. Errands.”
“Fine,” Zoey said. “I’ll walk.”
Zoey swept into Miss Lemon’s office and slapped the bill onto the desk. “This better be a mistake!”
Leaning back in her cushy leather chair, Miss Lemon raised a turquoise mug of steaming herbal tea (Peach Tranquility, Zoey couldn’t help but notice) and drew a long, slow sip. “Good morning, Zoey. I’ve been expecting you. Please, have a seat.”
“I prefer to stand.”
“Suit yourself.” With her thumb and forefinger, Miss Baker picked at the tea string on the rim of her mug. “Have you come to pay the ten thousand dollars you owe, or have you come to argue? Wait, wait. Don’t tell me. Argue.”
Zoey picked up the bill, shook it, and slammed it down on the desk again. (She needed something to do with her hands.) “You never said anything about extra fees.”
“I didn’t think I needed to. After all, Zoey, you know everything.” Miss Lemon’s lips twitched like she was suppressing a smile.
“You’re enjoying this,” Zoey said. “Why?”
Miss Lemon set her mug on the desk. “The president of Mulberry Bank paid me a personal visit yesterday. He said he wanted to inform me, in person, that the bank’s health insurance policy wouldn’t cover my recent lobotomy.”
“Ooh,” Zoey said brightly. “How was the baklava?”
Miss Lemon looked confused. “Who said anything about baklava?”
“You did.”
“No I didn’t.”
“You went to Greece, right?” Zoey said. “You can’t visit Greece and not try the baklava. That’s like going to Turkmenistan and not trying the shurpa.”
“A lobotomy,” Miss Lemon said, “is a surgical procedure to remove a person’s brain.” She mimed cutting open the top of her skull with scissors.
“So…no baklava?”
“The bank president said I must’ve had a lobotomy because…” Miss Lemon cringed like she was recalling a traumatic event from her childhood. “…because only a brainless idiot would lend fifty thousand dollars to an aspiring twelve-year-old restaurateur.”
“Did you tell him I’m a culinary genius?”
“No.”
“Want me to talk to him?”
“He almost fired me.” Miss Lemon looked panicked, like a firing was still a possibility. She sipped her tea. It calmed her down a little. “I had to plead to keep my job. I was on my hands and knees, like a dog begging for table scraps. I’ve never been so humiliated.”
Zoey scratched an itch on the back of her neck. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you blame me for this.”
“I do blame you for this.”
“I didn’t force you to do anything.”
“You tricked me! You came in an hour before lunch, when you knew I’d be at my hungriest. You fed me a delicious chocolate truffle to pique my appetite, with a touch of jalapeño to pique my curiosity. Then, at your house, you blurred my senses with your tasty Balsamic Pear Ravioli and Fried Banana Fondue. I was in no state to make important financial judgments.”
“So these extra fees are, what, your revenge?”
Holding the mug in both hands, Miss Lemon breathed in the rising steam. “Mmm. Yummy.”
Zoey planted her index finger on the bill, pointing at the loan origination fee. “Four grand? A bit steep, don’t you think?”
“A legitimate amount, considering the risk we’ve taken on you.”
Zoey tapped the next line on the bill. “What the mustard is pre-interest?”
“Pre-interest is the fee you pay us before you pay us interest.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s new.”
“Sounds made-up.”
“It’s very new.”
Zoey moved her finger to the next charge. “Post-interest?”
“That’s the fee you pay us after you pay us interest.”
“But I haven’t paid any interest yet.”
“We require post-interest payments in advance.”
Zoey pointed at the final charge. “Shipping and handling? You haven’t shipped or handled anything.”
“We sent you this bill, didn’t we?”
“I don’t have ten thousand dollars,” Zoey said.
“Correction,” said Miss Lemon. “You have fifty thousand dollars.”
“I already spent forty. I need the other ten for ingredients and supplies.”
Miss Lemon paled. “You spent forty thousand dollars in one day?”
“I don’t mess around.”
Zoey and Miss Lemon stared at each other, like they were playing chess and they’d forgotten whose move it was. Until Zoey said, “Listen, I’d pay you if I could but I can’t. I lost my checkbook and the cash is, um…” Zoey glanced down. “…tied up.”
“It’s in your boot, isn’t it?”
“How’d you…?”
“You looked down.”
“Did not.”
“There. You did it again.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
Zoey wanted to scream. “These fees are absurd. I won’t pay them.”
“You have to pay them.”
“I refuse.”
“You can’t refuse.”
“I refuse to accept I can’t refuse.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I refuse to suit my—Wait, what?”
Miss Lemon grinned. It was not a nice grin. It was a sly, conniving, I’ve-already-got-your-money-you-just-don’t-know-it-yet grin. (If you’ve ever said the words, “So all I gotta do is knock those three bottles over and I win that giant teddy bear?” you’ve seen it.) “If you refuse to pay, Zoey, then I can’t force you.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
“But our lawyers can.”
“There it is.”
“We call them the pit bulls,” Miss Lemon said with relish. (The emotion, not the hot-dog topping.) “If you refuse to pay, the pit bulls will sin
k their legal fangs into your skinny neck, make you bleed money. By the time they’re done with you, ten grand will seem a mere trifle.”
Zoey did not like her options. She felt like one of those plane crash survivors you read about: stranded in a jungle, desperate, wounded, and starving, forced to choose between eating a handful of poisonous berries or a dead flight attendant.
Seething, she reached into her right boot, pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills from her sock, and slapped it down on the desk. “There. Ten thousand. We done?”
“For now.”
Zoey stormed out of the office, onto Bay Street. The sun was bright and warm. The placid breeze carried smells of carrotwood and ginkgo trees. At a sidewalk café across the street, folks enjoyed fresh coffee, clam omelets, and croissant French toast, and laughed at each other’s jokes. A teenage girl and her boyfriend strolled past Zoey. The girl rested her head on her boyfriend’s shoulder, like that was comfortable somehow.
The weather, the pleasant smells, the happy brunchers, young people in love: it was all wrong. How can anyone be happy at a time like this? Don’t they know I’m in the middle of a crisis?
Her phone rang. She answered. “Oui?”
“Yo, it’s Knuckles. I’m calling about the trolleys. We got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
Knuckles cleared his gravelly throat. “A big problem.”
For the most part, the trolleys looked fantastic. Gone were the dents and chips. Gone were the cracked windows and cobwebs. Fresh coats of red, black, and gold paint glistened in the noonday sun. New windows looked shiny and spotless. Glass chandeliers and plush red carpet gave the dining trolleys an air of luxury and elegance.
There was something missing, however.
“Why aren’t the wheels on?” Zoey said, placing her hand on Trolley 1’s bare front axle.
“We put wheels on,” Knuckles said, “but your fancy walk-in fridge and three stainless-steel ovens are too heavy. They crushed the wheels.”
“So get stronger wheels.”
Knuckles wiped grease off his fingers with an oily rag. “We tried that. There’s only one company in the world that makes wheels strong enough and big enough for your trolleys. The wheels are solid titanium, and they ain’t cheap.”
“How much?”
“Five.”
“Only five bucks?”
“Five thousand.”
Zoey’s heart sank like an uncooked potato in a pot of gravy. “Expensive day.”
A gust of wind blew trash and debris across the junkyard floor. A crumpled plastic sack caught on Zoey’s boot. She shook her foot. The bag came loose and tumbled away.
“There has to be another way,” Zoey said.
“There is,” Knuckles said. “Downgrade your kitchen appliances. Lose the anvil and fish tank and fire pit. Get lighter stuff.”
“No way. I’m a professional chef. I need professional appliances.”
“Then ya need another five grand.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“Whatever ya do, ya better do it soon. The company only has three sets of wheels left. That’s one set for each trolley. If the company sells one more set, your trolleys ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Rainy Days Diner was a sad-people magnet. It shared a building with a divorce court, a Prozac pharmacy, a global warming research center, Supercuts, and a clinic for euthanizing ugly puppies. A sign on the diner’s front door read NO SHAME, NO SORROW, NO SERVICE.
Inside, the walls were decorated with framed photos of grubby children standing in breadlines during the Great Depression. Wall-mounted TVs ran footage of the polar ice caps melting set to the music of Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely.”
The waitress, who dressed like Wednesday from The Addams Family, sat behind the counter, reading Human Extinction Weekly and stroking a taxidermy piranha.
Zoey sat at the counter, drowning her sorrows in a triple hot-fudge brownie sundae. When her spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl, the waitress said, “Anything else, lonesome?”
“Got ten grand?” Zoey said.
“A basset hound ate my cat,” the waitress said. It was a weird thing to say, but, hey, that’s the kind of talk you hear at Rainy Days Diner.
The front door opened. In walked a middle-aged man with mocha skin and thinning black hair. He wore a gray uniform with button epaulets on the shoulders. A plaque on his left breast pocket read:
JAMBALAYA BARBOS, TOUR GUIDE, ALCATRAZ PRISON
Jambalaya took a seat at the counter, two stools down from Zoey. “Gimme one hundred hot dogs and a big glass of water,” he told the waitress.
The waitress didn’t even look up from her magazine. “You need a new hobby, dude.”
“This time won’t be like last time.” Jambalaya patted his belly. “The machine is primed and ready for action.”
The waitress sulked off to the kitchen, muttering something about “a heart attack” and “the depravation of humanity.”
Jambalaya straightened his back and neck and placed his palms on the counter. He began to breathe in short, rapid bursts like a deep-sea diver preparing for a plunge.
Zoey swallowed a mouthful of hot fudge. “Hey, you okay?”
Jambalaya nodded.
“Why are you breathing like that?”
Jambalaya shook his head.
“Panic attack?”
Jambalaya shook his head.
“Allergic reaction to something?”
Jambalaya shook his head.
“Alien’s gonna pop out of your chest?”
Jambalaya shook his head.
Minutes later, the waitress returned from the kitchen holding a glass of water and a tray of one hundred hot dogs stacked in a pyramid. (I wonder how many days those have been under a heat lamp….) She placed the tray and glass on the counter. “If you blow chunks, do it outside.” She tromped back into the kitchen.
Jambalaya pulled a stopwatch from his pocket. “Hey…” Breath. Breath. “…you got…” Breath. Breath. “…three minutes?”
Zoey looked at the pyramid of hot dogs. “You’re gonna eat a hundred hot dogs in three minutes?”
“I…” Breath. Breath. “…hope so.”
Zoey accepted the stopwatch. “This I gotta see.”
“Count…” Breath. Breath. “…to three…” Breath. Breath. “…then press…” Breath. Breath. “…the green button.”
“One…two…three.” Zoey started the stopwatch.
Jambalaya folded a hot dog in half and crammed it into his mouth. While he chewed, he dipped a second hot dog into the glass of water. Swallowing the first hot dog, he thrust the soggy second hot dog into his mouth. While he chomped on the second hot dog, he dunked a third hot dog into the glass of water.
Jambalaya carried on in this fashion until, three minutes and forty-two hot dogs later, the stopwatch beeped and Zoey declared, “Time.”
Red-faced and sweating, Jambalaya plonked his head down on the counter and groaned. “I’ll never move out of my parents’ basement.”
Zoey set the stopwatch on the counter. “Parents’ basement?”
Jambalaya produced a paper flyer, handed it to Zoey. The flyer read:
25th ANNUAL
“HOT DOG” EATING CONTEST
WINNER GETS $10,000
Saturday, 10 a.m. @ AT&T Park, Center Field
$300 entry fee. Nonrefundable, even if you puke.
Sponsored by PETA
Zoey scoffed. “This is a joke, right? PETA is the animal rights people. Why would they sponsor a hot-dog eating contest?”
“It’s no joke,” said Jambalaya. “Last year, a guy ate seventy-two hot dogs and won ten grand. I was there. I saw it.”
Whoosh. A spark of hope. “Can anyone enter?”
“Anyone with three hundred…” Jambalaya’s cheeks and eyeballs swelled up like water balloons.
“You better go outside.”
Clamping both hands over his mouth, Jambalaya
sprinted out of the diner. As the front door swung closed behind him, Zoey heard the epic SPLASH! of vomit hitting pavement.
“Good luck with that,” she hollered. It was the least she could do. “I’ll just…” Zoey slipped the flyer into her skirt pocket. “…keep this.”
Zoey was not a baseball fan. She found the game slow and trivial. She could not understand how anyone could be so in love with such an underwhelming sport. And yet, as she stood on Giants stadium’s dusty pitcher’s mound, taking the place in—the arena seating, the mammoth scoreboard, the dugouts, the diamond, the bases, the smell of mowed grass, the thought of whacking a fastball over the fence into McCovey Cove—even she had to admit: This is pretty cool.
Competitive-eating fans crowded the stands and field. The PETA main stage was center field. Speaker towers stood on both sides of the platform, crowned by an epic rainbow of red, white, and blue balloons. A Santana cover band occupied the stage, playing “Oye Como Va” for a herd of dancing hippies.
Per their plans, Dallin met Zoey on the pitcher’s mound at noon. The first words out of Dallin’s mouth were:
“What—the heck—is that?”
Zoey froze, thinking maybe she had a huge, scary bug on her somewhere. “What the heck is what?”
Dallin pointed an accusing finger at her. “That.”
“What, my face?”
“Your jacket.” He said the word “jacket” the way a detective says, “It was murder.”
“It’s chilly. I wore my dad’s old jacket. So what?”
“It’s an Oakland Raiders jacket.” Dallin spat, as if the words had left a bad taste in his mouth.
“So?”
“So the Raiders are evil incarnate.”
“You say that about every team that’s not the 49ers.”
“But the Raiders are the evilest,” Dallin insisted. “Before every game, they chant ‘Death to America’ and strangle a bald eagle.”
“I doubt that.”
Dallin yanked on her sleeve. “Take it off.”
“No. I’m cold.”
Dallin hadn’t looked this betrayed since the time his mom snuck a 3 Musketeers from his Halloween stash. “We can’t be friends anymore.” He headed for the dugouts.
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