by Jane Heller
“Did I?” She looked surprised but laughed it off. “I did a couple of lines of our best stuff before the welcome party and was really fucked up that night. My bad.”
“Why did you write it in the first place?” I asked. “You made it sound like you had a personal vendetta against Chef Hill because of his food philosophy, not the drugs and all of that.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of people hate the chef,” she said, which made him wince. “Danny wanted to drive him crazy wondering which of them hated him enough to kill him, so I kept the letter pretty generic.” Another laugh. “Danny’s into psychological torture these days.”
“Sounds like a lovely guy,” I said. “Danny’s the boss you spoke to on the phone yesterday? The guy who likes enchiladas?”
“Somebody’s been listening to other people’s conversations,” she taunted. “Rick was right about you, Elaine. You’re a pain in the ass.”
“And you’re a lowlife,” said Jackie.
“A wolf in cheap clothing,” Pat chimed in. “That’s what you are.”
I watched Simon out of the corner of my eye. That Alex now had to monitor a full house—not just Chef Hill but also Jackie, Pat, Eric and me—meant she seemed to have lost track of my boyfriend. And yes, he was my boyfriend again. It’s not every guy who’ll brave a gun-brandishing crackpot for you. “Listen, Alex, why don’t you drop your phallic weapon and tell Danny that Chef Hill was busy pickling vegetables and you couldn’t get him alone, and we’ll all go back to our lives as if none of this ever happened.”
“Could I say something?” said Chef Hill.
Alex whipped around to point the gun at him again. “No, Mr. Farm-to-Table. You’re not in charge anymore—bang bang.”
She was grinning at her use of his catchphrase when Simon, who was at least a foot taller than she was, reached over her shoulders and grabbed the gun. She was a fighter though, and didn’t let go. As we all looked on in horror, completely uncertain how their scuffle would turn out, the gun went off, into the ceiling.
Forget silencers, by the way. There was nothing silent about the sound of that first shot.
“Get down!” Simon shouted to us, and we all crouched down except Eric, who belly-flopped onto the floor.
The next shot landed in one of the chairs.
“Stay down!” Simon shouted again while he continued to wrestle with Alex, who had kneed him in the groin. This Danny person must have taught her more than a little jujitsu, I thought, wondering how a seemingly normal girl like her ended up as a hit woman, not to mention a drug dealer.
For what felt like an eternity, she and Simon tussled on the floor, which was covered in coarse, bristly sisal. I prayed that he would come away with a little rug burn and nothing worse and that we could all go home in one piece.
The next shot landed in my left thigh. Well, it didn’t so much land as graze the area just above my knee, but what I remember most was an excruciating burning sensation and then a remarkable gushing of blood onto the rug, saturating it. I thought for sure I was about to die or at least pass out until I realized I was alert enough to hear Eric scream like a little boy having a tantrum. The bullet—my bullet—had ricocheted and embedded itself into the right buttock of my facedown ex-husband.
Once Simon had seized control of the gun and pinned Alex to the ground with Chef Hill’s help, Jackie called 911, and Pat sat on the floor next to me, applying direct pressure to my wound with Whitley’s fluffy white towels. She was trying to stop the bleeding and ended up looking like she’d hosed herself down with ketchup.
It was at that point that I started to lose consciousness from the pain, and I was okay with that now that Simon and my friends were out of danger. But I stuck around long enough to hear Alex say to Eric, “Did you really think I would marry a guy who sews his name in his underwear?”
And then it all went black.
Day Seven:
Sunday, July 21
27
I woke up in a private room at Danbury Hospital, which was only a short ambulance ride from Whitley and more sophisticated than you would expect a local country hospital to be. They had over 300 beds, actual doctors, and most importantly, the latest painkillers, of which I took full advantage.
I had one of those morphine pumps hooked up to my IV, and it eased the throbbing in my leg where I’d been sewn up. Yes, I hallucinated from time to time, but I was lucky the bullet didn’t break a bone or shred ligaments, tendons, arteries, and whatever else was in there. I had a wound, that was all, and it would heal. So what if the scar eliminated the likelihood that I would ever again wear a pencil skirt? At my age, pencil skirts were about as attractive on my body as a thong.
Jackie and Pat were hovering over me the first time I opened my eyes, and I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, when she comes to after the tornado and sees the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion who turn out to be farmhands that work for Auntie Em. Similarly, I couldn’t place my friends exactly, because they were out of context in the strange hospital setting and because my thinking was muddled by an opiate. But when I realized that they were two-thirds of the Three Blonde Mice and that they hadn’t been shot or otherwise injured in the melee over the gun, I was so happy to see them that I cried. I hardly ever cried, but I guess the combination of the drugs and the near-death experience made me weepy. (Okay, so I was never near death, but I had lost a lot of blood and gone into shock.)
“Will it hurt if we hug you?” said Pat, her arms already outstretched.
“It’ll hurt if you don’t,” I said, and we clung to one another until an aide came to give me a pill.
“What’s this one for?” I asked. Her name was Wanda and she wore blue scrubs. I could never figure out who was who in the hospital hierarchy. The surgeons wore scrubs and the nurses wore scrubs and the aides wore scrubs. The only one who wore a white lab coat was my “hospitalist,” the guy who said, “You’ll be fine,” patted the knee near the wound site, making me wince in agony, and left.
“It’s your antibiotic,” said Wanda. She filled up my water glass from the pink pitcher on my tray. “Drink.”
I drank and thanked Wanda and asked her for a turkey on rye with lettuce, tomato, and mayo. In my morphine haze I had momentarily mistaken her for a waitress. She laughed and told my friends to keep their visit short.
“Am I hallucinating or are you glowing, Jackie?” I asked. “I know you’re relieved that I’m not dead—that we’re all not dead—but you look happier than you’ve looked for a while.”
She smiled. “I got laid.”
“What? How?”
“The usual way,” she cackled.
“One of the detectives was very handsome,” said Pat. “Very courteous too. Jackie was terribly upset at the police station when we were all giving our statements, so he drove her back to her cottage and calmed her down, and I guess one thing led to another.”
“He’s not involved in the case,” said Jackie. “He just happened to be at the station when we got there. He’s off duty next weekend, so we’re going out Saturday night.”
“That’s great,” I said. “At least somebody came out of this whole mess with something positive to take home. Tell me about the guilty guests who turned out not to be guilty. Did you see any of them before you checked out?”
“I was at the front desk when Jonathan and Beatrice were paying their bill,” said Jackie. “He was hitting on the reservations girl, and Beatrice was having a breakdown over it.”
“Pig,” I said, referring to my erstwhile suitor. “He and his mother deserve each other.”
“Connie and Ronnie told me they made plans for their next trip,” said Pat. “They’re going to Utah.”
“Why?” I said. “Is one of her precious Food Network stars doing classes there?”
“They signed up for a week at the Biggest Loser resort,” she said.
“It’s a fat camp with the same weight loss program as the reality show,” said Jackie when I look
ed confused. “They decided to shed pounds.”
“Good for them,” I said. “Much more constructive than killing off farm-to-table chefs. What about the Vanderkloot-Arnolds? Or did they end up killing each other?”
“Nope. They’re still breathing,” said Jackie. “Breathing fire, in fact. Gabriel told me they’re filing a lawsuit against Chef Hill for fraud because he claimed to be someone he’s not and charged money based on false pretenses. Or something like that.”
“And Rebecca thanked us for protecting her artisan in residence,” said Pat. “She called us heroes and gave us gift certificates for another week at Whitley.”
“Hypocrite. She can keep her lousy free week.” I shuddered after a particularly vivid flashback of how the trip had ended. “Did either of you run into Simon today by any chance?”
“Hasn’t he been here to see you?” Pat asked.
“Nope. Not once,” I said and started crying again. “I wanted to thank him for what he did—he saved my life, all of our lives—but he hasn’t shown up. Doesn’t he care how I am?”
“Maybe he had to go back to the police station,” said Pat. “There were a lot of details to clear up with all the drug charges.”
“Plus the weapons charge and, of course, the assaults,” said Jackie.
“Assaults, plural?” I said.
“Don’t you remember?” she said. “Eric got shot in the ass.”
“Right. How’s he doing?” I asked.
“He blames you,” said Pat. “He told the police that if the bullet hadn’t bounced off your leg, it wouldn’t have drilled him in the butt.”
I shook my head. “That’s Eric for you. But what about Simon? I just can’t believe he hasn’t come to check on me. Maybe I should sue him for fraud.”
“Okay, ladies. Elaine needs her rest,” said my nurse, who was named Megan and looked like Taylor Swift.
“How old are you?” I asked Megan as my friends took their cue and rose from their chairs.
“Old enough,” she said, studying my chart on the computer in the corner of my room. Miss Personality she was not.
“Did anyone ever tell you you look like Taylor Swift?” I said.
“No,” she said. “They tell me I look like Taylor Schilling from Orange Is the New Black.”
“That’s the one I was thinking of,” I said. “It’s the morphine. It’s making me fuzzy on my celebrity references.”
Jackie and Pat hugged me again and said goodbye, and Megan finished checking my vitals and didn’t say goodbye, and then I was alone.
Megan was right: I did need my rest. My eyelids felt as heavy as my wounded leg, which was encased in layers of bandages and elevated on two pillows. I sank into a pleasant state somewhere between sleep and many glasses of wine. It occurred to me that I was enjoying the morphine a little too much and that I should avoid becoming a “dope fiend,” as my mother would say.
I was lying there suspended in time, eyes closed, head in the clouds, leg in the air, when a voice penetrated.
“Slim? Can you hear me?”
Of course I could hear him. I wasn’t deaf, just injured. But I didn’t open my eyes or give Simon any indication that I was awake. Let him worry, I thought. Let him think I had only minutes to live. Let him think he waited so long to come and see me that he’d missed his opportunity and I was lost to him forever. That was what he deserved for making me believe in him again, making me believe in us again, and then ignoring me. How could an entire night and day go by without a visit from him? Not a phone call or even one of his stupid texts with nothing but emoji symbols in it. Why did he bother to rescue me if he couldn’t so much as—
“Slim, it’s me. Simon.” He spoke gently, tenderly, and kissed my forehead. “I’m sorry I got held up, but you’re not an easy person to shop for, you know?”
Shop for? What was he talking about?
“I’d really like you to wake up so I could ask you something,” he went on. “Come on. Open your eyes for me, okay?”
Well, I was curious about the shopping thing, but I decided to play the part a little longer. “Is someone there?” I mumbled, the way I assumed a patient emerging from a deep coma would mumble.
“It’s Simon, Elaine. Simon Purdys.” He sounded almost distraught.
“I’m sorry. Do I know you?” I was laying it on thick, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.
“It’s Simon,” he said again. “If you can hear me, I want you to know that I’m ready. No more ‘almost.’ No more limbo. No more your place on Tuesday night and my place on Saturday night. When I saw that gun pointed at you yesterday, it was a wakeup call telling me I was an idiot to keep living in the past. So I’m here to commit to you 100 percent, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, when times are good and when somebody’s trying to murder somebody. I want to marry you, Slim, as soon as you’re out of this hospital, if you still want me. That’s why it took me so long to get here once the police were done with me. Litchfield, Connecticut doesn’t have a Tiffany’s on every corner, so I had to drive to Westport and back. Traffic was awful going southbound on Route 7, but it was all worth it, because the ring I bought you is pretty special. I described you to the saleswoman—I didn’t know which kind you’d like—and she said to go with the one I have here. Oh, come back to me, would you? Let me put it on your finger and do this right.”
I wasn’t saying anything at this juncture, not because I was sadistic and heartless and unforgiving but because I was speechless, overcome with the sort of emotions I had spent a lifetime imagining that a bride in love would feel.
“I’d better get the nurse,” Simon said and started to leave.
“Oh, no you don’t.” I opened my eyes, reached out, and grabbed his wrist. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He smiled and said, before he kissed me, “No, Slim. I’m not.”
Author’s Note
The dessert featured in Chapter 22, the Dark Chocolate Marquise with Beet Cremeux, Beet-and-Raspberry Sauce, and Salted Pistachio Croquant, was created especially for this book by James Arena, pastry chef at Arethusa al tavolo, Connecticut’s hottest farm-to-table restaurant and one of my favorite eateries anywhere. Located in the charming Litchfield County town of Bantam and named a 2015 Top 100 Restaurant in America by Open Table, Arethusa al tavolo is owned by George Malkemus and Anthony Yurgaitis, the president and vice president of Manolo Blahnik, who branched out from the high-end stilettos made famous by Carrie in Sex and the City when they started a dairy farm business in Litchfield. Dan Magill, the restaurant’s executive chef, recently nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast, incorporates the farm’s heavenly milk, butter, cream, and cheese in his menu items along with seasonal products from around the state, as does pastry chef Arena. If you’re ever in Connecticut, treat yourself to a truly memorable dining experience there. In the meantime, below is Chef Arena’s recipe for the chocolate marquise, so you can enjoy it at home. Chef Arena conceived it as a way to celebrate the earthiness of the beets and the indulgence of the chocolate. “I like dessert and I like making people happy by offering them a great finale to a meal,” he said. (Disclaimer: I’ve swooned over Chef Arena’s dessert at the restaurant, but I haven’t tried making it. I’m not as hopeless in the kitchen as Elaine is, but I’m close when it comes to desserts. So try it if you’re feeling adventurous, and let me know how it goes.)
Thin Chocolate Crust
7 oz. Valrhona chocolate (70% “Guanaja”)
3 oz. pure cocoa butter
Line a small sheet pan with acetate. Melt chocolate and cocoa butter together in a double boiler or in the microwave in 30-second intervals. Spread a thin layer on the acetate and chill in the refrigerator until set. (Chef Arena says he puts the crust in the fridge, and by the time he makes the marquise the crust is set enough.)
Chocolate Marquise
15 oz. Valrhona chocolate (61% “Extra Bitter”)
6 oz. butter
6 eggs, separated and at room t
emperature
3 Tbsp. sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar
Melt the chocolate and butter together in a microwave or double boiler until warm but NOT HOT. Using a standing mixer with a whip attachment, whip egg whites with the cream of tartar until thick (medium peak). Add sugar and continue to whip until stiff. Add the egg yolks to the warm chocolate mixture working quickly. Stir until they are emulsified and the mixture is smooth and glossy. Fold egg whites into the chocolate mixture in 3 parts; the first should be worked until smooth, while the next two additions should be incorporated with a little more care so as not to deflate the whites. Dispense mixture onto the thin chocolate crust. Place in freezer to set.
Beet Cremeux
1 quart beet juice, extracted from a juicer, reduced to ½ cup, simmering on low, and reserved for the sauce
½ cup mascarpone cheese
1 cup heavy cream
2 Tbsp. confectioner’s sugar
Mix ingredients until thick and set aside.
Beet-and-Raspberry Sauce
1 pint fresh raspberries
Reserved beet juice from cremeux
¼ cup sugar
Slowly simmer all ingredients until raspberries are soft, approximately 10-12 minutes. Puree. Strain. Chill.
Salted Pistachio Croquant
½ cup pistachio meats
⅛ cup sugar
¼ tsp. sea salt
Line a sheet tray with parchment. Grind pistachios to a medium-fine texture in a food processor. Transfer nuts to a sauté pan and add sugar. Over medium heat, stir constantly until sugar starts to caramelize and nuts start to toast. Pour onto the parchment-lined sheet tray. Dust with sea salt. Cool. Once cool, break apart into bite-size pieces.