Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  “Okay, I’m picking up your right hand now and directing it to one of the bites,” he said.

  “Hm. Slippery,” said Jackie. “The hors d’oeuvre, not you, Ollie.”

  “Take your time with it,” he said. “Really savor it.”

  I could hear Jackie chewing. She was a loud chewer even when she wasn’t savoring. “Very tasty,” she said. “I could wolf down a dozen more of these, whatever they are.”

  “I’ll go next,” chirped Pat.

  While my friends were playing Whitley’s little mystery game with Oliver, I lifted my blindfold just enough to sneak a peek at the tray of Chef Hill’s tidbits. Call me a cheater if you must, but I wasn’t about to eat just anything. My blood pressure was ninety over seventy for good reason. My cholesterol level was an impressive 160. And I weighed 130 pounds, which, for a middle-aged woman of my nearly six-foot height, made me a giantess with a model’s figure—if not the staggeringly beautiful face. Why was I such a healthy specimen? Because I was in control at all times. I mean what if something on that tray was a cow testicle or an octopus heart, one of those “chef’s specialty” items you see on restaurant menus nowadays, and I spent the rest of the week with my head over the porcelain throne?

  Whew. Jackie’s slippery thing is just a deviled egg, I thought with relief when I had my 20/20 vision back. It didn’t look like the mayonnaise-and-mustard-with-paprika kind my mother used to make for company, but an egg was an egg. The second item was a piece of fruit—a peach maybe—with a dollop of cheese and some sort of herb or other. And mystery bite number three was meat—chicken, probably—sandwiched between two potato—

  “Your turn, Elaine,” said Pat, interrupting my stealth mission.

  I fake coughed, covering my mouth with both hands so no one would notice that I was reaching up and surreptitiously sliding the blindfold down over my eyes. And then I made a performance out of letting Oliver help me navigate the bites into my mouth, smacking my lips ostentatiously and emitting “ah” and “hmm” noises as if I gave a shit what I was eating and whether it was grown at Whitley or bought at the nearest Stop & Shop. “Wow, that was intense,” I said when I was done.

  Oliver gave us permission to remove our blindfolds and thanked us for our participation.

  “Now comes the test,” said Rebecca once all the guests had finished the exercise. She was still in the center of the room but was now holding a clipboard and pen. “Let’s find out who was able to identify the bounty. Anybody?”

  My hand shot up. Why not have a little fun with these people, I figured.

  “Yes,” said Rebecca, nodding at me. “The woman in the beige sweater. Your name?”

  Obviously she had no fashion sense, as my sweater was not beige. It was lightweight summer cashmere I’d gotten at last year’s Labor Day sale at Bloomie’s and its color was oatmeal. “Elaine Zimmerman,” I said. “I believe I ate an egg stuffed with beets, apples, and bleu cheese, a wine-soaked peach with a smear of herbed goat cheese and a sprig of mint, and braised chicken served between potato crisps and topped with a lemon aioli.” I smiled and waited to be told that I had just aced the class, the week, the trip.

  “You fucking peeked,” Jackie hissed. She pretended to look mad, but she was laughing. “You’re such a fucking baby.”

  “I am not,” I hissed back. Jackie loved using the f-word in all its iterations. She was so earthy. “I was only ‘going with the flow’ like you wanted me to.”

  “Not now,” Pat scolded. “You two can hatch this out later.”

  “There’s nothing to hash out,” I said, compelled yet again to correct her.

  “I appreciate your contribution, Elaine,” said Rebecca, scribbling my answers on her clipboard as the other guests murmured among themselves, no doubt astonished to have such a gastronome in their midst. “I think you’ll benefit greatly from your week here.”

  “See that?” I whispered to my friends. “Willie Nelson thinks I’m good at cultivating my bounty.”

  “Unfortunately, you didn’t identify any of the foods correctly except the hard-boiled egg,” said Rebecca, sending me into a state of sheer mortification. “And before I let the others give us their answers, let me boast about our eggs here at Whitley. They’re a product of our Rhode Island Red laying hens, which are fed our organic, certified soy-free meals so they’ll lay beautiful big brown eggs. During the summer, when there’s lots of sunlight, they lay about six per week per hen.”

  “Fascinating,” I muttered. “Just riveting.”

  I sulked while the other guests threw out their answers. I went into a complete snit when one of them, a young woman who looked like a walking juice cleanse, got every ingredient right.

  “Don’t feel bad,” said Jackie, slinging an arm around my waist and squelching another laugh. “So the egg was stuffed with radishes, not beets. They’re both red.”

  “And your peach turned out to be a pear, but they both start with p,” said Pat, with a not-very-straight face.

  “You couldn’t even cheat your way through,” Jackie said. She and Pat could no longer contain themselves and were now doubled over, cackling.

  I was about to point out that my friends didn’t try to guess what the mystery foods were when an extremely attractive man tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Sorry to intrude, but I just wanted to say that I admire your courage for being the first to raise your hand,” he said as I took a quick inventory of his refined, almost patrician appearance. Those soulful brown eyes! That lustrous brown hair curling under his ears! That Cartier tank watch that cost way more than the knockoff I’d bought off a street vendor! The rest of his wardrobe wasn’t cheap either; his shirt, slacks, and loafers were straight out of an Armani ad. And—most appealing of all—there was no wedding ring. “Your braised chicken idea wasn’t that far off the mark. Quail can be hard to identify.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that.” He had a jovial air about him, a good-natured, nonjudgmental demeanor. “I’m Elaine Zimmerman, and these are my friends Jackie Gault and Pat Kovecky.”

  “Jonathan Birnbaum,” he said during our round of handshakes. “Nice to meet you all.”

  “Do you work at Whitley or are you an agritourist like us?” asked Jackie.

  “The latter,” said this Jonathan Birnbaum person, who, although Jackie had posed the question, continued to concentrate on me, which was both unnerving and flattering. “I came primarily for the cooking classes. How about you, Elaine? What brought you to Whitley?”

  “The bounty,” I said without missing a beat. “Cultivating it, I mean. I have so much to learn, as you can tell from the Mystery Challenge. And I’m looking forward to the cooking, of course.”

  “Perfect,” he said with a gleam in those brown eyes. “We’ll be in the trenches together all week, Elaine.”

  Suddenly, things were looking up. Maybe Jonathan Birnbaum and I would embark on a torrid affair during Cultivate Our Bounty week. Maybe that affair would evolve into a meaningful relationship, one with stimulating conversations and stimulating sex and safety deposit boxes stuffed with Cartier jewelry. Maybe being dragged to Whitley was the best thing that would ever happen to me.

  Of course, there was a slight complication. I already had a boyfriend.

  2

  “Home sweet home,” I said out loud upon entering my cottage. After depositing the tote bag of Whitley handouts in the corner near my emptied luggage, I sank into the armchair to the right of the king-size four-poster bed. Other amenities of my accommodations included a marble bathroom with a soaking tub and rainfall shower, a desk area that offered Wi-Fi, an iPod dock and a fifty-inch flat-screen TV—pretty swanky for a farm.

  I was tired and therefore grateful for the early night, particularly since we’d be forced to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to shovel cow dung or something. Still, the evening had ended on a high note. Jonathan Birnbaum and I had chatted for a few more minutes while Jackie scurried off to the bar and Pat scurried off to
the restroom. (Before departing, Jackie had mouthed, “He’s hot,” the same thing she said about most men, although in this case she was spot-on.) Jonathan told me he was a partner at his late father’s law firm in Palm Beach, specializing in estates, wills and trusts; I told him I was a VP and senior account executive at Pearson & Strulley, the international PR firm where I’d worked for nine years. He told me he lived in a Mediterranean-style house with a pool and a tennis court across the street from the Intracoastal Waterway; I told him I lived in a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in a doorman building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side across the street from Madonna. He told me he was an accomplished home cook. I told him I was an accomplished orderer from restaurants that delivered, which made him laugh, which made me laugh, and before I knew it we were chuckling like fools. He said he wasn’t expecting to “click with anyone” at Whitley and he was looking forward to the week. I said, “Me too,” and then we said goodnight. He was definitely hitting on me, my friends confirmed later, and I have to say I didn’t hate it.

  I heaved a contented sigh, reached into the pocket of my white linen pants, and pulled out my cellphone to turn it back on since electronic devices were a no-no while the week’s activities were in progress. I had no desire to post selfies or food porn on my Instagram page, but it was torture for me not to be able to get e-mails and texts. I liked to feel needed.

  I checked the phone. Nothing. Bah.

  I was about to connect it to its charger and put it and myself to bed when it rang.

  My heart did a little dance when I saw that the caller was Simon, the boyfriend I mentioned. He and I had broken up shortly before the trip, so he was not, technically, my boyfriend, but that didn’t stop my pulse from quickening every time I heard his damn voice,

  “What?” I said in a not-very-cordial greeting.

  “Hey, Slim. How’s it going in Farmaggedon?” said Simon, clearly trying to be charming in that way he had of turning everything into a joke. “Were you out tilling the soil or picking berries for that pie you’ll be baking for me?”

  “I was at a party,” I said, determined to sound chilly yet irresistible, like a heroine from a classic movie, say Lauren Bacall.

  “Look, I know you hate me right now, but I love you and I’ll prove it,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  “I won’t hold my breath.” How dare he try to reel me back in? We were done. I’d ended it. And, trust me, it hadn’t been easy.

  “Don’t you remember how good it was between us, Slim?”

  Of course I remembered. That was the problem. I’d met Simon Purdys on the Princess Charming and, after a lifetime of mistrusting men, I’d allowed myself to trust Simon. We’d entered into a passionate romance after our shipboard fling, a serious, sappy romance of the type where you can’t bear to be without the other person for more than an hour and even an hour is a stretch. For a year it was miraculous and unexpected and beyond my wildest dreams, but not anymore. “What’s the point of this call, Simon?”

  “To cheer you up,” he said. “You seemed pretty miserable the last time I saw you.”

  “Yeah, because I was angry. People aren’t jumping for joy when they’re ending a relationship.”

  I had shared the details of the breakup with Jackie and Pat, of course, and they both thought it was my fault. Some friends.

  “Don’t be a fucking idiot. He’s a keeper,” Jackie had said.

  “I wouldn’t give him up if I were you,” Pat had advised. “He’s a special, special man, Elaine.”

  He’d certainly seemed to be. He’d been a well-regarded travel writer at Away from It All magazine when we met on the ship. He’d been thinking of resigning; he’d said he was tired of traveling so much. Then shortly after we got back from the cruise, his publisher offered him the editor-in-chief position, and he grabbed it, thinking a desk job would mean less time on a plane and more time for a life. Wrong. He was in nonstop meetings, buried under an executive’s workload. I could handle that, no problem, since I was a workaholic myself.

  But then he hired—no, campaigned for—Mallory Ryan to join the team as editorial director of afia.com, the magazine’s web site. Like every other magazine, Away from It All had experienced flagging newsstand and subscription sales and needed its digital operations to pull in more eyeballs. Since Mallory was a tech genius with a reputation for efficiently bringing print media into the twenty-first century, and she was ambitious, stupidly gorgeous, and only twenty-eight years old (the horror), Simon had convinced his boss to open his corporate wallet for her. I wasn’t thrilled that my boyfriend spent many hours of the day and night canoodling with her about memes and gigabytes and platforms, nor was I wild about hearing Mallory this and Mallory that whenever we were together. (He wasn’t wild about my nicknames for Mallory either: “the Web Wench” for obvious reasons and “Mammary” due to her big gazongas.) I’m sure she was a delightful person, but the fact was this: He claimed to love me but hadn’t asked me to marry him or live with him or even leave a toothbrush at his apartment. Not in the year that we’d been together. Had she bumped me out of contention?

  Or was he simply a commitmentphobe? He would tell me—I’m saying he himself would speak the words without any provocation from or prompting by me—that he wanted the same sort of coupledom that I did, but then he would go through periods when he would avoid the subject as if it had crab lice. It was a pattern, and it drove me nuts. He would get me all hopeful and excited about our future and then drop me on my ass if I tried to pin him down on the specifics, and I’d had it up to here with his flip-flopping.

  “Well, we don’t have to get into things tonight,” said Simon. “I just wanted to wish you luck with all the farming.” He laughed. “Still trying to picture you as that pioneer woman on the Food Network. What’s her name?”

  “Ree Drummond, and she lives on a ranch, not a farm. She’s married to a cowboy.” I’m sorry to tell you that I emphasized the word “married” because I couldn’t help sticking it to him that he and I weren’t.

  “I meant that I know you’re out of your element up there,” he said, his tone softening. “I hope you’ll meet some nice people. Really, Slim.”

  “As a matter of fact, I already did,” I said with a gleeful lilt in my voice, “and he’s extremely nice.”

  “He?”

  “Goodnight, Simon.”

  Day Two:

  Tuesday, July 16

  3

  “The land is divided into twelve plots, and we grow around 200 varieties of vegetables,” enthused Rebecca, the Willie Nelson look-alike. My friends and I and the seven other members of our group stood beside a row of red and golden beets. “Behind us is celeriac, chard, and kale, and down below we have cabbage and corn. At the top of the hill we have hops that are used by craft breweries in the area….”

  Blah blah blah. It was 9:00 a.m. and the day was a scorcher already—not a hint of a breeze, not a single cloud in the sky. Just hot, muggy air that made my hair frizz, my body clammy, and my brain yearn for my meat-locker-cold office where flies didn’t dive-bomb my neck and the sun’s rays didn’t bore through my broad-spectrum SPF 100 moisturizer. I wondered how I would survive the week.

  Don’t get me wrong. Whitley Farm was breathtaking—the stuff of landscape painters—but harvesting my own kohlrabi wasn’t high on my bucket list. I was more interested in getting into the presumably air conditioned kitchen.

  “We also do a lot of inter-cropping, so we plant green manures in between actual food crops….”

  More blah blah blah. I tried to look nonchalant as I scanned the group for Jonathan, and he gave me a big smile when our eyes met. Yes, he’ll be the bright spot, I thought, as Rebecca asked us to introduce ourselves and explain what had brought us to Whitley’s Cultivate Our Bounty week.

  “We have one more agritourist coming,” she added. “He’ll be joining us in the kitchen after our foraging expedition. In the meantime, let’s have those of you who are here get to know one another, shall we
?”

  “At least the person coming later is a man,” Jackie whispered before the introductions. “There aren’t many in this group, and Elaine has already staked out the hot guy, so having one more gives me a fighting chance at some action.”

  “I asked Bill to fix you up with that doctor,” said Pat, “but you didn’t like him.”

  “The proctologist?” Jackie shuddered. “All he wanted to do was stick his finger where it doesn’t belong.”

  “If the ladies over there are finished, I’ll go first. I’m Lake Vanderkloot-Arnold,” said a thirty-something who would have been pretty except that she didn’t look human. What I mean is she had the figure of a lollipop—all head and no body. I was thin for my giantess height, but she was as skinny as a haricot vert, with only the occasional ripple of muscle in her arms and legs. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a perky ponytail and she was dressed in Lululemon yoga wear. She bounced on the balls of her feet when she spoke, which suggested abundant energy and vivacity, but her face was drawn, her skin sandpaper dry, and her collarbones protruded from her pale blue tank top. In the daylight, I realized she was the one who’d guessed all the right answers to last night’s Mystery Challenge. “My life partner and I live in Manhattan—I volunteer at the Guggenheim, and he’s in commercial real estate at Cushman & Wakefield—and we came to Whitley because we’re true believers in the farm-to-table movement. We shun restaurants that don’t use the freshest, locally sourced ingredients and we bring our own food to dinner parties if we think the host is serving anything processed. We’ve been yearning to take our journey deeper by honing our cooking skills to reflect and honor the land. If you don’t honor the land and its bounty, you can’t really walk the walk.”

  Okay, who in their right mind talked like that? And what cooking skills was she referring to? Her idea of a meal was probably a chia seed.