Simmer Down

by Jessica Conant-Park

  I obviously had to get rid of her as quickly as possible. After tonight, Josh and I would never have to see her again. As if to reinforce my hatred, Hannah reached into her purse and pulled out a small bag of what looked like dried snap peas—with Josh’s beautiful food right in front of her. The barbarian!

  “God, I’m starving,” she said, crunching into a green crisp. “I can’t get enough of these. Want one?” she offered us. Her fingers were covered in pale green dust, and I was afraid she’d stick them in her mouth and suck on them in shameless flirtation.

  “Okay, well, nice to meet you,” I said in the hope of ending conversation. Forever. Bad enough that she was still interested in Josh, but what kind of sick human being would choose dried snap peas over his food?

  Even Naomi didn’t like Hannah. I could tell. Naomi hadn’t said anything to Hannah, which was very unlike my talkative supervisor. In fact, she seemed to be staring at Hannah with curiosity, wondering which evil planet had shot Hannah through space and beamed her down here. Naomi was on my side! I hadn’t known she could feel such loyalty to me as I faced off against a horrible rival. I hadn’t been the best social work intern, but I’d apparently been good enough to endear myself to her. Under other circumstances, I realized, Naomi would probably have gobbled up those snap peas, which were just the type of flavorless, natural food she liked. But she wouldn’t take them. Not from Hannah.

  “I should get back to work,” Hannah said, as though I hadn’t just kicked her out of our social circle. “Nights like this are all about networking, aren’t they? Josh, let’s catch up soon, okay? Here’s my new cell number.” When she handed Josh her business card, I was elated to see him carelessly fold it in half and put it in his pocket.

  “Yeah, definitely,” Josh spoke with what I heard as marked sarcasm.

  Hannah gave him a close hug while I made juvenile gagging faces behind her.

  When she finally left, Josh said, “I cannot believe I ever went out with her.”

  “Me neither,” I agreed. “At least she’s gone now.”

  Before I could add any other thoughts on Josh’s dating history, a booming voice over a microphone asked everyone to gather at the front of the gallery for a toast.

  “Chloe, I’m going to tidy up the tables in case anyone stops by during the toast, okay?” Naomi rushed off. God forbid anyone miss out on an important harassment fact for ten minutes.

  “I think I’ve got enough food out to keep everyone fed for a little while.” Josh put his arm around me, and we moved through the crowd. “Should we go hang out with Sean now?”

  “Ha-ha. Actually, I’d like to talk to Heather for a minute if you can stand being near my family.”

  “I love your family. Heather included, even if she doesn’t love me.” Josh gave me a quick kiss and went to talk to my parents while I made a beeline for my sister.

  I grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled her away from Ben. “Start talking,” I ordered.

  “Don’t be mad at me, please. I just ran into Sean the other day and I thought you might like to see him again—”

  “No, you did not run into him. He told me you called him! And why would I want to see him again?”

  “I just want you to really think about getting involved with someone like Josh. Chloe, honestly, what kind of life could you have with him for the long term? He’s a chef. He’ll work long, late hours. He’ll be gone evenings, weekends, holidays. What if you two get married and have children? He’s not going to be there the way somebody like Sean would. And Josh is never going to make a lot of money. You know what most chefs make. Are you two going to live in your little condo forever?”

  I was fuming. “You are so out of line, it is incredible we are related. First of all, I am already involved with Josh, and I don’t need to think about it. I know what his career is like, and I would rather be with someone who is passionate and creative and dedicated, even if it means he isn’t at home as much, than with someone I didn’t love who works some boring, uncreative nine-to-five job,” I spat out. “How dare you, Heather? Do I look unhappy to you? Did I ask for you to decide what I want? What I need? And what have you done to Sean? Did you tell him I want to get back together? God, you are unbelievable. I’m disgusted with you.”

  Heather had tears in her eyes. Oh, no! I’d gone too far and made her cry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am. I just want you to have what I have. But I didn’t say anything to Sean, I promise. I just told him you wouldn’t mind seeing him again, that’s all.”

  “Heather, I don’t need a goddamn picket-fence life like you have. I’m glad you are happy and have a great architect husband and great kids and a big, fat house in snooty old Brookline. Really, I am. I want a great life, too, but I might do it differently.” Especially if having Heather’s life meant getting pregnant and being hit with the notion that wearing L. L. Bean and listening to Celine Dion made you some sort of Earth Mother. “Maybe I’ll be with Josh, maybe someone else, but you have to stay out of it, okay? Please?”

  Heather nodded rather pathetically. “I will try. I promise.”

  I gave her an exasperated hug. Static came over the loudspeakers, and I turned to the front of the gallery.

  “Good evening, everyone. I’m Randolph Schmitt, and I’d like to welcome all of you to this year’s Food for Thought!”

  The distinguished-looking Randolph Schmitt was flanked by Gavin and Naomi on one side and Eliot on the other. After issuing a great many unsubtle hints about opening our wallets and donating substantial amounts of money to the Food for Thought charities, he introduced Naomi, who, he promised, would make some brief remarks about workplace harassment.

  Having evidently overcome her anxiety about being surrounded by Boston’s elite, Naomi practically leaped toward the microphone. Eliot looked so nervous that his frizzy hair seemed to pulsate with energy. He was, I assumed, appropriately afraid that Naomi would say something so bizarre that tonight’s visitors would never again enter his gallery. He did, however, manage to clap politely as Naomi seized the microphone in both hands. She immediately thanked Mr. Schmitt, Gavin, Josh, and me for our hard work. “And a special thank you to Eliot Davis for his belief in our organization and for giving us the opportunity to spread the word about harassment in this phenomenal gallery of his.”

  Harassment right here in this gallery of his? Naomi, that’s not at all what you mean!

  Luckily, Eliot showed no sign of having heard her thanks as an accusation, and no one in the crowd laughed. Eliot, in fact, looked pleased as he modestly waved away her comments.

  Eighteen minutes later, Naomi’s audience was still suffering through a forceful speech condemning inappropriate workplace behavior, which is to say, a detailed lecture that could have been entitled “What to Do When Your Boss Tries to Lick Your Neck.” Bored and restless, people began to talk among themselves. I glanced around the room, looking for Josh, and spotted him at the side of the room talking to Hannah, who must have lured him away from my parents. However terrible Naomi’s lecture was, talking to Hannah had to be worse. The front door to the gallery repeatedly opened and closed as visitors escaped Naomi’s fervent assertion that everyone here was “empowering harassers by remaining silent.”

  Oh, Naomi! She knew exactly what she was talking about, and she held wonderfully strong beliefs. When I’d heard her speak at rallies in front of the State House, the crowds gathered there had cherished her every word. I knew how helpful she could be to women who called our organization. But she clearly had no ability to read her audience. The less attention tonight’s speech received, the more flustered Naomi became and the louder she spoke. “…so you must document every step you take! You must make copies of every complaint you file with your human resources department! You must not let anybody get away with…”

  A piercing, high-pitched scream from the back of the gallery cut Naomi off. Like fans in a football stadium wave, the mass of people, suddenly silent, turned as one toward the cont
inuing shrieks that reverberated throughout the cavernous room. Turning with the crowd, I saw Hannah standing at the far end of gallery, by the back hallway. Every part of her body was motionless except for her mouth, which opened and closed with each yell.

  During Naomi’s endless talk, I’d apparently acted on a subliminal desire to distance myself from her by inching my way out of the front room toward the giant egg and the booths in the back area. As one of the people closest to Hannah, I started to step toward her when Barry brushed past me, rushed to Hannah, and grabbed her shoulders. “Hannah? What’s wrong?”

  She pointed behind her to Eliot’s office. “He’s dead! He’s dead!” she said hysterically.

  For a second, I wondered why Barry, the food-loving partner in the Full Moon Group, had taken it upon himself to be the first to rush to Hannah. Then I remembered that she’d been in Boston working for the group for—how long had she said?—six weeks. And the partners, Barry and Oliver, must have known her before that, or they wouldn’t have gone to the expense of bringing her here from New York.

  Barry took a few steps to the doorway and peered in. “Oh, God! Oh, my God!” Barry disappeared into the office and immediately reappeared. “Oliver! It’s Oliver!” he called out. “Call nine one one!”

  By now, Josh was next to me. I caught his eye, and we silently agreed that he should get to Hannah before she had a total meltdown. I followed him. When he reached her, she fell into his arms and buried her head in his chest.

  “I think someone hit him on the head with your food processor!” Hannah’s voice was forced and had a strangely mechanical quality. Just as I was feeling worried about her and sorry for her, she did something so disgusting that I hate to report it: she used my boyfriend as a handkerchief. Josh, to his credit, made a face as she wiped her mascara-stained eyes and, yes, her runny nose on his brand-new chef’s coat. “His head is all…bashed in,” she stammered. To my relief, she did not go on to recite gory details.

  The crowd that moments ago had been shocked into silence was now bustling about and reaching into Prada purses and Gucci suits to pull out cell phones. A man up front began shouting, “A doctor! Is there a doctor here?” Another man was supporting Oliver’s wife, Dora, who had collapsed. She looked ghastly. Even from a distance, I could see that the stretched skin on her face, and especially on her forehead, had turned a peculiar shade of yellowish white. Oliver, I thought, wasn’t the only one who needed a doctor, and he was apparently beyond help. Well, in this group, there was certainly no shortage of doctors.

  Police, too, were available in large numbers. When Josh and I had arrived on Newbury Street, Food for Thought hadn’t even begun, and there had already been cops on the street corners. Now, four uniformed police officers entered the gallery. One positioned himself at the front door and loudly announced that no one was to leave.

  When I looked away from the front of the gallery, I saw Naomi rescuing Josh from Hannah. “Hannah, how horrible for you!” Naomi said, her voice shaking. She looked more freaked than Hannah did. Her face was pale, but I could tell that she was trying to gear herself into clinical mode and was determined to assess any psychological trauma that Hannah might be experiencing. I assumed that Hannah would resent Naomi’s typical hand-holding, but within moments, the two were clutching each other and sobbing. Actually, Naomi was sobbing, and Hannah was simply looking frozen with shock, so it was hard to tell who was comforting whom. But at least Naomi had detached Hannah from my boyfriend.

  “Chloe Carter?” I spun around to see the only detective in the world I knew, Scott Hurley.

  “Detective Hurley. How are you?” Not the smartest question. He looked even more haggard than the last time I’d seen him. I’d met Scott Hurley last fall and had immediately thought that he desperately needed a long vacation in Aruba. Tonight, his scraggly black hair and unshaven face assured me that he was as overworked as ever.

  “Peachy,” he said with sarcastic exhaustion. “Josh, how you doin’? Chloe, I’ll talk to you first, then Josh. We’re gonna need statements and contact info from everybody here before you can go.”

  8. Being questioned by police regarding revolting food-processor murder.

  Hurley glanced up and called to an officer. “Connors! The docs are here. Help ’em through,” he ordered. I decided to keep my back to the EMTs to avoid watching them wheel Oliver out of the gallery. Because of the thousands of hours I’d spent watching TV crime shows, I was relatively sure that the body wouldn’t be moved for ages, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  I followed the detective to the side of the room. My mother waved to me from across the crowd and smiled, as though watching her daughter being led off by a detective were the most normal thing she’d ever seen.

  Hurley leaned against the wall and yanked a notepad and pen from his pocket. “Tell me what you know about tonight.”

  As much as I wanted to impress a law enforcement official by issuing dramatic statements about key events I’d witnessed, I had nothing useful to say, or so it seemed to me. I explained why I was here and said that I’d been up front when Hannah screamed. I had just met Oliver and knew almost nothing about him. I’d been paying no attention to what was happening at the back of the gallery.

  Hurley looked down as he wrote. “The back door to the alley is open. Do you know who did that?” As I shook my head, I noticed that the high humidity tonight was making him sweat more than usual.

  “It had been hot in here,” I said. “So I noticed the cool breeze coming from back there, but I don’t know who opened the door.”

  “You were here with your boss, Naomi Campbell?” He paused. “Is that her real name?”

  I nodded and pointed her out.

  “Was she with you, too? When you left your table? And when the screaming started?”

  I shook my head. “No, she was still at our table when Josh and I headed up front. But she must have left pretty soon after that to give her speech. She was still speaking up front when Hannah started screaming.”

  “Who else did you see while you were up front?”

  “Well, between you and me, Naomi didn’t give the most scintillating speech I’ve ever heard, so people were kind of milling around and talking through most of it. Well, after Naomi had been talking for five minutes, maybe. People were bored. And they started to leave partway through, so I’m not sure who was where. Although I’m pretty sure my family was up front all night, since they knew I was irritated with them for bringing my ex-boyfriend, Sean, here tonight. My parents are here and my sister and her husband. My sister’s the one who invited my ex-boyfriend. I mean, seriously, would you show up somewhere with your sister’s ex while she is perfectly happy with her new chef boyfriend? Anyway, they were all here.”

  Uninterested in hearing about my family drama, Hurley took my phone number and asked me to get Josh.

  I sent Josh to the detective, who, I was sure, wanted to know all about the Robocoupe that had been transformed from culinary appliance to murder weapon. Josh, I knew, hadn’t had a chance to wash the Robocoupe, and I idly wondered whether Oliver’s body was spattered with vinaigrette. Josh had poured out the dressing, but some of it must have remained in the bowl of the machine. And the murderer? Would traces of vinaigrette cling to the murderer’s clothing? Or had the killer used only the heavy base of the Robocoupe, without the bowl?

  I stood haplessly by myself watching the chaotic scene before me. Charity-goers were being interviewed by police officers, flashbulbs were going off near Eliot’s office, and the heat and stuffiness in the room had everyone on the verge of melting. The police had obviously closed the door to the alley. Dora, Oliver’s widow, was huddled on the floor, where she was being comforted by Sarka, Barry’s wife. Both of them, it occurred to me, looked unhealthy. Dora’s color was still a ghastly yellowish white. In any case, the bright overhead lights meant to show artwork at its best had the opposite effect on Dora. Instead of looking young, her overtreated skin looked stretched and thin. As to S
arka, she was what in some circles might be considered fashionably thin, but in my eyes she just looked malnourished.

  A voice interrupted my morbid reflections. “Chloe.” Ugh, Hannah. Shouldn’t she be sequestered by someone for something? She’d found the body, for God’s sake. Someone should be preventing her from escaping! Hannah, I might mention, looked like a model in an ad for multivitamins. In the brilliant gallery lighting, her hair was shiny, and her white teeth sparkled.

  “Hello. Have you spoken to the police yet?” I asked in the hope of shoving her toward Detective Hurley and away from me.

  “Just briefly. I have to stay here until they can take a more lengthy, formal statement from me,” she said smugly. Little Miss Snooty seemed to feel quite the celebrity tonight, what with discovering the body and all. Christ, it’s not like she was going to be whisked off to the Four Seasons and pampered while she narrated her torturous night.

  “This might not be the right time,” she started, “but you should know that Josh and I have a connection. He may be with you now, but you have to understand that doesn’t change how he and I feel about each other.” She must’ve been sniffing too many of those silly snap peas she’d been carrying around.

  “Yeah, okay, Hannah,” I said. Even I wouldn’t stoop to picking a fight with someone who’d just found Oliver battered to death with a Robocoupe.

  “I’ve been in Boston for a little while now, but I’ve been waiting to call him.” She cocked her head to the side and blew her bangs out of her eyes. They fell neatly back in place and didn’t stick straight up at freaky angles the way mine would have. “I saw he was going to be at this gallery tonight with Simmer, and I knew this would be the right time for us to see each other again.”

  I took a deep breath. Think about your social work training, Chloe. People deal with trauma in very different ways. Her head is probably spinning, and she is trying to regain a sense of normality by going back to something familiar, namely Josh. Except that this little snot had been eyeing my Josh before the murder. She is a dirtbag!