Swap Out!

by M. L. Buchman

  Focus, Jeff. Keep focus. Don’t think about the way Mandy’s hair was as unruly in mornings now as it had been a few decades ago and how much he’d wanted to brush it from her face so he could see those clear blue-gray eyes.

  “While those are searing, I’ll slice up some peppers, three varieties for color.” He winked at Mandy as he cut up a half of each pepper and tossed them atop the nearly full bowl he’d prepped earlier and stowed out of sight.

  They’d been playing coy. Chef and Mandy and the camera made three. Phillip had faded from Jeff’s worries as he’d flirted with Mandy like old times. She was doing great, a natural. No coaching needed, she played to the camera like an old pro. A shy old pro, but comfortably professional nonetheless.

  Phillip made a point of checking himself in the monitors which meant he was never looking at the camera when the camera was looking at him. But he could see how the two of them must appear together.

  And the audience was eating it up.

  This episode was headed straight for the “best of” reruns. No more worries about show sponsorship for weeks, maybe months to come. Not that he had that many, but it paid to be careful.

  Sam counted him down to commercial, he let the steaks sizzle in silence, a tight shot showing their beautiful brown finish as Jeff flipped them just five seconds before the break. The steaks sizzled happily through the commercials and he pulled the water-filled vodka bottle and a lemon from his pack. He pulled down three glasses, and slid a slice of a lime he’d prepped onto the rim of each. It was his trademark, the audience knew the end of the show was at hand without having to check their watches.

  Oddly he’d never had trouble coming up with a unique, soon-to-be-soused punchline at the end of each show. Too much practice in his youth. By Phillip’s knowing smile, he was thinking exactly the same thing, especially as his indestructible friend had instigated near enough every one of their wilder escapades.

  He chatted up the studio audience during the break which put them in a good mood and kept Phillip from speaking to him. A teenager from some place out West spelled S-e-q-u-i-m, she’d had to spell it twice before he nailed it, but pronounced more like “squid” than a clothing decoration, asked a couple of good questions about searing time versus time to cook the steak through.

  CHAPTER 12

  As the camera came back from commercial, he continued the discussion as if he were just starting the topic for the television audience without repeating himself. The webcast would have the break discussion and his seamless integration of the break information into the show, always a popular little extra.

  Ever since that disastrous vinegar pasta Alfredo and all his groans during the ad break, his podcast audience had been huge. This show’s podcast highlights would be a pretty teen asking cooking questions and Phillip drawling out a couple of marginally off-color jokes. And he and Mandy blushing various shades of red every time they looked at each other. Not off the charts, but still a definite winner.

  When the steaks were done, he set three aside on the cutting board and covered them with foil. He shoved the fourth lone soldier into the back corner of the cast iron to continue cooking on a cooler part of the pan.

  “Again, instead of oil, I use a little more of the stout beer that’s in the marinade to sauté the peppers and onions. This is a very low fat meal, though it won’t taste it, I can guarantee that. I’m using half red onion and half Walla Walla sweet here. If you use a white, you’ll want to cook it a little longer to caramelize the sharp acids into sweet sugars.”

  He poured his Grey Goose water into each of their three glasses. Felt there should have been a fourth for the camera. He was batting a thousand when he personalized the camera into being a live member of his audience.

  Rating numbers would show he was really wowing them at home.

  Jeff scraped the peppers and onions to one side and dropped four hoagie rolls face down onto the wide griddle.

  “This way, they get toasted and they absorb all of those wonderful juices and flavors that are so often left in the pan. But we’re not soaking up fat because we pretrimmed the steaks so carefully, and used no oil to cook them.”

  He uncovered the steak with a flourish of aluminum foil. “The steak has had about five minutes to reabsorb the juices released during cooking. By sitting, it will be that much more moist and tender.”

  He retrieved the steak he’d left in the pan.

  “We’ve cooked this longer, you’d think it would be drier.” He cut a slice and the juice flowed heavily. He took the three steaks he’d pulled out earlier and let stand under foil. He slashed one in half and a quarter as much juice flowed out of the wound. A perfection of light pink in the center.

  Then he passed a sliver of each to Mandy and Phillip.

  “More of the juices were retained in the steak allowed to stand. Which is more tender?”

  They both had taken him too seriously about the no-speaking rule and merely pointed enthusiastically at the second piece. Though he could see that Mandy was teasing him by not speaking. Did she know that she was curdling his hormones more thoroughly than that stupid Alfredo?

  Yes, of course she did and she was enjoying it.

  Gods he was in so much trouble, if only he could figure out whether it was good trouble or bad.

  “The steak reabsorbed most of its own juices while standing. So the one that cooked longer and appeared juicier,” he poked the steak in question with his long, two-tined serving fork, “is fibbing to us.”

  He tossed it over his shoulder with a casual flick. The camera followed the arc even as he continued speaking, “Now, we thin slice the perfectly cooked steak across the grain.”

  A solid thwack of meat on stainless steel marked the steak landing in the cleanup sink nearly fifteen feet away. He kept slicing as the audience cheered and applauded.

  Jeff never reacted, as if it was the easiest trick in the world, which it was after twenty or thirty hours of practice of several thousand tosses and however many more times over the two years since then on the air three to nine shows a week depending on what he was demonstrating.

  Having fun showing off for Mandy, you giddy teenager, Jeff?

  He could spend a whole day doing just that.

  Stop it! Focus back on the cooking.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jeff never announced what he was making ahead of time. Sometimes the dishes were a surprise, sometimes obvious. Sometimes it was a bit of magic to reveal what eventually turned out from the various preparations. But each show’s final dish was specifically in the obvious category.

  Make the audience feel smarter which was always a good policy.

  He dropped the toasted rolls onto plates, layered steak slices and the pepper-onion mix. He’d screwed up. Three sandwiches, but he needed four. Long practice gave him the answer, but was it the right one?

  Was it too hard a push?

  Did he give a damn?

  He set up a full sandwich for Phillip, dressed another for the camera to admire. A quick slash with the Halsinger chef’s knife and he plated half a sandwich for himself and a half for Mandy. He slid it across to her, and tried not to hold his breath. It didn’t work, he could feel his cheeks burning red.

  She looked down at them for a moment. The last meal he’d cooked for her so long ago had been nothing fancy, a BLT and home-fried potato chips. He’d run out of tomato and gone without on his own sandwich. Mandy had switched half of her BLT with half of his BL and no T.

  She remembered. He could see it in her eyes. She remembered the moment and hesitated.

  He spoke aloud for the camera and repeated the line he’d said so long ago at their last ever shared meal.

  “Trust me, this is the best sandwich you’ll ever taste.”

  Phillip had taken a huge bite and managed to mumble a hearty, “Wow!” He gave the camera an enthusiastic thumbs up.

>   Mandy took a daintier bite, but her smile and twinkling eyes spoke volumes. In that moment he knew he would do anything to make sure she was back in his life. Anything.

  He could see the guest camera gobbling up their expressions and shooting them off into the electronic void. He should have trusted his friends. They might be a part of his past, but they were still the best people he knew or had ever known. They’d kept fighting on when he’d been too weak, or scared, or… he still wasn’t sure what. The onions were more acrid than he’d first thought. He resisted the urge to wipe at his eyes.

  Phillip finished his mouthful then raised his water glass in a quick toast. He knocked back the whole thing in one Phillip-sized swallow. His eyes widened as he realized it was water rather than Grey Goose, then he began to smile.

  Jeff took his own glass, raised it to Phillip and then Mandy.

  Mandy raised hers as well. A perfect photogenic moment. Sensing it, Mandy held her toast with him a moment longer. All this time and they might have never been apart. Right in sync. Right in the groove.

  He turned to the audience to toast them and the camera. Could feel the final line, that ever so elegant twist of a closing quip, building inside as it always did. But from deeper than usual. Something that the audience would know was all about the beautiful woman sitting at his counter for this one day. His best day in a long, long time.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mandy smashed the glass from his hand, bruising his fingers. The glass shattered against the cast-iron griddle and the water splashed into the blazingly-hot pan where it immediately burst into a flash of steam releasing the fond. The thousand bits of steak and vegetable stuck to the cast iron turned the frothing water an intense, dirty brown.

  Shocked, he reached for the handle and burned his hand without a potholder.

  With a curse he dropped it on the floor and had to jump back as the whole mess of scalding, murky water splashed all over his pristine white pants.

  He’d expected trouble from her big brother, not her. Couldn’t she have sat still for another twenty-three seconds? He spun to face Mandy, her own glass sitting untouched on the counter.

  But she wasn’t looking at him, she was turned to Phillip.

  His face was a bright red. As bright as if he’d just chugged twelve ounces of vodka when he expected water and not the other way around.

  “Fucking Christmas and Thursdays.”

  Stupid damn time for jokes. Why did they want to make a fool out of him? It didn’t make sense.

  Phillip’s eyes focused for a moment as he stared intensely at Jeff. Struggled as if fighting against the mighty Niagara Falls, a place he’d often threatened to try in a barrel, provided Jeff went first. He mumbled twice before anything audible came out, “Hell.” But he slurred it and it came out, “Shel.”

  Then, in slow motion, like the Berlin Wall on television, he toppled forward. Slowly at first, gaining speed, and finally crashing face-first into his unfinished sandwich.

  For an awful second or so, he lay there, stopped. At rest.

  Then his body began to slide off his stool. He caught his chin brutally on the edge of the counter with a sharp clack of teeth but Jeff could see no reaction in his rolled back eyes.

  No joke!

  Heart attack!

  He vaulted the counter and knocked aside a Steadicam that was coming in close. He heard Jerry’s curse and he really didn’t care.

  He felt for a pulse at Phillip’s neck. As if he’d know how to interpret one if he even found it.

  Phillip’s body thrashed. It was a strange, disconnected motion, like a puppeteer pulling his strings. The legs would thrash, then an arm. His back arched. Then with a long final shiver, he went loose and the pulse that had roared against Jeff’s finger for a moment was suddenly gone no matter how he searched for it.

  “Phillip?” Mandy’s hand was on the other side of Phillip’s throat. “Phillip!” The panic in her tone made him even more frantic. He didn’t know CPR, but the floor director did.

  “Sam!” He shouted above the growing roar of the crowd. Jeff spotted him coming on the run, only to be battered aside by the audience. His cheek and lip were bleeding by the time he arrived and began pumping on Phillip’s chest.

  Sam leaned down to give mouth-to-mouth and Mandy stopped him.

  “Don’t. Not if you want to live.”

  Sam moved to push her aside, but Jeff grabbed his shoulder and waited for what Mandy had to say.

  “Can’t either of you smell it?” Mandy squatted on the other side of her brother.

  “Smell what?” Sam was still struggling against Jeff’s hands.

  “Most can’t. Like bitter almonds.”

  “He’s just had a heart attack.” Sam moved forward again and Jeff had to shove him aside as he tried to hear Mandy over the panicked audience.

  “Potassium cyanide. Your water was poisoned.”

  “How . . .?” Stupid question Jeff. How had Julio been poisoned? Without his knowing, that’s how.

  “I knew the smell because my brother is,” a tear hung on her eyelashes for a moment and she rested a hand against Phillip’s face, “was into old photographic processes. It’s a chemical in Collodion processing. But he knew how to handle it even if he couldn’t smell it.”

  She nodded to Sam. “If you give him mouth to mouth, you’ll be dead as well.”

  Sam paled. “I’ve got a breather bag in the med kit. Wait here.” And he was gone back into the thrashing crowd. All of them knew it was too late, but that wouldn’t stop Sam from trying.

  Jeff and Mandy were brushed apart for a moment by the people surging about them. Then they were pushed so close together her tears actually wet his cheek.

  “He was poisoned. You came that close,” she pointed at his bruised and burned hand.

  Jeff shook his head, but it was mere instinctive denial. He had no doubt she was right. Mandy always was.

  “We were supposed to be as well, but I could smell it. Clear as day. Haven’t we always said it was what it was?” More tears escaped from her eyes, now gone the softest sky blue from their former sea-gray shade.

  A strange bubble of silence surrounded them, protected them so they could hear one another despite the mayhem and Sam’s frantic cries to calm down. Jeff could hear Mandy breathe. She rested her hand against his chest for a moment. One wonderful moment in a nightmare.

  “It was what it was.” He could only stare at her as hands grappled him and dragged him up and away until he was on his feet.

  “You’re supposed to be dead now, not my brother.” Not accusation or recrimination, just fact as the tears streamed down her face in earnest. And she was right. Another chef dead on television. Even if he could smell it, he’d wouldn’t have recognized it and would have drunk it back for the sake of the show and started thrashing like . . . He looked at the dead man between them. The dead body of his best friend. And he couldn’t breathe.

  That close.

  Mandy was swallowed up in the audience as it surged forward then back. She struggled to return to her brother but was brushed aside in the frantic crowd. He strove to follow but was held tightly in place.

  She melted out of sight.

  He could see the crowd’s panic now in full swing. But it brushed by him, the calm of the storm. Half-million dollar cameras knocked aside, toppling majestically to crash down upon those too slow to get clear. Men and women jumping over seats, falling down stairs, all of their jaws flapping up and down, chewing the air with their screams.

  And he couldn’t hear a single sound.

  Jeff caught sight of Mandy in the midst of the surging crowd one last time as they finally found direction and rushed for the exits. Her salt-and-pepper hair rapidly lost in the distance, caught in the undertow of an irresistible tide.

  He had to get to her. But the sprawled corpse of his best frie
nd receded as Jeff was dragged in the opposite direction. Past the cameras and kitchen, makeup stations and prop tables.

  A sharp prick in his arm drew his attention to a long needle just being removed.

  Why give him a shot? He wasn’t the one who was dying.

  Was he?

  He tried to look up at his captors, but never made it that far.

  CHAPTER 15

  Big tits.

  “Hup! Hup! Hup!”

  Staff Sergeant Dave Lundgren cursed and stared down at his paper. A small clip light made it just bright enough to read in the darkened room.

  One line. Two words. Big Tits.

  That was all he’d noticed. Not even hair color.

  Everyone else had at least three lines. The stupid senior airman was still writing, must have seven or eight items by now. Boy was her ass grass when they got back to Wright-Pat and that damned Master Sergeant wasn’t giving her goddamn gold stars. Maybe Sergeant Shelley Thomas was a lesbian. That would explain—

  “Hup! Hup! Hup!” Her shout made him jump half out of his seat. He tried to cover his paper but he was too late. Screw her. Big tits was something she didn’t have. Not that she was bad looking. That’s how she’d gotten by him at the base. Unbuttoned and no bra beneath her well-worn fatigues with a Master Sergeant hash on the sleeve.

  Maybe if he killed Thomas this would end.

  Another light flashed in the darkness. Another figure was revealed for an instant in the pitch black of the silo’s second level. This time straight ahead instead of off to the side. He’d gotten a good look.

  “Gray suit. Light hair. Medium build. Briefcase.” Scar on the cheek? Had he seen it or not. “Scar?” Five, four-and-a-half. Not bad.