They both laughed and Tilly sat up, strengthened by her sister’s faith in her.
“You liked him a lot,” Renia said with a long look at Tilly.
“I did. When I’m with him and I can forget he’s The Eater, I feel as if the romance, the restaurant and anything else I want to do are within my reach. I’m superwoman when I’m with him. He looks at me and I feel powerful.” Tilly bit her lip, unable to put all of her feelings into words. Her heart swelled when she saw him until she wasn’t certain if it would fit into her chest and her body grew tingly at the thought of seeing him.
Was it love?
Then she thought about the unwarranted review and Dan’s stupid argument about business and personal and she wanted to throw something. Love wasn’t supposed to betray her.
She humphed when Imbir jumped onto her lap. He did a couple of circles and tested her thighs for comfort before lying down. The ginger tabby knew he was loved. She’d been prepared to make cat stew out of him after she’d caught him at Babka, but when she’d gotten to the vet’s to pay the bill, he was cleaned up, fed and purring as he rubbed his face against the cage. Now she didn’t know how she’d lived without him. He was company, always willing to hear her complaints and ideas, and he never argued if she kept the apartment cold. He bit her if she didn’t feed him quickly enough, but she understood the importance of food and eating. Sadly, so did Dan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BY THE TIME Dan woke up, Beth was gone. She’d left a note saying she was looking for an apartment and expected him to take her to a great place for dinner. She was always a reliable dinner date for a review. He knew people who shared his love of food, and there were others whose company he enjoyed for long hours over dinner, but not many enjoyed eating dinner with him the way Beth did. Some enjoyed the experience, but he couldn’t always avoid the coward who looked around the Chinese restaurant at the exquisite dishes of glazed pork belly, smoked duck tongue, whole fish glistening with ginger, and plates of barely cooked Chinese vegetables and wondered where the chow mein was.
His sister would try anything and he valued her opinion. If she was moving to Chicago permanently, Beth could be his Tuesday to Saturday date and he’d save some of the special places for Tilly on Sunday and Monday nights.
After a cup of coffee and toast with a ginger-peach jam, Dan turned on the hot water in his guest bathroom and stepped under the spray. Stupid, but he wanted to shower where he knew Tilly had been.
The water washed over him and with it a new thought. Rich might fire him from writing for CarpeChicago over this. It was unlikely, but possible. Rich valued integrity and journalistic ethics—both traits Dan had stepped on since his aborted dinner at Babka—but he also valued the popularity of the blog. The review post had triggered enough discussion that Rich had closed comments, and the one with his dish of crow was certain to get more hits. Rich might forgive his mistake if the hits were high enough.
Out of the shower, water dripping onto the bath mat, Dan dried off and wondered if he cared more about the CarpeChicago gig or freelance writing. He enjoyed the freedom from schedule and the adventure of his job, but the constant pressure to be critical might have turned him into a faultfinding jerk.
He didn’t need the money. Meiers might make cheese, but they made a lot of cheese. “Meier Means Dairy” was stamped on bricks of cheddar from coast to coast and he also had the money he’d inherited from his grandparents.
Dan Sr. might be a father figure only a psychopath could look up to, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d been the son of a small-time dairy farmer who’d married into money, turning it into a fortune of dairy products from cheese to ice cream. The man was even talking about sponsoring a stock car racer, although Dan didn’t see how the sponsorship would last past the driver’s first wreck. Dan Sr. would never understand wrecks were part of the sport.
But the man could make money and Dan had benefited from it. Neither he nor his sister had to work if they didn’t want to. It wasn’t as heartwarming as a dad cheering proudly in the crowds, but it was reliable and useful. The money would hold him until he discovered what else he wanted to do with his life besides traveling, eating and critiquing other people’s lifework.
Have I already decided to quit, even if Rich doesn’t fire me?
This was something to talk over with his sister when they met for dinner. Especially since Beth had recently changed jobs herself. Dan wasn’t sure what he would do if he wasn’t writing about food, but he sure as hell didn’t want to take over the family business.
* * *
“WELL, DAN, THIS will be a first for me. I’ve never had Korean food,” Beth said as she snapped open the menu. “I don’t know why I’m even looking at this. I’m sure you’ll tell me what to order.”
“I’ve never been here before, so order whatever you want. If I want you to order more, I’ll tell you. They have Korean barbecue we can make tableside, but I want to wait until we have at least a group of four.”
Bath set her menu down on the table, closed her eyes and let her finger fall. “Looks like I’m having ‘classic bibimbop.’ It’s hot outside, but I’m curious about the hot stone pot.”
“That’s what I was going to have, but I won’t argue with fate. My second option was kimchi stew.”
His sister raised a brow. “Adventurous food critic staying in safe territory?”
“It will give me a chance to try the Korean classics people know before venturing into the more unusual dishes.”
When the waitress stopped at their table, Dan ordered the stew, along with kimchi dumplings and sesame noodles to share. The waitress collected their menus and returned with their banchan, small Korean side dishes including kimchi, sprouts, cucumber and a couple of things Dan didn’t recognize immediately.
“What’s this?” Beth asked, holding up a small, dried fish in her chopsticks.
“A piece of dried fish.”
“Not helpful.” The fish wiggled as she shook it at him in admonishment. “Before I put this in my mouth, what should I know about Korean food?”
“It’s spicy, garlicky and makes heavy use of fermentation in traditional dishes like kimchi.”
Beth looked the bite-size fish in the eye, shrugged, then popped it in her mouth. Dan smiled. Fearlessness was one of his favorite things about his older sister.
“Spicy and crunchy. This would be good with beer.”
“Order some, then.” Dan put a strip of something white into his mouth and chewed. “Potatoes.” He pointed at the small bowl with his chopsticks. “Cooked with garlic, onion and sesame oil.”
Beth poked through the kimchi before finding the piece she wanted. “This is interesting. I wasn’t sure I’d like anything you described as ‘fermented,’ but it’s pretty tasty.” She took another piece. “And addictive.”
“Of course it’s tasty. Do I take you to bad restaurants?”
“Yes. Mike and I are your guinea pigs. I’ve been to some terrible places with you.” Dan smiled apologetically and Beth laughed. “Don’t try that smile on me. I’m your sister and immune to your charms.”
“It was worth a shot.” Dan plucked a piece of shiny cucumber with his chopsticks and stuck it in his mouth. A sharp, vinegary bite, with a little sesame oil. “Find a new job or apartment yet?”
“I’m not even looking.”
Dan raised his eyebrow.
“For a job. I’m looking for an apartment. I won’t be camped out at your townhome forever, I promise. Living with your younger brother sounds even lamer than working for your father. Oh, and when I move I’m taking those towels in your guest bathroom with me. I don’t think you appreciate them. Or the potpourri.”
“Why no new job?”
“Well...” Beth put another piece of kimchi in her mouth—a stalling tactic if Dan had ever seen one. If his fearless sister was hesitating, she wanted something from him. She chewed and swallowed, then looked at the small dishes scattered across the table. “I’m thinking of starting
my own company.”
Dan raised the other eyebrow but didn’t say anything. The waitress brought out their appetizers and Beth took the opportunity to sample a mouthful of sesame noodles. Another stall. She must want something big.
“I know a lot about the food business. Not only about dairy products, but about the business in general,” she said.
He nodded in agreement.
“And you know a lot about food, so...I was thinking maybe we could go into business together.”
“Doing what?” Dan speared a dumpling and dunked it into the dipping sauce before sticking it in his mouth. The salty flavor of the soy sauce exploded in his mouth, followed by the spicy garlic of kimchi all wrapped in a chewy dough fried crisp on the bottom. He filed through his memories of tastes, comparing it to other Asian dumplings he’d had as well as past experiences with Korean food. The dough was maybe a little soggy and the crisp bottom seemed more like a pot sticker than a traditional Korean dumpling, but he couldn’t fault the taste.
“I don’t know how you find them, but you always discover small, family-run food companies making, growing or producing something amazing. Things you can’t find in the grocery store and won’t find in Williams-Sonoma for another ten years. Like those beans grown in Idaho or those pork-fat fried potato chips from Pennsylvania.”
Dan paused to swallow his bite of sesame noodles before he answered his sister. “What’s your point?” he asked, more curious now than suspicious.
“Where do you find those companies?”
He shrugged. “I meet a lot of people when I’m traveling and I hand out a lot of business cards. People mail me things. I troll online food message boards and read newspaper food sections. I stop in every mom-and-pop store I see. Occasionally, I write about a product or an ingredient and I want to know all the available options, either from a larger company or a smaller one.”
“How would you like to sell those finds?”
Their waitress removed the appetizer dishes. She returned shortly with steaming stone bowls for each of them. Dan leaned over his bowl, taking a deep breath full of the rich, peppery vapor. Chunks of tofu, slivers of beef and slices of kimchi floated in a fiery beef broth. He shivered. It may be summer outside but the restaurant was over-air-conditioned and he was looking forward to his first warming bite.
Beth looked down at her bowl. “How do I eat it?”
“With chopsticks.”
“Are you twelve?”
Dan chuckled. She was so easy to annoy. He pushed a bowl of brick red chili sauce toward her. “Add as much of that as you want. If you break up the egg yolk, it will make a sauce to coat the beef and vegetables. The stone pot makes the rice at the bottom crunchy. If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it.”
She wrapped her arms around her bowl, leaving plenty of space between the hot stone and her bare skin, and glared at him. “This smells delicious and I’m not letting you have any of it. If you want to some, you will have to come back and order it yourself.”
They enjoyed their meals in silence. Beth’s idea had merit. She wanted to use her knowledge of the food business and his knowledge of food to create an online store selling specialty items from small producers and growers.
Dan did make a lot of food finds and many of the small producers were interested in finding a larger market for their products but didn’t have the inclination, time or money to do more than run a small website and peddle their products at a local grocery store.
“What about the competition? There are already online stores like you’re talking about.”
“I don’t want us to be the first. I want us to be the best.”
“Okay. Why would some local beef farmer trust two Meier kids with their product? Dad remembers the buyouts of the eighties with fondness because he managed to build a dairy empire out of the mess, but many people in the beef industry think we’re little better than carpetbaggers. Dad may think Meier means dairy, but to lots of smaller producers, Meier mostly means industrial food business and the death of the family farm.”
“This is where I think we could succeed.” She pointed a chopstick at him with a bit of pickled carrot clinging to the tip. “I know local producers are suspicious of large food companies, but large food companies like Meier Dairy are profitable because they’ve developed efficiencies over time to keep their prices low. Some of those efficiencies are because of the scale of the company, but some of them could be adopted by smaller producers. If they sell online exclusively with us, they get the benefit of my business knowledge to help them lower the cost of their goods. As they lower the cost of their goods, both the producer and my company can share in the profits.”
Dan let a big piece of silky tofu smooth over his tongue and cool the wallop of garlic from the kimchi while he mulled over her proposal. Beth’s pitch was fate. He had been thinking about what he would do if he didn’t write and he liked the idea of an online store. He loved traveling, eating and discovering interesting people and businesses more than he liked the writing. While there were many articles he was proud of, most of them were just a way to pay the bills.
Even reviewing wasn’t as interesting anymore. He had written his share of bad reviews, including the one of Babka, but he preferred to write positive reviews. A negative review carried a sick rush, but no satisfaction. For satisfaction, he needed to write a glowing review of a restaurant he couldn’t wait for the city to discover. Finding a small restaurant, maybe a hole-in-the-wall ethnic place or a chef starting out, and introducing them to Chicago was why he had agreed to write for CarpeChicago.
Bad reviews were part of the business. When he wrote for CarpeChicago, it was his responsibility to spend money at a restaurant so their readers didn’t waste theirs. For some restaurants he had even savored typing in CarpeChicago’s web address and seeing a deserving dump skewered in cyberspace. Hell, he had enjoyed Babka’s terrible review until Tilly had spilled a beer on his shirt.
Knowing Tilly had soured him on bad reviews. She was one-of-a-kind, but how many of those restaurants he’d burned had deserved one more chance? Not all of them, surely, but just as surely some of them had. He couldn’t review without writing bad ones. They were a necessary part of the business. No one trusted a perpetually pleased critic. If he couldn’t stomach the bad reviews anymore, or alternatively, enjoyed them too much, maybe it was time to get out of the business.
Beth’s online store would give him the opportunity to write only glowing reviews. His job would be to find those producers he couldn’t wait to present to the world. Instead of contributing to the downfall of a dream, he could help hundreds of dreams succeed. He’d also spend less time looking for mistakes, which meant the side of him that tended toward his father’s faultfinding would be given less exposure to the world.
“I know why I’d be interested, but what made you think of this?”
“I quit Meier Dairy because Dad refused to consider leaving the company to me, even if I agreed to find a husband and start popping out babies, but I’ve been soured on the company for a while. Meier Dairy stopped feeling like a family business. When he sold the actual family farm to a developer, it hit me. I’m sick of working for the big guys. I want to work for the small ones. I don’t want to make sure Meier butter is on every table in America, but I want those families who would appreciate Farmer John’s hand-churned butter to have a place to buy it. You help me find Farmer John and I’ll make the company a success.”
“You fell asleep with the lights on and the TV blaring last night. Crying.”
Beth glared at him. Any mention of her weaknesses tended to get him a glare. Or a punch.
“Today you’re looking for an apartment and have an idea for a new company. This seems like a fast turnaround.”
For the first time that night Beth looked uncertain. She’d eaten a dried fish without blinking, but admitting to crying was harder. “I took Dad’s phone by accident. We have the same model and I grabbed his instead of my own. I saw the text he sent yo
u, offering you the business again, not five minutes after I offered to sacrifice my love life and womb to a child if that’s what it would take for him to leave me the business.”
He didn’t say anything. Beth wouldn’t want him to. She was so tough, so hard on the outside, but inside her was a little girl still hoping for Daddy’s approval. They both knew it was there and neither talked about it. Beth wouldn’t have cried last night had he been home. Crying was admitting to being a little girl. Dan stopped feeling even the least bit guilty that he hadn’t been home last night for his sister. She’d needed the time alone.
Beth continued, “When I confronted him about it, he was surprised I would even be angry. Like I should’ve known my offer wouldn’t be acceptable. I was still the girl in the family and girls don’t get to run the family farm. Asshole,” she said with sharp vehemence. “I’ve been thinking about the website for years, not certain how I could start my own business while running Meier Dairy. Now I don’t run Meier Dairy anymore.”
Dan looked hard at his sister. They both looked like their father. Strong jaw, well-defined cheekbones, bright blue eyes and blond hair. Those traits made his sister handsome, rather than pretty, but also gave her a determined look her personality enhanced. If she said she would make a success of the operation, she wouldn’t stop until she did it.
A part of him doubted her desire to help Farmer John. For as long as he could remember Beth had wanted to run Meier Dairy. She’d done everything she could to impress their father with her competence and interest, right down to always showing off Meier Holsteins for 4-H. If he knew his sister, she had her Best-in-Show ribbons from the state fair packed away in the suitcase in the guest bedroom. But circumstances changed people. If Farmer John was what pulled her away from being Dan Sr.’s whipping girl, pit bull and industry slave, Dan wouldn’t argue. As long as Beth believed in Farmer John, he would believe in her.
“All right, Beth, what’s your timeline?”
Beth pumped her hand in the air. “I’d hoped you’d be interested.” Then she outlined her full plan.
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