Cowboy Baby Daddy

by Claire Adams

  Okay, that and I find the practice hilarious.

  Wilks isn’t coming, so I turn around and start walking toward the first stop on our itinerary.

  He catches up in a matter of seconds.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “Lesson number two,” I tell him with no explanation whatsoever. “Questions whose answers you know are a complete waste of my fucking time.”

  That one was particularly helpful in building staff resilience, or occasionally, weeding out people who can’t bear hearing one of my very favorite words on a frequent and often hostile basis. This was a must for my kitchen.

  “Lesson number two?” he asks. “What are you talking about? What was lesson number one?”

  “We’ll cover the lessons as the need arises,” I tell him. “Didn’t you write down our shopping list?”

  “Yeah,” he says, pulling a notepad out of his breast pocket.

  I tell him, “We’re going to start at the top and make our way down to the bottom: simple.”

  “All right,” he says. “I just didn’t know if you had a particular order in which you liked to make your stops.”

  “I do,” I tell him, laughing. “It’s the order I gave you. But hey, lesson number eight: it's your restaurant. Do things the way they work best for you. Screw the staff.”

  He chuckles, and I know exactly what he’s thinking. Sadly, he’s still too anxious to ask the question.

  This should be a fun morning.

  As we’re walking, I remember the contraband in my pocket and I deposit it in the next trash can we pass.

  “What was that?” he asks.

  I take a moment to count the syllables before I answer.

  “New lesson: if it's coming out of my pocket, it's none of your damn business, Wilks.”

  “Oh,” he says, “okay.”

  “Wilks, for God’s sake, loosen up, will you? You’re the fucking executive here. I’m just the washed-up bastard who’s filling in the gaps for you,” I tell him. The glory of always being that unassailable character starts losing its luster. “If you’re going to run a kitchen and keep it running, you’re going to need to work on your confidence.”

  He lifts his head a little as he walks, but just as quickly lowers it again.

  “All right,” he says.

  “Okay, we’re coming up to our first stop,” I tell him. “Now, we’re going to go in there and get some fresh monkfish, and whatever he quotes you on price, I want you to talk him down by at least 10 percent. I’ll help you a little on this first one, but you’re taking the lead.”

  What he doesn’t know is that I’ve done almost all of the shopping for the next day or so, only leaving the items which absolutely must be same-day fresh for him to find his sea legs.

  A lot of chefs nowadays like to set up contracts with suppliers that will ship wholesale ingredients right to the restaurant, but it’s a lot better for everyone if you take the time to give a shit what you feed people. Fortunately, Wilks already knows that much.

  “Shit,” he says just loudly enough for me to hear. “All right.”

  We walk to the fishmonger’s shop and walk up to the counter.

  “Ah, Mr. Paulson,” Martin, the 60-something, perpetually scale-flecked proprietor says. “Come in for to teach the new chef today, huh?”

  “You know it,” I tell him. “Don’t go easy on him, Marty. He’s got to learn how to deal with crooks and swindlers like you.”

  “With all the fish I give you so cheap, you should be nicer to me, Daniel.”

  No, Daniel’s not my name, but for the finest fishmonger in the city, I’m willing to suffer a few small indignities.

  Wilks, naturally, is unaware of this.

  “I thought your name was Dane,” he says.

  Now, Wilks has gone and pissed Martin off.

  This was expected.

  Most of the time, these people are really easy to work with, once you get to know them. Everyone has bad days, though. In order for those bad days to not transform into profit-margin-killing price hikes, one must learn how to negotiate a sour mood.

  “You let him talk this way to me, Daniel?” Martin asks. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  The only difficulty I’m having in this moment is keeping a straight face.

  “Don’t piss off the seller,” I tell Wilks, “or it’s caveat emptor to a degree which I seriously doubt you can even imagine.”

  “Isn’t it always caveat emptor?” Wilks asks.

  “Make the buy,” I mutter, and nudge him.

  “Why doesn’t he answer?” Martin demands.

  I just shrug my shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” Wilks says. “I must have been mistaken.”

  Martin eyes him, but slowly unclenches his fists.

  If Wilks knew exactly how ferocious Martin can get, and how close he came to getting his ass kicked by a senior citizen, he probably would have run out of the store screaming.

  Never—and I mean never—mess with a fishmonger.

  “Eh,” Martin says, “it’s all right. What do you need?”

  “What do I need?” Wilks asks me, and I’m about ready to kick his ass myself.

  “Monkfish,” I tell him.

  “Monkfish,” Wilks repeats. “Fresh monkfish.”

  “Now you’ve done it,” I mutter in Wilks’s ear as I walk past him for a better view of the action.

  “You think I sell anything that’s not fresh?” Martin snaps. “You think I sell garbage?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “I build this business from nothing. Everyone who comes in knows I sell the freshest fish in the city. This is why I’ve been here 35 years. Why are you so stupid?”

  I can’t contain my amusement completely, but I try to keep my snickering at least somewhat quiet.

  Wilks hears me well enough, and it’s not doing his confidence any favors. He’s got to come to some sort of détente with Martin, though; otherwise the old fuck won’t sell to him.

  This is one of those baby-bird-out-of-the-nest moments. I’ll step in if Martin starts swinging. Other than that, Wilks is very much on his own.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Wilks says.

  He’s getting frustrated, but he’s not mad yet. The key is in finding just that right dose of anger. It has to be enough to convince Martin to chill the fuck out, but it can’t be so much that it just escalates the situation.

  Let’s watch.

  “You come in here and tell me that I call my customer the wrong name and you tell me that you want fresh monkfish when there is no other monkfish that I sell!”

  Martin’s screaming now, and I’m laughing my balls off.

  Wilks tries to reason with him, but he’s not getting through.

  And then, like a miracle, it happens.

  “Listen, you ornery old prick,” Wilks starts, “you know very well that I wasn’t saying your fish wasn’t fresh, I was just repeating what Dane told me to get when we came in here! Now, you can put it back in your pants and make a sale or you can keep screaming and lose a solid customer! Now, what’s it going to be?”

  He hit all the relevant points, and with the exception of insisting the proper form of my name, he didn’t go overboard.

  You can’t teach that.

  Martin’s face grows a few shades redder, but in the next moment, he’s got Wilks in a bear hug that’s sure to ruin the latter’s nice, clean shirt.

  When Martin finally drops the new executive, he turns to me, exclaiming, “This one’s got the eggs! Ha! Reminds me of when you first started coming in here.”

  Now, let me make something clear: we are not the only people in the fish market, not by a long shot. Martin’s been in business this long by being the best, and every chef who even thinks of working with seafood in this town knows it.

  Wilks is going to be fine, although he’s again becoming aware of just how many people have been watching the scene. I can’t be sure, but I could swear I saw some money
change hands between customers when Martin picked the poor bastard off his feet.

  Martin gives a decent starting price, and like a trooper, Wilks starts talking him down.

  My attention is elsewhere, though.

  I could swear that I just saw something on the far corner of the market. It was a flash of red hair ducking behind a display.

  When nobody comes out, I tell myself I must be imagining things. Why would Wrigley follow me to a fish market?

  “Does that sound about right, Paulson?” Wilks asks, apparently not for the first time.

  Pulled back from my ginger hallucination, I turn to look at my new boss.

  “It’s your deal,” I tell him. “Does it sound about right to you?”

  He turns back to Martin and extends his hand. It’s a rookie mistake.

  We leave Martin’s shop and I could swear I see that red hair again before we come to our next stop.

  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to discover that Wrigley’s stalking me. What I don’t understand, though, is why she’d choose to do it here. Why now?

  It occurs to me that I’m trying to assign rationality to someone who may or may not be stalking me, and I give up the futile chore.

  “How’d you do?” I ask.

  “Were you not paying attention?” Wilks beams. “I talked him down a full 20 percent from his original asking price.”

  “Well done,” I tell him, and cautiously pat him on the back.

  “So, any other lessons before our next stop?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “Lesson number five: whatever you do, do not get on the bad side of a fishmonger.”

  His confidence is sufficiently elevated to the point where he’s finally willing to ask the question: “Are all your lessons haikus?”

  “I knew I liked you, Wilks,” I tell him, and we finish off the rest of our daily buys with relative ease.

  After everything’s taken care of, I walk the new exec back to his building, giving him further lessons and miscellaneous advice on the way.

  “Are you on tonight?” he asks as we approach his building.

  “I’m on the schedule,” I tell him, “but look, something’s kind of going on and I might need to have someone cover me. Is that all right?”

  “Paulson, after everything you’ve done for me, I think you’ve earned another night.”

  “Thanks,” I tell him, and shake the hand Martin hadn’t touched. “Oh, by the way, Wilks…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Lesson ten: never give your sous chef a night off when he asks. He can't be trusted.”

  He has no idea how to react, but seems to take the lesson in good humor. Of course, when he tries to weasel out of giving me the night off, I gently remind him that not only did he already authorize it, he shook my hand.

  I leave him with, “Lesson six: handshakes are how you get what you want and make sure you hang onto it.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I turn around and there she is, leaning against the pole of the stoplight on the corner.

  This shit’s got to stop and it’s got to stop now, before it has a chance to escalate.

  “Wrigley,” I say as I approach her. “What are the chances that you’d just be standing here at the exact moment I’m walking by?”

  “They’re pretty good, I would imagine,” she says, blowing out a puff of smoke. “Have you gotten your head out of your ass yet?”

  “Nah,” I tell her. “It’s warm and cozy in there if you don’t mind the smell.”

  “Clever,” she says humorlessly. “You know, it is common courtesy not to dump the woman you just started a relationship with, even if she tells you to explore things with someone else.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing,” I tell her.

  “Oh yeah?” she asks, blowing her next drag in my face. “What makes you think that?”

  “Way too convoluted, and you know, dripping with crazy.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little fucked up how often men call the women in their life crazy?” she asks. “If every woman who was called crazy was actually crazy, I’m pretty sure we’d have a lot more axe murders.”

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Only what’s due me,” she says.

  “And what is due you?”

  “Do me,” she says. “I get tense as shit if I don’t have a good lay, and you, my dear, couldn’t have ducked out at a worse time.”

  “Just find someone else,” I tell her. “That’s never been a problem for you before.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you’re casting some kind of weak ass moral judgment on me for enjoying sex,” she scoffs.

  “Not at all,” I tell her. “I’d have no room to talk. It’s a serious suggestion.”

  “I don’t want to fuck anyone else right now,” she says. “That may change, but as for right now, I want to fuck you.”

  The small group of people waiting for the light to change takes a step or two away from us.

  “I’m very flattered,” I tell her, “really, I am. But I’m seeing someone else now. You’ve got to move on.”

  “That option’s really not on the table at the moment,” she says. “By all means, screw your roommate to your heart’s content, but don’t pretend like you’re the saint in this conversation.”

  “I don’t think either one of us is ‘the saint,’” I answer. “You don’t really think you’re going to get me to cheat on Leila with you by stalking me, do you?”

  “I’m not stupid, Dane,” she says. “I’m just planting seeds.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  She flicks her cigarette into the group waiting for the light. “You’ll figure it out,” she says. Without a nod of acknowledgement for her crassness, she starts walking away, turning back just long enough to call out, “Sooner or later, they always figure it out!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Exaltation with Just a Pinch of Denial

  Leila

  It’s my last day at the office and nobody but Annabeth could give a crap.

  Well, that’s not entirely true. Kidman did offer to go down on me as a going away present. The mental picture makes me vomit a little in my mouth, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?

  Right now, I’m a little over halfway done with Atkinson’s final laundry list of menial tasks. I just finished walking his lucky ferret—yeah, the man has a ferret which he not only considers lucky, but actually brings into the office whenever there’s an important meeting—and am now on my way to see if I can, “figure out what the hell is wrong with that fax machine.”

  I have absolutely no skills with anything technical like this, but my feeble attempts should buy me a good half hour before he finally tells me to just call maintenance.

  I tried calling maintenance first once when his monitor started flickering.

  That was the day I found out that Atkinson, though otherwise intimidating, screams like a girl when you get him really, really mad.

  Tonight is going to be Dane and my second attempt at an actual date.

  After he told me what happened with Wrigley outside his new executive chef’s building earlier today, though, it’s apparent that we’re going to have to get a little creative.

  That is, if this interminable day ever comes to an end.

  After 15 minutes spent literally poking and prodding Atkinson’s fax machine, I decide to give up a little early and let maintenance deal with it.

  My next stop is to collect the third page of Atkinson’s last memo from everyone on this floor and replace it with a new copy.

  I’m not doing this because there was some sort of new policy or significant change. I’m doing this because in line 36—that is, fourth paragraph from the top, second sentence—he inserted a hyphen where it didn’t belong.

  The offending pair was “boiling-over.”

  Never to fear, though, soon everyone will have the copy which rightfully has t
he phrase as “boiling over,” and I am perfectly confident that no one would ever have noticed. Even if they did, I am certain nobody would have cared.

  As I look at the clock, though, my mood lightens.

  Only a few more hours and I will forever be free of this cluster fuck.

  (I think Dane is starting to rub off on me.)

  I hand out the third page of the memo to everyone in the office, making sure to collect the old versions. Atkinson will check my work when I’m done.

  This is not speculation.

  Kidman’s is the last one, and I motion to Annabeth that it’s time for the fireworks.

  She creeps to the side of Mr. Kidman’s doorway. I knock and let myself in.

  “Mr. Kidman,” I start, “Mr. Atkinson has asked me to replace page three of today’s memo. Do you happen to have it handy?”

  “I’m sure I can find it here somewhere,” he says. “You know, I think I must have tucked it down the front of my pants. Why don’t you be a dear and help me pull it out?”

  “You know,” I tell him, “I saved your page for last. Would you like to know why?”

  He straightens his tie and says, “Because you’re finally ready to get that raise?” he asks. To ensure there’s no miscommunication, he grabs his crotch.

  “No,” I tell him. “I saved yours for last because I finally did something that I really, really should have done a long time ago.”

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “I learned the finer points of your particular severance plan and contract with the company.”

  “Oh?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “Apparently, it’s a pretty standard document. I talked to one of the lawyers here, just to make sure—”

  “Wait,” he says, “how did you get access to that?”

  “I’m an intern,” I tell him. “I work with important papers all the time. Anyway,” I continue, “it turns out that you only get severance if you’re not fired for cause. While it is true that whoever drew this up gave you a lot of latitude regarding what constitutes cause, in section 18c of the agreement, it clearly states that sexual harassment, as it is against both state and federal civil law, is cause for immediate termination, forfeiture on your part of severance rights, profit-sharing, and about 10 other things I didn’t really take the time to look over.”