by Kim Barnouin
Tonight, when everyone was gone, I’d get back to work on it. And tomorrow morning I’d work on my blackened pad thai for Asia Asia.
But right now, I had a birthday party to make happen. Ty and I had spent two hours in boutiques looking for the perfect outfit as a gift to Sara from me, while Ty’s sister Val, a famed hairstylist who specialized in curly hair, went at Sara with her scissors, Ty’s present. Apparently you were supposed to individually snip each curl in the center of the S to stop frizz. When we’d left, Sara had been in a swivel chair in front of Ty’s huge hall mirror for an hour, and only one side of her hair had been “carved.”
When we got back to Ty’s with a dress I knew Sara would love—short, shimmery, and blousy and tight at the same time—and a cool, long necklace, Sara was smiling and shaking her hair around. It was still long, but fell in perfect, shiny, shampoo-commercial ringlets.
I made her close her eyes while I got her into the dress and her strappy four-inch sandals and clasped the necklace. We sat her back in the chair by the mirror, but swiveled her around so her transformation would be a surprise. I did her makeup, vamping her up a bit.
Swivel time.
“I. Look. Amazing!” she screamed, staring at herself, then going into Ty’s bedroom to look in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. “Where’d this dress come from?”
“I got it for you. For your birthday. And for kicking ass on the diet.”
“I love it!” she screamed again. “Are those my legs?” she asked, sticking out her gams in the hot four-inch-high platforms. “Where’d my fat calves go?”
“You look gorgeous, Sara,” Ty said, giving her a hug.
“Suck it, Duncan,” she said, making kissy faces at herself in the mirror.
Everyone brought a birthday present to that night’s final class. Including Duncan, who’d surprised me—and Sara—by actually showing.
“Wow,” he said, eyeing Sara up and down. “You look great.”
“I know,” Sara said, beaming. “Clem and her friend Ty glammed me up for my birthday.”
“Well, they did an amazing job,” he said. “I barely recognize you.”
“Meaning I looked like shit before?” she asked.
“Meaning you look great. That’s it. Jesus. Here,” he said, handing her the wrapped rectangle with a red bow on it.
His gift was a biography of Hillary Clinton and a Barnes & Noble bookmark. Sara thanked him, then rolled her eyes and put on the funky earrings Eva had bought her.
“You really do look incredible,” Eva said, spinning Sara around for the up and down assessment. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
“I don’t look that different,” Sara said. “Okay, I do. Clem’s makeup skills, Ty’s sister’s hair chops, and a great dress. And twenty pounds gone. But I’m still the same Sara I was last week.”
Duncan said something under his breath.
“What was that?” Sara asked.
“I said I can’t stay—I have, um, plans I can’t change,” Duncan said, smiling awkwardly at me. Then glancing at Sara. “But I wanted to say thanks to Clem for the great class. I learned a lot. And it was great meeting you, Eva. You’re really funny.”
“Yeah, I’m a shitload of laughs,” Eva said, grabbing him into a hug. She was in a very good mood and wearing her wedding ring again, so maybe things had worked out with her husband. She wore a low-cut black dress with thigh-high boots, and her usual bobbed hair had a more stylish edge.
“Can you stay long enough for the L.A. Times reporter to come and go?” I asked Duncan. “Since you’re here anyway. Then she won’t think I suck enough that a student dropped out.”
“Wait, what?” Eva said. “Why does the L.A. Times care about our class?”
I explained about Zach’s press release and the menus I was working on for the restaurants and my Skinny Bitch Bakes business taking off.
“Wow, Clem,” Duncan said. “Skinny Bitch is going to be famous. We’ll say we knew you when. I’ll definitely stick around—until the reporter leaves,” he added, glancing at Sara.
“Can I bash him over the head with the book he gave me?” Sara whispered as I set two butternut squashes on the counter. “Oh wait, it’s not even a hardcover. Just a cheapo paperback.”
“So what are we making?” Eva asked. “It’d better be something amazing for the L.A. Times.”
“It is,” I assured her. And a little bit of a fuck-you to Rain Welch and Emil Jones, too. My Butternut Squash Ravioli in Garlic and Sage Sauce. The very dish that had stolen my five seconds of fame in L.A. Magazine when Rain screwed me. And the very dish that I’d now show everyone was the best they’d ever had.
Stephanie Stemmel of the L.A. Times looked no older than Jolie Jeffries, but she wore a wedding ring, so I figured she wasn’t a teenager. Then again, Jolie Jeffries would be rocking a wedding ring any time now, so who knew? Stephanie showed up with a very tall cameraman and a hunk of Portuguese bread just as I was showing everyone how to roll out the dough for the wonton wrappers. She made several raviolis herself, then helped cut up vegetables for the salad.
Stephanie had managed to interview me while we were cooking, so it really just seemed like talking. Eva made her laugh. Duncan had tried to flirt, which led Sara to fling a slice of onion at his back while he was sautéing garlic—and it had stuck there, too.
The camera guy, who told us to ignore him and act like he wasn’t there at all, took photos and shot some footage of the cooking class: chopping, sautéing, blending. I made a point of talking up how I made my garlic sage sauce—I wasn’t going to say a word about the incident that had gotten me fired at Fresh; my sister told me not to, but since the reporter asked, I told her exactly what I thought had happened without naming names. I grabbed my packet of recipes from the mail sorter holder on the counter and showed her the pages for my ravioli. Not a drop of butter. She even had the camera guy take some video of me flipping through the paper-clipped stack as though I was choosing what to have the class make. Then she interviewed me on how I chose the recipes for the vegan menus for the restaurants that were hiring me as a menu consultant.
The ravioli was done, so we plated it, dressed the salad, and sat down to eat.
“This is fantastic,” Stephanie Stemmel said, digging her fork into another ravioli. “Incredible. And I’m no vegan.”
Her camera guy took some photos and video of the reporter having an orgasm over her little plate, which I truly appreciated.
“Hey, Duncan,” Sara said. “I sure hope your ex-girlfriend doesn’t read the L.A. Times. She’ll see the pics of us and know you sent us into Ocean 88 to spy out why she dumped you.”
He looked kind of nervous for a second, but then shrugged. “Whatever. It’s not like I have a chance with her anyway.”
Sara rolled her eyes.
As the reporter and the camera guy were leaving, Duncan grabbed his messenger bag, wished Sara a happy birthday, and booked out of our apartment, the onion slice still stuck to his back.
I saw Sara’s face fall. No matter what she said about not caring or being over him, she wasn’t. “Forget him,” I told her. “He geeks out over eggplant. He wears bad shirts. And he’s a clichéd jerk who has sex with women and then decides he’s not interested. A jerk who smells like onions, too.”
“This,” she said, sweeping her hand up and down her body, “was supposed to be my in to whatever guy I wanted. It just sucks that it doesn’t matter what I look like. It means the problem is me.”
“Sara, it’s not you. Duncan’s just not your guy. That’s all it means.”
“He’s too much of a priss for you anyway,” Eva said, pulling out a compact and glossing up her lips. “Wait till you meet my husband—now that is a man. A man’s man.”
Sara burst out laughing and got a glare from Eva.
“I can’t wait,” Sara whispered to me.
The doorbell rang. Maybe it was the man’s man.
But it was Duncan.
“Um, Sara, can I talk to you
for a sec?” he asked.
She raised her eyebrow at me and walked over to the door. I pretended to be busy cleaning up the counter.
“Wow, Sara, you really do look amazing,” he said, his gaze traveling up and down her body. “And I just wanted to say that after the party, if you want to stop by . . . ”
“I doubt the party will wind down till after one,” she said. “Maybe even two.”
“That’s fine. I’ve got plans tonight, but I should be home by one. Come by.”
Ew. This had booty call stamped all over it.
She was smiling at him. Shit. “Duncan, do you know what a Skinny Bitch is?” she asked.
“A vegan, I guess. Why?”
“Actually,” Sara said, “being a Skinny Bitch is about cutting the crap out of your life. So buh-bye.” She closed the door in his face, then turned to a very proud me. “Let’s get this party started!”
The buzzer buzzed a half hour later, and Sara perked up even more. Party time. Zach was away on business in San Francisco—something about meetings; he would have come otherwise. The first to arrive was Alexander with a bowl of salsa and a tray of mini veggie empanadas he’d made. Then Ty and Seamus showed up. Sara’s friend Trish from work and her best friends from high school. An obnoxious couple that Sara had met last week in hot yoga who kept interrupting everyone to tell their own boring stories. Sara’s sister who lived in Malibu brought her boyfriend. The cute new guy on the floor above us in 3C stopped by with a bottle of wine and flirted with Sara, which made her very happy, but he left after a half hour. Jolie and Rufus came by with a coffee-table book called Actors Through the Decades with black-and-white shots of stars from the silent screen to a steamy one of Ryan Gosling. “This is so regifted,” Sara whispered. She got a ton of presents, everything from gift certificates to bracelets and a tiny red iPod from her sister.
Sara and I were hoping Eva’s husband would show up so we could get a glimpse of the man’s man—what a husband of Eva’s would look like, we had no possible clue—but he never did.
Finally, at close to two-thirty in the morning, the apartment cleared out and Sara had crashed. I was totally awake, though, and still had all this energy, so I figured I’d try an avocado paste as a layer for the lasagna. I made some black tea and went to get my packet of recipes from the mail sorter on the kitchen counter. But it wasn’t there. Just a cable bill and two casting-call notices.
Maybe Sara had moved it so it wouldn’t get splattered with the salsa that Alexander had brought. I looked all over the kitchen. Not there. The living room, under the magazines on the coffee table. Under the huge Actors coffee-table book. Under couch cushions. Under the couch. Found an old remote control and three bucks, but no recipes.
I looked in my room. Under my pillow. Had I totally forgotten putting the recipes away somewhere? Yeah, I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, but I wasn’t blitzed or anything.
I tore the place apart and finally, by the front door, I noticed the big green-and-white-striped paper clip that I’d used to keep the pages together.
As though someone had taken the too-thick packet and the paper clip had popped off as they were leaving.
Okay, did someone take my recipes? What the fuck for?
I opened the door into the dimly lit hallway. Just to the left of the stairwell was a piece of paper lying faceup. I went over to get it. My scratched-over recipe for Hungarian Mushroom Soup.
Okay. This made zero sense. Someone stole my recipes. Seriously?
As I stood there in the middle of the hallway trying to figure out what could have happened, a drunken couple started coming up the stairs, so I went back inside my apartment.
All that work—gone. And I had my first demonstration for Stark 22 in three days.
Chapter 17
“Who would steal your recipes?” Sara asked the next morning as I sat at the kitchen table, rewriting as much as I could remember of five recipes I needed to get straight for Stark 22. She handed me a mug of coffee, which I rarely drank but needed this morning. And lots of it.
“No one. It makes no sense that anyone would take them. Why would they?”
She sat down and dunked soy milk in her coffee. “Maybe someone’s taking them as a surprise, like to transcribe for you or something.”
“Who’d do that?”
“I would. But I didn’t.”
“This party was more your friends. And the only other person who’d take them for that kind of weird do-gooder act would be Ty, and he’d know I’d freak out if they were just suddenly gone. Someone took them. Or I accidentally threw them out when I was cleaning up after class.”
Except I knew I didn’t. When I scrubbed down the sticky counter, I remember glancing at the packet in the mail sorter and thinking I’d work on the avocado paste for the lasagna after the party. I hadn’t touched it.
The buzzer rang. Then again. And again. And again.
“Okay, Jesus,” I said, going over to the intercom.
“Maybe it’s your recipes, saying they want back where they belong,” Sara said, then disappeared into the bathroom.
I pressed TALK. “Yeah?”
A wail came out of the tinny intercom. Then another. “Clementine? It’s Jolie.” Another wail.
“I’ll let you handle this one,” Sara said from the bathroom, the sound of the shower turning on.
I pressed UNLOCK and opened the door. I wouldn’t even have to ask her what was wrong. My money was on Rufus cheating. Or saying maybe they shouldn’t get married so fast.
Her head appeared on the stairs, followed by her skinny body. She was wearing dark gray yoga pants and at least four long, tight, ribbed tank tops with her usual pound of jewelry. Her light blond hair was in a loose ponytail with strands sticking to her wet face.
“Why are guys such assholes? Whyyyyyy?” She covered her face with her hands and slid down the back of the door onto her butt.
I called that one. “You and Rufus got into a fight?” I pulled out a chair for her. “Come sit.”
She dragged herself over and dropped down on the chair. “There’s a new background vocalist in his band. A gorgeous girl named Bebe. I showed up at rehearsal last night, and he could barely take his eyes off her. He hung on her every word. And every suggestion she made for how to play the song, he took.”
I poured her a cup of the coffee Sara always forgot to shut off. “Maybe it just seemed like that.”
“He was totally flirting. And she touched him at every chance she got. ‘How about aiming the bass like this when you hit that chord, Rufus?’ ” she mimicked. “While finding every excuse to put her hands on him. He was loving it.”
“It’s just the new chick syndrome. She’ll get attention for, like, five minutes, then become one of the guys. You’re worrying for nothing.” Not that I was so sure.
“She’s too gorgeous for that. She’s prettier than I am. Sexier, anyway. Huge boobs. He’s probably with her right now.”
“How long have you and Rufus been together?” I asked.
She sipped the coffee, then asked for milk and Equal. She’d have to settle for soy milk and the real thing, since I dumped Sara’s toxic fake sugar long ago. “Since sophomore year. Almost three and a half years.”
“So you know him pretty well, right? Do you trust him?”
“I guess. But this isn’t high school anymore where there were, like, two other girls he might have been interested in. There are girls everywhere here. One more gorgeous than the next. I hate it.”
“So Rufus is only with you because you’re gorgeous?” I asked.
“No, he really loves me.”
“Why?”
“He thinks I’m really smart. And I’m the only person who gets his weird sense of humor. He thinks it’s really cool that I turned down my father’s credit cards to make it as an actress. He respects me.”
“So big boobs and a gorgeous face wouldn’t be enough to make him cheat probably.”
“Yeah, I guess not. He hates phoni
es. And stupid girls. And snots. And Bebe is totally phony. She was kissing up to their manager, this short, bald dude who discovered Fierce and Brothers Beck. She’s as fake as her chest.”
“So you have nothing to worry about, do you?” I asked, glancing at the recipe I’d written up for the lasagna. Go have make-up sex with your boyfriend so I can get to work, I sent Jolie telepathically.
“You’re totally right,” she said, her face lighting up. “I really, really, really love him.”
“And from what I saw, he really loves you. But you guys are eighteen. You’re gonna meet a ton of different people. Have wild experiences. That’s what you’re supposed to do at eighteen.”
She sat back, crossing her arms over her chest. “So now you’re saying it’s okay if he cheats on me?”
“No, I’m saying that maybe you guys shouldn’t be talking about marriage right now. If you stay together, great. If you do both end up meeting other people, that’s okay, too. You’re supposed to do all this now so that by the time you do get married, you’ve been through enough shit to know who you want, what you want.”
“I just want Rufus.”
“So tell him his flirting with that girl made you feel like shit. Just tell him outright. Don’t get all passive aggressive and give him the silent treatment and act like a bitch. Just tell him what’s up. See what he says.”
She nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “What’s all that stuff?” she asked, upping her chin at the counter where I’d set out everything that went into making lasagna.
“Want to help me make the best lasagna you ever tasted?”
“Not really,” she said. “I want to go talk to Rufus. I actually did give him the silent treatment all night and acted like a bitch this morning.”
I smiled. “Go.”