Mumbo Gumbo

by Jerrilyn Farmer

  “This is what Tim was so good at,” Jennifer said, sighing. “I really miss him.” She picked up her telephone and called Susan to give her the last-minute substitution. Then she called Chef Howie, out in his trailer, and asked if he could come over so we could review the material. Normally, one of the writers went to him, but today we were just too shorthanded.

  While we waited, I went over the bumper material I had written for the show, reciting the recipe for a simple guacamole.

  “ ‘Want to take a smooth trip south of the border? Say olé with a lovely guacamole dip. The ingredients are simple, and so are the steps:

  GUACAMOLE INGREDIENTS

  3 ripe avocados

  1 vine-ripe tomato, diced

  4 small onions, minced

  2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

  “‘With requests for second helpings from all of your guests, you’ll be so glad you served this delightful guacamole dip, you’ll soon be thanking San Gabriel!’”

  I stopped and looked up at Jennifer, who was deep in thought, reworking her own material. “Jenn? I have a question. I wrote up the guacamole recipe exactly as it was given to me.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jennifer said. “Artie likes those to be written in a style that is so corny and 1950s, it kills me. Their kitsch charm completely eludes me, but the audience doesn’t seem to notice how lame they are. Go figure. This show is camp for a reason.”

  “I know. I’m not complaining about all those ‘olés’ and ‘second helpings.’ I just think the recipe itself is questionable. I’d never make guacamole like this.”

  “Well, my advice is, don’t second-guess it, Madeline. The show likes to keep these recipes simple. They don’t believe America can cook anything, so they make it like ‘Avocado for Dummies.’ My advice is to just go with it.”

  “I understand your point. And I don’t want you to think I’m trying to be difficult. But I think there must have been a typo in the recipe I received. Take a look. Page nine.”

  Jennifer fluttered through the bound script and read the recipe. “You mean all those onions?”

  “That is a seriously inedible dip,” I said. “Not to mention, it would really be better with some lemon juice to keep the thing from turning horrendously brown and disgusting.”

  “You take your food seriously,” Jennifer said. “And I can tell that you’ve succumbed to the writer’s disease.”

  “Which is?”

  “You know this is just a stupid game show. And you know you shouldn’t take it seriously. But you don’t want to put your name on something that is an ounce more dreck-filled than it absolutely has to be.”

  I smiled, aware that she had nailed it.

  “Well,” Jennifer said, “caring is a good thing. It means you’re willing to fight for your material, regardless of how ridiculous it might be.”

  “Thanks.” I chuckled. So true.

  “I’m not the food writer on this show. That was Tim and Howie. If you say it is inedible, what does it need to fix it?”

  “I’d take it down to one small onion. And maybe add the lemon juice?”

  “Tell you what—when Chef Howie gets here, I’ll run it past him. If he approves, you can change it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And it’s not because I don’t trust you, Madeline. It’s because I want to cover your butt. This way, if anyone gets agitated that there was a change, we’ll just say that Chef Howie approved it.”

  “Excellent.”

  The door to Jennifer’s office flew open and in the doorway stood Chef Howie himself, and right behind him, his wife, Fate.

  “Come on in,” Jennifer called out. “We’re just talking about a few tiny script changes. Always like this just before a taping.”

  “Yes, but really.” Chef Howie sounded concerned. “I hate to mention it, but this is a ‘live’ event. I’ve just about memorized the script you gave me. Any changes and I’m not sure I can promise I’ll get it right.”

  “Nonsense,” Fate said, cutting Chef Howie off. “We’ve got every confidence in your abilities, my dear. Besides, all of this will be on cue cards, won’t it, Jennifer?” Before Jennifer could respond, Fate asked, “What are the changes?”

  Jennifer walked right past Chef Howie to confer with Fate. Howie had long ago learned to just shut up. While Jennifer was showing Fate the new material we were adding to the question round, I showed Chef Howie the recipe for guacamole and my suggested change. He was nervous, he said, to make too many changes, but he did agree that four onions was impossible. He told me to change it to only one, but not to add the lemon juice.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Madeline, I don’t give a gnat’s ass what color the guacamole turns when all those millions of folks at home try to make this recipe. They should be grateful they aren’t choking down four goddamned onions!”

  I had to admit, while he may not have shown a missionary’s zeal to lift the masses up to a higher gourmet plane, he did take pity on them. I made the quick revision, knocking four onions down to one and called Susan with the change. She told me she’d come down to Jennifer’s office and pick it up.

  A few minutes later, Susan arrived, out of breath.

  “I’ve got some wonderful news,” Susan said to the room at large. “The fire at Tim’s house. The body they found wasn’t Tim. It was just on the news.”

  We all looked at Susan. I noticed that each one of Tim’s work friends seemed to take the news a little differently, but they all seemed to be relieved. Then she continued her report. “There is sad news, too. The police have identified the body. It was Quentin. They said it was murder.”

  Everyone in the room seemed stunned into silence. Then Chef Howie spoke up. “That’s not true, is it?” His words slurred just the tiniest bit.

  “Damn you,” Fate said, looking right at Susan. “My Howie has to go before the cameras in an hour and you slap him with this? Why not just hit him over the head with a sauté pan?”

  “Why I…,” Susan stuttered. “I thought he would be happy with the news about Tim. I thought Quentin…” She let the sentence hang in the air.

  “No one understood him,” Howie said, fiercely. “He had a poet’s soul. He—”

  I turned to look at Chef Howie and saw him in a whole new light. I am not exactly naive on this subject, just so nonjudgmental that I sometimes fail to notice the obvious. I’m willing to let everyone live his or her own life however they may. It doesn’t strike me as odd that people should form close friendships, so I don’t always imagine the next step such friends might take. But I suspected even at a time like this, when not a soul would dare speak ill of the dead, no one but a very special friend could see the poetry in Quentin Shore’s soul.

  Was that true? My head spun. Quentin Shore and Chef Howie Finkelberg? That stopped me cold. Had we all been looking at the whole puzzle from the wrong side?

  Chapter 25

  Above the twin, gleaming, high-tech kitchens on soundstage 9, an iron grid hung from chains. And from that grid, aimed down at the set, shone an array of brilliant stage lights. Each spotlight and Fresnel and Baby Fresnel and Tweenie Fresnel was focused on the Kitchen Arena below. Each light had been tested. Each colored filter gel had been checked and, if needed, replaced. On this late afternoon, inside this dark, cavernous building, each fellow pushed his wattage to the max, together on a joint mission to light up Freak’s final episode in a blaze of glory. All these expensive stage lights, soaking up a thousand dollars’ worth of electric current, all carefully clustered, and aimed, and plugged into the central dimmer board, were necessary to make our star chef and his contestants look great on camera. Good lighting made a show’s set look rich and its performers look beautiful. Bad lighting revealed the truth. It was no wonder actors made friends with the lighting director before they thought to meet their costars.

  Here’s the thing about intense light. So much light focused on one spot makes anyone standing in the glow feel washed
with warmth and power. Even I felt it, and I was merely onstage for an errand, doing my own last-minute checks before Freak was to start. I squinted in the spotlight, facing the rows of in-the-round audience seats. All looked inky black. Just beyond the edges of the lit-up Kitchen Arena, the world seemed to stop. If I hadn’t heard the sounds of talking and feet shuffling, I might not even realize the studio audience had been let in and were finding their seats, so little of that area only three yards from me could I see.

  “Maddie, you know what to do?” repeated Jennifer, like a mantra. Who could blame her for feeling the pressure? She had been asked to replace three people, Greta, Tim, and Quentin, and had been handed a complete novice as her able right hand.

  “I’m checking Randy’s cards,” I said, just to make her feel a little more in control. She needn’t worry. I could follow instructions like a champ. Over at the edge of the Kitchen Arena, to one side of the back-to-back cook-off kitchens, I stood at the podium for the show’s announcer, Randy East. He wasn’t there yet, but his portion of the script was waiting on the podium. Susan’s junior PA staff was in charge of the announcer’s cards, and they were efficient. Since Randy’s segments were mostly voice-overs, he was actually off camera when he read the material from the prepared five-by-seven index cards. Each little bundle was paper-clipped together and kept in order. I picked up the first packet and read it to myself:

  “Good evening and welcome to…FOOD FREAK!—the cutthroat culinary competition that pits teams of the most daring amateur chefs against one another…in the Ultimate Battle of Good Food versus Bad! Join us for tonight’s knife-sharp game in which even the ingredients can turn against you!”

  So far, so good. I read on, almost unaware of the hyperbole in my pursuit of the misplaced comma.

  “CHEF HOWIE FINKELBERG, the legendary chef at San Diego’s POSH NOSH, will give us the play-by-play and lead us through the WAR ZONE in our Kitchen Arena! (Hold for applause.) We’ve got the hottest stoves and the coolest stars!! Like tonight’s tasting judge SUPERSTARS…We’ve got Spider-man’s awesome star arachnid, TOBEY MAGUIRE! (Hold for applause.) We’ve got red-hot J.LO! and, baby, JENNIFER LOPEZ knows what sizzles! (Hold for applause.) And we’ve got JON “BOWZER” BAUMAN!—the leader of that oldies music sensation, Sha Na Na! So get ready! Tonight, for the first time ever, we are LIVE! (Hold for applause). It’s gonna be RAUCOUS! It’s the match of the year!! As two battle-scarred teams of champion warrior food freaks come back in a no-holds-barred cook-off we like to call…‘FOOD FREAK REVENGE: THE FINAL FOOD FIGHT’!”

  “How’s everything look?” Jennifer asked, checking the index cards over my shoulder.

  “Fine. I think.”

  Jennifer looked up, worried. “What is it?”

  “I have never seen so many exclamation points. Or capitalized words. Or sentence fragments.”

  Jennifer relaxed. “Yes. Artie loves them. It’s game-showese.”

  Jennifer had written the opening copy, but I knew her words had gone under the editing pen of Artie, as he was the guy who had the final approval.

  “Did Artie write this part?” I asked, pointing to one card. “ ‘…Spider-man’s awesome star arachnid TOBEY MAGUIRE.’ ”

  “Of course. Do I think the word ‘arachnid’ is cute? For prime time? But try telling that to Artie. He finds the word ‘arachnid’ hilarious, despite all my objections.”

  “Don’t you think it might sound better if we changed the word order just a little so it reads’…Spider-man’s awesome arachnid star’…?” I suggested.

  “Yes, I do. But once Randy’s cards are set down by the PAs, it’s too late to make changes. It means we would have to find Artie and get his approval again, and get Susan to issue new script pages to all the production staff in the control booth. It isn’t worth the pain and aggravation. We just don’t bother for anything minor.”

  “Like making the language more precise or appealing?”

  “Exactly. Ain’t television writing fun?” Jennifer smiled and then dashed away, mumbling something about checking that the questions had been corrected on Chef Howie’s cue cards.

  I replaced the large paper clip on the index cards and moved to the next stack. As I reread them once more for typos or omissions, I wished I could instead be sent on an errand a little nearer the dressing rooms. Our celebrity judges would arrive soon and I longed for a peek. Artie hadn’t booked Tom Hanks, but he’d gotten us Tobey Maguire. I was human. I wanted to look. I thought it might be nice if Mr. Maguire’s invitation to the wrap party was delivered personally.

  I daydreamed a bit about impossible romantic scenarios as I silently read through more of the announcer index cards. The next packet on Randy’s podium contained the intro cards, the language used to introduce the teams of returning contestants and describe their previous victories, all of which would be read over videotape clips of their past appearances. The cards were typo-free and looked in good order. It’s Nellie’s responsibility to go over this set of cards and proof them with Susan, so I just glanced through.

  My cell phone went off, beeping a little tune, the opening notes of “Stayin’ Alive.” It was Chuck Honnett, returning my call.

  “What’s up, Madeline? You okay?”

  “Hi, you. Are you able to get over to the studio later?” I asked.

  “That’s right. The studio,” his low voice drawled, making it sound sexy. “Say, I don’t know. I’m going to be pretty busy tonight.”

  “Aren’t you off at seven?”

  “Technically. Yeah. But, you know.”

  “It might be fun. You might get a kick out of watching America’s number one television series do its final show. You know, I wrote a few things in this one.”

  “That’s terrific. You must be excited, huh?”

  “And after the show, Wes and Hol and I are catering the wrap party. You should come for that part, at least. They’re cooking up the hottest gumbo and all the fixings. I could show you off to my new friends here. And just think—you could use the social setting to interrogate everybody who knew Quentin Shore. Much more effective.”

  “Maddie,” he said, sounding tired.

  “Please?” I asked. “It’s my first and probably last time writing on the staff of a TV show.”

  “I’d like to get there, but…” He let it hang. Honnett sounded on edge. And then I put it together.

  “It’s Wednesday night,” I said. “You’re expecting another one.”

  “I have a bad feeling, Madeline. I better go. Look, I’ll try to stop by if things are quiet, okay?”

  As I stood in the blinding glare of full stage lighting, clicking off my cell phone, I became aware that I wasn’t alone. The audience was now, apparently, seated. Just beyond the blackness all around the stage, there was a perceptible charge to the air from the proximity of human beings. Their voices were subdued, but the constant shuffle of belongings, purses hitting the floor, throats being cleared began to make me feel self-conscious. Great. I had just been rebuffed and rejected in front of a full house. Perfect. My face grew hotter.

  Making a big entrance, Randy East swept onto the stage. It was his job to warm up the audience before the show, just to get them roused and ready to scream and applaud. Randy had a big handsome jaw and hair that looked like it had been cut with a laser. He was speaking into a hand microphone, using his big voice to get the crowd excited. He was saying, “You know, folks, we really do give away half a million dollars every week to the team that wins! Of course, we don’t give it all at once. Like the state lottery, we parcel it out over time. What is it now, Madeline?” he said, turning to address me, the only other human on the overlit stage. And then without waiting for my answer, he said, “Oh yes. We pay them fifty cents a year for a million years.” The audience roared. “We don’t do this for ourselves,” he continued, milking the laugh. “You can imagine how much it lowers their taxes.” The audience roared again. They seemed just as happy as I was that they now had something to amuse them other than
my personal life. My flush began to fade.

  As Randy moved into the audience to meet and cajole some nice individual named Pat Tracy from Kentucky, I got back to my task. The next packet of cards contained material I had helped write. An unaccustomed swell of pride made the tips of my fingers tingle and my brain feel hot and sweaty. In a good way. Actually, most of this material was written exactly the way I had been instructed to do it, leaving in most of the abominable clichés. Still, I felt pride in the one line I had changed and the corrections I’d made. I read to myself the bumper copy that leads into the first commercial:

  “Want to take a smooth trip south of the border? Say olé! with a zesty guacamole dip. The ingredients are simple, and so are the steps.

  “Start with:

  3 ripe avocados

  1 diced vine-ripe tomato

  4 small onions, minced

  2 tablespoons of chopped fresh cilantro

  “Mash and stir it all together in a small bowl, then serve with tortilla chips. You’ll be so glad you served this delightful guacamole dip, you’ll soon be saying ‘Gracias!’ to San Gabriel! Stay with us…Next, Chef Howie shows us how far our teams will go to get their FOOD FREAK revenge when we return.”

  “That’s odd,” I said aloud. Somehow, the old ingredients with the mistake had remained in the script. Those excessive onions. I remembered going over the correction with Susan, but it never got corrected. Not her fault, I knew. It must be impossible for one woman to keep every single change straight. I took out a pen and quickly crossed out the “4” and replaced it with a “1.”

  Just then, Arthur Herman, wearing a blue-pin-striped sports jacket and red bow tie over his trademark khakis, walked onto the stage and over to me.

  “So what’s up, cookie? Everything check out?” Artie asked, his Brooklyn accent making him sound like a vaudeville straight man awaiting the punch line.

  “It’s looking good, Artie,” I replied. “I found one small mistake, but it was just a typo. Everything else looks excellent.”