At the studio he was seated in a corridor through which many people walked briskly. Finally one of them, a young woman of characterless brunette good looks, stopped and introduced herself as Jane.
She consulted a piece of paper affixed to a clipboard. “You’re the chef, O.K.? We’ll get you into make-up in a few minutes, O.K.? You want to check your pots ’n’ pans ’n’ stuff?”
He followed her, around little clusters of people and lights and cameras and cables, onto what was obviously a corner of the set.
“You’ve got a whole kitchen here.” It looked like a permanent installation and had everything one would need, within two walls without a ceiling.
“We do a cooking segment of some kind every day,” said Jane. “Sometimes we just dye Easter eggs or make Play-Doh from flour and salt.”
Reinhart opened the copper-colored refrigerator. Just inside, on gleaming chromium-wire shelves, was a large glass bowl filled with eggs and a generous chunk of butter on a plate of glass. A glass canister bore a solid white label, imprinted in large black letters: GRATED CHEESE.
“Everything there?” asked Jane. He had ordered these omelet-making materials the day before.
“Except salt and pepper,” said Reinhart. “I gather they’ll be over here.” He turned to the free-standing counter that would face the camera. He had not seen much of this show, but he had watched other programs on which cooking was done. Ah, yes: electric burners were built into the top of the counter, and a ceramic jug stood nearby, holding spatulas, big forks, etc., and salt and pepper were alongside in large white shakers, again labeled in black.
“Oh, and the skillet. I was going to bring mine, which is seasoned, but my boss insisted on one that her company is apparently thinking of putting on the market, in a new line of cooking utensils.”
“Grace Greenwood,” said Jane. “Yeah, she sent over some special stuff.” She poked amongst the open shelves below the counter-top, on the left of the burners. “Take a look. It should all be here.”
Reinhart bent and found a skillet, a lightweight stainless-steel job with a thin wash of copper on the outside bottom. “This is it?” He winced. “I’m going to have to be very careful to keep from burning the omelet. This is trash.”
Jane put one finger on the nosepiece of her glasses—which until now Reinhart had not noticed. “If it does burn, then just don’t turn it over on camera, O.K.?” She sniffed. “Don’t panic: this is the magic of video, remember.”
Some young man shouted her name, and she went away. Reinhart looked about: everything seemed a good deal smaller than anything he had ever seen on the screen. For some reason he thought he might have been more at ease had things been larger. He was suddenly jumping with nerves.
Jane returned and took him into a room where he sat in a kind of barber’s chair and was made up by a deft, laconic young man. When the job was finished, he ducked into a booth in the men’s room and drank some cognac from the half-pint in his pocket.
The well-known movie star Jack Buxton was urinating in one of the stalls as Reinhart emerged. Apparently they were to be fellow guests on the show.
Jane came from nowhere when Reinhart left the lavatory and led him back to a chair in the corridor.
“Sorry we don’t have a real Green Room,” she said.
“Wasn’t that Jack Buxton I saw in the men’s room?”
“He’s plugging his show.” Jane consulted her clipboard. “You go on the air at seven forty-seven, but we’ll do a run-through in about five minutes from now, so you’ll have your moves down pat. This is live, you know. We can’t do retakes.” She left the area.
And here came Jack Buxton. Reinhart seldom went to the movies nowadays, and he hadn’t seen a performance of Buxton’s in—God, could it be that long?
“Hi,” said the actor, flopping his large, heavy body into the chair next to Reinhart’s.
“Hi,” said Reinhart. “This is quite a pleasure for me. I’ve always enjoyed your pictures.”
Buxton’s face, perhaps owing to its familiarity, seemed enormous. He grinned at Reinhart. “Thanks, pal, I needed that. Listen”—he dug into an inside pocket of his Glen-plaid jacket and withdrew a leather-covered notepad—“I’ll send an autographed picture to your kids, if you give me the names and address.”
“My kids are grown up,” said Reinhart. Buxton’s long lip drooped. It was true he looked a good deal older than when Reinhart had last seen him. “But I’d like one for myself.” This lie failed to cheer up the actor by much, but he pretended to take the name and address.
Reinhart asked: “Are you in a new picture?”
Buxton inhaled. “I’m considering some scripts,” said he. “But I’m in town here to do Song of Norway.” He put his notebook away and adjusted his jacket. Like Reinhart he was wearing face make-up that made the skin look beige. The heavy pouches under his eyes and the deep lines flanking his mouth could be seen all too clearly at close range but probably would be diminished on their voyage through the camera.
“Oh,” said Reinhart, “I’ll have to see it.” If memory served, the vehicle was a musical: he hadn’t been aware that Buxton sang. The actor was best known for his war films.
“It’ll be my pleasure,” Buxton said, cheering up now, and he reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of tickets. “These are for the show only. Dinner’s separate, I’m afraid, but...”
Reinhart accepted the tickets with thanks. He joked: “I wouldn’t expect you to pay for the food I ate before going to the show!”
Buxton frowned. “It’s the dinner theater. That’s what I meant. It’s no comedown either. That’s the latest thing. I don’t mind it at all.”
But clearly he felt humiliated at the thought of people digesting their steaks while he performed. For his own part Reinhart was only now remembering that he had never really liked Buxton as an actor—or at any rate, he had not found Buxton’s roles sympathetic: there was always a resentful streak in the character, of whom one expected the worst, owing to the cocky, smart-ass personality he displayed at the outset. But then he came though courageously in the pinch, kept the plane aloft though badly wounded, or fell on the grenade, saving his comrades.
Buxton was still worrying. “I started out on the Broadway stage,” said he. “I was trained for musical comedy, long before I went to Tinsel Town.”
So they really said that. “I’ll bet you’re good,” said Reinhart. “I look forward to the show.”
Buxton leaned over. He had maintained his familiar widow’s peak of yore, and the scalp looked genuine, but why a professional would have his hair dyed matte black, leaving sparkling white sideburns, was not self-evident.
“Say,” he said, “you wouldn’t know where a man could get a drink?” His breath smelled of mint Life Saver.
“Well, now...” Reinhart reached into his pocket for the half-pint of brandy.
But Buxton said: “Not here.”
They got up and were heading for the men’s room when Jane came along and carried Reinhart away.
“We’ll do the omelet run-through,” said she, and when they had left Buxton behind she said: “It’s Has-Been City around here lots of mornings. Watch yourself with that one: he’ll hit you up for a loan.”
Reinhart felt he owed Buxton some loyalty, the actor having embodied the old-fashioned virtues until both he and they went out of fashion, to be replaced by nothing and nobody worth mentioning. “I always liked him in the movies.”
“He was through before my time,” said Jane in her brisk way.
Time was all. Twenty years earlier some Jane might have seen Buxton as a rung on her own climb to success.
They were in the kitchen now. Reinhart practiced the movements he would make on camera. Taking the eggs and butter from the refrigerator to the counter consumed too much of his allotted three minutes. On the other hand, as Jane pointed out, too much premeditation would diminish the dramatic effect. The eggs, for example, should remain whole, to be broken on camera.
Debbie was the “co-host” of the program, with a man named Shep Cunningham. Meeting her backstage apparently violated some show-biz rule, and having rarely tuned in to Channel Five. at this hour, Reinhart had little sense of the woman. Cunningham, however, had formerly been anchorman on the Six O’Clock News: his amiable, insensitive face above a wide-bladed tie and even wider lapels was remembered. But Reinhart was to have no direct connection with him whatever this morning.
“For all the woman’s movement,” said Jane, “anything in the kitchen this time of day is always played to the ladies.” She looked up at one of the clocks that were mounted overhead at frequent intervals throughout the studio. Monitor TV sets were everywhere, as well. Someone was speaking through a public-address system: it was like the voice of God, and hence quite startling when it uttered foul language.
Jane said: “You’d better put on the chef’s hat and apron.”
Reinhart was getting into the spirit of the place. “Oh, God,” he said, with real despair, “I forgot to bring them!”
Jane shook her head. “Your office sent them over.” She led Reinhart to a little dressing room, where he found the cook’s costume and donned it. The toque was pristine, but the apron was imprinted, over the region of the heart, with the logo of Grace Greenwood’s firm: the name EPICON printed in the form of a croissant. This was something new.
Jane came along just as he emerged: she apparently had a sixth sense about these matters, for he was certain she had not been lingering there. Again she took him to the chairs in the corridor. Buxton was missing.
Jane said: “O.K., it’s just waiting now. You can watch the monitor.” She pointed to one high on the wall across from him. “I’ll have somebody bring you coffee, O.K.?”
A young man brought the coffee. As discreetly as he could, Reinhart dosed it with brandy. He had had the sense to buy expensive cognac: cheaper stuff was hardly drinkable in the best of times, but with morning coffee it would erode the stomach.
The monitor was showing a rerun of an ancient situation comedy, in which the adult male characters all wore crew cuts and suits a size too small, and all the children were well behaved and everybody did absurd but decent things. The sound was turned down to a murmur, and when the old show gave way to the seven o’clock news report, the volume came up to a level of command and the backstage noise died away.
International crises were routine this morning and given little more than noncommittal platitudes by the newscaster, an attractive fair-haired woman who used the intonations of a man. Locally a citizen had handcuffed himself to a light-pole at a downtown intersection as a protest, but against what had not yet been established, and opening the cuffs had thus far been beyond the powers of the police, who believed them of foreign origin.
Then, to the strains of a lilting musical theme, the Eye Opener Show came on. There was Shep Cunningham, between his desk and a photomural of the cityscape. Reinhart saw and heard him on the monitor screen, though presumably the man himself was just a partition away.
After a greeting and an observation on the rainy weather, Shep said: “But enough of this nonsense. Let’s get to the beauty part. Here’s Debbie Howland.” The camera panned to his left, the curtains there parted, and out came a very winsome young woman with dark red hair and a jersey dress in lime green. She had an ebullient stride.
“Good morning, Shep,” said Debbie, taking a seat next to her partner.
Shep winked at the camera and said: “Notice I don’t get to walk across the set. Maybe if I lost ten pounds?” He grinned and shrugged and said: “Tell us who we’ll meet today, Deb—or should that be ‘whom’?”
Debbie smiled into the camera. “Shep, when you think of that classic quality known as Hollywood there are a few names that embody it in themselves alone: personalities like the Duke and the never-to-be-forgotten Bogie, and likewise with our guest this morning, Mister Hollywood himself, Jack Buxton.”
“Oh, wow,” said Shep. “I want to ask him how he feels about our new pals the Chinese Communists—after fighting them so many times in Korean War films.”
Reinhart suspected this reference was not authentic: in his own memories Buxton was always involved cinematically with World War II Germans. Indeed, if memory served, at least once he had played a Nazi.
Debbie went on: “And then our own Bobby Allen, Man in the Street, live out there in the pouring rain, will get an answer to today’s question—hey, Shep, it’s not about sex for a change—”
Shep groaned. “That’s bad news.”
“C’mon, now, this is important: ‘Nuclear Power—Love It or Leave It?’”
“That is important,” said Shep. “I was kidding.”
“And then,” Debbie said, “a French chef will show us how to make the perfect omelet in a minute. Sound good?”
“Mouth’s watering already,” said Shep. “My beautiful wife Judy’s on a diet kick. I don’t know, maybe I’m weird, but alfalfa sprouts on low-fat cottage cheese is not my idea of breakfast.”
“Come on,” said Debbie.
“Washed down with herb tea.”
“Come on. You’re kidding.”
“Yes, I am,” said Shep. “Incidentally, that’s the same thing my wife said the last time I tried to get friendly with her.”
Debbie rolled her eyes. “Oh-oh. I think it’s time to hear from our first sponsor.”
Under his apron Reinhart tipped the cognac bottle into the now empty Styrofoam cup. It was just as well that Buxton had not reappeared: the cook would not have been keen on sharing his supply of Dutch courage. He was himself no professional performer, and the nearer he got to going on camera, the more he realized how crazy he had been to let Grace do this to him. For God’s sake, he wasn’t even a professional chef.
Anxiety makes the time fly. Suddenly Jane came and led him onto the TV kitchen, holding a finger to her lips, so that he couldn’t ask questions. But he looked up and saw a clock, and already it registered 7:35—and then without warning was at a quarter to eight and a voice was reading brief headlines from the news, and then, in an instant, a red light glowed from the darkness before him and Reinhart was on the air! Or so the sequence seemed.
Across the room, though actually very close to him, Shep Cunningham sat at the desk, and Debbie was just entering the kitchen. Reinhart had been deaf to the preliminary comments, and for a moment he had the terrified feeling that she might be coming to expose him as a fraud.
But she was smiling. “Is there a secret to omelet-making, Chef?”
Reinhart was amazed to hear a deep, mellow baritone voice emerge from his chest, as if he were lip-synching to a record made by someone else. “I suppose it could be called that, Debbie, but it’s not the kind of secret that would interest a Russian spy.”
Debbie giggled dutifully here. Luckily he overcame an impulse to build a large comic structure on the feeble piling of this witticism.
Quite soberly he said: “It’s simply speed. The egg, once out of its shell—which has been called nature’s perfect container incidentally—the naked egg is a very sensitive substance.” He was aware that persons out there, off camera, were gesturing at him, and now Debbie stepped lightly on his foot. Of course, he must begin to break eggs!
Amazingly enough, everything he needed was at hand—and his hand was sure, in fact even defter than when he was alone in his own kitchen. In one movement he seemed simultaneously to have not only cracked two shells but opened them and drained them of their contents. His flying fork whipped the yolks and whites into a uniform cream. Meanwhile the butter was melting in the skillet.
He was speaking authoritatively. “Speed’s the secret, but we d
on’t break the fifty-five-mile limit: we let the butter reach the frothing point. Meanwhile, we’ve got our filling ready. In this case it’s Swiss cheese, for that simplest of dishes, a plain cheese omelet. But if it’s properly made, there’s nothing better, and nothing more elegant.”
“Or more nutritious,” said Debbie, nodding vigorously. “Gee, Chef, I can’t wait.”
“Just about time... We’ve got our cheese all grated already—and may I strongly recommend that you always grate your own cheese from a fresh piece: you can do that in a blender or a food processor, if it’s too much work for you by hand. In this case the cheese is simple Swiss, but an even more delicious filling would be Swiss mixed with a bit of Parmesan.” A moment earlier he had put two tablespoonfuls of the cheese from the canister into a shallow bowl. “Ah, there we go, just as the frothing begins to subside and before it turns color, the eggs go in quickly, quickly, and you keep stirring them, stir, stir, as they begin to thicken and curds appear... and now the cheese goes in, all at once!”
He emptied the contents of the bowl onto the mass of eggs, lifted the skillet from the burner, inserted the fork under the near edge of what was already an omelet, folded one half across the other, and slid the finished product onto a china plate.
“My goodness,” said Debbie, “you don’t even cook the top side? That must be my trouble, why my omelets are so dry. I always turn ’em over.” She accepted the dish from him, and holding it high, raised a fork in her other hand.
“Yes, the top becomes the inside of the omelet, and you want that moist,” Reinhart said. “And you must remember that whenever uncooked eggs are around heat, something’s going on. The hot omelet continues to cook for a while after you take it from the pan. That’s happening right now, in fact, Debbie.”
“Mmm, oh, golly,” said she, making rapid eyeball movements as she tasted a modicum of egg from the end of her fork. “Hey. Say. Oh-oh, Shep, we’ve got a winner, and don’t think you’re getting any of it.” Shep in fact was not behind his desk or anywhere in sight, so far as Reinhart could see. Debbie waved her fork and looked into the camera. “Well, now you know how to do it like an expert.” She turned back to Reinhart. “Thank you, Chef—who appeared here courtesy of the Epicon Company. Back to you, Shep.”
Reinhart's Women: A Novel Page 22