Adventures with Max and Louise (18 page)

I bend over and kiss Chas on the cheek. My breasts almost spill out of the flimsy, wet halter dress. I hear the pat, pat, pat of the little dog’s tongue on the tomato soup. The camera lights in front of us flash white.

Chas wipes a bit of soup from my collar bone with his finger, sucking on it playfully. “I never knew tomato soup could be quite so seductive,” he murmurs. His focus telescopes time, blurring out our audience.

“Who knew, right?”

“On the lips!” barks Liz, wrecking the moment.

Chas raises his glass. “I’ll drink to that!”

“Go for it, Molly!” yelps the photographer’s assistant.

Embarrassed, I put my hand on my cheeks, preparing to kiss Chas Bowerman on the lips for the first time in front of twenty-eight people.

“I don’t know,” I say in mock horror, opening my eyes wide and shaking my head.

The photographer’s camera flashes. Liz jumps up into the air, pumping her fists.

“That was it! Our cover shot!” she screams.

A
FTER THE SHOOT,
I shower in the pool house, pointedly refusing a ride from both Chas and Liz. I don’t want Chas to know I’m meeting my sister to buy a new outfit for our date tonight, and Liz I never want to see again. I meet Trina at a chi-chi boutique downtown. As soon as I climb out of the cab, I blurt out everything about the shoot, culminating with Liz’s heinous kiss.

“She was coming on to him like a heat-seeking missile, and he clearly liked the attention. He made a big deal out of wiping the lipstick off his face, but he didn’t mind the kiss one bit.”

“Of course he didn’t. He’s a man. They are biologically programmed to love that stuff. But let’s not forget one thing: he likes you. You’re the one cooking him dinner, right?” She takes my hand and leads me straight into a large, airy boutique, where the clothes are spaced out on racks over a gleaming hardwood floor. “Don’t worry; women like that are like guns. Guys are completely fascinated until they get shot, and, boom, it’s all over.”

“So, what if he wants to play with guns?”

“He’s an idiot. But our insurance is going to be a killer dress.”

As if on cue, a pale, bone-thin young woman in a tight black dress and boots glides up. I feel the urge to cook a good meal and make her eat. “Anything to drink, Mrs. Rasad? A cappuccino? Some Pellegrino? A glass of wine?”

Tired, I am about to ask for a cup of coffee when Trina waves her away. “The usual, later, thank you.”

Dragging me behind like a rank amateur, Trina cruises the gleaming hardwood, serene and acutely focused, a woman in her element. I lift one of the price tags on a sweater, giving it a casual glance: $350. I nearly swallow my tongue. Hurrying over to Trina, I hiss in her ear, “Trina, are you out of your mind? I’m a writer, for crying out loud. I can’t afford this stuff. Let’s get out of here before they charge us for the air we’re breathing.”

Without even looking at me, she spits out, “I can guarantee you that the women Chas Bowerman dates all shop here.” She whips dresses from the racks, piling them into her arms. “Later, you can shop where you want, but right now, you need to dress the part.”

“Then I guess I can’t afford him. Seriously, Trin, let’s go.”

She pushes me toward the dressing rooms. “Fine then, I’ll pay. But unless you have another outfit in your purse, you’re going to have to buy something now.”

I look at my watch. I have exactly one hour to get dressed, grocery shop, and locate Chas’s condo downtown. “Okay,” I murmur, following her meekly into the dressing rooms. After all the gorgeous clothes that I wore today, this shopping trip almost makes sense. Almost.

In the dressing room, which is the size of my bedroom, a bucket of Pellegrino bottles rests on a tiny table. Reclining on the couch, Trina kicks off her shoes, opening a bottle while I try on the first dress. It looks quite sophisticated until I zip it up. The fabric molds to my upper torso like latex.

“I look like I belong in an
X-Men
movie. Who wears these, strippers?”

She hands me an open bottle of water. “You look beautiful.”

“Okay, a beautiful stripper on spring break. Can you believe they want $800 for this much fabric? It’s like very expensive shrink wrap.”

“Molly, you’ve waited half your life to have breasts. Now that you’ve got them, flaunt them. Besides, you’re only showing the top third. Not the whole enchilada.”

Max adds, “That is Academy Award−winning, NBA championship, blue chip cleavage. Give a bloke a gander at that, and ’e’s putty in yer ’ands.”

Louise sputters in disagreement. “Oh no, girlfriend, a dress like that says one thing and only one thing: ‘touch my boobies.’”

I laugh. “What if I want him to touch my boobies?” Trina gives me an odd little smile.

“Well, then, you’d just say, ‘Chas, how’d you enjoy the fish? Want some more wine? And, oh, by the way,’ ” she snorts with glee lifting her water bottle, “ ‘feel free to touch my boobies.’ ”

“You wear this dress, sugar, you’re gonna get yourself neck high in man before you even put your toe in the water,” Louise clucks.

I look at myself in the mirror. I’m twenty-five years old. I have a date with a man I’ve had a crush on since I was fifteen. Maybe it’s time to get into a little trouble.

Chapter Nineteen

“I
THINK SHE’S
the most pushy, annoying, arrogant person I’ve ever met. Do you know how she’s trying to quit smoking? She only smokes in restaurants. That way she knows she has a two-minute limit before someone tells her to put it out,” I complain. But what’s really on my mind is the kiss.

I am nestled in Chas’s condo kitchen, thirty stories above Denise’s co-op, eye to eye with the stars. Chas clears the dinner dishes, while I peel and slice bananas lengthwise for dessert, trying to feel comfortable in an apartment where a single throw pillow costs more than my couch. With its granite countertops, deep leather couches, and soft recessed lighting, it makes my own crumbling house seem positively grimy. Every room except the bathroom has a stunning view of Elliott Bay and the Seattle skyline. My first reaction when I came in was to run around screaming, “Would you look at this place?!” But I played it cool, commenting on the view with appreciation, not dumbstruck, drooling jealousy.

“I think she’s really talented,” Chas pronounces as he rinses the dishes, placing them neatly in the stainless steel dishwasher. I scroll through the photos from the shoot on my phone.

“She was incredibly rude to the stylist. She told her a peasant blouse she’d picked out was fine as long as the look we were after was Miss East Germany 1965. Finally, the stylist just quit, told her to take all the clothes from Barneys and stick them where the sun doesn’t shine. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.” I melt butter in the pan for my grand finale: bananas Foster. When it forms a golden puddle, I throw in a couple heaping spoonfuls of brown sugar.

Chas laughs. “She’s not the touchy-feely type, I’ll give you that, but just look at these pictures.” He dries his hands on a dish towel and taps on my phone’s screen. “Doesn’t it make you want to run out and buy the book? I do, and I don’t even cook.”

I have to admit that the whimsical cover shot, with my cleavage soaked in tomato soup, the little dog eating from the table, and the handsome man toasting me, invites the viewer into a mysteriously exciting world where fun things are about to happen. It’s both chic and inviting. Liz is in her hotel room at this moment, feverishly redesigning tomorrow’s shoot in the style of the cover photo. I’ve turned my cell phone to vibrate to halt the noisy barrage of phone calls from her peppering me with ideas and plans. When I made the mistake of telling her that I was on a date with Chas, she’d redoubled her efforts.

I gaze at the shot me in a red dress holding a summer salad, near the pool. The sleek, simple dress that Liz picked out whittles my hips and draws the eye toward the food: a yellow, red, and green riot of roasted peppers. She wants to use the same setup tomorrow except I am going to be falling into the pool. I wonder how enthusiastic Mrs. Bullitt will be after we litter her pool with peppers and salad dressing.

The smell of burning sugar draws me back to dessert. Putting down my phone, I quickly stir the sauce, then add the bananas, sautéing them until they are just starting to soften.

“She’s good. She’s very good. I just think she’s a drama queen. It’s all about Liz getting her own way, stepping over people with her spiky little shoes.” I dig in the freezer past stacks of frozen dinners and a bottle of Stoli for the vanilla Molly Moon’s ice cream I brought. “Will you scoop some into a couple of bowls?” As he scoops, I’m mesmerized as his gym-toned biceps flex.

“Her job isn’t to be nice. It’s to make you and your book look good. Not that you need any help in that department.” He catches me watching him as he scoops the ice cream and poses like a weight lifter. “Which way’s the beach?” he asks in a deep baritone, pointing the ice cream scooper as he makes a bulging muscle, hamming it up like a vaudeville clown.

I bend over laughing and catch his eyes glancing down at my breasts, swinging out there like twins in a front-carrying babypack. I’m still not used to this cleavage thing. Obviously, he is.

“Oh, uh . . .” I fumble, confused at the attention. I feel half-naked in my low-cut shift that screams “Got Boobs?”

When Chas took my coat off in the hallway and saw my dress, he’d tried not to act surprised, but something had caught in his throat. He spent the first five minutes coughing and drinking water while I unpacked the groceries. For the rest of the evening, he was valiantly trying to keep his eyes off my chest, but it is just as Max predicted: the man is deer-in-the-headlights powerless.

“Ahem.” Chas coughs again. “Excuse me.” He drinks his water. I didn’t know cleavage could catch in a man’s throat. Blushing, Chas asks, “How’d you end up working as a food critic?”

“It fell in my lap, really,” I say as I carefully add rum to the pan and continue to heat the sauce. “I’d been cooking a lot since Mom died, reading a lot of cookbooks, and part of me wanted to go to culinary school. I even applied to the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, in Napa, and got accepted. My dad really wanted me to go. My mom’s insurance money would have more than covered the cost, but I just couldn’t leave Dad all alone; it felt wrong. I was bored and not really doing much of anything but cooking and keeping house, so when Martin asked if I wanted to be part of this contest to become the
P.I.
’s new food critic, I jumped at the chance. There were six of us, and we each reviewed the same six restaurants. Our columns appeared side by side. My first few were really boring, but Martin told me to make my reviews kind of chatty and personal and just as much about people as food. My last three reviews read like Diner X, and people really got into it. I got voted into my job by the readers, which is kind of cool.”

Chas pours us each a glass of rum, a nice, elegant touch. “Why didn’t you use your real name?”

“I don’t know. When the photographer arrived to take my picture . . . I guess I was just too shy.”

With the sauce now ready, I tip the pan slightly and ignite the rum, a culinary trick that I had mastered a few years ago. Chas grins boyishly, a look of sheer delight on his face at the sight of the blue flames flickering over the bananas. “Wow, that’s so cool. I’ve never seen anyone do a flambé at home.”

“I don’t know why. It’s so easy.” Something about the improbability of setting perfectly good food on fire delights even the most jaded diners.

“Can you blow it up?” Max had asked when I was planning the menu. “Only thing lads love more than a good fire is a bloody good explosion.” I marvel daily now at the amount of testosterone in one of the most feminine parts of my body.

“You’re an amazing cook,” Chas says, practically drooling. As the last of the flames subside, I lift the bananas out of the pan and place them in the bowls, then spoon the sauce over the ice cream. We carry our desserts to the dining table and sit. With no hesitation, Chas takes a long, luxurious bite. “This is soooo incredibly good,” he says with a contented sigh.

“Thanks.” I realize I’ve talked too much during dinner and haven’t eaten enough. I try not to wolf down my portion. “I really enjoy it.”

Chas leans over the table, taking one of my hands. “You know, I realize now that I didn’t really know you very well in high school. I didn’t take the time.”

“No, you were too busy dating cheerleaders.” I lick the last bit of sauce off my spoon, trying to file every little moment in my head so I can go back and relive this later.

“Was not,” Chas protests. “I was a well-rounded kid in high school.”

“Missy Cranston: cheerleader, Alma Carlisle: cheerleader, Naomi Clinton—”

“Ah-ha. And that’s where you’re dead wrong. Naomi Clinton was not a cheerleader.” He looks proud of himself.

“Oh, but she was. She was an alternate. If there was ever a cheerleader emergency, a shortage of pep . . .” I swing my spoon in the air like a baton, making my point.

“A bad hair day,” Chas adds, enjoying this.

“A zit,” I laugh.

“A zit is definitely a cheerleader emergency,” Chas spoons up the last of his ice cream with relish.

“The kind of thing poor Naomi lived for. Supposedly she took her uniform to every game in the hopes that she’d be called up. I bet she was secretly praying for someone to break her ankle.”

Chas shakes his head. “How sad. She’s like the benched player who never made it into the game. She never told me that.”

“I imagine there are lots of things those girls never talked to you about,” I say as I clear our dishes.

“Au contraire, ma cherie. We had long, intellectual conversations about quantum physics,” Chas says, rising from the table to help. I’m acutely aware of his proximity in the galley kitchen.

“Right, as you tried to unhook their bras.” I rinse the dishes and place them in the sink.

“We did,” he smiles devilishly, sticking a finger into the remnants of warm sauce still in the pan. The way he sucks his finger distracts me. His tongue slips out and in from between those dazzling teeth. He pours me more rum.