Brooklyn Girls (13 page)

“So try one part oil to two parts vinegar,” she says. “And one part lemon juice. And salt and pepper. Use a screw-top jar, like an old peanut butter jar, so you can just shake to mix. My Aunt Jo had loads of them. They’re in the side cupboard over there.”

I mix it. I shake it. We taste it.

“That is
excellent,
” I say in surprise. “But you never cook!”

“I’m very good at dressings,” she says, grinning at me. “My mom showed me. It was our thing.”

“Then we’ll call it Kim’s Dressing,” I suggest.

“Call that one Julia. I have another one we can call Kim,” she says. “Olive oil, red wine vinegar, whole-grain mustard, salt, pepper. That was her favorite.”

“So good!”

Sitting at the kitchen table, Julia at the head with me on her right (I always have this seat, it’s where my ass belongs), we sample each dressing, sipping from spoons like medicine.

Then I try my own dressing: lemon, Dijon, yogurt, olive oil, and vinegar.

“Amazing! Fivie!” says Julia, holding her hands up for a high five.

“No fivies. Fivie ban, Jules.”

Back when Maddy and I were still close, we once banned Julia from saying or doing “fivies” for a fortnight. We had no choice. Jules fivied for goddamn everything, it was out of control.

For a second I feel sad. I wish Madeleine and I were still friends sometimes.

Then Julia grabs my hand and forces me to high-five her.

“Hah. Suck it.”

“Thanks for this,” I say. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

“Does anyone?” says Julia. “So, how much are you charging?”

“I think six dollars per salad,” I say. “Who can say no to a six-dollar salad, right?”

“Not me! Will you come to my office first tomorrow?” she says. “I really want to be your first customer.”

“Hell yeah, sister!” I say, grinning. This is really going to work! I’m going to drive a food truck!

“What’s that smell?” says Madeleine, coming into the kitchen.

“
Merde!
The chicken breasts!” I run over to the smoking oven, and open it to reveal charred, perfectly lined up chicken breasts. Smoke billows out and engulfs the kitchen. I grab the oven mitt and take them out. “That’s like a hundred bucks worth of goddamn chicken!”

“I’ll get you more chicken, relax,” says Julia, opening the windows. “Make your salads. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“You’ll never get a parking space for that shit-bomb in Manhattan,” says Madeleine, leaning against the doorframe.

“Thanks for the hot tip,” I reply, not turning around. Did I say I wish we were still friends? Yeah, well, I take that back.

By the time Julia returns with thirty raw chicken breasts, I’m sweating and swearing, and suddenly plagued by the feeling that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Every inch of the kitchen bench, table, and floor is covered in tablecloths (sanitation!) and open salad boxes. It looks like a picnic on steroids. I’m trying to share the chopped vegetables evenly between all of them, while wearing sanitary gloves one size too big. And completely freaking out.

“Thank you! Don’t come in here!” I shout to Jules in the doorway. “This is a sterile environment! I need to cook the chicken!”

“How are you going to cook the chicken when you can’t get to the oven?” asks Julia.

We stare at each other across a sea of salad boxes. A long pause.

“Throw the chicken to me,” I say, taking off my gloves.

Julia looks like she’s trying not to laugh, and throws me the chicken breast packets one at a time. I drop them in the sink, wash my hands, put the gloves back on, open the packets, take the chicken out, season with a little salt and pepper, arrange on the trays, remove the gloves, wash my hands again, move the salad boxes and tablecloths out of my way one at a time, make it to the oven, put the chicken in, edge carefully back, and wash my hands again.

“Easy,” I say out loud. “See? Piece of goddamn cake.”

Finally, the chicken breasts are perfectly cooked, cubed, distributed evenly, and every salad box is closed, one by one.

One by one, they all flip open again.

So I scream.

“What? What is it?” Angie and Coco come running in.

“The boxes won’t stay shut,” I say miserably. “Look.” I close one of the plastic salad boxes, using the little plastic notch thing. It pings straight open again. I could cry. But that really wouldn’t help.

“I can’t do this,” I say. “What was I thinking?”

“Rubber band?” suggests Coco. “Scotch tape?”

“No, stickers!” says Angie, and runs upstairs, returning a moment later with dozens of sheets of large heart stickers.

“What the—”

“Stationery cupboard at work. They’re cute.”

“You stole from your place of employment.”

“Stationery doesn’t count. It’s like other people’s cereal.”

“You’ve been eating my cereal?”

The heart stickers are the perfect salad box solution and totally goddamn adorable. I feel almost positive again. This might just work out.

“You forgot the feta cheese,” says Angie, reading my menu.

I let out a scream of anguish.

Carefully opening every box again, I put exactly seven squares of low-fat feta cheese in each one.

“Now, it’s time for the second salad!” I say, trying to sound positive and gung ho. I can do this. I can. So it hasn’t been the best first day ever, so what.
Illegitimus non carborundum,
just like that nice woman at Bartolo’s said.

“Umm, Pia?” says Coco. “Can we use the kitchen to make dinner?”

I look at the clock in dismay. How did it get to be seven o’clock? “Oh, God! I’m sorry. Order pizza. I’ll pay. Or sushi. Whatever.”

“Sushi! Arigato!” says Angie.

“I’ll call Bartolo’s!” says Coco. “Oh, sugar, I have to ask the others what they want.” She runs out of the kitchen.

“Here,” I say, handing Angie a wad of cash. “Pay for the pizza and sushi with this.”

“You must be running out of cash, ladybitch, seriously,” says Angie doubtfully.

I wave my hand with all the blasé confidence I don’t feel. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll make it all back in no time.”

The second salad is easier, thanks to help from Coco and Angie. Then I decant the dressings into the tiny dressing containers and write “Kim,” “Julia,” or “Pia” on top in a big laundry marker, while the girls close the boxes.

“You should add baked sweet potato,” says Angie. “And artichoke hearts.”

“And sprouts,” says Coco. “And beans! Beans are super-awesome.” Then the doorbell rings. “Dinner!”

Feeling much more cheerful, I place all the salad boxes into the second refrigerator in the laundry. They look so beautiful and neat, all stacked up one on top of the other.

Now all I have to do is make low-fat brownies! Coco gave me her mom’s foolproof recipe. I use my phone to multiply it by three, and substitute canned pumpkin for oil, as she suggested.

I am going to make a damn fortune from this. I can feel it. And I’ll pay back Cosmo in time and be really successful and my parents will see it for themselves and life will be perfect.

Three hours and four brownie batches (one burnt, one didn’t cook properly, one dropped on the floor, one perfect) later, I’m nearly finished. I cut all the brownies up into generous squares, put them in the salad boxes—they look pretty pathetic marooned in the salad boxes, I need to get something to individually wrap them instead—and stack them to the side with the salads.

Then I look around.

Our cozy little kitchen looks worse than it did after the party. The burnt-chicken smell hasn’t left, somehow, and there is brownie batter on Coco’s goddamn herb garden. And how are there little bits of feta all the way over underneath the kitchen table? And, oh, my God, is that brownie on the ceiling? I feel guilty. Like I should be reprimanded for kitchen abuse.

“Sorry, Rookhaven,” I mutter. “I’ll look after you, I swear.”

I spray and scrub and sweep every inch of the kitchen. I even mop the floor, something I don’t think I’ve ever done in my life. When I’m done, I look around at how clean and perfect it is and feel a bizarre, exhausted sense of satisfaction.

It’s almost midnight. Everyone else has already gone to bed.

Starving, I eat one cold, congealed slice of salami pizza and the leftover end of a dragon roll maki on the way upstairs.

At my bedroom door I find three little notes:

The first note covers a stack of printouts:
I did some research. Here are the menus to all the best salad places in New York. For inspiration. Coco xxx

The second note says:
Good luck tomorrow. Go get ’em tiger. Jumanji x

The third note is covering a stack of cash that looks suspiciously like the money I gave Angie earlier:
Your money. Sorry ladybitch. A. PS: For you …
And underneath it is a cartoon of Toto, with a little cartoon Pia leaning out the driver’s window. The words “SkinnyWheels” are written in a fat black cursive script on Toto’s flank. The overall effect is sort of ’70s and scratchy, with big red hearts dotted all over the truck, and a big red lipsticked mouth on the front grill. Underneath it, Angie wrote,
We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

I know Angie is giving me this as a good luck card, but as a truck design, it’s perfect. Silly and charming and cool—the ideal antidote to the hyper-glamorous logos of all the food trucks I saw at the Brooklyn Flea.

She’s so talented. I wish she still took art seriously.

Then I see my phone. I left it on my bed all day, which is completely unlike me. I have three texts.

From Jonah:
Hey, princess, wanna come join us at Seersucker? Bianca and I are here!

Urgh.

From Mike:
How’s your weekend treated you? How’s that pink truck? How about that drink? x

Double urgh.

From a mystery number:
Hey. I’ll be over at 7 pm next Sunday night for the first collection. Look forward to catching up! Cosmo.

Isn’t Cosmo friendly! Imagine if I end up buddies with my moneylender, how about that?

I don’t have the energy to shower, or brush my teeth, or anything. I have never, ever been this tired but I still need to paint Toto with the new SkinnyWheels name and heart designs.

Mentally counting backward I figure I probably need to be on the road by 9:30
A.M.
in order to find a good spot, so I need the paint job to be done and drying by 8:30
A.M
., and I need to load the truck, and I really need to shower because I don’t think I did today though I can’t even remember, and that means forty minutes to blow-dry my hair, and I haven’t done any laundry, and I don’t have any clean panties, and I need to pick up napkins and maybe some bottled water and diet soda, and I need to get change for the cash register, and oh, damnit, I don’t even have a cash register so I need to leave Rookhaven by 8:00
A.M
.

I set my alarm for 5:30. And then fall—no, crash—to sleep.

CHAPTER 10

“Would you buy a low-fat, low-carb, high-protein salad from a pink truck called Toto?” I shout through the truck window at eight the next morning.

“I
so
would!” calls Coco, waving at me from the front stoop. “Good luck!”

“Go, ladybitch, go!” shouts Angie, lighting a cigarette. “Give me a woo!”

“Uh … woo!” I shout, trying to put Toto in gear. She grumbles for a few extra seconds, and for a moment I worry my career is over before it’s even started, then coughs to life.

“Woo!”
I say again, more authoritatively this time, throwing a fist punch out the window as I drive down Union Street. It’s Monday morning, and I am ready to
work
!

Toto looks
great
. I wrote “SkinnyWheels” on her sides in bright red paint, and dotted her with hearts just like Angie’s drawing. She looks girly and funny, but not schmaltzy. Sort of dilapidated and effortlessly cool. How Brooklyn.

The radio kicks on, and finds one of my favorite songs, “Here It Goes Again” by OK Go. I kind of like not being able to tune Toto’s radio: it’s like leaving my musical choices in the hands of fate. Or maybe Toto chooses for me.

I’ve missed driving. Julia taught me at Brown (a serious test of our friendship) and then let me borrow her car. She had a little brown VW Beetle we called the Poomeister. It died, tragically, in a confusing diesel-versus-unleaded accident last year. (Hey. It could have happened to anyone.) Anyway, I can’t wait to sell my salads and—

Bang!

What the hell was that? I screech to a halt. That was a damn loud bang, it sounded like a gunshot. I think. Like I would know.

“Did you hear that, Toto?”

Everything is silent.

I start driving again. What’s that whiffle-whiffle sound? It sounds like—

“You blew a tire!” shouts a voice.

I slam on the brakes again. On the sidewalk is a woman walking with a little girl and boy. The little boy is crying, probably because of that banging sound. I wonder what it was.

“Your back tire is blown!” she shouts again. I look closer. I know them!

“Lina!” I say. “Hi!” I get out of the car and cross over to them. “Hi, Pia! Hi, Gabe!” Lina is the woman who tipped me that two hundred dollars at the restaurant! It seems like forever since I met them at Bartolo’s, but it was only Friday.

“You’re moonlighting as a food trucker now?” she says, laughing. “Look guys! It’s Pia from our pizza place!”

“Is there a gun?” The boy is still crying. Pia is shyly hiding behind her mom, peeking out at me. I wink at her as Lina comforts Gabe.

“No, honey, it was the tire on the truck! It popped, like a really big balloon.”

Finally, it sinks in. “Sh … ish kebabs! My tire!” I say, remembering the kids. “I don’t know how to change a tire!”

“There’s probably a spare in the truck, right?” says Lina. I make an anguished search-me face, and she laughs. We all walk to the back of the truck, and I remember something Francie, the former owner, mentioned: everything “else” is in a trapdoor underneath the floor of the food truck.

“I’ll help you,” Lina says ten minutes later, when we have the tire and jack lying next to the truck on the road. “It can’t be that hard.”