Eggsecutive Orders (21 page)

Bucky glanced at me quickly—almost as though he was fearful that I would take Cyan’s comment as a slam against me. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Bucky, if they ever give us the money to redesign the kitchen, you’re the man. I can’t imagine anyone doing it better.”

He gave a half smile, which was an odd sight. It didn’t last long. He clapped his hands again. Bucky was ready to work, and in this domain, he was clearly the boss.

“I arranged for the eggs to be delivered here,” he said.

Cyan had opened his super-sized refrigerator and turned to us with a pained look on her face. “This is nowhere near enough.” she said. “Looks like maybe ten dozen or so.”

My stomach dropped. Bucky had assured me he could handle the egg acquisition, and I’d trusted him to do so, without any double-checking. Bucky shook his head. “The rest are downstairs,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

Nana opted to stay on the main level, but the rest of us traipsed down the steps into the dungeon-like cellar. “Wow,” Cyan said, her voice echoing off the stone walls. “It’s cold down here.”

At the head of our little troupe, Bucky turned. “Exactly,” he said. “I keep it at about thirty-six degrees.” He opened a heavy door and pointed to a thermometer inside. Flicking on the light, he kept talking, even as the rest of us gasped. “Here we are.”

He wasn’t kidding. There were eggs . . . everywhere.

“This is almost as big as our storage at the White House,” Cyan said in awe. “You could start your own banquet business out of your house.”

Bucky winced. I wondered if his fears about our losing our White House positions were working on him. He stepped forward and rested his hand on one of many stainless steel carts filled, top to bottom, with fresh eggs.

“I talked with our friends at the American Egg Board,” he said. “They’re sympathetic to the situation and after a little coaxing, they agreed to let me hold on to these for transport.” He turned to me. “But I had to promise that they’d get them back as soon as the Egg Roll was over.”

“No problem,” I said. “Bucky, you’re a miracle worker.”

Again, the half smile. “Have you talked with Paul recently?”

“I called him just before we left,” I said. “No updates yet.” “So, we could be doing all this work for nothing?”

“So, we could be doing all this work for nothing?”

“We could.”

Bucky nodded. “Well, you’re the boss.”

“And I think this is a great idea,” Cyan said. “It sure beats staying home waiting for the phone to ring. At least we’re doing something.”

Upstairs, we settled ourselves into an assembly line of sorts. We estimated we had approximately six thousand eggs on site. “That’s a great start,” I said. “If we can get these done, then maybe in the next few days we’ll be able to pick up the rest, and by the time Monday rolls around, we’ll be all set.”

Cyan and I were the runners. We went up and down Bucky’s back stone steps, carrying large square crates of eggs. Mom and Nana made sure to gently place each and every one into giant pots of cold water, easing them in to prevent cracking.

Once the eggs were boiled, Bucky ran them under cold water, then dried and placed them back into their cradles. “Why do you bother to dry them off?” Nana asked. “I never do that. The heat makes the water evaporate.”

He pointed into one of the crates. “If they’re not dry, they tend to drip and then the eggs sit in little puddles of water.” He shook his head. “I don’t like that.”

“But when we dye them, they’ll just get wet again.” Nana said.

“And I’ll dry them again,” he said patiently. The caustic, angry Bucky we knew from our White House kitchen was surprisingly gentle with my mom and nana. “You see, if we let them sit in the crates wet”—he wadded up a cloth and dipped it into one of the egg holders—“we would have to then go in one by one and dry out these spaces out. If we don’t, we’ll wind up with little round water spots at the base of every colored egg.” He wrinkled his nose. “Not nice.”

While each new batch of eggs boiled, Nana, Mom, Cyan, and I took each and every dried egg by hand, and dipped them into vivid pinks, blues, greens, and yellows.

Eggs, eggs, and more eggs. I was going to dream about eggs tonight. After so many hours surrounded by steam, heat, dripping dye, and eggy smells, I started feeling just a little bit punchy.

“Hey Bucky,” I said. “You did an
eggcellent
job of getting all this together.”

He rolled his eyes. Cyan laughed.

Mom said, “Relax. It’s just a
yolk
.”

Nana held up a pink-dyed egg. She giggled. “Isn’t this an
eggsquisite
color?”

This time we all groaned.

Bucky glanced up at the clock for about the third time in as many minutes. Cyan noticed, too. She and I exchanged a look.

He turned to us. “How many more eggs are left downstairs?”

Cyan stood. “I’ll go check.”

“No,” he said quickly. “No, that’s okay. I just was wondering.”

Again he checked the wall clock.

“Are you
eggspecting
someone?” Cyan asked.

While the rest of us smiled at her attempt, Bucky frowned. He wiped his hands on his apron. “I think we should start wrapping up for today, don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, he poured out the boiling water, even though the eggs still had another minute to cook. “It’s getting late and I know you wanted me to take a look at that DVD tonight. You made me a copy, right?”

“I thought . . .” I gestured to encompass myself and Cyan, “We were all planning to watch it together.”

“I lost track of time,” he said without apology. “Did you make an extra copy? Can you leave it with me? I’ll get to it tonight.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said, bewildered. “I didn’t think we’d need any extras.” Mom and Nana stood and started to clean up.

“No, no,” Bucky said, stopping them. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You’re acting a little weird all of a sudden,” I said.

“Is it so strange to have another commitment?” he asked, the old crustiness back in place. “I told you I lost track of time and I’d rather not . . .”

Bumping sounds from the back of the house silenced us all. There was the unmistakable sound of a door opening, closing, and of footsteps coming up the back way. I turned to Bucky. He looked miserable.

A clear voice called out, “Buck?” Female voice. Slightly familiar. “Can you give me a hand?”

He’d gone red in the face. “Hang on,” he called, then bolted for the back door.

We heard low conversation, all of us leaning closer to the door to hear better. They weren’t having an argument, but Bucky’s lower-timbered voice sounded terse. A moment later he came through the door carrying two eco-friendly shopping bags jammed with groceries, wearing a look of resigned indignation.

He stopped in the doorway and I got the impression that he intended to stay there, blocking our view. “Buck,” the voice said, from behind him. “Can I get through?”

She was tall, with clear Irish skin, long red hair, and a smile as wide as the Potomac. Recognition kicked in a half-second later. “Brandy?” I said.

She placed the bags she carried on the nearest open countertop and came over to greet me. “How are you, Ollie?” With a glance around the kitchen, she said, “Looks like you’ve gotten a lot done today.” Long-limbed and bright-eyed, she always wore an aura of confidence that allowed her to carry off such an unusual moniker.

Mom and Nana were looking at me, mildly perplexed. Cyan was wide-eyed. “Brandy,” she said. “How are things going?”

I introduced my family, relying on my autopilot politeness to carry me through. When Cyan and I exchanged a glance a moment later, Brandy caught it. “Yeah,” she said, tossing her head back in a laugh, “I’m the big secret.” She held up her fingers to make air-quotation marks, then pointed at the back door. “Can you believe he was trying to convince me to tell you I was just making a delivery?” She laughed again. “Sorry, honey,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. Even though he was obviously uncomfortable, he didn’t seem entirely displeased by her display of affection.

Brandy had been our liaison to the Egg Board for as long as I’d been working at the White House. She was great. “How long have you two . . .” I gestured to encompass the house.

She glanced at Bucky, whose lips were tight. Then she winked at me. “Long time.”

Inwardly, I groaned. I think I’d actually tried to set her up with another White House staffer some time ago.

Little had I known. About Brandy—about my colleague Bucky. To me, he’d always been a crochety older guy, brilliant in the kitchen, but difficult to deal with. Brandy was about five to seven years older than I was, and suddenly, next to her, Bucky seemed much younger. Talk about a paradigm shift.

“Hey,” I said in delayed realization. “No wonder you were able to get all these eggs delivered here.”

Brandy flung a grin at me. “It pays to have friends in helpful places.”

“Eggsactly!”
I said.

Mom and Nana were confused, but rolling with the punches. The same couldn’t be said for Cyan. “You mean,” she said, “all this time we’ve been working together, you two have been able to keep a secret relationship going?”

Bucky made a face, then turned his back to us. “Better than some people.”

I felt my face redden. Brandy patted Bucky on the shoulder as she passed him to get to the fridge. “How is your handsome Secret Service boyfriend?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Minkus’s death makes things a little rocky.”

Brandy wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I can imagine. Tough times. But Tom’s a great guy. You’ll be fine.”

I nodded, not entirely sure I believed her—and at the same time amazed that she even knew that Tom and I were together.

Bucky had stopped cleaning up. “Seeing as how we’re all here now, we might as well finish the job.”

“Is anybody hungry? I can order in.” Brandy asked. “I would offer to whip up something—heck, I’ve got plenty of groceries—but the fact that I’ve got not one, but three chefs here, is a little intimidating.”

I was about to demur, but Bucky mentioned an ethnic carry-out place he liked. “If we have something delivered, we’ll all be able to check out that DVD.”

For about the fifth time that day, Bucky made my jaw drop.

 

 

Two hours later, we had gotten more eggs boiled, the kitchen cleaned, and the DVD started. Bucky maintained control of the remote and we fell into a rhythm of watching, then stopping, then discussing, all aspects of the dinner preparation.

Nana, on the purple couch next to my mom, had fallen asleep shortly after Bucky hit “Play” for the first time.

“This is all great,” I said, when we’d finished dissecting our performances and had restarted the tape from the beginning, “but the camera people were more concerned about angles. Look.” I pointed toward the screen, where Suzie was arranging salad greens on a plate. “Even though there are a bunch of cameras rolling, most of the angles are artsy, keeping focus on the plated food and our faces. All the busy preparation is going on in the background. There’s no way to see if anyone dropped something into Minkus’s food.”

Bucky, looking thoughtful, pointed the remote at the television, but didn’t press any buttons. Cyan stared at the screen as though waiting for it to tell her something. Brandy asked my mother if she’d like more iced tea.

“Maybe,” Bucky said, “we should be looking at who’s staying off-camera.”

Together we accounted for everyone in the kitchen staff, including Suzie and Steve. Occasionally someone left the room—to get something from storage, or from the refrigerators, or for any number of reasons. With everyone in constant motion, there was no way to determine any unnecessary off-camera forays. Even after studying the outtakes.

“If there was anything in Minkus’s food, I doubt it was in the salad,” I said. “Everyone had that. Same with a few of the sides, and dessert. It had to be the entrée. Otherwise there would have been too much chance that he didn’t get the right one.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I sat up.

“You don’t think that maybe it was the salad—or the dessert—and it was meant for someone else?” Cyan asked.

The thought was too terrible to contemplate. Had someone targeted President Campbell and missed? I shook my head. “Let’s not get crazy here. Let’s just deal with what we know.”

“We know squat,” Bucky said.

Mom and Brandy got up and went into the kitchen. After another five minutes of futile food-prep-watching, I took a look at my watch and realized we were running much later than I’d expected. “I have to go to Minkus’s wake tonight,” I said, standing.

Cyan and Bucky both said, “What?” so quickly, it startled Nana awake.

I gave them the lowdown on Ruth Minkus’s phone call.

“That’s a little odd,” Cyan said.

Mom was still out of the room, so I lowered my voice. “Not when you understand the back story.” I told her about Kap and about his efforts to smooth things over between Ruth Minkus and me. “Probably just because he’s attracted to my mom.”

Nana had roused herself enough to add, “He sure doesn’t try to hide it.”

“So, you’re actually going to the wake?” Cyan asked disbelievingly.

“I hate those things,” Bucky said.

I gave him a look. “Like anyone enjoys them.”

I had no desire to visit a funeral home tonight, but I hardly felt able to refuse. Ruth had asked me to come. And though I barely knew the woman, I had to believe she would not have taken the time to call me if she hadn’t felt compelled to. Who’s to say how different people deal with grief? Maybe I represented closure for her.

After stopping back at my apartment to shower off the day’s egg smell and to change into appropriate clothing, my family and I drove to the funeral home in a Maryland suburb.

“Don’t they usually have services in the Capitol for big shots like Minkus?” Nana asked.