Julia's Child (9781101559741) (26 page)

I fanned myself with a spatula and looked for the five hundredth time toward the double metal doors.

Marta's cousin Theresa was a young woman of few words. She shrugged. Theresa had expressive brown eyes, but she rarely spoke up.

“
Chica
, calm down,” Marta ordered. “Stop staring at the door and help me unpack these ingredients.”

I attempted to comply. Marta looked piqued. She was sweating too. And we hadn't even turned on the oven yet.

“Damn,” she said.

“What's the matter?”

In answer, she held up an industrial-size bottle of organic vanilla extract. It was nearly empty.

“Oh, shit!” I stared at the empty bottle. “I forgot to order more.” Organic vanilla wasn't easy to find. And we were supposed to bake pumpkin muffets, which were flavored with a fair dose of vanilla. “I guess we'll just . . . leave it out? We have to make
something
when Smith and Smythe are here.” The only other choice was to switch recipes, which would leave us short of some other ingredient.

“But the muffets will taste bland,” Marta objected. “And they
are
going to taste them, right?”

I sighed. “What are our options? We can make just a small amount, with the last bit of vanilla, or make some more without and then throw them away.”

Theresa looked stricken. “We can't throw them away! We need eight cases.
Mañana
.”

“I'm goin' in.” Marta inhaled. She reached up to the hairnet she wore, removing a bobby pin from over her ear. Then she squared her shoulders and marched toward the back of the building, which contained Zia's office and the closely guarded storeroom. Marta had told me the lock on Zia's pantry was pickable, but I'd never seen her do it.

I took a deep, cleansing breath and tried to tell myself that this wasn't a disaster. A disaster was the Ebola virus. Or a tsunami. A lack of vanilla was an inconvenience—but of the sort with which my life was increasingly peppered.

We'd never managed to screw up in precisely this way before. Cooking—unlike business savvy—was our core competency. Obviously, the stress was getting to us. Inviting the suits from GPG to scrutinize our production facility had made me feel incredibly self-conscious. Allowing them to paw through my underwear drawer might have felt less invasive.

If we had a sufficient amount, I might have helped myself to a swig of organic vanilla extract.

As I stood there, attempting to think Zen thoughts about vanilla theft and my visiting corporate judging committee, Marta trotted quickly back out of the hallway, followed by Zia Maria herself.

“And a-where were you headed, Marta dear?” Zia sang out. Zia stood about four feet eight, the gray bun on top of her head adding a couple of additional inches. In her arms she carried a broad tray, piled high with colorful gift boxes. She swept past us, hoisting her tray onto the workstation in the middle of the room.

“Hello, Zia,” Marta said weakly. “I thought I heard . . . something rustling around back there, and so I went to check. But it was
you
.”

“Of course it's me,” Zia snapped, as if we always saw her at that hour. We hadn't spied her on a night shift in weeks. Now she stacked the shiny gift boxes on the stainless steel worktable. She opened a tin of Christmas cookies and a pastry bag for icing, and then set about arranging all the ingredients on the table.

The unusual incidence of Zia decorating cookies in the Cucina on a weeknight necessitated a whispered conference between the employee-owners of Julia's Child. “What the hell is this all about?” I hissed. I had never seen Zia making cookies. And the thought of her making gifts—to be given away
for free
—was almost incomprehensible.

“Hmm,” Marta whispered. “The holidays are coming. I'll bet she's greasing the wheels of bureaucracy. Maybe for the borough officials who certify the Cucina?”

I felt my blood pressure soar. “We're toast! What's she going to say when Smith and Smythe show up to look around? This is terrible.”

Marta chewed on her lip. “We'll have to tell her they're coming. Zia doesn't like surprises. You want me to do it? She likes me more than you.”

That certainly was true, but I didn't wish to hide behind Marta. I scrutinized the back of our cheerless leader. Zia's apron strings were cinched so tightly around her rail-thin body that the two sides of the apron fabric overlapped at the knot in back. Underneath, I noted her typical black stockings, black skirt, and black turtleneck.

I took a deep breath and strode toward her. “Good evening, Ms. Maria. Those are beautiful boxes.”

She didn't look up at me but rather knitted her dark eyebrows tightly into a knot. She squeezed the pastry bag in her hands, and a bead of perfectly round white icing curled from the metal tip. Even frosting was afraid to cross Zia. “Yes, my dear, presentation is everything, isn't it?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed as cheerfully as possible, reminded of the attractive way in which my sweaty shirt was sticking to me. “In fact, tonight I'll be presenting my little business to a couple of men from a food conglomerate. They want to see the spotless kitchen I've been telling them about.”

At that, Zia put the pastry bag down, the metal tip clanking onto the stainless steel table. She whirled to face me, and reflexively I flinched. “People coming, tonight? Here?” Her mustache twitched.

“Just two. They won't stay long.”

“
Cara mia!
Are you saying that if all goes well, I will have a graduate?”

“A graduate?”

“Your business hits the big time, with my Cucina responsible. This could be big.
Mamma mia!
This is news!”

“Oh!” It took a minute to adjust my psyche. I had expected to get a lashing. “Well, then, I'll let you know how it goes.”

Relieved, I turned back to our corner of the room to tell Marta everything was okay. But she had vanished. Instead, her cousin Theresa stood worriedly in her place, glancing toward the back of the building, her doe eyes heavy with remorse.

“Where's Marta?” I asked.

In answer, my partner appeared at the end of the short hallway that ran back toward the storeroom and Zia's office. She peered around the doorjamb, toward Zia's back, and then scurried over to our table. “Got it,” she hissed at Theresa. “Cover me.”

Theresa positioned herself between Zia and her cousin, and made herself busy with the ingredients on the stainless countertop. Marta slipped a very large bottle of vanilla from under her apron, holding it just beneath the edge of the table, and decanted some of Zia's extract into our empty bottle.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “That's not organic!”

“Julia!” a voice rang out from the middle of the room.

“Shit!” Marta said, diving into a crouch near the floor.

I whirled around to find Zia advancing toward me. “Yes?” I chirped self-consciously, meeting her halfway between our stations.

“When those men come to see your production, I will help-a you. Over here. Help you with the muffins. They'll see you have a big staff, yes?”

“Muff
ets
,” I corrected. “And that's a kind offer but . . .” I sensed trouble. Zia meant well, but she was prone to making scenes. I was anxious enough about the encounter without adding some forced role-playing to the mix. “There's probably not enough work to go around,” I said lamely.

“Nonsense! I do your work on the muffins while you talk to the nice men. Where is your purse? We need some more lipstick on you.” Zia gave me a gentle shove toward our workstation.

There was a scramble and a bump. “Ow!” Marta said. She emerged from under our steel table, rubbing her forehead. I was afraid to look, but her hands held only my purse and our own bottle of vanilla. “Here it is,” she said, thrusting the bag at me.

“You!” Zia pointed at me. “Put on some makeup. And you”—she pointed at Marta—“need some ice for that bump. You're a-going to have a goose egg.” She turned on her heel toward the ice machine in the corner.

“What are you doing?” I whispered again to Marta. “If we use that stuff, the muffets won't be one hundred percent organic.”

“
Dios mío!
It's just vanilla. A tiny drop.”

“But the organic regulations require that every
ingredient
—”

“Hoolia!” Marta shrieked. “God will forgive this one transgression. Stop playing saint for a minute and—”

“
Playing?
” I sputtered. “This is not a
game
for me. It's serious.”

“Serious? Let me tell you what's serious. If tonight goes down the drain, you'll spend your days strolling around your fancy neighborhood, drinking five-dollar lattes. But me, I might be back on welfare.” She brandished the bottle of vanilla. “I'm just asking you to remove that stick from your ass if we're going to make it through tonight.”

Blood rushed to my face, and I had the sudden urge to belt Marta on the uninjured side of her face, but Zia pushed me aside and pressed a bag of ice with a great thunk onto Marta's forehead.

“Ow!” Marta yelped.

And that's when Smith and Smythe arrived.

Chapter 23

I
will never forget the look on Smith's face as he took in the kitchen. I'd already worried that he'd find our operation to be laughably small. But as I saw his eyes sweep the space and so quickly return to me, I knew it was even worse than I thought.

The others did an amazing transition, lunging into a pantomime performance that could be entitled
Kitchen Hard at Work
. Theresa, eyes down, began breaking eggs into the enormous bowl of the commercial mixer. Marta flicked the ice pack into a trash can and began sifting whole wheat flour. Zia Maria, stealing looks at my corporate raiders and clicking her tongue at Theresa's handling of the eggs, took up a giant carrot and began to peel it.

“So this is where it all happens,” Smith said coolly.

“Yes, for now.” I was defensive. “But we're bursting at the seams here. We need an automated facility to keep up with demand. I've toured six or seven copackers in New Jersey already, to get a feel for the market.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Smith chuckled. “I don't think I can even calculate a labor coefficient on an operation this small.”

Whack!
Zia Maria's knife hit the chopping board with surprising force for a lady who must weigh eighty pounds dripping wet. A carrot top rolled off the table, like the head of a guillotined French rebel.

“We're . . . uh . . . off to a good start here, though,” I said, trying to find something conciliatory to say.

Smythe peered over his clipboard, his eyeglasses glinting in the bright kitchen lighting. “And who handles your health department certificates?”

“That's the good thing about this space—”

“One of
many
,” Zia grunted.

“I don't have to maintain them myself,” I explained, ignoring her. “This is an incubator kitchen, designed to help small businesses get off the ground. The owner maintains the certifications and documentation. I rent space by the hour. This has allowed me to avoid the overhead of running my own certified commercial kitchen.”

“At the expense of scale,” Smith noted.

“Exactly,” I said. Scale was a well-placed euphemism for “small.”

“Ahem,” said Marta, putting down her sifter on the table in such a way that she managed to jab me in the ribcage with her elbow.

“Oh! I'd like you to meet Marta Rodríguez,” I said then. “My partner, friend, and general manager.”

Marta removed her latex kitchen gloves to shake hands. “It is a pleasure to meet you, sirs.”

“So what are you manufacturing tonight?”

“Muffets, of course,” Marta answered. “We've had to drop our other product lines because of Whole Foods' insatiable appetite for this particular product.”

“I see,” Smith said politely. “And where do the ingredients come from? Julia's farm?”

“Some of them do, of course,” Marta replied. “But most arrive from the distributor each night just before production.”

“So, you don't need to store them,” Smythe noted.

“Right,” I volunteered. “We have very limited storage space for raw ingredients. We spend our storage dollars to warehouse the finished product.” I'd said it hoping to make the point that we took good care of our product, but then I cringed. It would be impossible to show Smith and Smythe my freezer space. If I walked two men in dark suits up to the door of the Sons of Sicily Social Club, Pastucci might take one look at them and bolt, imagining they were cops coming to inspect his liquor license.

“If you had adequate storage, you'd save money in the long run,” Smythe said. He scribbled again on the clipboard.

“Of course,” I said. “I could save money on everything if I bought in greater bulk, especially packaging materials and non-perishables like flour.”

“Yeah,” Smith sighed. He stared toward the door. I seemed to be losing him.

“What else can I show you?” I asked, desperation creeping into my voice.

He leaned against a stainless steel countertop, and I worried that there'd be a line of flour chalked across the back of his navy suit. “I guess we'll take a look at the books,” he said noncommittally.

 

 

Marta and Theresa were flash-freezing muffets when I emerged, alone, from Zia's office.

“How's it going in there?” Marta asked, over the clanking of the machine.