Simmer Down (10 page)

Josh groaned. “Hey, hey. Snacker’s got plenty to do around here to keep him busy, so don’t get him all distracted with one of your friends this early in the game.”

After Barry and I had finished our food, he thanked Josh and Snacker and promised to return on New Year’s Eve. “I know how much you two have to get done, so I’ll leave you to your work. Thanks again for everything. This really did cheer me up a bit.”

We waved good-bye, and I was ashamed of how relieved I was to have him gone. It’s awful, but there is something intolerable about being around someone else’s pain when you can’t do anything to help. Maybe next semester I could sign up for a class on coping with grief?

I watched Josh while he worked in the kitchen. He was looking particularly sexy today, what with the sparkling white coat and all, and I was hoping for some alone time in one of the storage rooms, even though it was probably some enormous health code violation to fornicate near the dry goods. Besides, I really had to get going if I was going to make it to Moving On to meet Adrianna.

I did manage to pin Josh against a wall for a few minutes of groping while Snacker stepped into the office to make some phone calls and confirm orders with purveyors. “Am I going to see you tonight?” I asked in between kisses.

He sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He slid both his hands into my back pockets and pulled me in close. “I’ve got too much to do, and I’ll probably be busy all night. I’ll call you later, though, okay?”

What Josh meant, I knew, was that he wouldn’t have even one day off for the next two weeks. I already missed him.

I dragged myself out of his arms. “Okay, I’ll talk to you in a bit.”

Just one more kiss—

I heard the kitchen doors swing open and shut.

“Oh, excuse me. Sorry to interrupt.”

I pulled away from Josh to see Eliot Davis standing by the door looking embarrassed to have caught us glued to each other. “I just wanted to see how the restaurant was coming along.” His physical features, especially his peculiar eyes, were unattractive, but he wore a boxy, trendy-looking sport jacket and somehow exuded an air of sophistication appropriate to the owner of a Newbury Street gallery. I hoped that Naomi’s thank-you present hadn’t been some god-awful macramé wall hanging or the stinky handmade candles or pop psych book I’d imagined.

“It’s okay.” I laughed. “I’m on my way out anyhow. Nice to see you. And thanks again for your hospitality the other night at the gallery.”

“Nice to see you, too, Chloe. Bye.”

Josh squeezed my hand, and I left for another dreaded T ride, this one to Cambridge.

M
OVING
On was located in an adorable yellow house on a quiet street off Mass. Ave. outside Harvard Square. Adrianna’s car was parked out front, and I hoped she wasn’t going to kill me for being a few minutes late. The program director, Kayla, let me in and showed me into the combined kitchen and dining room. I don’t know what I was expecting, but Moving On looked like a normal house, with real furniture, hardwood floors, pale green walls, and white trim. Three windows in the kitchen gave a view of a back patio with a grill, covered for the winter to protect it from the snow. After working at the Organization, I’d assumed every nonprofit would be barren and depressing. This was a cheery, comfortable environment; it was a home. Adrianna stood in the kitchen, wrapping a nylon cape around a young woman seated in a chair.

Adrianna greeted me by saying, “Hi, Chloe. This is Isabelle, and she’s ready to chop off this mane of hair.”

“Hi, Chloe.” Isabelle spoke in a whisper. She looked about twenty years old and probably weighed all of one hundred pounds, not including the ten pounds of frizzy black curls that overwhelmed her tiny frame. She was either frozen in her seat or ready to fly off it; either way, here was a young woman terrified of what was about to happen to her hair. And to make matters worse, Ade looked even more beautiful than ever with her artistically colored blonde hair blown out to its fullest in an homage to early nineties’ supermodels. She looked so glamorous that poor Isabelle must have felt dowdy by comparison. Anyone would have. I did.

“Hi, Isabelle. Don’t worry about anything. Let me just talk to Adrianna for a second before we get started.” I grabbed my stylist friend by the elbow and led her off to the side for a moment.

“Ade, what did you say to her? She looks petrified!”

“Nothing, I swear. I just suggested that we cut off all of her damaged hair, try a more flattering cut, and get her using better products. What’s the problem?”

“The women here do not exactly have piles of money floating around with which to maintain highlights and dye jobs, okay? And I can guarantee you that Isabelle isn’t in a position to buy high-priced shampoo! The point of being here is to make her feel good about herself, not make her feel inadequate, okay?”

I knew from talking with Kayla the other week that Isabelle had been kicked out of her house at sixteen and hadn’t had a permanent place to live since then. She’d bounced around, staying with friends and living on the streets for years, until her room at Moving On had become available. Kayla had said that she had no idea how someone as shy and withdrawn as Isabelle had toughed it out on her own for so long.

For once, Adrianna had the sense to look sheepish. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll take care of her.”

Thirty minutes later, Isabelle’s hair had been washed and conditioned in peppermint-scented products, and Adrianna was finishing a chin-length cut with chunky layers that would help her curls fall softly.

I scooted my chair close to Isabelle, who looked near panic as strands of her hair continued to fall to the floor. “So, Kayla told me you have an interview tomorrow morning? What’s the job?” I asked.

“Well, um, it’s in Westwood, at a medical building. They need someone to do some office stuff, I guess. You know, filing and making copies, I think.”

“Westwood? That’s quite a hike from here.” How this girl was going to get from Cambridge to Westwood on public transportation five days a week was beyond me. That was at least a forty-five-minute drive by car, barring traffic jams.

“Well, I worked out a route. If I get the job, I’d have to be there at nine, so I think if I leave here by five thirty, I should be okay.”

“What?” Adrianna stopped her styling. “Five thirty in the morning? You wouldn’t even get back here until late at night! Are you kidding me?”

Isabelle clasped her nervous hands in her lap. “I’m not really qualified for a lot of jobs ’cause I never finished high school. I’m trying to get my GED, though. Kayla is helping me and a couple of the other girls here with that when she has the time. I’ve had a few other interviews closer to home, but I don’t have much work experience, so no one will hire me.”

“No, no. Chloe, do something,” Adrianna instructed me. “We can’t send her off with this great new hair to spend her entire day commuting to frickin’ Westwood!”

“Oh, uh, okay. Let’s see.” I glared at Ade. I wasn’t exactly a headhunter. “You’re looking for office work? Or is there something else you might like?”

“It might sound silly, but I’ve always wanted to work in a bakery. I love the way it smells—sort of homey and safe. I never really had that when I was growing up, but I used to go into this bakery near my house when I was a kid, and the owner would give me a cinnamon roll every afternoon on the way home from school. She’d let me hang out there for a couple of hours if I needed to when my parents…” She broke off for a moment. “It seemed like a nice place to be.”

Adrianna smiled at me. “I bet Chloe could help you out with this.”

“Let me make a phone call. I might have something better for you, Isabelle.” I pulled my cell phone out of my purse. “I’ll be right back.”

I dialed Josh’s number, and he picked up quickly, sounding significantly more harried than he had when I’d left Simmer.

“Hey, Josh. Sorry to bother you. What’s going on there? You sound busy.”

“Oh, Christ. It’s havoc here,” he groaned. “I’ve got a big staff meeting so we can prep the front and the back of the house and try to make this opening go as smooth as possible. And I forgot I have to go out later to take care of some other stuff.”

That
stuff
better not have to do with Hannah.

Josh continued. “Just becoming one of those days, you know? What’s up with you? How’s it going with you and Adrianna?”

I ignored the possibility that Josh might be seeing Hannah later. Well, I ignored it for now. “Good. Only I’m wondering if you can help me with something.”

I begged Josh to find some way to hire Isabelle to do something in the kitchen. Anything! Simmer wasn’t a bakery, of course, and the hours would be horrible, but the commute would be easy. Mainly, I thought that what Isabelle needed was a work setting with a family feeling. Restaurant kitchens were hot and demanding and sometimes chaotic, but Josh always took excellent care of his staff.

“Does she have any restaurant experience?” Josh asked hopefully.

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so,” I confessed. “She’s always wanted to work in a bakery, so she’s interested in cooking on some level. And she needs a break. If you don’t give her a job, she’s going to have a long commute and be miserable.” Guilt, guilt, guilt!

“All right, you got me. Send her in, and I’ll give her a kitchen job. The money won’t be wonderful, and I don’t know how many hours I can give her, but send her in if you want. Can she be here for the staff meeting today?”

If I could’ve hugged Josh over the phone, I’d have done it.

When I shared the news, I couldn’t tell who was happier about it, Adrianna or Isabelle. Adrianna started maniacally blow-drying Isabelle’s hair with a diffuser, shouting above the din, “Oh, my God, this is so great! Are you so excited? Do you have anything to wear?”

Although Isabelle didn’t say much, she couldn’t stop smiling and must have said thank you a hundred times. Moving On had provided her with some outfits for interviews. Since there was no need to be formal with Josh or Gavin, we helped her to select plain black dress pants and a pretty yellow sweater. Working in Josh’s kitchen, she would be provided with chef pants and a kitchen shirt, so she wouldn’t be spending hard-earned and much-needed money on work clothes. All she’d have to buy would be a pair of good shoes.

Adrianna rummaged around in one of her bags and pulled out hair and makeup samples to leave with her new client. While she did Isabelle’s makeup, I wrote down directions to Simmer. When we finally got our protégée out the door, we were beaming like proud parents and waved overzealously as she walked down the street to the T station.

“Okay, we’ve got to keep moving,” I reminded Adrianna as I swept up hair from the floor. “We’ve got four more women here who need to get ready.”

I stayed with Adrianna for another two and a half hours while she worked wonders with more residents of the house. Now that she understood where these women were coming from and the challenges they were facing, she dropped her normally brash, outspoken, and headstrong style and showed remarkable compassion and sensitivity.

“I can’t believe we’re done,” Ade said, rolling up the cape and beginning to pack away the mountain of supplies that had accumulated on the table. “That was great.”

“You were wonderful!” I commended her. “You about ready to go?”

“You go ahead. I want to stay and talk to the director. I was thinking I might volunteer here whenever they need me.”

Would wonders never cease? I hugged Adrianna and left for home. When I arrived, it was almost five, and Gato yet again welcomed me by urinating in a plant. I took off my uncomfortable shoes and then threw on some sweatpants and a T-shirt, and sat down at my computer to check my e-mail. I deleted even more copies of almost the same letter that had snuck through my spam blocker earlier today, a version now
urgently
suggesting I get my penis enlarged.

A bunch of e-mails were from my lawyer friend, Elise, who lived in Chicago with her husband. To judge from the number of e-mails I got from Elise each day, being a lawyer primarily involved surfing the Web for entertaining stories and interesting sites. She’d sent a bunch of links to sites with music clips from Kevin Federline—in Elise’s opinion, listening to him never ceased to be violently amusing—and one link to photographs of celebrities caught with wardrobe malfunctions. Elise also forwarded me an e-mail from her ex-boyfriend, Alex, with a picture of himself, his wife, and their new baby and a pretentious note detailing how happy he was with his family life and his snooty academic professorship. Elise was pleased to see that his wife was quite possibly the homeliest creature on the planet and that their baby was a squished, wrinkled little blob who looked remarkably like a cross between Winston Churchill and a bulldog. Elise and I took a sick pleasure in creating an imaginary life for Alex based on the scant details she received from his sporadic e-mails. Our latest was that he’d taken up knitting bulky, brightly colored Argentinian-style sweaters and was forced to work summers in Alaska catching crabs from boats that sailed through high storms.

Next I checked voice messages. The first was from the lawyer in charge of Uncle Alan’s estate, and
this
lawyer apparently had time to do things other than send e-mails to friends making up stories about his exes. His message was an unamusing lecture reminding me yet again that the credit card I had been given was strictly for the purpose of buying myself school-related items. He remained irrationally convinced that Williams-Sonoma, Gap, and J. Crew sold nothing related to social work.

The next message was from Sean. “Chloe, I really need to see you. It’s important. Can you call me back as soon as you get this?” I jotted down his number on the back of a gas bill and sighed. Clearly, Sean had seen me and was bowled over by an intense desire to reunite with his past love. Did I really want to call him back? I decided to start dinner and mull over the question.

I opened the fridge to see what I could throw together and had to fish through a whole mess of other food to find what I wanted. Josh had stocked my fridge with what seemed like hundreds of free samples of food he’d been given by purveyors. When restaurants need food, they don’t go to supermarkets; rather, they get deliveries from meat, fish, vegetable, dry goods, and alcohol companies, among others. And even when a restaurant was all set up with its purveyors, representatives from rival companies stopped in periodically to try to win the restaurant’s business by dropping off packaged samples of products. Some samples were ordinary things like chicken breasts and sirloin steaks, but others were fancy cuts of meat and various high-end products that Josh didn’t need. I now had ten individual-sized packets of gourmet pasta, including one of black-and-white-striped ravioli stuffed with lobster, and another of Gorgonzola and roasted red pepper tortellini; two sealed bags of ground lamb; a Cornish hen; venison sausage; a package of pork chops; and an unidentifiable duck part. When Josh gave me samples, I usually threw them into the freezer, which was now crowded with them. Once I’d sorted everything out, I happily realized that I had all the ingredients for one of my favorite winter dishes.

I started to assemble ingredients: kielbasa, onions, garlic, white beans, canned tomatoes, kale, chicken broth, and a variety of dried herbs from the spice rack. “That Kielbasa Thing,” as I ineloquently referred to it, was a thick, delicious, hearty, comforting stew. It was not named something like Kielbasa Surprise, because I avoid cooking or eating anything called a festival, a carnival, a medley, a party, or, especially, a surprise. In my experience, Pasta Surprise all too often means
Surprise! There are jelly beans in your macaroni!
Furthermore, festivals, carnivals, surprises, and such reminded me of the disaster known as
Recipes and Memories of the Carter Family
, which was a nightmare collection of supposedly touching stories and secret recipes gathered by some distant relative of my father’s. My parents, Heather, and I had each felt obliged to fork over twenty-five dollars for the small three-ring binder that contained mysteries of the Carter clan. When the book arrived, I opened the binder and immediately found a hint of problems to come. Paper-clipped to the title page was a small sheet with the heading, “Errors Discovered After Cookbook Returned from Publisher.” When making the King Ranch Chicken, I should not use 1/2 cup of chili powder, but 1 teaspoon. The Popcorn Cake recipe required an
angel
food cake pan and not an angle food pan. The Bundt Cake Supreme-O needed 3/4 cup water, not the “3/4 bunches of water” called for in the book. When I made Outdoor Cooking Banana Boats, I was not to be confused by the phrase “with o cutting,” which should be read as “without cutting.” Whew!