When in Doubt, Add Butter (15 page)

“It’s from my grandmother’s recipe collection?”

“Yes.” My friend who was translating had run low on time this week, so I’d just told him to pick the shortest recipe in the book and give me that one. Some of the grandmother’s recipes were quite long and involved, and I was dying to try them, too. “So … this should be ready in about twenty minutes, give or take.” I took the eggplant slices out and put them on a paper towel, then put more in, saying, “When do you think your father will be available?”

He glanced at the clock and said, with complete certainty, “Twenty-five minutes.”

“That works perfectly, then.” I waited, hoping he’d elaborate, but he didn’t.

Borya disappeared down the hall, toward the back room where Vlad took his meetings. After a moment, Serge joined him.

I was glad to be alone.

It was short-lived, though. Cindy came into the kitchen about five minutes later. “Sorry about before,” she said. “Viktor can be a real jerk sometimes. He’s all worried about this
thing
his father’s involved in, so he’s even worse than usual.”

“Oh, that’s…” What? Okay? Uncomfortable? Your problem, not mine? I couldn’t think of a way to end the sentence, so I didn’t.

She nodded. Apparently my silence was the most profound thing I could have come up with for her. “Have you ever been married?” she asked me.

This personal question, particularly from someone who’d been calling me Jenna for almost a year, took me by surprise. “No, I haven’t.”

“Why not?” She looked me over—her manicured, made-up, designer-clad self shining like a beacon next to the shrub that was me—and frowned, as if such a thing seemed impossible.

“I guess I never found the right man.” I hated giving her the answer that would make sense to her for all the wrong reasons.

She nodded. “It’s a jungle out there. Have you tried a lot of dating services and things?”

The assumption that I not only had been to dating services but that I had also obviously burned through
a lot
of them was insulting. “None, actually.” I turned the eggplant slices over in the pan. “I don’t really have a lot of time for dating.”

“Really? What do you spend your time doing?”

I looked at the stove and then at her. “Working.”

“At … this?” She smiled, but it wasn’t charming. “I mean, is this your only job?”

“Yes.” My voice was getting as crisp as the eggplant. “This is what I do. I have other clients to fill up the week and special events on the weekends at the country club.”

“Oh.”

I took the eggplant out of the pan. Suddenly it looked dark, gray, and depressing to me.

The smell made me feel a little ill.

“I love my job,” I added, though it was probably a bit too defensively.

She sighed. “I need a lawyer.”

“What?” My question had been automatic, but I immediately wished I could take it back.

“A divorce lawyer. I need a good divorce lawyer.”

“Well.” Why was she saying this to me?

“Do you know one?”

This was starting to make me nervous. I had no way of knowing for sure, of course, but my impression was that Viktor wasn’t privy to these thoughts she was having. Or, if he was, he wasn’t worried about them. But it didn’t make sense that a man worried about his wife divorcing him would be hammering her about something as petty as giving driving directions to another man. So if Cindy was thinking of divorcing Viktor but Viktor didn’t know it, I sure as shit didn’t want to get caught talking to her about it.

“I’m sorry?” I hedged. I was bad at improvisation. Focus on work. Pour pomegranate juice into the pan to reduce it to a syrup. Chop the garlic. Add the salt and red pepper flakes.

Toasted walnuts were the garnish.

Perfect.

“Could you recommend a divorce lawyer for me?” she pressed.

Ugh. “Wow, I really—”

“Divorce lawyer?”
The question came with such ferocity that there could be no doubt who was asking, even before Viktor rounded the corner, red-faced and wide-eyed. “Do my ears deceive me, or did you just ask the maid for a divorce lawyer?”

Chef.

But
really
not the time to argue that.

Cindy’s face paled. “It wasn’t for
me,
” she lied badly. “I was asking Jenna about her divorce because my friend Ramona is looking for someone.”

Somehow his expression darkened. “I’ve never heard of this Ramona.”

“She’s in my Yogilates class.”

He didn’t look like he believed her one bit. “Ramona.”

“Yes.”

I turned and stirred the chopped nuts, garlic, and spices into the sauce and turned off the burner.

Behind me, I heard Cindy say, “She’s a new friend. You haven’t met her yet.”

I assembled the eggplant slices onto a platter, then poured the sauce into a gravy boat. Incredibly, and luckily, I was invisible to the two of them again. Viktor and Cindy, whatever their supposedly “humble” upbringings, had an amazing capacity for completely ignoring the “help”—this was not a conversation I would have had within fifty feet and three locked doors of anyone, if I could help it.

“You listen to me,”
Viktor said, capturing both Cindy’s attention and mine.

Now, believe me,
I
didn’t want to listen. I absolutely love a good story, and the gossipier it is, the better usually, but this was not a scene I wanted to witness. I’d learned a long time ago it was really hard to rebound from witnessing a personal scene in a client’s home because
most
people are well aware that the hired help tends not to be blind, deaf, and dumb. (And all too often, the hired help then goes out and tries to make a buck off what they see, hear, and can say for the right price … particularly if the client in question is either famous or rich enough to be blackmailed.)

That said, they were across from me on the counter that was my workspace. However much I tried to ignore them, it was impossible.

Especially when he swooped in closer to his wife’s face and said, “Make no mistake. I will see you
dead
before I will see you in divorce court.”

Ah. True love.

*   *   *

I was trying to bolt out the door and get away from yet more marital acrimony when the great Vlad Oleksei himself showed up in the kitchen.

This was a rare thing, believe me. Most of the time, people showed up at the door, as they had tonight, looking nervous and agitated, ready for an appointment with Vlad. Once I came up with the whole Russian Mob Theory, I imagined that they left as emotional basket cases—which at least half, maybe more, of them did—because their family’s lives or kneecaps had been threatened.

So when Vlad showed up in the kitchen, pointed a gnarled finger at me, and said, “
You.
I need to talk to you in private,” believe me, I was scared to death.

“Me?” I touched a hand to my chest and looked around, as if there were any possibility that he was actually talking to someone else.

I was, of course, the only one there.

“Yes, you.” He snorted, like I was an idiot. “Who you think I’s talking to?”

“Well…” There was no answer. Best not to try. “I don’t know.”

“Come.” He gave the universal
come with me now
arm gesture. “We talk.”

I didn’t want to talk.

I didn’t want to hear.

I didn’t want to die.

But this was more crazy stuff from my imagination. I knew that. I’d been working for them for ages; they knew I was a good employee, discreet and trustworthy.

Maybe he wanted to talk to me about a raise!

Okay, stop laughing. I know that sounds a little overly optimistic, but I didn’t do super well with middle ground. My imagination tended toward either the very grim or the very great. And there was no reason
not
to hope this could be great. I mean, for real, I’d made their Russian meals seriously kick-ass.

In any event, he beckoned and I followed, well aware that I was about to see, at last—for better or for worse—the locked room in which Vlad conducted the business that made people nervous coming in and, a good percentage of the time, weeping copiously on their way out of the house.

It smelled funny.

He paused outside the door. “I don’t normally do this,” he said to me with a significant nod of the head.

Trepidation gripped my chest. “Maybe you shouldn’t then?… I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

He shook his head with great impatience. “I
have
to. Sometimes God does not give choice.”

Okay, shit.
God
was telling him he had to do something here? That sounded like crazy “talking to the devil” stuff to me. I didn’t normally believe in that, truly, but my friend Jamie totally believed, and though I dismissed it out of hand over drinks at a nice restaurant, it was harder simply to dismiss it at this moment.

“What is … God telling you to do?” I asked as gently as I could manage.

Vlad was older, and definitely weird, but he knew when he was being condescended to. “God gives me vision. Vision for you.”

Okay, I don’t know if the rest of the world would have had this figured out by now, but all I can tell you is that I did not. I didn’t know what he was talking about, and if I was worth my salt at all, I would have told him I was uncomfortable with the meeting he was trying to coordinate and either we could do it in the open—and easy-to-escape-from—living room, or we could not do it at all.

Naturally, I opted for the wimp path.

So, thinking that Vlad
might
be a Russian Mafia kingpin, but fearing being rude above all else, I followed him back to the mysterious room where I’d seen countless people walk in smiling and walk out crying.

It was a small room, with deep mauve walls and no pictures or decorations. The only furniture was a utilitarian wooden desk—with no drawers or shelves—an orthopedic office chair, and three folding chairs opposite it. The only light came from one of those green glass banker’s lamps on the desk.

He indicated that I should sit in one of the folding chairs, while he creaked painfully over to the executive chair on the other side of the desk.

Any second now, he might start talking about that raise.

But no, he took out a deck of cards and handed them to me. “Shuffle.”

Yes, I was still confused. “I’m sorry, do what?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. In retrospect, I can’t say I blame him. “Shuffle the cards.”

“Why?”

“So they absorb your energy.”

“But—” Finally it dawned on me. “Wait, are you a
psychic
or something?”

Now, here’s a fact you might want to keep in your back pocket: If you work for one of the most famous clairvoyants in the Metro area for almost a year and don’t realize it, you might want to keep that little bit of ignorance to yourself.

Unless you really want to insult them, that is.

“Is this joke?” he asked, his expression darkening.

“No, I”—I just didn’t know what to say—“I work in your home, so I try to mind my own business as much as possible when I’m here. More so than if I were, say, your neighbor, or—”

He snatched the unshuffled cards from my hands. “I try to
help
you!”

“Oh! Well, thanks, but I think I’m okay.…”

He scoffed. Actually
scoffed.
“You do not know what Vlad knows!”

I have never believed in psychics. At least not since I realized the gypsy at the carnival was Mrs. Rooks. I believe some of them might believe they’re psychic, so they may come at it from a well-intentioned place, but I think at best they are people who are very good at reading other people.

The rest are just thieves.

I’m not sure it’s that hard to be either one of those things. If you think about it, almost everyone you know is wrestling with either a money, job, or romance issue to some degree. Even most happy people would probably agree they’d like to better their lot in at least one of those areas.

Mrs. Rooks was one of the best examples of that, actually. Apart from the bitter tirade against men and marriage that she’d unleashed on me, she’d evidently done a pretty good job of convincing my classmates she was the real deal. Obviously, she’d had a few pat, universal “predictions” and she’d divvied them out to the amazement of my friends.

She knew I don’t like school!

She said a new boy was going to come into my life and ask me out!

How could she know my best friend wouldn’t keep my secret?

It was all just basic body-language reading. Almost anyone could do it.

However, Vlad Oleksei did it for a living, and whatever his gift actually was, he was apparently good enough at it to have people coming to him all day long and taking him very seriously.

Besides which, I couldn’t afford to insult him and lose my job.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “You’re right, I don’t know what you know.”

He eyed me. “You
need
to know.”

“Okay—?”

He thrust the cards in my direction again. “Shuffle.”

So I shuffled. “Is that enough?”

He splayed his hands. “If you say it’s enough, it’s enough. Cut three times to the left.”

I wondered if he meant cut three times, to make
four
piles, or make three piles, but I didn’t dare ask. I made three piles.

Apparently that was right, because he gathered them up and spread them in a line in front of him. “I see a man here, a man in your life—”

And here we go.

“—it’s not romantic,” he added, looking sharply at me.

Okay, I’m a private chef. I work in people’s homes. Obviously, I interact with men on a nonromantic basis. Hell, he could have claimed to have been talking about any one of his sons, or even himself!

I waited for more.

After a loud rattle of breath, he said, “You’re making some sort of movie with him.”

“Movie?”

He nodded. “Film. You know, a—what do you call it?—a video, a movie.”

I frowned. “I don’t know what that could be.” I think it was the sheer unexpectedness of such a specific and odd detail, but I did find myself trying to imagine what he could be talking about. “You mean, like, at a family gathering?” We were sure to have a party once Penny’s baby was born.