Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [38]
“Hey, Mira, sweetheart, did you enjoy those halibut cheeks?” Eddie says, when I finally manage to get him on the phone. “I’m not used to having my gifts go unacknowledged.”
I have no time for social graces, however.
“Eddie, where the hell is my fish?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s after eight, and I don’t have the shipment I ordered. We open for lunch in three and a half hours, and all I have are a couple of pounds of tuna left from Friday’s delivery. What’s going on?”
“Deliveries went out already. Shoulda been there. Hang on a minute, and I’ll check to see who had the Grappa drop this morning.” He puts me on hold, and suddenly I’m listening to “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid, another of Eddie’s little jokes. In a couple of minutes he’s back on the line.
“Mira, I checked backwards and forwards, and I don’t see no order from you guys. That’s why you didn’t get anything. No order, no fish.”
“What? I put an order in, I have a copy of it right here,” I say, rummaging through the files on the office desk for a copy. And then, I remember. I gave Nicola the orders for this week last Monday when Jake was “out sick.” She was supposed to give it to Jake. Shit. Obviously, she hadn’t done it, and that meant no fish and no meat.
“I gave that order to Jake, Eddie! I can’t believe he didn’t phone it in. Oh, my God. That bastard!”
“Listen, Mira, tell me what you need. I can’t promise I’ll have everything you want, but I’ll take a look, see what we got left, then put together an order, something at least that will get you through lunch. I will deliver it personally within the hour. And you can repay my saving your behind by agreeing to have dinner with me, okay?”
I ignore Eddie’s unconcealed attempt to blackmail me into a date and barrel ahead with my order. “Give me thirty pounds of mussels, twenty-five of scampi, as much squid as you can get me, some whitefish, snapper, sea bass, and sardines—whatever you’ve got. That will get me through today, and when you get here I’ll give you an order for the rest of the week.”
I’m too spent to repeat my outraged performance for Rob, the meat guy, because by now I know that neither he nor Eddie is to blame. But because we’re great customers, Rob agrees to rush me over some sausage, a dozen pork tenderloins, and some flank steak, which I can cook quickly, for braciole.
I instruct the prep cooks to roll out some lasagna noodles and to start preparing béchamel in large quantities. We will resort to a couple of baked pasta entrees, flavored with meat and sausage and, depending on what Eddie sends over, a cioppino. It’s now almost nine, and my adrenaline level remains high, although a plan, of sorts, is slowly coming together. Whether it will be sufficient to stave off the pending lunch disaster remains to be seen, but for the moment, at least, the prep staff is well occupied, and I have a moment to breathe. Instead, I lock myself in the office and call Jake. He picks up on the third ring, and I can tell right away from the background noise that he’s at the gym.
“Jake, what the hell is going on? How could you have forgotten to order the fish and meat?” It’s the first time we’ve actually spoken since that day in the apartment, but I don’t have the time or the patience to feel weird about it.
“Mira? What are you talking about?”
“Last week, when you were out sick, I gave her some stuff to give to you, including the meat and fish orders, and told her to have you add what you needed and phone them in.”
“Mira, Nicola gave me the package, the menu changes and the note about Castelli Farms pork, which I did order, by the way, but there were no meat or fish orders in there. I assumed that you’d taken care of the orders like you always do.”
“What do you mean the orders weren’t in there? Of course they were!” I scream into the phone.
“Look, I told you they weren’t in the package. You must have forgotten to put them in.”
“I did not forget! She must have taken them out!