Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [41]
Usually I take a few minutes to look at the receipts, but I know without looking that we’ve taken a big hit financially today. My feet and back are aching, and my burned hand is throbbing. The thought of having to remove the duct tape bandage, not to mention the approximately six thousand calories worth of food I’ve tasted on its way out of the kitchen, make me feel like throwing up.
Finally, at three o’clock the last of the orders have gone out, and there’s time to breathe. The kitchen staff is beat, and the waitstaff has had to put up with unhappy customers and bad tips; the kitchen is a mess, and we open for dinner in three hours. I can only hope that the meat will make it here in time. It suddenly seems so much easier to think of that as Jake’s problem.
There isn’t much in the way of leftovers, so I throw a few pounds of pasta in the pasta vats and prepare a simple aglio e olio for the troops. We open a couple of extra bottles of house wine, and the staff, at least the ones who are on for a double shift, gather to eat a well-deserved meal. I raise my glass and thank them, acknowledging that this was hell, but that today in my kitchen everybody is a chef. I’m tempted to stick around until Jake arrives, so that I can at least watch him suffer, but I’m still too angry. We’d probably just end up screaming at each other, and that might throw the dinner staff off their game. I clean up quickly and leave without even bothering to remove my tunic and clogs.
chapter 10
On Wednesday morning I buy the paper on the way to work, something I almost never do, because usually by the time I get around to reading it, everything is old news. I quickly check the Food section, just to make sure that the nightmare of Frank Bruni’s being in the restaurant Monday was the result of Terry’s stress-induced paranoia. Good, I note with relief, no scathing review. Nevertheless, I’ll probably continue to check for the next several weeks, just to be sure. When I turn on my cell phone after dropping Chloe off, I see that I have two new messages. The first is from Eddie, who was just following up on how things went Monday, glad he could help, and wondering whether I was free for dinner on Saturday night. How did he get my cell phone number? Of course, in my panic Monday, I probably made the call from my cell phone. I delete the rest of the message before I even finish listening to it.
The second message is from my lawyer. “Mira, Jerry Fox returning your call. I just received Jake’s settlement offer, and we need to sit down and go over it before our meeting with Jake and his lawyer tomorrow morning. Give me a call at your earliest convenience. Thanks.” I call him back immediately but, as I expected, he’s not there—lawyers are never there—so I leave him another message.
In typical fashion, Jerry doesn’t return my call until later that evening while I’m trying to get Chloe to bed. I’m tempted to make a sarcastic comment about his returning my call at his earliest convenience, but he says, “Sorry, but I hope you don’t mind if I finish my dinner while we talk. I’ll try not to chew in your ear.” Seeing as it is nearly eight, how can I say I mind?
I’ve watched enough episodes of Boston Legal and The Practice to know that lawyers do this stuff all the time. They rehearse arguments on their way to court, have conference calls on their cell phones during lunch at my restaurant, and scream instructions at their secretaries while clients are talking to them on the phone. They are the consummate multitaskers whom, for the record, I do not begrudge a penny of their six-figure salaries. In the kitchen I’m a multitasker, too, but now I need to talk to Jerry about my life. I need time to digest things. I need to be brought along slowly, particularly on issues of such immense personal importance. Jerry Fox, unfortunately, is a man willing to pander to my needs only so far. Time to digest? Don’t be silly, he’d say. If you don’t sleep, you’ll have fourteen hours.
“Okay, where are we?” he says,