Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance Read Online Free Page B

taste”
extra forks because the first ones may look yucky from breaking up the potatoes
. Viewers truly write us letters about things like that. If there’s a question about whether something is needed, I put it out anyway. It’s a CYA lesson I learned the hard way. On an earlier show, I had to crawl on my hands and knees below the camera’s eye to put a whisk in Karen’s hand when the talent asked her to beat some eggs. It was an okay way to get it there, but I took a lot of razzing from the camera crew.
    I gave an empty tray a number and wrote on the tape “Finished bird, beautifully garnished on pretty platter.” The chicken hadn’t finished baking, and Jonathan was still stewing about the platter, but everything happens so quickly right before airtime that we might forget what goes on it and where it goes. I marked another empty tray “I uncut finished blob, I sliced bread” as well as “bread basket, napkins, butter dish, and butter knives” and told Jonathan we’d need these items. He ignored me. He was standing at his cabinet with four differentplatters lined up at his feet. He had one hand curled up so it made a lens-like circle and he was turning his hand camera from one dish to the other. It’s not as though we had all morning, but I knew better than to rush him. “You have
way
too much free time, Jonathan,” I said under my breath.
    By seven-thirty, things were beginning to steam up in the kitchen, literally. The two fat little chickens were roasting away, and each time we opened the oven door to turn or baste them, thyme-scented steam filled the room. Mae, who was now shaping breads, had entered another zone. In one smooth motion, she ran her hands over the top of the puffy mound, stretched a thin layer of dough down the sides, and tucked it under the bottom as she lifted and turned the
boule
. She repeated the motion three or four times with each ball of dough, sending little poufs of flour into the space around her. Sally had taught her this French technique for creating surface tension and Mae had it down. It was sweet to watch. Unfortunately, Sonya chose that moment to arrive with Tina, who was not as impressed as I with Mae’s technique. “What are you doing?” she exclaimed. “Is that my bread recipe?
Don’t
do it that way. Just plop it onto a baking pan.”
    Tina picked up a perfectly formed mound of dough and looked around for a pan, all the while juggling the dough, and jabbing her long, perfectly manicured red fingernails into the lovely smooth surface. By the time she got it into the pan, it was the misshapen blob of her dreams. Mae kept looking from the dough to Tina as though the star had just snatched her first-born baby off her lap and given it to a mother gorilla. I was glad Mae practiced Zen meditation, because otherwise I think she would have hit Tina.
    Tina seemed oblivious to Mae’s wrath. “That’s all you haveto do. It’s so easy. That’s why I love it. Oh, the chickens smell so good. Do you think they’ll be done on time?”
    “I’m sure of it,” I reassured her, and I explained about the dark color the camera created. She understood.
    “Believe me, I know what lighting can and can’t do for an actor, even if it’s a bird,” Tina chirped. “Let’s light that mother right and shoot it from its best side.” With the exception of Mae, we all gave a little laugh at her movie humor, and I took that moment of discussing personal appearance to mention that we were going to leave the foil off the potatoes so they wouldn’t wrinkle.
    “But how will the audience know they’re cooked if they aren’t wrinkled?”
    I started to explain that baked potatoes don’t have to be wrinkled, but at that moment she reached up to push back a lock of hair and I noticed that two of her fingernails were completely gone and bits of polish were missing from a few others. “Oh gosh, Tina, look at your hands. You’ve lost a couple of press-on nails.”
    “Shit. That’s why I