On the Right Side of a Dream Read Online Free

On the Right Side of a Dream
Book: On the Right Side of a Dream Read Online Free
Author: Sheila Williams
Tags: Fiction
Pages:
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high-class lady as they are.”
    This is a man who looks at me through rose-colored bifocals, no doubt about it.
    There’s a fish fork?
    “OK, OK, I’ll go,” I agreed, just to get him to stop picking at me. “But what kind of food does he serve? Real food, or will I have to stop at McDonald’s afterward?”
    At that comment, Jess looked sheepish.
    “Oh. Uh. Well, yeah, you might want to do that. Yancey’s a great chef but he does belong to the ‘less is more if it’s beautifully arranged on the plate’ school.”
    Just as long as he didn’t use shitty, I mean, shitake mushrooms,
I thought.
    Yancey’s is tucked away on a side street just off Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It is a place that is 180 degrees different from Jess’s diner. It has a wine cellar, a huge glass-paneled bar, and a place where folks can smoke cigars, men
and
women. You have to call a month ahead to get a table because it is a place to be seen and to see (or something like that). But, thanks to Jess, Peaches and I didn’t need a reservation and we got the best table in the place.
    Yancey Carl is a West Virginia boy who served with SSG Jess A. Gardiner’s unit in 1966. He was pulled onto a chopper by that stone-faced sergeant after he took shots in the leg and abdomen. There isn’t anything Yancey wouldn’t do for Jess.
    “Almost fell off my stool when I got the phone call,” Yancey told us. He seated us himself, served our drinks, and now sat at the table shooting the breeze despite the frantic waving of a familiar-looking woman across the aisle who was trying to get his attention. Peaches’s eyes were huge. And she was . . . pointing.
    “Juanita, isn’t that . . . ?”
    I swatted her hand down. Sometimes, Peaches is not cool at all. It was what’s-her-name from one of those TV shows that I don’t watch.
    “How is the old sergeant?” Yancey asked.
    “Still growls a little,” I told him.
    Peaches looked doubtful.
    “No, he growls
a lot,
” she corrected me. Now Peaches was trying to sneak a peek at whoever-that-woman-was without looking like she was trying to sneak a peek. That didn’t work either. Peaches is a lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them.
    Yancey enjoyed hearing that.
    “Yeah, he usta growl at me, too. I sure miss him. Have to get out your way someday.” He looked around at the busy restaurant now filling up with patrons. “When things settle down. If they ever do.” He pointed out some items on the menu and made a few recommendations. “Pick what you want; it’s on the house. If it weren’t for the sergeant, I wouldn’t be here to cook up these fancy smantzy dishes. My momma says I’ve come a long way from sausage gravy and watercress greens. Oh! Save some room for dessert. Wendy Stern is my pastry chef and she’s A-plus.”
    The wine was good. (Peaches says it was “great” but she knows a lot more wine than I do. My experience is limited to Boone’s Farm.) And the food was good, too. What there was of it.
    Jess was right. Yancey cooks from the less-is-more-just-add-a-sprig-of-parsley-or-rosemary school. There was a nice, round, thin (≴thin” was the most important word here) slice (only one) of rare (extremely rare, so rare that it was scary) roast beef resting in a pool of
au jus
(I know about “oh juices” now), along with finely chopped scallions (I call ’em “green onions”), and a nice, large,
very
green piece of parsley. Think Emerald City green. A teaspoon of garlic mashed potatoes (What is the point of just a teaspoon of mashed potatoes? That’s hardly worth the effort!). Oh, and two beautifully cut (and very thin) strips of carrot.
    I looked at my plate. Peaches looked at hers as if it was a plate of gold, said, “Hmmm . . . maybe I should have ordered two . . . ,” and dug in, using both hands. I looked back at my plate.
    From over my shoulder, I heard Yancey say, “Is something wrong, Juanita?”
    I am not an herbivore. I do eat meat. I just don’t want to eat it
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