A Batter of Life and Death (4 page)

Linda waved with her fingers. “Hi, y’all. I’m just thrilled to be here with y’all in Or-y-gone.”

She butchered pronouncing “Oregon” the way most people from other states do—it’s
“gun,”
not “gone.”

Philip next introduced Nina Perry, a vegan chef from Los Angeles. She was probably close to my age and looked like she could easily mix in with the hippie crowd here in Ashland. She wore her hair in a long braid down her back and a flowing skirt and sandals.

“Nina’s the owner of Garden of Vegan, one of my favorite shops in L.A. She’s the first vegan chef we’ve had on the show and I’m excited for her to show you the magic she can do without using butter.”

The last contestant, Sebastian Le Goude, scowled as Philip introduced him. He wore black from head to toe. A long unlit cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth.

“Sebastian is head pastry chef at Nourriture, a French bakery in Portland, Oregon. I’m sure many of you have already heard his name being thrown around. Nourriture was named best new bakery by
Cuisine
magazine last month. He trained with top chefs in New York and Paris before opening Nourriture in Portland, right, Sebastian?”

Sebastian gave him a disinterested look. Andy returned with a bottle of wine and a tray of glasses. He poured a glass for Chef Marco, who urged him to fill his glass to the top.

When Andy offered a glass to Sebastian, he scoffed. “Non, non, it is not ze time for drinking yet.”

Marco stared at Sebastian, as if trying to decide how anyone could claim it was too early for a drink. Sebastian rolled his unlit cigarette in his fingers and gave Marco a look of disgust.

Sebastian’s sentiment was shared by the rest of the room. Marco seemed pleased by this fact and instructed Andy to leave him the bottle.

Andy caught my eye. I shrugged, so Andy left the bottle with Marco who had already polished off his first glass.

“Jules, would you stand, please?” Philip extended his hand in my direction.

Heat burned on my cheeks as I pushed back my chair and rose.

“Jules Capshaw, owner of this adorable shop, Treat, has graciously agreed to take a recently vacated spot.”

“It’s
Torte,
” I said.

“Right. Right. Torte. She’ll be our final contestant this season. I know you all have been sampling her products, and I’m sure you’ll agree she’ll be a great addition to the show. She might need her own show. A pastry chef who looks even better than her sweets—whew, that could bring up our male demographic.”

I caught Richard Lord’s eye. His face looked as red as mine felt. Lance sat back with his arms folded, grinning ear to ear, and my team all gathered behind the counter looked wide-eyed. Andy gave me a thumbs-up. What had I got myself into? Maybe I should have trusted my initial instinct.

Sebastian cleared his throat and addressed Philip like I wasn’t in the room. “She is not a professional chef, non? She is a home baker.”

“I assure you, she’s a professionally trained chef. She went to culinary school in New York and rose to fame on a world-class cruise ship before returning here to her hometown of Ashland.” He turned to me. “Did I get that right, Jules?”

“Pretty much.” I sat down.

Lance leaned in. “What’s with the uptight Frenchie?”

“No idea.” I could feel Sebastian’s eyes on me.

“He must have tried one of your croissants and is sweating it.” Lance nudged my waist.

“Right.” I laughed. “That’s definitely it.”

Philip scanned his phone. “One last intro. Where’s Elliot?”

A young guy, who I’d peg to be in his mid-twenties, with a flashy Hollywood smile and perfectly spiked hair, made to look tousled, jumped to his feet. “Hey, hey, Ashland, happy to be here.” He made a clicking sound and shot imaginary guns with both hands.

“You all know the Pastry Channel’s golden boy, Elliot Cool,” Philip said with a pained smile. “We’re thrilled to have Elliot on board as this season’s host. He’s got his own lineup of shows. The network had to pull some strings to get him here.”

Elliot gave Philip another click of his finger gun. “That’s right. I’m happy to be here. Happy to sign autographs, take photos.” He passed around glossy headshots and brochures to each table. “Check out my Pastry Pop-Ups online. We’re doing cra-zie things with pastry, man.”

I glanced at a brochure. Elliot’s shops had a disco vibe with neon-colored cupcake displays, strobe lights, and desserts constructed in funky geometric shapes.

Behind the counter I watched Stephanie flush as Elliot wound his way in her direction. She handed Andy her phone so that she could pose with Elliot. While Andy clicked shots of her and the Pastry Channel star, Sterling looked less than pleased and busied himself wiping down the already spotless counter.

“I love your shows.” Stephanie twisted her hair around her finger. “I’ve been watching them to get some ideas for working here.”

“Nice. That’s awesome. We should hang out while I’m in town. I can give you some tips and stuff.”

“Sure.” Stephanie tried to act nonchalant.

Marco polished off the bottle of wine and began to sway slightly as Philip explained how the production schedule would work, kitchen assignments, and how the first challenge was to create a custom layer cake for the first round of judging, which would start tomorrow.

“We’ll be shooting the introduction on set, so I need you to deliver your cakes directly to the theater. After tomorrow, my camera crew will be following you all over town, and getting footage of you at work in each of your respective kitchens,” Philip said.

Nina and Sebastian would both be sharing the Merry Windsor’s kitchen—it was bigger than ours, since Richard’s staff serves full meals in the hotel’s dining room in addition to serving coffee and pastries at the newly added espresso bar. Not that anyone actually bakes in that kitchen. Richard’s idea of morning treats are dry, store-bought muffins with little to no flavor. Not that I’m biased or anything.

Linda would be working at OSF with Lance. That left us stuck with the inebriated Chef Marco. How was this guy in any shape to bake?

Lance offered words of consolation as he looped arms with Linda and escorted her outside. Richard Lord snarled, “Good luck with the drunk, darling,” and left with Sebastian and Nina on his heels.

Philip asked me to wait for a moment and went over to Marco’s table. I couldn’t hear what he said, but his body language made it evident that he was not happy with the chef.

While I waited for Philip, I told the rest of the staff to call it an afternoon. They’d managed to clean all the trays and dishes, and the workspace in the back gleamed. Stephanie chatted with Elliot and offered to show him around town. Sterling zipped up his hoodie and took off with his skateboard under his arm.

“Is everything okay with him?” I asked Andy as he positioned a Southern Oregon football cap on his head and plugged headphones into his phone.

“He’s cool. Jealous, but cool.”

“I didn’t know Stephanie had such a crush.”

Andy tucked the headphones around his neck. “Maybe she doesn’t. You know what my mom says—absence makes the heart grow fonder.” He stuck the headphones into his ears. “Catch ya tomorrow, boss.”

I thought about his words as I watched him walk across the plaza. His analogy didn’t quite work since Stephanie wasn’t actually absent.

I knew something about absence. It had been almost four months since I’d last seen Carlos. In some ways it felt like yesterday. If I tried, I could smell his musky aftershave and the scent of garlic and onions on his skin and hear his Spanish accent whispering my name. Usually I don’t try. When I returned home, we made a deal that we wouldn’t talk until the new year. I was sticking to my end of that deal. He’d broken my heart, but I wasn’t broken anymore. I needed this time in Ashland to cocoon myself and figure out what was next. If I kept running the loop of our relationship in my head, I’d never be able to move on.

Moving on was what I needed to do now. I hoped I hadn’t taken on too much by agreeing to be a contestant. Philip promised to return first thing in the morning with a new contract for me to sign. He dragged Marco to his hotel room at the Merry Windsor to sleep it off.

Time for me to start baking.

Chapter Four

I may have taken on too much, I thought the next morning as I glanced around Torte. The dining room was packed with locals who had come in for news about
Take the Cake
. I’d spent most of the night working on my entry for the competition—a triple-layer Bavarian chocolate cake.

Marco arrived looking disheveled sometime after noon. He looked like he’d slept in his chef’s coat. The little hair he had was matted to his forehead and he reeked of booze.

Andy asked me if he was still drunk. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say yes. He kept taking swigs from a half-full bottle of absinthe that he unsuccessfully tried to disguise under a dish towel.

We were due at the Black Swan Theater in two hours to start shooting the first segment of the show. Philip had explained that all of the judging would be done on the set, but since this was a “boutique” show part of the appeal was giving viewers at home an insider’s look into a busy professional kitchen. Opening Torte to Philip’s camera crew was fine with me, but having Marco share our space was a disaster. He’d been ordering my staff around, demanding they help him with his entry. That wasn’t part of the deal.

Regardless of whether I was a contestant on the show or not, our contract with the Pastry Channel spelled out that we were to provide the visiting chefs a functional workspace and nothing more.

I reminded Marco of this fact more than once, and had to jump in when he started berating Stephanie for not bringing him the proper flour. He clutched his worn notebook like it contained the arm code for a nuclear weapon.

“This could be a long week, guys.” I huddled the team together when Marco stepped outside for a break, which was probably code for pulling out the bottle of liquor. “I know he’s being demanding. Trust me, I’m used to working with chefs like this. If he bothers you, come get me. I’ll step in. Just try to focus on your tasks for Torte as much as you can.”

Sterling craned his neck toward the windows to steal a look at the chef. “That dude is a celebrity chef? Right. Only if he met his celebrity clients in rehab.”

Everyone chuckled. “Once you get to his level, he probably has a whole team of sous-chefs doing all the work for him,” I said.

“I’d say your odds of winning this thing are looking better by the minute, boss,” Andy chimed in. “He’s not even gonna be upright by the time you start rolling. Plus, have you seen that mess of a cake he’s working on—disaster.”

Stephanie twirled a strand of purple hair around her finger. “Total disaster. I wonder what Elliot’s going to think.”

Sterling’s jaw stiffened. “I better get back to the front. I see a couple OSF people heading this way.”

“Just remember, let me be the bad guy, okay?”

Everyone agreed and returned to their stations. I tried to placate Marco as much as I could. Andy was right. Marco was already in bad shape. He slurred his words and nearly fell over twice. His cake looked like something a first-grader put together. The tiers were uneven, the frosting looked way too thick, and the piping work was a joke.

Comparing our entries side by side I knew mine would win in an instant. My four-layer cake sat perfectly round and level. I’d frosted it in a dark chocolate icing and piped it with white French buttercream. Each layer showcased a different style of piping. I was pleased with the final result. As to how it would stack up against the other competitors I wasn’t sure, but Chef Marco’s cake wouldn’t win at a grade-school bake-off.

We packed up our cakes late in the afternoon to trek up the hill to the Black Swan Theater. Andy stayed behind to close up shop. I was worried that neither Marco nor his cake would make it up Pioneer Street to “the bricks.” That’s what we call the large courtyard in front of the theaters.

Somehow Marco managed to stumble up the steep sidewalk to the Black Swan. The smallest theater in the OSF complex, it’s used by the company for workshops and classes and as a space for writers and actors to test new material. Philip’s crew had transformed the space for the show.

Huge banners reading
TAKE THE CAKE
hung from the ceiling, and lighting and screens were angled toward the set, a temporary kitchen complete with appliances—none of which actually worked. Thanks to the magic of television, viewers at home would never know.

Elliot Cool paced back and forth, speaking into a lapel mic. He spotted us and flashed me a toothy smile. His smile evaporated as Marco wobbled in behind me, nearly knocking me and my cake off my feet.

He stormed over to Marco. “Man, no! You are not messed up again. This is ridic. Where’s Philip?”

Marco’s response ran together in one long unintelligible sentence.

Elliot tapped his foot and scanned the room. He yelled to the lighting and sound crew. “Where’s Philip? Someone needs to get him now.”

Marco rocked unsteadily from side to side, his sloppy cake tilting with him. It reminded me of trying to move during heavy seas on the cruise ship.

“Can I put this down somewhere?” I asked Elliot, nodding toward my cake.

Elliot glared at Marco. “You stay right there. Jules, follow me.”

I readjusted my cake and tagged behind Elliot, who showed me where to place my cake for filming.

“He’s wasted.” Elliot’s over-the-top smile disappeared. “I told Philip this would happen.”

“What do you mean?” I had to shield my eyes from the lights positioned on the kitchen.

Elliot pulled me away from the glare. “He’s messed up all the time. Philip knows it but for some idiotic reason won’t cut him.”

“Why would Philip want to keep Marco on the show if he knows that Marco’s a drunk?”

Elliot shrugged. “Ask Philip.” He waved to a woman with a makeup bag slung over her shoulder. “You ready for me?”

She shook her head and pointed at me. “Nope. Her. You’re Jules, right?”

“Right.” I looked at Elliot.