Fry Another Day (21 page)

There was no sign of the Our Daily Bread team. Had they given up rather than wear bikinis? It seemed like too much to ask for. I waited for them to make an appearance.

When everything pertinent had been said, the remaining food truck teams started back to get ready for the day. Chef Art had managed to get a TV crew from Mobile to come in and tape us making food.

“You all remember to wear your hats,” he reminded us before making room for the cameramen.

Ollie and Uncle Saul looked at each other and sighed before they removed their outer garments to reveal the skimpy bathing suits beneath them.

When Ollie removed his T-shirt, I heard an audible gasp from Delia.

She stared at him. “Which one of us is supposed to look better in a bikini?”

My jaw dropped, too. I had never seen Ollie wearing so little. He made Dante look like he'd only started working out a few days earlier. Ollie had muscles on his muscles. He was in awesome shape.

“Man!” Uncle Saul shook his head. “You look
good
. Why were you covering up?”

“I'm wearing a
woman's
bikini.” Ollie punctuated each word with a dollop of sarcasm. “Why do you think?”

“I love the dragon tattoo.” Delia ran her hand up his back from the spot where the dragon's tail ended under the red bottom to the head that was arched back on his broad, muscular shoulders.

“Thanks!” He looked surprised and pleased that we were so complimentary.

I took the opportunity, while everyone was gawking at Ollie's physique, to remove my robe and quickly stash it in a bottom storage bin in the kitchen.

“
Wow!
” Miguel approved quietly, but with a lustful smile that I enjoyed.

I felt myself blush all over—and I mean
all over
. “Okay. Let's get going or we don't have a chance of having the food ready by eight. Uncle Saul, what are we making today?”

He'd chosen a simple, but sure to please, menu. His gumbo was to die for, even though we'd have to take a few shortcuts to have it ready in time. For our sweet dish, he'd chosen berries and whipped cream.

We jumped right in. Delia and I chopped precooked vegetables, sausage, and chicken while Uncle Saul started the biscuit bowls. The berries had to be thoroughly washed—that was Ollie's job.

It was hard to ignore the cameramen. It was already like being in a fish bowl. Sometimes I felt like the camera was going right in my
ear
. Could they come any closer?

I knew they were doing us a favor, traveling up from Mobile to document the race. It was still hard to work that way.

It was just as hard to keep my mind focused on what we were doing. I kept thinking about Helms, wondering how she was doing and why she'd risked her life to come up to my hotel room after she was shot.

It made me feel guilty that I couldn't understand what she'd been trying to tell me. Obviously it was something important or she wouldn't have done it.

All we could do was wait until she until she could tell everyone.

I hated waiting.

The bikini was comfortable as the kitchen heated up. I'd left the back door, and the order window, open. That brought in a fresh breeze. I didn't want to turn on the air-conditioning until the afternoon.

“Okay.” Uncle Saul rubbed his hands together as he finished making the roux. “Let's get the rest of it in there.”

The big pot had to rest over three of the burners on the small hot plate. All of the vegetables and meats went into the pot, and the whole thing started to smell divine right away.

It was a good thing we were using fresh berries for the sweet biscuit bowl and not cooking those, too!

“Where does this recipe come from?” one of the cameramen asked when we got quiet.

“My grandma made it and passed it to my mother.” Uncle Saul grinned as he stirred the mixture. “Now I make it. You know, a man can cook, too.”

The cameraman laughed. “Some men, maybe. I can barely make coffee and toast.”

“It's easy,” Uncle Saul assured him. “Here. Let me hold the camera. You stir the pot until the sauce thickens.”

They switched places, and the cameraman awkwardly used the big spoon to stir the mixture. “Like this?”

“Just like that,” Uncle Saul told him. “I hope the camera is on.”

“It's on.” The other man laughed. “They might want to edit this part out.”

“The berries are ready,” Ollie said. “Should I put sugar on them?”

“No!” Uncle Saul didn't like that idea.

I wasn't so sure. “You know how berries are—some sweet, some not so sweet. I think a little sugar would be good on them.”

“Zoe! You're putting whipped cream on them,” Uncle Saul argued. “How sweet do they need to be?”

“For most people, pretty darn sweet.”

He shrugged. I put a little sugar on the berries and then had Ollie gently toss them in the sweet mixture.

“People eat their food too sweet nowadays,” Uncle Saul said. “We shouldn't help them.”

I laughed at the idea that we were in
any
way promoting healthy eating. “We serve deep-fried biscuit bowls. I don't think a little extra sugar is going to matter. Besides, you know when people eat out, they want things they don't eat at home. Maybe they're counting calories all week except for this one
special
meal.”

“Okay. You win. And I know what you mean. Do I eat too much butter when I go out? Yes, ma'am. I eat a lot of cream I wouldn't eat at home, too. I get your point.”

The cameraman took back his camera as he returned the big spoon to Uncle Saul.

“It's easy, right?” Uncle Saul asked him.

“Yeah—when someone else puts it all together.”

I wiped my sweaty forehead with a cool, damp towel. It wasn't bad enough that the kitchen was hot. I was also wearing a huge, heavy hat.

Chef Art was smiling at me from the open doorway. I didn't take the hat off.

“It's seven thirty,” I told my team. “Time to start the biscuits.”

By eight
A.M.
, we had two trays of biscuit bowls ready to go out the door. We decided to send Ollie out with Delia again. That combination had worked well for us. “Why am I going?” Ollie asked.

“Because you look
hot
, and this way you'll know when Delia starts running out of food. You did it before. Come back and get another tray so we can keep her going,” I said. “At ninety-nine cents each, we're gonna have to sell a lot of biscuit bowls.”

He glanced over me in a cursory kind of way. “You look hot, too, Zoe.
You
go.”

“She needs to be here making biscuits.” Uncle Saul's eyes were on the camera that was recording our disagreement.

“But Delia could make biscuits,” Ollie reminded him. “Zoe taught her how. Or I could make biscuits. Delia and Zoe could go out together.”

“No.” I finished the disagreement. “You and Delia are going. Get out of here.”

Ollie wasn't happy with that verdict. “Fine. I'll go out looking like a big freak in a red bikini for everyone to see on national television.”

Delia lightly slapped his hard butt. “Hey, I'm going out there, too. Believe me, you'll get as many people interested in biscuit bowls with
that
body as I will.”

“We'll probably sell quite a few biscuit bowls as they walk through the crowd,” I said after they were gone.

Uncle Saul nodded. “Like we did in Charlotte. We need to get more biscuits ready.”

While I made new batches of biscuits and put them in the little oven, Uncle Saul fried them up into biscuit bowls. We made two trays—one sweet and one savory—for Ollie to pick up on his return trip. The hard part was staying ahead. It was very different than selling my biscuit bowls back home.

Ollie was back even sooner than we'd expected. “That crowd is like a bunch of wolves. We barely got into it before we were selling left and right.” He picked up the new trays, dropped off the empties, and was gone again.

“At this rate, we'll reach that two-hundred mark before nine.” Uncle Saul was ladling his thick gumbo into biscuit bowls.

“So will everyone else,” I said. “If we want to beat Our Daily Bread, we better sell until the sales stop or we run out of food.”

We barely had the two new trays finished when Ollie came back.

“Is the Our Daily Bread team out?” Uncle Saul asked him.

“Oh, they're out. All of them, I think. They had to get that bread ready mighty darn early.”

“All of them?” I asked him.

“No.” Ollie picked up the new trays. “Reverend Jablonski is standing in one place while the others are around him singing hymns. It's like watching people throw money into a hat for a guitarist on the street. But they aren't wearing bikinis. Does that mean their sales don't count?”

“I don't know. It will definitely take away from their standing. We might finally beat them.”

“Miguel,” I called out, knowing he was standing by the open door. “Will you go take a look and see what everyone's doing?”

“Sure.”

I wasn't sure why I cared. All I should focus on was getting our food to Delia. I suppose I was curious.

“Our Daily Bread is selling bagels for a quarter,” Miguel said when he returned. “I guess they're going for bulk sales.”

“That's a lot of bagels.” Uncle Saul whistled but didn't look up from ladling gumbo.

“What about everyone else?”

“Shut Up and Eat seems to be doing okay with Bobbie's daughter out there. Dante is doing some kind of street dancing and selling pot stickers stuck in a clay holder of some kind. Grinch's is selling cupcakes with the Birmingham logo on them.” Miguel grinned. “The biggest crowd is hanging around the two attractive Biscuit Bowl people.”

“Is everyone else in bikinis?” Uncle Saul wondered.

“Only Ollie and Delia, and Bobbie and her daughter,” Miguel reported.

I smiled at that. “Thanks for spying. I guess we'll keep doing what we're doing.”

“I think it's working,” Uncle Saul said. “How close are we to the two-hundred mark?”

“Four trays. We could beat Our Daily Bread. I know it's a good crowd out there, but selling bagels for a quarter each is going to take a while.”

Chef Art called a halt to the cameraman being inside the Biscuit Bowl, thank goodness.

“Good luck,” the cameraman called out as he was leaving.

“You all are on track to win this one, Zoe,” Chef Art said. “Let's do it.”

“I'm glad they're gone.” Uncle Saul took a tray of biscuits out of the oven. “And this bikini is uncomfortable. How do women wear them?”

I laughed. “You should try high heels.”

“No, thanks.”

Ollie came back again in less than fifteen minutes. It was light outside now, and he said the crowds were thinning. “It might slow down. I hope it slows down. I feel like a piece of meat out there. I'm going to have bruises from people pinching me.”

He was gone before Uncle Saul, Miguel, and I burst out laughing.

“They might have to move out of the crowd and hit the downtown traffic,” I said. “I was hoping we could sell them all right away.”

“We'll do better than Our Daily Bread,” Uncle Saul said.

“I hope so. They're the ones to beat.”

Ollie came back for the last two trays that made our two hundred dollars in sales. “Can we stop now?”

“Keep going until we run out of food,” I said. “I'll go report that we made our goal.”

“We're not going to go too much further,” Uncle Saul remarked. “I've only got enough gumbo for a few more bowls, and there's only about that much left in berries and whipped cream.”

“Okay. Let's do what we've got.” I took the last tray of biscuits out of the little oven and set them aside. “I'm going over to make sure they know that we won the challenge.”

Ollie came back for the last tray as I was leaving. I'd covered my bikini again and removed my chef's hat. I walked quickly from the food truck to the cool-down tent, holding the money close to me.

But I was too late. Sales had been very good for everyone. Shut Up and Eat had finished at the same time as Stick It Here. One of the assistants marked down when I got there. Grinch's Ganache came in after me.

I hoped the “tag” would help us out, and the fact that we'd worn our bikinis. I went back to the Biscuit Bowl to find out what the decision would be.

I explained to everyone about where we were with the challenge. Ollie threw down his chef's hat and stepped on it before stalking off. Delia went after him.

Uncle Saul and I started cleaning up. It was too hot to wear the cover-up with the bikini. I took it off and worked.

“Zoe, you look mighty fine in that bikini.” Uncle Saul nodded to Miguel. “Don't she?”

“I think she looks
great
.”

“Thanks, but it's hard to be a business owner in a bikini.” I smiled at them both. “Not that I don't appreciate the compliments.”

“I'm just saying.” Uncle Saul maneuvered his gumbo pot into the tiny sink.

He winked at me when Miguel couldn't see. I knew he was trying to help me. I thought I was doing okay, finally. Miguel and I seemed to be on the right wavelength.

Ollie and Delia came back to the Biscuit Bowl, and we applauded their efforts.

“I think everyone's done,” Delia said. “It looks like they're all headed for the cool-down tent.”

“I'm glad we're headed home today,” Ollie said, pulling his shirt over the bikini.

I checked on Crème Brûlée, and then we started across the street to the stage and the cool-down tent after everything was clean and put away. I saw Patrick Ferris helping the two bikini girls with the electronic board. Delia was right. It was time to wind up the Birmingham challenge.