Mumbo Gumbo
Authors: Jerrilyn Farmer
Jerrilyn Farmer
For Sam and Nick
J
udgment was bearing down on the beautiful Baker sisters like a freight train. The jury looked on. Beneath deadly hot lights, the young women awaited the verdict. They were doomed. Everyone knew it. But we still loved to watch them squirm. Sydney and Marley, the two elder sisters, wore the lowest-cut designer gowns. They clung to each other for support. Emily, the youngest of the three beauties, admitted she might faint from fear.
“Can you turn the sound up a little?” asked Drew.
I shot him a look. All the chefs were staring at the screen of our kitchen Toshiba, drawn into the drama that marked the final round of
Food Freak
, America’s hot-hot-hot new cooking quiz show. I reached for the remote control and adjusted the volume.
“The guys from Jersey killed ‘em,” said Philip Voron, wiping his apron. “Is it too late to raise my bet?”
“Yes,” came the answer from five other kitchen assistants and chefs.
On-screen, the celebrity judges tasted the food that had been prepared over the previous half hour. Tony and Frank from Jersey vs. the Fabulous Baker Girls.
“I’ll take your money,” I said, giving Philip a level gaze.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Another twenty.”
No one knows quite how these pop culture phenoms begin, but at the moment, America’s TV viewers were just crazy about
Food Freak
, the show that pitted amateur chefs against one another in a hilarious sendup of feuding gourmands. Thousands of hot little office betting pools were springing up everywhere. Internet betting was also huge. For some reason, the idea of caring so much about who was crowned the best amateur chef in the U.S. had tickled us. The show was a riot for those of us who cook for a living, television of the absurd. Sort of like the Pillsbury Bake-Off on steroids.
Judgment was at hand. We all turned to the screen. And despite the knife-wielding prowess displayed earlier by the dance instructors from Trenton, it was not to be Tony and Frank’s night. I two-finger-whistled when the guest judges, pop divas Destiny’s Child, admired the sisters’ shimmering chiffon gowns in sherbet colors as well as their mouthwatering take on fat-free tiramisù. I cheered on Emily, Marley, and Sydney Baker and whooped as they pulled out from behind and won the show by only a scant point.
There was some teasing and settling of bets, and then we all got back to work. This is what it is like to be an event planner in the midst of orchestrating a major Hollywood party. I was working in my own professional kitchen, one I’d had added to my home in the Hollywood Hills, preparing a spectacular Mumbo Gumbo and several other exotic dishes for a party of eighty to celebrate the close of production on one of TV’s most memorable new shows of the season, the
one whose episode we had just screened early since we’d be working when it aired later tonight.
We would produce this evening’s wrap party for
Food Freak,
but after this one last party, our schedule was alarmingly unbooked. The great blank calendar that was March loomed ahead. The country was not in a lavish, celebrating, party mood.
“We’re definitely going to pull through this little slump,” Wes said, looking up as he chopped a mound of okra. Throughout the past month he’d said much the same thing, each time with the same upbeat tone. It never failed to make my stomach queasy at how hard he was trying to cheer me the heck up. Wesley Westcott is my best friend in the world and my business partner in our event-planning company, Mad Bean Events.
I gave him a great cheery smile back. Wes is a tall, perfectly groomed guy and you would hardly guess he was thirty-eight by the boyishness of his good looks, the great hairline, or the energy of his movements. He took note of my best smile and looked queasy.
I’m Mad Bean. Madeline Olivia Bean, actually. Twenty-nine. Single. Raised in a suburb of Chicago, trained at the Culinary Institute in San Francisco, and finally transplanted to L.A. Wes and I began our company a few years back, catering high-profile dinner parties in Hollywood, a town that rates a good party slightly higher than your average fish rates water. The top-end party crowd has come to discover that we are more than willing to be arty, outrageous, and temperament-free, a perfect combination, it turns out, to prosper here amid hothouse egos and insane party budgets.
But this town, like every town, has been changing.
People are more worried than ever about the state of the world and what the future might bring. With fears about the economy, our best clients—the movie studios and television productions—seem less inclined to want to spend wildly. For the first time in, I think, ever, the Emmy Awards decided to tone themselves down, banning the jewels and ball gowns. And as for our business? No bookings. Our lack of income was something I was planning to be desperate about just as soon as this last party was taken care of.
But not right now. Now, we had to cook and put on a terrific event.
I looked around. My kitchen is quite cozy in a brushed-stainless-steel, white-tile, warm-wood-counters sort of way, but it is not pretty on the day of a party. It’s a battle zone. It is rather like the beaches during the Normandy invasion, I imagine, only exchange the sand for linoleum, the sweaty soldiers for sweaty cooks. A dozen prep chefs were busy here and there, lifting great pots onto the fire, or shelling fresh Santa Barbara prawns.
And yet, to me, the scene of culinary battle is also one of grace. The energy in a working kitchen is thick with steamy rustic smells, with the rhythm of aluminum whisks stirring against metal bowls, knives pounding chopping blocks. Alicia Keys’s soulful voice wailed out from the CD player and kept the crew lively. With swift, graceful movements, a corps de ballet of white-clad cooks holding steaming colanders zigzagged between fellow cooks rinsing greens, improvising their efficient
pas de twelve
among the counters and sinks and gas flames.
I looked up to see a visitor to our frenzied workroom. There was something odd about the way Greta
Greene,
Food Freak
’s producer, stood at the doorway. Anxious. Almost sad.
“Greta?” I said, walking swiftly toward her.
“Hi, Madeline. What a whirlwind in here. I’m afraid I need to talk with you right away.”
As I smiled at her, doing the party-planner-calm thing, I began reorganizing the day’s timetable in my head, just in case. Wes and I had but ten hours to finish preparations and the clock was ticking. We had staff to brief, sauces to stir, shrimp to butterfly.
Greta settled on an empty bar stool amid the clutter and announced, “I probably shouldn’t put this extra burden on you, Madeline, but…”
Several of the nearby assistants looked up, Wes threw out a significant glance, and I joined Greta, giving her my full attention. A professional event planner hears this sort of thing all the time. Pre-party problems and how to deal with them are exactly the reasons our clients turn to us to plan their affairs. We take it all in stride.
Greta Greene looked tiny sitting at the vast butcher-block kitchen island, the one we’d rescued from the salvage yard and refinished, good as new. She was small boned and attractive—the short-blond-hair-and-small-upturned-nose kind of cute. She would have looked ten years younger if her delicate skin hadn’t begun to betray her with dozens of fine lines—sort of the good news/bad news bargain of being a natural blonde.
Greta had risen steadily through the ranks of game-show jobs to become the television producer of
Food Freak.
When I first met her several years back, she had still been a PA, one of the many production assistants who get the work done behind the scenes. Even in her
PA days, Greta Greene had always been the type to wear pressed linen while the world around her wore faded denim. That morning she was wearing her size-two khaki pants with a neat dark blue blazer, a red silk scarf at her throat.
“This is awkward, really, Madeline,” she said. “I’ve got news.”
I gave her another reassuring smile. I had a closetful.
“The network called me three hours ago—you know, East Coast time. You won’t believe our ratings last week.
Freak
is now officially bigger than
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
“You deserve all your success, Greta.” Greta and I were business friends and, as we both had a tendency to work long hours, our casual relationship mostly consisted of two-hour lunches every few months to kind of keep tabs on each other and catch up. She’d fill me in on all the Hollywood gossip and I’d tell her what hot new restaurants and chefs were about to hit town.
Greta grinned, a little giddy with being on top, while her fine skin betrayed why they call them “smile lines.”
“
Food Freak
is a great show,” I said. I must admit, here, that we always say this. Even if our client produces
When Good Pets Go Bad.
But like most of the country, I got a kick out of
Food Freak.
I especially love it when a celebrity “chef” judge like Britney Spears tells a team that they maybe need to cut down on the butter.
“And, that’s not all the news we got,” Greta said. “The network wants us to do one more episode. A one-hour special.
Food Freak
just got an extension.”
“Wonderful,” I said, but then I stopped.
Greta waited until I fully understood.
“So then,” I continued, “your shooting schedule hasn’t ended.”
She shook her head and hardly a blond hair moved. “I know. The network was actually begging us for more. Isn’t that wild?”
“Congratulations, Greta,” Wes called from nearby, following our conversation.
“Yes, congratulations,” I said as sincerely as I could, considering that I had of course by then figured out the bad patch up ahead. If Greta’s hot new television series was not, in fact, “wrapping,” we could no longer throw a wrap party. I looked up at my work crew, chopping a hundred scallions, steaming a thousand fresh scallops, and gulped.
“Now the hard part…,” she said.
I waited for it.
“…we’ve lost our head writer.”
“Your head writer?” I took half a second to follow this new thread. “He quit?”
“No, no. We kind of can’t find him at the moment, that’s all.” Greta smoothed her khaki pants, creasing the pleats between her slender fingers.
I waited for more.
“Tim Stock. Did you ever meet him?” she asked.
“Don’t think so.”
“Oh, he’s a great guy. Very funny. He’s young, thirty-six or -seven, and single, and, well, always doing some damn crazy thing.” Greta seemed to shift gears and looked at me before continuing. “The problem is, Tim took off. He’s probably in Vegas. He loves Vegas.”
“Wasn’t he going to be at the wrap party tonight?” It only made sense. I would have expected the head
writer of the show to be there for the close of production.
Greta went back to work on her pleated slacks, smoothing, smoothing. She began speaking a little more quickly. “He wanted to get away early, he said. Tim had asked if he could skip the wrap party and I didn’t see why not. I think he has some new girlfriend or other. Anyway, I have been calling him ever since six this morning, since I heard we have one more huge show to do. He’s not at home. He’s not answering his cell phone or responding to his pager. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just left all his gadgets at home and took off with some new woman.” She frowned.
All around us I could tell that my prep chefs were eavesdropping. The noise of chopping knives against boards had softened and cross conversations had ceased. We were all waiting to hear if our party was off.
“Madeline, I’m really in a bind.”
I turned and gave the dozen chefs in my kitchen a bosslike glance and two dozen hands returned to work at a renewed frantic pitch. And why not? The party is not over until the client calls it off. And so far, what with her television series’s runaway ratings and her runaway head writer, I had yet to hear Greta suggest our evening’s party was to be canceled.
“Come on back to my office,” I suggested, turning to Greta. “More private.”
Greta seemed happy to follow me back through the house. It is a sweet old Spanish-style bungalow, all white stucco and arched doorways, which was built in the Whitley Heights section of the Hollywood Hills back in the twenties. It has been reconfigured in a way that I can use the downstairs as my business space and
the upstairs for living quarters. The original old kitchen was small, so I had it remodeled and enlarged to accommodate party-size cooking. In fact, most of the rooms downstairs are now used for a new purpose. The old butler’s pantry is now a short corridor lined with glass-front cupboards. Here I display our growing collection of vintage serving platters and beautiful bowls in bright thirties colors like turquoise and cobalt blue and sunshine yellow, all of which are used for the dinners we cater. As Greta and I passed through, she stopped to comment on one of the rare rose-pink-glazed cake stands.
Beyond the pantry, the former dining room is now transformed into the office I share with Wesley. I closed the door behind us as Greta and I sat down in this quieter part of the house. I took my usual seat while Greta sat opposite, across the antique partners’ desk, in Wesley’s chair. I offered Greta her choice of bottled water, and without further delay asked the big question. “Tonight’s party. Is it off?”
“We need to cancel,” Greta said, with a sigh.
A sigh, I daresay, certainly no bigger than my own.
Greta folded her beautifully manicured hands in her lap, stopping for once the constant creasing and recreasing of fabric. “Things at the office are going to be wild,” she said, “just wild.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It will all work out. I imagine it must be very hard to restart a show that is closing down.”
“Exactly! We need to get our entire crew back—our camera operators, our graphics guys, our ADs, our contestant department…And I’ve got to somehow book studio time immediately, which is impossible. And not only that, everyone on the staff has already
found new jobs. I have to lure them back and that means money. I need to set up a new tape schedule and figure out the budget and, and everything. We still haven’t worked out a deal with our director. My God, Madeline, we were ready to strike our set tomorrow—which reminds me, I need to cancel our storage contract at NBC. And then our head writer is gone and I’m not sure, to be honest, if he’s really all right, but…It’s just a mess.”