Mumbo Gumbo (2 page)

“I see,” I said. I was sort of listening, but her point was clear from the moment she began. It was off, of course. I would have to stop the crew before they chopped their hearts out for a party that wasn’t going to happen.

“But really, Madeline, I feel horrible about how this affects your group here. Please don’t worry about the expenses. We’ll pay for the entire party, anyway. We can afford it—I’ll just bill it to the network and send them a copy of the contract. I know you’ve hired waiters and chefs, bought food, everything.” She waved her delicate hand in the air in the direction of the kitchen. “But you will be paid, at least.”

“That,” I said, “will help. Thanks.”

“And since
Food Freak
will still need to throw a wrap party when we come to the
real
end of the season, we’ll reschedule the party. I’ll let you and Wes know once we get our dates figured out, if that’s okay. We’ll do it right next time, too. Let’s come up with a bigger budget. Hell, we were just given a new order for a one-hour special episode.”

This had gone from one party to no party to
two paid-for parties.
“Wonderful,” I said, without betraying a bit of whiplash. “And I’ll get my guys to finish the dinner here and deliver it to your set. You can all
take the food home. Maybe that little reward will help bribe your crew to stay with you.”

“You are such a dear.”

We looked at each other. It was so easy to deal with the little slings and blows when one’s client was a good and generous soul like Greta Greene.

“There is one other thing, though,” she said, pushing her short blond hair behind her ears. “One thing I was hoping you might think about.”

“What’s that?”

“This could be a neat opportunity for you, Madeline. You did tell me before that your bookings are down.”

I didn’t need reminding. It had gotten so bad that Wes and I and our full-time assistant, Holly, had speed-dialed through our entire contact list and called every client we’ve had over the six years of Mad Bean Catering, hunting for work. I even called the Vatican on a whim, since we’d once done a very nice reception for the pontiff’s last visit to L.A. The pope was fine, I was told by Monsignor Reggia. He just wasn’t in the mood to party. Money was so tight it was getting scary.

In fact, Wes and Holly and I had come to some difficult decisions. Wes revised his timetable on the house he had been restoring on the side. He hoped now to get it finished by next week in order to put it on the market as soon as possible. Holly was putting out feelers to her buddies, looking for something temporary. And that left me.

I have a lot of friends who own restaurants. But the food business was suffering all over and the same serious mood that kept the town’s foodie clientele from throwing elaborate parties was keeping them home at
night, eating take-out Chinese, instead of going out to expensive restaurants. Some restaurateurs I know had actually called
me,
looking for work. I had come to the worrisome conclusion that without being able to cook for a living, I had virtually no marketable skills.

“Here’s the thing,” Greta said, using her most winning manner, “would you come to work for me? Hear me out. I will pay you a fortune and I would never be able to thank you enough.”

“Work for you how?”

“At
Food Freak.
With Tim away, we are down to just two writers. We absolutely need another one. We are dying for new material. It’s only two weeks and then we’re through. You could do it, Maddie. It’s easy.”

“What sort of material do you need?”

She smiled.

Wait. Did I just ask that? I realized how desperate to find a job I was when I discovered I was taking her suggestion totally seriously.

“Just recipes. And background on exotic foods and dishes. The history of pasta. Who invented popcorn. That sort of thing.”

“Really?”

“It would be so easy for you, Madeline. I’ll go over all the material; Tim usually did that. And I’ll assign the material into the show script. Tim did that as well. He’d pick from all the recipes and other information that we’d approved and he’d decide what went into each individual show.”

“Is that difficult?” I asked.

“Well, time-consuming and picky. We have to be very careful or we might OD on lemon dishes in one show, or do too much Italian in another. That sort of
thing. Tim is so good at it, he just keeps all the future shows in his head. He’d balance it all and none of us had to worry. I will just pick up the slack until we find him and bring him back. But I’ve been thinking, even if he’s back by Monday, we’re under the gun for new recipes and history-of-food material. And if Tim doesn’t turn up, well…” Greta’s eyes seemed to lose their focus for a second, but then she looked up and met mine. “We’ll just have to be positive. So about this writing job…What do you think?”

Show biz. They always say if you sit by your phone long enough…

“I hate to admit it, Greta, but I’m kind of interested.” Ha! Just when I was beginning to accept the lousy fact that I was probably good for nothing, along comes Hollywood announcing that that is precisely the skill set necessary in the game-show biz.

“Oh, good! You’ll love it,” Greta said. She took a dainty sip of water, smirking, I suspected, at how well it was all working out for her and the show.

I was smirking, too. This was a job, after all. Bills would get paid. And I’d get to find out what goes on backstage at one of the hottest shows on television.

“Of course,” I added, “to be truthful here, I’ve never actually
written
anything before. I have absolutely no experience.”

“Never mind,” she said happily. “Not really necessary.”

Hot diggety dog.

“Don’t worry,” Greta said. “We’ll show you everything you’ll need to do.”

No wonder I love this town.

G
lamour may still exist in the studios of Hollywood, but if it does, it is not wasted on the production staff of game shows. Even if a show has taken but one short season to become the top-rated series, as
Food Freak
currently is. Even if the show has made a household name of its odd little star, Chef Howie Finkelberg. Even if the show has got all of America singing its theme song, “Who Let the Chefs Out?” Let it be known that even if the show is grossing hundreds of millions of dollars for its gimlet-eyed owners, the production assistants and contestant coordinators and question writers on that show work in run-of-the-mill squalor. These workers tread upon cheap carpet and work on ancient desks that have been recycled, production after production, from a time in the distant past before
To Tell the Truth
was even a glint in the eye of legendary game creator Mark Goodson.

I now sat at just such an old dark wooden desk, checking over the questions and answers I would soon be turning in as they came spitting out of the computer’s printer.

“Hey!”

I looked up and saw Quentin Shore, one of the two
regular staff writers on
Food Freak
, his face a fetching grimace.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said, calmly. Only a madman would make the statement so coolly. Well, a madman or a frustrated game-show hack; take your pick. I had only known the guy for a week. It usually takes me longer to get someone this riled.

Quentin Shore had been passing by on the way to his office down the hall. Had been. Now, he stopped stock-still and stared at me. His perfectly oval head contained an overabundance of shiny forehead; his spiky brown hair was clearly running for its life. He was wearing his trademark, just-pressed Polo jeans with an oxford-cloth shirt tucked in. He always looked like this. Even after a workday that stretched past dinnertime, one had to give Quentin a nod for the high degree of just-pressed-ness he managed to maintain. I suspected starch.

Quentin sipped from a super-size cup of Starbucks and simmered with irritation. He was all the f-words: forty, fussy, forgettable looking, and at this particular moment, furious.

“Why?” I asked.

Quentin Shore seemed in no rush to tell me why he wanted me dead, but I could guess. In the world of television production, the stakes were high. Everyone felt vulnerable. Ratings. Each network passed along that particular sour stomach down the line to the folks who created the programming. Eventually this mass of passed-along pressure settled over entire studios. You could see it in the stress lines around every PA’s tightly clenched jaw, hear it in the insistent buzzing of every runner’s pager, and taste it in the dozens of half-empty coffee cups littering the consoles in every overtime edit bay.

My newness to the world of TV production provided temporary immunity, but eventually everyone in this world felt threatened. It doesn’t take a Dr. Joyce Brothers to figure out why Quentin Shore was sputtering in my doorway. When a coworker moves ahead too quickly, someone may become threatened. Every extra square inch of office space—tacky carpeting be damned—mattered when gauging one’s worth to the show.

I gestured to my temporary new quarters. “This office?”

“You’re dead.” He said it like the kid who catches his little sister eating cookies on Mom’s good couch.

I tried reason. “This is only temporary. Until…”

He straightened up to his full five-foot-five height. “Don’t give me that—”

We were joined at that moment by Greta Greene, who peeked into my doorway. “Morning, Madeline,” she said to me. And then to the man standing beside her, angrily sipping his coffee, she said, “Calm down, Quentin.”

Quentin forced his gaze from my newly assigned workspace to turn hurt eyes on Greta. “This is an outrage,” he said softly. “I’m serious. How can you do this to Tim? You gave away his office! What’s going on? Have you found him yet?”

Greta didn’t answer right away. She looked uneasy, clearly not happy to be drawn into such a discussion in the middle of the hall.

“What?” Quentin insisted, trying to read Greta’s silence. “Have you fired him?” Quentin lost a little of his peeved expression and was moving into the area of shocked. “Greta, that man was the best head writer
in the business. He deserves more. He was my friend. He—”

“We’re all worried about Tim,” Greta said, cutting off any more of Quentin’s tirade. “But those of us who are still here are also worried about getting the show together. We start taping this evening and, Tim or no Tim, the show must go on. You know that. You’re a pro. Please try to stay calm.” Greta was, as always, the definition of ladylike petite blonditude. She patted his hand. “Let’s all stay focused, okay? It’s Monday. You’re a writer. Your deadline is”—she looked down at the Tiffany watchband on her small wrist, and back up—“in ten minutes.” She gently shooed Quentin out of my office doorway, but he was loath to budge. “Let’s meet in my office at ten o’clock. We need good stuff.”

Quentin gave a lovely groan and muttered, “Great,” his braces gleaming.

From her spot at the doorway, Greta sent me an inquiring look.

“Fine,” I said, a neat stack of pages lying on the desk in front of me. The good girl. Competitive? Me?

I received a look from Quentin Shore as dirty and large as a landfill. Then he hurried off down the hallway, careful not to spill his Starbucks.

I sighed. Me in TV Land.

I looked around my newly assigned office, tidy if threadbare, the prize that had sent a grown man into a tizzy of resentment and envy. It really wasn’t all that much. But as carefully as I tried to resist the lure of Hollywood’s seduction, I could not totally ignore the room’s quirky coolness. It was like some large eccentric library you might find in a charming old hotel. But since it really belonged to
Food Freak
’s head writer,
Tim Stock, I felt a little awkward sitting among another person’s possessions. I noticed a deep-blue glass vase, ready to accept a single flower stem. I instantly liked a guy who was ready to bring a flower into work. And it made me think again about the circumstances that might cause a man to remain missing for over a week. Something was nagging at me. Some old nightmare. “Missing” was a dangerous word. Was it really normal that an eccentric young writer should disappear on vacation for this many days? Probably. After all, none of his girlfriends or relations were calling here, looking for him. I was just scaring up some ghosts. I looked around the room again and tried to imagine what Tim must be like.

This office was actually two stories high, which gave it an open and majestic feeling. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases, old and dark, hugged three of the walls on the first floor, and rose up again from the second-story balcony. A spiral staircase was off to one side. I love libraries, and this one, devoted to the culinary arts, was exceptional. From its shelves, hundreds of books spotlighted every imaginable cuisine, diet, lifestyle, food group, or exotic ingredient on the planet. I leaned over to the nearest shelf and pulled down a few books. One could choose from the naughty (
Make Love to Couscous!)
to the cosmic (
The Scott Baio Diet for Inner Peace)
to the lethal (
Death by Frosting
) and beyond. This impressive cook’s library stretched high, the top shelves almost scraping the large room’s discolored acoustic tiles twenty feet above. It was that odd mix of great books and hand-me-down furnishings that made the whole thing offbeat. Take the sofa. Does anyone remember the horror called Herculon? That sad excuse for upholstery fabric rendered the
brown sofa in the corner its seventies retro style and posed a skin-burn threat, all in one neat package. I sighed. I was there one short week and was already daydreaming about a little redecorating.

I came out of my meditation on Tim Stock’s office with a start. It was just about ten o’clock—writers’ meeting time. I grabbed my red canvas bag and quickly filled it with a file I’d kept of clippings from food magazines and newspaper food sections. I added a new yellow legal pad, and a folder in which I placed my game-show material—several pages of culinary facts and recipe histories that make up the questions and infotainment bites on America’s hottest new game show. I was only now missing my lucky pen—a Sensa in black and blue—a real beauty, a gift from Wes. He’d told me it would help launch my temp career as a game-show writer if I carried a serious pen.

It still felt awkward opening another person’s desk, but I didn’t want to be late to our meeting. I pulled the drawer open and surveyed the jumble of Tim Stock’s belongings. It was of
legendary
junk-drawer proportions. Pads of Post-it notes were crammed on top of a spaghetti tangle of multicolored rubber bands. Several spiral-bound notebooks squeezed against a sprawl of pink and blue index cards, all the worse for wear. A half-eaten Hershey bar seemed stuck to a knock-off brand clear-tape dispenser. Needless to say, dozens of cheap plastic stick-style pens shared the squalor with numerous capless felt tips. But my sweet little Sensa was not there.

Time was passing here, and I would simply have to make do with a ballpoint from Tim’s cesspool of office supplies. I grabbed one, not terribly surprised that it was sticky, and wiped it thoroughly with a tissue from
a small pack of Puffs protruding from the desk drawer. Handy. I dropped the cleaned pen into my canvas bag, ready to go.

“You planning on being late?” a voice drawled.

I looked up. At my doorway was that charmer Quentin.

“I’m on my way,” I said, as I shut the desk drawer and grabbed my bag.

“Oh, joy,” he said over his shoulder, moving up the hall in the direction of Greta’s office.

Joy, indeed. I had fun at these gatherings.

Just last week, I’d attended my first writers’ meeting, barely able to speak up and introduce my recipes. Greta sat behind her desk and smiled at me, encouraging her new little pupil.

“Go on, Maddie, what recipes did you bring in for us today?”

My first time up to bat, and I’ll admit I had been a little tentative. “I studied the file that lists all the recipes you have used this first season of
Food Freak,
and I didn’t see a show that featured
pasta al pesto.
” Pesto is a favorite Italian pasta topping, but not terribly exotic. The sauce, which is made from fresh basil and olive oil and grated Parmesan cheese, appeals to many taste buds.

“Pesto?” Quentin smiled kindly. “Honey, we don’t do anything as terribly
obvious
and
pedestrian
and—well, I have to say it because it’s true—
clichéd
on
Freak.
Our standards, which I’m sure you can’t possibly know about since you have absolutely no experience in television, are much more sophisticated. Nice try, though.”

Jennifer Klein added quickly, “But personally, I love
pesto.” She smiled at me, a signal that she was not part of Quentin’s vendetta.

“I love pesto, too,” Greta said. “Why haven’t we thought of using it in the past?”

“Well,” Quentin said, muttering under his breath, “some of us
did
make a tiny suggestion of pesto at the beginning of the season, but then some of us were shot down by a certain head writer who found the entire idea of pesto, and I quote, ‘
nauseatingly
plebeian.’ ”

“Go on, Maddie,” Greta said, “what sort of background information have you put together for
pasta al pesto
?”

I took a deep breath. Whatever office politics ruled this kingdom didn’t apply to a foreigner like me. I had diplomatic immunity. After all, the best part of a temporary job is that one never has to worry about “the long run.” I opened my folder and began to read aloud.

“ ‘If you’ve ever driven or ridden the train from the French Riviera into Italy, you’ve been to Liguria, one of Italy’s smallest and most charming regions. The sparkling Riviera di Levante, the coast from Genoa to La Spezia, is one of Italy’s most famous. It features a collection of picturesque fishing villages, the most famous of which is Portofino. The Riviera di Ponente that stretches from France to Genoa is a flowering paradise studded with such turn-of-the-century belle époque resort towns as San Remo.’ ”

“It’s a travelogue,” Quentin commented. “Too many foreign words.”

“I love it,” Jennifer said. “I was in Liguria last year.”

“Please continue, Maddie,” Greta said. She was pleased.

“‘Traditional Ligurian food is some of the most refined cuisine in Italy. For centuries, sailors plied the seas as part of the spice trade, bringing to Europe the exotic products of the Far East and Africa. When they returned from their long voyages, the sailors had had their fill of fish and spicy food. What they wanted instead was fare that spoke of their homeland, made from vegetables fresh from the gardens and farms that cling to the Ligurian hillsides. As a result, the dish that is now most closely identified with this region is
pasta al pesto,
noodles bathed in an intensely green and fragrant sauce.

“‘Ligurians almost make a religion of their devotion to pesto sauce and its main ingredient, fresh basil. There is, however, no uniformity of opinion as to the best recipe for pesto or its best uses. Every village, and for that matter probably every family, has its own recipe for pesto sauce and its favorite shape of pasta to use with the sauce. For example, the Genoese prefer a sharp, pungent pesto sauce, which they serve with ravioli filled with veal and cheese. Many people opt for a mild pesto sauce, sometimes with cream or butter added. In many areas, the preferred pasta is
trenette,
a sort of plump local version of linguine. In still other areas, they dispense with the pasta altogether and add the pesto to their local version of minestrone or to fish soup.’”

“Okay,” Quentin said. “That’s our forty-six minutes, folks. Good night and sorry we don’t have time for the game.”

“But, Quentin, be fair. That’s exactly what we are looking for,” Greta said. “Madeline has given us some charming history of the dish, and at the same time she’s opened up the possibility that our contestants
might have their own versions of the sauce and their own ways of serving it. Of course we can cut that copy down to proper time. We always do.” And she turned to me once more and said, “Excellent work.”