The Art of Love (16 page)

“He told you that?” I can’t conceal that I’m surprised and, to be honest, a little hurt. It’s not like we’re dating or anything, but if he was going to tip Kiki off, you’d think he’d tip me off as well.

“Sure.” She gives a little sniff. “Like I told you, we’re close.”

I don’t know what to say to this. Maybe Aziz really did send her to help me out. Maybe Toulaine is going to show up to film tomorrow, and I’ll look all washed out and tired when I’m supposed to be showing the world what a great place Bouche is to dine.

Kiki rolls her eyes with impatience. “Let me just show you a few tricks so that you look okay on film. But I’m not promising miracles or anything. Just so you know.”

Nope, still not buying it. Believing Kiki isn’t going to turn around and stab me in the back is like believing a scorpion in my boot isn’t going to sting me. “
No offense, Kiki,” I tell her, “but why exactly should I trust you?”

“
First of all, I used to be a model,” she says, impatience hanging in her voice, “so I know what I'm talking about. And secondly,” she shrugs, “I promised Aziz I'd help you out, and to tell you the truth,” she leans in all confidential like, “I’d do anything for that man.”

“Um
... You would?” I gulp.

“Wouldn’t you?”

If I thought there was one chance in a million a man like Aziz would go for someone like me, then I probably would. And putting romance aside, he’s been an amazing friend, even when I was digging my own hole to jump in.

“The stuff you wear for print or TV isn’t the kind of makeup you’d wear every day,” Kiki tells me. “In fact, I feel kind of stupid when I’m all made up for a photo shoot, like I’m wearing a makeup mask or something, but it’s worth it when you see the results,” she assures me. “
I'm going to be wearing it tomorrow myself, but we don't do it if you don't want to.”

“Well…” I’m really on the fence.

“Fine.” Kiki turns to leave. “I’m going to do it, but if you don’t want to, it’s no skin off of my back.”

“
No, that's okay...” I’ve made my decision. “I mean, I'd like some makeup tips if you want to share them.” Kiki might very well be playing me for a sucker. In fact, she probably is, but I can hear her advice and then make my own decision. And if she shows up tomorrow in this so-called special makeup, then I know it’s legit because if there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s that Kiki would never allow herself to look bad on television.

Chapter 17

I’ve been watching several episodes of
The Specialist
every morning since Aziz told me Michael Toulaine had agreed to film at Bouche. Multiple episodes air each day on the Eat Food Network so I’ve been recording them on my DVR.

The opening is pretty slick. It starts with a panoramic shot of the New York City skyline. I guess Toulaine has a restaurant in New York somewhere, and he’s written a couple of books, so that’s how he got his start in show business. Then the camera closes in on Michel Toulaine posing in the foreground. He’s tall and skinny with a full head of dark brown hair. There’s a voice-over where he says, “
Hello, my name is Michael Toulaine, but you can call me
The Specialist
.”

Then there are all these shots of Toulaine in different bistros and restaurants, sampling various foods. They’ve got him pulling a snail from a shell in slow motion with the juices spraying everywhere. He appears to be consuming the snail with gusto, but that’s honestly not for me. I’ve never been able to force down something my grandmother sprays for in her garden, no matter how much you conceal it with garlic and butter.

Toulaine continues narrating with, "I travel the main streets and back roads of America sampling the specials off of restaurant menus." Next, paired up with Toulaine saying "Where I show up is always a surprise, but I'll definitely give an honest review," is a shot of him walking through the door of a small diner in the middle of a cornfield and the hostess's surprised reaction at recognizing it's him.

The final shot of the opening credits is Toulaine doing kind of a male-model pose where his is
seated at a table with a checkered tablecloth. He looks up from a giant slice of cake and makes direct eye contact with the camera, keeping head tilted slightly to one side, before he takes a sizable bite of the cake. "Only the specials, of course. And a few desserts. That's why they call me
The Specialist
." After that, of course, the big logo for
The Specialist
fills the screen.

I’ve watched so many episodes of
The Specialist
, I’ve got the whole introduction memorized and the theme song permanently stuck in my head. I know what Toulaine likes and what he finds blasé. I know when he gets annoyed with a chef for being too pushy and who he likes to flirt with. It may sound a bit obsessive, but I’ve actually kept notes on almost every episode. When I’m home, I have the show on constantly. While I eat, while I bathe, while I’m trying to fall asleep at night, Toulaine is there, sampling plate after plate of food. It’s amazing he stays so skinny.

I can’t sleep at all because I keep thinking about Toulaine actually showing up at Bouche. I want to make a good impression; I want to look attractive on film; and I really want him to like the food. I know if I nail this, just really hit it out of the park, I’ll be lying on a beach with Trent in no time, trying to decide on lobster or crab for dinner.

I keep going over the menu in my head. Have I chosen specials that will appeal to
The Specialist
? I also keep thinking about Kiki. If she’s being truthful, then Toulaine will be filming in Bouche tomorrow. Aziz tipped her off but not me. Well, if they’re “close” like Kiki claims, I guess that makes sense. Still, do I trust her makeup advice? My gut tells me no, not in a million years.

I wake up and have
The Specialist
on while I eat some cereal and get ready for work. I sew the sleeves back on my chef’s jacket and iron it to starched, white perfection. When I sit down to do my makeup, I look at myself in the mirror for a very long time. Am I so concerned about how I’ll look on television that I’m willing to trust Kiki? The answer is no, I’m not that big of an idiot. But I do take extra time to put on some makeup the way the lip gloss lesbians taught me according to the contours of my face.

As I breeze through the hotel lobby and head for Bouche, Aziz is the first person I run into. He’s looking extra dapper, if that’s even possible, which is my first hint that Toulaine really is going to show sometime today. “Good morning, Sue.” He beams at me.

“Hi, Aziz.”

He takes a few steps toward me and lowers his voice. “Did Kiki talk to you last night?”

“Um… yeah,” I say, “You… uh… You asked her to?”

He nods. “Sure. I mean, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone or anything, but you-know-who’s going to be here,” he says in a half whisper. “Today.”

“If you’re not supposed to say anything, then why did you tell Kiki?” I hope he can’t sense the mild hurt in my voice because I know I’m being stupid.

“I just want Bouche to look as good as possible.” He flashes me a sheepish grin, which I’ve never seen before, and it makes him ridiculously appealing, damn him. “You know what I mean?”

“So you think I should follow Kiki’s advice?” I ask.

“About what?” He squints at me.

“About makeup.”

“Oh.” He looks mildly puzzled for a moment. “Definitely. I mean, she’s the expert. Right?”

“I guess,” I say, but without at all being convinced. “Anyway, I’d better get to work.”

“Okay.” He squeezes my elbow, which makes my arm all tingly, but I’m sure he has this effect on every woman. “Good luck today. And try not to tell anyone before he shows up. I know it’s hard, but Mike gets super annoyed if a bunch of people find out.”

“Got it.” I nod and then take off for the kitchen.

When I head into the locker room, Kiki is there sitting in front of a portable makeup mirror which she must have brought from home. Globbing a wide palette of colors onto her face, she gives a little frown after catching my reflection in the mirror. “Don’t you know what today is?” she says in a stage whisper.

“Yeah, I know,” I tell her, opening my locker. “I just prefer to look more natural.”

“Suit yourself,” she says, going back to her own reflection. “If you want to look like the walking dead for all of America to see, that’s fine by me. In fact,” she gives me a little smirk, “I prefer it that way.”

“Well…” I hesitate while I tie my apron around my waist. “Okay then, thanks, anyway.”

As I turn to head for the kitchen, she calls after me, “For crying out loud, at least let me touch you up with some liner and some gloss.”

***Kiki***

She fell for it. I can’t believe what a sucker Sue is. Half an offer to be nice to her and she’s letting me apply the war paint to her face with a trowel. A very artistic trowel, of course; it’s not like I’m coloring outside of the lines, but it does look a bit like she fell asleep face down on  a rainbow. And she’s actually thanking me while I turn her face into a gay pride parade. It’s so pathetic that if I didn’t dislike her so much, I’d feel bad for her. Why is she so desperate to be liked?

I have to admit, Sue is kind of pretty. Actually, she’s borderline very pretty once you get a good look at her. She’s got the body language of a middle-grade girl with bad acne whose boobs came in early. That alone does a surprisingly good job of disguising her looks. I half want to ask her what her deal is. But how do you approach that? “Excuse me, but why are you such an insecure doormat?” I’m not sure she’d appreciate it.

When I’m all finished, I show Sue her new face in the mirror, and she literally jumps like I’ve jabbed her with a pin. “Oh!” she says. I can tell she wants to cringe but is too worried about hurting my feelings.

“What do you think?” I say casually as I break out some lip gloss and apply yet another layer to my already coated lips.

“It’s very…” she searches around, “colorful.” Then she summons up the courage to ask in a very hesitant voice, “Are you sure this is what looks good on camera?”

I give her a flat look and say, “Just wait until you meet Michael Toulaine. He’ll have a bunch of makeup on, and he’s a guy.”

While she thinks this over, I add more eyeliner to my own face even though I’m already looking borderline like a raccoon with dead spiders for eyelashes. I should have been a method actress. Finally, she says, “Okay, well, I really appreciate it, Kiki,” and heads off to work.

I’m willing to admit that not all of me feels totally good about what I’ve done. But she’s the one that’s been playing extra dirty. And I play to win. Still… Never thought she had it in her.

******

It is so hard to concentrate on anything when you know at any second a camera crew is going to come barging through the door. Plus, it’s not like I can ignore the regular diners. People expect to be fed. So I’m playing this little game of trying to run the kitchen while continually dashing out to the dining room to see if he’s arrived. It’s really turning me into quite the spaz. I’m so glad no one else in the kitchen crew knows, or I’m sure we’d never make it through dinner.

Finally, I see Toulaine parading through Bouche with a cameraman and a bunch of other people who I assume are the director, production assistants, and assorted staff needed to make the show run smoothly. In person, Toulaine doesn’t appear quite as tall or quite as suave as he does on TV, but he’s definitely got on some makeup, and his hair has obviously been styled. As he’s walking, he’s narrating his show, speaking directly into the camera. “Today we're visiting Bouche in Chicago to see what's special about this historic restaurant.”

Bouche patrons and staff are all looking up in surprise as Toulaine strides past, a few of them feeling the need to mug for the camera.
The Specialist
ignores them all, which has got to be nearly impossible to do seeing that some patrons are almost willing to get trampled to be in the shot. He continues narrating with, “Bouche's famous Chef Escoffier made this restaurant the place to be back in the seventies and eighties, but now he's in semi-              retirement and letting a young upstart have a chance at running the show.”

I have to get the hell out of there and figure out some way to act naturally for when the camera crew enters the kitchen. I slip through the swinging doors with Toulaine and his posse hard on my heels. I can just catch Toulaine saying, “
Suzanne Sun is Bouche's acting chef de cuisine, and we've been hearing great things about her culinary choices as she brings the Bouche menu into the twenty-first century and beyond.”

I’m standing at a stove, trying to look like I’m ministering to half a dozen boiling pots, steam rising into my face, when the camera crew and host burst through the swinging doors. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing I didn’t say anything to the kitchen staff because their reaction is definitely unscripted.

“Oh, my god,” I hear someone say. “It’s that guy.”

“What guy?”

“You know, the one on TV. He reviews different restaurants around the country. The Perfectionist or something like that.”

“
The Specialist
?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Toulaine? That sucks. My cousin used to work for him in New York. He’s a complete tool.”

I have my back to the action, but I inwardly cringe, just hoping they can edit that stuff out.”

Like the professional that he is, Toulaine ignores the comments floating around him and walks up behind me. He lowers his voice and says to the camera in a half whisper, “Let's see what surprises Chef Sue can offer
The Specialist
.”

There’s a tap on my shoulder, which I know to be Toulaine. I take a big breath and turn around, prepared to be totally surprised. “Chef Sue,” he begins, until he gets a good look at me and then lets out a startled,
“Whoah!”

“Keep rolling,” says a woman with long brown hair who is part of his crew. She has that take charge tone to her voice that lets me know she’s probably the director.

“So... you...” Toulaine flounders, a portable microphone limp in his hand. “Um...” he tries, casting a worried eye in the way of the director.

“
Cut!” she finally shouts. “Michael?” She approaches us, both the palms of her hands facing the ceiling in that what’s-going-on–type gesture.

Toulaine just shakes his head. “
Sorry,” he tells her. “I tried to make it work, but I wasn't expecting an escapee from Cirque du Soleil over here.” He waves a hand toward me. “She really threw me off.”

I am mortified. I am beyond mortified. I did let Kiki touch me up a little, and she did give me a bit of a tropical fish look, but it was no worse than the war paint she’d applied to her own face. “
This isn't right?” I say, resisting an overwhelming urge to bury my face in my apron. “A friend told me this is the way to wear makeup to look good in front of the camera,” I explain.

The director looks at me, somewhat astonished. “Um
, yeah...” she says, and I have the horrible feeling she’s trying to suppress either a laugh or a sneer. “That's someone you should not call a friend.”

I can’t help it. I’m so humiliated, I really do cover my face with my apron. I can’t believe I fell for Kiki’s trick. It was so flipping obvious, and yet I still went for it. But how did she get Aziz to play along? I thought he was my friend. Why would he go through the trouble of getting his college buddy to show up to film at Bouche and then go out of his way to embarrass me?