Libby watched as Bernie rolled her eyes.
Estes pointed to himself. “And I’ll start with me. Or is it I? Oh, who gives a damn. As you can see, I have a problem with my weight. It’s a glandular thing.” Libby heard some titters around the room. “But that aside, I’m forty years old and in perfect health. Hortense and I have been working together for four years with, I think, good results. If you have any problems, any at all, just tell me and I’ll do everything I can to resolve them. That’s what I’m here for.” And then he pointed to the black man sitting down beside the woman with the long red hair.
The man stood up. He had a shaved head and a gold earring and was dressed in a white suit. A black Mr. Clean, Libby couldn’t help thinking.
“My name is Jean La Croix,” he said. “I’m from Haiti. I run a shop in New York City called La Bon Food. We specialize in authentic Haitian food as well as Creole and Cajun cuisine. My shop has been written up in both Food Styles and the food section of the New York Times. I’ve catered parties at Trump Towers and the Royal. My gumbo is famous from Maine to California.”
Libby suddenly became aware that Bernie had pushed a napkin in front of her. She looked down. On it Bernie had written, “Full of himself, isn’t he?”
“Just a tad,” Libby wrote back as Jean shot the cuffs on his shirt.
“So,” La Croix said to Estes, “where can I put my pans?”
“Your pans?” Estes asked.
“Yes. I assume I am allowed to use my own pans.”
Estes looked nonplused. “I … I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean you don’t think so?”
Libby watched Estes backtrack. “I’ll have to talk to Hortense about that.”
“How can you not know?” La Croix flung his arms out. “Not allowing me to use my sauté pan would be like not allowing Da Vinci to use his paintbrush. If I cannot use them, I will have to withdraw.”
“How precious,” Consuela said. “And by the way, I thought you were from Brooklyn. So is your shop. I heard you got your accent working in the kitchen of Le Mer.”
“Like you got yours from New Jersey,” La Croix shot back.
“Actually,” Pearl Wilde interrupted, “I brought my knives.” And she opened up her backpack and laid a boning knife, a paring knife, and a cleaver out on the table. “I always carry them with me,” she confided.
“That’s very nice, sweetie,” Estes said uncertainly.
“I would like to be able to use them as well. I think of them as my little helpers.”
Libby noticed that there were beads of sweat on Estes’ forehead. “I’m not sure that will be possible,” he told her as he extracted a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his jacket and mopped his brow.
“Well, you said you’d help out any way you could.”
Libby could see from Estes’ expression that he was deeply regretting those words.
“And I have something else I want to clear the air about,” Pearl continued. “I think it might be useful if you moved the glasses to the left of the sink on the set. All things being equal, that seems to me to be a more proper placement.”
“Why to the left?” Jean said.
“Because it will balance things out.”
“You are crazy,” La Croix said.
“Me?” Pearl pointed to herself. “I’m not the one who got myself arrested for—”
Estes hit the table. The glasses on it bounced. “That is enough,” he bellowed. “We will iron out these little details later. Right now, I just want everyone to introduce themselves.”
“When is the divine goddess gracing us with her ineffable presence?” a man Libby recognized as Reginald Palmer asked.
Libby had been in his store a couple of times. It was two towns over and did things like clotted cream and scones with strawberry jam. Palmer did a fairly pleasant high tea three days a week, but she’d been told that the store’s real money came from catering Bar Mitzvahs and weddings.
“Reggie,” Estes was saying when the sounds of “Disco Duck” filled the air.
Consuela began snapping her fingers in time to the music while the redheaded woman sitting next to Jean La Croix started rummaging through her bag.
“Sorry about this,” she said. Finally she pulled out her cell. “Hello, Ronnie,” she said into it. “I’ll call you back later. I’m in a meeting. My publisher,” she explained as she clicked her cell off and dropped it back in her bag.
Right, Libby thought. Now she knew where she’d seen her before. Her picture was on the cover of a well-reviewed cookbook on how to throw a party for twenty people in a half hour or less. However, two cooking teachers who Libby knew and respected had pronounced it not worth the money it would cost to recycle it.
She brushed back a strand of her red hair and stood up. “I guess I’m next. For those of you who haven’t seen my book yet, I’m Brittany Saperstein, and I own Kugle to All.” At which point her cell rang again. She went through her bag till she found it. “Yes, Evelyn, I think you should go with the gold on the walls. Sorry,” she said again.
“Could you turn that thing off?” Estes told her as it rang a third time.
“Hello, Judy,” Brittany said into the cell. “I’ll have to call you back.” She dropped the phone back into her bag—a Fendi, Libby noticed. “There’s no need to yell,” she told Estes.
“I wasn’t yelling,” Estes told her.
“Well, then raising your voice,” Brittany countered.
“It’s difficult to conduct a meeting when that thing of yours keeps going off.”
“It’s not my fault if people need to speak to me,” Brittany said.
“Are you going to have it on, on the show?” Estes asked.
“Of course not,” Brittany said.
“Then turn it off now,” Estes thundered.
“Joe, Joe. It’s not good to be losing your temper like that,” Reginald Palmer said. “Not good at all. Especially for someone of your size.”
“Let’s leave my size out of it, shall we?”
“Fine,” Reginald said. “I just don’t want you to drop dead of a heart attack.”
“Thank you for your concern. Now can we get back to the matter at hand? We have a lot to cover before the show.”
“Which is why I want to know when we are going to get a chance to speak to Hortense.”
“You’re not,” Estes said.
“What do you mean?” Reginald demanded.
“Exactly what I said. She doesn’t want to talk to the contestants before. You’ll speak to her on the show. She never speaks to anyone before airtime.”
“What utter rot. She talked to me before.”
“That was then. Now she likes to meditate and prepare herself.”
“You mean have a couple of cocktails,” Libby could have sworn she heard Pearl Wilde mutter under her breath.
“But I have something to say to her,” Reginald insisted.
“You can tell me and I’ll tell her.”
“I’m