Authors: Mary Kay Andrews
W
hen Gina got home, Lisa met her at the door. She was wearing a vaguely familiar looking, too-tight, low-cut lime green T-shirt and a pair of gray gym shorts with the waistband rolled down around her hips, and the words “
POP TART”
emblazoned right across her butt cheeks.
“How’d it go?” she asked. “Did those Cooking Channel guys love you? When do you find out if you get the show? Do you want a glass of wine? I bought a bottle of that chardonnay you like. You owe me six bucks.”
Regina stashed her laptop on a console table near the door, and allowed herself to collapse into the nearest armchair.
“Is that my shirt?” she asked pointedly.
“Huh? I guess.”
“Except that when it belonged to me I seem to remember it had sleeves,” Gina said. “And a neckband that did not threaten to expose my boobs to the whole world.”
“Yeah. I fixed it for you,” Lisa said, twirling around. “Better now, huh? You weren’t going to wear it tonight, were you?”
“Never again,” Gina assured her. “And how do you know anything about The Cooking Channel?”
“Hello?” Lisa said. “D’John called here looking for you. He filled me in on everything.”
“Everything?” Gina asked, dreading the answer.
“All of it,” Lisa assured her. “So, Scott was boinking the sponsor’s wife? Right under your nose? And he got your show canceled? How trashy is that?”
“Pretty darned trashy,” Gina said wearily. “Look, can we not talk about Scott tonight? I am just whipped.”
“Okay,” Lisa said. “Let’s talk about The Cooking Channel. It’s a big deal, right?”
“Very big,” Gina admitted. “It’s what I’ve been dreaming of since I started writing about food. TCC is only eight years old, and they have ninety million viewers. You know Peggy Paul, that woman who does all the cooking segments on Oprah? She had a little mom-and-pop restaurant in Birmingham. One of Oprah’s producers had dinner there one night, and she liked the barbecue so much, she had them overnight ten pounds of it back to Oprah in Chicago the next day. Peggy Paul did one guest shot on Oprah, and within a month she had a cookbook deal with a major publisher, and TCC signed her up even before it came out. Now Peggy Paul has had the number-one best-selling cookbook on the best-seller lists for two years in a row.”
“Good, huh? But your cookbook was on the best-seller list too,” Lisa said loyally.
“Only a regional best seller,” Gina said.
“D’John says you shouldn’t worry about getting the new show,” Lisa said, plopping down onto the carpet next to Gina’s chair. “He says you’re a lock.”
Gina managed a smile. “He might be a little bit prejudiced. Anyway, it’s not a sure thing at all. They do want to add a southern cooking show, but there’s another guy in the running.”
“No way.”
“Way,” Gina assured her.
“Who is the turkey?” Lisa asked.
“Nobody you’ve ever heard of,” Gina said. “He does a show called
Vittles
, of all things.”
“Oh, my God,” Lisa shrieked. “Are you talking about Tate Moody?
The
Tate Moody?”
Gina stared at her sister. “You’re saying you know about him? Since when do you watch cooking shows? You don’t even watch mine, and I pay the rent around here.”
“Everybody I know watches the Tatester,” Lisa said unapologeti
cally. “He rocks. In fact, Southern Outdoors rocks. My friends have parties to watch those shows. Like, Andy? This friend of mine? He’s in my calculus class? His favorite show is
The Buck Stops Here
. And Sarah? You met her. She loves
Kickin’ Bass
. But everybody’s favorite is
Vittles
.”
Lisa scrambled to her feet, went to her room, and came back with a DVD.
“A bunch of us went in together and bought the first season of
Vittles
, and then Sarah bootlegged copies for all of us.”
“I don’t believe this,” Gina said, holding the DVD gingerly by the fingertips. “My baby sister, who can’t even make microwave popcorn without burning it, watches a television cooking show. A show about killing animals, cutting them up, and cooking them. Tell me this. Are any of the recipes he does on his show even remotely edible?”
“Who knows?” Lisa said cheerfully. “He could make Kool-Aid and peanut butter sandwiches and I’d watch. I’m tellin’ you, Geen, the Tatester is hot. Not just hot. Smokin’ hot. Make sure you watch episode three. That one’s my all-time favorite. He’s like, on a boat, down on the Gulf Coast, throwing this cast net…”
She rolled her eyes and licked her lips. “Without a shirt. Check out the six-pack.” She fanned herself with both hands and grinned. “I just totally had an orgasm thinking about it.”
Gina stared at her younger sister. “Lisa, that is the crudest, most pathetic thing I have ever heard of.”
“Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it,” Lisa said.
“I think I’ll pass,” Gina said. “Anyway, I’ve got to get changed and get over to D’John’s.”
“Oh, my God,” Lisa said. “D’John is so awesome. I love his place. And he always gives me samples of the coolest makeup and stuff. Lemme go too, okay?”
“Deal,” Gina said. “Just one thing.”
“What now?”
“While I’m in the shower, you change your clothes. We are not leaving these premises with you dressed like some hoochie-mama.”
“D’John’s gay, Geen,” Lisa said. “He
so
is not looking at me that way.”
“And I am
so
not going anywhere with you until you put on something to cover your butt cheeks.”
G
ina had just turned onto Cheshire Bridge Road when she heard the high thin wail.
AAARRRRR.
She jerked the steering wheel hard right and pulled over the concrete curbing and into the parking lot of a seedy bar with painted-over windows.
“Whoa! What are you doing?” Lisa asked. “D’John’s place is two blocks down.”
Gina half turned in her seat to look down the street. “Police car. State law says you have to get completely out of the way for an emergency vehicle.”
She heard the siren again, but frowned when she couldn’t see any flashing lights.
Lisa rolled onto one hip and held up her cell phone.
AAARRRR
. The incoming call light flashed off and on.
“Here’s your emergency,” Lisa said, handing the phone to Gina.
“What in the world?”
“Don’t hit the talk button unless you wanna talk to Mama,” Lisa warned. “That’s her ring tone.”
“Lisa! Gina choked back a laugh. “That’s awful.”
“No. It’s efficient. This way, I know without even looking at the readout when Mama’s calling. So if I’m at a party or a noisy club, I don’t pick up. Saves us both a lot of heartache.”
Gina waited a minute, and then punched the button to listen to the message Birdelle surely had left.
“Hello? This is Mrs. Birdelle Foxton, calling for Lisa. Lisa? Is this you? I’m getting kind of worried, honey, because you haven’t returned any of my calls all week. And I haven’t heard from Gina, either. Anyway, I did want to let you know that I saw that precious Tiffany Tappley last week at church. Well, of course, she’s Tiffany Dugger now. She married one of the Duggers from Hazlehurst. He does something for the government. She had the sweetest little boy.
I forget his name. And she told me to be sure and tell you to call her next time you’re home. Well, that’s all for now, honey. You be sweet, you hear?”
Gina pressed the end button and pulled the Honda back onto Cheshire Bridge Road.
“Did you know a girl from home named Tiffany Tappley?” she asked. “Because Mama saw her at church and got the whole rundown on her, and she wants you to be sure to call her when you’re home again.”
“Tiffany Tappley? That slut? I can’t believe she had the nerve to set foot inside a church,” Lisa said.
“Well, she did, and Mama got the whole report. You can listen to her message if you want to catch up with good ol’ Tiff.”
“No thanks,” Lisa said. “I haven’t talked to good ol’ Tiff since she got knocked up at the end of eighth grade.”
“Good news,” Gina said, turning into the parking lot for D’John’s apartment. “She’s married to one of the Duggers from Hazlehurst. According to Mama, he’s got one of those good government jobs.”
“She must be talking about Tommy Dugger. He inspects hog feed for the State Department of Agriculture.” Lisa sighed. “Mama thinks that’s a great job because he brings home free peanuts that aren’t good enough to feed to hogs.”
“Eew,” Gina said.
“And you wonder why I never return her calls,” Lisa said, getting out of the car.
D’
John emerged from his kitchen wearing a spotless starched white lab coat with “Dr. Evil” embroidered over the left breast. It was a hot spring night, so he was bare-chested and wearing loose white cotton drawstring pants and white rubber clogs.
Regina eyed the plastic mixing bowl he carried in both hands. She was seated in a high-backed bar stool in D’John’s tangerine-painted dining room, wrapped in a matching tangerine-colored plastic cape.
“Just how blond are you taking me?” she asked.
“Geeeeen,” Lisa managed, from between lips tightly drawn by the herbal mud mask D’John had applied to her face. “He’s a genius. You have to trust him.”
D’John blew the baby sister a kiss, and she nodded her receipt. He couldn’t wait to complete his work on the braver of the two Foxton sisters. Already he’d cut her hair in a daring jagged bob he’d proclaimed was “Metallica meets Dorothy Hamill.” Next up for Lisa, he thought, would be some yummy aubergine highlights.
But in the meantime, Miss Regina was having second thoughts.
“How blond?” she repeated.
Before she could resist, he snapped on a pair of thin latex gloves and quickly began applying the bright gold goo to her hair.
“D’John?”
“Well”—he pursed his lips in thought—“Scott wants you way blonder. This is my own formulation, and I haven’t really given it a name yet. I’d say your new color is less slutty than platinum, and more intellectual-looking than a honey blond. Let’s just say it’s somewhere between Marilyn Monroe in
Some Like It Hot
and Lauren Bacall in
Key Largo
.”
“Huh?” Lisa managed. Her idea of a classic movie was
Dude, Where’s My Car?
Regina sighed. “I think he’s trying to say that when he gets done with me, I’m going to look like a somewhat brainy bimbo.”
“Dingbat!” D’John cried. “I’ll call it Dingbat Blond. Oooh. I’ve got to write down my formulation, because once your public gets a look at your hair, I am going to become Hollywood famous.”
“Cool,” Lisa said. She plugged her ears with her iPod’s buds and immediately began bopping to her own secret beat.
“You’ll be fabulous,” D’John assured Gina, with a pat on her shoulder. “D’John can do no wrong.”
Regina took a sip of her wine and sat back while he applied the strong-smelling chemicals. When her entire head was coated with goo, multiple strands of hair had been pasted to long strips of aluminum foil, and her whole head had then been wrapped in plastic like a leftover Sunday roast, D’John wheeled over a menacing-looking machine and lowered the bullet-shaped hood over her head.
He picked up a plastic kitchen timer and set it. “Twenty minutes till magic time.”
The doorbell rang. “That’ll be Stephen, the takeout boy from Jade Palace, with our dinner,” D’John said. “And he is the most luscious little piece of dim sum you have ever seen!”
Gina shook her head in mild disapproval, and D’John opened the door for Stephen, who, to Regina, merely looked like a surly Asian-American young adult with baggy jeans and a straggly soul patch on his chin.
As the two men opened the white cardboard takeout boxes and the plastic containers of egg-drop soup and arranged them on the tabletop, the smell of sizzling pork wafted through the room and Regina’s stomach growled.
D’John whispered something to Stephen, who laughed and blushed, and the men stepped into the kitchen.
G
ina’s stomach growled again, so loudly she was sure the men could hear it.
Quiet, she thought, patting her tummy. She took a long drink of wine and tried to think of something besides food.
Today, for instance. According to Scott, the taping had gone really well. He was a pig, but he did know television production. Barry Adelman had seemed interested in her concept of fresh, accessible southern food. The prep girls said he’d raved over the shrimp during lunch, and he’d even asked her to e-mail the flounder and slaw recipes to him.
But Adelman had hurried away to watch Tate Moody’s taping before she really had a chance to chat with him.
The thought of Moody made her scowl. Stupid creep. Catfish-frying, gun-toting pseudo-foodie. The idea that she would ever stoop to dirty tricks to win this slot on TCC made her blood boil. And that poor sweet dog, Moonpie, locked up in that trailer all day. She took another sip of wine and wondered, idly, if Moonpie’s invasion really had ruined the taping, as Moody claimed. She really
hadn’t
let the dog loose on purpose, so if things had gone badly for Tate Moody,
it totally was
not
on her conscience. At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself.
Eventually, she put the wineglass down and felt herself relax for the first time all day. Her eyelids fluttered and then closed.
Such a pleasant dream. She was back at her grandparents’ farm in Alma, Georgia. She’d spent the morning picking strawberries from Gram’s patch. She was barefoot, and the sun-warmed soil squished between her toes as she popped the sugar-sweet berries in her mouth, eating nearly as many as she plunked into her plastic bucket. Gram had baked her a little yellow butter cake in the special tin tart pans she used only for what she called her “pattycakes” while Gina picked, and she was just taking the cakes out of the oven when Gina wandered into the kitchen, berry-stained face and fingers and all.
Gina heard the oven bell dinging as she sat down at the linoleum-topped table to help Gram trim the tops from the berries and sprinkle them with sugar. Now Gram was reaching into the Frigidaire and bringing out the blue bowl heaped full of sweetened whipped cream. She placed each pattycake on one of her treasured pink Depression glass plates, then spooned a mound of berries on top of the cake, ending with big dollops of whipped cream, and then just a few more berries, their bright red juice dribbling down the edges of the cake and pooling onto the pink plates.