North of Montana

EIGHT

IT IS KYLE VERNON’S IDEA for everyone to contribute to a potluck lunch once a month. A serious student of French cooking and connoisseur of fine wines, Kyle once conned three of us from the office into taking a class in pizza making in the private kitchen of some schmancy chef up in the Hollywood Hills. I sat on a bamboo stool and drank the free Chianti Classico and made wise-ass remarks. Kyle was in ecstasy. He just didn’t want the excitement to end. The Brentwood housewives went home with special pizza baking stones and dried oregano still on the vine; I went home with no illusions about rolling out the dough for the man in my life.

This month Kyle shows off with a couple of French apple pies for which the apples have been cut so thin he must have used a razor. The slices are arranged in perfect concentric circles on a layer of custard and covered with a coating of orange jelly that he identifies as apricot glaze.

“Geez, Kyle,” I say, “why didn’t you just go to a bakery? You could have saved a lot of work.”

“Ana, it’s people like you who wrecked the Pieta.”

“Pieta,” I muse just to get him going, “isn’t that some kind of a Middle East sandwich?”

Barbara baked lasagne and Rosalind brought a tuna casserole. Duane Carter’s contribution, needless to say, is Texas chili so bitter and hot it makes you sweat. Frank Chang’s mother made Chinese raviolis and I plunk down a family-size container of Chicken Mc-Nuggets.

Kyle looks pained. “I’m not even sure we should allow that semi-food product on this beautiful table.”

“Hey, I don’t have a wife to go shopping for me.”

“Who’s talking wives? I went to Ranch Market and personally inspected each and every piece of fruit that went into those tarts.”

“That’s because you’re a compulsive maniac who should be treated.”

“What about Barbara? What about Rosalind?” Kyle goes on. “Do they have wives? Or do they put their best effort forward for their squad?”

“He has a wife.” I point dramatically to Donnato, who looks up from prying the lid off a giant blue plastic bowl filled with lettuce and topped off with slices of carrots and radishes that are in turn carefully overlaid with rings of red onion and green pepper to create a virtual kaleidoscope of vegetables.

“Admit it, Donnato. Your wife made that salad.”

“The evidence is compelling. I’ve never known a man who could use Tupperware,” Barbara remarks in her dry way. “The airlock seal is beyond them.”

Donnato unscrews the lid from a fresh bottle of blue cheese dressing and dumps the entire thing in a pile into the bowl. “Guilty as charged. Chain me to the wall and beat me.”

“Very tempting,” I whisper, reaching past him for the Chinese raviolis, which I know from experience are the best thing out there.

At first he doesn’t seem to react. His eyes are on the black plastic tongs he is using to toss the salad; the tongs from the utility drawer in the harvest gold kitchen in the tract house in the Simi Valley, where the daisy pot holders match the daisy towels and the metal canisters lined up by size are lettered Sugar, Spice, Everything Nice.

Finally, after giving it a lot of thought, Donnato calls my bluff: “If you’re into that sort of thing I know a leather bar up on the Strip.”

“And I bet you’re a regular customer.”

Still deadpan: “We’ve been partners for three years but how much do you really know about me, Ana?”

I laugh. “I can see you in a lot of things, Donnato, but somehow leather is not one of them.”

“What’s so funny?” Barbara wants to know.

“Donnato in a black leather girdle.”

Donnato’s mouth has taken on a funny pull, a hint of a smile beneath the beard.

“I can see you,” he says. “Annie Oakley in black lace.”

Barbara elbows my ribs conspicuously and fires something back at him which I am not hearing. His eyes touch mine for half a moment—Annie Oakley in black lace? — then he turns away and I find myself unexpectedly flushed from the groin like a teenager.

Back in the bullpen a phone is ringing.

“I’ll get it.” Rosalind automatically puts her plate down.

“No — it’s mine.” I can see the light flashing on my desk across the room.

The moment I hear Mrs. Gutierrez’s voice the sexy little high evaporates as my stomach contracts into an anxious knot.

“Everybody is sick,” she is telling me. “All the children have the runny nose and Cristobal is hot.”

“Does he need to see a doctor?”

“I don’t think so. I think he gonna get better in a day. I just give him soup.”

I am watching the group behind the glass partition of the lunchroom. Donnato is listening along with everyone else to Duane Carter holding forth. Even with his slumped shoulders Duane is tallest. He says something that makes everyone laugh.

“Did you get the money from Mrs. Claire? I was waiting to hear.”

“No. I didn’t. I talked to her, but … I didn’t get anywhere.”

“How can I take care of the children with no money?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Gutierrez.”

While I am standing there, Henry Caravetti, a mailroom clerk with muscular dystrophy, rolls by in his electric wheelchair and puts a bundle of envelopes into my tray. I give him a thumbs-up. His pale lips stretch into a wobbly smile as he removes one frozen hand from the controls, jerks it up toward the ceiling to return my gesture, and travels on.

“These children are your family,” Mrs. Gutierrez spits angrily, “but you feel nothing. Lady, I am sorry for you.”

She hangs up. I sit there motionless, feeling attacked from within and without. Suddenly it all turns to anger and I slam through desk drawers, purse, and the pockets of my jacket, finding the peach and gray card from the Dana Orthopedic Clinic squashed on the bottom of my blue canvas briefcase along with some warped throat lozenges. Once again I fight the impulse to identify myself as an FBI agent in order to cut through the standard receptionist bullshit but I do use the words “very urgent” and “legal matter,” which finally get me through to Dr. Eberhardt.

“I’m sorry — who are you again?”

I tell him that I am a cousin of their late housekeeper, Violeta. It sounds odd but I stick with it.

“Apparently you still owed her money when she left your employ.”

Cold: “She was paid.”

“She told a friend you still owed her approximately four hundred dollars.”

“That’s crazy. I wouldn’t rip off a housemaid.”

“Let’s short-circuit this.” I feel guilty and deeply conflicted and he is a doctor living in a million-and-a-half- dollar house with a crystal chandelier. “Her children have nobody to take care of them, okay? May I suggest out of common decency, as her last employer, you make a contribution to their welfare?”

“Hold it, Ms. Grey,” he says, making a big deal out of Ms. “I fired Violeta. Do you want to know why? Instead of watching my children, which she was paid very well to do, she was inside gabbing with another housekeeper. Because of her negligence my four-year-old daughter fell into a pool and almost drowned.”

Subdued: “I didn’t know about that.”

“No, you didn’t know, but here you are making insulting accusations.”

“Still,” pressing forward despite shaky ground, “her children need help.”

“How about help from a government agency? I pay fifty-one percent of my income to the government, which is supposed to take care of people like Violeta. People, by the way, who aren’t even American citizens.”