Episcopalianism. The only ones who would be bothered by this, I thought, were the Episcopalians.
And then I began to think about Philip Miller.
One thing I had learned as a thirty-one-year-old single mother: no matter how your body aged, your feelings did not. At any time of life you could be subject to a high-school-vintage infatuation. Another late-teen aspect to Love in the Thirties: you could feel as if you loved two people at the same time.
For seven months I had been seeing Tom Schulz. He was a policeman who had helped me through a rough time when my fledgling business was threatened with two attempted poisonings. He had the build and appetite of a mountain man. Tom Schulz doted on Arch and me, and he made me feel safe.
But in the last few weeks, perhaps because I was trying to block out the specter of the omnipresent Jerk, Philip Miller had once again stolen into my psyche and my daydreams. Eons ago Philip and I had dated at the University of Colorado. Dated? Listen to me.
In any event, Philip was good-looking, well-off, and intelligent. He looked and dressed like a golf pro. When I talked, he listened with great intentness. Since early May we had been doing crazy things like toting backpacks bulging with exotic foods on long Saturday hikes. One Monday morning Philip had sent me ten bunches of gold Mylar balloons. No reason. Before the move, I had taken my morning cup of espresso out on the wooden deck where the balloons floated, tied to the railing, for two weeks. I would sit and watch them move languidly in the cool morning breeze. I would listen to the silky brushing sound their crinkled surfaces made when they touched. I thought, Somebody loves me.
I had pushed John Richard out of my head. Schulz was on emotional hold. I made up elaborate excuses while off on excursions with Philip. And I felt guilty. But not too much.
Now I reluctantly hauled myself up to do battle with cantaloupe, strawberries, and kiwi. What a mess. The social life, that is; I was used to the fruit. But sometimes the Philip Miller-Tom Schulz problem felt like a nice mess. So much better than worrying about The Jerk. I was taking care of that crisis; I had moved. But the two-man mess . . . that was the mess of a glutton. After dieting for years, the glutton gorges herself on Chocolate Marble Cheesecake and Hot Fudge Sundae. Simultaneously.
I showered, dressed in my caterer’s uniform, and reminded myself that gluttony was one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Not to mention lust.
I combed out corkscrew-curly blond hair and put makeup over freckles on slightly chubby cheeks. With tap shoes and a big smile, I could have done Shirley Temple. Yes, slightly chubby, yes, occasionally gluttonous. But in the lust department I was pristine in the four years since divorce. Listening to friends’ stories had convinced me that casual sex was anything but. Unfortunately, no one was interviewing me on the subject of promiscuity. Interesting topic, though.
I made my way down the back staircase, crept along the second-floor hall past the framed photographs of General Farquhar with Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, and tiptoed down the main steps. One of my jobs in this house was to disarm the first-floor security system every morning. I pressed the buttons to deactivate the motion detectors on the first floor and house perimeter. Then I banged open the door to the basketball court-size kitchen.
Well, maybe not that big. But it was gorgeous, the kind you drool over in household magazine centerfolds with captions like
In the center of this vast culinary sea was an island the size of Antarctica. It was a good bet no kitchen designer ever had to do housework for a living. But the task of washing the expansive tile floor was left to the other staff person, a teenager who had moved into the Farquhars’ basement level. For me there were muffins and breads to make, not to mention the stacked fruit on top of Antarctica. I took the smooth lumps of Sally Lunn dough out of the refrigerator for their final rising and then picked up my knife.
“Take that!” I whispered as I whacked my way through juicy green kiwi, fat, ultra-red strawberries, and pineapple so sweet you wondered why they’d let it leave Hawaii. One of the secrets of catering is that you have access to high-quality ingredients unavailable in the grocery store. If you have a good supplier, you can even get delicacies on short notice.
The cantaloupes were luscious, their juicy dark orange centers dense with a caviar of seeds. By half past six I had carved ten of them into centerpiece baskets and used a garnishing tool to give each a scalloped edge. I took the Sally Lunns out of the oven and put them on racks, where they filled the kitchen with the rich scent of baked bread. The last step was to scoop sour cream batter thick with inky blueberries into muffin tins and put them in to bake. The rest of the food was at the school. Once I’d poured the champagne and managed the buffet, the alums could eat while the headmaster made his money pitch.
The kitchen telephone rang. Unfortunately, this was no ordinary ringing but a sustained beeping from a complicated radio contraption boasting three lines, an intercom, and various other functions unknown to me. Two lines in my own house I could handle. But this gadget of General Farquhar’s—he had brought it with him from the Pentagon, I was convinced—had been a headache from the time of its installation two days ago. The phone was like the security system. It needed to be disarmed.
I stared at the flashing light and tried to remember how the buttons worked. Between General Farquhar’s associates and Adele’s various committee people, the phone rang constantly. Who could be calling at this hour? Someone from the East Coast, no doubt. This inconsiderate person would be thinking, Oh, the time change. Well, they’re probably already up.
I lifted the receiver and stabbed at what I hoped was the right button.
“Farquhars?” I said hesitantly, and prayed that I was not speaking into the intercom.
“Goldy,” said Philip Miller.
I was immediately flooded with relief, desire, and other teenage-type feelings. Why he was calling so early I did not know.
I said, “Are you okay?”
“I have a doctor’s appointment before the brunch,” he said. “I’ll be late.”
“We are indeed meeting at your high school, Philip. But I can’t give you a tardy excuse.”
I could hear his grin when he said, “Not to worry. Listen. May I see you afterwards? There’s something about food I need to discuss.”
“Sure,” I said warily, perusing my appointments calendar on the kitchen bulletin board. For June 3, a hastily penciled
“No problem,” I said, as if to convince myself. Philip did not sound good. There was caution in his voice. I said, “Should we get together before your first appointment? I need to be near your office to shop, anyway. We could have coffee at Aspen Meadow Cafe.” I hesitated as the wind whipped aspen branches against the kitchen windows. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk now?”
He said, “Not over the phone.”
“Don’t get paranoid on me, shrink-man.”
“Don’t play fast and loose with psychological terms, food-woman.”
I said, “Fast and loose?”
But before he could reply, one of the other lines into the Farquhars’ house lit up. Through the insistent beeping I told Philip to hold. Then I took a breath and hit a few buttons.
“Farquhars?”
“Miss Goldy,” said Tom Schulz.
I looked at my watch: six-forty. What was going on here? I said, “It’s a little early, Tom.”
“You’re hard to reach,” he said. I said nothing but felt guilty for the latest creative rash of excuses. He went on, “Besides. As I recall, sometimes you’re an early riser.”
I could imagine him shifting his big body from side to side on one of the too-small chairs of the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. I could see him cocking his head, looking into his coffee as if that dark liquid could give
