Prime Cut

“No! Just give me that.” She wobbled across the uneven floor toward me, eyes fixed greedily on the coffeepot. I sighed and poured the viscous liquid into a foam cup, which the model immediately grabbed, along with ajar of powdered creamer from a wooden shelf abutting the plywood over the sink. Andre frowned. The model ignored him, shook a dusty layer of creamer across the surface of the murky liquid, swirled it with a polished green fingernail, and took a noisy slurp.

“I’m Goldy.” I kept my voice low in the hope that Andre would go on with his work and ignore us. “And you’re—?”

“Rustine,” she whispered over her shoulder as she clutched her cup and swayed toward the wooden door. She turned and gave me a vaguely flirtatious look. “Goldy? You’re the famous caterer, right?”

“Uh,” I said, mindful of Andre’s ego, “not exactly.”

Rustine mock-kissed the air. “I can’t wait for lunch.” She raised the coffee cup in salute. The door swooshed shut behind her.

Great, I thought as I turned back to Andre. Instead of continuing with the burnt sugar cake, however, he was penning another sign: DO NOT DISTURB OR YOU WILL NOT EAT!

“Put this on the door!” He thrust the sign at me. “Then we will make our syrup!”

I reluctantly thumbtacked the sign to the outside of the heavy kitchen door. In the cabin’s small foyer, a dozen handsome young people huddled mutely, waiting to be called. Rustine put her cup to her lips and avoided my eyes. In the bright sunlight, her hair shone like an orange-gold cloud around her face. I nodded at the models and quietly shut the door.

“All right, we are ready. You must watch.” Andre moved the iron pan back to the burner and adjusted the flame. “Sugar can kill you,” he warned in a low voice. His very blue eyes, slightly bulbous above reddening cheeks, concentrated on the heating pan. He clutched the padded handle in a death grip. I stepped up beside the cabin’s ancient stove and dutifully watched. Andre’s wooden spoon moved rhythmically through the white crystals as they turned to slush.

“The sugar melts.” The red folds on his neck trembled. “It is molten lead. It is lava. The burns to the skin are deep. Instantaneous.” He shook the pan and glanced again at my scar, then at the lid and towel that lay on the wooden countertop. There was a knock at the closed door.

“Not now!” I called, ignoring Andre’s scowl. The knocker went away.

The thick mass of muddy brown crystals melted under Andre’s determined stirring. He reached for the beaker of water he had poured before starting the caramel.

“Of course you must never use water from the hot water heater.” His small nose wrinkled. “Minerals in the filtering process.” He shuddered, as if the minerals were radioactive. His eyebrows quirked upward as he poured the water onto the pan’s molten mass. A nimbus of mist erupted as the pan’s contents hissed. “The steam, mind!” he cried, and I made a great show of pulling back. Andre’s free hand slapped the lid onto the pan.

“Very impressive,” I said, with genuine admiration.

“My strop caramel,” he announced triumphantly. The dimple in his chin deepened as he smiled. “Now I will make my burnt sugar cake.” The beater on his electric mixer hummed and twirled through the softened butter. “You will tell me about your fight at the Soiree tasting party with this horrible competitor, Litchfield,” he ordered. He pronounced it leachfield.

I sighed. For the last five years, my business—Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right!—had been the only professional food service in the mountain area. And for each of those years, I’d been the caterer of record for the September Soiree, the annual fund-raiser for Ian Hood and Leah Smythe’s charitable enterprise, Merciful Migrations. But now there was Upscale Appetite, and its proprietor, Craig Litchfield, was working diligently to steal the Soiree from me. Worse yet, Litchfield was cute. He always submitted a head shot.

“Dark brown hair, drop-dead gorgeous. That’s Craig Litchfield,” I began, as Andre showered sugar into the bowl. “Women love him. He started the caterers’ version of a food fight in June. Ads, promotions, underbidding. He went after my customers with a vengeance. How he got my client list with all my schedules and prices, I don’t know.”

Andre shook his head and dropped an egg into the batter. “I should have come to the tasting party at the Homestead. My doctor is an idiot.” Another egg plopped beside the whirling beater.

“We were in the Homestead kitchen when Litchfield lost his temper with Arch.”

Andre poured cake flour into his mixture. “How can a chef lose his temper with a fourteen-year-old while he’s cooking?” Teenagers, in Andre’s view, did not figure in the world of food preparation.

I shrugged. “Litchfield’s no chef. He was heating frozen hors d’oeuvre when Arch asked who his supplier was for phyllo triangles. Litchfield said Arch was being disrespectful, implying the food wasn’t fresh. Arch argued, Litchfield yelled at him, then grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the kitchen. I calmed Arch down, told him to wait in the van. Then I marched back and told Litchfield to back off. But when Arch came in later for a snack, Litchfield shoved him out the back door so hard that he actually fell to the ground. I was so mad I banged my marble cake plate over Litchfield’s head. Didn’t hurt him. Broke my plate.”

I groaned, remembering. Craig Litchfield had been unharmed; my son had recovered; the tasting party had been postponed. Litchfield, calling me an “unattractive, overweight harpy,” had reported the incident to the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. The investigating officer had told me I’d used undue force, even if I had been concerned about my son. The cop said I was lucky Litchfield hadn’t pressed charges.

“Poor Goldy,” murmured Andre, as he dribbled the burnt sugar syrup into the batter. Tom, too, had sympathized with my plight. Even Arch had felt bad.

Andre poured the batter into parchment-lined pans. Another knock, this one sharper, reverberated through the decrepit kitchen. “No!” Andre roared.

The door banged open. I stepped back. Andre grimaced and thrust his pans into the oven.

“What in the world is going on in here?” Leah Smythe demanded, her voice managing to be hurt, upset, and indignant all at once. Her shredded black-and-gold hair quivered as she regarded us. Stunned, neither Andre nor I answered her. She blew the bangs off her forehead and crossed her arms. Short and slender, she was dressed in faded blue jeans and a black cotton sweater.

“Well—” I began.

Leah studied me with an up-and-down look. Recalling my work on last year’s Soiree? No. She said flatly, “You’re not looking to work as a model.”

I blushed. “No, I’m helping Andre with the lunch—”

“Then please don’t give any more models coffee! Then everybody wants some and everybody complains about unfairness and nothing gets accomplished. And you’d better move that food outside to the deck. Hanna and Ian are terrified the set will be covered with crumbs. By the way, people have already started eating those burritos. The break hasn’t even been announced! Why did you put out the food?”

Andre’s face wrinkled with rage. “My spring rolls,” he retorted loudly, “are not burritos, Miss Smythe. Goldy! Rescue my dish.”

“I’m sorry, truly I am,” I murmured to Leah. “I’ll get it right now.” Conflict with competitors is one thing. But the first rule of food service is that you avoid fights with clients.

In the great room, I snatched the spring rolls and slid them onto a tray. One was missing; one had been dug into. I scanned the cabin’s interior for the culprits, squinting suspiciously at the scruffy man in overalls who’d moved Gerald Eliot’s air compressor. Still engaged in set construction, the fellow was hanging a snakeskin on the wall between the Christmas tree and the far windows. Next to the skin, he’d hung a weapon I recognized: It was a Winchester, just like Tom’s. Rattle-snakes and rifles. Now that’s what I called the spirit of the holidays.

Leah quick-stepped to rejoin the judges. She, Hanna, and Ian peered dubiously at a sharp-faced blond woman wearing white pedal pushers and a halter top. The woman’s extreme thinness, her bony hips, her distinct rib cage, contrasted bizarrely with her high, full breasts. The other auditioning models were nowhere in sight. Still, the smell of cigarette smoke told me they weren’t far off.

Clutching the tray, I hustled back to the kitchen. Andre was cleaning up his beaters and bowl. I grabbed a clean pair of tongs and removed the gutted spring roll. To my chagrin, the tongs snagged unexpectedly. I carefully pulled them up; between the tongs was the violated roll and a cilantro-tangled piece of … hair. With a silent curse and surreptitious haste, I opened the tongs over the trash. Then I quickly covered the dishes with foil and rewashed