Tough Cookie

come out.”

I nervously made for the hot line. Five weeks earlier, Arthur had impatiently explained that broadcasting from Killdeer presented too many technical problems to go live for all six weeks. But we were doing it today. Although the term for my persona on camera was “the talent,” this talent was definitely afraid of committing more bloopers. I suspected I was the cause for Arthur changing from Rolaids to an extra-large bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Did that affect his taste buds, I wondered?

When I finished arranging plates on the hot line’s tile bar, I whisked back to the kitchen. Thank heavens: Eileen and Jack had finally arrived.

“Goldy!” Eileen Druckman called and rushed to hug me. “You made it.” She had newly short, newly blonder hair and was wearing a clingy royal blue turtleneck and black ski pants. She looked terrific. “Think the boys will be able to snowboard in this mess?”

“When did snow ever stop two fourteen-year-olds?”

In the background, Jack Gilkey smiled bashfully as he looked up from chopping scallions. Jack was pale and thin, and possessed craggy good looks, sort of French Cro-Magnon man. His dark eyes were earnest, and his long, mahogany brown hair was woven into hundreds of thin braids pulled into a ponytail.

“Thanks for helping, Jack,” I said sincerely. He nodded, and I wondered again why Arthur had been adamant that I should do the show alone, without help from the bistro’s excellent chef. Jack had fixed a stupendous dinner for Eileen, Arch, and me at Eileen’s condo, so I knew he was a great cook. Plus he was much cuter than I was.

Ah, well, who was I to decipher the mysteries of PBS? The three of us set to work filling glass bowls with black beans, shredded cooked chicken breast, grated cheddar cheese, and egg roll wrappers. I fished out my script, peered into the dark interior of the larger of two walk-in refrigerators, and retrieved a bag of delicate frisee greens and a head of crisp radicchio. Because I prepared only two longer or three shorter recipes per show, I wouldn’t actually be tossing the salad today, although I would talk about it. Arthur had told me to instruct folks to use the meal’s wine, rather than lemon juice or vinegar, as the acidic ingredient in the dressing. Easy enough, as were the crab cakes, which I had urged Arthur to include. They were made from pasteurized crab, and sent my clients to heaven. Make that my former clients.

“Any progress on getting your business reopened?” Eileen asked, once we’d set up the ingredients so they didn’t obscure the large portable screen where I watched the camera’s movements. The babble of voices from the telephone bank almost drowned her out.

I mumbled, “Not yet,” and scanned the row of chairs set up behind the two cameras. I was startled to see the face and shoulders of Rorry Bullock emerge from just behind the screen. Now that I saw her, what should I say? I didn’t know.

I sighed and turned my attention back to my work. Fifteen minutes to showtime. I still needed to be wired. A bubble of panic rose in my throat. Arthur nodded to me, then in Rorry’s direction. While Jack and Eileen leafed through the script to make sure I had every single ingredient, I hurried over to the screen.

“Rorry?” I asked nervously. “Remember me? Goldy? Fellow church school teacher? Supervisor of kids carving clay tablets of the Ten Commandments?” One of our more memorable projects, the tablet-making had been surpassed only by the blowing of horns to bring down the Sunday school walls, a la Jericho.

Rorry turned and faced me. She was wearing a sagging gray sweatshirt, and looked uneasy and out of place. She was dunking a tea bag into hot water. Her look was unexpectedly defiant.

“I’m sorry,” I stumbled on, wishing I hadn’t tried to be funny. “This day must remind you of Nate—”

“Long time no see, Goldy.” Rorry’s face was unreadable, her tone bitter. She slurped some tea. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, in spite of what she’d said. “Didn’t mean to upset you—”

“I’m not upset,” she interrupted. “Just puzzled.”

“About what?” My question sounded stupid, even to me. I shakily wired the microphone Arthur handed me through my double-breasted chef’s jacket.

“Two minutes,” he warned. “Mrs. Bullock, I don’t suppose we could convince you to say a few words for PBS—”

“No!” Rorry’s reply was nearly a shout. The hand holding the plastic cup trembled; pale green tea slopped out. Arthur rushed away.

“Rorry,” I murmured. “I just heard about the, your, other loss. I didn’t know about the baby, and I know you loved Nate—”

“Nate is the only man I’ve ever loved,” she cut in fiercely.

Why the rudeness? I didn’t get it. My cheeks reddened. Why did I always make things worse when I was nervous? “I know you did—”

Rorry lifted her chin. “You don’t know a thing, Goldy.”

She walked away from the screen, toward the spectators’ seats. Slowly, she seated herself. I gasped, stunned. During my years of marriage to my first husband, Doctor John Richard Korman, a.k.a. The Jerk, I’d seen plenty of his ob-gyn patients. I could read them pretty well. Why had no one told me about Rorry?

Three years after the death of the only man she swore she’d ever loved, Rorry Bullock was nine months pregnant.

I didn’t have time to reflect on Rorry and her condition, though. Arthur raced back and sternly ordered me to test my mike. I nodded, swallowed, and rasped, one, two, six. My tongue was dry. When Arthur moved away, I poured myself a glass of water from the hot line sink. Had Rorry remarried? Did she have a lover? What was going on?

Don’t be preoccupied while you’re on TV; everyone will be able to tell something’s wrong, Arthur had warned when we’d first begun shooting. After the turkey-boning and sauce-spilling incidents, I’d concentrated harder. Now Arthur—clutching Pepto and clipboard—murmured into his headset about the sequence of shots. He rechecked the audio for the six-person phone bank. Then he trotted over and delivered a last set of directorial laws: “Never admit you’ve made a mistake. We’ll break at the halfway point to show a clip from one of Nate’s old shows. Watch the screen, watch your time, but don’t be obvious. I’ll signal you.”

Finally he backed away. I blinked into the bright lights, forced myself to clear my mind, and shuffled through my notes. Do the egg rolls first. On the counter, the delicate wrappers lay next to the glimmering bowls of stuffing. Quickly, the crab cakes. Talk about how satisfying a hot, succulent shellfish dish is after skiing.

On the hot line’s closest stovetop, a finished set of crab cakes was waiting for the final shot of the entree Last, do the dessert. I would have preferred a chocolate treat, but Arthur said chocolate was too tricky with dessert wine. So I was making gingersnaps. The wine Arthur had paired with them cost seventy-five dollars a pop.

Arthur morosely called for silence, then counted down loudly from five to one. The red light on top of Camera One blinked on. I took a shaky breath.

“Greetings from Killdeer!” I began, and hoped I was the only one who could hear the wobble in my voice. “A very special show today commemorates the loss of a dear friend of the Front Range Public Broadcasting System.…” And I talked on about how we remembered Nate, how special his show had been to those of us who’d been regular viewers. Then I gave the phone number where folks could call in, and segued into a cheerful review of the show’s menu.

My screen showed the visual for the egg rolls. When the camera returned to me, I mixed the cheeses with the other south-of-the-border ingredients and swiftly rolled them into the wrappers. I slid the egg rolls into a deep- fat fryer that Chef Jack, hovering on the sidelines, had set to the proper temperature, and we were on our way. If I could only ignore the two cameras intimately focused on me, I thought, I’d be fine. I’m never happier than when I’m cooking.

I launched into my patter about buying crab and mixing it with easy-to-find ingredients. I smiled at the camera, mixed the ingredients for the sauce, and patted rich cracker crumbs on both sides of the soft, luscious cakes. Then I dropped them into the hot saute pan with a tantalizing splat. The phones rang; I gabbled on about food and love going together.