Crunch Time

encouraging without being obnoxious—I hoped—I’d happily contracted to do a buffet lunch for the would-be athletes. The lunch would be held out on the track if the weather was good, or in the gym if it was not.

I still couldn’t believe Arch was now in his junior year. His fencing coach had already confided that he’d probably make varsity again. I’d told Arch that I was proud of his accomplishments, but he needed to keep all pointed weapons away from the house.

A moment before the sudden change in weather, Yolanda and I had been joking. How many rich people does it take to screw up a catered event? One, but she has to be plastered. Then a door slammed upstairs. Yolanda screamed as if she’d been hit.

“It’s all right,” I said, puzzled. “The wind’s picked up. I’ll go shut the windows.” Before leaving the kitchen, I put my hand on her arm. “Are you all right?”

Avoiding my eyes, she shivered and nodded.

When I returned to the kitchen, Yolanda was removing one of the roasts from its marinade. When she saw me, she turned her head. I walked around in front of her. Tears had sprouted from the corners of her eyes.

“Yolanda, what is it?”

She closed her mouth and shook her head. At that point, I didn’t know what was going on. I thought, It’s only a storm coming, right? I mean, Yolanda had lived in Denver most of her life. A couple of years ago, when she became the head chef at the Gold Gulch Spa, she’d moved up to Aspen Meadow. So by now she should have been used to the mountain climate. Shouldn’t she?

I frowned when Yolanda sniffed. I wondered if her eyes were watering from ingredients in the marinade. Not likely. Was she mourning her recent job loss? Three weeks earlier, Gold Gulch Spa had been closed by the sheriff’s department. The owner, as it turned out, had been doctoring the guests’ food with illegal drugs. The guy had figured, people will love your food if you put cocaine into it. They’ll have energy, lose weight, and keep coming back, right? You bet they will, until your long-term clients go home and writhe through drug withdrawal. Then you get caught. As Arch would say, duh.

When the spa closed, Yolanda had called me, begging for a job. She said no place in Aspen Meadow would hire her, despite her impressive resume. I’d hesitated, because three weeks earlier, financial anxiety had begun to claim me, too.

Unfortunately, the closing of Gold Gulch Spa had coincided with the national economy undergoing one of its periodic convulsions. Months earlier, housing prices had tanked; then the stock market collapsed. Recently, large- scale layoffs had put all kinds of people out of work. The two restaurants on Main Street went out of business. Unemployed secretaries, engineers, and lawyers began traipsing into the Grizzly Saloon, our town watering hole, asking for anything, jobs as dishwashers and busboys included. The Griz said they had all the help they needed. So the newly unemployed stayed to drink, demanding the cheapest booze available. They peppered one another with questions: Know anybody who’s hiring? Heard of any temp openings?

Oddly, the kitchen manager at Aspen Meadow Country Club had told Yolanda he couldn’t have her working in his kitchen because he’d heard she had hepatitis C. Stunned, she protested that she was perfectly healthy. He hung up on her. Later, I called the guy myself, said who I was, and defended Yolanda. He said, “I don’t care whether she’s healthy or not. I can’t hire anybody, period.”

It’s not as if I didn’t know things were bad. Financial meltdowns make wealthy clients cancel bookings, either because they’ve lost their jobs, are afraid of losing their jobs, or think flaunting their money makes them appear insensitive. I’d made it through the summer relatively unscathed, as people still wanted me to cater their wedding receptions. But in the previous three weeks, I’d had so many parties called off, my brain was spinning like a cotton candy machine. I’d given up trying to sleep. I’d lost ten pounds, and not because I wanted to.

Tom, on the other hand, had suffered no decline in his work. Our local paper, the Mountain Journal, gave dire weekly reports on how crime was escalating. People were breaking into houses, dealing drugs, shooting at hikers in the wildlife preserve, and perpetrating every kind of financial fraud. In the previous month, Tom had heard all excuses imaginable for thieving, drunk driving, assault, you name it. And everyone, including yours truly, blamed their problems on the economy.

Still, I insisted to Tom after Yolanda called asking for a job, she was in worse shape than I was. I couldn’t just let my old friend be thrown out of work when her great-aunt Ferdinanda—whom Yolanda simply called her aunt—depended on her. Ferdinanda was seventy and confined to a wheelchair after an accident. Yolanda had COBRA benefits and Ferdinanda was on Medicare. But they had no income. I couldn’t just ignore my friend’s needs, could I?

Tom had cocked one of his cider-colored eyebrows at me, the same way he had since before we were married. He shifted his mountain-man build and gave me the benefit of his kind sea-green eyes. Usually when I want to do something he doesn’t approve of, he exhales, thinks for a few minutes, then patiently tells me how completely and totally wrong I am. But when I talked about Yolanda, Tom said nothing, which unnerved me. So I ramped up my argument, pointing out that Yolanda and I had been friends since Arch was in grade school. Furthermore, Yolanda had helped me land my very first job cooking professionally, doing prep under the tutelage of Chef Andre, my deceased mentor. When Tom still remained silent, I demanded that he say something.

Tom said, “I don’t trust the people she hangs out with.”

“Who does she hang out with?”

“Never mind.”

“Tom! That’s not fair. Does she associate with known criminals?”

Tom shrugged. Sometimes he could be infuriating. “Miss G.,” he said, “you don’t have a whole lot of actual work to offer Yolanda.”

“Don’t change the subject. Who does she hang out with?”

“Forget it. If she hasn’t told you, then I shouldn’t.”

“Well, I need her. Or I will need her, so I should hire her now. And if she doesn’t mix with folks you like, then that’s her business.”

Tom sighed. “Goldy, just do what you want. You know you’re going to anyway.”

I’d called Yolanda and said she was hired. Tom had not brought up the subject again.

So here we were, on Yolanda’s first day of working with me. On the phone, she’d seemed grateful. Now she was crying. Had she come to regret her decision? That, as Arch would say, was cold.

“Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you?” I asked, my tone gentle. “Is it this storm moving in? I closed all the windows.”

“You’ve been so nice to me. I just—” Her voice caught. She whacked the pork onto the counter and raced to the first-floor bathroom.

Oh-kay, I thought as I moved back to my bread. The bathroom fan couldn’t quite muffle the sound of Yolanda weeping. I didn’t want to intrude. All right, in all honesty, maybe I was a tad nosy about what was going on with her. But I would wait until she wanted to talk.

I finished the kneading, tucked the dough into a buttered bowl, and placed it over a pan of hot water in one of our turned-off ovens. I washed my hands, dried them, and leaned against the marble counter Tom had installed when he’d had to take over the remodeling of our kitchen from an incompetent contractor. I loved my new kitchen. Never mind that Tom had cursed to heaven when he’d put in the cabinets, and never mind that over the past few years, the catering business had encountered a few bumps. We’d gotten through it all, and I was determined that this would continue to be true.

I felt my face set in a scowl. Yolanda’s sobs seemed to get louder. Was she worried about the national economy? I wanted to tell her that I was positive things would pick up soon. They always did, as I’d been reminding myself for the past three weeks. If a caterer ended up shorthanded and missed the wave of bookings that would occur once things turned around, that caterer wouldn’t be doing all those profitable parties during the hectic Halloween-to-Christmas season. When everyone started whooping it up again, I did not want to be without help.

That was one of the reasons I’d offered Yolanda the job. Julian Teller, my longtime assistant, had returned to the vegetarian bistro in Boulder that employed him. The bistro owner always took August off, but once students returned to the University of Colorado, the owner demanded Julian’s time. With him gone, I would need another professional at my side. Eventually I would need that professional. I didn’t allow myself to wonder if or when clients would resume their celebratory ways,