Diane Davidson - The Grilling Season

THE GRILLING SEASON

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON

STANLEY CUP VICTORY CELEBRATION Saturday, August 2 Featuring

SOUTH OF THE BORDER APPETIZERS Layered Dip of guacamole, refried bean pure, sour cream, cubed fresh tomatoes, and Cheddar cheese Tortilla Chips Crudits: cauliflower, carrot, celery, cucumber, cherry tomatoe Mexican Eggrolls

ENTREE Goalies Grilled Tuna Grilled Slapshot Salad Mediterranean Orzo Salad Vietnamese Slaw Hockey Puck Biscuits, Potato Rolls

DESSERT Stanley Cupcakes surrounding Rink Cake Mexican Beers, Chablis, Coffee

1

Getting revenge can kill you. If you want real revenge, you have to be willing to pay. Life is not like the movies. Unfortunately. With these happy thoughts, I measured out fudge cake batter into cupcake liners and slid the pan into the oven. I set the timer and reminded myself for the thousandth time that Id let go of the need for revenge. I wasnt a hot-blooded teenager. I was a thirty-three-year-old caterer with a business to run and work to do. Half-past six on a cool August morning? What I needed was coffee.

You never let go of the thirst for revenge. Yeah, well. Maybe hearing other peoples sad stories sparked thoughts of my own. Or in this case Id heard one unhappy story, one story needing justice. But what could I do for a client in emotional pain? Id agreed to cater her hockey party. A nurse had told my client Patricia McCracken that hosting this sports celebration would distract her from her problems. But whenever we discussed the menu, Patricia didnt want to talk about vittles; she wanted to talk about vindication. And I was as unenthusiastic about jumping into her revenge fantasy as I was about washing dishes after a banquet.

For five years, Id run the only food-service business in the small mountain town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado. My son, Arch, was fourteen years old. Just over a year ago, Id married for the second time. Add to this the fact that Id already sought punishment for the scoundrel whod recently wronged Patricia McCracken. Id barely escaped with my life.

I retrieved unsalted butter and extrathick whipping cream from my walk-in refrigerator, then reached up to my cabinet shelves for aromatic Mexican vanilla and confectioners sugar. Stay busy, I had advised Patricia. ItlI help. Make your guest list. Plan your decorations. Some people despise slates of tasks and errands. But I revel in work. Work keeps my mind off weighty matters. Usually.

Take this morning, for example. After finishing the cupcakes I needed to check my other bookings, make sure our sick boarder was sleeping peacefully, then rush to pick up Arch from an overnight parry. Before zipping back to my commercial-size kitchen in our small home, I was going to deliver Arch to the country-club residence of his cant-he-bothered father. My ex-husband, ob-gyn Dr. John Richard Korman, was the father and scoundrel in question. He was the man my client Patricia McCracken obsessively hated; he was the man I had escaped from. He was known to his other ex-wife and me as the Jerk. Small example of Jerk behavior: Dr. John Richard Korman would no more pick up his son from an overnight than he would beat some eggs for breakfast. And careful of that word beat.

I stared at the menu on my computer screen and struggled to refocus on the task at hand. After much hesitation, Patricia had finally decided that her party would be a two-month-late celebration of the Colorado Avalanche winning the Stanley Cup. But making the plans with her hadnt been easy. One week she didnt care about the menu; the next she obsessed about details, such as how long to grill fish. After many discussions, Patricia had finally ordered Mexican appetizers, grilled fish from Florida (the Avs had beaten the Florida Panthers in the Cup finals and Id dubbed the entree Goalies Grilled Tuna), three kinds of salads, puck-shaped biscuits, and homemade potato rolls. Plus a dessenrt Patricias husband had christened Stanley Cupcakes. I sighed. After dropping off Arch this morning, I still faced a truckload of food prep. Not only that, but this evenings event promised to be raucous, perhaps even dangerous. I mean, hockey fans? Now there are folks who take revenge seriously.

I turned away from the computer. Our security system was off, so I opened the kitchen window and took a deep breath of summery mountain air. The postdawn Colorado sky glowed as it lightened from indigo to periwinkle. From the back of my brain came the echo of Patricias furious voice.

Im telling you, Goldy. I need to see someone punished.

I slapped open the other window and tried to block out the memory of her anger by inhaling more crisp air skimming down from the snow-dusted mountains. August in the high country brings warm, breezy days and nights cool enough for a log fire.

Heaven.

Unless you have to deal with John Richard Korman, I my own inner voice reminded me. Then it can be hell. Perhaps I should have told Patricia, an old friend who until now had loved cooking, to prepare herself for a descent into the underworld. I took a bag of coffee beans from the freezer, then sliced a thick piece of homemade oatmeal bread and dropped it into the toaster. The interior wires glowed red; the delicious scent of hot toast filled the kitchen.

Poor Patricia. After years of infertility and after adopting a son just before her first marriage had gone sour, she had remarried, endured a year of fertility drugs, and become pregnant. But she lost the baby. Unexpectedly, horribly, and avoidably, according to her. John Richard was her obstetrician. And she blamed him for the babys death.

Now she wanted my help. I had been married to Dr. John Richard Korman, she reminded me; Id suffered through an acrimonious divorce. How could she deal with her rage against him? she wanted to know. How could she get through this?

Id told her Id cooked with much imagination when I was furious with the Jerk. But no matter what Id said two weeks ago while booking the event, it hadnt been enough. Patricia, short and pear-shaped, with bitten-down nails and eyeliner applied with a shaky hand, had fumed like a pressure cooker. Shed shaken her mahogany-with-platinum hair and complained that I wasnt helping. She wanted revenge on the Jerk, and she wanted it now.

I took a bite of the crunchy toast and looked out my window at a dozen elk plodding through our neighbors property. We live just off Main Street in Aspen Meadow, but the elk pay no attention to houses, fences, or any other son of human presence, as long as the humans dont carry guns. In July and August the herds move down from the highest elevations in anticipation of hunting season, when hunters march into the hills in search of the huge dusty-brown creatures. When darkness engulfs the mountains, the elks bugling, along with their hooves cracking through underbrush, are the only heralds of their arrival. Other times, you dont know the elk have been through until every last one of the leaves on your Montmorency cherry trees has been stripped. Deep, telltale hoof-prints in nearby mud usually betray the culprits.

A dog barked at the elk and the herd trundled off, leaping over a three-foot-high fence as if it were nothing. I glanced back at my computer screen, but again couldnt rid myself of the image of Patricia McCracken tapping the fleshy nub of her index finger on her bone-white Corian counter.

Everyone hates him, Goldy, shed declared. John Richard Korman and that damn HMO that you have to belong to if you want him for your doctor. I cant believe we signed up. I cant believe I ever wanted John Richard as my doctor. But Im telling you. Hes going down.

And so then Id heard the whole story. Patricia had been diagnosed with placenta previa, a precarious condition that jeopardizes the stability of the unborn child. Total bed rest is usually recommended; Patricia had begged John Richard to prescribe a hospital stay. Shed been denied it.