“No trip.” Eve waved the paper. “And you won’t need to take any time off from work. This is in the evening. Every evening for ten evenings, starting this Monday.”
“A book discussion group.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “You know better than that! A girl with my busy social schedule doesn’t have time to read.”
“A visit to a spa.”
“For ten days in a row? Don’t I wish!”
“Then what?” I drummed my fingers on the table, annoyed and, I admit, intrigued in spite of myself. “Oh, I know. It’s Peter’s new address. That place he bought with Mindy or Mandy or whatever her name is. We’re going to stake out the house, wait until he leaves one night, jump out of the bushes, and-”
“Now, now. Remember: acceptance.” Eve tapped my arm with the paper. “This,” she said, “is my receipt. Enrollment for two. You and me, honey, we’re taking a cooking class.”
I would have laughed if there was anything funny about it. Instead, I aimed a laser look in Eve’s direction. Sometimes that could get through to her.
This time, it didn’t.
“Earth to Eve!” I waved my hands in the air. “Do I need to remind you? You live on carry-out Chinese. And me?” I looked over my shoulder at my ruined saucepan. “I can’t even boil water!”
“All the more reason to take the class.” She set down the paper and swept her things off the table and back into her purse.
I took the opportunity to scoop up the receipt and look it over. “Ten Nights to the Perfect Ten-Course Meal,” it said, right above the part that said the class would be held at Très Bonne Cuisine.
I knew the place, all right. Fancy-schmantzy kitchen shop on the ground floor, upscale cooking school above. It was in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, one of those rare spots in town where old storefronts stood in unexpected but peaceful coexistence with million-dollar condos, trendy boutiques, and restaurants with sidewalk cafés out their front doors.
I knew the place well, but not because I was a social climber. Très Bonne Cuisine was the home of Vavoom! seasoning, a cult icon in Maryland, D.C., and beyond. Like thousands of others, I was addicted. I used Vavoom! on everything from popcorn to chicken wings. I knew exactly how much a two-ounce jar of it cost and, if I wasn’t heavy-handed, how long it would last me. And going on how expensive those two ounces were, there was no doubt in my mind that ten days of classes would be exponentially pricey.
I dropped the receipt like it was on fire. “No way, Eve. No way am I going to let you-”
Her mouth puckered. “Like it or not, you’re going to do it.”
“Like it or not, you’re going to get a refund. You can’t afford to pay for a cooking class for me. You can’t even afford to pay for a class for you!”
“Afford has nothing to do with this. Haven’t I always told you, Annie, it’s not the necessities in life we need to worry about. They’ll be provided somehow. It’s life’s little luxuries that are important. Right now, we need to get your mind off Peter. This is one way to do it.”
“No.” I could be just as stubborn as she was. “Get your money back.”
“Can’t.” She pointed to the line on the bottom of the printout that said all enrollments were final. “It’s paid for, Annie. I know the way your logical little mind works. You know it’s better to take the class than waste the money. Besides, it will be good for you to get out.”
“So I can embarrass myself in front of a class full of chefs? You know I’m a terrible cook!”
“Don’t be silly.” Eve got up, slung her purse over her shoulder, and headed for the door. “You’ll get an e-mail,” she said. “We all will. Tomorrow and every night before class. They’ll let us know what ingredients to bring. That way, they’ll be nice and fresh. And don’t worry about driving. I’ll pick you up. Monday, six fifteen.”
She knew I was going to keep on arguing-that’s why she didn’t give me a chance. Eve swept out the door and left me alone. In my jammies and my bunny slippers, the caustic tang of burnt metal still sharp in the air.
“Cooking class?” I’d already heard my own voice echo back at me before I realized I was talking to myself.
When Peter was around, I at least made an effort to cook. Spaghetti sauce, omelettes, the occasional blueberry muffin (always from a box). Since he’d been gone, I hadn’t done even that much. I lived on soup and cereal, and when I tried to cook… well, all I had to do was catch a whiff of the metallic odor in the air to know how things usually turned out.
But I couldn’t be mad at Eve. She was my best friend, bless her, and she was just trying to make me feel better. For that, if for nothing else, the least I could do was cooperate.
I told myself to get a grip and did a mental check through my schedule for the next ten days. It didn’t take long: Class was in the evening, and I didn’t have a social life. All I had to worry about was embarrassing myself or burning down the cooking school.
But after all, there would be professionals at class, guiding us through each step. There would be cooks-real cooks-telling us what to do and what not to do and how to make sure we never burned pots of water.
How dangerous could a cooking class be?
Two
WE WERE LATE FOR THE FIRST CLASS. JUST FOR THE record, it wasn’t my fault.
Like I did every day (except for Fridays when the bank was open until six), I arrived home at exactly five twenty-five. By five thirty, I’d sorted through the day’s mail. I filed the bills in their proper slots in the accordion folder I kept nearby, threw away the junk, and made a separate pile for the letters that were still arriving addressed to Peter. As usual, my plan was to rip them into tiny little pieces and toss them out but-as usual-I relented. I wrote “forward” on his mail along with the address of the school where he taught, and stuck the letters by my purse so I could drop them on the table in the front lobby as I was leaving.
I wasn’t sure what cooking students wore, but after a sweltering weekend that culminated in a Sunday afternoon thunderstorm, the temperature had cooled considerably. I changed out of my black pantsuit and into jeans, a green long-sleeved T-shirt, and sneakers. After a minute, my nervous energy got the better of me and I swapped the green T-shirt for a white one. Chefs wore white, didn’t they?
About a minute later, I switched back to the green.
Just before I walked out the door, I grabbed the groceries I’d picked up on my lunch break.
“Chicken stock. Broccoli. Cheddar cheese. Cream. Butter. Spanish onion.” Even though I’d checked and rechecked earlier, I peeked in my grocery bag and did an inventory, making sure that I had everything mentioned in the e-mail that arrived the night before from someone named Jim at Très Bonne Cuisine.
Thirty minutes later-twenty minutes after she promised-Eve careened into the parking lot on two wheels and slammed on the brakes right next to where I was pacing in front of the cement pad outside the lobby door.
“Forgot to shop,” she said breathlessly as I climbed into the car and fastened my seat belt. “Had to stop on the way. Had a heck of a time finding cauliflower. Did you get cauliflower?”
I had printed out the e-mail shopping list. I pulled it out of my bag and I pointed to a line on the ingredients list. “It was supposed to be broccoli.”
“Oh. You’re right. I always get those two mixed up.” Eve’s plucked-into-submission eyebrows dipped. “I thought-”
“That’s OK. I’ve got enough for both of us.”
Like all of the D.C. Metro area, Arlington traffic has a bad reputation, and for good reason. By the time Eve negotiated her way through the crush of commuters between my not-so-stylish neighborhood and Clarendon and found a parking place around the corner from Très Bonne Cuisine, we had exactly three and a half minutes to make it into the store. That meant getting to the shop, climbing the steps, getting ourselves and our supplies organized…