“Here you are, then. Four minutes late.” He tsked, then added, “Rorry Bullock was supposed to be here at seven. Nobody’s seen her. Eileen Druckman should have arrived with her chef. So we’re in a bit of a pickle. A gherkin, maybe.”
“Just tell me what I need to know so I can get ready.” I hesitated. “No Rorry?” Again, I felt guilt. I should have called her, maybe offered her a ride.…
“Do you know her?”
“She and Nate used to live near us. Rorry and I taught church school together.” Glancing around at the chaos in the dining room, I had a sudden memory of the fun Rorry and I had had with our fourth-grade class, as we acted out the story of the Valley of Dry Bones. All of us had leaped wildly around the narthex floor once the boy playing Ezekiel prophesied.…
Arthur asked, “Did you know she was pregnant when the avalanche happened? They’d been trying for ages. Right after Nate died, she lost the baby.” He sighed, and I wondered if the miscarriage, with all its attendant physical and emotional pain, was the reason Rorry had not responded to my letter. Why hadn’t I followed up? “Everybody at the station loved Nate. And his shows were popular with the granola set.” Arthur searched his pockets fruitlessly for an antacid. “So every year we do a memorial fund-raiser for him. The Federal Communications Commission only lets us raise money on air for ourselves. Sad, because Rorry needs money.” He raised a black eyebrow at me. “I was hoping you, Goldy, could introduce Rorry. I wanted her to say a few words at the beginning of the show. She said no to me.”
“I haven’t seen her in a long time—”
He smoothed the top of his curly hair. “Just ask her yourself, will you? Do you have your script?” I nodded; he glumly assessed the top page of his clipboard. “Live fund-raising is not that different from taping. Just crack a joke if something goes wrong. Most important: If the phones stop ringing? We’ve got zip. If that happens, the camera will focus on the silent telephone bank. I’ll cue you. Watch your screen. Be out here and ready to go at quarter to eight. Got it?”
I nodded compliantly. Arthur again consulted his clipboard. I gazed at the far wall in search of dark-haired, slender Rorry Bullock. What would I say to her? Why hadn’t I known about the baby?
Arthur waved at the row of grills and stovetops along the back wall of the restaurant. Called the hot line, this was where I did my work before the camera. Then he pointed to a row of empty chairs against the far wall of the bistro. “That’s where the phone bank will be. We’ll get you wired when you 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 frisée 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, à 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?