HER
MASTER’S CHOICE
Bound to Please 1
KAREN MERCURY
Copyright
© 2013
Chapter One
“Did he describe it as an ‘orgasmic
explosion’?”
Shannon Bloomfield giggled. She dug her
forearms into the comfortable position on her desk where she often hunkered
down and Skyped with her BFF, Natasha Woolf. The two women got a sheer kick out
of ruthlessly tearing apart food critic Bletchley Park. His purple prose and
use of absurd metaphors made him the laughingstock of the foodie world—but
maybe that was why he was so popular. People enjoyed “hate reading” his blog
just so they could revel in savagely picking it apart later.
Natasha tossed her hair over her
shoulder. “No, this time he went for ‘a regular tornado of flavors.’”
“Hoo, boy,” said Shannon. “He’s getting
into the weather metaphors now. ‘A seismic cataclysm of cilantro and cumin.’”
Natasha laughed until her eyes were wet
then took another sip of her hibiscus tea. She liked to pour it into a
margarita glass so she could pretend they were enjoying cocktails, but they
usually had too much work to indulge in that. Natasha had to leave her
apartment soon to head to her new restaurant in the suburbs of Tucson. The two
women used to work together here in the hills of Berkeley—thus the name of
Shannon’s restaurant, The Wolf and The Fox.
Shannon didn’t want to change the restaurant’s
name when it was at the top of its game, even if it had just recently lost a
coveted star in the classy and deluxe Hamsun guidebook to the world’s
restaurants. Chefs had been known to commit suicide when a star was deducted
from their rating—after all, the top rating, the crème de la crème, was only
three stars. Most restaurants didn’t even make it into the guide with one star.
But in the foodie world appearances were everything, and some poor fellow in
France who was probably already depressed had actually killed himself after
being demoted from three to two stars for the “lazy presentation” of his sea
urchin toast with caviar. Restaurant reputations were made and broken on the
weight of one measly Hamsun star.
“Imagine how the Hamsun inspector of
that restaurant felt when he heard about the chef,” the two women had always
mused from the safety of their three-star Berkeley kitchen. Well, now Shannon
knew how it felt, because coincidentally right after Natasha had moved to
Tucson, the new ratings were unveiled, and The Wolf and the Fox had lost one
star. Shannon had been too mortified to show her face for a couple of days, but
the show must go on. The atmosphere in her kitchen had been stiff and
uncomfortable for quite awhile, the rating only talked about in whispers.
Now Natasha said, “I’ve got to sign off
now. We’re unveiling a new king salmon gravlax tonight and I don’t even know if
the fish were delivered. Just one last thing.”
Shannon sat erect, on alert. She knew
Natasha well enough to know that tone in her voice. She was pretending to be
relaxed about something that was actually incredibly important. “Yes?”
“Deep Dish.”
I
knew it! Deep
Dish was a highly mysterious internet presence. He—most people agreed it was a
man—popped up once in awhile commenting on blogs, and he always seemed to have
an insider’s industry knowledge of things. In fact, Deep Dish seemed to know
hugely secretive things before they
happened. He had once scooped a brand-new restaurant’s award of the coveted one
Hamsun star a week before the awards
were announced. He bandied about names like Tony Bourdain, Jamie Oliver, and
David Lynch as though he personally hung around with them. He truly did seem to
know that Bourdain planned on jetting to Rwanda next to sample fufu and ugali, or that Bobby Flay was about to announce that he hated
raisins. Deep Dish seemed to be a legitimate insider in the foodie world. That,
or he really was Rachael Ray in
disguise. “Let’s dish!” cried Shannon, Deep Dish’s catchphrase.
“Well,” said Natasha, “I saved the best
for last. According to Deep Dish, the Hamsun inspector is going to revisit The
Wolf and The Fox again within the next week.”
Shannon sat in silence, stunned. Why had
Natasha withheld this vital information until now, just tossing it off in her
sign-off?
Natasha leaned in closer to her computer
screen. “And get this. Deep Dish thinks it’s someone different this time
because the guy last year blew it so badly.” The scuttlebutt was that The Wolf
and the Fox had lost their star due to some badly molded flan that was spiced too boldly. It couldn’t have just been that
one item, but inspectors were human too, and no doubt had their irritated days.
Since the majority of global Hamsun inspectors were men, the assumption was that an irritated, unprofessional asshole
had had a bad day, and the powers that be at Hamsun were obviously now
regretting having removed that one star.
Shannon leaned closer too. “That’s
awesome, Natasha! Of course now I’m a nervous wreck all over again. I’d best
zip back to the restaurant too.” The flan
had been completely eliminated from their menu to prevent lookie-loos from
ordering it in some kind of morbid tasting and blogging contest, but you never
knew where the Hamsun raters would focus their ire next. “Do you think they
might try and send a woman this time?”
“That’s what Deep Dish said. Here, I’m
sending you his link. He thinks the next inspector will be a woman pretending
to be half of a couple. Isn’t this awesome, Shannon? You get a second chance!”
That “second chance” was already bumming
out Shannon. “Yeah,” she muttered, “a second chance to get another star taken
away.”
Natasha waved a dismissive hand at her,
the other hand on the mouse about to click off. “Don’t be so pessimistic,
Shannon! You can do it. You’re Berkeley’s ‘it’ place—”
“At the moment,” moped Shannon.
“—and you’ve earned top reviews in every
publication worthy of the name. Gastronomica
said your lemongrass chicken was velvety, and The Art of Eating praised your quinoa salad. ‘Impudent and
scintillating,’ they said. Michelin compared you favorably to Chez Panisse. You
even got Bletchley Park to revise the scathing review he did when I was head
chef at The Wolf.” The acid-tongued critic for the Tribune, Bletchley Park was also Shannon’s ex-boyfriend. But the
less said about him, the better. “You don’t need to worry about this asshole
rater coming next week. Just make sure you keep an eye out for any woman under
fifty who has a male beard as her date. Here. I just texted you the link.”
“Are we sure? We just assume all the
inspectors are under fifty because, well, it’s commonly known that most of them
are.” Actually, nothing was commonly
known about Hamsun inspectors. Their own parents—or spouses, if they somehow
managed to have any—weren’t even supposed to know their true identities. They
traveled all over the United States and Europe eating two meals a day at
restaurants and staying in crappy Extended Stay America apartments. Shannon,
Natasha, and the other members of their Facebook foodie group often pretended
to feel sorry for these lone raters—they called them “raiders” in less
charitable moments. After all, how could they possibly have any friends living
as they did, unable to reveal the tiniest detail of their occupation? If any of
them even succeeded at maintaining a marriage or a real relationship, how real
could it be when they had to pretend to their own partner they were flying to
Denver to attend a plumbing convention?
So they had probably just assumed all
inspectors were under fifty because of the stress and physical toil the job
must entail. All Hamsun inspectors were inhuman zombies and monsters, so
loneliness wasn’t a characteristic often ascribed to them.
Natasha nodded with confidence, wiggling
one eyebrow. “Check your text.” Her lovely image vanished from Shannon’s
computer screen, replaced with a screen saver of Tony Bourdain in Namibia. It
was the episode where he’d sampled the warthog anus, but the screen saver didn’t
actually depict that part. Shannon just liked Tony, probably mainly because he
physically resembled “the one who got away,” her ex-husband Guillermo. Tony
even had that bon vivant, humorous, and fun attitude that was Guillermo’s
trademark.
Shannon had loved Guillermo with a
passion, with that sort of obsessive lust that only twenty-somethings ever
felt. Once a woman had been through that sort of soul-searing, all-consuming
infatuation with a man, she was probably burned out for life. Once she’d
recovered, her next big relationship with popular food critic Bletch turned out
to be a rinse-and-repeat scenario. She had put Bletch on a pedestal and
worshipped him obsessively—so why did he need the ego-stroking of other women? But
he did. Most men probably did.
No. Shannon was determined that her
feelings for her next boyfriend would be more down-to-earth. Her love for the
next man would be based upon a genuine, grounded, mature sort of love. She was
not afraid to love again—she was afraid to worship
again.
And her next fantasy boyfriend would
never, ever cheat on her. Shannon Bloomfield would not be cheated upon again. That seemed to be her “pattern,” as they
said in those self-help books. Guillermo and Bletchley, in retrospect, had a
lot of things in common. They were both “yes men” who seemed devoted and
worshipful on the surface, attending to her every need, flowing with sappy
sentiment and emotion—emotion that must have been faked. For how could a man
love a woman to the ends of the earth or time or whatever the crap those men
claimed, then turn around the next night and fuck another woman?
I’ve
been going about it all wrong. Shannon checked the link Natasha had
sent her and did a quick makeup check in her 1940s bathroom with the jade,
black, and tan tiles. Guillermo and Bletchley had oozed sincerity all over her,
seduced her with flowery words, then stabbed her in the back. Shannon was sick
of yes men. She had enough of those at work—her line cooks, salesmen, diners,
her sous chef, Darius Fripp. She even felt that people tip-toed lightly around
her because she was the high-powered owner of The Wolf and The Fox, one of “America’s
Best New Restaurants,” according to Bon Appétit magazine. Her life was a blur
of roasting, sautéing, sauce-making, meeting and greeting, ordering, and
tasting. When she tried to sleep at night all she saw was hands chopping and
stirring. No one dared criticize her because at the age of thirty-three she was
at the top of her game.
Shannon jumped down the steps between
her front door and her driveway. The filtered autumn sun warmed her face. She
loved her Berkeley house, the row of vintage bungalows straight out of an
Alfred Hitchcock film, the lacey shadows of the Japanese maples flickering
against the Craftsman exteriors. It was so quiet up in these hills, each
tweeting bird stood out like an instrument in a symphony, and Shannon preferred
it that way. There was enough noise and excitement, enough hustle and bustle,
at work. She didn’t need a party boyfriend who stayed up until four in the
morning, like Bletch. Those party animals were clearly unreliable.
She put her 370Z Roadster into reverse,
careful not to ding the undercarriage on the steep slope where the driveway met
the street. No, her life was pretty good, aside from losing that one star Hamsun
rating and the messy breakup with Bletch six months ago. She sped downhill toward
the shopping district where The Wolf and the Fox was located between a
marijuana dispensary and a mom and pop hardware store.
Let’s
dish!
Deep Dish’s blog had said. Word on the
street is that Ms. Bloomfield at The Wolf & Fox will be given another lease
on life with a return visit by the dreaded Hamsun raider who docked her a star
last summer. The grapevine says to expect this beeyotch between today and next
Wednesday. Run, Shannon, run! Or at least get your flan to set right in your
ramekins before deciding you are seaworthy of this C-word’s star rating.
C-word
indeed.
Shannon set her jaw as her tires hugged the roundabout that was the center of
her lovely neighborhood. I’m going to
make sure every I is dotted and every T is crossed when this beeyotch steps
into my restaurant. Then I’ll be the chef who earned back her third star.
That feat had never before been
accomplished. There were only twenty restaurants in America that had three
Hamsun stars. And Shannon was bound and determined to rejoin their ranks.