I Hate Everyone, Except You(56)
“All the plates are white,” she said.
I took a deep breath through my nose, while nodding and smiling in hopes of disguising my blinding rage. “Okay. That’s cool,” I said. “I’m just curious if Jason had mentioned having a big selection to pull from.”
“He did,” the organizer said, “but we decided that the plates should be white to really showcase the salads themselves. And we don’t want you to do the salad styling for the winners, we want you to inspire people to use the plate that best reflects their vision.”
So, for two hours, I walked around an industrial kitchen, interrupting couples who were grilling shrimp or searing steaks or whisking vinaigrettes to suggest different white plates.
“You know what would look amazing under that salad,” I said to a mother and daughter. “This plate because . . . it’s a triangle. And how often do you see that? Not often enough, if you ask me. Think about the significance. Earth, wind, fire. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It can symbolize whatever you want.”
After an hour or so, I tried fanning the flames of not-so-friendly competition among the breeders. “See that couple over there?” I asked a late-thirties husband and wife from Michigan, whispering and nodding my head toward a couple of newlyweds from Florida. “They’re using a high-gloss oversized round. Big mistake. Huge. Who’s going to be looking at their salad when it’s on top of that gaudy thing? Ah, but this plate. It’s ivory with a matte finish and not too much rim. There’s no way this plate is going to steal your salad’s thunder.”
They looked at me as one might have expected them to, like I was batshit.
Two hours felt like a thousand days and nights. Basically, I was the Scheherazade of Salad, just making up nonsense to avoid not death, but a breach of contract lawsuit. I needed a drink, a massage, a pill. Pretty much anything to make this day go away. Luckily, my friend Lisa was awaiting my return in the very expensive hotel room where we were staying. Usually if there’s a companion airline ticket included in an appearance deal, and I’m traveling somewhere fun or beautiful, Damon will come with me. But he had recently entered the final stretch of writing his dissertation, so he asked if I would mind terribly if he sat this trip out. I didn’t mind at all. I was thrilled he was this close to finishing his doctoral degree. It was hard to believe, but after eight years of his studying and researching, I might someday live in a home without twenty oversized textbooks and huge piles of psychology journals cluttering the dining room table. “Do what you need to do,” I told him, mimicking Ingrid Bergman’s Casablanca stare. “I’ll miss you, darling.”
Lisa was thrilled to accompany me in Damon’s stead. She always is. Doesn’t matter where we’re headed. I once brought her with me to a mall in Milwaukee, and you would have thought she was strolling the Champs élysées. “I’m just glad to get away from the trolls for a few days,” she said when I asked why she was skipping through the mall. “The little sons of bitches always want so much from me, like food and . . . well, food.” The trolls were her two teenage sons. She’d left them fifty bucks and her car keys on the kitchen counter with a note that said, “Good luck, fuckers. I’m out.”
While I’d been degrading myself in the promotion of leafy greens, Lisa had been renting movies in our hotel suite and ordering room service. “I just watched an entire Japanese film—in Japanese. No subtitles. While eating a Kobe beef burger,” she said when I got back to the room. “This may just be the best day of my life.”
I kicked off my shoes and picked at the cold fries on her plate.
“How was your day, America’s Sweetheart?”
“Stupid,” I said.
“Well, let’s go do something. We could sit by the pool. Or get drunk. Or both.”
All were perfectly agreeable suggestions, but I had been hoping to have a mud bath in a spa I liked a few miles up the road in Calistoga. I called to check their availability, and they were booked for the day. So I called two other spas. Still no luck. At the fourth spa, they had one appointment open, but there was a catch. I consulted with Lisa.
“They only have one appointment,” I said, holding my hand over the microphone. “And it’s for couples.”
“What’s the problem,” she said. “We’re a couple. A couple of assholes.”
I booked the mud baths, unsure why I even hesitated in the first place. Having been best friends continuously since junior high, Lisa and I are like two peas in a twisted pod. We often tell people, hospitality workers mostly, that we’re married, just to watch the expression on their faces slowly change from coolly welcoming to wholly confused. “We’re on our honeymoon,” she proudly stated to a ma?tre d’ in Honolulu, while I stood behind her braiding a little strand of her hair. “We’re celebrating our twenty-fifth,” I once confided to a concierge in Key West, “but, please, don’t tell anyone. We’re keeping it hush-hush for obvious reasons.” He answered, “Twenty-fifth what?” In reply, I stuck my tongue in my cheek and wriggled it around a bit. It just seemed like the right thing to do. He didn’t ask any follow-ups.
The girl behind the front desk of the spa was pretty and young. She struck me as the type who played varsity field hockey: long, lean, no makeup, and a golden tan. Her name tag said BRITANEY and so I immediately hated her parents.