Under the Table(2)
“You’re going to have to talk to him eventually. He is your husband.”
“Only because he doesn’t know when to quit.” Zoey was loud and quick with the response. After noting the glances in her direction from other, usually aloof Duane Reade shoppers, Zoey brought her tone back down to a whisper and took a few steps toward the door. “I can’t deal with this right now. And I’m creeped out enough as it is.”
“Ah. The secret customer with his penchant for all things NOLA,” Ruth said, back to being jovial. “Maybe he’s the one who’s been calling?”
“Nope. I have him in my contacts by name.”
“Of course you do.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Zoey snapped with pent-up tension. She wasn’t the one who collected phone numbers for a hobby.
“I just meant that you’re as conscientious as ever. Get ahold of yourself, little sis. Don’t worry, I remember what you told me to do. If I don’t hear from you by three that everything is on the up-and-up, I’m to call you. And if I get no answer, then call the police to tell them that you’ve been abducted by the Craigslist Crawdad Killer.”
Ruth was making too light of a situation she thought was serious. Zoey gave a quick “That’s right. Gotta go or I’m going to be late. Thanks for the heads-up.” Zoey pushed the end button on the phone, cutting off Ruth’s follow-up. Then she powered the phone down, even though that meant there would be no way to track her if she was kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car in the next twenty minutes. She dropped the phone back into her coat pocket and pushed the drugstore door open. She was back on the street. There was no problem with the pacing, since she felt the all-too-familiar urge to run. She also no longer appreciated the chill; all she felt was the heart-pounding flush that came with the feeling of having no control.
Zoey didn’t want to admit it, but just the mention of a potential return of Derek Sullivan into her life was enough to turn her inside out. And she was already on shaky ground since accepting a job offer from one Tristan Malloy.
It started innocently enough, with a phone call inquiring about private catering. Zoey had placed the ad on Craigslist and other NYC-based platforms in the hopes of appealing to small dinner parties and wealthy romantics who wanted something a bit more intimate than making reservations. She had no official culinary training, just an honest love of cooking and a large family to experiment on. Once she broke free from the Midwest and Derek, she drove her twenty-year-old Chevrolet Cavalier through the Lincoln Tunnel into the electric, pulsating city. When the car promptly seized up and died on Forty-Second Street, the song playing on her radio was “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. And if her dreams of conquering the concrete jungle included watching her car get towed away for scrap as soon as she got there, then she was off to a great start. She took it as a challenge. Zoey knew within weeks of working in a cubicle three floors down from Ruth that an office job was never going to cut it. But she was a terrible singer and all of the acting jobs in town were probably taken, so she settled on trying to make something out of the hobby that she loved. Within the first month of running the ad, she had yielded a kid’s birthday party where she tested her skills on chicken nuggets and hot dogs with fries for ten kids who were only interested in the cake, a pseudo BBQ for some foreign exchange students from Turkey, and a jerk-ball who upon their first meeting asked her if she was going to be the dessert at his dinner. So much for conquering the concrete jungle. Still, Zoey refused to be daunted. Thanks to her sister’s vast network and her own word of mouth at the monotonous day job, she soon was booking all her weekends. Four months later, she was able to abandon the nine-to-five, pay her half of the rent, and still have something left over. She even scored a few regular customers. She had three months to prove she could make it on her own. None of it prepared Zoey for when the landline rang last week.
“Good evening. May I please speak to the person who placed the advertisement for a personal chef?”
“Speaking,” Zoey sang, then, not recognizing the voice, she dialed it back to a more professionally courteous, “My name is Zoey. And I just need to clarify, I’m more like a private caterer.”
“May I ask what you see the difference as?” the caller asked politely.
“Well, a personal chef is usually a full-time position with a single client. I’m more along the lines of the person you call when you want to impress your boss or a date. A full-fledged caterer would be able to feed as many people as you want, but I max out at about twenty guests.” Zoey wasn’t doing a very good job at selling herself, but the leering perv who wanted her to jump out of a cake was impossible to erase from her mind. And she thought it vital that whoever was on the other end of the line know she was her own boss and wanted to remain that way. “May I ask who I’m speaking to?”
“Certainly, please excuse my bad manners,” the masculine voice continued. “My name is Tristan Malloy. And I’m not looking for a personal chef, at least not yet. Can you prepare Cajun food?”
Not yet? One of her pet peeves was people who assumed if they offered her something, she would automatically want it. This man sounded different. Zoey had never gotten much further than looking up a Cajun recipe, but she did know how to read and measure, and she always had her little bag of tricks. “Mr. Malloy, that happens to be my specialty. Would you like to set up a meeting to discuss a menu and I can quote you a price?”