Before I Melt Away

Will you be around at Christmastime or back in California? Or are you visiting your folks in Maine? I wasn’t planning to come home; Annabel doesn’t “do” Christmas anymore, but if you’re there, maybe I will, and bring Alison and the kids. I’ve got a cousin who owns a house next to the lake and there’s plenty of room.

Got to run to a class, stay in touch.

Best,

John

ANNABEL TURNED her minivan into her narrow driveway on Sixty-third Street in Wauwatosa, only three blocks west of the Milwaukee city line, pressed her garage-door opener and sailed into the two-car garage. Yes, indeed, she was fried like an egg. All day, cooking a week’s worth of meals at the Bergers, the fussiest people on earth. Ted, one of the students she hired to help out, was cramming this week for his exams at Milwaukee Area Technical College, so Annabel had taken over at a time she’d rather be working on getting more new business. Things might be going well, but they could be going better. Her personal mantra.

This time of year was always nuts. Starting mid-November, people wanted to party instead of work. Which meant shifting from high gear to overdrive. Plus, in addition to her regular roster of clients and the extra holiday dinner parties, this year she was adding a new option—Dinner and a Show. Pairing an early dinner party at the client’s home with tickets to The Nutcracker or A Christmas Carol, or a Milwaukee Symphony Holiday Pops Concert. Included in the deal was a limo chauffeuring the lucky paying guests to and from. Dessert and drinks after the show could be had in addition to or instead of dinner.

Brilliant, if she did say so herself, which she did and no apologies. With any luck she could get a real office someday and lose the stigma of the cute little woman starting a cute little business out of her home. Pat, pat, pat and a cheek pinch—yick.

If Annabel had anything to say about it, Chefs Tonight would be anything but cute. Chefs Tonight would someday be an empire. Her dishes would be delivered around the world, syndicated newspaper columns would feature her menus, her cookbooks, her recipes. She’d be the female version of Adolph Fox, the success comet whose tail she was following, the man who’d put his signature gourmet food in every supermarket freezer in the country.

She stepped out of her minivan—oh, for a sexy convertible, but sexy convertibles were bad news when it came to lugging clients’ groceries around town—and grabbed her fancy leather briefcase, a gift to herself last summer when she signed on her tenth client.

Outside in the misty, damp December air, she jabbed the button to lower the garage door. It was unusually warm for this time of year, upper forties and densely foggy, ho, ho, ho, thanks a lot. The houses across the street appeared and disappeared as if they, not the fog, were undulating and immaterial.

The soles of her clogs clunked across cement to her back door, her footsteps louder than usual in the thick, silent air. She grabbed her keys and let herself into her house, kicked off the shoes and padded to the back bedroom her assistant used as an office.

“Hey, Stefanie. Any messages?” She glanced at the miniature lit Christmas tree on Stefanie’s desk. “Very cute.”

“How was it being back on the front lines today?” Stefanie smiled over from the holograph hovering above her desk, where she was entering in the dietary requirements of a new client. Her usually clear eyes looked puffy and bloodshot; her normally rosy skin was pale and blotchy, as if she hadn’t slept well in days.

“Grueling. Like being back in school. But you know the Bergers. Meat-and-potatoes father, mother on the Atkins diet, son won’t eat vegetables, daughter is vegan. No wonder Mom Berger hired us.”

“No wonder.” Stefanie yawned, rolled her chair to her desk and handed Annabel four pink message slips.

“Any new business queries today—I hope?” Annabel leafed through the messages and made a sound of exasperation. “Bob called again?”

“Three times in the last hour. The poor man is obviously still hoping you’ll get back together. He said he wanted to catch you in and I shouldn’t tell you he called.” Stefanie rolled her eyes. “Like I wouldn’t.”

“Well, he’s persistent, I’ll give him that. What else?”

“Four phone queries, responding to the regular ad in the Sentinel. Five calling about Dinner and a Show and three e-mail responses.”

“Any through our Web site?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Annabel glanced at the other messages—one from a downtown organization that wanted her to give a cooking demonstration for at-risk kids. Like she had the time? She handed that one back to Stefanie. “All in all, a good day. Say no to these people, send them a check. Fifty bucks should make them happy.”

“Will do.” Stefanie yawned again, guiltily covering her mouth. “Sorry, it’s this weather. Four-thirty, getting dark already, and the fog makes me want to curl up and sleep forever.”

“Ha! It’s your space heater, roasting you soporific.”

“I’d be a lump of ice without it.” Stefanie shivered and rubbed her hands together over its warmth. “You must have been an Eskimo in another life.”

“Cold is good for you.” Annabel smiled and headed for her own office.

“Oh, someone else called, but didn’t leave a message. Deep voice, totally dreamy-sounding. Said he wanted to surprise you.”

“Really.” Annabel paused in the hallway, frowning. Who would want to surprise her? “It wasn’t John goofing off?”

“No. I’d know your brother’s voice, even clowning around.”

“Hmm. Okay. Probably another male who didn’t quite get the meaning of ‘it’s over.’” She continued into her office, grinning at Stefanie’s giggle. Running joke between them that Annabel had an army of men clawing to get back into her life. Right now that army consisted of: Bob, whom she’d dated briefly, though longer than most—three months—before she got restless. Or bored. Or just too busy.

When she went looking for a man, she wanted her sexual itch scratched, a warm body to provide company for a while, then to leave so she could work on business until the urge struck again.

She was always up-front about what she wanted and they all reacted with the same patronizing nod, and the same gleam in their eyes that said they knew it was only a matter of time before their irresistible masculinity got her in touch with her inner need to be enslaved.

Strangely enough, it never had. Oh, my. Gasp of surprise and horror. A traitor to her gender she must be.

The look of bemused shock on the men’s faces when she broke it off was identical, too. Impossible for them to comprehend that a woman didn’t see her salvation in the form of a man. Ball-breaker, bitch, slut—she’d been called them all, and worse. When all along she’d been nothing but honest about where the relationship would end up and what she wanted it for.

Even more ironic, if she’d been one of their male buddies, they’d admire her. Hey, dude, there’s someone who got it right. Hot babes when he needs them, dumps them when he’s done, no entanglements, no strings. But she was a woman, and they didn’t like seeing their own behavior reflected back.

Tough. Like a turkey roasted too long. This worked for her.

She went into her office, enjoying the clean, sleek look of the cream-colored walls, beige carpet and honey-maple furniture. The furniture had been an indulgence, but what was the point in buying cheap things that wouldn’t last?

None. Why buy jarred caviar when you could save up for fresh and be sixty times happier, even if you could only eat it a quarter as often? You still came out ahead.

The phone rang; she waited for Stefanie to pick it up, curious about the deep-voiced man. Raoul had a pretty deep voice. But he’d long since married and would have no reason to call. Peter—maybe, but they’d parted badly. David, ditto.

Stefanie exchanged warm Christmas wishes with the caller, then clicked the hold button.

“Annabel, it’s your cousin Linda.”

“Oh, no.” Annabel braced herself and picked up her phone. Either Linda had more questions about her husband, Evan’s, holiday business party, which Chefs Tonight was preparing again this year, or, as every year, the same invitation—We’re having a Christmas party, hope you can join us. Sweet of her, but Christmas was one of the few days this time of year that Annabel could avoid anything that involved either preparing food or parties. Her idea of Christmas heaven was staying in bed all day, watching movies and eating junk food. “Hi, Linda.”

“Hey, Annabel. How’s business going?” Linda’s voice always sounded as if she was about to laugh, was laughing, or had just stopped. Annabel had a perfectly well-evolved sense of humor, but she would never understand what Linda found funny every second of the day.

“Business is booming, thanks.” She kept her answer short, knowing Linda didn’t really want all the details of how her business was going, and because they’d talked only last month about Evan’s party. “How are Evan and the kids?”

Okay, so she asked. She had to ask. But Linda didn’t realize that Annabel wanted to hear about Linda’s kids exactly as much as Linda wanted to hear about Annabel’s business.

After three minutes of detailed descriptions of each child—how many were there, a hundred by now?—his or her activities, clothing, cute antics, new words, Annabel couldn’t take it anymore.

“So then Lawrence was sitting there, covered in yogurt and I—”

“Linda, I’m so sorry to interrupt you, but I have another call I have to take. Was there anything you wanted to talk about for Evan’s party?”

Linda laughed as if Annabel was the wittiest person she’d ever met. “Oh, no. I just want to invite you to our annual Christmas Party. Four o’clock Christmas Day, by then the kids are all—”

“Oh, gosh, Linda, that’s a bad day for me.”