Deep Dish (16 page)

V
alerie Foster was sitting in the Vagabond, going over production notes with her star, when her cell phone rang.

“Barry?” Her face brightened. She got up from the dinette and walked outside. Tate watched her through the window as she talked and gestured, all the time walking in a tight little circle in the parking lot.

After five minutes, she came back inside the trailer and took her seat at the dinette, frowning at the coffee that had gone cold.

“Well?” Tate said. He put his cereal bowl on the floor, and Moonpie obligingly lapped up the last half-inch of milk and soggy cereal. “Who won?”

Val blinked. “Didn’t we tape a show at a place called Eutaw Island?”

“Sure,” Tate said. “We did it our first season. Don’t you remember? You found a tick on your ankle when we got back to the lodge over there, and you screamed so long and loud, you’d have thought we’d have to amputate your leg.”

“I knew it,” she said. “Eutaw Island. At the very top of my never-again places. Along with Disney World and Gatorland. And let’s not forget the Okefenokee Swamp.” She shuddered violently.

“Val?” Tate said. “We were talking about The Cooking Channel—remember? What did Barry Adelman say just now? Who won?”

“Y
ou both won, sort of,” Scott said. “Barry says the network wants to cash in on your sudden notoriety. They’ve been looking at
the popularity of all the reality shows the big networks are running, and he says he’s come up with an idea that’s a guaranteed out-of-the-park hit.”

Gina felt a chill of dread go up her spine. “Like what? No more boxing matches. I mean it, you two,” she said, glaring at Deborah. “No more weird getups. I don’t care what kind of ratings or money they’re offering. I cook. That’s it. That’s all I do from now on.”

“That’s what they want you to do,” Scott insisted. “They’re even calling it Food Fight. They want to take both of you to this barrier island, down off the coast in South Georgia.”

“I thought you said something about Utah,” Gina said.

“Not Utah as in Salt Lake City,” he said. “Eutaw Island. With an E-U. It’s some godforsaken sand spit that Barry’s research people dug up. Like a dozen people live over there. You have to get there by ferry, and there’s only one paved road on the whole island. They’ll take us over—our crew, and Moody’s. Put us all up at some lodge. Then the two of you will be given a box of groceries—just staples like salt and pepper and cooking oil—and the first challenge. You have to plan, cook, and serve a meal using only what you find on the island. There’ll be a couple of judges. Barry says they’re still working that part out—and whoever wins the Food Fight wins their own show on TCC’s fall lineup. The whole thing will be taped, and they’ll show it in three installments during the fall sweeps.”

“It’s brilliant!” Deborah gushed. “Don’t you get it, Gina? The object is to use fresh, natural, native ingredients. It plays to all your strengths.”

“She’s right,” Scott said. “Tate Moody is toast.”

R
egina Foxton is dead meat,” Val declared. “There’s no way you can lose. You’re a lock.”

“Riiight,” Tate said, looking dubious.

“Look. The rule is that the meal has to be made of stuff you find on the island. That’s what you do every week on
Vittles.
The beauty of it is, we’ve already been there. We’ve got the place scouted already.
And from what I remember of the place, there were no organic broccoli forests or herds of free-range chicken breast.”

“There’s just one hitch,” Scott warned.

“We leave Saturday,” Val said. “I gotta go shopping for snake boots.”

L
isa was sitting on the living room sofa, surrounded by a mound of just-washed laundry.

“What’s going on?” Gina asked, sinking down onto the sofa beside her. “Who’s dead?”

“Nobody’s dead,” Lisa said serenely, moving a stack of her thong panties aside. “Can’t I do our laundry without you assuming the worst?”

“No,” Gina said. “Who told you how to operate the washer?”

“There’s a diagram on the inside of the lid,” Lisa said. “Plus, I might have asked Mom.”

“Mom?” Gina covered her face with the sofa cushions. “Our mom? Why would you talk to her without warning me?”

“We leave for Eutaw Island on Saturday,” Lisa said. “You’ll have a thousand things to do ahead of time to get ready for the Food Fight. I was just trying to help out.”

Now Gina sat up straight. “How do you know about the Food Fight deal? Scott just told me about it an hour ago.”

“Zeke? He’s Barry’s assistant? He called here while you were at the studio,” Lisa said airily. “They’re couriering over our itineraries and plane tickets, and he wanted to make sure he had the right address.”

Gina narrowed her eyes. “What makes you think you’re going to Eutaw Island?”

“Of course I’m going,” Lisa said, rolling a T-shirt into a tight ball. “I’m your personal assistant. I’m invaluable. And by the way, Mom would really like to talk to you. She’s already left two messages on your machine.”

“What did she say?” Gina asked, taking the T-shirt away from Lisa and folding it so that it looked factory fresh.

“She said I should hand-wash delicates,” Lisa said, frowning at the mangled remains of her best bra.

“I guess she’s seen this week’s
People
, huh?”

“Ooooh, yes,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes.

Gina went into the bedroom. The blinking light on her answering machine reminded her of the twitching her left eyelid had been doing all day. She backed all the way out to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of chardonnay, which she sipped while refolding all the clothing her sister had wadded up.

She turned on the television and flipped channels until she got to The Cooking Channel. Research. For the next two hours, she watched back-to-back episodes of
Light and Luscious
—a dreary diet show hosted by a skeletal gay nutritionist—and
Pizza Power!,
which featured a pair of cheery Italian sisters who traveled the globe in search of the perfect pizza. She made notes about what worked and what didn’t work. And when she’d finished that, she made more lists—lists of clothing to take to Eutaw Island, equipment she’d need, questions she had about the logistics of the Food Fight. Shortly after midnight, unable to avoid the inevitable any longer, she crawled into bed and punched the play button on the answering machine.

“Hello?” Her mother’s high-pitched quavery voice seemed to have gone up an octave since they’d last talked on the phone.

“This is Mrs. Birdelle Foxton. Regina? Honey? Are you all right?”

The bedroom door opened, and Lisa stood in the doorway, dressed in panties and a severely shrunken T-shirt, swigging from a can of Red Bull. “I told her you were fine,” Lisa offered.

“Honey,” her mama went on, “I saw that article in
People
magazine today. And I like to have died. The girls at the Beauty Box tore it out of the magazine before I got there today, but afterward, I stopped into the drugstore to pick up your daddy’s Gasex, and the girl behind the counter gave me such a nasty smirk, and then she gestured toward the magazine right there, and asked if you’d be moving home to Odum now that you were out of a job! Did you ever? Natu
rally, I just smiled and said ‘We’ll see’ and then I bought it, and when I got home and saw the story, and that unfortunate picture of you, and well, I like to have died.”

“She like to have died,” Lisa said helpfully.

“Of course, you know, everybody down here in Odum is just real proud of you,” Birdelle said. “Except for some un-Christian types whose names I won’t mention, who are just jealous of how sweet and smart and successful you were.”

“Were?
” Gina repeated. “
Were?
”

“Now, Regina, honey,” Birdell said, a little hesitantly, “I wish you had told us that you lost your job. It is nothing to be ashamed of. We would have completely understood. I swannee, I don’t know what those people at Tastee-Town were thinking. What could have gotten into them, canceling your show like that?”

“I heard it was Scott Zaleski’s getting into Danitra Bickerstaff’s drawers that made them cancel the show,” Lisa said. Gina responded by throwing a shoe at her.

“Anyway, the girls at the Beauty Box, and my Sunday school class, and Laura Anne across the street, and your aunt Opal, we are mounting a letter-writing campaign to Tastee-Town. We are going to give them a piece of our minds, believe you me. And, of course, we are completely boycotting Tastee-Town. Well, except Laura Anne says she can’t be expected to give up her Tastee-Town frozen biscuits.”

“Can’t blame her,” Gina said ruefully. “They do have the best frozen bagged biscuits. Better than Mama’s even.”

Birdelle’s voice droned on. “Now, don’t be mad at me, sweetheart, but I put a little box together for you. It’s nothing much, just some coupons for canned goods, and some toiletries, and a package of my Coco-Nutty Toffee Bars.”

“Sweet,” Lisa said. “Dibs on the cookies.”

“Your daddy tucked in some mad money for you too,” Birdelle said. “Just a little something until you get yourself back on your feet. Well, I’ll let you go. I’m sure you have a lot more important things to do than listen to me run on. You be sweet, now, you hear?”

Gina punched the stop button on the answering machine and pulled the covers up over her head.

“There’s one more message,” Lisa pointed out. She sat down on the bed beside her sister, patted her back, and punched the play button.

“This is Birdelle Foxton calling again,” her mother said. “Gina, honey? Your daddy wants to know can you get that nice Tate Moody to autograph a cookbook for him. We’re just crazy about
Vittles
down here. We never miss a show.”

V
al Foster looked dubiously at the sixty-foot launch idling alongside the dock at Darien. The
Belle of the Seas
had once been painted white, but now most of that paint was gone, and its hull was streaked with green mold and clumps of dying barnacles.

The passenger “cabin” had a rickety roof and open sides, and the deck was littered with huge coils of oily ropes and vaguely nautical-looking machinery. Its engines spewed foul black smoke into the sticky summer air. The
Belle
had seen better days.

“Oh, no,” Val said, backing away. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t be such a weenie, Val,” Tate said, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be fine. She’s perfectly seaworthy. And it’s only a forty-minute crossing to Eutaw.”

“Seaworthy,” Val said, reaching into the pocket of her slacks for her cigarettes. “Isn’t that how the
Titanic
was described on her maiden voyage?”

One of the deckhands, a wizened old geezer wearing greasy white pants and a yellowing undershirt, blew an air horn. “Fifteen minutes,” he hollered. “Fifteen minutes till departure.”

Val lit up the cigarette and inhaled deeply, her eyes narrowed behind their dinner-plate-size sunglasses.

Tate plucked the lit cigarette from her mouth and tossed it into the water. He picked up the canvas tote Val had dropped on the dock and hefted it onto his shoulder. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Barbie and Ken and Company are already loaded aboard.”

“Good,” Val said, planting her feet firmly on the planks beneath them. “I’ll wait till the real boat gets in.”

“This is the real boat,” he told her, tugging at her arm.

She allowed herself to be helped on board by the granddad grease monkey, and she even reluctantly handed over her other suitcase to be loaded with all the rest of the party’s luggage.

Tate sat down on a rough wooden bench and motioned for her to join him. BoBo and Javier and the rest of the crew were milling around at the back of the boat, laughing and having a grand old time.

Once she’d settled herself, Val looked over her shoulder. Sitting on the row of benches behind her was Regina Foxton and her entourage. Her producer, Scott, was two rows back from her, engrossed in a paperback thriller, and, with his deep tan and casually rumpled khaki slacks and pale yellow polo shirt, he looked like something out of a Ralph Lauren catalog.

“You folks all set?” the geezer hollered, and without waiting for an answer, he gunned the boat’s engine, and it lurched away from the dock.

“You okay, Moonpie?” Tate asked, leaning down to check the dog’s crate.

The dog’s answering thump said that he had fewer misgivings about the
Belle of the Seas
than Val.

“Hang in there, buddy,” Tate said, scratching the dog’s nose through the crate’s metal mesh.

He hadn’t been happy at hearing the news that the launch captain required all pets to be crated on board. He’d argued and whined and even threatened to cancel, but the girl at the ferry dock had been adamant. No dogs—or cats—were to be loose on the boat.

In fact, Barry Adelman’s assistant, Zeke, had been required to get special permission from the family foundation that owned Eutaw to take Moonpie over at all.

Tate glanced over his shoulder at Gina, who quickly looked away when their eyes met. What was up with that woman? He thought they’d negotiated a truce after that fiasco at the boxing match, but she’d been distinctly edgy around him ever since.

Like this morning, when he’d run into her in the motel’s diner. He replayed their brief encounter in his head.

She’d been seated alone, at the counter, dumping packet after packet of artificial sweetener into her coffee, when he’d wandered in with the Atlanta newspaper tucked under his arm. There were only two other people in the coffee shop.

“Mind some company?” He perched on the stool next to hers, not waiting for an answer.

She’d shrugged. Not exactly a warm welcome.

The waitress poured him a cup of coffee and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Should be pretty good weather today,” Tate said, searching for some kind of an icebreaker. “Highs in the mid-eighties, lows down to the sixties tonight.”

“That’s nice,” she’d said, concentrating on the packet of nondairy artificial creamer she was trying to puncture with her fingernail.

“Here,” Tate said, taking it from her and ripping off the foil tab top before handing it back.

“I could have done it myself,” she said.

“Just trying to help,” Tate said.

She stirred the creamer into the coffee.

Something occurred to him. “Hey, Reggie. Aren’t you the one who’s always harping on natural this and seasonal that?”

“I’m an advocate of fresh, seasonal ingredients,” she said cautiously.

“And yet,” he said, picking up the discarded creamer packet and reading from the ingredients label, “you’re using hydrogenated dexo-whatever, and blahblah chemicals in your coffee this morning. So, I’m assuming you’ll be having those fresh, seasonal ingredients with the rest of your breakfast?”

Before she could answer, the waitress slid a plate onto the counter in front of her. Two runny fried eggs swam in a pool of bacon drippings, flanked by three bright red sausage links and a mound of buttered grits. Two cat’s-head-size biscuits perched on the edge of the plate.

“Your side of bacon’ll be out in a minute,” she told Gina, whose face was getting pinker by the second.

“Healthy, seasonal,” Tate agreed. “You sure walk the walk, all right.”

“My plane didn’t get in to Savannah till ten, and then there was an issue with the rental car, so we didn’t get down here to Darien till after midnight last night,” Gina said, dipping her fork into the grits. “I had no lunch or dinner. I’m famished. Anyway, we’re in a diner in Darien, Georgia. It’s not like they’re gonna have something like a fruit plate on the menu.”

The waitress came back with Gina’s bacon, then tilted her head and gave Tate a friendly smile. “Ready for breakfast, hon?”

“You got anything healthy and seasonal like a fruit plate?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “We got strawberries, cantaloupe, and peaches this morning. Anything else?”

“Maybe some low-fat yogurt?”

“Show-off,” Gina said, doing her best not to laugh at him.

The waitress brought his fruit plate and a bowl of plain unflavored yogurt. He looked at it with undisguised displeasure.

“Yum,” Gina said, reaching over and snagging one of his strawberries.

“Double yum,” Tate said, staring down at the canned peach slices.

Taking pity on him, Gina sliced one of the biscuits in half, loaded it with jelly from the bowl on the counter, and laid two slices of bacon across it before topping it off with the other half.

“Here,” she said, placing the biscuit sandwich on his plate. “You’re breaking my heart.”

“For real?” he asked. “Aw, Reggie, you really do like me.”

She snagged another of his strawberries and sliced the top off with her butter knife. “Just don’t make a move on my red-hot links, or you’ll be drawing back a bloody stump.”

They ate in companionable silence. He sipped his coffee and tried not to get caught staring at her.

“You’re staring at me,” she said, mopping up the last bit of fried egg with a bit of biscuit. “Do I have egg on my face?”

“Literally? No.”

“What?”

He propped his chin on his elbow. “I’m trying to figure out what that Zaleski character sees in you.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly.

“I mean, you’re so obviously not his type,” Tate said, struggling to explain himself. “Not showbizzy, if you know what I mean. I mean, you’re pretty, but not in an obvious, conventional way.”

“You really know how to flatter a girl,” Gina said.

“I suck at this,” he said.

“Boy, howdy,” she agreed.

“I’m usually great at pickup lines,” Tate said, frowning. “Girls love me. They fall all over me. When I go to Bargain Mart, I have to fight ’em off with a stick. I think it’s your fault. I think you throw me off my game.”

She picked up her napkin and delicately dabbed at her mouth. “Maybe you should stick to trying to pick up girls in Bargain Mart. Instead of women in diners. You ever think of that?”

“How come you bleached your hair and cut it so short?”

She threw down the napkin, reached for her billfold, and took out a five-dollar bill. “This has been fun,” she told him, with a crooked half smile. “We should definitely never do it again.”

“Aw, Reggie,” he drawled, spinning around on his stool so that his knees were touching hers. “Don’t leave. You know I don’t mean it like that. I like your hair. I really do. I liked it when it was long and brown, and I like it now.” He reached out and touched a tendril that had fallen over her forehead, and to her surprise, she didn’t stop him.

“Scott wanted me to go blonder so I’d look more glamorous for this TCC thing,” she heard herself telling him. “D’John accidentally left the color on for too long because he was flirting with the cute Chinese takeout boy, and it burned my hair, and half of it broke off, and my little sister cut off the rest of it.” Her eyes got very wide. “I can’t believe I just told you all that.”

“And I can’t believe you let a jerk-off like Zaleski tell you what to do,” Tate said. “Let alone sleep with him.”

“I’m not,” Gina said quickly. “Anymore.”

And then she spun around on her stool and walked quickly out of the diner.