Chapter One Dying For A Blue Plate Special © 2005 by Beth Kalikoff   Jewel Feynmann thought about taking off her clothes and standing buck naked in the storefront window of Blue Plate Catering. She’d never considered indecent exposure a marketing strategy, but things were getting desperate. Another slow month for her catering business in Tacoma, and she’d head back to New Brunswick, the longest three thousand miles in the world, to get the horse laugh from her family, who didn’t believe that any good could come out of Jews moving so far from New York, the epicenter, unless they were crazy. She wouldn’t go back a failure.  Crazy was looking good, but shaking her naked booty in the storefront window would bring the police rather than business. Or Jewel could look for the rat in the wall. The idea made her mouth dry. Skittering sounds had come from behind the cabinets, at floor level. She’d heard them, off and on, for the better part of two weeks.  There was a rat back there. Brown fur, yellow eyes, germ-ridden, teeth that could puncture skin like a balloon. She’d never seen him but knew he was there. No one else had heard him. Better not go down that garden path. It was so unfair. Or—hang on—she could check Blue Plate’s month-old web site.  As of yesterday, the tracker had recorded only two hundred and fourteen hits in four weeks, and at least two hundred of them were Jewel, checking the tracker. On the bright side, the site had netted one e-mail asking for directions to Martha Stewart’s web world and one saying “your site sucks.” The phone was ringing. Maybe this would be a big fat wedding for five hundred, bankrolled by the bride’s parents. “Jewel?  This is Helena Moore. We met at ‘A Taste of Tacoma.’ You threw fried ice cream on my shirt.” “It was an accident!” “I’m about forty, five foot seven, of Haitian descent—” “I remember you. You were the only one I threw ice cream at that day.” “One never knows,” said Helena. Jewel had run into Helena at Tacoma’s answer to big-city food fairs. Pretty hard, too.  She had just gotten a big cone of fried ice cream from the Lotus Tree booth and was reconsidering her Taste of Tacoma game plan, which had been to eat a little bit of everything without throwing up.  She swung around to check out the south end of Point Defiance Park just as the crowd surged forward. Jewel managed to hang onto the cone, but not the contents. As a result, the black t-shirt of a snappy-looking brown woman sported a third breast, this one of fried ice cream. It was a good look but not a great look. Helena had been a sport about it.  Jewel liked that in a person. “So you ready to take me up on my offer? Dinner for two, catered by Blue Plate, your house?” asked Jewel. “Generous,” said Helena. “Not really. I make the same offer to everyone I throw ice cream at.” “I wish that was why I called, but it’s not. Have you seen the newspaper this morning?” “Hang on.” Jewel reached across the counter for the Telegraph, Tacoma’s answer to the New York Post, still folded from delivery.  She unfurled it for a quick look. The headline screamed: “Woman, 20, Dies in Zoo U Kitchen Accident.”  Below the fold wasn’t any better: “Campus Seethes With Sex Scandal.” The article began: “Students chained themselves to the flagpole yesterday to protest . . .” “Oh, no!” Jewel said.  “That’s awful.  How are you?  What happened?” Helena worked at Commencement Bay University.  Doing what, Jewel couldn’t  recall. The pricey little school by Point Defiance was oddly wedged between the Tacoma Zoo and the working-class neighborhood of Ruston, so everyone called it Zoo U. According to the paper, the young woman had been found dead in the campus kitchen. On learning of the death, protesting students rattled their flagpole chains until around one o’clock, when they released each other and went back to class. “I’ve been better,” said Helena. “But as far as what happened goes, I can’t tell you anything that isn’t already in the newspaper.  I’m calling you because the university needs an outside caterer.” Jewel was torn.  Work was work.  But—  “Is something wrong with the ovens? Because—” Helena sighed. She sounded as though she hadn’t slept for a while.  “No, nothing. Listen, can you come to campus this morning and meet the Dean’s assistant, Muriel? She’ll tell you about the job.” “This morning?” “I know. Very sudden. But can you clear your calendar? It’s an emergency for us.” As if Jewel had a calendar.  She could memorize Blue Plate’s commitments with room enough left in her brain for the collected works of Julia Child. “I’m on my way.” She hung up before Helena could change her mind. * * * * * Less than an hour later, she parked her cherry-red Dodge Duster in among the Hondas of the visitors’ parking lot. The breathless Telegraph articles had her curious about what she’d see along the way. The reality was disappointingly sedate. Jewel strode into a foggy postcard from some picture-perfect moment in the 1920s.  The architecture was collegiate Gothic, red brick arches everywhere.  The tall windows were etched with lead tracery. The cherry trees, heartened by the mild winter, were just about to bloom.  In spring they must look like heaven.  All this luxury made her wistful for the college years she’d dropped like a burning pan.  No one here ever thought about rats or car repairs. She was homesick, but not for New Jersey.  Who says you can’t miss what you never had? A brick building with a bell tower loomed out of the mist. It boasted huge wooden doors and Latin over the archway.  A tiny sign was stuck in the herbaceous border for visitors.  Darmon Hall.  Muriel’s office. Several students in baggy shorts and cotton sweaters scampered down the stone stairs, giggling.  If these were the flagpole radicals, they had lost their handcuffs along with their outrage. Muriel turned out to be a petite woman whose desk commandeered the spacious outer office of the Dean.  Muriel wore a flowery shirtwaist like the ones that kindergarten teachers used to sport.  She had a good head of fluffy silver hair. Jewel wondered how she endured the institutional décor: oil paintings of balding white men in black suits. “Oh, here you are,” Muriel fluttered.  “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Ms.—er—Feynmann.”  She pronounced it in the style of midwestern Christmas-tree Jews, to rhyme with bean. Back east, it rhymed with wine. “We don’t generally hire outside caterers, as you probably know. But—”  She stopped, then backtracked. “Have you read the newspaper today?” Jewel nodded.  Muriel sighed.  There was a lot of that going around. “The young woman was one of the students working for the university food service.” “How’d she die?” Muriel’s kindly face froze.  Jewel jumped in before Zoo U cash flew out the window, heading north towards Winterset’s Catering on Proctor, a fancy-pants competitor. “I’m not nosy.”  A lie.  Jewel was nosy. “My concern is with the kitchen. If there’s been an accident with the kitchen equipment, I need to know about it.” Muriel’s fluffy silver wash-and-set wilted slightly. She looked abashed.  “Certainly you do.” She took a steadying breath.  “The student was found in the kitchens. Her death was not caused by any equipment failure or . . . anything related to her employment there. Nevertheless, several other students left their cafeteria jobs in protest. The food service is . . . restaffing.” Jewel wondered why the student died. And in the kitchens. And why the others quit. “While they do that, we thought we’d hire an outside caterer to do a few special events. There are several Humanities Program dinners coming up very soon.” Muriel seemed heartened by her return to familiar ground. “The first is scheduled for next week. The Dean wants this dinner—all of the dinners—to go very smoothly.” “Yes, of course.” “This business with SSH has been extremely unfortunate.  The Dean sees this as an opportunity to put it all behind us.” This business with—what? Muriel seemed to be hushing Jewel, or hissing at her.  “What’s SSH?” Muriel looked unhappily over her shoulder at closed oak door behind her. The inner sanctum. She lowered her voice. “Oh. That’s Stop Sexual Harassment, an extremist group. The young women in it—there are even a few young men—are quite nice individually—they made coffee for me during their sit-in last week—but as a group . . . well, the Dean is very concerned.” Jewel tried to imagine a Darmon Hall sit-in of rosy-cheeked, coffee-brewing activists in cotton sweaters but failed. “I want the dinner to go well, too.  Will the Dean discuss the menu with me?” “Oh, no, no. You and I will do that.  Helena Moore enjoyed meeting you, and I’ve heard wonderful things about your work from Professor Underwood; you did the bridal shower for her niece?  She’s still talking about that cake.” Ugh. Complete catastrophe.  The Duster had broken down on the way to the waterfront rambler.  Then the guests only nibbled because they were dieting.  They looked at the angel’s devil cake as though it were made of slugs.  Oh, none for me, thanks.  No, I’m fine, really. I couldn’t possibly. What was it with women? This Underwood must have been the one guest who asked for a business card. “Great.  Will you show me the kitchen?” “No, the Dean wishes to do that himself. He’s taking a special interest in this event because . . .”  Muriel checked herself.  “Well, he’s what we call a ‘hands-on’ type of administrator.” Jewel had a sudden flash of handcuffs, but supposed that wasn’t what Muriel had in mind. “Yes?  What’s his name, anyway?” “Oh. Call him ‘Dean Mulcahy.’ Although he sometimes asks people to use his first name. It’s ‘Matthew.’”  Muriel said it as though she were doing Berlitz Swahili—carefully and slowly. “Other times he asks people to use ‘Mr. Mulcahy.’ I expect he’ll tell you what he’d like you to call him.” Won’t that be a rush, thought Jewel. She struggled to keep her expression neutral. Muriel checked her watch.  “The Dean will meet you here in an hour to show you the Faculty Club kitchen. Perhaps you’d like to discuss the fees in the meantime?” Jewel grinned, grabbing her satchel. “You bet.” “And of course if the dinner works out, we’ll be eager to have you help on our other events, which we can discuss later.” “How many people?” Jewel asked hopefully.  Her middle-of-the-line wedding dinner price was twenty-one dollars a head. This would go higher than that, according to the sanctified campus smell of nineteenth-century timber money. “Ninety-six for the first event.” She did not fall to the carpet and kiss Muriel’s sensible pumps. A matter of personal pride.  Muriel named a figure.  A high figure. “It’s quite a big celebration for us,” Muriel continued. “The Humanities Program just received a sizeable two-year grant.” “Terrific!”  Dollar signs danced in Jewel’s head like sugar plums. Muriel looked startled.  “Oh yes.  It was a national grant, highly competitive.” The older woman paused.  Jewel smiled and nodded like an idiot while thinking about salmon.  Or maybe ham. Everyone loved ham.  They pretended not to, for nutritional or religious reasons.  Jewel knew better. Although once . . . salmon, then. She thought about the stack of bills on Blue Plate’s front counter.  She could buy a new bedroom lamp instead of rewiring the old one for the second time. Maybe get those ruby-red flats in the window of Second-Hand Rose’s.  They looked like lucky shoes. Jewel didn’t need a bank loan. She didn’t need a college education. She didn’t need to go back to New Jersey and compete for oxygen. She was Blue Plate.  She had work. “Er . . . Jewel?”  Muriel smiled at her expectantly. Had she been talking? “Yes?” “Would you like to talk about the menu?” “Muriel,” Jewel grinned, “I thought you’d never ask.” Back to TOP