Chapter One
Judgment was bearing down on the beautiful Baker sisters
like a freight train. The jury looked on. Beneath deadly
hot lights, the young women awaited the verdict. They were
doomed. Everyone knew it. But we still loved to watch them
squirm. Sydney and Marley, the two elder sisters, wore the
lowest-cut designer gowns. They clung to each other for
support. Emily, the youngest of the three beauties,
admitted she might faint from fear.
"Can you turn the sound up a little?" asked Drew.
I shot him a look. All the chefs were staring at the
screen of our kitchen Toshiba, drawn into the drama that
marked the final round of Food Freak, America's hot-hot-
hot new cooking quiz show. I reached for the remote
control and adjusted the volume.
"The guys from Jersey killed 'em," said Philip Voron,
wiping his apron. "Is it too late to raise my bet?"
"Yes," came the answer from five other kitchen assistants
and chefs.
On-screen, the celebrity judges tasted the food that had
been prepared over the previous half hour. Tony and Frank
from Jersey vs. the Fabulous Baker Girls.
"I'll take your money," I said, giving Philip a level gaze.
"All right," he said slowly. "Another twenty."
No one knows quite how these pop culture phenoms begin,
but at the moment, America's TV viewers were just crazy
about Food Freak, the show that pitted amateur chefs
against one another in a hilarious send-up of feuding
gourmands. Thousands of hot little office betting pools
were springing up everywhere. Internet betting was also
huge. For some reason, the idea of caring so much about
who was crowned the best amateur chef in the U.S. had
tickled us. The show was a riot for those of us who cook
for a living, television of the absurd. Sort of like the
Pillsbury Bake-Off on steroids.
Judgment was at hand. We all turned to the screen. And
despite the knife-wielding prowess displayed earlier by
the dance instructors from Trenton, it was not to be Tony
and Frank's night. I two-finger-whistled when the guest
judges, pop divas Destiny's Child, admired the sisters'
shimmering chiffon gowns in sherbet colors as well as
their mouth-watering take on fat-free tiramisΓΉ. I cheered
on Emily, Marley, and Sydney Baker and whooped as they
pulled out from behind and won the show by only a scant
point.
There was some teasing and settling of bets, and then we
all got back to work. This is what it is like to be an
event planner in the midst of orchestrating a major
Hollywood party. I was working in my own professional
kitchen, one I'd had added to my home in the Hollywood
Hills, preparing a spectacular Mumbo Gumbo and several
other exotic dishes for a party of eighty to celebrate the
close of production on one of TV's most memorable new
shows of the season, the one whose final episode we had
just screened early since we'd be working when it aired
later tonight.
We would produce this evening's wrap party for Food Freak,
but after this one last party, our schedule was alarmingly
unbooked. The great blank calendar that was March loomed
ahead. The country was not in a lavish, celebrating, party
mood.
"We're definitely going to pull through this little
slump," Wes said, looking up as he chopped a mound of
okra. Throughout the past month he'd said much the same
thing, each time with the same up-beat tone. It never
failed to make my stomach queasy at how hard he was trying
to cheer me the heck up. Wesley Westcott is my best friend
in the world and my business partner in our event-planning
company, Mad Bean Events.
I gave him a great cheery smile back. Wes is a tall,
perfectly groomed guy and you would hardly guess he was
thirty-eight by the boyishness of his good looks, the
great hairline, or the energy of his movements. He took
note of my best smile and looked queasy.
I'm Mad Bean. Madeline Olivia Bean, actually. Twenty-nine.
Single. Raised in a suburb of Chicago, trained at the
Culinary Institute in San Francisco, and finally
transplanted to L.A. Wes and I began our company a few
years back, catering high-profile dinner parties in
Hollywood, a town that rates a good party slightly higher
than your average fish rates water. The top-end party
crowd has come to discover that we are more than willing
to be arty, outrageous, and temperament-free, a perfect
combination, it turns out, to prosper here amid hothouse
egos and insane party budgets.
But this town, like every town, has been changing. People
are more worried than ever about the state of the world
and what the future might bring. With fears about the
economy, our best clients -- the movie studios and
television productions -- seem less inclined to want to
spend wildly. For the first time in, I think, ever, the
Emmy Awards decided to tone themselves down, banning the
jewels and ball gowns. And as for our business? No
bookings. Our lack of income was something I was planning
to be desperate about just as soon as this last party was
taken care of.
But not right now. Now, we had to cook and put on a
terrific event.
I looked around. My kitchen is quite cozy in a brushed-
stainless-steel, white-tile, warm-wood-counters sort of
way, but it is not pretty on the day of a party. It's a
battle zone. It is rather like the beaches during the
Normandy invasion, I imagine, only exchange the sand for
linoleum, the sweaty soldiers for sweaty cooks. A dozen
prep chefs were busy here and there, lifting great pots
onto the fire, or shelling fresh Santa Barbara prawns.
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