Fed Up - By Jessica Conant-Park & Susan Conant Page 0,87
and back onto Ade and Owen.
When the couple took their seats, Robin threw her hands on her hips. “Nelson, I’ve had it. You are totally incompetent! Give me the damn camera, Nelson! I mean it!”
“Yeah, right.” In showy defiance of Robin, Nelson slowly played the camera back and forth over the crowd.
I felt certain that this time, Robin and Nelson wouldn’t take their fight outside, and I was equally sure that they wouldn’t make peace on their own. To prevent an ugly scene, I stepped in. “Stop it!” I ordered in an undertone. “Both of you! Come over here.” I herded the pair out of the tent and stopped just outside the entrance. I didn’t relish having to chat it up with Robin, but I had no choice; I couldn’t allow the two of them to make a spectacle of themselves at the reception. “What the heck is the problem now?”
Ignoring me, Robin resumed her attack on Nelson. “Get this straight. I am making this film. Me! I am in charge. It’s not about whatever pretty girl you happen to feel like looking at. I’m the producer and director. You’re just the cameraman. I’m the brain, you’re the eyes, and that’s all you are. You shoot what I tell you to. Got it?”
Nelson leaned forward. “Maybe the film was yours, but it’s mine now. And my film is much more interesting than yours would have been. I’m an artist, and you’re nothing but a third-rate, unoriginal, imitative, small-time hack!”
Robin laughed condescendingly. “You’re nothing but a technician. If you think that you are ever going to be a filmmaker, you’re dreaming. You don’t have the talent. As a cameraman, you’re barely adequate!”
“Oh, Robin.” Nelson spoke all too calmly. “I warned you. You have no idea what I have on film. I have so much! A great shot of you buying foxglove not too long ago. I bet you’d love that little sequence, my dear. It’s all right here, baby.” Nelson sneered and patted the camera that he held at his side. I had to wonder about his claim. Wouldn’t he have downloaded that footage?
But Robin failed to share my doubt. She made a mad grab for Nelson’s camera. He, however, held it in a firm grip. I was furious! Josh had been more than justified in punching Emilio, and he’d done it in the kitchen before the wedding, not just outside the tent during the reception. Now, I wasn’t about to tolerate a physical altercation
“Cut it out!” I demanded.
Robin drew her leg in and then swiftly kicked Nelson smack on the kneecap. Nelson yelled out in pain, and as he fell to the ground, Robin wrestled the camera from his hands. While Nelson was clutching his knee and swearing, Robin jabbed at the camera in what seemed to be an inept effort to locate the part that held the recording.
“You two are totally out of control!” I whispered angrily. “And don’t you dare ruin the wedding footage,” I warned.
“Stay out of this, Chloe. It has nothing to do with you.” Robin turned the camera upside down and began trying to pry out its innards.
Nelson snorted. “Actually, it has a lot to do with Chloe. Chloe was asking questions about—”
I cut him off. “There has to be a way to work this out.”
“Leave me alone!” Robin raised her voice. “Mind your own business, Chloe. And your boyfriend’s, too. I happen to know a lot more about Josh than you do, so maybe you should pay a little more attention to him and less to me.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, completely confused and momentarily distracted. “What do you know about Josh?”
Robin halted her fiddling with the camera and looked smugly at me. “I know he’s not the chef at Simmer any longer. He quit. The new chef there is his supposed friend, Digger. Digger starts tomorrow. Marlee told me. You know how quickly restaurant gossip flies around.”
Robin had to be out of her mind. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Robin. Josh would have told me if he’d left Simmer. And there is no way Digger would take Josh’s job. It’s an unwritten rule that you don’t take your friend’s job, no matter what the restaurant.”
“How dumb can you be? You know these chefs. They all want to be stars. Digger wouldn’t hesitate to take a job on Newbury Street, even if it ticked off his good buddy. God, Chloe, you don’t know anything.” Robin laughed heartily.