Fed Up - By Jessica Conant-Park & Susan Conant Page 0,48
resisted the attack I mounted with the not-a-fork. After a couple of failed efforts, I had to use my fingers to yank out a rosemary spear that elevated the shrimp above a mountain of thick brown mush almost covered in what appeared to be grass clippings. Although the shrimp were terribly overcooked, I managed to chew and swallow a few bites, but I nearly choked on a small prongful of grass.
“It’s got a kick to it, huh?” Robin handed me my water. “That’s the jalapeño Marlee puts in her mushroom and sprout puree.”
“Very unusual,” I sputtered.
Robin’s cell phone went off again, and she began another loud exchange. A male server approached our table. “Ma’am? I need to ask you to turn off your phone.” He pointed to a prominent sign on the wall requesting that all cell phones be turned off in the restaurant.
“Oh, all right,” Robin said sharply to the server. “Shit, I’ll go outside.” She made quite a display of stomping across the floor and rolling her eyes as she marched out of the restaurant. At least she found the exit. I made a mental note of its location. Looking embarrassed, the server left the table.
“Just you and me, Chloe.” Nelson chomped happily on the vile food. “I’ve been hoping to get a chance to talk to you. Maybe we can find some time to talk on Saturday at the shower.”
Eeek! To cut Nelson off, I signaled the server who had asked Robin to leave. She’d been so rude to him that I felt compelled to apologize, as I couldn’t do in her presence. “The sign about not using cell phones is pretty clear,” I said. “I’m sorry for what happened.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Friend of the chef. That’s how it is. Thanks, though. Excuse me, I have an order to bring out.”
Nelson was gazing at me with strange intensity; he almost seemed to be in a trance. In what I intended as a startling tone, I said, “I didn’t know that Robin and Marlee were friends. I thought they just knew each other from Chefly Yours.”
“Oh, yeah. They’ve been good friends for a while. Robin wants to keep that quiet, though, because she doesn’t want it to look like she’s playing favorites on the show.”
Well, Robin most certainly was playing favorites! And having a chef friend of hers in the competition was bad enough, but keeping the friendship secret was even worse. Granted, Robin couldn’t control the number of viewers who actually called in to vote for each chef, but for all I knew, she could falsify the voting results. What if Marlee ended up winning the show because Robin had tinkered with the numbers?
I was fuming. It ticked me off to realize that Josh could lose to a chef who served such disgusting food at her restaurant. In the single episode that Marlee had done, the food had looked better than the revolting stuff I’d eaten tonight, but Josh’s cooking was incomparably better than Marlee’s, and his on-camera personality outshone Marlee’s by light-years.
Nelson’s hand slithered across the table toward mine. I swiftly yanked my hand away while desperately looking around for Robin. Mercifully, she was on her way back to her stool.
“Sorry about that. That waiter is an asshole.”
I pushed my food around on my plate and watched in awe as Robin polished hers clean. Nelson ate all of his food, too, but he struck me as someone who’d be unable to discriminate between a dinner at a run-down roadside shack and one at La Tour d’Argent. When the entrées appeared, I repeated the process of pushing my food around and managed to ingest only a tiny portion of the lavender-and-oregano-infused salmon that Marlee had chosen for us. Chosen for us? Inflicted on us, I should say.
To avoid Nelson’s ogling, I shifted around to face Robin and concentrated on giving her a detailed description of the wedding plans. Robin sounded delighted to have the opportunity to produce Adrianna and Owen’s wedding video and assured me she’d edit the footage down and set it to whatever music the couple wanted.
“Another delicious meal!” Robin pronounced as the waitress cleared our plates. “After that, I think I’m too full for dessert tonight.”
“I agree. Stuffed. I’m absolutely stuffed.” The last thing I wanted was cilantro-scented ice cream or whatever other vile dessert Marlee would send out. I was already brainstorming about where to stop on the way home to buy an edible dinner.