And how much that humility conflicted with the eyes—full of pomposity and anger—that were evident every time I remembered the image of him that was seared in my brain.
I groaned as I watched a single tear splatter into the eggs. I stood and carried the bowl over to the sink, prepared to pour the mixture down the garbage disposal—out of habit, I guess. The rules of presentational cooking had taken over my instincts. Thankfully I remembered, just before I tilted the bowl, that the rules of stress relief cooking, for only myself, were very different. You didn’t have to start over on a quiche simply because a tear dropped in. You just had to add less salt.
I flipped the bacon in the frying pan, standing back to avoid the hot, splattering grease, and tried to think about anything other than the way I had been completely disarmed by Max’s surprise appearance—and even more so by the apparent purpose of the appearance. And the way I had just stood there, silent and numb. For months I had thought of all the things I should have said to him on the set that day, and those things varied widely from, “Clearly something is bothering you. If you need to talk, I’m here,” to “If you call me Hayley one more time, I’m going to shove your special ‘secret ingredient’ somewhere that you’ll never have to worry about anyone figuring out what it is.” But I hadn’t said any of it then, and I’d said even less during our surprise reunion.
Quiche was not nearly distracting enough. It had clearly been a mistake not to pull out a turkey, a duck, and a chicken and begin the arduous turducken process.
I shifted gradually from shock into a deliberate attempt to try and focus on the good things I’d heard about him through the years. If I was going to have any luck whatsoever reconciling the eyes of the two Maxes in my mind, maybe that was a good place to start.
He was a genius. Clearly. I’d watched him enough to know that was true. I’d eaten some of his food from time to time—in his restaurants or on Fiercest Chef, of course—and he was undeniably a genius. Each bite was much more pretentious than I preferred, but boy was it good. I’d always heard that he could be charming—only when he wasn’t drinking, according to some; only when he was, according to others. He’d apparently donated a whole bunch of money through the years to help stamp out hunger in America’s inner cities, but none of it had been done discreetly. From what I could tell, Chef Cavanagh did not believe in letting his good deeds fly under the radar. Not when he could become the poster boy for some cause or other, and he could list his uppity restaurants—where each side of risotto cost more than a week’s wages in those inner cities he was helping—as sponsors of his initiatives.
Okay . . . the good things weren’t helping very much.
When my phone rang and I saw Leo’s name, I instantly knew I’d never been more grateful for a manager who had no respect whatsoever for his clients’ desires not to be bothered late at night.
“Hey, Leo.”
“Good evening. Sorry to bother you so late.”
I glanced at the clock on the microwave: 9:34. Okay, so it wasn’t quite as late as I had thought. I would have sworn it was 2:00 a.m. in the year 2070 or so. I definitely felt like an octogenarian at the moment.
“No problem. What’s up?”
“You doing okay? All ready for the big move? I bet you’re exhausted.”
“I am, actually,” I replied with a yawn. I hadn’t realized just how exhausted until that moment. I speared the bacon with my fork, pulled it out of the pan, and placed it on the paper-towel-covered plate on the counter. I turned off the stovetop and looked around with exasperation at the mess I’d made for a quiche I no longer had any desire to make. “But everything is going well. We’re all set for tomorrow’s show”—Or we would be, if I hadn’t broken into Lacey’s Kentucky Derby ingredients—“and we’ll also tape one extra, just as security in case there are any unexpected delays with the move. And then Stuart and the guys will immediately break down the set—”
“The network will be sending over an additional crew to help.”
“Great. Yeah, so, I guess that’s all good. They’ll get everything moved over and set up at the new place, and then we’ll start taping there on Monday.”
“Good. Good. This is a positive thing, Hadley. An exciting thing. There’s already been such an impact, just from being in Nashville. Don’t you think?”
“Yep. Definitely.” I covered my mouth to try and stifle a second yawn, but it was to no avail.
Never one for silence of any kind in conversation, I’d already discovered, Leo jumped in again. My half-hearted, sleepy affirmation and acknowledgment that he had been right to move the show to Nashville was all he sought, I guess.
“And there are some other things in the pipeline too. Exciting things.”
“Oh really?” I asked, hopeful that my tone expressed interest. Because there was interest. I was greatly interested. I just also happened to suddenly feel like I’d run the Kentucky Derby.
If I had any hope of staying awake while Leo wrapped up the conversation, I knew I needed to keep moving. Clearly I wasn’t going to follow through on a quiche. As much as I wanted to dump it all down the garbage disposal and be done with it, I couldn’t ignore the guilt that had been instilled in me throughout my childhood and all thoughts of how a starving child in a third-world country would have benefitted from my egg pie. I begrudgingly began rifling around for plastic containers to store the mess I had created for myself.
“They want you on Renowned, Hadley.”
I froze, bacon-grease-splattered pot holder in hand. Surely my emotional and physical exhaustion had transported me to a dream-like state where I only thought my manager had just told me that the single greatest establishment in the history of culinary entertainment—with the possible exception of Dan Aykroyd’s Julia Child sketch on Saturday Night Live—wanted me as a guest. Me.
Renowned is the Hollywood Walk of Fame. No, that’s not big enough. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Renowned is an all-star game. Careers were forever cemented as legendary on Renowned and, on a few disastrous occasions, careers came to a close on Renowned.
In my world, there was nothing else quite like it.
“You there?” Leo asked, after a little too much stunned silence.
“Yeah, I’m here. Did I hear you right? Did you just say—”
He laughed. “They want you on Renowned. You heard me right. Now, look . . . if you want to do this, things are going to move fast. Mario Borjomi was scheduled for this season, but he came down with tuberculosis or something while filming his National Geographic special.”
“Oh my gosh, Leo! Is he okay?”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine. But they’ll want to be out in Nashville soon—I’m talking next week—to scope out the house and some locations, and start filming some promos.” He gave me a moment to process before saying, “We’ll sort out the details over the next couple days, but congratulations, Hadley. You deserve every bit of this.”
I put my arm out behind me to feel around for the stool I desperately needed to sit down on. I found it and pulled it a little closer and collapsed onto it. I nearly biffed it, but I righted my position and settled in. Renowned. I had watched Renowned with my dad from the time I was a little girl, and I’d never missed an episode in the years since his death. It wasn’t like any other show. It wasn’t like the current state of entertainment—not even the current state of entertainment I was a part of. Now we worked hard and we worked fast to try and keep up. Constant content. Constant publicity. Constant attempts to somehow stand apart.