CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Somehow, the school’s administrative offices weren’t damaged in the fire. The rooms on several floors smelled of smoke but the insurance company’s ionizer equipment was working overtime to clear the air. The kitchen classroom where the fire occurred was the only room with major damage. Several other rooms had water damage. Finn and her two cohorts had effectively put school on hold for everyone.
She sat in the reception area cooling her heels, waiting to have her feet, so to speak, held to the fire. Called on the carpet. Berated. Admonished. Rebuked. Or all of the above. Whatever happened there would be no kissing and making up.
From her intense study of the intricate blue and gray woven carpet at her feet, she saw a shadow pass in front of her. Chef John Michael sat down next to her wearing his usual white double-breasted chef coat and white toque. Finn straightened and leaned away as she stared through him at the wall at their backs.
“You set my home on fire.”
Finn cleared her throat. Thank God, they were alone. She was in enough trouble without being seen talking to herself. “It was an accident.”
“This never happened on my watch before.”
“Of course not,” Finn snapped. “Mister Perfect here who trained Emeril to be the millionaire he is today. You think teaching cooking to the masses on TV is my idea of a chef?”
She startled him into a brief chuckle. “I didn’t perceive it. Non. You think there is something wrong with TV?”
“Have you ever actually watched him in action?”
“Non.”
“Then save your advice. I just meant I want to cook in a real restaurant, one meal at a time.”
“I was merely going to say that you’ve mucked up any chance you have of becoming a TV chef or anything else for that matter. You’re going to be suspended, even if it wasn’t strictly your fault.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Of course you will, Arnold.” He rolled his eyes, then folded his arms across his chest looking decidedly haughty. “In the meantime I have to put up with the stench of this place. L’horreur. I could have been hurt, you know.”
“You’re dead.”
“You’re an expert?”
Finn studied his arrogant face. He seemed more irascible than usual. Maybe it was the fire. “What’s wrong? Really.”
“Nothing.” He sighed, staring heavenward.
“You’re not French at all, are you? It’s all a front.”
“Of course I am,” he replied, the snotty factor in place.
“It doesn’t matter to me. You’re a ghost. Who cares if you’re English, French or an Indian maharishi?”
“I care. I’m a Cordon Bleu-trained chef who—”
“Is dead.”
“—who had the most excellent training ever. What does it matter if I’m actually French or not?”
“Exactly. It doesn’t matter to me at all,” Finn said. “And you can stop putting on airs. I’m less than impressed.” She actually was impressed that he’d attended the Cordon Bleu School but she wasn’t about to tell him so.
“This from the young lady who set her own school on fire.”
“It was an accident,” Finn reiterated, sick to death of the entire conversation. “Do you think we could put this love fest on hold for a few days? I’m sorry it happened. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine,” she said.
They sat in mutual silence a few minutes. Finn watched the dust motes in the air. When she turned to look at him or rather through him, she caught him smiling. “What now?”
“I am not happy. Okay, not really, but you wrecked my home.”
She raised her brows.
“Such as it is. Still it’s my home, cooking school or not. It’s mine and has been for years.”
“And now it’s waterlogged, smells like a bar after hours and is a little charred around the edges.”
“Exactly.”
“Get over it, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.”
“Oh.” He grabbed his chest. “L’insulte. I’m devastated.”
“I don’t remember you having a sense of humor.”
“That was before I saw you in action in the classroom with the incomparable Miss Cynthia.” He threw his arms wide and sang out, “Mental.”
“Got that right. I can’t believe no one else caught on to her act before now.”
“It takes a village.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up. It takes a witch doctor.”
“I hear footsteps. The instructors are coming to take a bite out of your posterior. Take care not to burn any other buildings down while you’re away.”
“Does that mean you think I’ll be back?” she whispered.
“Of course. It’s your destination.”
“Wow,” Finn said to herself. Her chef ghost disappeared. Chef Shane stood in his place dressed in his whites.
“Wow?” he questioned.
“Nothing,” Finn said as her cheeks heated. “I was thinking aloud.”
“Okay, then, we’re ready to see you. Are you ready to see us?”
“As ready as I will ever be.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
***
Beneath the pale yellow halogen light from the pole overhead Finn sat in her car in the hospital parking lot after her visit with Jack. She groaned aloud. She beat her head against the wheel once. Then twice for good measure. It didn’t make her feel any better but what the hell. It didn’t make her feel any worse either.
If this hadn’t been the week from hell, she didn’t know what was.
She couldn’t believe she’d incapacitated Tommy. Twice. And now, Jack. She’d managed to put two grown men out of commission without even trying. Tommy could at least move but Jack looked worse and felt worse if his loud complaining meant anything. Who knew he’d be allergic to poison ivy and her special bbq sauce ingredient, tamarind? He was itching and vomiting equally.
If one didn’t know better one might think she was out to get the Boyle brothers. Nothing could be further from the truth. She liked them. This is what she did to her friends-–broke their legs, gave them black eyes, gave them food poisoning and allowed them to cover nearly every square inch of their skin with poison ivy. And these were the people she liked. Why couldn’t she be this effective against the bad guys?
Furthermore, she’d put two streetcars out of commission and burned down a perfectly good building. Accidentally.
She had to face it. That voodoo doll must have cast a spell on her. She was bad luck. Next thing you knew, she’d get arrested for scaring little kids. Or sideswiping the mayor’s limousine. Or setting back civilization by several hundred years. With the Boyle brothers out of commission, she was on her own. Well, the FBI might help if she called them. Then again, they might not. They might be afraid of her. Thank goodness all the crazies chasing her were either in custody or out of the country sunbathing on a Caribbean island.
She stiffened her spine, dug out her car keys and started the Bug.
To hell with Johnny Franco, Margaret Jane Barron and both La Fontaine brothers, one alive and impotent, and one dead. She could take care of her own damn self. She was going home to fix herself something fattening to eat before heading to bed and sleeping for a solid eight.
***
“Margaritas?” Tommy stared into Finn’s grocery bags as she stood at his door shortly before eight the next night.
Finn lifted her heavily laden grocery sack. “I didn’t know what you had so I bought everything we’d need, including the gonzo extra-large bottle of tequila.”
“Hot damn.” He shuffled to the side to let Finn in. His crutches, she noted, were propped in the corner beginning to collect dust.
“The kitchen is all yours. I’d help but I’d get in the way.”
“Sit,” Finn ordered, waving him to the couch. “If I can’t handle a batch of Margaritas, I might as well throw away my apron. Oh, yeah, I already have.”
“You said something on the phone about getting kicked out of school? What’d you do? Get caught in the storage room checking out the head chef’s sausage?”
“Not exactly.” She choked back tears. “I’m out, though. As soon as I’ve numbed myself, I’ll tell you all the gruesome details.”
“Gruesome, huh. You must be feeling awful if you can joke about it.”
“It’s either that or cry. I feel terrible. I’ve already cried a million tears and I still get all weepy whenever I think about it.”
“Stop already,” Tommy ordered. “I can’t handle it. Get those Margaritas in the blender. I’ve got chips and salsa. We’ll have, what do you ladies call it?”
“A pity party,” she suggested.
“Damn straight. A pity party. You can tell me all about getting kicked out of school and I can tell you how hard it is to dress myself, to say nothing of taking a piss or tying my own damn shoes.”
He sat on the couch with both legs propped on the coffee table. His feet were bare.
He caught her staring. “That’s right, Jones, I’m not wearing anything on my feet. I’m lucky if I can step into flip-flops.”
Finn found herself laughing for the first time since she’d stood outside the school building watching black smoke billow out a side window.
Exactly forty-eight hours ago.
Tommy plucked his cell phone off the table. Finn, measuring and pouring tequila into the blender, saw his face light up as she flipped it on. She couldn’t hear him but managed to catch the last of his conversation once she’d turned off the blender.
“So Finn and I are getting drunk and maybe we’ll have hot monkey sex later on.” He winked at Finn before she could stop him from saying anything else. “Thanks, Gert. Don’t give Debbie any naughty ideas.” Whatever Gert said in reply made him laugh.
When Finn came into the room carrying two frosted glasses, a bowl of salsa and a bag of chips, Tommy explained, “You’re good for the night. Gert’s taking Debbie to the movies, out for pizza and then they’re having a girls’ sleepover at her house.”
“God. I forgot all about Debbie. I’m a terrible mother.”
“You had other things on your mind.”
“I did but I shouldn’t have forgotten her.”
“True.” He reached for his Margarita, then patted the seat beside him. He waited until Finn picked up her glass. Holding his aloft, he said, “Here’s to better days.”
Finn nudged her drink against his. “Hear, hear. Better days.”
They each took a healthy swallow, not always a good idea with an ice cold drink. Brain freeze was a possibility.
“To having more sex,” Tommy said, setting his glass down and reaching for a chip, then dipping it into the salsa.
“More money,” Finn said.
“More paying customers,” he said, chewing loudly.
“More tourists.”
“More sex,” he said again, grinning.
Finn laughed. Tommy always knew how to cheer her up.
Two hours later, two pitchers of Margaritas later and Tommy knew all the revolting details of her culinary school denouement. He knew she’d been suspended and had to do community service before she could even apply for admission again. And, she’d do whatever it took.
Finn dropped her head against the back of the couch to the sound of Tommy’s soothing voice and fell asleep.
She woke to semi-darkness, the only illumination coming from the kitchen stove light. A light blanket covered her but Tommy was nowhere to be seen. She squinted at the stove’s clock. Past midnight. She sat up and was immediately sorry. She eased back down. Her head pounded, her stomach revolted. Fully sober and completely wretched, she lay still a moment, waiting for her body to settle and her vision to clear.
A knock pounded at the door. Finn couldn’t imagine who would be coming to see Tommy in the middle of the night. She prayed it wasn’t one of his many female friends looking for benefits.
Tommy shuffled into the room dressed in only a pair of plaid flannel boxers, his chest and feet bare, his bed hair tousled and his eyes half open. He turned on the table lamp beside her. “Go back to sleep. I’ll get it.”
“Sleep? With this headache?”
“You shouldn’t drink tequila. It’ll give you a monster hangover.”
“Now you tell me.”
Tommy looked through the eyehole in the door. “Damn.”
“Who is it?” Finn whispered. “Jack.”
“He’s out of the hospital?”
His mouth fell open. “He was in the hospital?”
“Oops. My bad. Forgot to tell you. I kind of put him there.” She hiccupped. “Excuse me.”
Tommy opened the door and Jack stepped inside. He was pale, his face and hands covered in calamine-covered scabs.
“Wow,” Tommy muttered as he closed the door behind Jack. “You look awful.”
Jack stared at Finn where she lay on the couch, then at Tommy dressed in nothing but his boxers. He fixed his eyes on her. His mouth tightened. She knew how she looked. Crazy hair stuck up in several places, her cheeks pink from the drinking, her eyes at half-mast. She knew how she looked, all right. She giggled.
“What’s going on here?”
“Nothing, bro.” Tommy patted his shoulder. “Want a Margarita?”
“No.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“D’you want anything?”
“No.”
“Can you say anything but no?”
“Not without hollering.”
Finn brought her hand up to her mouth to keep from bursting out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Jack stood over her with his hands on his hips.
“You,” she managed to say. “You look like an escapee from the pink clown circus. Sorry.”
Tommy threw back his head and exploded with laughter.
Jack’s face darkened, if possible. It was a bit hard to see through the cracked seams of calamine lotion and over-all scabbing. He gave Finn another black look, then drew back his fist and punched Tommy in the stomach.
Tommy reeled back, then bent over and vomited all over Jack’s feet. The stench of re-cycled Margaritas and hot bile permeated the room.
“What the hell?” Jack muttered, jerking away.
Tommy hobbled to the bathroom. For a man with a broken leg, he surprised Finn with his speedy, though clumsy exit.
She jumped to her feet and was immediately sorry. Her head spun, her stomach threatened to follow Tommy’s and spill onto the floor. “What’re you doing?”
“What’re you doing?” Jack barked. “How long have you and Tommy been getting it on?”
“We’re not. We haven’t. We, we don’t, what are you saying?”
“You mean to tell me you’re not.” He waved his hand around the darkened room, the blanket wrapped around her bare feet. “Look at you. Your hair’s a mess, your eyes are all soft and gooey, your clothes half on. What else would I think?”
“I don’t really care what you think.” In a feeble attempt to tone down her strident tone and calm her headache, she lowered her voice. “I’m a grown woman and if I want to have wild, hot sex with Tommy, I will.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked, becoming peeved with Jack’s holier-than-thou attitude.
“Having wild, hot sex with Tommy?”
“That’s none of your business.” Sorry for the intrusion into her throbbing head, she placed her cool palms against her forehead. “Where are my shoes?”
“Who cares?”
“You hit Tommy, you jerk.”
“Now that’s uncalled for.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” She found her flip-flops and stepped into them. “Go see Tommy. Make sure he’s okay. Talk to him. Then kiss and make up.”
“I’ll talk to him all right. Maybe I’ll blacken his other eye while I’m at it.”
“Grow up, Jack.”
He gave her one last angry stare and walked away. Once he was out of the room, she heard the two of them yelling again, the sound escalating with each passing second. She shook her head and eased out the front door, pulling the door shut behind her as she hefted her backpack into place.
Finn wobbled down the steps into the shadowed parking lot with its one meager pole giving off little light to see by. She hoped she still had that bottle of aspirin stashed in the glove box. She couldn’t believe those two. How could two brothers be so confrontational? It boggled her mind. And, in its current muddled, inebriated state, it wasn’t too hard to boggle.