Page 10 of Best Served Hot

When was the last time I’d cooked? I actually had to think about it. I used to love cooking in college, but since I’d moved to New York and started JulieZeeEatsNYC, I’d been eating out so much keeping my page current that cooking had kind of taken a back seat. When was the last time I’d even gone grocery shopping?

I ran out of time for an answer. Marcus scoffed, turning back to his show. “I made extra pasta salad if you want some. It’s in the fridge.”

Well, now I had to cook. “I don’t need your pity pasta salad,” I said, sticking my nose in the air. Then lowering it back down. “Though I’m sure it’s delicious.”

“It is delicious.”

Unlike most New York City kitchens, which were long and narrow and dark, ours was big enough to fit a kitchen cart and even a tiny table for two under the big window; Marcus’s herb garden was green and cheery on the sill, and he’d covered the old but serviceable (and only slightly leaky) fridge with magnetic poetry. Light the world on fire, it told me now. I hoped it didn’t mean literally.

“Let me know if you need any help,” Marcus called from the other room.

“I’m good,” I called back as I opened the fridge. And grimaced. Marcus’s side overflowed with a bounty of fresh greens and violently purple eggplants, little jars of sauces and plastic Tupperware filled with an expectedly tasty-looking pesto pasta salad, with . . . were those roasted carrots and asparagus? Yum.

My side was barren in comparison. I had a bottle of ketchup, a half stick of butter, a slimy bag of what had once been spinach, and a few eggs that had expired only a week ago and so were probably still good. My cabinet situation wasn’t much better. I had some flour and stale popcorn, which weren’t all that appealing or helpful. A dusty bag of rice, which smelled fine.

Okay. That was it, then. I’d make eggs and rice and mix it up with some ketchup and Marcus’s soy sauce. Ketchup fried rice had been a college staple, even if back then I’d included some more vegetables. But ketchup was kind of a vegetable, which made this a nutritious and filling meal. Sort of. The annoyance was simmering inside me again just looking at it all, not as hot as the anger but from the same source. I’d be eating delicious roti and potatoes from Edna’s if Bennett Wright hadn’t distracted me with his extremely punchable face on video.

I took a deep breath and assembled my mise en place. I might not cook often, but some things were muscle memory. My half stick of butter, the rice, the eggs, the soy sauce, and the ketchup. Oh, and salt. Everything needed salt. And maybe pepper, except that my pepper grinder had run out. How sad was that?

I could practically see Bennett sneering at me with disdain.

“Shut up,” I hissed, even though he hadn’t said anything and he wasn’t here, anyway, but even so, after I turned the heat on under the skillet on the stove and dumped in a pat of butter, I cracked the eggs maybe a little bit too hard. Okay, definitely a lot too hard. And maybe I shouldn’t have done it on the edge of the skillet, because the whites oozed over the side, little flakes of shell falling into the pan with them. I cursed under my breath and stuck my fingertip in the pan, trying to scoop the bits out, only to stick my skin right up against the searing metal. I cursed again, not under my breath.

“You sure you don’t need help?” Marcus called.

“I’m good,” I called back again. I was not good. Why had I started off by cooking the eggs? They were already done, but the rice would take at least—I peeked at the back of the bag—twenty minutes. I was so out of practice. The only thing that kept me from cursing again was that I didn’t want more of Marcus’s pity.

Okay. The rice went into the pot, followed by twice that amount of water and a good pinch of salt. I put it on the stove and turned the burner way up so it would boil quickly, then turned the burner under the eggs off. I sighed, flopping onto one of our little barstools and resting my cheek against the table.

Somehow, over the furious battle cries of my stomach, my thoughts drifted back to the video. To post or not to post: that was the question. It really depended on how I framed it. If I posted it and used the caption to tattle on Bennett for being a classist jerk, I’d look spiteful and petty, and people would sympathize with him. If I just posted it alone, that was the Wild West. People would be able to interpret it however they wanted. They wouldn’t like that. Followers didn’t go on my social media to think hard and analyze; they went on because it was easy and fun. And there was nothing wrong with that—they probably thought hard and analyzed all day at work, listening to music or podcasts, reading books and articles. It was okay that they came to me to unwind, but that meant they’d want some kind of frame or fence herding them to a conclusion.

I could post it if I knew the frame would make my followers and anyone else who saw it sympathize with me. Even better if I could make them feel under attack. I could frame it as a public service announcement. Hey, people on social media, do you put a lot of stock in the Scroll’s reviews? Here’s a PSA on what the reviewer thinks of you. The thought of people’s reaction was enough to make my nose wrinkle, like I smelled something burning.

No, not like. I did smell something burning.

I jumped up from the barstool. Marcus called out to me again from the other room, though our smoke alarm wasn’t going off. We should probably get that checked out. I grabbed the pot lid, then shouted because it burned my hand.

“Out of the way!” Marcus to the rescue. He pushed me to the side—in a gentle way—and, somehow with a pot holder already on his hand, lifted the lid off my pot. Smoke escaped, and I wrinkled my nose harder but didn’t turn away. I felt like the guy in Game of Thrones who gravely told his son they had to see firsthand the dirty consequences of what they had to do, and even though they’d been talking about beheading lawbreakers, the sentiment felt similar. Kind of.

“You know, you’re supposed to pay attention when you’ve got something on the stove,” Marcus said once the smoke had cleared and we could both stare into the pot. The rice had scorched black and stuck to the pot and burned while I was sitting there thinking about the video. He gazed into the pot, reaching in and poking some of the grains gingerly with one finger. “It’s somehow over- and undercooked at the same time. Truly impressive.”

I knew my cheeks were flushing from embarrassment from how hot they were getting, but still, I stepped back. Took a bow.

Marcus laughed. “Maybe don’t feature this one under your handle,” he said, pulling the pot off the stove and dumping it into the sink, then filling it with water. “We’ll let this soak for a while. In the meantime, you have some . . . overcooked, rubbery eggs with shell in them?”

I gritted my teeth. “My favorite.”

Marcus sighed. “Do you ever think about how ironic it is that you literally review restaurants for a living, but you can’t even boil water?”

I didn’t quite review restaurants for my living, but yes, I had thought about this before. Maybe I should dedicate one night a week to cooking again just so I wouldn’t be so embarrassing in the kitchen. I ground my teeth harder. “I can so boil water,” I said. “The problem was that I boiled it too hard.”

He patted my shoulder. “Keep telling yourself that.”

As it turned out, the pasta salad was delicious.

5

I woke up the next morning determined and decided on the course of the edited video. No, that wasn’t exactly true. As usual, I woke up determined and decided on nothing but stumbling into the bathroom and brushing my teeth and pouring some coffee into my face. So the truth was that I strode into Mr. Decker’s office and plunked in my chair and kicked off my shoes and then, just then, I was determined and decided.