Chapter 21
On Thursday, Sara and I drove to Studio City and finally found Eat Me ’s soundstage inside a huge building. The set was wild. State-of-the-art double kitchens with maybe ten feet between them, no barrier or partition, so that Johannsen had full view of the challenger to heckle. The kitchen was built on long stainless steel counters that stretched across the length of the stage: six-burner stove top, oven, sink, garbage hole. Behind the counter was another stretch of table with pots and pans, dishes, utensils, and silverware.
The producer had us arrive three hours before the show was set to begin. A guy with a clipboard had met us at the door and had tried to take our bags of ingredients and my cases with my trusty sauté pans. Yeah, no . I didn’t trust Joe Asshole Johannsen for a second. My ingredients and my pans were not leaving my sight. We carried them in ourselves and put them on the counter in front of us.
The audience seats were empty, which was probably why Joe Johannsen was nowhere to be seen. No audience, no need to appear. The producer talked our ears off for the next fifteen minutes, explaining timing and that I should keep an eye on the big blinking red digital clock on the wall. Sara would be my time watcher and let me know how much time I had left every fifteen minutes. I’d have ten minutes to prep, twenty minutes to cook, five minutes to plate twenty servings, and then the remaining time would be watching the tasters try both versions and record their favorites. The last five minutes of the show would be declaring the winner.
“You’ve seen the show, so you know what to expect,” she said. “If you let the heckling get to you—from Joe and the audience—he’ll win. And that’s no fun. Give it back to him.”
“Oh, we will,” Sara said.
Then it was off to hair and makeup. Sara and I sat in huge swivel chairs in front of a wall of mirrors. It took more than an hour for our makeup artists to make us look completely natural.
By the time we got back to the stage, the audience began filing in, a bunch of staffers directing them to their seats and explaining cue cards and instructions. I heard one woman tell the audience to scream and shout whatever they wanted, to have fun with Joe and his challenger, not to hold back. But no cursing was allowed; anyone who cursed would be escorted out.
One guy raised his hand and asked if “damn” was a curse. No, it was not, a producer assured him.
There were about two hundred people in the audience, their attention taken at the moment by staffers. The first row of the audience was only ten feet or so away from the long kitchen counter, which faced the audience. I looked around for Zach and spotted him in the third row. He winked at me, and I shot him a smile. I’d been given ten tickets to give away (but those names were disqualified from being taste testers). Ty and Seamus were a few rows behind Zach, and they gave me a wave. Julia from the coffee lounge, who’d become a friend, my sister—who’d let me know yesterday that Eva was cooperating on the Prime issue—and her fiancé rounded out the rest.
“Ten minutes to showtime,” the producer told Sara and me. “Why don’t you get in position and begin setting up? You can’t actually start prepping, but you can put your ingredients and cookware on the counter.”
Johannsen had yet to make an appearance. All the more to rile up the crowd when he did walk on, I figured. Sara and I put all my stuff on the counter. I was ready.
“And five. Four. Three. Two. And live,” called the producer.
The clapping and cheering and “Eat me!” chanting started up immediately. While I started slicing the eggplant, Johannsen appeared and called out, “My challenger calls herself Skinny Bitch! And she doesn’t eat or wear or use anything that comes from an animal. I think she could rename herself Stupid Bitch!”
The audience hooted and clapped. “Stupid Bitch!” they chanted.
What a moron. I totally ignored him.
Sara focused on measuring out the dry ingredients, then shouted at Johanssen, “I’ve already renamed you Knuckle Dragger. Totally fits the Neanderthal over there, right?” she said to the audience. They clapped and cheered and wolf whistled. “I got this,” she whispered to me. “No problem.”
I heard everything from “Go, Clementine!”—at least twice from Ty’s booming voice—to “You suck, Johannsen.” Which elicited a “Suck this” from my challenger across the stage. I glanced over and he was holding an eggplant up to his crotch.
Classy.
As I sliced and cut the eggplant into square pieces, Sara had my spices in their measuring cups and spoons ready to go as I asked for them. I got on the tomato sauce and Sara kept her eye on the amazing bread I’d baked myself that morning as it toasted in the oven.
“Too many ingredients over there!” Johannsen shouted, jabbing his finger at me. “What do I always say is the key to good cooking, folks?”
A producer held up a giant cue card. “Kiss! Kiss!” the audience chanted back.
“That’s right!” he shouted. “K. I. S. S. Keep it simple, stupid!”
The audience cheered.
“Eggplant,” he shouted. “Marinara sauce—made from tomatoes and some garlic and salt. Bread crumbs. Good mozzarella cheese. Done! She’s got all of Whole Foods over there!”
I rolled my eyes and focused on my cheese sauce.
“Gross—tofu!” Johannsen shouted, sticking his finger down his throat.
“ You’re gross,” Sara shouted back.
He laughed. “How gross am I?” he chanted to the audience.
“So gross!” they shouted back.
This was a cooking show? Seriously? I was getting more and more embarrassed to be there at all, but for $25,000 I needed by the 15th? I’d suck it up.
“Let me tell you something, folks,” Johannsen said, slapping mozzarella cheese on his slabs of bread crumb-coated, marinara-soaked eggplant. “That crap she’s putting on her eggplant? Not cheese!”
“Not cheese!” the audience chanted back.
Someone shouted, “Go, Crunchy Vegan. All the way back to the farm!”
“Crunch this,” Sara shouted at the guy, which elicited claps and cheers and boos.
“I like this chick,” Johanssen shouted at the audience, jabbing a thumb Sara’s way. “Too bad she’s gonna lose!”
More clapping. More cheering.
The more this crap went on, the more grateful I was that Alexander hated my guts and wouldn’t answer his phone. He would not have survived five minutes up here. Sara perfectly walked the line between focusing on assisting me, watching the time, and shouting back at Johannsen and the audience. Oscar-worthy performance.
“Fifteen minutes,” Sara and Johannsens assistant called at the same time. I carefully laid each square of eggplant in the four sauté pans.
“Aww, how cute!” Johannsen shouted. “She’s so dainty with her planty-loo!” He practically threw his slabs of eggplant in his pans, sauce splattering.
“Aww!” the audience shouted.
“Five minutes!” Sara and the other assistant shouted.
We plated the Eggplant Parmesan, which looked and smelled amazing. I glanced over at the mess Johannsen was serving up.
That money was mine.
The nineteen taste testers were seated at a long table onstage, in front of the kitchens. Each had two plates in front of them—the one that was clearly Johannsens, with its thick oozing mozzarella cheese and pile of sauce, and mine, which looked a thousand times more delicious than Johannsens.
They cut bites. They chewed. They took more bites.
Finally, Johannsen took the mike. “Okay, taste testers. Whose Eggplant Parmesan did you like better? Mine or the Skinny Bitch’s? No matter who wins, $25,000 goes to the American Heart Association. But if Blondie here wins, she also gets twenty-five thousand big ones. So who’s it gonna be?”
One by one, he went down the table of taste testers. They shouted out “Johannsen” or “the Skinny Bitch.” I had seven votes so far. Johannsen had eight.
“Four more votes!” Johannsen said.
“The Skinny Bitch!” shouted the next taster, flashing me a thumbs-up.
“Johannsen!” said the next guy.
Shit. He had nine votes. I had eight.
Unless the next two voted for me, I’d lose.
“Okay, taste tester number eighteen,” Johannsen said. “Who’s it gonna be. Me, right?”
“No! The Skinny Bitch,” the guy shouted. “Hers is fantastic. And I love cheese!”
Shit, yeah. I was so close. So close. I shut my eyes for a second, willing the next guy to say “Skinny Bitch.”
“Taste tester nineteen!” Johannsen boomed. “The vote is tied. Who’s it gonna be? Drumroll, please.”
Indeed, there was a drumroll.
“Your vote is …” Johannsen shouted.
“I vote for …” the guy said, drawing it out, per the cue card that said to. “Oh, man, I can’t believe it, but the Skinny Bitch’s rocks. Sorry, Joe!”
“You won!” Sara screamed. She jumped up and down. “Clem won!”
Johannsen faux stabbed himself in the heart. “And the winner of the Eggplant Parmesan cook-off is … shockingly enough, Clementine Cooper!”
The audience leapt to their feet, cheering and chanting, “Skinny Bitch! Skinny Bitch!”
I did it. And I wasn’t talking about beating the gross slob, though I did do that. I won the money. Clementine’s No Crap Café was mine.
Text from Zach later that night: Can’t wait to celebrate your win. I would have liked your Eggplant Parmesan better, too.
Me: You hate tofu.
Him: But I love YOU.
I went completely still for a second. But instead of texting something back, or calling him, I just stared at that text for the longest time. So long that the next thing I knew, birds were chirping like crazy and the sun was shining.
I love you, too, I was thinking.
So why couldn’t I say it?