Page 19 of The Golden Spoon
“How’d it go today?” he calls out.
Shit.Now I have to say something.It’s okay, Stella. It won’t kill you to talk to an attractive man.I walk up to the side of the gazebo.
“It was good,” I say, lying. My mouth feels dry. All those months at home have weakened my conversational skills.
“Stella, right?” he asks. I nod. I notice a piece of a large tattoo peeking out from the cuff of his shirt. “I’m Graham.”
“Today was pretty bad, actually, if I’m being honest,” I say. I haven’t spoken to anyone about my performance in the tent, and I find I want to say it out loud. “I don’t think I’m going to manage to stick around here much longer.”
“I’m sure you just have to find your rhythm,” he says. “Besides, it can be hard to do your job when you have Betsy hovering over you.” His voice turns bitter, and I wonder if he’s no longer talking about me. He takes another puff on the vape. What could someone like him have against Betsy? I can’t imagine her doing anything bad to him. I’ve watched her, and she hardly interacts with the camera operators.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” I say, dodging, while hopefully communicating that I am not the one to commiserate with about Betsy Martin. “You’ve been doing this a while then?”
“This’ll be my fourth season,” he says.
“And you like it?”
“Yeah. It’s not too bad.” He stretches and his shirt rises up, flashing a sliver of toned stomach. “The money’s good considering it’s just a week’s work, and it’s great being out here during the summer. And don’t tell anyone, but sometimes we get to eat the things you bake.”
The idea of them scavenging over our bakes at the end of the day fills me with a strange sick feeling.
He leans over, resting his forearms on the side of the gazebo. His voice is low and gravelly when he speaks. “I’ve met Betsy’s ex-husband.”
His eyebrows go up like he knows things. He glances back at the manor and bends closer to talk to me.
“Listen, this place… Betsy. Let’s just say there are rumors.”
I don’t know what he’s getting at, but I don’t like it. “I’m sure her ex would have plenty to say about the place he’s no longer allowed to be in and a woman who stood her ground in a divorce,” I say in her defense.
“Maybe,” he says. But I can tell he doesn’t believe me at all. I’m finding his personality extremely off-putting and regret stopping to talk to him at all.
“I thought the crew stayed in town,” I say pointedly, changing the subject.
“We do. Gotta secure the equipment before we go, though,” he says. “I’m always the last to leave here.” His eyes lock with mine uncomfortably.
“Oh, really?” I feel my internal alarm bells starting to go off. I look past him at the front steps of the manor, gauging how long it would take to run if I needed to.
“I better get back,” I say, already stepping away. “Don’t want to miss dinner.”
He grins to himself as though he is finding something funny.
“What?” I ask warily as I back away from him, ready to bolt.
He just raises his hands, smiling like he knows something I don’t.
“It’s probably safer out here than it is in there.”
PRADYUMNA
Dinner tonight has been an unpleasantly quiet affair. The only conversation the four of us have had was speculating about Gerald, who has not come down to eat, hasn’t even been seen since his abrupt departure from the tent earlier. I suspect he is embarrassed. Being such an uptight man, so intent on doing things to a certain code, it must have been mortifying for him to lose control like that. Not to mention the incredible letdown of being sent home when he could have so easily won.
“It’s a shame,” I say. “He probably was the best baker of all of us.” Nobody responds to me; each of them seems lost in their endive. I wonder if I’ve offended them. I suppose they all prefer to think of themselves as the best baker of the group, even if it isn’t true. I’m almost envious of how much each of them cares about winningBake Week.
Next to me, Hannah is silent and jumpy, which seems a bit strange given her victory in the tent today. I’d have thought someone like her would be over the moon, full of annoying false modesty and equally insufferable false eyelash batting. But she has barely touched her food or even looked at the rest of us. A clock on the mantel behind me ticks loudly, counting down the seconds until this interminable meal is over.
Stella is the only one who has spoken at all, chattering along rather inanely as usual, but even she seems more subdued than normal. Aside from Gerald’s unfinished disaster, her pies were obviously the worst of the bunch, somehow both burnt on the outside and raw and unset on the inside. I realize suddenly that this is the second time she’s been saved by an unfortunate error. How lucky she is.
Lottie’s eyes flutter slightly, and she nods toward her plate as though she is about to doze off into her boeuf bourguignon. I think of the dinners I used to cook for friends, elaborate multicourse affairs that started civilized and would digress into debauched parties that would end listening to records and smoking cigarettes on the balcony as the sky lightened.
