Basil Instinct by Shelley Costa Page A

when she forgot all our names and just called us “you.”
    “You”—she pointed to Landon—“pound the veal.”
    “You”—she pointed to Choo Choo—“batter the scallops.”
    “You”—she pointed to me—“whip the cream.”
    Pound, batter, whip.
    Like General Patton only without the warmth.
    Then our nonna got that misty look she usually saves for when the garlic in her bagna cauda —garlic and anchovy—sauce is coming up short. “Where’s what’s her name? The new girl?”
    And if Georgia were alive and standing next to me, she’d still be called “you.”
    Landon muttered she was under the weather. And I muttered she had heart trouble.
    At that, Choo Choo lifted a whisk from the batter for the fritters and drew together his eyebrows, which pulled his whole bald scalp down over his eyes like an avalanche.
    “Car trouble?” barked Nonna.
    Landon and I gave each other a regretful look like, yeah, car trouble might have been the better lie, in the circumstances.
    Over the next couple of hours, several things happened. Several things quite aside from cooking. James Beck arrived with the order of white calla lilies and bemoaning the shortage of clear glass marbles for the vases. This, by the way, pretty effectively killed whatever was left of my crush on James since I discovered I didn’t have much taste for a man for whom a shortage of glass marbles was a serious problem on the level of, say, world hunger. Corabeth arrived looking slightly the worse for wear, bemoaning Georgia’s failure to pick her up, so she had to steal a bike. (We laughed merrily, assuming it was a joke.)
    Jonathan arrived, and announced he was having an anxiety attack about whether we had enough pinot noir on hand to pair with the veal, and as he headed for the storeroom, Landon and I both bellowed, “No!” And then added: “We’ll check!” And Paulette finally arrived with Nonna’s new midnight-blue satin “chef jacket” gown for her membership in the Psycho-Chefs Club, beautifully steamed and hung.
    Bubble, sizzle, pop.
    At one point I happened to glance out the back windows and saw a couple of familiar figures dashing through the deserted courtyard and scrambling over the back fence. This I would have chalked off to kids just passing through had it not been for the flopping mane of dirty, beaded dreadlocks on one of them. Mitchell Terranova! And the clean-cut miscreant with him must be his partner in crime, Slash Kipperman. Paying me a visit? Casing the joint? Too shy to hand me my polished apples in person? Even after one class with those two, I knew better. I set down the beater I was jamming into the hand mixer and hurried outside.
    Gone.
    I headed through the courtyard, eyeballing everything, looking for some evidence of—what, exactly? Theft, first. Scanning, scanning. Nope. Votive candles all there and intact. Hmm. Slipping on my delinquent hat, I even peered into the compost bin, just to see—ascertain, as Detective Sally Belts and Boots would say—whether they’d deposited some roadkill. Nope. Could it be Mitchell and Slash just wanted a peek at where I worked? Despite their tough talk, were they harboring a little crush on me? The psycho lambs . . .
    On my way back inside, I spied a colorful can lying at the side of the building. I picked it up—an empty can of neon orange spray paint. Two feet away lay a half-full can of neon green spray paint. And then, of course, I looked up, and staggeredbackward to get the full effect of the graffiti on the beautiful old red brick of the restaurant. It was an orange, eight-foot-high, pretty fair likeness of my face in profile, downing, with great relish, a neon green cannoli, or what I could only assume was a cannoli. Also in green was my phone number.
    As I walked back to the kitchen door with spray paint cans in my hands, and my eyes narrowed to slits, I pondered the situation. If I called the cops then, we’d have the same problem on Nonna’s busiest day ever