Stars So Sweet by Tara Dairman Page A

at listening to her new boss’s orders at the café in Paris? Gladys had been sure that the new owners were horrible people and that her aunt was in the right to quit in a huff. But now, after witnessing Aunt Lydia’s behavior at work multiple times, she wasn’t so sure.
    â€œHere—why don’t you let me and Sandy handle the sample tray for a few minutes while you go change that light?” she suggested. “I think Mr. Eng keeps spare bulbs back in the storeroom.”
    â€œOkay, okay,” Aunt Lydia said, “but make sure you push the Limburger.”
    â€œâ€˜Bodaciously funky’—yeah, right,” Sandy muttered as Aunt Lydia moved away. “It’s unpopular because it tastes like a foot!” He grabbed another sample and held it out to a man entering the store. “Excuse me, sir, but would you like to try some Limburger? It’s vomitously delicious!” The man gave Sandy a strange look, and Gladys couldn’t help but laugh as he hurried away.
    â€œYou’re terrible,” she said.
    â€œNo,
this
is terrible.” He waved the sample under Gladys’s nose, and her eyes watered. “I’m gonna win on Monday for
sure.
”
    A few minutes later, the cheese fridge was bathed in glorious light, the sample platter was bare (thanks, in most part, to Sandy, who forced down several more bites of Limburger “to build up tolerance”), and Mr. Eng was none the wiser. Still, as Sandy lined up to buy his package of putrescent cheese, Gladys couldn’t help wondering how many times she was going to have to swoop in and save her aunt from her self-destructive instincts at work.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Luckily, Aunt Lydia wasn’t on duty the next day when Gladys returned to the Gourmet Grocery to meet Parm and her teammates. Still in their practice clothes, the girls peeled off in groups of two or three to troll the aisles for the ingredients Gladys assigned them. Somehow, talking to kids she didn’t know was less scary when the subject was food.
    Parm, however, did seem a little scared. “How many different things are we making??” she asked, her voice panicky as she looked over Gladys’s list.
    â€œI thought we’d do three recipes.” Gladys showed Parm the first recipe she had printed. “The frosting pattern on these cookies makes them look like soccer balls, see? Then there’s this brownie recipe I got from Sandy’s mom, because kids love chocolate and her brownies are the best. And then, finally, I wanted to make something gluten-free, for the kids who can’t eat wheat.” Gladys shuffled to a new page. “I did a bunchof searching and finally came up with these Indian confections made with chickpea flour.”
    Parm looked at the picture on Gladys’s printout. “I know those. There’s a sweets shop in Jackson Heights where my family likes to go sometimes, and they sell them. But wait! Don’t they have some kind of nasty name?” Parm looked at the paper again, then pointed to the subtitle. “Yeah, that’s it: barfi.”
    Gladys nodded. “I thought maybe we’d just keep the name to ourselves until
after
the kids had tried them.”
    â€œGood plan,” Parm said. “I’m sure it actually means something else anyway, right?”
    â€œI looked it up, and it comes from the Hindi word for ‘snow,’” Gladys told her. “Now come on, let’s get these last few ingredients.”
    Their bill at Mr. Eng’s was not cheap, but Gladys promised the team they would make plenty more in profits the next day. “The good thing about selling three different items is that kids will want to try them all, so hopefully you’ll get more than one sale per kid,” Gladys said. Parm agreed that that made sense.
    At Parm’s, under Gladys’s watchful eye, everyone rolled up their sleeves and busted out the mixing bowls.