Simmer Down

always took excellent care of his staff.
    “Does she have any restaurant experience?” Josh asked hopefully.
    “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so,” I confessed. “She’s always wanted to work in a bakery, so she’s interested in cooking on some level. And she needs a break. If you don’t give her a job, she’s going to have a long commute and be miserable.” Guilt, guilt, guilt!
    “All right, you got me. Send her in, and I’ll give her a kitchen job. The money won’t be wonderful, and I don’t know how many hours I can give her, but send her in if you want. Can she be here for the staff meeting today?”
    If I could’ve hugged Josh over the phone, I’d have done it.
    When I shared the news, I couldn’t tell who was happier about it, Adrianna or Isabelle. Adrianna started maniacally blow-drying Isabelle’s hair with a diffuser, shouting above the din, “Oh, my God, this is so great! Are you so excited? Do you have anything to wear?”
    Although Isabelle didn’t say much, she couldn’t stop smiling and must have said thank you a hundred times. Moving On had provided her with some outfits for interviews. Since there was no need to be formal with Josh or Gavin, we helped her to select plain black dress pants and a pretty yellow sweater. Working in Josh’s kitchen, she would be provided with chef pants and a kitchen shirt, so she wouldn’t be spending hard-earned and much-needed money on work clothes. All she’d have to buy would be a pair of good shoes.
    Adrianna rummaged around in one of her bags and pulled out hair and makeup samples to leave with her new client. While she did Isabelle’s makeup, I wrote down directions to Simmer. When we finally got our protégée out the door, we were beaming like proud parents and waved overzealously as she walked down the street to the T station.
    “Okay, we’ve got to keep moving,” I reminded Adrianna as I swept up hair from the floor. “We’ve got four more women here who need to get ready.”
    I stayed with Adrianna for another two and a half hours while she worked wonders with more residents of the house. Now that she understood where these women were coming from and the challenges they were facing, she dropped her normally brash, outspoken, and headstrong style and showed remarkable compassion and sensitivity.
    “I can’t believe we’re done,” Ade said, rolling up the cape and beginning to pack away the mountain of supplies that had accumulated on the table. “That was great.”
    “You were wonderful!” I commended her. “You about ready to go?”
    “You go ahead. I want to stay and talk to the director. I was thinking I might volunteer here whenever they need me.”
    Would wonders never cease? I hugged Adrianna and left for home. When I arrived, it was almost five, and Gato yet again welcomed me by urinating in a plant. I took off my uncomfortable shoes and then threw on some sweatpants and a T-shirt, and sat down at my computer to check my e-mail. I deleted even more copies of almost the same letter that had snuck through my spam blocker earlier today, a version now urgently suggesting I get my penis enlarged.
    A bunch of e-mails were from my lawyer friend, Elise, who lived in Chicago with her husband. To judge from the number of e-mails I got from Elise each day, being a lawyer primarily involved surfing the Web for entertaining stories and interesting sites. She’d sent a bunch of links to sites with music clips from Kevin Federline—in Elise’s opinion, listening to him never ceased to be violently amusing—and one link to photographs of celebrities caught with wardrobe malfunctions. Elise also forwarded me an e-mail from her ex-boyfriend, Alex, with a picture of himself, his wife, and their new baby and a pretentious note detailing how happy he was with his family life and his snooty academic professorship. Elise was pleased to see that his wife was quite possibly the homeliest creature on the planet and that their baby was a squished, wrinkled little blob who looked remarkably like a cross between Winston Churchill and a bulldog. Elise and I took a sick pleasure in creating an imaginary life for Alex based on the scant details she received from his sporadic e-mails. Our latest was that he’d taken up knitting bulky, brightly colored Argentinian-style sweaters and was forced to work summers in Alaska catching crabs from boats that sailed through high storms.
    Next I checked voice messages. The first was from the lawyer