Simmer Down

so she could fend off the man harassing her with her stinky breath. That suggestion, as I recalled, hadn’t gone over too well, and I’d transferred the anonymous caller to the thoroughly professional Naomi.
    “I think I know who it is.” Naomi sighed. “I’m glad she called back. I’ve been waiting to hear from her. I’ve been working really hard to put a stop to her situation. Totally intolerable, what that young woman is going through.”
    I agreed with Naomi. Every time this caller went to work, she faced her asshole boss and his attempts to maul, grab, and pinch any available body part.
    “All right,” Naomi continued, “I’m going to go call her back right away. I am taking care of this situation before the year is done. Enough is enough! And I’m going to check in with Eliot Davis at the gallery. Have Josh there by five thirty tomorrow to start setting up, okay?”
    I promised that I would, hung up the phone, and went back to staring at Josh, who’d barely spoken for the past two hours. Under normal circumstances Josh could carry on a full-blown conversation while cooking food good enough to make you shake your head in disbelief that you’d managed to live on anything else. Today was different. The food he was making today would be the public’s first taste of his new menu, and the pressure was keeping him quieter than usual.
    He was making Parmesan-panko-encrusted beef medallions served on crisp wafers and drizzled with an oregano vinaigrette. Panko, it turns out, is Japanese bread crumbs and not, as I’d feared, some sort of weird plankton. Because he was forced to work out of my little kitchen, Josh was playing it a little safe with this dish. He had wanted to do smoked bluefish with wasabi vinaigrette, but the odds of successfully smoking enough bluefish out of my beat-up oven were pretty bad. The amount of prep work for this beef dish wasn’t too serious, considering that he had to make three hundred servings. Today he would clean and slice the tenderloins into half-inch-thick medallions, make the Parmesan-panko mix, blend up the vinaigrette, and bake herb focaccia, which is, of course, a somewhat flat and totally delicious Italian bread with olive oil drizzled all over the top crust.
    “Hey, Red?” Josh was teasing. Every redhead in the world is cursed with the nickname, and he knew that I loathed it. Why do people think that they have the right to address redheads by their hair color? I spent my childhood cringing every time someone asked, “Red, where’d you get your red hair?” My redheaded friend Nancy used to respond, “From under my father’s armpits!” She often shut people up, but I never had the nerve to answer with the same retort.
    I smiled at Josh. “Sure, but if you call me Red ever again, I’ll—”
    “Could you take the oregano leaves off these stems for me? I need them for the dressing.”
    “No problem.” I took a handful of the fresh herbs from his hand, pulled my chair closer to the table, pushed my computer aside, and began plucking leaves. That was fun for all of eight seconds. Then I realized what an excruciatingly annoying job this was.

2.Removing oregano leaves from stems, even when helping hottie boyfriend.

    “I want a different job,” I complained.
    Josh came closer and peered at my piddling pile of leaves. “Here, hold the end of the stem in one hand, then pinch it between the thumb and forefinger of your other hand, and glide down the stem to pull off the leaves.”
    “What about all these little branchy, twiggy things sticking out the side? Nope. Not doing this. Give me another job,” I insisted.
    “Some help you are,” Josh teased. “Don’t worry about it. You should probably finish your stuff for the booth tomorrow.” He turned back to his cutting board. “I can’t believe I finally get to meet the infamous Naomi. She definitely sounds unique.”
    Images of granola-crunchy Naomi swirling her many brown braids around, engulfing Josh in hugs, and spouting words about peace and love started to give me a headache. I appreciated her gung ho attitude about Josh and me—she was forever telling me about the benefits of having a loving, supportive partner when working in an “emotionally draining field”—but she and Josh were two very different personality types; he didn’t have a Peruvian-knitted-cap bone in his body.
    “Yes, well, she’s excited to meet you, too,” I said truthfully. “She asks about you all the time.