Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

Quinn was laughing at something Gray had said.

Laughing? In the nine months that I had known her, I’d barely seen Quinn smile, and I’d never heard the cheerful soprano trill that was coming from her throat until now.

I should have been pleased that Quinn was entertaining my show guest with such uncharacteristic warmth. Instead, I was a bit annoyed. Not that they were getting along so well, but that they were doing it in my kitchen. Granted, it was a set constructed in the studio for use in broadcasting shows, but it was a replica of my cozy, yellow and white kitchen at home. I didn’t care what either Quinn Tanner or Roland Gray did socially, only that they were doing it on my turf. The feeling surprised me, but then I’d never seen anyone else using my set as a café. It was unreasonable, I knew, but I couldn’t help feeling proprietary.

The two of them were so engrossed in their conversation that they didn’t look up until my “Hello.”

“Oh, Della, you’re here at last,” Quinn said.

“I’m fifteen minutes early.”

Roland Gray stood up, smiled, and greeted me.

I said, “Please sit down.” But, gallantly, he remained standing.

“Join us for a cuppa,” Quinn said.

“Quinn has been kind enough to give me true English tea,” Gray said. “Steeped in a china pot, made properly with leaves.”

“From my private stash,” Quinn said, smug as the Cheshire Cat.

“I’ll take a rain check. Unfortunately, I have too much to do right now.” The truth is that I’m a devoted coffee person, just short of being a coffee addict.

“Ah, brewed tea,” Quinn said, inhaling steam from the cup. “The hallmark of a civilized people.”

Ignoring Quinn’s little dig, I moved around past them and into the kitchen, took my small handbag out of what I called my “cooking tote,” and bent down to put it away on the bottom shelf of the utensil cabinet. When I straightened up, I almost collided with Roland Gray, who had followed me.

“Ooops. I seem to always be running into you,” he said, grinning.

“It’s all right.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Quinn glaring at us. She folded her arms across her chest and crossed her legs: the human body language equivalent of a coiled snake.

Gray indicated the fluted mold encased in foil resting on the rear display counter. “That is my finished steamed pudding. The shopping bag on the floor contains what I need to demonstrate how to make it.”

“Good,” I said. “Let’s unpack both our bags and Quinn can walk us through what we’ll be doing on camera.”

The first item my guest took out of his bag wasn’t an ingredient for making pudding. “This is for you,” he said, handing me a hardcover book. “My latest.”

“The Terror Master. Thank you. I’d planned to buy a copy.”

“You must not have read my reviews.” His tone was wry.

“I don’t pay attention to them,” I said. “When I was teaching I wanted my students to learn how to survive the harsh criticism that we face in life, so I brought in a collection of terrible reviews for some books that later became great classics. A reviewer at Russia ’s Odessa Courier said that Vronsky in Anna Karenina showed more passion for his horse than he did for Anna. A British critic said about Moby Dick that it was full of the biggest collection of dolts to be found in all of ‘marine literature.’ And a critic in Boston called Leaves of Grass obscene. He said Walt Whitman should be publicly flogged for writing it.”

Gray laughed. “At least none of my reviewers have suggested that.”

“Haven’t you noticed that very popular authors are resented by some critics because their books sell so well? It’s as though the elitists think that if millions of people like a novel then it can’t be any good.”

“Thank you for cheering me up,” he said with a rueful smile.

Quinn saw me holding the book and came over to us. “Isn’t Roland marvelous?” she said. “This afternoon he telephoned the studio to find out how many people would be in the audience. When he arrived, it was with a case of his novels, enough for everyone who’ll come to our broadcast, and for all of us here at the channel.”

“That was a very generous thing to do.”

“I’m unscrupulous in my pursuit of readers,” he said with a smile that seemed almost embarrassed. I had the feeling that with all of his success he was shy in the face of compliments.

Quinn held her hands out. “Let me have your jacket. I’ll hang it up for you in my director’s booth.”

“How nice of you,” he said, slipping out of the navy blue cashmere blazer that was almost the same shade as his Rolls.

Beneath it, he wore a pale blue silk shirt and steel gray slacks, secured by a black belt with a silver buckle in the shape of a badge with the raised monogram “MI 9.” The department Gray called MI 9 was the fictional antiterrorist division of British Intelligence for which his series hero, Roger Wilde, was the top secret agent.

Quinn removed a clean dishtowel from one of my equipment drawers and tucked it carefully into his belt. Very carefully.

“This is to protect your trousers from kitchen splatters,” Quinn said.

In my opinion, Gray was in more danger from Quinn Tanner than from getting stains on his clothing.

Quinn was supposed to be married, but no one at the channel had met her husband. Camera operator Ernie Ramirez once voiced the theory that Quinn’s husband, the never-seen Mr. Tanner, had been killed and stuffed, like Norman Bates’s mother in Psycho.

After the bit with the dishtowel, Quinn took her teapot and strainer and Gray’s blazer and went up to the director’s booth. She usually held her body in a posture stiff as a fire-place poker, but today there was a definite sway to Quinn’s narrow hips.

In my earpiece, I heard Quinn start her countdown to air-time. The show’s theme music began, Camera One’s red light flashed on, and we were broadcasting.

I smiled into the lens and said, “Hi, everybody. Welcome to In the Kitchen with Della. Tonight I have a special treat for you at home, and for you here in the studio audience.”

Camera Two swung around to take a shot of the audience in the studio. There were lights above the seats because I’d learned that people liked to see themselves on TV and programmed their sets to tape the shows they attended.

More than half of the members of the audience were women, their ages ranging from early twenties into the seventies. The men appeared to be in their late sixties, and older. I had often wondered if they were widowers, or for other reasons needed to learn how to cook. John O’Hara, at fifty, was the “kid” among the men. I’d seen him arrive just a minute or two before we began broadcasting and pointed to the only empty seat: on the aisle in the last row, nearest the entrance. I’d saved it for him by putting a cardboard “Reserved” sign on it.

I told the audience, “A famous guest cooker is here with us, a man who has kept me awake many a night-long before I met him. Let’s give a warm welcome to one of the world’s most popular novelists, Roland Gray.”

As the audience applauded, Camera One drew back from its close-up on me into a two-shot that included Gray, standing on my left, relaxed and smiling.

Facing the camera, I held up my copy of The Terror Master . “This is Roland Gray’s latest spy thriller.” Turning to Gray, I said, “I think it’s been on the New York Times best seller list for a month now.”

“Six weeks, actually,” he said. “But who’s counting?”

Twenty-nine out of the thirty people in the audience chuckled appreciatively. The one grim face belonged to John O’Hara.