I am wondering if any of you would consider reviewing the book. It will be released on Amazon/Kindle on October 18th. I need reviews from regular folks posted to amazon on the release day, if possible. You get a FREE pdf, word.doc or .mobi (Kindle ebook file) copy and plenty of time between now and mid-October to read it. Let me know, friends!
Chapter 12 might make you hungry- it's set in the company cafeteria. Oprah makes an appearance (well, sort of) and you'll find out what happened to Mike after he got back to Chicago those many years ago after being fired and having his fireworks fun. It was a blast to make up a book title and premise that Oprah would embrace on her show and then link it into my book and its characters. Ha!
Treasure Island is a great little grocery store on Chicago's north side and Dieter Schantz is based upon the late Chicago chef Charlie Trotter.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Kate, hi, can I join you?” Kate looked up from her boring little chicken Caesar salad to see Chrissy holding a tray crammed full of food. Apparently she believed lunch should be a rip-roaring power meal. It was still only eleven thirty and no one else had arrived in the cafeteria yet.
“Sure,” Kate said. “‘Set a spell, take your shoes off. Have a heapin’ helpin’ of some hospitality.’”
“Huh?” Chrissy cocked her head. Kate noticed how gorgeous her deep brown eyes were. Even at roughly fifty Chrissy was still an amazingly attractive woman.
“Sorry, I’m still weirded out from my morning meeting in retro-TV land down in the C wing. My mind has been invaded by old sitcoms.”
“Ha, oh that. A little odd, huh? So what do you think?”
“I don’t know. The whole thing is bewildering. Especially all the demented stuff that Gloria Dunham is up to. I left there and started to think—what’s the one thing that a businessman like A.C. Nielsen would be livid about in regard to this WFN Platinum station that Gloria concocted? The one thing he would be outraged by?”
“Hmm, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it much.” Chrissy didn’t care to tax her mind for she was far more focused on the epic mac and cheese Chef James had created for her. She swirled the golden sauce with a flourish, encouraging it to thicken and weld itself to the pasta. Meanwhile, the tendrils of steam rising from her minestrone soup were making Kate realize her stomach might rebel and insist on more satisfaction than the puny salad in front of her could ever offer.
“Chrissy, if Mr. Nielsen came back and saw WFN Platinum without any commercials he’d go totally bonkers. His company’s ratings and research determined not only the price of TV ads but also which shows survived and which went to the graveyard. The Nielsen ratings were pretty much the sole arbiter for years, right? For him to see TV with no commercials would tell him that his company had become a total failure. Instead of being consoled by seeing old TV shows on WFN Platinum, he would be bewildered by it all. Gloria is crazy, right?”
“Well, I suppose. Kate, Gloria Dunham and logic don’t pal around too often. Anyway, why should you worry about any of that?”
“I worry about everything, Chrissy. I was born a worrier. Can’t get over it. Anyway, enough about me and my day so far. We should get to know each other. What are you up to these days?”
“Well, I don’t know. Norm and I are just holding down the fort. With Dr. Saltieri gone, we’ve been staring at the walls. We’re waiting for you to give us something to do, frankly.”
“I understand. Say, answer me this. Why do Saltieri’s records swing so much from meticulous to shabby? I mean, I find files that are impeccably detailed and others that look like a fifth grader was writing them up.”
“Saltieri was a genius. Record keeping was probably a bore to him. Hey, you want to try the soup? It’s really good.”
“Sure. Mm, that is delicious. The food in this cafeteria is going to spoil me rotten!”
“Hey, it’s all healthy food,” Chrissy countered. “That’s what Mike wants Chef James to make for us. So, Kate, guess where Mike found James.”
“I don’t know. A cooking school or something? He’s great, but really young, obviously. He can’t have cooked that many places. You think he’s dreamy, Chrissy? James I mean, not Mike.”
Chrissy laughed. “Yes, he is a bit of eye candy but I’m too old for him. Mike found James from the backseat of a cab. James was driving and was taking just about the worst possible route to where Mike needed to go. At first Mike thought the kid was trying to run up the meter on him, so he finally started telling James how to get to the destination. Then James kind of lost it and kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ and admitted he didn’t know his way around. He’s broke and took the cab job out of desperation. His only family is down near Little Rock, Arkansas, and besides, they can’t help since they’re all poor as dirt.”
“So then what happened?”
“Mike asks him what he’s good at doing. He tells Mike he loves to cook and watched cooking shows on TV all the time when he lived in Arkansas. Mike finally gets to his destination, and as he gets out of the cab, he gives James his ExitStrategy business card. Tells him to come here the next Saturday—come and show what he can cook.”
“Seriously? That is so cool. How long ago was this?”
“Like six months ago. Oh sorry, I slurped my soup while you were talking.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Kate replied. “So he shows up and cooks for Mike?”
“Mike and Franklin, and get this—Dieter Schantz is here, too, you know, the famous chef. He’s a friend of Franklin’s from way back. So Mike has some banged-up pots and pans here and Schantz stops at Treasure Island and grabs some groceries on his way over. Of course, the kid doesn’t know who Schantz is and that this world-class chef is here—right here in this cafeteria. But James just goes and whips up this great dinner—oh wait, there’s Norm. Come join us, Norm.”
“Hi, Kate!” Norm said, sans clipboard for once.
“I was just telling her how Mike found James. What was the food he cooked up? You know, when Dieter Schantz brought the groceries.”
“Um, let me think. Oh yeah, he made a salad with goat cheese and pomegranate seeds, a deep-dish cheese and pesto pizza totally from scratch, and a fresh blackberry cobbler. Not bad for a twentysomething with no formal training, huh?”
“Yeah,” Chrissy added, still slurping the soup, “so Mike hired him part-time to cook lunch for us and at night he’s over at Schantz’s kitchen learning the art. See, this is what Mike does, he’s a Finder.”
“Meaning what?” Kate asked. “‘A Finder’? What’s that?”
“He finds struggling souls and helps them find their true path, you could say. There was a whole show about it on Oprah.”
“Oh, here we go. Chrissy and her hero Oprah,” Norm poked.
“Oh, shut up,” countered Chrissy, sticking her tongue out at Norm. “It was a good show most of the time. Anyway, I don’t think Mike ever watched an Oprah in his life, but this guest author on the show happened to describe what Mike does to a T. She was touring and publicizing her new book about all this. Kate, I’ll bet you’ve noticed he can strike up a conversation with anybody.”
“Yeah, he’s got the gift of gab,” Kate answered.
“That’s right,” Norm said, “and when we were both at GM he could talk corporate strategy with a top executive one minute and then go out in the factory and talk transmissions with any guy on the line. Heckfire, he’s so garrulous it’s crazy. Chrissy, what’s that crazy theory of yours? Something about toes? Talking toes or something?”
“It’s the talkative toe, Norm,” Chrissy answered, grabbing a thick slice of seven-grain bread. “Jesus, I’m hungry!”
“You’ve got a tapeworm, Chrissy,” Norm offered.
“Shut up, dork!”
“No, you have one,” Norm insisted slyly. “I’m convinced of it. I think you should give it a name. Then the two of you could politely discuss and negotiate your meal plans.”
“Wait, you two. Back up a sec. A ‘talkative toe’?” Kate was getting more interested in the conversation but also noticed her stomach was now grumbling. Feed me, it kept saying.
“You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but there are theories about people’s toes.” Chrissy shot Norm a dirty look to keep him quiet. “One of them is about that second toe. If it’s longer than the big toe, it means you talk a lot. People like to listen to you, please you, do what you say. You’ve got the gift of gab, like you called it, Kate—you’re the master of small talk, maybe the class clown in high school, in a good way. Or maybe you’re more serious and you’re the class president. You can easily woo the opposite sex. So let me tell you, Mike’s got a really long, talkative toe. I saw it once when he was in the hospital.”
“Okay, my day just keeps getting weirder and weirder.” Kate smiled.
“Why? What was weird before I sat down here?” Norm grinned.
“She met the renegades down yonder at the Nielsen homestead,” Chrissy offered, now launching into a supposedly low-cal white chocolate brownie.
“Mm, can I have a tiny bite of that?” Kate asked.
“Sure, honey, here you go!”
“So what was on TV this morning?” Norm asked.
“Leave It to Beaver, Petticoat Junction, then Perry Mason I think,” Kate said. “They were making bets on whether Bennie could recite all of today’s Leave It to Beaver dialog. I guess I screwed that up by showing up with Mike.”
“Oh yeah, they do that.” Norm nodded. “Miles has over a hundred TV shows totally memorized. Sitcoms and even full one-hour dramas. The others have some, too, but he’s the one who can parrot back tons of entire shows. That young man is amazing.”
“I thought he was rude, actually,” Kate replied. “Well, at least he was rude to me. You know, it sounds like they’re a dumbed-down version of Fahrenheit 451—you know, the Ray Bradbury novel.”
“Oh, yeah!” Chrissy said, her eyes brightening. “Where books are banned and there’s a whole underground of people who’ve each memorized an entire great novel to keep it alive, right?”
“Kate, you can’t always look down on people like Miles and the others,” Norm asserted. “Maybe they’re just memorizing moronic TV shows, but they’re still using their minds. And besides, look where they each came from. Hang on, I’m going to finally go get some food—I’m really hungry now. Kate, can I grab you something?”
“Yes, please. The minestrone—a big bowl! And it’s okay for you to call me out if you think I’m ever being snooty. Most people view me as a rich little North Shore girl, and maybe sometimes I’m guilty as charged.”
“I get it.
“So, Chrissy, what does he mean, ‘look where they each came from’?”
“Mike again. The Finder and the Fixer of people. I can see his aura—it’s deep purple—quite beautiful. Anyway, the name of the book the lady was talking about was Finders, Fixers, and Rocks. All three of those guys Mike found on the streets. Bennie was morbidly obese and had suffered a stroke, lost his job as a school bus driver because of it. His insurance didn’t cover everything, so he went broke and wound up on the street. Mike met him living in some haphazard assembly of cardboard boxes down near DePaul University. They started talking and Mike offered to buy him food at the Burger King nearby. Bennie said no, he couldn’t eat that kind of food, he was scared of having another stroke. So Mike walked with him somewhere else and bought him a salad. Next time he saw Bennie he did the same thing, but then he asked him all sorts of questions about whether he was an alcoholic or used drugs. When Bennie swore he had nothing like that going on, Mike hired him to come here and do maintenance. When Gloria came up with her loony round-the-clock attendant scheme, Bennie was promoted to that instantly. And oh yeah, he’s lost over a hundred pounds. You should have seen how big he used to be.”
“So Mike’s a guardian angel, according to that book?”
“Well, maybe,” Norm said, arriving back with the vittles, “but he’s not perfect.”
“Yeah, okay, of course. What about DePaun?” Kate asked.
“DePaun has early-onset Parkinson’s disease,” Norm explained. “Mild enough you don’t always see the symptoms. Mike struck up a conversation with him when he was living on the street selling Street Savvy papers near the Art Institute. You know, Street Savvy, the homeless people’s newspaper? Mike brought him up here and put him to work in the A.C. Nielsen apartment, too. Our company insurance and the docs have his Parkinson’s under control now. You can hardly tell he’s got it.”
“Wow! And Miles?” Kate asked.
“Nobody knows the whole story,” Norm explained between bites of James’s low-cal Reuben sandwich. “He and Mike don’t talk about it. Maybe they will at some point. Obviously something happened for Mike to want to bring him in here, and Miles is as smart as anyone under this roof. That kid’s IQ has to be one fifty or higher. He won fifty grand a few months ago at a national tournament playing that card game Yu-Gi-Oh. But there’s something going on there—some kind of hurt, some kind of damage. I think I’ve figured that out. He’s got the potential to do far more than just sit in that room, but right now he’s not ready. I think Mike’s giving him time to sort it out. If Miles acts like an ass to you, just keep in mind that it’s a defense mechanism. Give him some space and grant him a little basic respect, and I bet he won’t always be obnoxious when he sees you coming his way.”
“This is just a lot to process. Between all the personalities and all the odd files from Dr. Saltieri and not knowing exactly what Mike wants from me, I’m kind of in free fall. Maybe this isn’t the job for me,” Kate said, feeling a bit numb.
“Oh no, Kate, we need you,” Chrissy insisted. “Mike is a Finder and a Fixer. But you’re the Rock. Like in the book—that’s you, I can sense it. You anchor the whole thing, everything around you, everywhere you go. Didn’t you say you were the captain of the tennis team in high school, or was it college?”
“Both actually, but so what? That’s just a sports thing I did growing up. How important is that now that I’m an adult?”
“It was important then, and even now it proves you are a natural-born leader. A true leader. That’s what Mike and Franklin see in you. It doesn’t matter that you’re young; in fact, maybe that makes it even better.”
“So how about you, Chrissy. How did Mike find you?” Kate felt a little better about herself. Chrissy was so supportive, so friendly.
“Well, it was over the top, I can tell you that.” Chrissy winked at Norm. “I was in the restaurant where Mike had his heart attack. Did you know he had a massive heart attack?”
“No, I didn’t. Really?”
“Well, he did, a while back—quite a while. Like I said, I was there. I was on a second date with Enzo Saltieri. Seems like a million years ago.”
“Dr. Saltieri? Our Dr. Salieri?” Kate asked, surprised.
“Yes, but the dating didn’t last long. We realized we would be better off as friends. I was a lot younger than he. I was working as a veterinary assistant and didn’t like my job much—it just wasn’t challenging enough. Plus my boss was hitting on me. What a prick. Anyway, Enzo and I were nibbling on an appetizer one evening and just talking and I was thinking this guy is so nice, I wonder where this is headed and all that. Oh my God, I was a silly young thing, can you ima—”
“You’re getting off the story, Chrissy!” Norm interrupted.
“Oh yeah, right. Sorry, Kate. Anyway, Enzo and I were talking, and for a while I had noticed this big brawny man at the bar pounding down shot after shot, and then he goes over to the payphone in the corner and he’s talking to someone for a while, the receiver in one hand and a drink in the other. I remember pointing him out to Enzo and telling him, ‘Hey, that man doesn’t look like such a happy camper.’ Well, he looked terrible, in fact. Suddenly the guy, which was Mike, got the strangest look on his face, like total panic. His face turned the weirdest color, he dropped the phone, staggered for a bit, and then went straight down, straight down like bam! Everyone in the whole restaurant jumped. He had landed square on his face and there was blood everywhere. People were screaming at the sight of that big man lying unconscious with a broken nose and gashes all over his forehead. Enzo and I ran over, pushing our way through people to get to him. Mike was in full cardiac arrest so Enzo and I dove in and did CPR. It took forever to get a pulse back and for the damn ambulance to arrive. And that, Kate Pearson, was the very day Mike had lost his job at GM.”
“Wow, that is amazing. He would have died if you two hadn’t been there. Sounds like you and Enzo saved his life.” Kate shook her head as she felt tingles run up and down her spine.
“Well, yes, we did. It didn’t hurt that I had just taken CPR at the community college. Enzo needed my help to get that big man’s heart and lungs going again. Anyway, Mike had been driving all that day, from here to General Motors in Detroit, where they canned him, then back here again. He wound up at that bar, downing shot after shot of Maker’s Mark. He says now that it was a great day, all the freedom and the future opening up, but I guess his heart disagreed with that assessment. Mike’s world imploded on him that day, but think about it, Kate—without that heart attack none of us would be together here today. ExitStrategy was born out of Mike meeting Enzo that day and then them getting to know each other and building their crazy cryo ideas together. I came along for the ride and then Mike stole Norm away from GM, and it was just us four for a while.
Some people would say that Mike was lucky that Enzo and I happened to be there. But that wasn’t just dumb luck, no ma’am. Somebody or something put all three of us together in that building that day, that hour. And pardon my new-agey Oprah-speak, but I believe that some great power—God or Allah or the positive energy of the universe, whatever name you want to use—was at work that day. And no matter what name you choose, that’s the ultimate, the original True Finder and the True Fixer of all our souls.”
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