Judith Krantz by Dazzle Page A

cook who was only happy when there was a dramatic bustle and flurry in the kitchen. If she had her way, Mike Kilkullen would give at least three dinner parties a week. The large kitchen, where once several Chinese cooks had prepared three hearty meals a day for a large family, would, if Susie had her way, still be filled with voices and people. Now her employer usually dined alone except on those weekends when Jazz came to visit, but today’s planning for the Sunday Fiesta was up to her standards of hospitality.
    “Where’s my father?” Jazz asked.
    “Up at the bowl, kicking ass. I don’t have the time to worry about him—I’ve got my big chicken dinner to organize.”
    “But what about the caterer?” Jazz asked in surprise. “More than five hundred people are coming for a barbecue, Susie, not a chicken dinner.”
    “Oh, the caterer will be on the job tomorrow. His men are starting to set up already. But tonight it’s my special saffron chicken with pine nuts and grapes, my Italian-style French bread, my multicolored coleslaw, my strawberry layer cake with a sauce of—”
    “All that just for the two of us? Are you bucking to be voted the Martha Stewart of Orange County?”
    “We’re expecting company for dinner,” Susie said mysteriously, and wrinkled her nose in a secretive way that succeeded in provoking Jazz as no man ever had.
    “That’s nice,” Jazz said, as indifferently as possible. Susie would not be rushed when she was in themood to withhold information. “I guess you don’t happen to have anything for my lunch? Peanut butter and jelly, or a slice of packaged cheese?”
    “Look in the icebox. There might be something for you to pick at on the bottom shelf, but don’t dare touch anything else.”
    “Gee, thanks, Susie,” Jazz said, helping herself to a large, carefully covered plate of sandwiches and salad. “And I thought you didn’t care.”
    Sometimes compliments worked with Susie, sometimes insults, sometimes a judicious combination of both.
    “Nellie and Matilda are coming to set the table tonight and serve,” Susie offered as Jazz ate with every sign of incurious contentment.
    “Good. That’ll make it easier on you, honey. At your age you shouldn’t be expected to do too much. Slowing up is natural, Susie, after sixty. You shouldn’t feel badly about needing help with a little chicken dinner,” Jazz said solicitously. “I’ll do the flowers for you as soon as I’ve finished,” Jazz added, “and then you can tell me if you want me to chop the cabbage. Or I could go into town and get you some special-strength supplementary calcium. Have you been taking enough calcium, Susie? You certainly don’t want to shrink any more. I’ll bet you’re low on potassium too.”
    “Sixty!”
    “Well aren’t you over sixty? Or am I confused?”
    “Damn it, Jazz, all right, I’ll tell you. You’ve got it coming. It’s your sisters. And their husbands. And their kids.”
    “SHIT!”
    “Well, you started it. Sixty! I’m fifty-eight and you know it.”
    “Who invited them?”
    “Your father. You know how he is about the girls.”
    “Oh, double trouble, triple shit. Shit in multiples. Shit piled upon shit. Towers and turrets and pinnacles of shit.”
    “Yep. I agree. We’ll be knee deep. But it does give me a chance to do a little cooking around here. Thank God I’m not a member of this family.”
    “You might as well be,” Jazz said gloomily. “You’ve been around long enough.”
    “No thanks.”
    “How wise you are.”
    Jazz’s appetite almost disappeared at the mention of her half sisters, who were no doubt in mid-flight at this very moment from their homes in Manhattan. Of course she must have known they would be coming for the Fiesta. She just hadn’t wanted to face the thought of the two daughters of her father’s first marriage: Valerie, who was forty-two, and Fernanda, who was thirty-nine.
    Throughout Jazz’s childhood the two older girls had spent weeks at