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The Secret Rooms

At about this time last year, my fellow Whore and I were called by an associate to do a last minute catering gig for a very important client.

We're not big into last minute gigs, but we happened to have a free night and decided to help our associate out.

Apparently this very important client had been through a few different caterers of late and had fired all of them. Which, didn't make the job more enticing. Either he had bad taste in caterers or he was a freakish prick.

As you will see after reading this, it was the latter.

So we do this trick. It was a tiny one, only 25 people. When we arrived, the Client - we will call him Mr. Freak - greeted us in Spanish. We weren't told he didn't speak English so this took us off guard. But, like the fast-thinking whore that I am, I responded to him in Spanish (And they said my 3 years of Spanish in high school would be a waste...) He was surprised and very pleased.

Turns out he does speak English, though. He just did the Spanish thing as a test.

That should have been our first red flag. Unfortunately, like the good whores we are, we were blinded by the green cash...and the fact that his kitchen is a state of the art masterpiece which overlooks the ocean. (Hey, I am The Food Whore, beautiful kitchens call to me.)

After this gig, we were immediately hired as the full time Whores, or as he came to call us, "His girls." (Red Flag #2)

We had many tricks over last summer, all which usually ended with him playing his piano, Liberace style, while wearing smoking jackets.

And always with the greeting us in Spanish.

And always with the quizzes about wine, CPR, and Organic foods.

And always with the "No Other Man Rule." His entire staff was made up of women and when he had functions, he never allowed them to bring their mates. Now, he allowed other male guests to be present, but anyone who worked for him was not allowed to bring a man.

(Red flag, red flag, red flag, RED FLAG)

I could go on an on about Mr. Freak and his weird little games. But in the sake of his privacy (and your boredom) I will move on.

One of the last times we catered, we were busy packing the last of the chafing dishes in the van and Mr. Freak asked if we would like a tour of the house. Now, normally we don't do those kinds of things but we obliged because, well, we're whores, he hadn't paid us yet and we just really wanted to see the house.

On the way up the stairs he said, "I suppose you're both married, right? All the good ones are married." In my mind I thought, "Shit, I knew this was a bad damn idea". I soooo wanted to say, "Yes, and did I mention that The Husband is a Black Belt in Karate and can crush your skull with his toes?" (The husband really is a Black Belt. He's not just eye candy, people.)

But I didn't.

Instead my partner and I just looked at one anther with that, "Great. We just sold our souls to the Devil" look.

This house tour began with a brief history of the place. Apparently Mr. Freak built the house his children were young so he had secret rooms built into, well, secret locations.

Again with the look to my partner, "Did he just say secret rooms?" (RED FLAG)

Holy Mother of God.

All I was thinking was, "Great. He's going to lock us in like Hansel and Gretel and poke us with sticks and we will never be heard from again."

My partner and I smiled, said nice things about the house and I whispered to her, "We can take the bastard if he tries anything."

When we came to the first room he said, "Go on in, girls. Check out the hiding place. It's a fabulous place to be alone with your thoughs." Yeah. Uh huh.

From there it was the room behind the mirror in the bathroom, under the floor in the loft, behind the wall in the theater... but we never went in a room. We both pulled the old "Gee, I am really claustrophobic - sorry" routine. And fortunately for me, I remembered I still had a cork screw in my pocket so we were covered. One false move and his adams apple would have been popped like a good Chardonnay.

He finally got the hint that we had to get going. He paid us, greeted us a fond "Adios!" and sent us on our way.

We drove for a while and then I pulled the van over and we got out and lit up the cigarette we found in the glove box. It was at that moment when the epiphany came to me. After that day of pretending to be interested in the game of "name the wine cork" and "guess the song I am playing now" and "check out the secret rooms", I exhaled slowly from my puff, counted the amount of the tip he gave us, and I stated, "We're nothing more than Food Whores."

As I had mentioned early on in the story, he had gone through a lot of caterers before he hired us. They claimed that no one had ever lived up to his standards. My guess is somewhere in that house is a woman in a chef's coat trying to pick her way out of Secret Room #8.

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Posted by Foodwhore at April 28, 2004 11:20 AM