A Second Bite at the Apple

by Dana Bate

Genres: Coming of Age; Women's Fiction; Humor & Satire

Synopsis

"Bate's writing is smart and compelling." --Publishers Weekly

From the acclaimed author of The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs comes a witty, honest novel, perfectly seasoned with both humor and heart, about daring to bite into the life you really want. . .

Sydney Strauss is obsessed with food. Not with eating it—though she does that too—but with writing about the wonders of the gastronomic world, from obscure fruit hybrids to organic farming techniques. Since food journalism jobs are more coveted than Cronuts®, Sydney pays her bills working for one of TV's biggest egomaniacs—until she's left scrambling for shifts at a local farmers' market.

Stacking muffins for the Wild Yeast Bakery isn't going to win her any James Beard awards. But soon Sydney is writing the market's weekly newsletter, and her quirky stories gain attention from a prominent food columnist. After years of putting her love life into deep freeze, she's even dating again. And then Sydney gets a shot at the story, one that could either make her career or burn it to a crisp—along with her relationship and her reputation. . .

"A breezy, idiomatic voice." – Publishers Weekly

"Full of humor and lots of genuine heart." – RT Book Reviews

"In smart and crisp prose, Bate tells a winning story about food, love and second chances, with recipes appended. Great fun." - Booklist

Praise for The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs

"Bate deftly conjures up a witty, resilient heroine, surrounds her with delightful friends and frenemies, and sends them all on a rollicking quest for love and delicious food." --Kirkus

"Engaging. . .Even Bate's implausible happy ending feels right."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"The food—oh my goodness—the food! From the Dupont Circle farmers' market to the Maine Avenue Fish Market, Hannah leads readers on a culinary tour of D.C.'s locavore scene. Do not read this book hungry." --Washington Post

Release date: December 1, 2014

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 334

Sample

Just when I think this morning can’t get any weirder, I spot Charles Griffin skiing down Seventeenth Street. Skiing, like we’re in Aspen. Or Vermont. But we’re in Washington, DC, and unlike the rest of the residents of this city, who are drinking hot cocoa and snuggling beneath their fleecy blankets on this snowed-in December morning, Charles and I must subject ourselves to the vagaries of Mother Nature and the incompetence of the city’s Department of Transportation.

“Hey, there!” Charles shouts as he glides through the mounds of snow, stabbing haphazardly at the ground with his ski poles. Even muffled by his scarf, his voice resonates with the deep gravitas of a TV news correspondent.

I wave and stumble toward the corner, plowing through a waist-high snowdrift as I clutch my notebook to my chest. Charles presses his knees together and manages to bring himself to a stop next to me.

“How about this weather?” he says, dabbing his forehead with his gloved hand. “When’s the last time we got this much snow in December?”

“Someone at the Chronicle said 1932. They’re calling it Snowzilla.”

He laughs. “Where’s Tony?”

“Grabbing the gear upstairs. He’ll be down in a minute.”

I pull my gray fleece hat tighter over my head as I glance down Seventeenth Street. Normally, at this time of morning, cars would barrel southward toward the bustle of K Street, that infamous east-west thoroughfare known for its lobbying firms and major office buildings. But today, instead of a thick flow of cars and taxis and buses, all I see is snow. As someone who once dreamed of penning articles about soufflés and famous chefs, I have to wonder how I ended up here, half-frozen and clad in snow boots, producing a live shot for a TV news correspondent on skis.

“I can’t get over how quiet the city is,” I say. “I’ve never seen the streets so empty.”

Charles taps on his skis with the tip of his ski pole. “More people need to invest in a pair of these bad boys.”

I roll my eyes. “How about we get you out of those bad boys and into position.”

Charles raises his arm to prevent me from coming any closer. “The skis aren’t going anywhere.”

“Charles . . .”

“No—listen. I thought we could start with a tight shot of me skiing down Seventeenth, and then Tony could pull out to a wide as I approach the camera. To give people a sense of how much snow there is.”

“Have you cleared this with New York?”

“I don’t need to clear it with New York.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I do.”

“No, you don’t. It’ll be fine. Trust me. I do stuff like this all the time.”

This is true. Charles is basically The Morning Show’s resident jackass, though officially, he is a general assignment reporter. He possesses an uncanny ability to make himself the center of every story, and, as his producer, my job involves, among other things, bailing him out of the binds that result from his asinine pranks. I’d say this behavior is part of his midlife crisis, but from what I gather, he has been acting like an idiot for years. Last year, when we visited a farm in Loudoun County to report on farm subsidies, Charles decided to do his standup while driving a combine harvester—a machine he had never driven before and that was probably bigger than my first apartment. Charles also happens to be a terrible driver. I begged him to choose another standup location (there is a reason he calls me “Square Sydney”), but when Charles gets an idea in his head, it is impossible to reason with him. He mounted the combine harvester, and the shot ended with him crashing through the poor farmer’s fence. It was not one of my more enjoyable afternoons.

As Charles shuffles his skis back and forth, Tony trudges down the sidewalk from our bureau, gripping his camera gear with his big bear paws. Tony is built like a tank, with broad shoulders, a thick neck, and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He regularly lugs multiple pounds of equipment from shoot to shoot, setting up and breaking down in record speed, and lifting boxes filled with lights and batteries as if they were filled with feathers.

Tony sets up Charles for his live shot, snapping the camera into the tripod and looping the wireless microphone through Charles’s jacket. I tug the scarf away from Charles’s face and apply a thick coat of foundation to his weathered skin, trying to smooth the peach-colored gunk out of the creases around his eyes and mouth. Not much of his face shows, framed as it is in fleece and wool, but his distinctive wide eyes peer out beneath his woolen hat, and a few tufts of his graying chestnut hair stick out around the edges.

“Up for a test run?” Tony asks.

Charles adjusts his hat. “I skied all the way from my apartment in Kalorama. I don’t need a test run.”

“Okay, man. Suit yourself.”

Tony’s attitude, always so laid back and calm, must be a requirement for his job. If reporters like Charles aren’t complaining about their appearance on camera, producers like me are yelling at Tony for not getting enough video. But somehow he manages to take it all in stride, never raising his voice or saying a mean word. I don’t know how he does it.

“What’s our hit time?” Charles asks.

“The first is at 7:25, then every thirty minutes until ten. Unless there’s breaking news.”

Charles waves his ski poles in the air. “What could be more important than this?”

That pretty much sums up Charles’s attitude in life: If he isn’t involved in something, how important could it be? An intergalactic explosion, the defection of a political leader, the extinction of the human race—irrelevant when compared to the prospect of watching Charles slog through the snow on an old pair of cross-country skis.

At the top of the hour, Charles treks up Seventeenth Street, using the narrow tracks from his descent as his guide, and turns around when he reaches his self-proclaimed starting point. I call into the bridge in New York, where I hear Bridget, The Morning Show’s coordinating producer, moan at the sight of Charles on her preview screen.

“Is Charles really wearing skis?” she asks.

I sigh into the phone. “Yes. Unfortunately.”

“Sydney . . .”

“It wasn’t my idea—I told him not to do it.”

Bridget clicks her tongue and doesn’t say anything. She knows it wasn’t my idea. I’m Square Sydney. Skiing live shots are not part of my vocabulary.

I hold my phone to my chest and yell up to Charles. “Five minutes!”

Tony finishes adjusting the camera. “Can you believe this guy? What a clown.”

Thirty seconds before we go live, Charles rubs his skis back and forth into the ground, as if he is Bode Miller, preparing for the downhill race of his life. Every Olympic season, Charles catches Olympic fever something fierce, and this past year was worse than most. For years, he has been angling to travel to the main event as part of the network team, and for years, including the last one, he has been passed over in favor of another reporter. I’m sure these skis are his way, however small, of throwing up a symbolic middle finger at the network executives for having left him in Washington.

“That’s right, Diana,” Charles says, staring into the camera as he pushes off from his perch just below M Street. “This was how I got into work today—pushing my way through the snowdrifts that have brought the city to a crippling standstill.”

As Charles speaks to the camera and, by default, our anchor Diana Humphrey, he picks up speed as his skis lock into the tracks made by his prior descent and ascent. He builds up momentum until, much to the surprise of both him and our viewers, he is moving at quite a clip, flying toward the camera, his eyes wild with terror. He stabs at the ground with his ski poles, but the mountains of snow lining the sidewalk rip them from his hands, and he loses them.

“Please fucking tell me he knows how to stop,” Bridget yells into the phone, which is pressed tightly against my ear.

I wish I had an answer for her, but I am too busy watching Charles panic as he realizes he is heading straight for the camera.

“. . . and as you can see, it’s pretty treacherous out here. . . .”

He is fifteen feet away from the camera now and shows no sign of stopping. He continues to fly toward Tony, his arms flailing at his sides as he tries to keep his balance, his knees turned inward as he tries to bring himself to a halt. It worked earlier, but it isn’t working now, not when his skis are stuck in the grooves of his track marks and he is coming at us like a freight train. When he is only a few feet from me and Tony, he surrenders and throws his arms over his face in a brace position.

“Oh, jeez!” he yells as he crashes full-force into the camera. Tony and the tripod go tumbling to the ground, and Charles lands on top of them.

It is just the sort of jackassery I’ve come to expect from Charles, and if past is precedent—and I believe it is—this will all be my fault.

After the show ends, I slog up to the fifth floor of our building, my fingers stiff and cold like spindly icicles and my nose the color of a maraschino cherry. I ran out of tissues around eight o’clock, so the sleeve of my puffy black ski parka is covered with crusted snot, and I may or may not be sporting a booger mustache. Some days in this job are definitely better than others.

When I reach my desk, I shimmy out of my coat and make my way toward Melanie, the show’s senior Washington producer, whose desk is located at the far end of the newsroom. She hugs the phone to her ear as she types at her computer, speaking in a hushed tone, and sits up abruptly when she notices me approaching her desk.

“Gotta run,” she barks into the phone. She throws the receiver into its cradle and leans back in her chair. “What the hell was that?”

“That was Charles.”

She whips off her black-rimmed glasses and dangles them by one of the arms. “Bridget says New York is pissed.”

“Charles says New York loves what he does.”

“The skis?”

“His idea. I told him not to use them. And anyway, he took them off after the first live shot.”

“After which he proceeded to throw a snowball at an old lady,” she says.

“In his defense, she looked like a child all bundled up like that.”

Melanie runs her hands through her chestnut, ear-length bob. She has the kind of hair I’ve always wished I could have: pin straight, always falling in exactly the same way no matter how windy or humid it is. A few months ago she added bangs, a style I haven’t attempted since fifth grade due to my thick, unruly waves. I’m still traumatized by my class photo from that year, in which my forehead seems to have spontaneously grown a toy poodle.

“Come on—the snowball thing was kind of funny,” I say.

Melanie rips open her file drawer and pulls out a Kashi bar. “Laugh all you want. You won’t find it so funny when the suits make their announcement.”

“What announcement?”

She stops halfway through peeling her snack and sits frozen in her chair. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

She bites off a hunk of the Kashi bar. “Suffice it to say, major changes are on the way.”

“Major as in . . .”

“Think restructuring.” She swallows. “Listen, I don’t have any details. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

This is how Melanie operates: doling out a bit of juicy gossip, but then backtracking, assuring you she has already said too much, but ah, how lucky you were to catch her in a moment of weakness.

“They wouldn’t do anything so close to the holidays, would they?”

She shrugs. “Who knows? Like I said, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“I’m glad you did,” I say. “Could you let me know if you hear anything else?”

“Sure. Assuming I hear anything. For now... I’d watch my step, if I were you. These are dangerous times.” She picks up her coffee mug, and as she goes to take a sip, she narrows her eyes. “By the way,” she says, “you have snot running down your face.”

This day just gets better and better.

Melanie may love gossip, but she also has a pretty good track record when it comes to knowing what’s going on behind the scenes at our network. She knows which anchors are about to get the boot and which reporters are about to get a promotion and which correspondents are sleeping with the network executives. So if she says major changes are coming, major changes are coming.

I scoot back to my desk, which is wedged between a rectangular column and the wall: a less than perfect location for a less than perfect job. I know, I know—I shouldn’t complain. It’s a paying job, after all, and to most outsiders, it sounds fantastic. Associate producer for a national morning show? Who wouldn’t want that job? Well . . . me, actually. It’s not that I hate my job. In many ways, it’s a great gig. I put together stories seen by millions of people every morning, regularly interact with on-air personalities like Charles Griffin and Diana Humphrey, and meet interesting people, from politicians to inventors, all the time. But the truth is, I ended up here by mistake, and if I had my choice, I’d be producing segments for the Cooking Channel or writing food columns for the Washington Chronicle. But I’m not. I’m here, working for a correspondent whose contribution to the journalistic profession includes a live shot on skis.

My fingers are still red and raw from our two hours in the snowy outdoors, so I sit at my desk, rubbing my hands together to thaw them. As I press my palms against each other, my cell phone hums and buzzes on my desk. It’s my younger sister, Libby. I can only imagine what she wants to talk about this time.

Libby recently moved in with her boyfriend, relocating to an apartment in downtown Philadelphia only twenty minutes from the house where we grew up in the Philly suburbs, and has taken to calling me regularly with “crises” that involve crown molding and paint colors. I toy with the idea of ignoring her call, but I decide talking to her about Benjamin Moore’s “Lavender Whisper” is better than talking to Charles, who is currently parading around the office in long johns.

“Syd—hi,” she says, her voice tense. “Are you sitting down?”

As if by command, I sit up straighter. “Yes . . . Why?”

“I have news.” She takes a deep breath. “Matt and I are engaged!”

My stomach curdles. This is an inappropriate reaction, I realize, but it is my reaction nonetheless. “What?”

“I’m engaged,” she repeats. A brief moment passes. “Hello? Are you there?”

“Yes—sorry. Wow. Congrats, Lib. That’s . . . great news.”

“That almost sounded sincere,” she says.

“Sorry, I’m just . . . How long have you known each other? Six months?”

“Seven,” she says. “And they’ve been the most wonderful seven months of my life. I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“I am. Sorry. I am. Really. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she says. I can hear her smile through the phone. “And to think, everyone thought you and Zach would be the ones to get engaged first!”

“Yeah. To think.”

“Sorry—I didn’t mean . . . It’s just funny, is all.”

Our idea of what is “funny” is one of the many ways Libby and I are nothing alike. We are three years apart, but to look at us you wouldn’t think we were even related. She inherited my mother’s honey-brown hair, her blue eyes, and her fair skin, whereas I am my father’s likeness: thick, sable-colored hair, so dark it appears almost black, green eyes, and freckles, all set atop a wiry frame. At my best, I can look cute—the classic nice Jewish girl from a good family—but Libby is flat-out beautiful and always has been. She never went through an awkward phase, whereas I looked like a mutant Chinese crested dog for most of middle school.

To speak to us, you wouldn’t know we were related either. Libby was the popular, sporty one in school, destined to become captain of the field hockey team and president of her sorority at Penn State. She dated with such frequency and enthusiasm that I could never keep track of the flavor du jour. One week it was James so-and-so, and the next it was Mike what’s-his-face. With her bubbly laugh and outgoing personality, men flocked to her like a bunch of lovesick fools. Until now, she’s had no interest in maintaining a long-term relationship with anyone, but that’s because she knew she would always have a date, even if it was with a new person every time. She didn’t even have to try.

Meanwhile, I had Zach. We met freshman year at Lower Merion High School when we both joined the school paper. Immediately I was attracted to his geeky, sideways smile and big truffle-colored eyes. Other girls probably laughed at the way his pin-straight brown hair stuck upright in the front, thanks to his severe cowlick, but I thought it was adorable. He must have thought the same about me because within a week of meeting, we were inseparable. We were like two black jellybeans in a sea of reds, two nerds who didn’t really fit in with everyone else. We weren’t outcasts. We were just . . . different. Old souls. Rather than spend the weekend drunk in the woods around a bonfire, we would cook each other dinner and watch the original Japanese version of Iron Chef. When I went to Northwestern and he went to Princeton, we maintained a long-distance relationship all the way through graduation. Everyone assumed we would get married. I thought so, too. And then he lied to me and broke my heart.

“Obviously you will be the maid of honor,” Libby says.

“Are you sure?”

“That’s how you respond? ‘Are you sure?’ ”

“It’s just that work is so crazy, and you know I’m the worst when it comes to parties. I want you to have the maid of honor you deserve.”

Libby grunts. “You’re the maid of honor I want, okay? But if you’d rather I choose someone else, just say so.”

Realistically, I would rather she chose someone else—not because I don’t want to support Libby, but because helping with her wedding, after everything I’ve been through . . . it’s too much. But I can’t say that. Not if I want to avoid an onslaught of teary hysterics and a stern call from our mother.

“Of course I’ll do it,” I say. “I’m honored—no pun intended.”

Libby squeals. “Fantastic! How do you feel about coming up here tomorrow morning to look at bridesmaids’ dresses?”

“Already? Have you even set a date?”

“August 6,” she says.

“But that’s, what, eight months from now? What’s the rush? Isn’t a lot of stuff booked up already?”

“Matt knows the wedding coordinator at The Rittenhouse, so he called in a favor. We lucked out with the florist and photographer, too, so we’re pretty much set.”

The Rittenhouse. One of Philadelphia’s fanciest hotels. That’s where I always thought Zach and I might get married. Not that I fantasized about our wedding in any great detail. I wasn’t lying to Libby when I said party-planning isn’t my forte. But one time in high school, while Zach and I were having a picnic in Rittenhouse Square, we saw a bride and groom getting their photos taken in front of the hotel. And as I bit into my Di Bruno Brothers sandwich, I thought, Who knows? Maybe that’ll be us someday.

Of course, as the years went by and I realized what a wedding at The Rittenhouse would cost, that fantasy gradually withered away. And then everything with Zach fell apart, so it hardly mattered.

“The Rittenhouse Hotel? Mom and Dad are okay with that?”

“Sure,” she says. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“You know money has been tight. . . .”

“Yeah, but this is my wedding. And for all they know, it may be the only one they ever host.”

“Thanks, Lib . . .”

“I’m just saying. Anyway, can you come up tomorrow?”

“I’m not even sure Amtrak will be running. The snow has shut everything down. And since I don’t have a car—why don’t we put a pin in that for now?”

She groans. “Fine. But I’m still going to need help with color schemes. I’m pretty sure I’m going with the jade chiffon for the bridesmaids’ dresses. So the logical color accompaniment for the flowers is white and yellow. But now the florist thinks I need a third accent color, and I don’t know what to do.”

Libby pauses, and a long silence ensues. I pull my phone from my ear to make sure I haven’t dropped her call. She is still there. And, apparently, waiting for me to say something.

“Syd? Hello?”

“I’m here,” I say.

“Well, what should I do? What goes with yellow, white, and green?”

The only person less qualified than I to answer that question is someone who both is colorblind and has a penis. My work attire revolves around five pairs of slacks—two black, two gray, and one khaki—and a limited variety of solid color tops, the “wildest” of which is a red sweater. Style has never been a personal strength.

“Lib, you repeatedly tell me my entire wardrobe is a crime against fashion. I think you might be better served asking one of your other bridesmaids. Or Mom.”

“Mom is more indecisive than I am, and my other bridesmaids are too worried about their own weddings. You’re the only one left.”

I lean back in my chair. “Okay . . . What about . . . lavender? Or violet?”

“Matt hates purple flowers.”

“Wait, Matt has an opinion about flowers? What guy has an opinion about flowers?”

“Sydney—stop. Help me.”

I clench my fist into a ball and bite my knuckle. “What about hot pink? That’s bright and summery.”

Libby goes silent, presumably mulling over this very important decision, upon which rests the fate of the human race.

“That’s perfect!” she says. “See? There is a fashion sense somewhere in there. Just takes a little digging.”

“Glad I could be of service.”

“You’re my maid of honor,” she says. “Being of service is your job.”

“Ah,” I say. “Right.”

This wedding is going to kill me.

When I hang up with Libby, Melanie storms over to my desk, her arms folded across her body.

“Hey—Boogerface,” she barks. “You off the phone?”

It’s at times like these that I remember Melanie grew up the youngest among five brothers. Sensitivity does not come naturally. Jokes revolving around poop and boogers, however, seem to flow with ease.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Check your e-mail. Memo from the network prez. It’s happening.”

I scroll through my in-box and find a message from the network president, Andrew Halliday: “Structural Changes at the Network.”

This can’t be good.

The e-mail continues, using expressions like “consolidate,” “promote efficiency,” and “eliminate redundancies.” The bottom line? They are going to close bureaus, combine jobs, and fire people.

“Holy crap,” I say as I finish reading the e-mail.

“I told you this was coming.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize . . . I mean, I didn’t think it would happen today. Or be so extensive.”

Melanie pushes her black-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose. “No one is safe. Every job is up for grabs.”

“How many jobs are they eliminating?”

“How should I know?”

“You knew about the restructuring, didn’t you?”

She tucks a pin-straight lock behind her ear. “I’m hearing at least four hundred positions.”

My eyes widen. “Four hundred?”

“Apparently Halliday is calling the bureau chiefs today. He’s delegating.”

My heart rate quickens. This may not be my dream job, but I make a respectable salary and have decent health insurance. And given that I’m behind on rent and have a knee-high stack of bills, any job is better than no job.

“He’s not telling us in person?”

“I think he wants to get this over with as quickly as possible. Out with the old year, in with the new.”

Before I can exacerbate my anxiety with more questions, Charles waltzes past my desk, his thermal underpants only adding to my nausea.

“What’s with the somber faces?” he asks.

“Check your e-mail,” we say in unison.

Charles glances down at his phone, and his dopey smile morphs into a sober stare as he scrolls through the two-page memo.

“How long have you known about this?”

“I just found out,” I say.

Charles nods solemnly, scrolling through the memo a second and then a third time. It’s the most serious I’ve seen him in the four years I’ve worked here. Even when the Dow dropped almost eight hundred points in a day and all of our futures seemed to splinter before our eyes, Charles injected levity into the newsroom with an occasional bad joke or cheesy story. But not today. Today his face is as white as the snow outside, and he utters not a word.

As Charles reads through the e-mail for a fourth time, our bureau chief Linda McCoy—a woman I have spoken with a grand total of two times in my four years of working here—walks into the newsroom, dressed smartly in a black suit, baby-blue shell, and pearl studs. She is not smiling. The entire newsroom stares at her, none of us smiling either. We know why she’s here. There’s no need to pretend.

Linda smoothes her brassy bob with the palm of her hand and pulls on her suit jacket. “I just got off the phone with Andrew. I take it all of you have seen his memo.”

We all nod, slowly and almost imperceptibly. No one wants to stand out. No one wants to let his or her anxiety into the open, to give off a vibe that says, I’m nervous. I know I’m hanging by a thread. But that’s what we’re all thinking. We’re also thinking, Don’t get rid of me. Get rid of her. Or him. But not me.

“I think it would be best if I spoke to each of you one-on-one to discuss your future here, and the future of The Morning Show.”

She drags her eyes across the newsroom and back again, until they land on me.

“Sydney,” she says. “Why don’t we talk in my office?”

As much as I try to tell myself that everything will be okay—that she wants to discuss the new duties I will assume and the cuts to my 401(k) match—I know from the pitying look in her eyes that we will not be discussing any of those things. We will be discussing something far worse. And everyone in this newsroom knows it.

“Have a seat,” Linda says, gesturing to the smooth, gray chair across from her desk.

I lower myself into the chair, gripping the cool, metal armrests for support.

“As you know, the network is going through some major changes,” she says. “And one of those changes is to consolidate operations in the Washington bureau.”

I nod soberly as my throat begins to close.

“They have decided to combine several of the producer and reporter roles and enhance our digital presence. As such, they are eliminating all of the associate producer and producer positions for The Morning Show.”

A wave of nausea crashes over me. “All of them? Then . . . who is going to produce the morning segments?”

Linda presses her lips together and clears her throat. “Charles.”

“Charles?” Linda nods. “What about Melanie?”

“Melanie will maintain some of her production duties, along with helping to maintain The Morning Show’s digital presence. It’s where the business is heading.” Linda folds her hands together and places them on her desk. “But, unfortunately, this means your pos. . .