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Bellinis are a Bad Idea…
Emma Banks - Culinary Institute of America, New York Campus
“Emma, you’re not still asleep, are you?” The voice of my roommate, Priya Bhatt, interrupts what is most definitely the best dream I’ve had in months.
“No, of course not. I’ve been up for hours. That’s how I made the greatest Baked Alaska Gordon Ramsay has ever tried,” I say, rolling over onto my stomach and snuggling into my pillow. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, he was just about to offer me a job.”
“Well, you may want to save salary negotiations for later. Your flight leaves in just over two hours, and those packing fairies you were hoping would stop by overnight haven’t shown up yet.”
I flip over and bolt upright. “No, no, no, no, no! How did I sleep through my alarm?” Grabbing my mobile off my tiny wood veneer night table, I swipe the screen. “Oh, that’s how. I set it for sixp.m.,” I say, tossing my phone on the single bed and rushing to my closet.
“In hindsight, we probably should have set our alarmsbeforewe made the first pitcher of Bellinis,” Priya answers, tugging her towel off her head and shaking out her wet, black hair. “I tried to wake you before I went for my shower, but you were out cold.”
Priya and I have been roommates here at the Culinary Institute of America for over three years. The big graduation ceremony was yesterday afternoon and things may or may not have gotten out of hand last night. Okay, they definitely may have. And by ‘may have,’ I mean I don’t remember anything that happened after we got to the third pub.
“Damn Bellinis,” I mutter as I toss my scuffed soft-sided suitcase on my bed. It takes two quick steps for me to be in front of my rickety dresser. Pulling out the top drawer, I dump its contents into my waiting suitcase.
“Here. Let me help,” Priya offers, opening the second drawer and carefully lifting an armful of sweaters out of it. She’s not in nearly as much of a rush to clear out as I am. Priya candrivehome to Philadelphia at her leisure, while I need to be at JFK Airporttout suitefor the nine-hour flight home to the Caribbean.
I pivot around Priya to replace the drawer. Glancing at the sweaters, I say, “Do you want those?”
“Seriously?” she asks. “Like,allof them?”
“Yup.” I won’t need them when I get home to Santa Valentina Island. “Oh, except my green cardigan. I’ll take that with me.”
Grinning, Priya hurries to her side of the room—the much neater side that has been thoughtfully decorated with a white and gold bedding set and matching area rug that say ‘Sparkle’ on them in flowy pink writing. While Priya is all about the sparkle, I’m more of a ‘get in, get it done, move on’ kind of girl. I’ve been using a sleeping bag since I came to school and I sleep just fine, thank you very much.
“You’re so lucky,” she says as she refolds her new sweaters. “You’reliterallygoing home to paradise to have your pick of restaurants to run.”
“But there’s no In-N-Out Burger on the Benavente Islands,” I answer lightly, trying to deflect her comment. I know it shouldn’t bother me, but the only reason I’m so ‘lucky’ is because some jackass ran a red light when I was seven and killed both my parents. My uncle, who owned a large, all-inclusive beachfront resort, took my brothers and me in. Then, when he died (a week before my grade twelve final exams), we inherited the resort, the staff, and all the responsibility that came with it.
Not that I’m complaining, because, as a student of the culinary arts, having guaranteed employment when you graduate is kind of like finding a talking unicorn that poops cash on demand. But, still, I’d much rather have had my mum and dad at the ceremony yesterday, snapping photos and cheering for me in embarrassingly loud voices.
I actually had no one in the audience because I purposely didn’t tell my family until it was too late for them to book flights. My little brother, Will, is somewhere on the other side of the planet filming the adventure/nature docuseries in which he stars, so there’s no way he could take a break with all those people depending on him. And my big brother, Harrison, is preparing to open the resort’s premier private island villa this week, which has basically had him working around the clock for the better part of the last year.
Priya was the only other graduate without family in the audience. Her parents are both super busy surgeons who also happen to think this ‘cooking thing’ is just a phase, like trying weed or making out with a girl your first year of college (which they actually told her they would have preferred, since in either of those cases, they could have hidden it from the family). But don’t worry, they’re not all bad. They’re planning to attend herrealgraduation when she finishes med school. So, that’s nice of them, isn’t it?
Poor Priya.
She’s going home to live in their basement while she tries to find work and pay off her student loans. (They’ll pay for her med school tuition, but cooking school? Not so much.) She could move in with her sister and brother-in-law, a cardiologist and an impossibly brilliant pediatric cardiologist, but according to Priya, they’re even more judgy than her disapproving parents.
I finish with the dresser and rush over to the closet, grab at the thigh-high laundry pile, and start stuffing it all into a duffel bag I ‘borrowed’ from Will when I moved here. (Don’t tell him; he thinks he lost it. He’s about to become a big TV star so it shouldn’t matter to him that I didn’t exactly ask if I can use it, but he’s also a jackass, so if he finds out, he won’t shut up about it.)
Oh, God. I just realized my brain feels like a wool sweater that’s been washed in hot and dried on high. I’m going to need to guzzle a couple of litres of water during the cab ride so it’ll return to its normal size.
Mmm…my breath must be delightful right now. Not to mention theeau de exam stress and boozeI’m wearing. “I don’t even know if I’m going to have time to shower,” I mutter, glancing at the clock and feeling my stomach tighten.
I eye Priya’s bottle of Febreze for a second, considering it. How bad could that be for you, really? I mean, if you just Febreze yourself the one time…
She must know what I’m thinking because she’s looking at the bottle too, and her tone is slightly urgent when she says, “I have some wipes you can use.”
“Much better idea. Thanks!” The outfit I was going to wear on the plane is jammed into my dirty laundry, so I dig through my suitcase to find something appropriate for travelling. I’m out of clean knickers so I’ll have to go commando, but I do find a pair of yoga pants, a tank, and a long-sleeved tee that I can take off when I land at the San Felipe airport. It’ll have to do.
Priya hands me the wipes, I grab my change of clothes and my toiletries kit, and sprint down the hall to the communal washroom. As I brush my teeth, I feel a surge of excitement building. Or maybe it’s terror. So hard to tell the difference sometimes.
For the first time in my twenty-eight years, I’m finally going to run my own kitchen. And not just a homey little café that seats twelve and serves soup and sandwiches. I’ll be in charge of a large, world-class restaurant with a staff of somewhere between sixteen and thirty people, depending on which of the resort’s seven restaurants my big bro, Harrison, hands over to me.
