Chapter 1

I was in the frozen foods aisle selecting a stack of frozen dinners and dumping them into the shopping cart. “Excuse me.” I heard a woman’s voice. “I think that’s my cart you’re using.”

“No, I don’t think so...” I looked down and saw my pile of frozen dinners commingled with ones I hadn’t selected. “I guess you’re right.” I began transferring them to my own basket. “Sorry about that.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so,” she said, “I think you could’ve made healthier choices.”

I looked up at her and scanned her up and down. She was tall and slender -- a bit lanky, actually. Her face was oblong with a high forehead, a straight and slightly pointy nose, broad mouth and weak chin. She wore her long, straight brown hair parted in the middle and cascading casually over her shoulders. Her eyes were steel gray and her thick-lensed wire-frame glasses made them look a bit beady. She had a naturally tan complexion -- Mediterranean, perhaps. My overall impression: A nerdy girl, maybe a school marm or librarian.

“What’s wrong with my choices?”

She took a frozen potpie from my basket and showed me the ingredients list. “Palm oil. There are healthier choices.” She took a similar package from her basket. “This one’s made with real butter.”

“Butter is healthier than palm oil?” I asked.

“It is. It’s a natural product. Palm oil is processed. Look at the amount of trans fat in yours.”

“Oh. Wow,” I replied.

“I avoid anything containing palm oil,” she continued. “In particular I don’t like what the palm oil industry is doing to the ecology of Southeast Asia.”

“What’s it doing?” I asked.

“Native forests are being plowed under to plant palm plantations,” she replied.

I looked into her eyes. “So, you’re a green girl.”

“I try to be,” she said with a slight smile.

“Where did you find all these?” I asked.

“Over there.”

I stuffed my original selections back in the freezer case and wheeled my basket to a section of health and vegetarian items -- a section I normally bypassed. “What do you recommend?” I asked.

“It depends on what you like.” She started handing me frozen packages, some of which I placed in my cart and others I handed back to her.

“You’re not a vegetarian,” I remarked as I looked over what was in her basket.

“No, but I do try to limit my meat consumption.”

“Well, this should hold me for a week.” I headed for the checkout with her following me. One lane was open with no other customers in line. “After you,” I said and she began unloading her cart onto the belt.

I followed, placing items as the cashier rang the up. The nerdy girl stood to the side reviewing her receipt before stuffing it in her purse. “Well, those selections certainly are more expensive,” I remarked to her as we wheeled our baskets to the parking lot.

“You get what you pay for,” she replied. “I hope it didn’t bust your budget.”

“No ... I can manage. By the way, I’m Eric. Eric Gleason.”

“I’m Helen. Helen Jaffee.”

“Nice to meet you, Helen. That’s kind of an old-fashioned name. I don’t hear it often.”

“I suppose it is. I was named after my grandmother. She died of cancer shortly before I was born and my mom wanted to honor her.”

“I like your name. Thanks, Helen, for pointing me in a healthier direction.”

“If you want truly healthy meals,” she added, “you should buy fresh raw ingredients and make them yourself. Then you know exactly what goes into them.”

“Excuse me for saying this,” I replied. “I don’t mean to criticize, but...”

“You know, when someone says I don’t mean to do X, BUT ... It means they’re about to do X.”

“I was going to say, I don’t see any fresh raw ingredients in your shopping bags.”

“It’s because I live alone and frozen meals simply are easier,” she replied.

“Same here ... plus the fact that I’m not a very good cook.”

“I do know how to cook,” she said. “I spent two years at the Culinary Institute. I just don’t like cooking for myself.”

We wheeled our baskets toward the parking lot. “I’m parked over here,” she said and pushed her cart to a silver Nissan Leaf. I saw the legend, zero emissions on the trunk.

“A Leaf,” I remarked. “How do you like it?”

“I like it very much. It’s great for around-town driving.”

“What about road trips?” I asked.

“If I’m going on the road, I rent a car. For ninety percent of the driving I do, it’s fine. In fact, where I work they have charging stations in priority parking stalls, right next to the handicap ones. I can park close-in, which is great when the weather is bad. At home I run an extension cord from an outlet on my patio out to my parking spot.”

“Where do you work?” I asked.

“I’m a microbiologist at BioPharmacia,” she replied.

“I’m a lab technician at Community General. I’m a supervisor, actually. You said you went to culinary school. How did you end up as a microbiologist?”

“I went to the Culinary Institute right out of high school,” she explained. “I thought I wanted to be a chef. They taught me just how much hard work goes into being one. I realized I didn’t have what it takes to survive in a high-pressure commercial kitchen. Then, I learned of a program to attract women into STEM studies. I did pretty well with math and science in high school, so I applied.”

“And the rest is history.”

“Some of the courses I took at the Culinary Institute actually transferred. I overloaded my schedule and got my B.S. in three years. Then I finished my M.S. in eighteen months. The loans were starting to pile up, so I decided to forego the Ph.D. program and landed a job at BioPharmacia.”

“Do you ever get to use your culinary training?” I asked.

“Now and then -- primarily when my family comes to visit. I don’t like cooking just for myself -- it’s too much effort; then there’s cleanup and usually leftovers I end up tossing out. I’m kind of a misfit, socially, at work...”

“Yeah, I know how that is,” I added. “Besides, I think intramural relationships are fraught with danger. I avoid them like the plague.”

“I agree with you there,” she replied. “One of my co-workers was terminated for what he said was a misunderstanding but she said was harassment.”

“You know -- I’d accept an invitation to sample your cooking ... if you were to offer one.”

She regarded me for a long moment. “Eric -- are you really so forward as to fish for an invitation from someone you just met at the grocery store?”

“No, but...”

“Aha! There’s the BUT again.”

“You’re an interesting girl ... an interesting woman ... an interesting person, Helen. I’ve enjoyed our conversation and I’d like to enjoy more.”

“I sense your sincerity,” she replied.

“Normally I wouldn’t fish for an invitation, but my instinct told me it was the right thing to do.”

“Are you doing anything this Saturday evening? Say, six?” she asked.

I took out my phone and consulted the calendar. “Well ... I did have rearranging my sock drawer on my to-do list for then. I think I can reschedule. Let’s exchange phone numbers. You can text me with your address and directions.”

She took her phone from her bag and we made the entries.

“I’ll text you when I get home,” she said. “See you on Saturday.”

“Can I bring anything? Wine, maybe?”

“I’ll let you know what I decide to make,” she replied, “and text that to you, too.”

She opened her trunk and I helped her set her bags inside. Then I rolled my basket to my car.

Lo and behold, that evening I received a text from Helen giving her address, directions and saying she had a baked ham recipe she wanted to try. Now it was Saturday and I was headed toward her place.

I parked in the visitors’ lot of a complex of squat, three-story apartment buildings. I found Helen’s building and the name H Jaffee under a call button. I pressed the button.

Yes? Her voice came over the intercom.

“It’s Eric.”

I heard the buzzer and opened the door. Her apartment was on the ground floor and I saw her standing in the open doorway. She was wearing an above-the-knee denim skirt and a sleeveless top. “Come in,” she said.

I handed her a paper bag. “I brought some wine. You said a rose...”

She removed the bottle from the bag. “A sparkling rose Cava,” she remarked. “A very nice selection, Eric.”

“I might not be a great cook, but I’m not a total ignoramus when it comes to food and wine. I can grill a killer burger.”

“This is nice and cold,” she said. “I’ll put it in an ice bucket.”

She stood with her back to me and I regarded her. Helen’s arms and legs were slender with good muscle definition. I’ve always thought the backs of a girl’s knees were pretty and Helen’s were very sexy.

“Nice place,” I remarked, looking around.

“It’s okay,” she replied. “I don’t like being on the ground floor.”

“At least you don’t need to climb stairs.”

“True, but I prefer the security of being on an upper level.”

“How would you charge your Leaf? You’d need to toss an extension cord out a window.”

“I hadn’t considered that angle,” she replied. “The kitchen is okay, too. Not a chef’s kitchen for sure.”

“It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools,” I remarked.

“Maybe so, but a sharp saw cuts a cleaner line than a dull one. Dinner is almost ready. I have a small bar over there if you’d like to help yourself to a drink.”

“How about I make one for you, too?”

“What did you have in mind?”

I regarded the selection of bottles. “French vermouth,” I remarked. “How about a martini, dry but not too dry. I like them with French vermouth.”

“That sounds lovely. I prefer French vermouth over Italian, too. There’s some barware in the cabinet.”

“I’m going to borrow a few cubes from your ice bucket,” I said as I plunked some in her cocktail shaker. Then I measured some gin and vermouth, gently swirled it to mix them and strained the contents into a couple cocktail glasses. “You wouldn’t happen to have some lemon peel? Or olives?”

“Olives in the fridge,” she said.

“Here -- cheers!”

We clinked rims and she sipped from hers. “Mmm ... You make a nice martini, Eric.” She took another sip and lifted her face. “Mmm ... Just about perfect, actually. Dry but not too dry and you let just enough ice melt to let the gin bloom.”