Master Chef

Claire and I used to also live with Julie. Those days were fantastic. Julie is an excellent cook and whenever she would get bored she would end up making us these incredible dinners with several courses complete with wine and dessert, and sometimes she would even print out a menu to make us feel fancy. They were always mouthwatering dishes, such as stuffed mushrooms and grilled asparagus and chicken a la delicious, etc. Sometimes Claire would cook too, and although she was good, we could both agree that Julie was on a whole other level.

I cooked once during the 6 months we lived together. I tend to get extremely stressed out when I cook; I don't like shopping for the groceries and I will tolerate the cooking part, normally with small mistakes. I love the eating part but this, the best part, only lasts for about 15 minutes. And to me, that is just a waste of time, cooking for hours for minutes of eating. But sometimes you have to suck it up and do something nice for people, so I decided one Friday night to make chicken skewers. I stabbed chicken, peppers, and mushrooms onto some sticks with only minor bleeding, and seasoned them well past Julie's normal tolerance of spice. Perhaps this was why we ended up drinking so many martinis, to cool the fires in our mouths.

We all agreed that our favorite parts of martinis are the olives, so we decided to soak some olives in gin before putting them in our drinks. Maybe that had something to do with it too. After drinking several martinis each, all three of us are pretty wasted and spend about a half an hour telling each other how awesome we all were. At one point someone spills their drink and Claire of course shouts "ZAMBONI!" Immediately someone is required to suck up the alcohol, which I do, then Julie and I soak up the rest of it with bread and eat it.

Eventually we are all dancing around to Lady Gaga, and at one point Julie gets really mad at Claire. I believe it has to do with a fight regarding the degree of awesome Claire is. Julie runs to Claire's room and grabs her jade plant and is waving it around, spilling dirt everywhere and yelling, "SAY IT! SAY YOU ARE AWESOME!" while Claire is screaming, "MY GRANDMOTHER'S JADE PLANT! PUT IT DOWN! THAT'S MY GRANDMOTHER'S JADE PLANT!" I am sitting on the bed, calmly wiping the dirt from Claire's comforter onto the floor. Suddenly I realize the trouble Claire's grandmother's jade plant is in, and this is when I tackle Julie, rip the plant out of her hands and give it to Claire to put in a safe place until Julie forgets why she is in Claire's room. Then we all go to bed.

Even now that Julie has moved out (she is going to LA for the summer), she still feels at home in our apartment, as she should. She came over a few weeks ago for a Friday night dinner, which she ended up making. Our kitchen is your kitchen, Master Chef. She made gourmet burgers out of whatever she could find in our fridge. We were, of course, also having drinks. I don't remember what Julie and I were drinking but I do remember very clearly that Claire had a mason jar full of whiskey on ice. I remember this because, as Julie is blabbering away on her phone to her friend about their upcoming wine trip, Claire says to me, "This might be too much whiskey. I might pour some back in the bottle."

I stare. "What?"

"I might put some back..."

"Claire. Claire, it's Friday night," I say to her, genuinely shocked and worried about what she was saying.

"I know, but it's already 8:00 and I'm tired and we're going out big tomorrow night..."

Throughout this whole conversation Julie has visibly stopped listening to whatever her friend Elizabeth was saying, staring at Claire with the same shock on her face that I felt in my heart. Julie is saying, "Yeah, okay. Yep. Right. Okay." but she is bursting to say something.

I stare some more. "Claire... What are you saying?? It's Friday night! Stop being a grandma."

Suddenly Julie hangs up the phone and screams, "I THOUGHT YOU WERE A CARTER, NOT A LITTLE BITCH!" There is smoke coming out of her nostrils and her head just burst into flames.

Claire's eyes get huge and she looks from me to Julie, pauses, then takes a drink of her whiskey and breathes a sigh of relief. "Thanks guys. I needed that."