Kitchen Chinese Read Free

love this cranky, pouty Isabelle,” he said. And then, when I remained silent, he cajoled, “Come on, Iz. I’m sorry I didn’t call. Let me make it up to you over lunch.”
    I felt myself weaken as I looked at him, the lock of dark blond hair that flopped over his forehead, the way his gray eyes crinkled. But then I remembered the red folder. “Sorry, I can’t,” I said. “I’m on deadline.”
    “Deadlines, shmed-lines.” He threw me a careless smile. “Let’s go to Pearl Seafood and get oysters and a bottle of wine.”
    “I can’t…I don’t want to piss Nina off. They’re making a decision about the job in Features next week, you know.”
    Richard gazed at me admiringly. “You know, Iz, this might finally be your big break. You could finally make the leap to staff writer.”
    Behind my back I crossed my fingers and squeezed them together with an intensity that surprised me. “Here’s hoping,” I murmured.
    I spent the rest of the morning with the telephone receiver wedged under my ear as I struggled to reach all the sources named in the article, while my fingers typed agitated bursts into the LexisNexis search engine. The journalist, a freelancer named Zara Green, was considered one of Belle ’s rising stars, known for her assertive reporting. I’d met her once at a brown-bag lunch for assistants, and found her unreserved enthusiasm and determination compelling. Unfortunately, she’d left so manyholes in this story about Jolly Jones, I was starting to feel more like her ghostwriter rather than a fact-checker.
    At lunchtime my boss appeared at my cubicle.
    “Almost done?” She shot an agonized look at my computer screen. As Belle ’s managing editor, Nina was arguably one of the most powerful women in New York media, yet she lived in constant fear of getting fired for missing a deadline.
    “Not quite.”
    “When?” Nina spoke in one-word sentences when she was stressed.
    “I don’t know. I need another couple of hours. Actually, I had some questions…”
    She heaved a sigh so forceful it ruffled the papers on my desk. “What is this, like the eight hundredth story you’ve fact-checked for the magazine? You should be able to do this in your sleep by now.”
    “It’s just that there’s so much information missing from the article…and I can’t reach half her sources. And Zara’s not picking up the phone or answering any of my e-mails. Are you sure this piece is ready…?” My question hung in the air.
    “Why don’t you just do your job, Isabelle, and I’ll do mine,” she said crisply. “Zara Green is a highly respected journalist and I highly doubt she’s making up sources.”
    “But—”
    “If you can’t finish in time, I’m sure I can find someone else to take over.”
    “The deadline is not a problem. But—”
    “Good. I’ll expect it on my desk in an hour.”
    Swallowing my frustration, I turned back to the phone, picking it up to call Zara one more time. To my surprise, she answered on the third ring.
    “Hi, Zara? This is Isabelle Lee from Belle magazine. I’m fact-checking your piece and I had some questions about reaching some of your sources…” As we started to go over my notes, I noticed that Zara had a habit of calling me “kid,” as if she couldn’t be bothered to remember my name.
    “Kid, don’t worry about reaching Henry Collins…he’s on some sort of meditation retreat in darkest Tibet. He’s totally out of contact,” Zara reassured me.
    “Henry Collins…” I scanned my notes. “You mean the extra on the set of Jolly’s latest movie who claims he had a one-night stand with her?”
    “Yes, and she made him dress up in a bear costume while they had sex.”
    “His quotes are pretty, er, revelatory.” Bizarre was more like it. “All that stuff about her ursine fetish—her fixation with beehives, smearing honey all over him, using a stuffed salmon as a sex toy, and then retreating into a darkened room for days and calling it