“You are an embarrassment,” she announced to the whole party. “You’re fired.”
She stood there in her thousand-dollar dress, a smug look on her face as two hundred pairs of eyes stared at me.
This was her plan all along. After weeks of impossible demands and last-minute changes that cost me thousands of my own dollars. After treating me and my staff like dirt.
She wanted her perfect party. She just never intended to pay for it.
She thought she was just firing her caterer; she didn’t realize she was about to become the only employee at her own party.
The Gilded Cage: The First Crack
The first time I saw Evelyn Rothchild’s house, I didn’t think “home.” I thought “mausoleum.” It was a cavern of white marble and glass overlooking the Pacific, a place so sterile and silent you could hear the hum of the sub-zero refrigerator from the front door. It smelled of Windex and money so new it was still tacky. My own house, just twenty miles down the coast, smelled of dog, my husband Mike’s half-finished woodworking projects, and the lingering scent of whatever recipe I was testing for my daughter, Chloe. This was a different universe.
Evelyn stood with her back to me, studying her own reflection in a mirror the size of my car. She was blade-thin, dressed in white linen that probably cost more than my monthly mortgage. “My husband, Richard, is turning fifty,” she said to her reflection. “The party must be legendary, Sarah. Not just nice. Legendary.”
I run Savor, a catering business I built from scratch. It’s my other child. This party, the Rothchild gig, was the big one. The one that could get me featured in a magazine, pay off the loan I took out for the new commercial ovens, and maybe let Mike and I finally take that trip to Italy we’d been talking about since Chloe was born. The contract was for twenty thousand dollars. I needed it. Not in a casual way. I needed it like a lung.
“Legendary is my specialty,” I said, forcing a smile that felt tight on my face.
She finally turned, her eyes sweeping over me once, a quick, dismissive appraisal. “Good,” she said, and turned back to the mirror.
The Price of a Whim
The first sign of trouble arrived at 2:17 a.m. a week later. An email with the subject line: “Vision.”
I was up, unable to sleep, my mind churning through logistics. Mike was snoring softly beside me. I read the email on my phone, the screen a harsh blue light in the dark. Evelyn had decided to scrap the entire menu. The one we’d spent three meetings and countless hours perfecting. My signature Pacific-fusion dishes—the seared ahi with mango salsa, the spicy coconut-lime skewers—were out.
She now wanted classic, fussy, Escoffier-era French. Pâté de campagne. Duck à l’orange. Coquilles Saint-Jacques. It was a completely different culinary language, one that required twice the prep time and a skillset my small team was less familiar with. More importantly, the ingredients—the foie gras, the specific French butter, the truffles she was now demanding—would obliterate my budget.
I called her the next morning. “Evelyn, I’d love to make this menu happen for you,” I started, my voice calibrated to be as smooth and accommodating as possible. “We’ll just need to revisit the budget to account for the new ingredient costs and the extra labor required.”
A laugh, sharp and tinkling like ice in a glass, came through the phone. “Oh, Sarah, don’t be silly. The budget is the budget. I’m sure a real professional can find a way to make it work. It’s just food, after all.”
“It’s not quite that simple,” I tried to explain, my grip tightening on the phone. “The cost of duck fat alone, for that many people…”
“Find a way,” she said, her voice dropping the false pleasantry. “That’s what I’m paying you for.” The line went dead. I stood in my kitchen, the morning sun streaming in, and felt a cold dread pool in my stomach.
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