Have you ever had one of those days where your life is sailing smoothly down Ventura Highway in the sunshine, good life, great career and then someone else’s crisis completely throws potholes in the pavement?
I’m Natalie McDuffy, “Nat” to my friends, and “Duff “ to people who haven’t learned any better yet. And “Dufflebag” to my least favorite sibling.
I grew up in the backwoods of Washington State. God’s Country. The Evergreen State. Twenty-seven different local words for rain. Couldn’t get my rust-covered ass out of there fast enough. Since I graduated culinary school, I’ve lived and worked in Southern California. If you watch the Epicurious network on cable at all, you’ve probably seen my show “Vegetarian Victuals”. When I’m not shooting VV, I work at the world famous restaurant Maximillan’s By The Sea in L.A. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good steak as well as the next girl, but the vegetarian gig was the only programming slot available, and I needed the job. Now it’s the most-watched program on the network. Wouldn’t you know?
So now I’m a closet carnivore, living with my two dogs in Venice Beach.
Make that “was” a closet carnivore, living in Venice Beach.
Yesterday two unrelated unfortunate events changed both my eating and living arrangements.
I got outted from the closet con carne by an impromptu run-in with Lindy Carrington. You probably know Lindy from the pages of People magazine. She’s the actress who’s Britney’s BFF every other 20 minutes. Turns out she’s a religious vegetarian, card carrying member of PETA, and self-appointed president of the “save the hot dog” campaign. She caught me right outside the Venetian Frank with a double chili dog with onions. Lindy screamed and called me a lying, fraudulent bitch, which kind of pissed me off. I don’t get pissed off easily, but Lindy might have pissed me off to the point where I might have kind of lost my temper and thrown the double dog with onions in her bleached blond hair.
This unfortunate misunderstanding was followed by a phone call from my producer Bruce at Epicurious explaining that really, it had come to their attention that I a) was most unsuitable for the VV show, and b) had some serious temper issues. I tried to argue that I don’t have temper issues, I just like to eat in peace, but it didn’t fly.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I then got one of those middle of the night phone calls. You know, the ones that make you sit bolt upright in bed, trying to catch your breath, your heart hammering in your chest, and adrenaline surging through your fingers because you know something must be terribly wrong? Problem was, I couldn’t sit bolt upright in bed because Dandy the dog was lying across my chest. Under the covers. His sister Fine was on top of the covers, curled up in a little ball on my feet. Between the two of them, I couldn’t have sat upright if the apartment had been on fire.
Fortunately, my cell phone was within reach. And I recognized the ring tone. Certain people in your life, for various reasons, warrant their own ring tone. My twin sister was one of them.
12:30a.m. This had better be good.
“Nic. What’s wrong?”
My sister’s voice sounded fragile and shaky, although that was normal when she called my Horizon cell phone. She still lives in the official Middle of No-where on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and the small town where we grew up finally got a stop-light last year. Cable TV. and cell phone reception haven’t made it yet.
“Nat?” Crackle, fzzzz, staticky sounds
“ Nic what’s wrong?”
Fzzzttt “Jake” crackle, crackle “surf & turf bitch” crack fzzzzzzt “alone” fzzzzzzttttt “kids” sssssstttttt “need help up here”.
“Nic, I can’t hear you. Is something wrong with Jake or the kids?”
Fzzzzzttttttt “Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” Snort, sniffle. I held the phone away from my ear as my sister unmistakably blew her nose into the microphone.
“Nic, stop right where you are, I can hear you now. What’s going on?”
Crackle, ffffzzzzttt, crackle. So much for the Horizon stalker network.
I sighed and tried to heave 65 pounds of combined sleeping whippet off my body so I could get up and see if the reception was any better in the living room. The apartment’s pretty small, but it’s not that small, and it has a great view of the ocean if you stick your head out the bathroom window. With the success of VV, I could probably have afforded better, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. Too busy. Now unemployed.
It wasn’t until I got to the kitchen that Nic’s voice came through clearly enough for me to understand the issue du jour.
“Nat, Jake’s gone. Sluurrp, snuffle He ran off with one of the meat suppliers, and left me here with the kids to manage this place alone. I need help.”
Some sets of twins know what the other is thinking and feeling without having to exchange words. Not so Nic and I. We actually need modern conveniences, such as Horizon Wireless, to communicate.
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t close, and as luck would have it, I had some time on my hands, thanks to Lindy Carrington, vegan bitch.
For most emergencies my family usually manages without me. I’m in L.A. and I have four siblings still within a 20-mile radius of the family homestead. For this particular emergency, however, the rest of the MacDuffy family were, well, duffs.
“Nic, why are you calling at 12:30am? Couldn’t this have waited until 5:30, or some civilized hour?”
“Nooo” Nic wailed. “There’s a Save The Spotted Owl convention in town, and we’re full up. I can’t make breakfast for 15 people.”
Nic and her soon-to-be ex-husband Jake ran Jake’s family business, a semi- bustling B&B in Quilcene, Washington. If you could convince a tourist there was a reason to stop and stay in Quilcene, Nic and Jake got their business. They also catered coffee, beer, sandwiches and oyster sliders to every logger and local fisherman around. Nic can field strip a 30-06 and you can bounce a quarter off a bed she makes, but she’s about as much good in the kitchen as Daisy, the resident goat. Usually, Jake’s mother, Ginny, nick-named for her favorite booze stashed under the counter, could slosh coffee at the locals, but without Jake’s culinary skills, there was gonna be no one to serve up the famous beer battered fish and chips, and the clam chowder would come from a can from
Not to mention, Nic’s breakfast-making skills probably didn’t run much past corn flakes and orange juice.
One can make the drive from LA to Seattle in about twenty hours if you stop at every Starbucks between Disneyland and the Space Needle. By my sleep-addled brain, that was going to put me about 16 hours late for breakfast.
“Uhhh, Nic?” “How’m I supposed to be any help here? I sure can’t get there before breakfast.”
“Ever heard of an airplane?” “I’m pretty sure they have them at LAX”.
“Nic, I can’t just come and leave Fine and Dandy. They have to come too.”
“Shit”. “Lemme think”.
Since Nic thinking could be a laborious process, I amused myself by making a pot of coffee. I debated between leaded and un-leaded – unsure as to what my chances of actually making it back to bed might be. Nic’s a slow thinker, but she is an amazing plotter.
“Okay, I’ve got an idea. Let me call you right back.” Nic disconnected.
I opted for caffeine, and took the opportunity to rummage through the back of my closet and throw some of my remaining Eddie Bauer wardrobe into a suitcase.
Twenty minutes later, the cell phone jangled an unknown number.
“Hey Dufflebag!” I rolled my eyes back in my head as far as they could go without a complete 360.
“Hey, North.” I can barely tolerate my oldest brother on good days with enough sleep. Middle of the night without coffee or alcohol wasn’t going to cut it.
“Nic says you need a ride home. Something about Jake the Snake slithering out in the middle of the night.” You may be getting the idea that our family leans a little counter-clockwise in the dysfunctional department. “I’m in San Diego dropping off a sick orca calf. Pick you up at Orange County in an hour.” The phone went dead in my hand.
When the growing-up genes were handed out, North missed more than a few of his share. He then addled what was left coherent in his brain with a bit too much Canadian wacky tobacky. In spite of the fact that he had the maturity level and general habits of a happy-go-lucky teenager, he managed to get his pilot’s license. The BC bud left him with a permanent need to, well, fly. Post-license, he disappeared for a few years, and returned to Quilcene with a tan and a Cessna. He pops about the world with the Cessna, sometimes on legitimate business, and other times we just don’t ask questions. Most of the time, we have no idea where he is or what he’s up to. Really, it’s okay that way. Remember what I said about dysfunctional.
Needless to say, my faith in his piloting skill is not assisted by the practices of any organized religion. And just my luck he’s an hour away with an airplane.
It’s a good thing I love my sister.
The other down-side of flying with North is that his music taste arrested sometime in the soft sounds of the Seventies. That means the cockpit headphones will be tuned to the likes of Karen Carpenter and Anne Murray. I’m pretty sure that after three hours of listening to “Daydream Believer” I’m going to want to do a D.B. Cooper out the back of the plane.
An hour later found me on the sidewalk outside Orange County Municipal Airport, towing a tangle consisting of two confused whippets on leashes and my rolling black carry-on size suitcase. Fine wanted nothing to do with the weird thing on wheels and had wrapped her leash around my knees in an attempt to get as far from it as possible. I couldn’t get her untangled without putting down my travel mug of coffee, which would have gotten knocked over in the chaos. So we staggered crab like to the section of the airport marked for transient aircraft. I didn’t see the blue and grey McDuffy Cessna, or any sign of North, so I made my way to the nearest hangar and stumbled through the side door.
“Dufflebag! It’s about time you got here!” North, unmistakable with trademark McDuffy red hair, and his pony-tail holding the current family record for length. In spite of the fact he was holding the largest wrench I’d ever seen, and his coveralls were drenched in grease, he whirled over to give me a big hug. This resulted in the two whippets going crazy with excessive greeting disorder, and me losing my grip on both the suitcase and the travel mug. Now I’m covered in grease, and I have no coffee.
“Hi North. Good to see you too. Where’s the plane?”
North gave me his most mischievous grin, the one that bore bad tidings to anyone with sanity intact. “It’s here” he gestured at the back of the hangar, where the plane appeared to be littered across the hangar floor in several pieces. “Started making a funny pinging noise when we took off from San Diego, so thought I’d better have a look before we headed up”.
I frowned at the mess on the floor. “Funny pinging noises? Just what does that mean?”
“Oh, probably nothing, maybe a loose screw or something. Don’t worry about it. Get yourself some more coffee.”
Since the whippets appeared to be harmlessly wandering the hangar, I took the travel mug over to a small kitchen area in a corner and examined the black sludge that represented itself as coffee.
BOOM! I jumped about three feet in the air as a bomb went off behind me. I came down, turned around and found myself nearly eyeball to eyeball with a gigantic bird that promptly bit me in the ear.
BOOM! The bird seemed to have a limited vocabulary, consisting mostly of imitating a cannon. It made what I swear was a strange face and spit my gold hoop earring out on the floor.
“North!” I yelled. “What the hell is this thing and why is it here?”
“What’s what?” North and Dandy both crawled out of the belly of the plane to check out the commotion. Whippets are the most helpful creatures on earth, and Dandy clearly felt it was his duty to be mechanic’s assistant. The bird was far too large for him to consider it any kind of prey. “Oh.” said North. “That’s Sully. Didn’t I mention Sully? He’s going back with us. San Diego Zoo is sending him up to the Game Farm.
“What the hell IS he?” I asked, cautiously ducking under the bird to retrieve my earring. Sully promptly tried to take a bite out of the hood of my sweatshirt. “And why does he keep trying to eat my wardrobe?”
“He’s an emu.” North explained. “He’s really friendly, and mostly harmless.”
Sure. As I try to yank my hood out of Sully’s mouth. I was saved from Emu tug of war by the arrival of Fine, who found nothing normal about a giant bird in an airplane hangar and ballistically started barking. Sully, who’d been quite happy to boom deafeningly at me, took one look at Fine and bolted for the Cessna, Fine at his heels. If Emu’s have heels. Sully made it to the plane and hopped up in the co-pilot seat and proceeded to scowl and hiss at Fine, who sat on the hangar floor and continued barking.
I sighed and soothed Fine with a piece of stale powdered doughnut that was hanging out by the coffee. North and Dandy appeared to have the plane almost back in one piece, so maybe we’d get lucky and get out of here before it was time to serve the Spotted Owl people breakfast.
“Okay, you ready?” North crawled out from under the plane and dusted his hands off.
“Is IT ready?” I was more concerned about the plane.
“It’ll be fine. It’ll get us home anyway” North walked off to get his flight plan cheerfully optimistic. “You and the dogs hop in back, and I’ll hand you up your bag.”
“Whaddya mean, hop in back?” I asked. “Doesn’t that beast have a crate to ride in?”
“You wanna try moving him now, be my guest.” North grinned at me. “Lot faster if we just let him stay put.” This appeared to be true. Sully the emu was glaring defiantly from the co-pilot seat. “This is all your fault” I told Fine. “You couldn’t see he was BIGGER than you are?” Fine perked her ears and cocked her head at me inquisitively. I guess you couldn’t blame her, she had to get up at 2am, and all she’d had to eat was a stale doughnut. I’d be grumpy too. In fact, I WAS grumpy.
I bet most people have not been stuffed in the back of a Cessna with two whippets, a smallish suitcase, a 35 pound bag of emu food, and a backpack, presumably North’s. Just getting all squashed in is bad enough, flying that way for three hours is pure hell. To top it all off, my kind and sensitive brother glanced back after I’d made room for everything and made me move the bag of emu food off the floor onto its own seat. “Well, it’s all we’ve got for him for awhile, and it can’t get ripped or dirty”. Great. This left my suitcase and the backpack on the floor and both Fine and Dandy sharing my lap.
In flight service on Air North is non-existent. No matter how much you ask, the emu will not serve coffee or peanuts. In fact, Sully was a paranoid flyer, considering the fact that he’s a bird, for crying out loud. He spent most of trip trying to climb in North’s lap, North spent most of the flight peering around an emu neck, and I spent most of the flight with my sweatshirt hood pulled around my eyes, clinging desperately to Fine and Dandy.
I’m starting to reconsider how much I love my sister.
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