“Mousy curls?” Lila asked, reaching out to feel her hair, currently piled high into a ponytail.
“She said you’d caused a big scene the other night and wondered what you had to say for yourself.”
“Oh my God! Did you tell her to kiss off?”
“No. I took her order for 400 dark chocolate oyster shells with white chocolate pearls inside and thanked her very much.” Lila nodded with understanding. “OK, but tell me what happened at the auction!” Lila brought her tea with her as she sat at the table and enjoyed finally getting to regale Annie with her account of the big night.
* * *
Clustered around the folding table in the staff room, Zoe, Annie and Lila each helped themselves to their pot-luck lunch: grapes, cheese, leftover quesadilla, apple slices, and a bit of quinoa, cranberry and walnut salad. Godfrey flitted around the edges, attending to nothing much but maintaining proximity. It was the first time all four of them had hung out since she and Annie had reconciled. Marion was out front and said it was fine if they all wanted to have lunch together; she’d come and get one of them if things got busy. Lila knew from experience that Godfrey didn’t like to sit with them, but if she fixed a small plate for him with some bites to eat he would eventually work his way over to it. A bit like a shy stray, she realized with a smile.
“I’ve been thinking,” Godfrey stepped near the table. “Do you think Mr. Meows should have a back story? I mean, in case any of the children ask? I ran into a lot of trouble last spring when one of the kids wanted a book about the Easter bunny and started asking questions. I had to think fast and make something up about him living on Majorca and traveling on a hydraulic cotton ball to all the gardens of good boys and girls.”
“I hear they make fabulous shoes there,” Zoe said. “Lovely soft leather.”
“Majorca?” Lila asked.
“It wasn’t my best work,” Godfrey admitted. “That’s why I think you need to be prepared when it happens to you. Where’s Mr. Meows from? Why’s he so cranky? What’s his motivation?” Lila laughed, having honestly not pondered these questions before.
“Maybe he was left on the shelf in a toy store for too long?” Annie offered. “It made him cranky.”
“Is that too dark for the kids?” Zoe wondered.
“I was going to say he was orphaned in a plane crash and raised by Romanian nuns who didn’t believe in physical contact,” Godfrey countered. Having drawn the three women’s attention, each wearing expressions ranging from rejection of the storyline (Lila and Annie) to sympathy for the orphans (Zoe), Godfrey asked, “What? Not believable? I know, he’d have an accent. But, Lila, you and I could work on that together.”
“Thanks, Godfrey,” Lila said, placing a small plate of food for him over on a nearby countertop. “I love the idea of a back story. Right now the toy shelf concept is really working for me. Maybe you and I can develop it?”
Considering the possibilities, Godfrey stroked the tiny hairs on his chin he was trying to coax into a goatee. “It could be that Sven owned the toy store. But he neglected the inventory due to his obsession with winning the Oktoberfest tasting.”
“Ooh!” Zoe clapped her hands. “Bring back Sven! I love Sven!”
“Have you met Sven and Olga?” Lila asked Annie, giving her a brief look of amusement as she began eating her quinoa. Sven had continued to make appearances at the bookstore, usually afterhours. Occasionally, however, unsuspecting tourists would find themselves getting advice on good murder mysteries from a Transylvanian book clerk. Olga, however, hadn’t resurfaced. Yet.
“No, but I would very much like to meet them.” With Annie’s magic words, Godfrey spirited away, only to reappear in a matter of seconds with a large, black beret.
“Just go with it,” Lila murmured softly to Annie, hiding her laughter by taking some bites of food.
After positioning folding chairs along shelving by the wall, Godfrey made two quick, loud claps and announced, “The Great Auction Rescue. Act One.”
Watching as Sven and Olga reprised their former roles, making something of a fuss with the imaginary waitstaff over the limited beer menu, Lila shook her head and wondered if she’d finally befriended people crazier than she.
She wished she could say it all felt like enough, that she was having a recurrence of that Zen transcendence and peace she thought she’d experienced on the bench overlooking the ocean. She did feel grateful to be there with such true if insane friends. But she also felt restless. She and Annie had been devoting so much dream energy toward the café; what to do with that now? And there was the matter of all of the unanswered questions with Jake. In the aftermath of the emotional extremes—loathing, rage, despair, she’d pulled them each out for a spin on the dancefloor in the previous weeks—now she mostly found herself with questions and a growing desire to seek out answers.
“Girls!” Marion huffed into the break room, thrusting the door to the side as if it had shown insolence. “Something remarkable has happened.” Her eyes gleamed and she pressed her fingers together in front of her formidable chest.
“Marion!” Annie answered in greeting, setting her fork down. Sven and Olga swiveled on their chairs to face the newcomer. Lila rose, wondering if she was needed out on the floor.
“I’ve just received the most unusual phone call! I think I might need to sit down.” Hand fanning her face, Marion accepted the folding chair Lila offered. “Oh my goodness. You never know what’s going to happen in life, do you? I must confess, I am absolutely shocked.”
“What’s happened?” Lila asked, alarmed by the extent to which Marion’s feathers, typically tucked each in their own place, were ruffled.
“It’s the funniest thing!” She exclaimed, displaying an unusual inability to get to the point. “I was up at the cash register, ringing up a sale, when my cell phone rang. You all know how I loathe the things. I never keep mine on me, particularly while I’m at the store. But this morning Joyce was running a temperature so I kept it in my pocket in case she needed something.”
“And then?” Annie prompted, clearly growing impatient.
“It was Martin.” At the name, Lila felt her pulse quicken. “The deal fell through! He wants to know if we still want the store?”
“What?!?” Annie’s shriek surely awakened some sleeping Japanese children across the Pacific as she sprang to her feet, managing to upend the folding table in the process. Neither the grapes rolling across the floor, nor the bowl with the quinoa splitting in two garnered the least bit of anyone’s attention.
“The deal fell through?” Lila asked.
“That’s what Martin said!” Marion brought a hand to her cheek in surprise. “I… I can’t think what happened. But he asked if we are still interested in making an offer. If we want it, it’s ours.”
Conveying an answer of ‘yes’ through screaming and jumping up and down, Annie and Lila officially freaked out.
“Then we’ve got a phone call to make,” Marion said, smiling. Throwing his beret up in the air, Godfrey joined the celebration. Zoe gave them all big hugs. Elated and still jumping, Lila couldn’t also help wonder—how did the deal fall through?
* * *
Put in charge of the Thanksgiving Tofurkey—a nod to vegetarian guests Zoe and Pete’s cousin, Zeke, whom Annie had described as ‘all beard’—Lila wasn’t sure of her next move. She’d never dressed one up before. Last night she’d decided on cranberries for the sweet taste and the holiday color and moved from there to an orange-cranberry glaze and a cranberry-walnut stuffing. This morning, however, it seemed a bit much. As a rule, she didn’t like using holidays as tests and guests as guinea pigs, but, then, she’d never faced down a Tofurkey before.
Looking at the faux bird critically, Lila picked up the phone to call her Gram. She could get some advice plus wish the Massachusetts group a happy Thanksgiving. Gram, as always, was confounded by the time difference and astonished that Lila had yet to leave her apartment since it was already the middle of the aft
ernoon.
“Not out here, Gram. It’s only ten thirty,” Lila gently reminded her. Annie wasn’t having people over until three, though Lila was expected at two, reporting for set up duty. There would be ten of them sitting down to dinner: Pete and Charlotte, of course, plus Pete’s mom, Annie’s mom and dad, Lila, Godfrey, Zoe and cousin Zeke. Without a dining room, Annie had yet to decide if she was going to try to cram everyone into the small living room at a round-kitchen-table-meets-folding-square-table ensemble, or separate the group into two rooms. The living room option sounded easier to Lila, but instead of bombarding Annie with yet one more opinion she figured she’d simply arrive on the scene and wholeheartedly support whichever configuration seemed to stress Annie out less.
Lila’s Mom had taken the phone for a few minutes as well. She, her boyfriend, Roger, and Roger’s mustache had made the drive down from Braintree to have dinner with Gram. It had been a long one in holiday traffic; Lila could hear the ice clinking in her Mom’s drink. Excited over Lila’s reinvention—and redemption in her eyes—as a small business owner, her Mom had wanted to talk over the details of the sale. She’d clearly missed her calling as an attorney with her laser-like attention to detail.
The crew in Hyannis was joined by about five strays from the neighborhood, plus three dogs needing a home as well. Gram liked fussing over the details of a holiday dinner, from her special occasion table cloth/napkin/place mat combos to her platters of hors d’oeuvres, usually featuring pigs in blankets and deviled eggs, to her small glass dishes of candies and nuts placed strategically throughout the little cottage.
“You know your Gram,” her mother had said and Lila could picture her shaking her head. Ever the counterpoint to Gram’s domestic focus, her mother was surely dressed in something she fancied chic and urban—usually black—and reading the paper on the couch alongside Roger. They’d probably brought a loaf of bread purchased on the drive down.
Cranberry-and-orange-dressed Tofurkey riding shotgun on the seat next to her, Lila headed over to Annie’s around 1:45 for Thanksgiving dinner. She grasped the wheel with her trusty green handknit mittens and nervously kept the car at about 15 mph. Annie only lived about three miles away but Lila wanted to avert disaster. Even in a car crash, though, the food would probably still be all right, sealed as it was in a serving dish and plastic wrap. Gram had a penchant for wrapping. Food, gifts, mailed items, winter sweaters put away for the warm seasons, all were wrapped within an inch of their lives. Signs of a lifetime under Gram’s tutelage sometimes still emerged.
Turning onto Annie’s street and listening to some excellent George Michael, Lila realized what hadn’t happened after her brief conversation back home. She hadn’t been struck hard and sharp across the head with the homesick stick. She’d enjoyed hearing their voices, picturing them in the familiar settings, even gained comfort from knowing all was as it always had been, but had then caught a glimpse of the clock and realized the Tofurkey needed attention, pronto. Funny how the absence of something could go unnoticed, when its presence could be so consuming.
A giant paper mache turkey sat on Annie’s front stoop looking as if it were guarding the entrance rather than welcoming visitors. Pete must have taken on A Project with Charlotte, Lila thought, smiling to herself. It had long orange legs that looked like they were made of wire and wings that appeared to have real feathers.
The front door was open and Lila let herself in. She heard a stressed, “Lila? That you?” from the kitchen.
Walking round the corner, Lila found Annie hunched in intense concentration over delicate tissue-thin strips of Filo dough. Strewn across the counter were bags of cranberries and chopped nuts, diced apples and a bowl of melted butter.
“What are you doing?” Lila placed her Tofurkey momentarily on the floor for lack of counterspace.
“I don’t know!” Annie wailed. “Why didn’t you tell me this was a horrible idea!”
“You didn’t tell me you were individually wrapping each of our meals in filo.”
“That might have been easier. At least it all would have been done in one place. I’ve spent about an hour on this stupid desert and I haven’t even started boiling the potatoes yet.”
Jumping into action—after securing some table space for the Tofurkey—Lila did her best to help get Annie’s overly ambitious Thanksgiving dinner back on the rails. While a top-notch pastry chef chocolatier, the more mundane aspects of cooking proved elusive to Annie. About an hour later, filo squared away, turkey nicely basted, Lila was turning her attention to the potatoes when Zoe and Godfrey arrived.
With a shriek, Annie pointed at the clock. It was the first time Annie’s parents had agreed to come out to her house for Thanksgiving and their imminent arrival had her wound like a top.
“Relax,” Lila found herself telling Annie once again, amused to find herself in that position.
“You don’t know my mom,” Annie muttered, checking on the turkey yet again.
“I do, actually,” Lila reminded her, having met her several times over the years. Coiffed and with a penchant for gold, Annie’s mother tended to give off an air that things were not meeting her expectations. “We’ll sit her right next to Godfrey.”
Getting a laugh, Lila went to go offer drinks.
Hours later, after some stilted chit chat, after everyone got seated, after Charlotte declared that she was most thankful for Mr. Meows, and happily after Godfrey’s lengthy reading from the journal of William Bradford and recitation of the names of the 53 pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving plus a minute of silence for all of our un-named Native American brothers and sisters, they’d all enjoyed heaping plates of scrumptious food. Even Annie’s mother had complimented the cranberry sauce—hastily purchased by Pete at the gourmet market merely two hours ago after a momentary panic by Annie, but no one needed to know that. Many toasts ensued, most of which were devoted to the closing of the bookstore café lease. As befitting her expertise, Annie had more deserts than dishes in the main course and it took nearly as long as dinner for everyone to make their way samples of each. Declaring the filo dough squares the winners, Lila gave Annie a brief round of applause which everyone joined.
Dishes done, Annie’s parents sent on their way, everyone sacked out in front of the TV. Lila decided to step out on to the front porch for a bit of fresh air. Stuffed, she leaned against the house enjoying the evening chill and gazing up at the towering pines bordering Annie’s property. No redwoods here, just a few miles inland; they were temperamental trees. She pictured the enchanted Redwood grove along her running route, then Jake living nearby. Had he had Thanksgiving dinner over his brother’s house? Had Vanessa joined? Was he watching the football game Pete kept turning to in between the James Bond marathon?
The door creaked and Annie stepped out to join her on the porch.
“Charlotte go down OK?” Lila asked.
“Fell asleep while I was buttoning her into her PJs.”
“And how are you doing?” Just looking at her, Lila knew Annie was much more relaxed and even feeling somewhat pleased with herself.
“I think it went OK.” Annie crossed over to one of two wicker arm chairs on the porch. “I was thinking we should take these in because of the rain but now I’m glad we left them out.” Settling into the other chair, Lila agreed. “So, I was at the store yesterday,” Annie began.
“And every day this week,” Lila laughed. She’d been there most days, too, measuring, envisioning, talking with Pete’s crew.
“Martin stopped by.”
“He’s always stopping by.” Lila could picture him, dapper and usually with a flash of purple in his tie or socks. “I think he likes it that we got the store.”
“He does. He told me as much.” After a pause, she looked at Lila and added, “He also told me how the Endicott deal fell through.”
“Yeah?” Lila wondered if her voice conveyed just how dramatically her pulse leapt at the prospect.
“Jake called him and pulled their offer
.”
“Jake called Martin?”
“He pulled out of the deal.”
Sitting up toward the edge of her chair, Lila’s “Really?” came out in an unusually high octave.
“And then he made Martin promise to call you so you could have the next shot at the property.”
“Me?” Lila now squeaked.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, I was just so frantic with my parents and the filo—”
“Wait. Jake cancelled the deal and told Marin—”
“To call Lila Clark,” Annie nodded, confirming. “I know, I don’t get it either. But Martin specifically said, ‘he told me to call Lila Clark.’”
“Well, he didn’t.”
“That’s because he knows who’s really paying for things,” Annie laughed. “But the fact is, Jake said to call you.”
“Why didn’t Martin tell us before?”
“He wasn’t supposed to. But you know what a gossip he is, it just spilled out and then he kind-of mumbled to himself, ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.’” Annie did a convincing Martin. “I asked him why not and he said Jake had asked him not to.”
Pete poked his head around the door. “She’s up.”
“That’s not good.” Annie rose from the chair with both determination and fatigue to go check on Charlotte.
Lila remained on the porch, kept company by her confusion, racing pulse, and more questions than she’d had even before getting some more answers.
CHAPTER 13: Watch out Boy, She’ll Chew you Up
Zoe sat in lotus position, fingers touching, eyes closed, meditating on paint chips. “I see vanilla,” she said without opening her eyes. “It’s an ancient aphrodisiac.”
“They say sex sells,” Annie commented, over at the chipped former deli counter top. She was paging through a design magazine on the top of a large stack. Every now and then a rip would punctuate their conversation as she discovered something she liked and placed it in her folder. A few minutes ago she’d sung Twinkle Twinkle to Charlotte via cell phone. Her mother-in-law put her to bed that night, as she’d done most nights that week. The full court press was on: eight weeks and counting to transform the dingy, long-vacant deli into Redwood Cove’s most bustling new hangout.
Christmas in Wine Country Page 26