Let Them Eat Tea

by Coleman Maskell

Chapter 25 – The Liberty Tea Company

  Late Saturday morning, Katrina joins the collection of random students who sit in the courtyard outside the Student Union coffee shop, lounging, studying, chatting with each other, listening to iPods, listening to the birds sing, breathing in the fresh spring air. Flowering trees are scattered everywhere. Red and yellow tulips dot the grounds. The scent of mixed garden flowers hangs in the air.

  As tired of life as she feels after the hard winter, Katrina enjoys seeing spring come over Wisconsin. The land is coming back to life, and immersing herself in it gives her the feeling that she can be reborn along with the land. As she walks slowly across the courtyard, tired but graceful, she feels the energy of life flowing back into her a little more with each step she takes.

  Inside the coffee shop she fills an extra large insulated cardboard cup with a mix of the herbal teas and pays for it with a wave of her smart phone. Then she comes back outside to enjoy the ambience and wait for Doug to meet her. She takes a seat at a table on the edge of the crowd, where she can feel that she is part of the group without worrying too much about their conversation being overheard. She sips the tea and looks around, soaking up the atmosphere, not bothering even to read a book. The realization strikes her that it's relaxing just to be away from Charlie, to be free from apprehension about when another bout of irrationality will strike. She sighs, and sips the tea.

  "Not great tasting tea, I'd wager," Doug says cheerily, coming up unseen behind her and taking a seat in the wrought iron garden chair on her right, setting his backpack and laptop case on the table.

  "It's pretty bad, actually," she admits with a little laugh. "Though I've had worse."

  That makes it Doug's turn to laugh. "You don't mean Paradise Island Tea, I hope?" he asks. "Because I've heard that's great stuff."

  "And so it is," she agrees happily. "Charlie's definitely improving. Still not exactly what I'd call sane, but definitely improving. The periods of blank staring at the wall are gone, and he doesn't rant as much."

  "The guys in the islands told me your spaghetti sauce is all the rage," Doug continues, smiling. "To die for, as people say."

  She laughs lightly again. "Or not," she answers as expected. "For Not-to-die. That's the goal."

  "It tastes good, though, right?" he asks again. "I mean, the way you prepare it, in spaghetti, or pizza."

  "Same sauce for both," she answers, "and yes, they're loving it. I guess the guys told you about the plan? To start a spaghetti sauce business and dose the whole insaniTEA, sorry, LiberTEA party?"

  "A tea party? That's a great idea," Doug answers, laughing. "I thought they were talking about organizing pizza parties, but either way. Now that you mention it," he continues, glancing at her as if it had been her idea, "I have been thinking about that tea idea. A beverage might be better for distribution. If you -- with your impressive culinary talent -- could turn that herbal concoction into something people would want to drink, that might be a better way to go on this. Relative to an Italian tomato sauce, which would have a smaller target market."

  She considers the idea.

  "I understand the competition in the herbal tea market isn't too formidable," he adds after a silent pause, gesturing in the direction of her cardboard cup.

  She smiles. "There are reasons Starbuck's doesn't sell a lot of herbal tea," she says. "Not least of which is taste."

  "That's where your talents come into play, my lady," the young man responds, with a hint of a bow. "Seriously," he adds, turning serious, "Have you thought about it at all? Developing something for the beverage market? I mean, apparently you do know a lot about cooking. Or so I'm hearing."

  She laughs.

  "Seriously. If these guys want your pizza this much, that's a real compliment. Remember, a lot of these people are accustomed to eating in four star restaurants, eating filet mignon and caviar." Unable to resist adding a joke, he adds, "Besides that, sometimes they eat really good food too."

  She responds with good humor, "So this is a sales pitch on what a great cook I am? To reel me into doing what -- developing a killer formula for a herbal tea that will turn Starbucks green with envy?" She holds up both hands in a gesture of incomprehension and helplessness.

  "This is no time for modesty, my dear," he dismisses the issue. "Lives are at stake," he adds, in a tone that combines mock humor with mock seriousness, lifting one eyebrow and looking at her slightly sideways.

  She laughs automatically at his tone and expression. "You ask me to do the impossible, sir," she objects, making her best effort at Shakespearian English.

  "Nay, only what would be impossible for a lesser mortal," he responds playfully, "for your talents are as infinite as the heavens, your cooking wisdom as deep as the ocean. Surely woman never lived who could outcook you."

  She shakes her head and smiles at the same time. "Honestly, Doug. A good tasting herbal tea? That's a bit more difficult than spaghetti sauce." After a quick pause she adds, "Could I add ginger and apple?"

  He smiles and nods. "That's my girl. We can call it The Island Kat Tea Company, what do you think?"

  "Liberty Tea might be an idea," she suggests, brainstorming. "Not Sani-Tea," she comes up with another idea and dismisses it just as quickly.

  "Sanity? Funny, and tempting, but no, It tips our hand and besides that it sounds suggestive of sanitation," he agrees. "We'll leave Sani-Tea off the short list. Kat's Meow? Kat's Caffeine-free Kapow?"

  "The name doesn't really have to have the word Tea in it, I guess," she says, "but the word Tea does directly address our, what did you call it, target market? The LiberTEA party members infected with this brain-eating parasite? So then, having TEA in the name might be good." She pauses to mull it over for a few seconds before adding, "I can see by that same reasoning that having Kat in the name is good too, because anybody in our 'target market' is going to love cats, so they'll be drawn to the word KAT. They certainly care more for cats than they do for people. If we could name it Liberty Kat Tea that would be something they could really identify with. Maybe have a picture of a sleek black cat stretching and rubbing itself on the liberty bell. Or a white cat, if the background is dark."

  "Did I detect a note of, um, animosity in your voice?" Doug responds. "Oh, wait, maybe it was the actual words you used that gave me that idea," he adds. "Really, you think they dislike their fellow man?"

  "Let me see," she pretends to ponder the question. "They don't want to pay taxes. They don't think they should have to spend money to fund public health care, not even for children, pregnant women, the elderly, the incapacitated, not even for the shattered war veterans who got their injuries fighting in wars to defend the liberty -- and international business interests -- the LiberTEA party prizes so much. They think they should be totally free to do whatever they want, pollute the air and the water with dioxins and everything else, cut down forests, drill and spill oil."

  Doug stares at her, surprised, but he lets her outburst run its course. Better to let her get it out.

  "That's freedom," she continues. "That's liberty. They can run their overloaded logging trucks on public roads and bridges, use so much public water from government-built dams that ordinary farmers with ordinary shallow wells run dry. When the bills come in for rebuilding and repairing not just the broken people but the roads and bridges and dams, well, everybody else -- ordinary everyday people who aren't rich -- bear the costs. In money and in blood."

  Doug just looks at her.

  She stops and shakes her head, then changes tack. "You know what? You might be right," she says. "None of that means they don't care about their fellow man. It just means they're tremendously self-centered. Really they're just acting like spoiled children. Which I guess makes sense, since, you know, the rich ones mostly are. Spoiled children, but grown up, physically. I'm guessing here, I'm no psychologist."

  He puts on a straight face, but his eyes twinkle with th
e effort of restraining laughter. The subject is deadly serious, but her outburst was still funny. After a few more seconds of silent eye contact, they both burst into laughter together.

  "Sorry, was that a bit much?" Kat says when she can speak again, eyes wet with laughter, barely able to get out the words without breaking up laughing again. "It was a bit of a digression," she adds.

  Doug is smiling and shaking his head, eyes still bright. "So you have some issues with the LiberTEA party, then?" he manages to say. "A little tension of some sort? I'm guessing here, I'm no psychologist."

  They both laugh again, and Kat blushes slightly. "The point was," she says sheepishly, eyes averted, "Liberty Kat Tea might be a good name. You know, it has liberty in it, and cats, and tea."

  Doug laughs lightly and shakes his head. "You had a hard winter," he concludes. "It's taken its toll on your disposition."

  "Very hard," she agrees, still a little embarrassed over her outburst, looking down at the grounds around them rather than meeting his eyes.

  "You've been very attached to Charlie for a while now," Doug points out analytically, "and you feel like the LiberTEA party has taken him away from you. All that pent up energy has to go somewhere. So you had a little outburst. No big deal. You're among friends here."

  She says nothing for a minute, eyes still lowered, looking at the concrete tiles of the courtyard around them, where she notices a stray or feral cat foraging around the legs of the tables, looking for scraps and handouts. "Speaking of cats," she says, "Look over there. There's one of the little guys now."

  "Speaking of cats," he answers, nodding, and looks in the same direction. He pulls out a small drawstring pouch from his backpack. From the pouch he takes a few pellets of something that looks like kibble or kitten chow. With his right hand he pitches a pellet gently in the direction of the young cat, so that it hits the concrete a few feet short of the target, then skips past it, like a stone skipping across water. The cat chases the pellet as if chasing a mouse.

  "You carry cat food with you?" she asks. "Now it's my turn to be surprised."

  "It's experimental," he says, tossing a second pellet after the cat chomps down the first. The second pellet meets the same quick fate. Then the cat sits, swishing its tail and licking its lips, looking in the direction of Kat and Doug. "We've been made," he jokes. Then he tosses another pellet with less force. It falls short of the cat's position by about a foot. The cat walks over to it slowly, sniffs at it, and devours it quickly. Again the cat sits and looks at him, licking its lips and swishing its tail.

  Doug sighs and looks at Kat. She seems to have gotten over her embarrassment.

  "Baldwin is developing some cat chow," he explains. "He says the only way to get rid of this thing for good is to cure the cats. People aren't the primary hosts, cats are. Cats are the key to the parasite's life cycle. Any cats will do. Pet cats sure, but stray cats, feral cats, wildcats work just as well. Bobcats, mountain lions. Circus lions. Right now it seems like pet cats are the main carriers, and that's a good thing, because we can reach them. Wildcats, with all of North America for their range, would be almost impossible." He pauses and tosses another pellet, a foot closer than the last one. Again the cat approaches. "I guess the flavor formula works," Doug observes. Katrina is still quiet. "Baldwin says we're lucky this wasn't an avian thing. You know, carried by birds. I mean, birds can get it, just like mice and people can, but cats are the key host that it has to have to reproduce. It lays its eggs while it's inside the cat's guts. Disgusting, if you ask me, like much of real life, but there it is. Our only chance to get rid of this thing totally is if we can cure all the cats." He can't think of anything more to tell her about it, so they sit together in silence for a while. The stray cat gradually approaches them, drawn on by the tossed pellets.

  "You did take your vaccine, right?" she asks him, feigning apprehension about their newfound feline friend, as if forgetting that the two of them took the vaccine together not long ago in this very quad.

  He exhales a short grunt of a laugh. "I was wondering the same about you," he says, glancing over to see her response. She smiles, bobs her head slightly, blinks her still moist eyes, and meets his gaze.

  "Am I wrong here, Doug?" she asks. "I mean, okay, that was an outburst, I kind of went off on you a little bit there. I'm sorry about that. Okay, maybe it was a lot, not a little. But I'm not wrong about the ideas." She looks at his eyes, as if waiting for an answer, but none comes immediately. "Oh well," she continues. "I'm sorry to have gone off on you like that. Really I am. I've been so stressed out, you know, with Charlie and his LiberTEA party cronies and all that."

  Doug nods. "I know," he says, looking at her steadily, searching for words that might ease her mood. "But it's almost over now," he says, trying to sound reassuring, to offer comfort and hope. "We're on the down side of the slope. We have to slog on these last few miles. But we're in it together. We have a good group. We can do this thing."

  Looking at him, she smiles, cocks her head, and sits up a little straighter, all in one motion, obviously encouraged. To Doug the whole world seems to brighten a little at that smile.

  "Thank you for being here for me, Doug," she says to him, eyes warm and open, clearly sincere.

  "Always," he answers, and lets the moment run its course in silence.

  "So I'm thinking we'll incorporate in St. Lucy," he says after a while. "We can call it The Island Kat Tea Company, Limited, and ..."

  Making a time-out gesture with her hands, Katrina shakes her head, her expression the smile of a woman who catches a man trying to fast-talk her into something. "Wait a minute," she says when he pauses. "Whoa. We haven't settled on the name yet. Island Kat Tea? I don't think so. The word Tea is good, and Kat is okay, but Island not so much. Surely we want something more patriotic, less exotic and foreign. Liberty Bell Tea. LiberTEA party Tea. The Boston LiberTEA Party Company. Something."

  "LiberTEA Belle Tea Company, spelled B-e-l-l-e?" he asks, not seriously. He just wants to see her reaction.

  "Who'll bell the cat?" she replies, shaking her head as if she isn't following his train of thought.

  He looks back at her the same way. "How about LiberTEA tea? Or Liber Tea? Doesn't really sound good," he replies to his own suggestions, shaking his head. "Liberty Tea might work. Liberty Bell Tea, Liberty Kat Tea, LiberTEA libations, no, groan, uh, Kat's LiberTEA food co.? Sounds boring, even to me. I'm liking Liberty Tea. It's simple, and we don't infringe on the party name."

  The stray cat reaches their table and brushes against Doug's leg, angling for attention. Doug pets its head and puts down a few more pellets, which the cat proceeds to devour.

  "What do we call the cat food?" she asks. "If it's a Tea company."

  "Good point. Kat's Gourmet Tea Cakes for Cats? Patty cake -- KatTea Cake? Delicious herbal health for gourmet cats with discriminating owners? It should have the word gourmet in it," he says.

  "Maybe the drinks should too. Kat's LiberTEA Gourmet Tea?" she suggests. "spelled -ty or -TEA, either way."

  "That's a good name for the tea," Doug agrees, nodding, looking at her, but also looking past her into a world of possibilities. "We can spell it liber-t-y or liber-t-e-a depending on what we can negotiate with the party. I'm not paying them for the use of the name, though, so I think we might have to stick with the -ty spelling."

  Kat shrugs. "You won't find me donating money to the party," she agrees. "Then again, if we spell it with lowercase letters it might not be a trademark infringement. If they even have a trademark. Should we?"

  "Yeah, we have to trademark our name, whatever it is. So it should be unique. I'll check with the lawyers to see if changing to lowercase would be enough. I agree I don't want to make any decision that mind end up forcing us to turn over any money to that party."

  After a while Doug continues, "Okay. So, we'll have a line of hot and cold beverages that eventu
ally we might market through places like Starbucks and Panera, but we start with Kat's Gourmet Liberty TEA, which can be served hot or iced, and during the trial marketing period it will be sold only at LiberTEA party functions. We tell them it's a trial marketing period. Maybe it's all the distribution we'll ever need, but we'll see. Let's say it'll be an apple ginger spicy thing with an earthy undertone characteristic of Kat's secret blend of herbs and spices. Or whatever formula, or recipe, you come up with on that." He stops for a minute and looks at her, to be sure she's still following. She looks into his eyes, but her expression tells him she still feels dubious about her ability to create the product.

  "Kat," Doug says to her, seeing her expression, "it seems to me that you apply the analytical mind of a scientist to cooking problems. I know you, Kat. You're bright and creative. You're bound to come up with something good that people will be lining up to drink."

  Again she shrugs. Probably she can work out a good drink recipe. Toss in apple and ginger and cinnamon, what can go wrong. They sit in silence for a minute again.

  "Doug?" Katrina asks at last.

  "Yeah?" he responds.

  "Not all of them are infected with the parasite. Some of them are just nuts on their own," she says sadly.

  He nods in agreement. "And some of them really are greedy self-absorbed villains who long for world domination. But most of them are just well-meaning but naive people, dupes taken in by the rhetoric and deceit of a handful at the top. The thing is, there have always been people like that. Both of those kinds of people. Usually there just aren't so many of them. At present their ranks have been greatly swelled by victims like Charlie under the influence of the parasite."

  They look at each other for a minute. Then Doug presents the bottom line, "We're going to do what we can to cure the ones who can be cured. That's all we can do."

  After a minute he adds a few more words of reassurance. "It really ought to be enough, Kat. There have always been people with radical fringe ideas. That's okay. It's even good for discourse and progress, as long as the fringe ideas stay on the fringe. Let's focus on the actual problem at hand: Curing the afflicted, controlling the parasite, driving back the night. We don't have to get rid of night entirely, we don't even have to be afraid of the existence of night. We just can't let night overwhelm everything and drive us back into the dark ages."

  She sighs and nods, then breathes deeply and relaxes.

  He takes a deep breath and relaxes too, looking at her, pretty sure she has settled down and is ready to work.

  He opens the laptop and brings up a document titled Articles of Incorporation. He fills in the company name, The Liberty Tea Company. She sees her name listed as one of the principal shareholders and directors. He turns the computer so the screen faces her, and she goes through the document, half reading, half skimming.

  "I'm one of your business partners?" she asks.

  "It's going to be all your formulas for the drinks," he answers. "Also, this way you can charge off business expenses. Food items and kitchen equipment for research and development. Distribution costs. Travel, including business trips to the island. In fact if your kitchen at the apartment isn't good enough for this research, we can look around, and have the company rent a storefront or an office, maybe a closed restaurant or deli, something like that, around here someplace. It would be our USA Headquarters, housing our local R&D lab. Oh, and I've taken the step of acquiring some startup capital, courtesy of my father. That's why he's also a shareholder. It's a reasonable division of responsibilities. Dad supplies the startup capital, I manage the business, and you're in charge of Research and Development for the products."

  Somehow this surprises her. After reflecting on it she realizes there's nothing in it that should really be surprising. She knows Doug. She knows this is who he is. She just isn't used to seeing him in this light. "What about Baldwin?" she asks.

  "He doesn't want to be directly involved," Doug says, exhaling a deep breath as he does so. The two look at each other. When neither speaks for a minute, Doug realizes it's up to him to pick up the ball. "The government of St. Lucy will supply us with herbs and spices, which will be sold as byproducts of Baldwin's greenhouse operation. They'll be billed as scraps and cuttings. We'll be acquiring them for food use, as spices and herbs, not for any medicinal purpose. When and if Baldwin happens to know of some medicinal purpose, that will then put these ingredients into the same logical, and hopefully legal, category as quinine. People drink tonic water as a beverage. The quinine in the tonic water also happens to be effective against malaria." At that he stops, makes a bulgy-cheek fish face for an instant, then looks at Kat.

  They both laugh together.

  "Tonic water," she says.

  He smiles, tilts his head to the left a bit, and shrugs. "Tonic water is the model," he affirms.

  They both laugh again.

  "Look at coffee," he points out. "You can't tell me caffeine isn't a biologically active agent. So, what do you say? Are you in?" he asks. Then in a half-humorous change of voice he adds, "People are dying," drawing out the last two syllables. They both know it's true, and it's serious, but they treat it like gallows humor.

 

  She tilts her head and shrugs in acceptance. "Okay, I guess," she says.

  He nods, and extends a hand. "It's customary to shake hands to agree business arrangements," he explains. "I'm afraid it's a part of my upbringing that I'm rather wedded to," he adds, slightly embarrassed. "It doesn't change our friendship at all. Shouldn't affect it. Just a business agreement. As a friend, you can trust that I'll always have your back, Kitten, business or not. Remember that."

  She looks at him oddly, again seeing a side of him than she hadn't seen prior to today. They shake hands.

  "There'll be some papers for you to sign. Maybe I can print them out someplace around here?" he asks.

  "You can be a cold customer," she observes.

  "Guilty as charged. It's part of the package. Now," he says, folding up the laptop, "Did you manage to get any samples from Nina? Anything I should take down to Baldwin and your uncle Zeph?"

  "We can talk about that," she says, "while we wander through campus looking for a concert. Oh, and the library has printers. Shall we go? Or do you want to try some of this Student Union Substandard Herbal Tea first?"

  "Walking sounds good," he agrees, and rises to join her. "Is there a concert today, really?" He asks.

  "Yeah," she answers, "I checked ahead of time. It starts around lunchtime. Gives us time to go to the library first."

  "You're very efficient," he points out.

  "Hey," she says, "I'm a businesswoman now. Hadn't you heard?"

  "A research scientist," he spins it for her. "You're in charge of R&D on a new product line at a startup company."

  At that they walk off together towards the library, and the uncertain future.