Let Them Eat Tea
Page 30
Katrina smiles at her visitor and gives a thumbs up gesture.
The well-dressed man smiles back condescendingly. With his wife on his left arm and the drink in his right hand, he can't very well return the thumbs up. Instead he turns back to his wife and guides her away from the table, back into the crowd. As she leaves she looks back at Katrina, smiling broadly, and nods approval.
So, Katrina thinks, they're drinking the tea. She sighs, exhaling heavily. That's good, anyway. They're drinking the tea.
Charlie comes up and pours two glasses of tea and carries them off. She sees him meet Marie Mallon about twenty yards away. Marie isn't exactly alone, but she isn't with anyone specific either. Charlie hands her one of the glasses, which she accepts. Katrina watches as they begin drinking the tea and then walk off together. Katrina is surprised to note that she feels nothing about it beyond scientific detachment. She shakes her head, shrugs, and goes back to pouring the popular tea.
Outside on the veranda, Charlie and Marie find garden chairs and sit at an angle to each other in the half light.
"This tea tastes exactly like apple pie," Marie says. "Just exactly; and the best homemade apple pie, at that. It looks sort of like pink champagne or cherry soda, but when you drink it, it's exactly like drinking liquid apple pie." So saying, she takes another sip. "Wow," she continues. "This sure beats my homemade bread."
"Nonsense," Charlie reassures her. "People loved your homemade bread. In fact you two could set up an event together, a tea and toast kind of thing. You could make little buns or croissants or individual bread loaves of some kind. Make it an afternoon tea party for the LiberTEA party. Sort of like that dinner at the farm, but toned down a little. Less work. A smaller and more intimate gathering. Hot tea and hot bread. It'd be perfect for a fund raiser."
"Is this tea still as good as this when it's hot?" she asks him, incredulous, looking at his eyes for the answer.
"Like hot apple pie," he answers, staring back at her evenly and smiling.
"Wow," she says again, and takes another drink of the tea. After half a minute of silence she comes back to Charlie's idea. "It would be like what they call High Tea," she decides. "We could do that. I could make little cinnamon buns and things too, not just plain bread. And those nice farm ladies could donate fresh butter. Weren't they wonderful, those women on the farm?" she asks Charlie's opinion. The success of several of his ideas has led her to place a lot of faith in his judgment.
"They were nice," he says, "and they still are. We'll ask them to send, or bring, fresh butter. It's a great idea."
Marie nods, happy when the genius Charlie approves of one of her ideas. She feels validated.
Back in the ballroom, Katrina continues to dispense the life-saving liquid to all comers, smiling so frequently that her face begins to feel strained from the exercise of it.
Before she has gone halfway through the forty gallons of beverage she brought to the event, Doug appears in the room, looking well dressed himself and totally at ease with the situation. She is surprised to see him, and very happy. The scientist in her is then surprised at her reaction. She laughs. "What are you doing here?" she tries to ask, mouthing the words slowly because she can't be heard.
Doug smiles too, and points to an empty tea jug, then makes a questioning gesture and expression. He wants to know if she wants him to bring in more tea.
She considers it and shrugs, gesturing with both hands held out to the side, palms up, almost at shoulder height.
Doug laughs and shrugs too. After a minute he takes out a piece of paper and writes, "Next time we hire someone to pass out the tea."
She nods and laughs, and he balls up the piece of paper and puts it in his jacket pocket. He looks around. Not seeing Charlie, he decides there's nothing to stop him from joining Katrina in dispensing the spiced herbal tea. Pouring and serving up tall glasses of Katrina's carefully engineered concoction, he smiles and nods at the guests like a natural born politician. Katrina's spirits are greatly buoyed by his arrival, but since he hadn't seen her alone, he can't know that. They carry on working and laughing together, pouring tea, floating in a sea of raucous music, patriotic colors, and seemingly random people.
Ten gallons of tea later, the night is still going strong. Doug sees that he'll have to leave Katrina's company long enough to go pick up more tea from their local headquarters, which at present is also their world headquarters: a converted restaurant they've leased, not terribly far from the hotel.
"I won't be gone long," he writes on a piece of paper. "Have to pick up more tea."
She nods and smiles at him. It's a different smile than she gives the others. She meets his eyes with hers, and in her eyes he sees deep human warmth tinged with both sadness and happiness, a nuanced mix.
Reluctantly he leaves to go pick up the resupply of the drink.
Katrina is left alone in the crowd with her feelings and her thoughts. The scientist in her observes, as if watching another person, that seeing Doug walk away leaves her with a feeling of emptiness. She recognizes it as the same empty feeling she felt when Charlie first started to withdraw into his illness, leaving her on the outside, leaving her alone. She shakes her head slightly, blinks deliberately, and takes a deep breath. So that's the feeling of being left alone. That's the feeling loneliness, as contrasted with solitude. She reflects on it like a scientific observation.
New patrons arrive rapidly at the table, looking for the fantastic tea. Smiling a broad artificial smile, she turns back to her work, pouring the tea with grace. "Thirsty?" she asks, as if she could be heard. "Here, try some of this. That should make you feel better."