by J. J. Murray
Bianca shook her head. “Only give her, oh, about one … fifth of the pot. Just put it in a bowl.”
“It will be cold …” Vincenzo stopped. “Revenge is a dish …”
“Best served cold,” Bianca said.
Vincenzo filled a bowl, covered it with foil, and put it in Bianca’s hands. “Ciao.”
As Bianca backed out of the door, she said, “Save me some popcorn, okay?”
“I will.”
By the time Bianca returned to the cabin, Katharina’s dinner had turned lukewarm at best. She set it in front of Katharina and handed her the spoon. Katharina immediately dug in but stopped chewing immediately. “It’s cold.”
“That’s the way, um, people eat it around here,” Bianca said.
“Did Alessandro make this for me?” Katharina asked.
“Um, no. Sly did.”
“Sly is a better cook,” Katharina said, and she inhaled the rest anyway, scraping every little speck of cheese from the sides of the bowl. Bianca half expected her to lick the bowl, but Katharina didn’t.
“I know where to find food in the forest now,” she said, “so eventually I won’t need to eat anyone’s cooking. Fonzi showed me this afternoon. Most of it was close to the ground, and you know what? I didn’t know there was so much to eat in the woods …” She told Bianca about every bush, berry, and branch she could eat as Bianca stared out the little window by the door.
It had started to snow.
Huge snowflakes the size of silver dollars.
I hope it snows a foot or two tonight, Bianca thought. A hungry and pissed-off Katharina is a Katha-diva I can understand. She looked back at the woman babbling by the fire. I have no idea who this nice person is.
Chapter 21
In the morning, though there was only a scattering of snow on the ground, Katharina balked at going out.
“No,” Katharina said after one glimpse of the snow from her window, and she returned to her bed.
Bianca relaxed. Katha-diva is back. She offered Katharina long johns to wear under her leggings.
Katharina only turned over in her bed.
Bianca offered the long johns and a pair of wool socks.
Katharina covered her head with her comforter.
Bianca offered the long johns, a pair of wool socks, and a flannel undershirt.
Katharina thought about it….”No.”
“I don’t have much left, Miss Minola,” Bianca said. “I have another pair of wool socks.”
“Deal,” Katharina said.
“You can’t wear those old boots and two pairs of thick wool socks,” Bianca said.
“Sure I can.”
Katharina dressed—and put the wool socks on her hands.
“Why have you been holding out on me, Bianca?” Katharina asked.
Bianca looked for a place to hide. After a good night’s rest, Katha-diva had made a brutal return to the cabin. “Have I?”
“You knew we were coming to a place like this, didn’t you? Don’t try to deny it.”
Bianca nodded. “Yes, Miss Minola. I knew we were going someplace cold.”
“Yet you let me dress as I did anyway, and I’m sure some animal has run off with my shoes. Am I right?”
“Um, and maybe your sunglasses.” Bianca nodded. “They were pretty ruined, anyway.”
“That is beside the point.” Katharina put on the headset. “Why, Bianca? Why did you lie to me?”
Bianca looked up briefly. “I didn’t consider it lying at the time. I was afraid.” Not. “I mean, any time I make a suggestion or speak my mind or give you my opinion, you just shoot it down, anyway.”
“I do no such thing.”
I just spoke my mind, you wench, and you shot me down again! “It’s as if I’m only entitled to your opinions!”
Katharina ignored her. “Bianca, I distinctly remember asking you directly if you knew where we were going, and you said, ‘I don’t know, Miss Minola.’ You weren’t making a suggestion or giving your opinion with that answer. You lied to me, Bianca. I don’t like people lying to me.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Minola.” Bianca looked at her cold bare feet. “I’ll, um, I’ll just—”
“Haven’t I taught you anything?” Katharina interrupted.
Where is she going with this? How schizophrenic is this woman? “I don’t understand, Miss Minola.”
“Bianca, look at me. I didn’t get where I am without asserting myself, without speaking up for myself. I have been hoping that by watching and learning from me, you would learn how to be more assertive, to stand up for yourself.” She sighed. “It is obvious that you are a very slow learner.”
Oh … my … God!
“We will discuss this further when I return.” She started for the door.
“Aren’t I going with you?” Bianca asked.
“Bianca, darling, you cannot go out there dressed like that. You’ll catch pneumonia.”
Katharina slammed the door behind her.
Bianca stared at the fireplace. What the hell just happened?
“What the hell was that?” Fish asked.
Walt was at a loss for words. “I have no idea. It was like watching Wild Kingdom or something, where one animal reestablishes dominance over another. And just last night I was betting that Katharina had mellowed a little. And now this.”
“Women,” Fish said. “You can’t live with ’em, and you can’t take ’em to a Cubs game.”
“Huh?”
“Trust me,” Fish said. “I took this girl to Wrigley Field, and she hated baseball, just hated it. ‘It’s too boring, it’s too slow, there’s not enough excitement.’ That night was like watching Wild Kingdom, too.”
Walt looked up at the big screen. “At least her fire skills are improving. Look.”
Katharina already had a fire blazing in the fire pit.
Fish zoomed in. “Hear that crackling? She’s using some really dry wood. Where’d she get that?”
Pietro closed his eyes and sighed. What is that woman doing? He had collected two dozen long, sturdy, dry branches during the night for Katharina to use to start her shelter, and here she was cracking them into three and four pieces and burning them. She’s setting fire to her “house” before she even builds it!
After warming for several minutes, Katharina slinked off into the forest to gather food, putting most of the berries she found in the pocket of her dress. On returning to the fire, she had a feast, even loosening her boots for a while, kicking back, and taking a little nap.
“Cut!” Vincenzo cried. “Brilliant! Alessandro, bring coffee!”
Pietro brought Katharina a Styrofoam cup full of high-test coffee, Vincenzo’s idea of a reward for all of Katharina’s hard work so far.
Katharina popped the top and sniffed the steam. “Real coffee?”
Pietro nodded. “Four sugars.”
Katharina sipped it greedily by the fire. “Now this is coffee.”
Pietro sat across from her and stared at her through the fire. “Good fire.”
“I don’t need your opinion, Fonzi,” Katharina said.
Pietro tossed a twig into the blaze. “Was wood for cabina.”
Katharina shook her head. “No, I think we have enough wood in our cabin.”
Pietro pointed to the remaining dry branches. “Wood for cabina. Um, shelter.” He outlined the shelter in the air around him. “Wood for walls, not for fire.”
“Oh?” Katharina said. Shit! she thought. He could have told me, couldn’t he? “I’m sure I’ll manage. There’s a lot of wood in these woods.” Shit! There’s wood for fire and wood for shelter and never the twain shall they meet. How the hell am I supposed to know that?
Pietro withdrew a small block of peat from his coat pocket. He had collected it from the nearby bog while Katharina had frolicked in the woods. “Is peat. Burns slow.”
Katharina leaned around the fire to look. “It looks like dried mule shit.”
Pietro nodded. “Too wet to burn now.
Must be dry. Puts off heat, smoke. Burn long time.”
“Burn long time,” Katharina said in a deep voice. “Where do I get this magic heat source, Fonzi?”
“Bog,” he said, pointing across the creek. “We take Curtis.”
Katharina stood and wiped some dirt from the back of her dress. “I don’t need your help or his. Just point me in the right direction.”
He pointed to the knife lying on the ground. “Bring knife.”
“Peat?” Fish asked. “What the hell is peat?”
Walt had a description from the Internet on the screen. “I’ll skip how nature makes it. Just know it’s dead, compacted foliage a few steps from becoming coal. Canada is one of the world’s leading producers of peat, and in parts of Ireland that’s all they have to make electricity. However, it has to be dry to work.”
“More snow in the forecast tonight,” Fish said. “For peat’s sake!”
Walt moaned.
“I thought it was a good pun,” Fish said.
“Just don’t re-peat it,” Walt said.
“Your pun was worse,” Fish said.
Walt smiled. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
Katharina cut a thick welcome mat-sized piece of peat from the bog using her knife, even though Pietro had recommended smaller blocks the size of her hand. When she found that peat held together much like a rug, she started dragging it back to the clearing, saying, “Bigger is better.”
By the time she got her rug of peat to the clearing, however, it had disintegrated into a piece of turf only two fingers thick.
She tried to spark it, but it would not light, much less smoke.
“Must be dry,” Pietro said.
Katharina waved her knife in the air. “Now how am I supposed to do that?”
Pietro shrugged. “Make oven.”
“Oh, sure,” Katharina said. “I’ll just whip me up a stove using my knife and a few of these magic berries.”
Pietro sighed. “Big, flat rocks. Put near fire. Floor. Walls. Roof.” He framed it with his hands. “Oven.”
“Oh. Like a brick oven.”
Pietro nodded.
“So one day I can make pizza for you, Fonzi?”
This woman, this woman …” Can cook bread, fish, meat.”
“Oh.” Great! I feel like a moron, but if I just had a script that spelled this shit out, I wouldn’t be sitting here getting schooled by a mule, um, leader. “Do the rocks have to be dry, too?”
Strangling her would be too nice of a way to kill her, Pietro thought. “Just flat. Same size. Make box or rectangle.”
Katharina looked at the piece of peat she had cut. “About the size of this?”
Pietro nodded. “Dry better if smaller.”
“All right, Fonzi,” Katharina said. “You’re the expert on shit that smells like shit.”
Katharina spent the rest of the morning wrestling large, flat rocks into position near her fire pit, and by the time she was through, she had a makeshift oven with two flat rocks on top, one of which she could move with ease. She nodded and smiled at her handiwork. “Ta-da!”
“Cut!” Vincenzo yelled. “You would not say ‘ta-da.’”
Katharina grabbed her knife. “I know that,” she said. “I was just feeling the moment. Lighten up.” She started cutting up the peat into smaller squares, stacking them inside the oven. “Don’t I have to keep this fire going all night?”
Pietro nodded. “But I will do it.”
“Good idea, Miss Katharina,” Vincenzo said. “And in the morning, you will have peat to burn. Then you can begin your shelter.”
Katharina smiled a dreamy smile at Vincenzo. Time to pay back Alessandro for not telling me shit. “Sly, there’s a lot of room left in my oven. Maybe your cousin could, oh, cut me some more peat, you know, fill it up for me.”
Pietro’s eyes narrowed to little dots. Don’t give in, Vincenzo. If you give in a little now, she’ll—
“Ah, but Miss Katharina, won’t you feel a greater sense of exhilaration knowing that you did it all by yourself?”
And that’s why he’s the CEO, Pietro thought, and I’m just the woodsman.
Katharina held up her hands, turning them so Vincenzo could see her nails. “Do you see what this shit is doing to my nails, Sly? Do you know how much this shit smells?” She waved her fingers under his nose. “I have done enough shit today, okay? Fonzi likes playing in shit, so let him do it. He’ll be out here all night keeping the fire going anyway, right? This will break up some of his monotony.”
Vincenzo caught the look in his brother’s eye and understood it perfectly. Katharina was slowly but surely turning diva, and he couldn’t let that happen. But he knew a concession here could pay dividends later. “You have worked extremely hard today, Miss Katharina. It is the least we can do for you.”
Katharina smiled at Pietro, batting her eyes. “Who knows, Fonzi? Maybe one day I won’t be able to tell you from your mulo. Ciao, bella.”
After Katharina sashayed and danced away up the hill to the bridge, Pietro confronted Vincenzo. “This is only the third day, Vincenzo. Yes, she worked her tail off for two days, but this … this is dangerous. We can’t let her get her way at any time.”
“I know, Pietro, I know,” Vincenzo said. “But it’s partially your fault.”
“My fault? How is it my fault?”
“You’re helping her too much,” Vincenzo said. “You’re not allowing her to solve her character’s problems by herself. We want her to fail. We want her to make mistakes. That’s the beauty of this picture, even the inherent humor of it. We’re trying to make her an everywoman, and you’re turning her into a superwoman. The audience will have trouble believing in her if she never makes a mistake.”
Pietro sat on the log. “I don’t mean to be doing that. I just hate to hear all her cursing and whining.”
Vincenzo sat. “Is that all?” He patted Pietro on the leg. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
Vincenzo sighed. “You’re smitten with her.”
“I am not! That … person impersonating a person is not the person for me.”
“Wow,” Fish said. “Pietro is someone who mangles the English language almost as much as you do, Walt.”
“Pietro likes her,” Walt said. “She’s hard not to like. She has a dream body, a sharp mind, and a killer tongue. What man wouldn’t want to try to tame her?”
“Me,” Fish said. “I know my limitations.”
Walt stared at the confusion on Pietro’s face. “Let’s just hope Pietro doesn’t know any of his limitations.”
Vincenzo stood. “Can you try not to help her as much?”
“I’ll try,” Pietro said. “But what will I be doing all night thanks to you?”
“It’s only one night,” Vincenzo said. “At least you’ll be warm.”
Pietro stood. “Bring me some coffee before you go to bed, okay?”
“I will.” He smiled. “Cheer up. You might actually get a compliment from her before all this is said and done.”
“The only thing I want to hear coming out of that woman’s mouth is the word ‘good-bye.’”
Bianca jumped from the pot she was stirring when Katharina blew into the cabin and slammed the door behind her.
“What is it and who made it?” she demanded.
“It’s oatmeal with cinnamon, and I made it, Miss Minola,” Bianca said. “It’s instant. Just add water.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Pietro brought it by just after you left. He gave us enough so we can have breakfast, too.”
Katharina sat, removing the headset. “I am going to cure that man from trying to help me.” She rolled her shoulders. “My shoulders are killing me.”
Bianca grimaced for the camera. “You want me to rub them, Miss Minola?”
“No rush,” Katharina said. “You can massage me while I’m eating.”
Bianca set a bowl in front of Katharina. “There�
��s more if you want it.”
“Let’s see. Macaroni ‘n’ cheese yesterday, oatmeal today. Are you trying to relive your childhood?” Katharina rolled her shoulders and grunted.
I do not want to touch this woman, Bianca thought. I don’t want her evil sticking to me. She reached out her hands and squeezed Katharina’s shoulders gently.
“Put some muscle into it, woman,” Katharina said. “I can take it.”
“Don’t do it, Bianca,” Fish said. “She can’t take it. She just wants another reason to scold you.”
“She can’t hear you, Fish,” Walt said.
“It’s a habit,” Fish said. “I do the same thing when I’m watching my soaps.”
Bianca bore down and ground the heels of her hands into Katharina’s shoulders, and Katharina didn’t cry out in pain. “Um, weren’t macaroni ‘n’ cheese and oatmeal part of your childhood, Miss Minola?”
“I was a kid once, Bianca,” Katharina said as she began eating, each spoonful bigger than the last.
“What was your childhood like, Miss Minola?”
“Some things I do not talk about. That’s one of them.” Katharina scraped the bowl and took one last bite. “Serve me some more.”
Bianca plopped another blob into Katharina’s bowl. “How is it?”
“Lumpy and thick as paste. Add more water next time, and definitely add some sugar.”
“Oh, but it’s better for you this way, Miss Minola.”
“I don’t need you to tell me what I need, Bianca,” Katharina said, finally slowing down and actually chewing.
Bianca took a chance. “But you said earlier that I should have told you what to wear. Didn’t you need me to tell you then?”
“I need you to be honest with me.”
And to know my place, right? “Yes, Miss Minola.”
Katharina finished her second bowl. “Bianca, you had better learn how to cook.”
“I can cook.”
“No, you can’t. This is from a mix, right?”
Bianca nodded.
“You can’t possibly get and keep a man by ‘cooking’ that way. A man needs more than just what comes out of a box. He needs to know that you put some time and effort into the meal, that you cared enough to go through the trouble of making it perfect.”