by Shirley Jump
Meredith was being measured for a casket.
Momma wrapped the tape around Meredith's hips, then bit her lip. "Hmmm. I think we'll need to take in the udders a little."
Oh no. Momma wasn't measuring her for a casket. Her intentions were much worse.
"I am not going home to be Miss Holstein. Not right now."
"I knew you'd resist," her mother said. "You always were my defiant child. Must have been all those jalapeno poppers I ate when I was pregnant with you. Got my insides all in a twist and twisted up your brain cells, too."
Momma's idea of practicing medicine meant blending folklore with suspicions and astrological predictions. Her theories rarely made sense to anyone but herself. Nevertheless, Momma was convinced that too much rain made people bloated and walking backwards under a ladder brought instant death.
"Eating spicy food during your pregnancy didn't make me stubborn."
"Oh yeah? Then why are Vernon and Ray Jr. so sweet? Because I craved M&Ms with them." Momma nodded, as if that settled the issue. She ran the length of white and black tape around her daughter's head, managing to resist Meredith's attempts to bat it off. "At least the top will fit."
"I told you, I can't go home. Rebecca needs me."
"That's why I had J.C. overnight it to Aunt Gloria's." The bell over the door jingled again and Caleb entered, holding a long black-and-white spotted plastic bag. "You read my mind, dear. Thank you."
"I thought Meredith might come around."
"Come around to what?" But the dread in Meredith's stomach gave her the answer she needed.
Caleb unzipped the bag. It fell to the floor, leaving him holding a hanger—and the empty shell of a cow. "To being Miss Holstein." He gave her half a grin, since Caleb never had managed to work himself up to a full smile. "Here in Boston."
Meredith backed up several steps, hands up, warding off the udders, the hooves and the long white snout. "No. No. No way."
"Honey, you competed and you won. You're my little cow girl," Momma said, her voice bursting with pride. "I talked to J.C. and he said if you couldn't be there to ride on Big Green, well, we were to get a picture of you and he'd blow it up to one of those life-size cutouts and affix it right on Big Green's radiator." Momma moved closer, making her case with a bright, Chapstick-adorned smile. "The Lincoln County Dairy Farmers Association got together and thought a little East Coast publicity wouldn't be such a bad thing." She waved out the door, indicating the city behind them. "These people don't drink enough milk. It's why they have such sour personalities."
Meredith shook her head. "What on earth does a lack of milk have to do with that?"
"Too little lactose," Momma said, laying a hand on her arm. "Doc Michaels thinks it can drive people mad. He says it isn't an apple a day you need, it's a quart a day. So the Lincoln County Dairy Farmers thought you could do them a favor and give the milk business a little boost while you're here."
"And just how am I supposed to do that?"
Her mother pressed the cow costume into her arms. "Why, dress up as Miss Holstein and get behind the counter here. People will stop on by, just to see the cow baking cookies and cakes."
Meredith knew if she put one foot into those hooves, she'd lose everything she had worked so hard for since arriving in Massachusetts. There was no way she could do this. Somehow, she had to get rid of Momma, Caleb, Vernon and Ray Jr.
Before they ruined her life forever.
"I can see the objection already in your mind," Momma said. "Damned jalapenos. I told your father I should have dipped 'em in ice cream first, but he said you would be a sweet baby no matter what."
Meredith knew the routine. Here came the guilt trip.
It wouldn't work, though. Not this time. They weren't going to suck her back in, no way.
"You simply have to do this, Meredith. The dairy farmers need you."
Meredith pushed the cow costume back at her mother, the udders flopping between them like little pink legs. "Let Annie Wilson be Miss Holstein. She did a great job last year."
"She can't, dear. She's in the family way," Momma said, lowering her voice to a whisper, just in case there were any of those little teapots around. "Her daddy marched her and Bobby Reynolds down to the courthouse and had them married, under the eyes of God and his best Remington."
Apparently that hernia screening hadn't hurt Bobby Reynolds's functionality.
Her mother looked away, but not before Meredith saw a flicker of worry in her green eyes. Stalwart Martha Shordon rarely betrayed any emotions, even when the family dog had been killed in a tragic La-Z-Boy accident.
But now, her eyes were misty and the cow costume shook in her hands, trembling like a new oak in a fall storm. "The milk business is suffering. Our farm is hurting, too, and whatever you could do..." Her mother's voice trailed off.
The Miss Holstein suit filled the strained space between them.
"But I thought Dad's farm was doing all right when I left," Meredith said.
Momma shrugged. "You know he doesn't like to worry us girls."
"How bad is it?"
"Do you think I'd come all the way out here and risk my life"—Momma pulled the surgical mask back over her mouth—"to bring you the Miss Holstein costume if it wasn't important?"
No, she wouldn't have, that Meredith knew. Martha had never left the town of Heavendale and she hadn't broken out in that much emotion since Ray Jr. graduated with honors in woodshop.
Not to mention, for her father to say anything at all about the farm's finances to her mother meant they had to be in trouble. Ray Shordon, Sr. worked hard, talked little and kept as much inside as he could. He took out his worries on a stubborn fence post or a stack of hay that needed baling. Not on his family.
That left Meredith in the exact same quandary where she'd been a week ago, only now the stakes were higher: live for herself...
Or help the people who loved her.
She stepped forward and took the bovine print out of Momma's hands. "What exactly does J.C. want me to do?"
The pile of crumpled paper beside the small desk in Travis and Kenny's living room nearly reached Travis's knee by the time he was pleased with the results. He sat back in the folding chair, rubbed at the crick in his neck, and studied the ad layout he'd created.
It could work. No. It would work.
And would work a hell of a lot better than Larry's crazy plan.
He'd worked all weekend—and avoided calling Meredith. He'd stayed home while Kenny hit the bars. Travis had thought it would be the best way to get Meredith out of his system.
He'd been wrong.
Every time he turned around, his brain resurrected a memory of her being in his apartment on Thursday. A hundred times, he'd reached for the phone, then put it back every time. Calling her would put actions behind his words, leaving him to either sleep with her without regard for the consequences or ...
Take everything to the next level and turn the words "making love" into a reality. That thought pretty much terrified Travis and left him with nightmares about wedding bells that rang "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead."
So he'd worked, staying up all of Sunday night, hammering out one ad concept after another.
Kenny wandered into the room, barefoot and sleep-rumpled, the morning's paper under his arm, the pages already out of order, Travis knew.
Before he even hit the toilet in the morning, Kenny grabbed the paper from the front stoop of the building. He said it was the one time of day when he could do some heavy thinking and after that, it was all downhill for his brain.
Kenny stifled a yawn with his fist. "Man, what the hell are you doing?"
"Working. Well, I was. But now I'm done." Travis held up a sheet with crude thumbnail sketches. The graphic designers would come up with something prettier, he was sure, but at least the concept was down on paper.
"You, working? All night?"
Travis glanced at the windows and saw, indeed, the first rays of sun beginning to stream through
the second-floor apartment windows. "Yeah, I guess so."
"For a guy who says he doesn't want to get involved, I'd say you're involved up to your neck." Kenny drew a finger across his throat and made a cutting sound.
"This isn't about Meredith."
Kenny snorted. "Since when have you ever stayed up all night to work on any of the ad campaigns for Belly-Licious?"
"Never. But—"
"Exactly. Usually we bang them out after work on a cocktail napkin. Pretty much the same effort we gave to the Algebra Two problems we scribbled out in homeroom between the Pledge of Allegiance and waiting for Jeanine Cooper to raise her hand so we could see her belly button."
What Kenny said was true. Until now, neither one of them had poured much sweat into anything they'd done at Belly-Licious. Well, that wasn't exactly right They had worked hard on a few campaigns— until it became obvious that Larry would take all the credit, all the perks, and then run with his own stupid ideas at the last minute, tanking the company's latest beverage before it even had a chance to launch.
Still, the president kept Larry on, because Larry was, after all, family and at Belly-Licious, blood was apparently thicker than corporate profits.
Travis bent down and started tossing the crumpled ideas into the circular trash can beside his desk. “I’m tired of Larry's stupid ideas making all of us look bad."
"You mean you don't want Meredith plastered all over the Globe and the Herald drinking that fake milk crap as our company 'spokesmodel'?"
"That too." He didn't want anyone using Meredith. Not Larry, not the company. And especially not himself.
"Hate to tell you this, bud, but you're too late." Kenny withdrew the morning's Globe from beneath his arm and tossed it to Travis. "Check out page thirty."
Travis unfolded the paper and flipped through the pages. There, above the fold in a nice bold headline was the announcement of the launch of Belly-Licious's new synthetic milk product.
And right below that, a photo of Meredith, enjoying a glass. Oh, shit.
By the time Travis got to the caption, he was considering committing murder one.
"Meredith Shordon, this year's Miss Holstein for the Lincoln County Dairy Farmers Association,'' he read aloud, the anger boiling up in him with each word, "tasted a glass of No-Moo Milk at Belly-Licious Beverage Headquarters and pronounced it a 'delicious' substitute for the real thing."
Kenny took a seat on the edge of the desk. "Did you know she was a cow princess?"
"No. How the hell did Larry know?" Something low and dark began to rumble in Travis's gut. All those hours he'd worked on an idea—an idea he knew was good—and here was Larry, plummeting to new levels as a snake ... and all before breakfast.
"Google, I'm sure." Kenny shrugged. "The man is a sleaze. When he's not wasting his day losing at solitaire, he Googles like he's Blackmail Blackbeard."
Travis had stopped listening to Kenny. He stared at Meredith's unauthorized image but saw only red. He smacked the paper and jerked to his feet. "I can't believe he did this to her!"
"Whoa, cowboy. You sound pissed. And surprised. You know Larry. He does this shit all the time."
"That lousy son of a bitch. I swear, when I get into work today, I'm going to slam him into the wall and knock his goddammed hair off. Then I'll—"
"Hey!" Kenny jumped up, grabbed Travis's shoulder and gave it a shake. "Will you listen to yourself? This is our boss you're talking about. The guy who signs our paychecks, remember? Yours. Mine. Brad's."
The mention of his brother's name drew Travis back to reality. Travis couldn't afford to be killing Larry, not until Brad was secure with a new job. Hadn't Brad called him late last night to tell him he and Jenny had just been preapproved on that mortgage?
"There has to be a way around this," Travis said, pacing now, trying to burn off the anger before he did something he'd regret. "A retraction. Or something."
"You could buy up every copy of the Globe in the country."
"There's an idea."
"Or not, Rockefeller."
Travis circled the room, the paper in his hands, crumpling against his tightened fists. The urge to kill Larry hadn't dissipated.
"You really like her, don't you?" Kenny said.
"Who?" Travis kept walking, wondering if there was a way to plan the perfect murder.
"Miss Holstein."
He looked down at the picture in his hands. Meredith's pert pretty little mouth, poised to take a sip of the white beverage.
Hell, yes. He liked her. A lot. More than he'd liked anyone in a long, long time.
He stopped pacing and sunk into the black leather La-Z-Boy. "Yeah, I do."
Kenny shook his head and dropped onto the sofa. "All those years, wasted."
"What do you mean?"
"I worked so hard on making you into the perfect bachelor. Now you're going Commitment on me." Kenny shrugged. "I guess that's it. Our days of Coors, chicks and carousing are over."
"Hey, I'm not marrying anyone."
"Not yet, you aren't. It's just a matter of time, my friend. Just a matter of time." Kenny shook his head, then his moment of grief passed and he grinned. "Hey, but then the Apartment of Love is all mine."
Travis laughed. "That's what this is all about? Don't tell me you're in on this with Larry." He gestured toward the newspaper.
"Nah. I'd never cooperate with Hair Bear on anything. It's against my principles."
"I thought you didn't have any."
"Only ones that screw Larry." Kenny rose and padded across the floor to the kitchen and began making coffee. Travis followed, taking their only two mugs—still dirty from the morning before—and washing them out in the sink.
"Now, if I'm ever going to get my solo love pad," Kenny continued, "and you're ever going to get Larry back without ending up in Cedar Junction, then you need one thing."
"What's that?"
"A plan." Kenny poured the water into the brewer and turned the pot on, then leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. "Let's come up with one that brings about Larry's destruction and gets you that happy ending you're so damned determined to avoid."
Travis scowled at the mention of a happy ending. All he wanted was revenge right now, not a ring and a preacher. "Sounds to me like you end up winning in the end, not me. You, in your Apartment of Love."
Kenny stood and draped an arm over Travis's shoulders. "Hey, isn't that what friendship's all about?"
Meredith's How-to-Make-a-Fool-of-Yourself Cream of Shrimp Soup
3 tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped
1 potato, diced
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup water
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Dash of ground nutmeg
Dash of Tabasco
Salt and pepper
2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
Hiding out in the kitchen isn't cowardly. It's smart. You just made a total fool out of yourself, and the only way to fix it is to avoid everything and everyone.
Start by melting the butter and adding the onion and potato. Sauté for two or three minutes, then sprinkle with the flour. Add the wine, water, cream, Worcestershire, spices and all but a couple of the shrimp.
Cover the pot (wishing you could so easily be hidden) and simmer for twenty minutes. When it's done, puree in small batches in a food processor. Watch everything get sucked into a smooth, easy, pretty pink soup and dream of all your problems going into the same blender.
Return it to the pan, reheat and add more seasonings if necessary. Decorate with the reserved shrimp. Eat behind closed curtains and drawn blinds.
Don't answer the phone, the door or any of your mother's questions.
Chapter Twenty
Late Monday morning, Meredith stood in the middle of Government Center, adjusting her udders and trying not to feel like a complete fool. Hundreds of people watched her fro
m the office buildings, while others had come out onto the plaza to gawk. A few were even taking pictures.
Apparently a woman in full cow regalia was not a usual sight in downtown Boston. Perhaps she should have brought Bongo Boy in to provide background music. Then there really would have been something worth seeing.
And heck, she might have even gotten a few tips out of it, too.
"A little to the left, Meredith, so I can get your right hoof in the picture," said the photographer from Dairy Farmers Monthly.
She obliged, shifting her body. The faux fur costume weighed at least thirty pounds and was starting to itch. Despite the cool fall weather, she was beginning to sweat, too. They'd already been at it for over an hour and had run through two and a half rolls of film. She prayed the photo shoot would end soon. How many shots did they need of her anyway?
"Okay, now keep those udders still. And smile. Remember, you're the Miss Holstein." The flash flared, the camera snapped, and then they repeated the whole thing over again, only this time with her leaning against a small brick pillar: Miss Holstein in Repose.
"Meredith, this time I want you to—" His words were cut off by a sudden flurry of activity coming from the right of them. A half dozen people, some with cameras, a few with notepads, rushed toward her, knocking the photographer from Dairy Farmers Monthly to the side.
Geez, these office people are getting out of hand. What do they want now? A hoof-print-graph?
A fuzzy black microphone was thrust into her face, bumping her chin. "Ms. Shordon, is it true you prefer fake milk over the real thing?" A long-legged blonde shouted. "Well, is it?"
"What? I—" Meredith shook her head. What were they talking about?
A slender man with glasses skidded to a stop beside her, along with a second man who was snapping a continuous stream of pictures. "Meredith! Aren't you afraid of what this will do to the dairy business in your home state?"
"Dairy business?" She spun around, looking for answers from the crushing crowd.
But no one explained; they just kept firing the questions at her like human M-60s.
