Hot Dish

by Brockway, Connie

  Cash shook his head. “How can you live somewhere you haven’t ever seen?”

  “Because I pay a very reputable firm to make sure that it meets a very strict set of criteria—that’s how.”

  “But what about the ‘feel’ of a place?” Cash protested. “The ambience. What if it isn’t right? Not homey?”

  Huh. “Home,” Steve realized, was a word he’d never heard Jenn use. “Place,” “apartment,” “house,” but never “home.”

  “It’s a place to sleep and do some work. If I spend as much time in my new place as I have in the old, it won’t amount to that much. Don’t look so worried. People hire people to find them places all the time.” She looked at Steve for support. “I bet you had a residence finder, didn’t you, Steve?”

  “I sleep in my studio,” he said. “Never really saw the point in having a bunch of rooms I’d never use anyway.”

  “See?” Jenn said triumphantly. And why was she triumphant? Because he knew as little about “homes” as she did? What a pair they made.

  “Are you really sure this is what you want?” Nina asked suddenly.

  “What?” Jenn asked.

  “This new job of yours. It sounds like a lot of pressure.”

  “It will be,” Jenn conceded easily. “But who cares? I’ll be one of the most widely viewed lifestyle authorities on television.”

  “That’s what you are, a ‘lifestyle authority?”’ Nina asked softly.

  Whatever the target of Nina’s subtext, she’d obviously scored a direct hit because a red stain spread up Jenn’s throat. “It’s what the public seems to think I am,” she said stiffly. “It’s what they pay me for.”

  “You’re not doing something just to say you made it to the top of the heap, are you?” Cash asked. “You have choices, you know. It’s important to take the time to figure out not only what you’re doing but why you’re doing it.”

  There wasn’t any anger in Jenn’s expression anymore; the stiffness had dissolved. She looked frustrated, sad, a little embarrassed. Her father wore the same expression. Steve wondered if either of them realized that their disapproval and disappointment were mirror images of the other’s.

  “Your father is proud of you, dear,” Nina, playing peacekeeper, was saying. “He’s just concerned about some of the things he hears about this Dwight Davies.”

  “He’s a prick,” Steve said. The Hallesbys traded knowing glances. So they thought so, too. “He is,” he said gravely. Then, seeing the dagger strike in Jenn’s glance, he added, “But sometimes you have to work for pricks.”

  Cash mulled this over for a second. “Jenny had such—”

  “Oops! Look at the time!” Jenn cut off whatever he’d been about to say, making a show of sticking her wrist watch over the table. “And it was snowing earlier. If I want to make it to Storybook Land by seven, I’d better get going.”

  Steve stood up, too. “Let’s go.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Jenn said. “It’s dark out and I won’t be gone long. You’ll only be bored.”

  “I think I should.” There was no way he was leaving the procurement of his butter head to a woman who clearly didn’t care whether she came back with it or not. “These men are kidnappers. There’s no telling what they’re capable of. I won’t feel right sitting back here while you’re out there alone, facing God knows what sort of danger.”

  “Steve,” Jenn said, “they stole a butter head. It was hardly a violent crime.”

  “Yeah,” he allowed, thinking quickly, “but still.”

  “Still nothing,” Jenn said. “I appreciate the sentiment but these guys are clowns, not hardened criminals. Fer chrissakes, I talked them down to one hundred dollars! If you’d have let me, I’d have probably gotten them to return the thing gratis. So just stay here and keep Bruno company and I’ll be back in a jiff.”

  She was right. Steve had the uneasy feeling that Jenn was often right. But he’d already come up with another excuse to accompany her. “I have to go with you because what if they leave it on the ground? Do you think you’ll be able to manhandle a hundred-pound block of butter into the bed of a pickup by yourself?”

  He had her. He could see by the way her eyes went sort of squinty and assessing. “And you could?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Yeah.”

  “He did bring Bruno down three flights of stairs in a fireman’s carry,” Cash affirmed. And would need about a bottle of Motrin to get out of bed tomorrow morning, but Steve wasn’t about to admit that now.

  “Okay,” she said. “You can come along if you want to, but I wasn’t going to drop the butter head off at the city dump, in case that’s what you were worried about.”

  Only one day, and already she knew him better than most of the people in his life.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  6:15 p.m.

  Stop ’n’ Go gas station

  Fawn Creek, Minnesota

  “I’m guessing you didn’t learn to cook at your mother’s knee,” Steve said as they stood under the arc lights at the Stop ’n’ Go gas station.

  It had begun snowing in earnest, the flakes no longer falling but sweeping across them laterally. Steve didn’t have to stand out here in the Sorel boots he’d borrowed from her dad, his collar pulled up around his ears, hands deep in the pockets of his leather coat, but he did. The man had an insatiable curiosity about things, people, and places. It was probably why he was so good at what he did, curiosity coupled with his ability to render what he learned in three dimensions.

  “How’d ya guess?” Jenn said, ramming the nozzle into the tank and feeding Steve’s credit card into the self-serve machine.

  “How is it that you’re, well, this renowned home-style cooking cook and she cooks like”—he paused, searching for a diplomatic term—“that?”

  Jenn locked the lever in place and reached over the side of the trunk into the bed, grabbing the old brush kept there. She began brushing off the front window.

  “I dunno,” she admitted. “She never cooked at all when I was growing up. She started after we moved here. I’d be tempted to say it’s penance but I really think she likes cooking that stuff and I know she believes it’s what keeps her and my dad in the pink. And, God knows, they are in the pink.”

  She moved to the driver’s-side window. “If it’s her food that’s keeping them healthy, they’ll live forever.”

  “But at what price?” he muttered under his breath.

  She laughed. “Similar words have occasionally been bandied around the house by both my father and me. Out of her hearing, of course. I’m not going to take that away from her. She has little enough to feel good about.”

  “Yeah.” He hesitated, the snow collecting in his hair and turning the spikes into improbable curls. Graphite-colored curls. Kinda sexy. “You know, I’m not too sure about this whole ‘my poor miserable parents’ thing you got working here, Jenn. They don’t seem all that unhappy to me.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said, “they’ve made the best of the situation. I don’t deny it. But come on. Back in Raleigh they were … like rock stars … like …” She searched around for a comparison and found one. “They were like you are in New York. Everyone knew them. They were the people to have at any fund-raiser or any sort of event or dinner party. In a way, I think that’s what’s kept them here for so long. They never could accept the idea of rebuilding slowly. This golf course my dad is talking about? Just another pipe dream where they recoup the past with interest added. But it’s not going to happen.”

  Steve was unconvinced. “People generally do what they want to do. I think your parents want to be here.”

  The idea was ludicrous. Preposterous. Her parents had no more of an abiding affection for Fawn Creek than she did.

  “If people have a choice, they do what they want,” Jenn said. “But mostly people do what’s easiest to do. And it’s easiest for my parents to make plans that’ll never work. Better that than to see things as they really are, give up, and
die.”

  “Wow. Remind me not to call you when I’m feeling low.”

  “I’m just being honest,” she said, hurt at his suggestion that her objectivity was depressing.

  “Maybe your parents make all these plans because it’s fun to think about and that’s as much as it needs to be,” he suggested. “You know, sometimes, as you close in on a goal you’ve held on to for a long time, it doesn’t look that important anymore. And you wonder if you’ve wasted your time, not to mention the energy.”

  He looked distinctly uncomfortable and she wondered what goal he’d been pursuing that he’d begun to doubt was worth the effort.

  “Maybe the trick is to keep changing the plan. Adapting them to current demands,” he said, still wearing that painfully contemplative expression.

  “Now that”—she waggled her snow brush at him—”is defeatism. I would suspect anyone who suddenly changed their plans of doing so because they’d realized they weren’t going to succeed and were trying to save face.”

  The side of his mouth curled up in a lightly mocking manner. “But not you.”

  “Nope. I haven’t veered off course or taken my eye off the prize. Not once,” she said, waiting for the pride to fill her voice and surprised when it didn’t. “I’ve been making my way slowly but inexorably toward my goal for twenty years.”

  “Sorta like a glacier?”

  Once more, he’d made her laugh. “The Minnesota ice pack. That’s me.”

  “I gotta give you credit,” he said, stomping his feet. “I don’t know anyone else who’s worked so long for a dream.”

  Dream? The word brought her up short, surprised the hell out of her. Being a success wasn’t a dream; it was a goal. She wasn’t exactly sure what the difference was, but she knew there was one and she knew which one she’d been pursuing and it hadn’t been a dream. She opened her mouth to protest but wasn’t sure what to say. She was saved from having to say anything by a young male voice suddenly hailing her from the gas station’s door.

  “Ms. Lind, you oughtn’t be standing out here pumping gas!” A skinny kid in an insulated jacket came slipping out of the gas station, a sheath of pink Xerox paper in one hand and a staple gun in the other. It was Ken Holmberg’s grandson if she wasn’t mistaken. Bill? Will?

  “That’s okay. I’m almost done.” Nice kid. “Go back! You don’t even have a hat on!”

  “I don’t have a hat on,” Steve said pointedly.

  Will? Bill? Ignored her. “I’m real sorry. I was in the back looking for the staple gun…. Say! Are you Steve Jaax?” he said, sliding to a stop near the gas pump.

  “Why, yes, I am,” Steve said, donning his Modest Star smile.

  “Wow! I was just getting ready to come stick these up before the storm hit.” He held up one of the Xerox sheets. “Supposed to be a big one. But it’s always supposed to be a big one, in’t?” he asked in the jaded tone of the true Northerner.

  Jenn edged in front of Steve and read the sign:

  REWARD!!!

  $2500.00 for the return of the butter sculpture

  of Jenn Lind by the artist Steven Jaax.

  Call 218-888-0008. No questions asked.

  “Crap!” Jenn exclaimed. “Who’s responsible for this?” And please, Lord, don’t let those buffoons with the butter head get wind of it until after I get the damn thing back.

  Bill? Will? looked taken aback. “I dunno. Some lady came by about an hour ago and asked me to put these up.”

  Panic had surfaced on Steve’s face. “Calm down, Steve,” she told him. “The mayor’s probably decided it wouldn’t look good if his celebrity cha-cha’ed when the town failed to produce his sculpture, so he talked the council into offering a reward.”

  “Really?” His tone said, Convince me.

  “Really.”

  “Mr. Jaax, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” The boy wiped his hand on his blue mechanic’s pants and held it out. Steve took it with a gravity suitable to shaking the hand of some foreign dignitary.

  Yes, Jenn allowed. There was something weirdly appealing about Steve’s catholic views regarding the equality of all his admirers.

  The handshake clearly went to the kid’s head because in the space of a few seconds he went from shuffling, gawky grease monkey to ambassador of Fawn Creek. “It’s a real honor to have you in our town, Mr. Jaax.”

  “Thank you, son.” Steve looked over the boy’s head at her. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You made a noise.”

  A rude noise, but she wasn’t going to fess up in front of the kid. “Don’t think so.” She gave the pump a wiggle, hoping the tank was already full and the detector just hadn’t noted it yet. No such luck. Okay, she was jealous. Why the hell was she jealous? It wasn’t as if Fawn Creek meant anything to her.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Bill? Will? asked.

  “Shoot.” Steve leaned against the side of the car, the snow collecting along his collar’s seam, his face sandblasted red by the rising wind, but looking as nonchalant as if he’d been standing beside a Palm Springs pool hobnobbing with the art-collecting set.

  “When you made Titus Wrecked, was aluminum your original choice of material?”

  “No,” Steve said, his face pleated into all kinds of earnest lines. “It wasn’t. I had originally intended to do that piece in silver, but it proved too brittle to support the upper flights, so I ended up using aluminum instead.”

  “I knew it!” The boy punched the air with his fist.

  Jenn stared at the kid, stupefied. Had the world tilted on its axis? Had someone come in one night and switched the inhabitants of the town with aliens … aliens with advanced degrees in American art studies?

  “You guessed that?” Steve said. “Good catch, kid. What gave you your clue—”

  The gas lever snapped off. “Done!” Jenn chirped cheerfully. “I’m sorry … Bill.”

  “Will.”

  “Right. Will. I’m sorry but Mr. Jaax and I have an important engagement we have to get to, so if you’ll excuse us …?”

  “Oh. Sure!” Will stepped back. “Wait until I tell some of my friends I met you, Mr. Jaax. Thanks and, ah, drive safe there, Ms. Hallesby. Wouldn’t want to hurt the sesquicentennial’s star attraction, now, would we?”

  “No. We sure wouldn’t. Get in, Steve,” she said sweetly. She managed to keep her smile in place as she climbed into the cab and looked out her window at the grinning kid. She lifted a single finger off the steering wheel in the standard Minnesota substitute for a wave, applauding herself for the self-restraint that kept her from making it the middle one, and turned the ignition key with the other hand. As soon as the engine turned over, she stepped on the gas.

  “You have a problem with my celebrity, don’t you?” Steve said.

  “No,” she said, eyes on the road. It was a little slick on the curves going north out of town. “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. Some people do, though. And every time someone asks me for an autograph—”

  “‘Every time?”’ she echoed. “Come on. You’ve gotten asked once.”

  “Well, they’d ask me if they had paper and pen handy,” he said, utterly sincere.

  She looked over at him. “Does it ever occur to you that not everyone is in awe of you? That some people might not know who you are, or do know who you are and just not care?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “Although you don’t seem to care.”

  “Does that bother you?” She wasn’t about to let him in on the little secret that she did, indeed, care. It would only support the wholly illusionary construction keeping his ego afloat. Except, if it was true, it wasn’t illusionary, was it?

  “Nope.” He meant it, too. Whether a person chose to worship at the Jaax altar or not made pretty much no difference to him. He caught her sidelong glance.

  “Look, Jenny, that thing with the kid at the gas station? That’s what it’s like for me everywhere. People are fasci
nated by celebrity. They want to get close to it, see what it looks like, if it has a feel, a taste, maybe hope a little of the magic dust will rub off on them. I don’t know what they want. I don’t even know if they get it.” He smiled. “But you already know that from experience. It just doesn’t happen to you here.”

  He was right, she realized.

  “Do you ever wonder why?”

  She did and she was curious about his thoughts on it, too, but the storm had grown in intensity during the last few minutes. Jenn turned the wipers to high to keep up with the snowfall, the flakes dancing in the headlights like feathers at a pillow fight. So she slowed the truck, leaned over the steering wheel, and concentrated on driving instead.

  Ten minutes later, she found the turnoff to Storybook Land.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  6:30 p.m.

  Hilda Soderberg’s house

  One hundred fucking bucks, Ned thought, jerking up the zipper on his snowmobile suit as he prepared to deliver the stupid butter head to its stupid cheap owner. A hundred split three ways. Not even ways, you could bet his granny’s rulle pose on that, but he still wouldn’t end up with more than forty bucks. Shit.

  “I’m heading out, Gran,” he called toward the kitchenette of the little five-room bungalow.

  She pattered out of the kitchen on her scrawny little poly-knit-covered shanks, a huge bowl of some yeasty-smelling goodness cradled in her spindly little arms, beating the batter in a quick circle. “Where are you going in a storm? The Chevy don’t have snow tires.”

  “I’m taking the snowmobile and meeting up with Turv. We’re going down to Portia’s to see if Duddie needs any help with anything. He’s out there a ways alone, you know.”

  From deep within puckered skin and lines, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you up to somet’ing rotten, Neddie?”

  “No! I’m just gonna have a beer or two and maybe help Duddie shovel a path for Portia, is all.”

  “Okay. But don’t call me when that thing flips over.”

  “No, ma’am.”