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Margaret Quilliam tucked a sprig of holly under the pig's ear and stepped back to regard her work.
"Guy I knew in the old neighborhood looked a lot like that after he welshed on a bet," said Alphonse Santini. He flung both hands up and cowered behind them in mock self-defense. Quill, who'd fled into the kitchen in search of respite, hadn't been pleased to find him there. "Hands out" was a gesture she was becoming all too familiar with, since Al had spent a large portion of the last three days harassing Quill and her sister Meg, when he wasn't aggravating the citizens of Hemlock Falls. The gesture always accompanied his notions of what was funny. Al considered himself quite a humorist.
"I'm sorry," she said, "about the fund-raiser. You've arrived at Hemlock Falls at sort of a peculiar time in the town's political history."
"That bitch Cahill," he said without rancor. "The press. Go figure."
"I don't think..." Quill paused. For all she knew, Nora may have prompted the H. O. W. revolt at breakfast, although to be fair, she couldn't see how.
"So. This roast pig's for a special occasion? Or what? Kinda early for Christmas."
The pig contemplated the ceiling. Meg contemplated the pig. Quill, whose testiness was increasing as the time for her lunch with Myles drew nearer, drummed her fingers on the butcher block counter. She stopped, not wanting to be rude. Ex-Senator Santini hacked into a well-used handkerchief, wiped his nose, and repeated his question about the roast pig. One of Meg's sneaker-shod feet began to beat an irritable tattoo on the flagstone kitchen floor. Quill held on to her own temper firmly and said in as diplomatic a tone as she could manage, "It's a special order for a men's organization in the village. Now, to get back to your wedding reception, Mr. Santini."
His eyes slid sideways at Quill. "I keep the title Senator, you get my drift? Even though I lost this time around. Most of my compadres call me Senator AI."
Quill, who'd been refusing Mr. Santini the honorific out of nothing more than perversity, decided to relent. For one thing, Senator Santini did have a miserable sloppy cold - or allergies - and he wasn't complaining about it. In Quill's opinion, far too many people with colds made their misery yours. For another, he was short for a man, about her own height, which made his frequent demands for attention more understandable, at least to Quill.
Quill had never gotten used to the fact that celebrities in person looked smaller than they did on television. This shrinkage made her sympathetic. Or maybe, she thought, they weren't smaller than they appeared. Maybe she'd only met celebrities who were smaller than the average person. The alternative was that her subconscious enlarged public figures based on the size of their reputations, which still didn't explain why she'd expected Senator Al to be bigger than he actually was, since his politics were so awful.
He certainly wasn't conventionally good-looking. He was balding, with lank brown hair that flopped over his ears. He had small, rather watery blue eyes and a pot-belly. None of this explained his undoubted appeal. Despite his height and rather flabby appearance, ex-Senator Al Santini definitely had charisma. The charisma might have been due to his voice, which was deep and resonant. Since he had a heavy Long Island accent, Quill didn't think so. It'd be a challenge to paint his portrait. She'd have to capture the charm and still get across the greed, vulgarity, and boys-in-the-back-room politics that had - finally, after three terms - lost him the race for the Senate.
"Quill?" Santini rapped his knuckles on the butcher block counter. "I got snot on my face or what?"
"Sorry, Senator," Quill said. "You were saying?"
"We got a few more people coming than we'd planned on."
Meg clutched her forehead, groaned, and said mildly, "Your mother-in-law-prospective mother-in-law, I should say - has been taking care of everything just fine. Senator. Did you check this new number with her?"
Senator Al waved largely. "She's busy with the other stuff. My guys've been on the horn. I'm telling you, we've gotta be prepared for a crush." Meg and Quill carefully avoided looking at one another. Senator Al had been unseated in a rash of very bad publicity six weeks ago; Newsweek's editorial on the demise - of his career had been scathingly final. Earlier in the week, they'd wondered if anyone would show up at all.
Meg said patiently, "Your fianc‚e Claire booked our Inn in April for a December wedding. In May you gave us the count for the reception - small, you said, since you didn't want a media circus. Forty, you said. Twenty of the immediate family, and twenty of your nearest and dearest friends. In the last few days you've gone from twenty to forty to seventy. Now, four days before the wedding, you want to bounce it to two hundred!?"
Meg's face got pink, which made her gray eyes almost blue. Her voice, however, remained soft, although emphatic. "Our dining room won't take two hundred. I can't cook for two hundred. Not in four days."
Al Santini waved expansively. "Hire all the help you need. Money's no object."
This blithe disregard for the fiscal gave Quill a clue as to a possible reason why the senator's campaign finances had occasioned such investigative furor from the national media.
Meg stared at him expressionlessly. "If I could hire somebody else to do what I do, do you think I'd be doing it?"
"Say what?"
Quill, grateful for Meg's unusual equanimity, and not too sure how long it would last, interrupted, "My sister's a great chef, Mr. Santini. A three-star chef. There aren't a lot of people who can cook with her style. I know that's one of the reasons your fianc‚e and her family wanted to have the wedding here. And, honestly, this last-minute change just isn't possible. You can't expect Meg to do a five-course dinner for two hundred. Not with this kind of notice. And not in our dining room. We don't have the space." Especially, she added to herself, for a guest list that was unlikely to materialize.
Senator Al put a large hand on Meg's shoulder and bent down to look her earnestly in the eye. "Five-course dinner? Am I asking you for a five-course dinner? Absolutely not. No question. But I got a problem here, you understand that? I got a hundred, maybe two hundred people that are going to be coming to my wedding."
"Which is it?" Meg asked patiently.
Santini shrugged. "Who knows? All I'm saying is we gotta prepare for the contingency."
"Contingency," Meg said. "Right."
"I got a couple of Supreme Court justices, a couple a guys from the Senate, ambassadors, and what all coming to this shindig. Important people, you know?"
Meg rubbed her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut. "Which is how come I can't give you an exact count.
If there's a war, or something, or like Bosnia heats up again? You gonna tell General Schwarzkopf he can't hightail it to the action on account of he's supposed to be at my reception?"
"General Schwarzkopf's coming?" said Quill. Senator Al shrugged. "He got an invitation. I expect him. Look, I don't want to say too much, okay? But there's something of national significance coming down pretty soon. And the eye of the nation is gonna be on Hemlock Falls."
Meg rolled her eyes at Quill.
The double swinging doors to the dining room banged open. One of the blue-suited men from the Santini entourage stuck his head inside the kitchen, a portable phone in one hand. Quill couldn't remember which of the men it was; they all looked and sounded alike. "Senator? We finally got Nora Cahill to agree to the interview. We have her in the conference room."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be right there. You see? It's starting already. Now we got the media. So we bag the five-course dinner for seventy. We do heavy hors d'oeuvres. Stand-up. A buffet, like. The dining room can handle that if you take out the tables. So, Meg, dolly. No dinner."
"Dolly?" Meg said blankly. "Dolly?"
"We're looking at serving two hundred, right? If we can't seat 'em, let 'em stand. That pig, there?" He flicked his finger at the holly under its ear. "You roast a couple of those, we're all set."
"Heavy hors d'oeuvres for two hundred," Meg said stonily, "means a steamship round, pasta and shells, and baked BEANS!" Sh
e planted both hands on either side of the pig and drew breath. If one didn't know her very well, the expression on her face might pass for a smile. It put Quill herself, who knew her sister better than anybody, in mind of the wrong side of an outraged baboon. To Quill's amazement, Meg swallowed twice, and said merely, "Why don't we take the change in the menu up with Mrs. McIntosh?"
Santini, clearly unaware he'd escaped a verbal tsunami, continued, "So, no roast pig. I can live with it. If the food's a little less fancy than we planned - don't sweat it." His pat on Meg's shoulder was dismissive. "I gotta take this interview. So, look. You got more questions about the menu? Talk to the ball and chain."
"The what?" Meg demanded.
"Claire. My fianc‚e. Or her ma. Either one. Same-same." He waved at Quill, gave Meg the high sign, pointed a pistol-like forefinger at them, and went pow! "Catch you all later."
The double doors swung shut behind him.
"I don't believe it," said Meg. "Ball and chain? Dolly? Oh, God. I can't stand it!" She ran her hands through her short dark hair.
"Steamship round?" said Quill. "And pasta and shells?"
Meg grinned. "It's tempting, isn't it? That idiot."
"That's all you've got to say? That idiot?"
Meg shrugged. "Why should I waste my breath? It's kind of pathetic, thinking that all these people are showing up for this party. Mrs. McIntosh told me herself that one of the reasons they picked our Inn is because it's so hard to get to in the winter. He's got a guaranteed excuse for nobody accepting the invitations. I have no idea where all this last-minute agita is coming from."
"Maybe he's nervous about getting married," said Quill.
"Whatever. Anyway, Claire and her mother have had seventy acceptances. Almost all relatives. Five-course dinner with no expenses spared. That's what the Mclntoshes are paying for and that's what they'll get. General Schwarzkopf, my eye."
Quill twisted a strand of hair around one finger and tugged at it. "You don't think..."
"That two hundred politicians, ambassadors, and the President's cabinet are going to show up for this wedding? On Christmas Eve? In central New York?" Meg gestured toward the window. The kitchen faced the vegetable gardens at the back of the Inn. Quill could barely see the tops of the brussels sprouts for the snow. "They're predicting four inches more by this afternoon. If the rest of the wedding party doesn't get here by tomorrow, we'll have to cancel the reception and eat each other like the Donner party since we'll undoubtedly get snowed in. Which reminds me. I thought you were going to have lunch with Myles in Syracuse. You better give yourself plenty of time to get there."
"I'll be fine," Quill said. "I told him two o'clock."
"You're sure about it," Meg said, after a pause. "I mean, this business about it being the last lunch."
Quill nodded. "This relationship is just - not going anywhere."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Well, at least it should end all this angst."
"What angst?" Quill demanded.
"The angst that's kept you functioning at half speed for the past couple of months. Good grief, Quill, you haven't even gone through the mail this past week."
Quill, who absolutely did not want to talk about her farewell to Myles until it was all over, changed the subject abruptly. "What's with the pig? It's down on the schedule as a delivery before noon. It's half past eleven now. Would you like me to take it somewhere before I leave for Syracuse?"
"One of the sous-chefs should be here soon. Unless the snow gets worse." She pulled the clipboard that held the day's rota from the wall by the small TV and studied it. "Bjarne's on today. He's a Finn and they're used to the snow. I'll get him to do it." Meg moved the roast pig into one of the aluminum pans they used to transport food and looked at it with a frown. "Do you think the holly's too Christmassy?"
Quill vaguely recollected Santini's offhand comment. "On the pig? Maybe a little."
"The holly's not in celebration of Christmas. It's a subtle reminder of the Druid influence on the S. O. A. P. rituals. Not that those idiots would know a Druid from a downspout."
Quill looked doubtful. "Suckling pig only serves twelve to fourteen, doesn't it? Last count, actual S. O. A. P. membership was thirty-two."
"The meeting this afternoon isn't the whole membership. It's just the executive committee. Elmer Henry, Dookie Shuttleworth, Harland Peterson, and those guys."
Quill sat in the rocker by the cobblestone fireplace, propped her feet on the hearth, and rocked back and forth. Menu planning had been a lot simpler before the Chamber of Commerce had split into two rival factions. S. O. A. P. wanted earthy, primitive fare with a gourmet touch, and H. O. W. was seriously considering vegetarian. She had a vague recollection that holly had something to do with Druid rites, but she wasn't sure what. "I don't think that S. O. A. P. is based on Celtic mythology. I think it's AmerInd."
"Do American Indians strip to the waist, paint themselves blue, and stick stones in their hair?"
"Is that what they do at those meetings?"
Meg grinned. "So I've heard. But it's just gossip. The men won't talk about it, and the women don't know anything because the men aren't talking." She began to pack the pig in aluminum foil. "It's all Miriam Doncaster's fault, anyway. She never should have let the mayor have a copy of The Branch of the Root. It's a stupid book."
Quill's mood wasn't improving, and wouldn't, she knew, until the final lunch with Myles was over. She said crossly, "How do you know it's a stupid book? Have you read it?"
Meg raised her eyebrows. "See this look on my face?"
Quill shoved the rocker into motion and muttered, "Never mind."
"Cheerful sarcasm," Meg said, "that's the look on my face. We're still recuperating from the Thanksgiving rush. We're headed into even worse chaos between Christmas and the most boring wedding of the decade, and you want to know if I've found time to read a seven-hundred-page book that's supposed to get white guys in touch with their maleness, for Pete's sake?"
"Good point."
"You betcha," She glanced at her watch, "You go on to your lunch in Syracuse."
"I've got lots of time." Quill wriggled her toes in the warmth of the fire, The kitchen was redolent with cinnamon, sage, and garlic. Meg had left the Thermo glass doors to her grill open when she'd removed the roast. Every now and then a bit of cracking fell from the rotisserie spit onto the flames with a hiss. The smell of seared pork and the warmth of the fire contrasted pleasantly with the wind-whipped snow outside.
The back door banged and Bjarne the Finnish sous- chef burst into the room,
"I am late," he announced. He was very tall - as most of the Finnish students seemed to be - and had a ruddy, hearty sort of face with bright blue eyes.
"So you are," said Meg, "Don't take off your coat. I want you to deliver this pig."
"It is a beautiful pig," said Bjarne, "A prince of a pig."
"It is, isn't it?" said Meg, pleased. "It's for the S. O. A. P. meeting."
"Ah," said Bjarne, with an air of enlightenment.
"You've heard about them, too?" asked Meg,
"Oh, yes."
"Have you been to a meeting, Bjarne?"
He shook his head.
"Well, take this pig and see if you can crash it. Then report back to us, Quill and I want you to be a spy."
"I don't," said Quill. "Who cares what goes on at those meetings?"
"I do. Ever since the Chamber of Commerce split into these two factions, the village hasn't been the same. It's depressing. It's depressing me and everyone else. Although, to be fair, it's not what's depressing you. This business with Myles is what's depressing you."
"Stop," said Quill. "It's not that the women aren't incredibly curious about S. O. A. P. Marge Schmidt thinks they hold sacrificial rites under the statue of General Hemlock in the park. Betty Hall thinks they toss the bodies into the gorge because Esther West told her she's hear
d weird noises at night near the waterfall."
"Esther thinks The X-Files is based on factual information from the FBI," Quill pointed out. "She's not what I'd call a reliable source."
"The X-Files is what's going to happen now that the Republicans have been reelected," Meg said darkly.
"I know what happens at the men's group," Bjarne offered, to Meg's surprise. "There are drums. Drums are an important part of the ritual. The Branch of the Root connects the hand and the heart and the" - his pale blue eyes looked wistfully down at Meg - "male root. Through the drum. The root of the primitive puts us in touch with ourselves. They chant. They eat. And beat drums."
Meg, who was short, bent her head back to look Bjarne in the eye. "How do you know? Nobody's even sure what the acronym means."
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