"Oh, that's good. I feel a whole lot better, now that I can cook and everything."
"Well, I'm glad I--"
"Independent," Maralynne said. "You know?"
"Yes, I--"
"So now that I can do all that," Maralynne said, "you can teach me some complicated stuff."
"Complicated . . ."
"Like petits fours and soufflés and lasagna and how to remove stains," Maralynne said. "You know."
"Ah," said Rowena. "That stuff."
"Yeah," said Maralynne. "So, like, is next week good for you?"
Rowena took a deep, deep breath. "Well, maybe the lasagna part," she said. "If you do all the cleaning yourself."
"Myself?" asked Maralynne. "But it's only cleaning."
"All by yourself," said Rowena firmly.
"Well . . . okay. But it better be good."
"It'll be good," Rowena said. "It'll be good."
Rowena Goes To A Picnic
Fiction by S. D. Youngren
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Rowena picked up the first memo of the day, an announcement of the annual company picnic. "Come bring a guest & celebrate 20 great years!" the memo said. "Food! Games! And a special cash bonus to all who attend." A little hand-drawn arrow pointed between the words "all" and "who;" somebody with handwriting very like Eloise's had inserted the word "employees." "As usual, this event will be a potluck," the memo continued. "So sign up to bring your favorite picnic dish! See Eloise for sign-up sheet." Rowena stuck the memo on her spindle. She picked up the next item, a brown envelope.
"Did you see this?" Marjorie demanded. She waved her own copy of the picnic memo.
"Yeah." Rowena opened her envelope.
"A cash bonus!" Marjorie's memo-waving grew frantic. "Wonder how much we'll get."
"No idea." Rowena pulled several sheets out of her envelope and frowned at them.
"I want a new car." Marjorie went suddenly dreamy. Rowena looked at her.
"A new car? You think the company's giving everybody a new car?"
"Not everybody. And they don't have to buy me the car; all I need's the money to buy it myself."
"Marjorie--"
"I'm worth it," Marjorie said. "And I've had that old thing for years."
Rowena shut her eyes, then turned back to her reading.
"Hey, you going to the picnic?" asked Jim.
"I'm using my bonus for a new car," said Marjorie. Rowena ignored them both.
"New car! Forget it. A new suit, more like." He paused a bit. "Suppose there are prizes for the games?"
"Games!" Marjorie snorted. "I'm worth a car, all the work I do here."
Work? Marjorie? This was news to Rowena. She turned over the final page of her mailing.
"Yeah," Jim began, "well--"
"Hey, Rowena!" Marjorie called. "You're the food expert. What should I bring?"
"Bring?" asked Jim, alarmed.
"It's a potluck. I gotta bring something impressive."
"Shit," Jim said. Rowena looked at him; he seemed to be weighing the merits of his new suit.
"Rowena!"
"I don't know. What do you want to bring?"
"Something impressive."
"Marjorie, it's only a picnic. Bring some kind of picnic food."
"Picnic food? But--"
"Hey, didja see the memo?" This was Berna. "I can't wait to see Eloise doing a sack race." She slapped a couple of papers onto Rowena's desk. "Those are for you," she said.
"Thanks."
"We're not going to have to play games with Eloise, are we?" demanded Marjorie. "They better pay good for that."
"You mean they'd better pay well," Berna said. "Look, it's a picnic, okay?"
"Games with Eloise," Marjorie repeated. "That wouldn't even happen to Shareena."
"One of your soap opera people?" asked Berna, as Jim simply left. "Gimme a break."
"It would happen to me," Rowena said.
Later that morning, Rowena finished her main project and delivered it to Eloise. She moved onto the next item, worked on that for a while, and just before lunchtime Eloise came by.
"Here," Eloise said, setting some familiar-looking papers down in front of her, "we found an error on Page Five. If you could just correct it for us . . ."
"What? An error?"
"In Paragraph Two of Page Five you substituted Mr. Berymanowski's name for Mr. Brashmaninski's. Kindly correct your mistake and double-check the rest of the document."
Eloise left. Rowena stared at the page before her: There it was, just as Eloise had said. Rowena bit her lip. How could she have made such a mistake? And Eloise had caught it. Eloise--or Mr. Schmed.
Possibly even Mr. Rorschach.
Rowena felt cold. She took a deep breath. Eloise had not seemed angry, but Eloise was not always predictable. She looked furtively around; Marjorie was already at lunch, fortunately, and no one else seemed to be within earshot. Rowena stared at the page. She had almost robbed Mr. Brashmaninski and his company of--of a sum equal to about two-thirds of her own yearly wages. Not a huge amount to the companies involved, and of course the wording was such, in the context of the rest of the document, that it did look like a mistake. Mr. Berymanowski would have a hard time, she suspected, having it upheld in court, even if it had managed to get past Eloise, Mr. Rorschach, Mr. Schmed, and all of Mr. Brashmaninski's people. Still . . . Still, it could have made quite a mess. Rowena closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She corrected her mistake, read the document over looking for others--she didn't find any--and then went out for an abbreviated, very light lunch, leaving the project for a second re-reading when she got back.
And then a third.
"So," Marjorie said. "What about a soufflé?"
Rowena put her pen down on the page. "A soufflé?" she asked. "At a picnic?" Marjorie, on top of everything else.
"They're impressive, aren't they? I need something Mr. Schmed will notice."
"Yeah," said Berna. "Like everyone noticed your cheese blintzes at the Christmas party."
"Shut up!"
"Marjorie," Rowena said, "he didn't hire you to cook." She did not feel she had the patience for this sort of thing, not with a real work problem on her mind. She yanked the next item out of her In box. "And it's a good thing, too, judging from your question. You have to serve a soufflé as soon as it comes out of the oven."
"As soon as it comes out of the oven?"
"Marjorie, choose some kind of picnic food. And if you really want it to turn out, choose something you know how to make."
"Something I know how to make? Who do you think I am, Sophie?"
"Sophie?" Rowena realized, too late, that Marjorie was talking about a soap opera again. Any normal person, she reflected, would be invoking some famous media chef, or even Betty Crocker. But Marjorie had, apparently, never been a normal person.
"Sophie's a caterer. She could handle this."
"You don't need to be a caterer to throw something together for a picnic. Look--"
"You suck-up, Marjorie," said Berna. "That is so--"
"Berna!" Marjorie was outraged.
"Rowena," said Leslie Campbell, behind her, "What should I bring?"
"Not you, too." Rowena turned around, if only so she could keep an eye on him.
"What would be the easiest kind of food I could bring? I don't wanna knock myself out over this."
"The easiest?" Rowena asked. "Something from the deli?"
He made a face. "Too expensive. What can I do that's real cheap?"
"Some soda?" suggested Rowena.
"Cheap!" cried Marjorie. "You won't get anywhere like that."
"Soda," said Leslie. "Sounds good."
"Soda," Marjorie repeated scornfully. "It figures."
"Hey," Leslie said. "It's just a job. I'm not gonna knock myself out for it." He gazed into the distance. "How much do you suppose the bonus is gonna be?"
"I have no idea," Rowena said. She di
d not want to discuss bonuses either. Even though he was still behind her she turned back to her work.
"I'd settle for a couple hundred bucks," said Berna, "but if it were really up to me, they would give the rest of us a bonus by firing you."
"Who asked you?" Leslie demanded.
"I did," said Sara, who, like Berna, liked to attack from behind. "Or, I would have if I'd known."
Leslie stalked off without a word; he was out of earshot by the time Marjorie asked, "Known what?"
"For Pete's sake," said Berna. She moved into Rowena's view. "Enough of all that," she said. "Right?"
"Right," Rowena said, reaching for her stapler.
"So," said Berna, "what do you think I should bring?"
"I can't believe it," Rowena told Sammy. "I've never done anything like that before."
"First time for everything," Sammy said.
"Sammy!"
"Darling, I doubt you're in very much trouble. Nobody does perfect work all the time. You're overdue."
"I don't do perfect work. I just . . . don't do anything that stupid."
"Rowena. You fixed it. It was a simple mistake, and you've fixed it."
"After somebody else found it! If you'd done something like that--"
"They don't fire Leslie Campbell. And Eloise hates him."
"I'm not afraid of getting fired. I just . . ."
"Relax," Sammy said. He began gently rubbing the back of her neck. "Tell me what else happened today."
She told him about the picnic announcement, although it seemed even more trivial now. "But that's all I heard for the rest of the day," she said. "How much money we're gonna get, what kind of food should everybody bring, what kind of games there will be, and will we have to play them with Eloise."
"What fun," said Sammy. Rowena laughed.
"We've never done the games part before," she said. "Either it's because they've never offered a cash bribe before, or because 20th anniversaries require that sort of thing."
"I'll keep that in mind," Sammy said. Rowena laughed again and squeezed his arm.
"So," she said. "Wanna go? Even if you don't get a bonus?"
He smiled at her. "I'll go if you're going," he said.
"You sure now?" It was her stupid company's picnic, and Sammy had been busy of late.
"As long as you're going," he repeated, "it'll be worth it." He kissed her hand, and she leaned up against him.
Sammy was not one of her mistakes.
Rowena loaded the cake into her car, setting it carefully onto the front passenger's seat. Willing as Sammy had been to go with her, Rowena, on the big day, had to go alone; Sammy had a project to finish for his boss.
"Shouldn't take too long," Sammy had said. "I'll join you there when I can."
"You sure?" Rowena had asked. She hadn't seen him for days.
"Absolutely," Sammy had said. "I'll even bring food." She had not asked him what he'd bring; everybody else had been driving her crazy with this issue ever since the picnic had been announced. Between Marjorie and Leslie in particular . . . And Eloise becoming more and more upset because half the employees hadn't filled in the sign-up sheet properly because they couldn't decide what to contribute . . . Rowena herself had signed up correctly; the sign-up sheet, at least, she had done correctly.
And at least once the picnic was over with she wouldn't have to hear Marjorie and the rest of them going on and on about the food and the bonus. She remembered a remark of Berna's: "Leslie, whatever they give you will be too much, unless it's a kick in the pants." Rowena, still bothered by her error, had not been as amused as she ordinarily would have been. The mere mention of bonuses kept reminding her that she had done something wrong and Eloise had not yet punished her.
She arrived at the park and unpacked her cake, her blanket, and her sunhat. A sign hanging from a tree limb not far from her car announced RORSCHACH & SCHMED ANNUAL COMPANY PICNIC. There was a large arrow at the bottom of the sign pointing to the right; it had been scribbled over with a ball-point pen and a smaller arrow squeezed in above it, pointing left. Rowena considered this only briefly; she locked up her car, gathered her things, and headed left over the lawn. Across the lawn and over a hill--and there they were, her coworkers, spread out in colorful disarray. Just who I wanted to see, Rowena thought, and smiled to herself. She found herself remembering, not for the first time, that her first date with Sammy had been a picnic. Sammy. She took a breath and trudged over to her coworkers.
"What'd you bring?" asked Berna as she approached.
"`What did I bring?' No hello or anything?" Rowena set down her things. "I brought what I was supposed to bring."
"Marjorie didn't. Her Mixed Seafood with Whatsit Sauce--"
"Hey!" Marjorie objected.
"--burned to a crisp and she ended up getting some potato salad from the deli."
"Well," Rowena said, "That's not too--"
"Whatsit sauce," grumbled Marjorie. "I don't make fun of you."
"It wouldn't be too bad, except that, well . . . You remember how much trouble everybody had trying to decide what to bring? And nobody was completing the food portion of the sign-up sheet, and everybody was going to decide at the last minute?"
"Berna," said Rowena, "what are you trying to tell me?"
Berna made a slow sweeping motion with one arm. "I hope you like potato salad," she said.
Rowena looked. Sure enough, nearly all of the bowls, trays, and pans on display contained potato salad.
"Lordy," she said. She felt a sudden protective urge towards her cake.
"Mine's the best," Marjorie said.
Rowena managed to capture one deviled egg and a slice of bread to go with her large serving of German-style potato salad and her even larger serving of "creamy" potato salad. The other non-potato offerings were pretty much decimated by the time she could get to them, except for the macaroni salad, which she felt she couldn't face. Eloise had brought, of all things, ambrosia; Rowena had lost her taste for this dish years ago but Leslie Campbell loaded up his plate--and made sure Eloise saw him do it.
"It won't do you any good, you know," Berna told him, as Marjorie followed his example. "You've been in the doghouse so long, you answer to `Bowser.'"
"What? I do not!"
"Hey, here's Boris!" Sara scrambled over to him, and quite a few other people scrambled after her. Each newly-arrived employee was pounced upon with a mixture of hope and dread; but everyone continued to bring potato salad. And Boris, as Sara soon found out, was no exception.
"Oh, Boris," she said.
"Boris!" Eloise wailed. "You signed up to bring a salad."
"Whaddaya call this?" Boris asked. Eloise tapped her sheet.
"It says here, a green salad."
Boris looked at his offering. "It's got parsley," he said. "Or whatever that stuff is." He looked back at Eloise, who stood her ground a moment, then wavered. She returned her attention a bit mournfully to her list. Rowena looked over at Sara, who was all but swooning at Boris' lack of concern. Boris, apparently not concerned with Sara either, put his potato salad with the others.
Leslie Campbell could, apparently, only think of one thing at a time; as soon as he was no longer hungry, he went back to pestering Rowena.
"Buzz off," said Berna, helpfully.
"Leslie, really. I'm not interested," Rowena said.
"Come on," Leslie insisted. "What harm could it do?"
"You have got to be kidding," said Rowena and Berna, in unison.
"Look," said Leslie, "I--"
"Hey!" objected somebody. "I saw her first." The voice was not Sammy's. Rowena turned around.
"Ferd! What are you doing here?" That Ferd of all people had somehow found her here . . . She remembered the time her mother, in a particularly unwelcome maneuver, had actually let him into her apartment in an effort to make Sammy jealous. But her mother didn't even know where the picnic was.
Ferd shifted, uncharacteristically uncomfortable. "What does it look like I'm doing?" he asked
.
Rowena looked at the pointed stick in his hand, and at the large bag he trailed. "It looks," she said, "like you're picking up trash in the park."
Ferd nodded, glumly. "They caught me littering," he said. "So now I gotta do this for a while."
S.D. Youngren - Rowena 6 - Rowena Moves In.txt Page 6
