Hot Dish (6 page)

Jenn looked up. He really had been listening, after all.

“I don’t have a choice. I have Miss Fawn Creek obligations, so I can’t even apply for an early admission to some school. I’m stuck through my senior year.”

“Gee, that sounds like fun.” He ducked down and disappeared behind the sculpture.

“No.” It wouldn’t be fun. It would be hell being trapped with no way out in the same school with the kids who’d derailed her would-be freedom train. “I’ll die.”

“Probably not,” his disembodied voice said. “If you really want to get out, you’ll find a way. Look at me. I was married to a vampire and yet managed to escape. I was just this far”—a hand rose above the butter head, forefinger and thumb illustrating a half inch space—“from becoming one of the undead myself.”

“A vampire? Like in she sucked your blood?” she asked only half sarcastically. He did come from New York City….

“There are more important things than blood, kiddo. There’s your confidence. When you sculpt for a living, you got three things that you gotta have: the ability to see things other people can’t see, the talent to
translate that vision into something other people can see, and the absolute faith that you have both.

“She sucked all three things out of me. And then, because that wasn’t enough, she went after the only good thing that ever came out of our relationship.” He tilted sideways and met her eyes for a second before disappearing behind the butter again. “My statue. The statue she posed for.”

“That’s rough,” she conceded. “Is that why you’re here carving butter heads?”

“Sorta.” He stood up, rummaged in the fishing tackle box he used as a tool kit, and came up with a flashlight. He flicked it on and focused the beam on the butter head. “The thing I’m trying to get to is this: things happen for a reason. It’s the nature of things. You’ve just got to figure them out.”

“Easy enough to say.”

“Nothing easy about it, Jenn,” he said, still working away, but now at an accelerated pace. “Look. If Fabulousa hadn’t been so extraordinarily evil, I’d probably have still been married to her and still spending my nights puking my guts out behind the bars in the Village.”

Fabulousa must be his wife.

“And if Fabulousa hadn’t slept with that judge and tried to screw me not only out of every penny of money I’ve ever earned but, on top of that, frame me for the robbery of my own sculpture to get me thrown into jail, I wouldn’t have ended up in Minnesota and I wouldn’t be sculpting this butter and I wouldn’t …” He trailed off, his mouth dropping open a little as he switched off the flashlight.

He frowned, blinked, and turned the flashlight back on. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

“What? What?” she demanded, and started to slide off the stool to see what had him riveted.

“No!” His arm shot up and he pointed at her. “Stay right where you are!”

She froze. Steve stared at her as though seeing her for the first time. His gaze fell on the butter head, jerked back to her, fell, rose, back, forth, quicker, quicker—

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Freeze!”

“
Wha ith it
?” she demanded through stiff lips.

“Do
not
move a muscle. Hold it right there. One minute. One … more … minute …” He was in the midst of a whittling frenzy, slashing off
gobs of butter and flinging them toward the white plastic bucket at his feet.

“Look at this.” He shoved the flashlight against the butter head’s ear and turned it on.

It looked like a yellow bug light shaped like an ear.

“Yeah?”

“‘Yeah?”’ he echoed. “You bet your ass, ‘yeah.”’

He began working fervently, muttering all the while.

“So that’s your big advice?” Jenna asked, reluctant to let the former conversation go. “‘Things happen for a reason. Figure it out?”’ Her mom and Kahlil Gibran could have done better.

“No,” he said and abruptly stopped working. He came to the side of the butter head and set his hands on his hips. “Here’s my suggestion. You got robbed of a crown? Find a different crown to win. Then flaunt it.”

He’d gone off the deep end. “I’m done with all this stuff. No more pageants for me,” Jenn said.

“Who said anything about pageants?” he said, returning to the front of the butter head. “This is about
kingdoms
, not tiaras. No one ever got handed a crown worth having. The real question is always what are you willing to do to get what you want?”

“Huh?”

“Sacrifices, baby. Everything you go after demands a sacrifice. Either from you or someone else.”

“Bull.”

“You sacrificed the other town beauties’ hopes to win this Buttercup crown, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know I was doing that!” she protested.

“Maybe not. But you should ask yourself this: would you do it again knowing now what you claim you didn’t know then? Would you have jettisoned a few milkmaids’ dreams for your ambition?”

Would she? She didn’t know. It seemed like a random question. She
hadn’t
known. And she didn’t like what-if games. They were too dangerous, like opening Pandora’s box.
What if
her parents had gone to Palm Springs instead of Las Vegas?
What if
her grandfather had owned a lodge in the Catskills instead of Minnesota?
What if
she’d gone with Tess on winter break …?

A sudden commotion outside drew Jenn’s attention to the far right side of the crowd gathered around the freezer. A huge guy in a leather biker’s vest had started pushing his way through the crowd.

“It needs to be etched,” Steve was muttering, “and something with lights. Maybe …”

Jenn wasn’t listening anymore. She was too busy watching the biker. He wasn’t pushing now. He was shoving, bowling through the crowds of bystanders, his expression fierce.

“Geez,” she said uncomfortably. “Where the hell does he think he’s going?”

Halfway through the crowd now, the biker raised his huge paw and pointed straight at the freezer window. “
You are mine, bitch
!”

Jenn’s jaw dropped; her eyes popped wide. She’d heard about weirdoes like this, men fixated on beauty queens or movie stars. The biker thrust an old lady and her corn dog out of his way, his steel-toed boots punching the ground, the chains on his hip bouncing.

“Oh … my … God.” Jenn jumped off the stool. “Steve!”

She looked around for a savior only to see Steve look up, spy the biker, and instead of doing something like barricading them in the freezer, go back to attacking the butter head with renewed fervor. He gouged a hole in the butter head with his grapefruit spoon again.

She wasn’t about to wait around and see why. She headed for the freezer door, but before she reached it, the door slammed inward and the biker burst into the tiny booth. His mouth spread in a wide, evil grin. Outside the cubicle, someone shouted and someone else screamed.

“Your ass is mine!”

“Holy shit,” Jenn whispered, her mind filled with images of becoming this guy’s Butter Head Bride right in front of all these people.

She scrambled for the corner, snagging a sculpting knife on her way, and wheeled around.

The biker guy ignored her.

All his attention was fixed on Steve, who was still fiddling with the butter head—filling in the hole?

Poor Steve, he’d lost it. He looked way too nonchalant for someone whose ass purportedly belonged to a two-hundred-fifty-pound guy in black leather. Her own heart was galloping and the hand holding the sculpting knife out in front of her was shaking uncontrollably. Outside the freezer, people were yelling and pointing.

“Bounty hunter?” Steve asked, finally turning around.

“Yeah.”

Bounty hunter
?

The biker reached behind his back and pulled out a set of manacles. “The bounty hunter who got here ahead of the cops and you’ll witness that, won’t ya, Toots?”

He glanced at Jenn, who was trying to disappear down into the neck opening of her parka as the biker grabbed Steve’s forearm and snapped the manacles closed on his wrist. “
Won’t ya, Toots
?”

“Ah, yeah. Yes, sir …”

“Good. And here’s Minnesota’s finest now. Right on cue,” the biker said as a confused-looking cop ducked through the door, his hand on the butt of his gun.

“Officer, I’ve made a citizen’s arrest of this man, Steve Jaax, for jumping bail and fleeing the great state of—” The biker frowned.

“New York,” Steve provided helpfully.

“Whatever,” said the bounty hunter and pushed him into the waiting arms of Minnesota’s finest.

“What the hell is going on here?” Ken Holmberg appeared at the door, took one look at Jenn, and squeezed into the booth with the rest of them. A lump of gratitude swelled in Jenn’s throat. Maybe Ken wasn’t so bad, after all.

“What do you think you’re doing, Jenn?” he scolded. “You were due over at the KMSP building fifteen minutes ago.”

“But the police …”

“Officer, do you need this young lady to stay here?” Ken demanded. “She’s supposed to be on the set of
Good Neighbors
right now.”

“Really?” The officer looked impressed. “You better go, then. If I need her later, I guess I know where to find you, huh, Miss—”

“This is Miss Fawn Creek, Jennifer Hallesby,” Ken supplied. He grabbed her upper arms and started pushing her toward the door. In doing so, his foot caught the dais, setting the butter sculpture teetering ominously.

“Watch it, man!” Steve yelped. “That’s art!”

“Oh gosh.” Ken half turned. “Sorry. You bet …” He trailed off.

Behind Jenn, everyone fell silent. Still hanging in Ken’s grip, Jenn craned her neck around to see what everyone was looking at and so, for the first time, got a full-on view of the sculpture.

At first glance, the sculpted face was pretty enough. The smile was winning, the features symmetrical and pleasant. But when you really looked at it, you saw something else. Something vulnerable, something defeated. Even the prow of bangs springing from the forehead looked forlorn.

And then it hit her:
This was it. This was all she had to show for all her months of effort
. She’d traded the few weeks she could have been with Tess for a butter head.

“It’s … radiant,” the bounty hunter whispered.

“Exquisite,” one of the cops opined.

Radiant? Exquisite? The word choices coming from two traditionally tough-type guys caused Jenn to look at the butter head again. She couldn’t see it, though. All she saw was a waste of time. The face of a loser.

Well, not anymore. Not ever again.

1:00 p.m.

Twenty-one years later

Tuesday, September 19

The Park Plaza, New York City

The room seemed surprisingly crowded for a press conference introducing an unknown lifestyle maven to the jaded New York media until you took into account who had done the inviting: megaconservative, ubercontroversial multi-billionaire Dwight D. Davies Junior. Dwight was an intolerant man, the list of things of which he disapproved including, but not limited to, smoking, drinking, gambling, swearing, illicit-drug use, and any kind of sex—unless it was between a married (and definitely heterosexual) couple. He openly admitted that making up for the excesses of his youth had led to his zeal for reforming decadent American society, leading some wags to speculate that at one time old Dwight must have been one helluva guy to party with.

As a businessman, Dwight was notorious for his Pharisaical policies. He’d been known to come in, after taking over multinational corporations, and decimate entire upper managements simply on the basis of “inspired intuition,” a practice that made both political parties leery of accepting his donations. All of which made him daily fodder for every newspaper cartoonist and editorial writer in the country.

Dwight didn’t care. He had a whole lotta work to do before he died. Mostly reforming things. And (some said not coincidentally) making a whole lotta money doing it. Lately, he’d turned his attention to reforming America’s television-viewing habits.

A year ago he’d proclaimed his mandate to eradicate America’s love affair with sex, drugs, and violence. He’d bought himself a successful cable network and renamed it American Media Services to accentuate his view that he provided the public a service, not just an entertainment. Then he hired a slew of like-minded men—or at least men who said they were
like-minded and who could not be proven to be otherwise through an intense background check—and rebuilt it.

It should have been a joke, but old Dwight wasn’t stupid (quite the reverse). He was just a dogmatist. When he did something, he did it right. Whether through sophistry or luck—and those who knew him best weren’t saying—Dwight had tapped into a huge reservoir of baby boomers wanting to rekindle their
Leave It to Beaver
days, Gen Xers looking for a little moral substance to pad their financial portfolios, and young Americans worried about being blown up.

Last month, Dwight had begun unveiling the lineup for the spring launch of his new, “values-oriented” programming, and today, AMS was introducing Jenn Lind, the star of Dwight’s pet project, a biweekly lifestyle magazine entitled
Comforts of Home
(debuting concurrently with a monthly magazine and iPod cast of the same name). Dwight had personally supervised the vetting process that had brought Jenn Lind from the Midwest, where she’d been enjoying an impressively robust popularity based on a weekday morning show, regular contributions to women’s magazines, and guest appearances on several of the Food Network’s most popular programs. With a sardonic nod to her home state of Minnesota, the media had already dubbed her “Martha ‘Nice.”’

So yes, the level of interest rose when AMS’s president, Ron Patella, trim, diminutive, and dapper, appeared from a side door and approached the podium.

“Good afternoon and thank you for coming,” he said. “You all have your bios and other material? Good. Then you already know you’re in for a treat.”

He gestured with an open palm toward the door. “It is with great pleasure that I introduce Jenn Lind, the star of
Comforts of Home
.”