“Sketches from the Café
Confictura” will return in January, 2018 for its thrilling final posts. Will
Klaus Orsted destroy the energy life force of Applewood to ensure Hackett
Masterson’s mayoral victory? Can the café regulars stop him? Will Roscoe ever admit
his profound love for Mrs. Creaverton? And just what’s going on with Violet?
Until then, catch up with
the first nineteen posts at www.clarissajeanne.com/sketches.html,
or start or join a discussion here on Vox Populi. I’ll also be posting bonus
material on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from time to time, so stay tuned.
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the nineteenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get
recipes from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion
tips from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts
every Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
The leader
called, “Mr. Masterson is campaigning today. He’ll be campaigning most days
from now until the election, so I suggest you attend one of his rallies.”
Apparently, Kate
was done being patient. She marched back over to Snitty McGee and said, “Well,
I suggest you call him and let him know his campaign schedule just changed.
Now, he can either be here for this event, or watch on the news tonight how he
cared more about delivering some rehearsed stump speech than discussing real
concerns with real people in real time.” As she spoke, she gestured toward the
five reporters, two producers, and two cameramen who’d shown up from a few
local papers and even a couple Hartford news stations.
Well, that got
Brunhilda’s attention. Finally, she tapped a number into her phone. She glanced
again at the cameras and, with as little movement as possible, smoothed her
eyebrows and hair, adjusted the shoulders of her blouse, sat up a little
straighter. She was just started to pout a little at the cameras when someone
came on the line.
“Uh, yes,” she
said into her headset, “is he available? It’s important. No, I don’t have that
number. Not an emergency, exactly. Right. Thank you.”
She hung up, and
said to Kate or, possibly, to the cameras, “Well, I tried. Mr. Masterson is
very busy, but you can’t say we didn’t try to get a hold of him. He’s simply
unavailable at the moment. If you’d like to leave a number where he can contact
you--”
“Leave a
number?” said Kate. “This isn’t a social visit. Look, you call whoever that was
back, and tell them…” And, with that, Kate was off on another couple rounds
with the leader.
Violet watched
Yolande through this, and then went over to her. She spoke to her under the
hullabaloo: “Bonjour. I am curious, what made you choose those glasses?”
Blood rushed
into Yolande’s cheeks and she ducked her head practically under the desk. She
shrugged. “Oh, I didn’t choose them. I need them. If it were my choice, I’d
never wear them. They’re just big reminders that I’m an outcast.”
Violet reached
out and rubbed Yolande’s arm. “No, no. This saddens me to hear.”
“Well, it’s
true,” said Yolande. “I got these because they were the most invisible, you
know? Rimless, no color on the bridge or temples.”
From the other
end of the counter came the leader’s squawk: “I told you, I don’t have Mr.
Masterson’s emergency number, and I’ve already spoken with the only person who
does, and he won’t put me through. There’s nothing else I can do here. I can’t
get a hold of him right now.”
Kate said, “All
right,” and stepped back. She sat on the arm of a chair, and crossed her long
legs at the ankle. “Then we’ll wait until you can get a hold of him.”
The leader
glanced again at the cameras, and held her tongue for now.
Violet came back
over to Doc Graham, Wilhelmina, and me, and she asked, “Do you believe that
they can’t reach Hackett? I do not. Yolande was averting her eyes when the
fashion faux-pas said this.”
Wilhelmina said,
with sympathy, “I think averting her eyes is just her normal look, Violet.”
“No,” said Violet. “There is
something different there. I think she can get a hold of him. I think I know a
way to get her to do it.”
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the eighteenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get
recipes from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion
tips from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts
every Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
This was what Roscoe
lamented, as Clarke and Schmetly argued. For most of tonight’s meeting, the
group had discussed Schmetly’s latest story, and it was rife with the same
mistakes as always. Clarke had chosen one such mistake to grab hold of, and he
wasn’t about to let go.
Schmetly yelled at him,
“Look, ‘I’ is always more proper. I wrote a scene with two high-society types.
They’re gonna say, ‘He gave the champagne to Miss Whitaker and I.’”
“Wrong, doofus,” said
Clarke.
“You’re a doofus!”
Roscoe laid his head down
and mumbled, “Stein had Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Benchley had Parker and
Woollcott. But let history show: never was the level of discourse heightened so
as when the likes of Clarke and Schmetly traded barbs.”
Clarke turned to Roscoe.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what the hell you just said, but I
get that you want us to calm down.” To Schmetly, he said, “When a pronoun
follows a preposition, like ‘to,’ odds are it’s supposed to be an object
pronoun: ‘me,’ ‘her,’ ‘him,’ ‘us.’”
Everyone looked at Clarke in
shock.
“What?” he said. “I know
things.”
Portia said, “Of course you
do. It’s just after taxing yourself with ‘doofus’ we figured your brain was
done for the night.”
Clarke made a face at her.
“Ha-ha-ha.” He turned to Roscoe. “I’m right here, right?”
“He is indeed, Mr.
Schmetly,” said Roscoe. Over Clarke’s gloating and Schmetly’s pouting, Roscoe
continued: “Let’s see. Many years ago, my daughter’s language arts teacher gave
her a trick to use when determining pronouns. I think she still uses it. ‘He
gave the champagne to Miss Whitaker and I.’ If you take Miss Whitaker out of
the sentence, you wouldn’t say, ‘‘He gave the champagne to I,’ would you? Of
course not. He gave it to ‘me.’ Just as he would to ‘her,’ not ‘she.’”
“Oh,” said Schmetly, drawing
out the word as understanding seeped in. “That’s a good trick.”
Roscoe picked up a pen and
tapped it against the table in a frustrated, nervous tick. “This is what I
mean,” he said. “I’ve tried repeating lessons on creative writing 101. I’ve had
you read good literature. But some of these fundamentals are still clouded over
in your minds.”
A woman had come up to the
entrance of the Riverview Room, and she grabbed everyone’s attention when she
said, “You always did have a tendency to skip over the basics, Roscoe.” Her
lips turned up into a knowing smile.
Finally, Clarke and
Schmetly, it seemed, had something to agree on. Clarke whistled low. Schmetly
whispered, “I’m in love.” The woman was striking: late fifties, tall with an
athletic build, dark brown skin, and streaks of gray in her shoulder-length
hair.
Clarke said, “Who is that?”
“Kate Brooks,” Roscoe
replied, and he returned her smile. “My ex-wife.”
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the seventeenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from
the Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get
recipes from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion
tips from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts
every Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
“What has you so enamored of
him?” I asked. Mrs. C usually doesn’t get swept up in politics.
She sat on the couch’s arm.
She fit there nicely, actually, now that she’s down about twenty-five pounds
since she started eating so much healthier in January. She said, “Well, I share
his values. I think he’d make a good mayor. Same goes for the guy he’s running
against in the primaries. But, with Masterson, I feel a kinship. When I saw Mr.
Creaverton just after he passed, I told some people about the encounter and I
was ostracized for a time. You know how people were in this town before the
ghosts really started kicking up a storm after 11/5. A full-spectre paranormal
encounter was sacrosanct. Half the people I told were jealous of me, half
thought I was making it up for attention. Masterson went through a similar
experience. He still gets flack, since he’s the first major candidate around
here to admit he had the same kind of encounter. He’s up against that kind of
malarkey and he still puts himself in the public eye, striving to make his
dreams come true. I’m pretty inspired by that. I really wish, just for now, I
lived in Speroton so I could vote for him.” She grinned. “But at least letting
him campaign here might help secure him the nomination.”
“Why Confictura?” said
Roscoe, his voice a touch gruff. Everyone knows Roscoe’s in love with Mrs.
Creaverton; everyone, that is, except Mrs. Creaverton. Whenever she
inadvertently reminds him that the ghost of Mr. Creaverton is still hanging
around, he gets a little prickly.
“His advisor guy on the
phone said Masterson loves the café’s story,” said Mrs. C. “That we were lucky
to be a rock in the midst of the quake, business hasn’t suffered, people love
coming here. He sort of holds us up as an ideal. And I guess he’s heard about
the changes I’ve made in my own diet and with some of the café’s recipes.” She
started to get flushed as the phone rang again.
Her flush quickly drained. “Oh,
really?” she said. She tried to keep her voice light, but the look on her face
was one of disgust. “I see. There’s not, by any chance, anyone else who could
maybe do it instead? No, no, that’s fine. I was just wondering. I’ll be looking
forward to it.”
We got the skinny when she
hung up, and said flatly, “One of their campaign people, who lives in
Applewood, can meet me here tomorrow to go over the schedule, figure out where
in the café he’ll be set up, things like that. And that person is none other than
Ms. Nessie Fyne.”
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the sixteenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get
recipes from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion
tips from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts
every Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Violet had rung up her last
order for a while. Graham was flirting with her and she was, in her cool way,
flirting back, just as any couple six weeks into their new relationship should
do. He told her he was going to head out and he’d see her later, and that it was
going to be such a boring day without her, and so began a back-and-forth about
who was going to miss whom more. Mrs. C told them it was unhygienic to slobber
so close to the food.
Then, Amy walked in.
A tempestuous gust pushed in
with her, smacking the overhead bell. After unusual heat lasting for several
weeks in February, we’re back to cooler temps, although it’s still more like
October than March. The last couple days have been gloomy with occasional bouts
of rain, and today’s no exception. I feel I should be going home, lighting a
jack-o-lantern, and putting on a scary movie to watch while awaiting
trick-or-treaters.
Every day that Amy comes in,
Violet and I ask her if she’s found anything at the library on old Applewood,
something that might reference the tunnels we found deep under the town. Since
that’s where we saw the hooded man, and the hooded man is related somehow to
the quake and the mental fog, we thought there might be some clue about those
tunnels that would start to solve this whole conundrum. And, every day, Amy
says the same thing she said this morning:
“Nope. Haven’t found a thing
yet.”
Only, this time, she said it
a little too emphatically, a little too quickly. She ducked her head down, her
corkscrew curls bouncing around her round face. Amy’s a stout woman, and
shorter even than me or Violet, and her face is naturally a touch ruddy. Just
now, it looked like she’d drunk a bottle of Tabasco.
Violet poured Amy’s coffee
into a takeout cup, and lidded it, all the while trading suspicious glances
with me and Graham. Violet came around the counter, cup in hand, and put an arm
around Amy.
“Uh,” said Amy, digging into
her purse, “hang on, lemme pay you.”
“It is on the house, oui?”
said Violet. She handed Amy the cup, and started walking with her back through
the café.
I came up on Amy’s other
side, and mirrored Violet. Graham followed us.
Amy looked up at us. “Where
are we going? I’ve got to get back. Radinka is the only other librarian on
shift, and you don’t want to keep the boss waiting--”
Near the far corner of the
Woodwork Room, Violet nodded to me. We ran Amy into the pocket room, a little
closet-like cubby, one of which is off of each main room. Graham ran in with
us; he locked the door behind him, and Violet and I each locked the other two
doors that lead to adjoining pocket rooms.
“You
know something about the tunnels,” said Violet. “Tell us or we don’t go outside
this room.”
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the fifteenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get recipes
from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion tips
from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts every
Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Just as Wilhelmina left,
Roscoe came running up to the remaining three of us. “Don’t go,” he said. “I
need your help.”
Our fashion maven, Violet,
nodded and said, “Oui, I am glad you recognize this. Okay, first,
this shirt is all wrong for you and anyone who is not living in 1991, so you
must burn it.”
I said to her, “I don’t
think that’s the kind of help he meant.”
“Well, it should be,” she
snapped.
Roscoe explained, “I’m
coming in and out of this fog and, as you know, when it hits full-on I seem to
lose any filter of propriety and just say whatever’s on my mind. Dean Krakas
will be here soon, and I can’t offend him. So, will you all please stay close
and interfere if it looks like I’m about to make a fool of myself?”
A few weeks ago, Roscoe was
offered to return to his old professorship at Fairburne College, for the
express purpose of serving on a special endowment board attached to one
specific donation. It seems one of the stipulations of this anonymous donation
is that certain professors, including Roscoe, have to be on this board to
decide what to do with the money; if even one doesn’t agree to serve, the
donation gets retracted. Another professor, Andy Wicks, has been circling
lately, trying to get Roscoe to commit.
Of course, if Roscoe does go
back, we lose him, and the salon loses him. Though, maybe if he’s away from
Applewood for a while, the mental fog will leave him alone. The dean of
humanities was coming tonight to get Roscoe’s decision, finally.
Mrs. C said to Roscoe, “So,
if you don’t want to offend the dean, I guess that means it’s because you’re
going to be working with him soon. You’ve made up your mind to leave Applewood,
and go back to Fairburne, then.” She looked crestfallen, in part, I’d imagine,
because she and Roscoe had just made up after a weeks-long fight.
A man’s voice cut straight
through Confictura all the way from the front door. “What a great little town,”
he said. “Such a quiet little burg. I love towns like this.” His words were
underscored by squeaking sneakers; and a moment later the man came into the
Riverview Room. The hook-nosed Professor Wicks was at his shoulder, but that
was the only thing that told us this man was Dean Krakas.
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the fourteenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get recipes
from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion tips
from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts every
Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Of course, not long after
Wilhelmina, Violet, and I resurfaced from our adventure underground on Friday
night, rumors started rolling about the hooded man haunting the secret tunnels
beneath the town. Okay, maybe that was our fault a little bit. We’d hardly kept
our voices down talking about it back at the café. And then there were the
fliers. Wilhelmina had sketched out a wanted poster with “Have you seen this
man?” in bold lettering at the top, copied it, and we all three handed them out
over the weekend and yesterday. So, you know, maybe that had something to do
with the spike in gossip.
Mark Raynid, the
“entertainment” columnist for the Applewood Timber--who is actually
little more than a town crier of hearsay, a scribe of scuttlebutt--Mark devoted
a special edition of his column last night to “hooded man sightings.” Which is
strange considering that before the three of us saw this guy skulking through the
underground tunnels, no one had ever mentioned him. Well, either Mr. Moleman
felt the need for a weekend out on the town, perhaps a few drinks at the
Sloshed Guzzler, maybe get his hood cleaned at the Fluf-N-Fold; or the town’s
imagination was starting to run wild. Whatever the explanation, Mark’s column
was hardly hurting for material.
And people were starting to
get nervous.
I attribute, then,
Confictura’s unusually busy past few days to this growing cloud of
apprehension. The prospect of a strange tall man running around with an
electrified lightning rod is a little less disturbing when you’re surrounded by
people. Add to that Confictura’s perpetually warm lighting, buzz of espresso
machines, and smell of apple tarts, and you’ve got an almost holiday atmosphere
of friends and family wrapped around you. Who can be scared in that?
Violet and I took it as a
hopeful sign when one of the people seeking refuge here was none other than our
Roscoe Belesprit. Since he and Mrs. Creaverton have been at war, we’ve hardly
seen him around, except for Wednesday night meetings of his “How to Write a
Novel in 30 Years” literary salon. On Sunday afternoon, though, he poked his
head in the door, ordered an almond milk latte and two of Mrs. C’s new vegan
cupcakes, and read in a corner of the Book Room. Neither of them started
arguing with the other. This was a huge step. So Violet, perhaps emboldened by
our recent adventure underground, decided to push them another step forward.
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the thirteenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get
recipes from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion
tips from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts
every Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
One of the biggest shards of
asphalt that pushed up after the 11/5 quake is located right in front of Our
Lord of the Ascension church, which the crooked Pastor Sweeney runs. The shard
comes up to Wilhelmina’s waist, and it’s surrounded by a whole lotta other
shards of street that are still tall enough to hide her legs. Violet and I,
both a good half-foot shorter than Wilhelmina, could’ve hidden in there for
weeks. Orange cones and various construction barricades with reflectors
encircle the whole area to try keeping people away from the perilous mess.
Well, there are fewer orange cones now. Pranks by a few mischievous teenagers
have been on the rise since the quake, too. I’m fairly sure that, somewhere in
this town, someone’s got an inordinate amount of orange traffic cones in their
closet.
The three of us walked over
to that biggest shard, skirting barricades and stepping carefully over smaller
debris. Loose pebbles and dirt right around that shard were relatively
undisturbed; even the pranksters really had no reason to be this far into the rubble.
We stood around the shard in
a little triangle. Wilhelmina gently scraped her palm over its peak, back and
forth, as though she were drawing her hand over a candle’s dainty flame. Violet
asked her, “Is anything coming back to you?”
“Something about sinking
down into the street,” Wilhelmina mumbled, confusion on her face. “But
obviously that must have been a dream. Either that or my imagination is on
overdrive.”
Violet said, “Do not be so
dismissive of your imagination. The subconscious talks to us mainly in dreams,
yes, but it can still whisper through our imaginations. Like we do with your
dress: try to see it in a different way. Maybe you did not literally sink into
the street. Be open to what your memory may be trying to tell you.”
Wilhelmina nodded. “I’ll
try.” For a while, she stared at the shard, her head cocked. Then she put her
hand out to touch it again. This time, she said, “It’s warm now. Yes. It was
warm the other night, too.”
Violet and I glanced at each
other. The street’s temperature was spontaneously spiking now? We both stepped
forward and touched the shard. I didn’t feel anything warmer than the humid
air. Judging by Violet’s bewildered expression, she didn’t either. We didn’t
have a chance to question this, though, as Wilhelmina was already moving away
from us.
She peered at the ground as
she walked. “There,” she said, pointing.
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the twelfth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the Café
Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get recipes
from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion tips
from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts every
Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
“These are the dean’s words,”
said Wicks. “It’s a game. It’s all a game, still is. You got yourself scouted
by the major leagues, and then instead of going to bat you sat down on home
plate and said no. Well, the majors are calling again. You’re getting a second
chance. By virtue of this endowment board, you’re getting a second chance. But
this time you’ve gotta play. And one of the things you need to understand is
how to survive this business.”
“Business?” said Roscoe. “We
are still talking about education, right?”
“Yes,” said Wicks
point-blank. “We sure as hell are. Rule number one, you don’t tell a good
student they’re good. You find fault. Especially with writers. Everyone thinks
they’re a writer. You throw ’em in the deep end--”
“I thought we were playing
baseball, now we’re swimming?” said Roscoe.
“You throw ’em,” said Wicks.
“Some sink. Some figure out how to swim. Those are the ones you lose. But most
of them, most of them, will keep doling out their money to anyone who keeps
offering a lifejacket.”
Slowly, Roscoe said,
“Professor, the level of your cynicism is nauseating.”
“It’s not just mine,” said
Wicks. “And it’s not just academia. There’s a whole industry devoted to keeping
beginner writers beginners. ‘Buy our new edition featuring this year’s rules.
You’d better buy it, you don’t want to get caught using last year’s rules.’
We’re competing with them. Come on, now, it makes sense. If a student doesn’t
have the confidence to move on from the classroom, they come back for an MFA,
or a second undergrad degree, or an alumni seminar. They buy our guides, attend
our workshops. Tell ’em they’re good and teach them practical skills, they
don’t need you anymore. Keep moving the goalpost, inject a little self-doubt
that you swoop in and cure each time, you’ve got ’em coming back for more,
every time.”
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the eleventh post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the Café
Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get recipes
from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion tips
from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts every
Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Yesterday morning, Pastor
Sweeney held his hands aloft and posed on top of his church’s front steps,
trumpeting his pre-service homily. Even in winter he wears no coat, so the
sleeves of his vestments gather down at his elbows. The forty-something’s skin
is so white you can see his veins coursing through it, like blue blood
dripping. He used to do this thing on the steps all the time, back before he
was indicted on the money laundering charges. Yeah, he was cleared, but
everyone knows he was just as guilty as the guy he supposedly snitched on, who
ended up taking the fall for the whole ring. Even Father Jack across town, if
asked, gently admits that Sweeney must answer for his actions--not with God, or
Jesus, or the church, but with the people of Applewood. Yep, everyone knows the
truth about Sweeney.
Well, not everyone knows it.
Or maybe I should say not everyone wants to believe it.
Sunday after Sunday since the
charges against him were dropped, Sweeney preaches his services to either a few
loyal dozens or just one, depending on how you look at the numbers. His
followers usually act as one shared mind, and since he’s been back they act on
his behalf, spreading his word by cold-calling, recruiting for his church by handing
out glossy leaflets. But this was the first Sunday he’d come back out to do his
pre-service homily, a way of “grasping wayward souls in the community and
pulling them in.” His words.
Mrs. Creaverton, Doc Graham,
Violet, and I had come out of the Café Confictura to watch his show. The four
of us made up kind of a human gate across the street from the Our Lord of the
Ascension chapel: Graham and Violet held hands, Violet’s left hand was on Mrs.
C’s right shoulder, and Mrs. C’s left arm linked with my right. None other than
Nessie Fyne stood beside the preacher man; and none of us believed it was by
coincidence that his first public outing was happening the day before the vote
to remove Mrs. C from the Merchants Association, a vote Nessie was driving. As
rumors of the joint Fyne-Sweeney appearance began to float over the weekend, so
too did rumors that Violet was the one who unwittingly prompted it. On Friday, our
Fastionista helped Mitzy Binkowski, owner of the stationary and pen store
Watermarks, find a stellar outfit for an important dinner, and because of this
Mitzy all but promised her vote and four others to Mrs. C. Apparently, Nessie
now felt she needed to step up her game.
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the tenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the Café
Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get recipes
from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion tips
from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts every
Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Well, Violet had a happy
little dinner with our fine doctor Thursday night.
The two finally carved out
an evening to get together. Violet’s been keeping Mrs. C company during this
nerve-wracking week while the Merchants Association decides the café’s fate; but
Mrs. C finally realized that, as much as she and Violet love each other, they
needed a night off from each other when some Yahtzee dice nearly turned into deadly
weapons.
The date seemed to do
wonders for Violet’s mood. This morning, she was giggling and whispering on the
café phone, an old touch-tone desk model that Mrs. C keeps under the front
counter. I don’t know how, but Violet can hold down the register during Friday
morning rush while trading sweet nothings. When I went up for my latte, I leaned
toward the receiver and called out, “Hey, Doc, from the way she’s smiling I
take it you two kids had fun last night.”
Violet laughed. “Oui. And why was it so fun?”
She turned the receiver to
me so I could hear him answer, “Because I left my baseball cap at home.” He
sounded like he was rolling his eyes while he said it. But he also sounded like
he was in heaven, so I guessed the dinner was worth the sacrifice.
For a while, even Violet
finally hung up, it seemed nothing was going to bring her down from her cloud,
at least not until bell bottoms make their next comeback. She was even talking
about what a beautiful day it was, which was strange because if Violet could
hibernate anytime the temperature dipped below seventy degrees, we wouldn’t see
her again until Memorial Day. And, yes, it was a beautiful day for February, if
we’re talking sunshine. But no one wanted to remind Violet that the beauty was
deceptive. You know those winter days where the sun is so cheerful and beaming
that you can almost see the icicles dripping, and the plowed white mounds
shrinking, and you’re bursting to go outside after so many months of dead cold?
You’ve grown used to the skeletons of trees and the muted, icy air. Everywhere
you walk you crunch through the patina of frost over stale snow. And then one
day you look out your window, and there’s this gorgeous sun beckoning you to
the party that is winter’s end.
Then you walk outside and
it’s still, like, -49 degrees and the first hit of wind cuts through your soul
like death metal music, and the one fleeting thought you have before you run
back inside to put on no less than a Sherpa-approved coat is that you remember
just how deceiving looks can be.
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the ninth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the Café
Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get recipes
from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion tips
from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts every
Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
While Mrs. Creaverton’s been
warring with Nessie and now the Merchants Association, and Violet’s been
running hot and cold on Doc Graham’s invitation to dinner (she’s rescheduled
twice now), Roscoe’s had a bit of a mystery on his hands. We still had no idea
who the strange man was who’d eavesdropped on his salon last week. Mr. X had
lurked in the shadows, curled like a vulture’s talon over his tea. Even more
unsettling than that? He didn’t just go away. He’s been circling.
Anytime Roscoe’s seen him
it’s been a quick glimpse--while Roscoe’s in line at the grocery store he’ll
see Mr. X dash through the sliding exit doors; when Roscoe goes out for his
brisk morning walk he’ll see Mr. X walk even brisker around a corner up ahead.
Each time, Roscoe calls out to the strange man, and then the man disappears.
Sometimes, it seems, literally. This is how Roscoe’s been able to rule out at
least one possibility of who this guy is.
“He’s not the government,”
Roscoe told me yesterday over lattes and Mrs. C’s trial recipe of vegan
blueberry cake.
“Why would the government be
following you?” I asked.
“I said he’s not the
government.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but why
even consider the possibility?”
“My teaching style might be
construed as anarchic at times.”
“Anarchic?” I said. “Hey, I
wouldn’t put it past you to overthrow one of those blogs on writing that just
regurgitates the same bad advice over and over--and, in fact, I’d commend you
for overthrowing them--but I don’t think you’ve got the government too
worried.”
“No?”
“Roscoe,” I said, “you’re
teaching twenty-two-year-olds the difference between writing literature and
writing whatever comes into their heads. No one’s going to DEFCON 1 over you.”
I love Roscoe, but sometimes it’s evident that growing up with a Civil Rights
activist mom who saw the shadowy side of government took its toll.
“Sure,” he said, “because
those in power have never tried to silence literature or teachers of it.”
Well, okay. He had a point
there.
He added, “Then there’s my
ex-wife.”
“You think she’s worried
you’ll overthrow the government?”
“She wishes I would.”
“I don’t think I knew you
were married.”
“Oh, yes. It was a civil
separation. I saw her at our daughter’s wedding a couple years ago. She left me
because I wasn’t politically active enough. She’s been on more than a few
lists, I’m sure.”
“I see,” I said. “Well,
then, in that case how do you know this guy isn’t from the government?”
Roscoe shook his head as he
sipped his coffee. “He’s too quiet. They like there to be a to-do when they
take in a rabble-rouser,” he explained. “My mother taught me that. Rather,
those who arrested her, gave her trouble with the IRS, harassed her, they
taught me that. They make a show of their strength. Making a to-do gives the
public a sense of security, whether it’s really there or not. ‘We’re looking
out for you, we caught the bad guy.’ At the same time, they can deepen divides
in the masses. Inevitably, some will side with the activist, some against him.
It benefits the establishment to make a show of their arrests. I’m fairly
certain that’s the only explanation why Cops has been on the air for so
long.”
“The government does like
its secrets, though,” I said. “They’ve got their dark corners.”
“Yes,” he said. “But those
corners are so dark, few people know they’re even there. Those operatives don’t
chance coming out from the shadows to get you. They pull you in.”
Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the eighth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get
recipes from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion
tips from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts
every Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
The taco buffet was set up
in the Book Room. You can pretty much guess how this room is decorated. But my
favorite touches are the mahogany rolling library ladders. They’re on the side
walls, which are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves save the doorway to a pocket
room. Just that sound of them, sliding down to explore a new literary time and
place, makes me want to take a day, curl up in one of the armchairs in here,
and get lost. A few of the tables have glass tops encasing replicate manuscript
pages from famous works, and each centerpiece is a stack of miniature notebooks
and a fully stocked pen cup, shaped like an ink well, in case anyone gets
inspired by the worlds around them. Just being in here expands your mind in all
sorts of ways, not the least of which is in compassion and understanding for a
story different from your own, and different from your own assumptions. Little
wonder why Mrs. C chose it for the meeting.
Tonight, the tables were
pushed off-center to make room for the buffet, and the staff were just
finishing bringing out the buffet servers and chafing dishes, full of all the
taco fixings, when the members started to come through the front door. Violet
was standing guard, letting in the members but turning away the few would-be
customers the café gets at six p.m., and explaining Confictura was closed for a
private function. For the inconvenience, she handed out coupons for free café
drinks.
Roscoe, Graham, and I were
the exceptions. Graham and Violet were supposed to go on their first date this
past weekend, but they’d postponed since Violet wanted to be with Mrs. C as
much as possible during the three torturous days of anxiety and waiting. Graham
had agreed immediately to join Roscoe and me tonight in showing our moral
support; plus, I think, since Graham missed out on the date, he wanted to get a
little extra Violet-time in. The three of us would stay quiet and wait in the
front room; that was the plan.
At
least, that was the plan until Nessie galumphed in.
