Talking “The Great Taco Debacle”

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.

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Talking “Feelin’ Blue”

Welcome to the intro video and an excerpt from the seventh 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.

Worst among Graham’s “style choices”--if you can call baggy, worn jeans and T-shirts style choices--is his baseball cap. He’s got this great curly mop of hair you can get a glimpse of, but mostly it’s shoved up into this red cap that’s quilted and shiny, like a puffer jacket. When he’s under bright light the glare is almost as cringe-inducing as the cap itself. It’s got the logo of some minor league ball team on it: snorting, angry oxen yoked together, pulling the name Florida Crackers. Apparently, this is an actual breed of cattle, which the small City of Kickensack in the Sunshine State chose as their mascot. (Though no one from Applewood can talk because, being as near as we are to Hartford, our minor league team is the Yard Goats. No, I’m really not making that up.)

Now, you might think this is awfully petty of Violet, rejecting the advances of a perfectly good suitor just because he can’t dress himself properly. However, I ask you to consider the following:

1) Twice now Graham has shown up to the café and asked Violet to dinner, and she’s told him she’ll go if he follows some of her style suggestions, but he’s refused. I think it’s a point of pride for him.

2) Imagine your own deal-breaker. This perfect person comes along into your life, perfect except for the deal-breaker. Your heart sinks, you get that yearning in your gut. If only that one thing were different! But it’s not. And it means the world to you. And you simply can’t compromise on it or else you’d be compromising yourself.

That’s what style means to Violet, but it’s about more than just looking good. It’d be one thing if Graham just didn’t have a clue about style but wanted to learn. I mean, the woman makes clients over all the time, it’s what she does and she loves helping people look their best. But the reason she loves helping them look their best is because she believes that if you look your best, you feel your best, and happiness is really what it’s all about. She believes that what a person chooses to portray about himself says a lot about the type of person he is.

I think she sees in Doc Graham a man who, yes, has his professional life together and, yes, would most likely wear actual clothes when taking her on a date. But look at what he wore tonight, a Friday night, to try wooing his elusive love: jeans, T-shirt, cap. Based on that, she sees beyond the honeymoon phase, to their weekends spent in front of various sporting events or video games, only going out to grab a beer at the Sloshed Guzzler or takeout from China Hank’s.

At least, that’s what she usually sees. Tonight, though, as though the young doctor brought with him sun to burn through Violet’s brume, she stared into his eyes, and saw something else.

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Talking “Writing Intimacy in Literature”

Welcome to the intro video and an excerpt from the sixth 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.

(Uh, just a note here in case you’re as surprised as I was the first time I overheard how blunt the salon can get: as Roscoe put it to me, when discussing literature, especially that borne by the discussion’s very participants, the soul is revealed. It’s like a scaled-back group therapy session, if you’re doing it right. They share their secrets, their fears, their desires. They give appreciated advice. They give unwelcome advice. They cut too deep and hit nerves and then have to heal together. In my opinion, if anyone wanted to write about an intimate situation, forget sex and just take minutes at one of these meetings.)

Roscoe said to Portia, “Let me get this straight. You think that because you’re controlling the message, the sex scene is not degrading, but empowering. Even though, by your own admission, it’s essentially the same as what a man might write.”

Portia shoved her hands in the pockets of her slacks. She paced up the right side of the table, and then nodded. “Yeah. Exactly. As a woman, I can write just as raw as a man. You know, equality. Ever hear of that? Hello, feminism?”

“You’re throwing around your words again,” said Roscoe. “Feminism was never about women being the same as men. Just the opposite. It was about respecting the different attributes women contribute to society, and seeing those different attributes as equal to what men bring to society. It was about giving women the same right to choose that men have. Paying them equal amounts of income, not just for doing the same job out in the workplace, but for doing the equally important work of keeping a home, raising a family, if that’s what they chose to do.”

“And how can a man lecture a woman on what feminism is?” said Portia.

“I listened to my mother,” said Roscoe. “She was a teacher and an activist. She went to jail for her rights. I’m offended that the voice she fought for is being used not only to throw yet another poorly written sex scene on the pile, but to do that in the name of feminism. You’re twisting the concept, so much so that you’ve wrung every last drop of meaning out of it.”

“I’ve written a scene where a woman is in control,” said Portia. “She’s calling the shots. Like you said, she’s controlling the message.”

“But this is my point: what is that message?”

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Talking “Taking the Steak Out”

Welcome to the intro video and an excerpt from the fifth 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.

Mrs. C rolled down her window and said, “Terry McQueen.”

“Ah, no, ma’am,” the police officer said. “The name’s Harry Foster.”

She said, “Dear, I know you’re not Terry. I meant you remind me of him. Surely this isn’t the first time you’ve heard that.”

“I don’t think I know who that is, ma’am.”

Mrs. C bopped herself on the forehead. “That’s right. I always forget. He used to tell me he liked the way I called him Terry, but mostly he went by Steve.”

I said, “Steve McQueen? Like, Magnificent Seven, Great Escape Steve McQueen?”

“He had this dimple…” She giggled, ducking her head. “I won’t ask you if the resemblance goes that far, though.”

Officer Papillon was trying not to smile. “Uh, this here’s a no-parking zone,” he said to Violet. “You’re going to have to move the vehicle.”

Mrs. C interrupted: “We can’t do that right now, hon.”

“Oh,” he said, “broke down? We can call a tow for you.”

“We’re just having a little lunch,” said Mrs. C. “Would you like some? I’ve got more bowls.”

Foster shifted his belt. “If there’s no problem with the car, you’re going to have to move along.”

Violet tried to agree. Mrs. C said, “Harry Foster! Of course. How’s your mother doing with her hip? You know, a plant-based diet can help bone strength, even in older adults. I’ll be happy to stop by this week with some of my newfound advice.” Then she said low, her eyebrow lifted, “It’d be a shame if she fell and broke it again.”

Foster took a moment, and then nodded. “I’m gonna need you all to step out of the vehicle.”

“For what?” cried Mrs. C.

“You just issued a threat to an officer, ma’am.”

“Threat?” she said. “No, no, no. That was a bribe, man. You let us go, I’ll help out your mom. Don’t you know your threats from your bribes?”

“So you were trying to bribe an officer?”

“Exactly.” She smiled with relief.

“Yeah. I’m gonna need you all to step out of the vehicle.” He waved at his partner to join him from the car.

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Talking “Breezy Poncho Bliss”

Welcome to the intro video and an excerpt from the fourth 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.

Something’s been bugging Violet for a few days but she keeps denying that anything’s wrong, so I decided yesterday morning that the best thing to do was needle her until she realized that the quickest way to shut me up is to just tell me what’s going on. I came into the café, paid Violet for my caramel latte, and made a quip about her outfit: white slacks, a white turtleneck that made her short black hair look extra dramatic, and a silky white, black, and red plaid scarf knotted in front.

I said, “White after Labor Day, huh? Kind of a fashion faux pas, there, Violet.”

Had she been feeling right, I would have gotten a glare, a snarky comment, or possibly a scone thrown at me. I’d not only questioned Violet’s fashion sense, but I made the equally offensive mistake of being passé. White after Labor Day is apparently fine now, provided you’re wearing a heavier material. I made the mistake last year of doubting Violet on that and was assigned mounds of required reading from Harper’s BAZAAR to Vogue.

Instead of flogging me, however, her moue only deepened into a full-on frown. She patted my hand. “You are a good friend,” she said in the affected French accent that goes beautifully with everything she wears. “You are trying to annoy me so I begin to talk, and who knows what comes out, including what is bothering me.”

“Well, whatever works,” I said.

She came around from the register and sat with me at a table in the front room, but near the far wall. The midmorning frenzy had by then evaporated. This was a normal lull, by the way; we were all happy to see that, throughout the week, there still were frenzies at all the normal frenzy times: early morning coffee fill-up, midmorning coffee break, mid-afternoon coffee refill. Whatever damage Mark Raynid had done with his article about Mrs. Creaverton’s new diet, and whatever damage Nessie was working on with Pastor Sweeney, it hadn’t as yet kept the folks of Applewood from getting their caffeine fixes.

“I have been thinking,” she said, “of Dr. Graham Teek.”

“Oh,” I said, stretching the word out as long as the smitten looks she’d given Graham when she met him last week.

Instantly, her cheeks matched the red in her scarf. “This is not what bothers me, what you are thinking. There is no chance of romance. He wears a baseball cap,” she said as explanation.

I wondered if she was in denial of her own feelings or if she just didn’t want to admit them aloud. I let that drop for now and sipped my latte. “Okay, so then what’s up?”

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Talking “Roscoe Belesprit’s 9 ½ Rules of Writing”

Welcome to the intro video and an excerpt from the third 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.

It’s been three days and none of us still has any idea just what Nessie might be up to going into Pastor Sweeney’s church like she did. I mean, she went in on a Sunday morning, so there’s always the possibility she was just taking in a service. She spends almost as much time telling people how Christian she is as she spends snapping selfies at the soup kitchen, selfies at the children’s hospital, selfies at the Book Mobile…So one would imagine the woman might sometimes, you know, go to church. But Father Jack’s service over at St. Francis is where she’s been going ever since Sweeney was brought up on charges. And that glare she shot at Confictura seemed to virtually scream that she was seeing Pastor Sweeney for some reason connected to the café, or the people in it.

Not knowing what’s going on has us all a little on edge, and so tonight’s meeting of Roscoe’s writing salon was probably not the best time for all of his students to up the stakes of what I guess can be called their protest. They’d been pestering Roscoe about something for a couple of weeks--until tonight, I didn’t know what for--but they wanted something and he said no, and all of it came to a head tonight.

At 7:30, when the salon meets, their big, round table was still empty save Roscoe. He wondered if that had anything to do with Nessie and the article in the Applewood Timber last week that sabotaged Mrs. Creaverton’s dance, which had been set to start last Saturday night at 7:30. I said that it was probably a coincidence. That, or maybe people were just rediscovering their love of the Jeopardy!/Wheel of Fortune hour. Then Clarke walked in, a small white paper clutched in his hand.

Clarke, presumably his last name, is all he goes by because he feels that a writer who goes by only one name carries an air of mystery. He’s twenty-two and wears a short Afro. He has these flashes of genius in the otherwise nebulous thoughts he’s been conveying, both on the page and in person, since the 11/5 quake. I didn’t know him before then, but he was a valedictorian. People say he could quote Langston Hughes, Pearl S. Buck, and Salman Rushdie. His plan was to take five years off after high school to save as much as he could for tuition, since substantial scholarships are about as real as the emperor’s new clothes these days. Now, unless this affliction brought on by 11/5 is cured somehow, it’s hard to see Clarke realizing the education, the future, he was destined for.

Tonight, he was wearing his usual three-piece suit, with one of my favorite ties, this Art Deco design. He also wore a blue ski mask. This is not a usual addition to the ensemble.

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Talking “Cashew Chicken…with a Twist”

Welcome to the intro video and an excerpt from the second 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.

So, the 11/5 quake left Beech Street with shards of road sticking up like a punk rocker’s over-gelled hair. I’m not sure if it’s because the street, home to Applewood’s business center, is impassable, or if the town’s residents are just suffering from some form of fatigue, but since the quake our nightlife is little more than crickets. Used to be, come Saturday night you could find folks out at arthouse screenings, antique shows, book readings. We had live music everywhere; we had dances. Now all we have is karaoke night at the Sloshed Guzzler, which, as you can probably guess from the name, is the type of bar with sticky floors and that stale beer smell that stays with you for the rest of your life. Sort of like if I say, “high school biology lab where you had to dissect a frog” you can still smell the formaldehyde.

A couple weeks ago, Mrs. Creaverton started bustling around the Café Confictura, brainstorming ideas about how to breathe a little life back into Saturdays. Partly, I’m sure, she’s feeling amped since she’s at the start of this new diet makeover/lifestyle change, whatever you want to call it. Partly, she’s ever the businesswoman, and she knows that “Happy Fun Night sponsored by Café Confictura” is a nice bit of advertising for her. But mostly, I think, she wants to help folks. Those whose minds were affected somehow by the quake have been automatons in their own lives. No joy, no ambition. They roll through one day after the last, numb and foggy, where once they shone. I miss how they brightened the café, the town. Most of us who haven’t been affected keep trying to reach them, calling their names in whatever dark wood has swallowed them, hoping to catch a glimpse of their light. And Mrs. C’s contribution right now is to turn quiet Saturday night on its ear.

She kicked her party-planning mode into high gear and got the county Historic and Tourism Commission to donate an evening in this barn that is Applewood’s contribution to the long list of places George Washington supposedly slept. “Dancin’ through the Decades” was Mrs. C’s idea, a town dance designed for everyone to stop sitting on their booties and start shaking them from the Charleston to the Hustle to the Time Warp to the Bus Stop. Within a few days the coffee wasn’t the only thing causing a buzz at the café, and my guess is that with so many people excited about the idea we would’ve had a decent turnout no matter what. But Mrs. C got it in her head to pester the entertainment reporter from the Applewood Timber for a story, for exposure. Mark Raynid is his name, and she finally got him to come into the café for an interview this past Friday, the day before the dance.

Mark sort of looks like a stick figure someone might doodle on a Sloshed Guzzler napkin. His limbs are rubbery, his hair is scant. He and Mrs. Creaverton were at one of the front tables next to mine, finishing up her interview and lattes, when in walked Roscoe Belesprit followed by a man I’d never met.

Roscoe’s trying to grow his hair out. When he was younger--I’ve seen a picture--it was thick, strikingly beautifully black against his brown skin. It’s thinner now, and mostly gray, and I’m hoping he doesn’t cut it anytime soon. The man following him was closer to my age, late thirties I guessed, Mediterranean white, slender but with a good build. He wore a red quilted baseball cap made of that shiny puffer jacket material.

Roscoe went over to Mrs. C first. If one day he were to walk into the café to find a time machine has landed with Hemingway waiting to ask Roscoe’s advice on dialogue, our retired English professor would go over to Mrs. C first. “Phillipa,” he said, the Boston Brahmin wafting smooth as smoke from his lips, “lovely as always to see you.”

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Talking “86 the Cow Paste”

Welcome to the intro video and an excerpt from the first 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.

Please, please, grab a coffee. Or whatever your beverage of choice: tea, Scotch, whatever it is, that drink you like to cradle in your hands and sip. If you were here, and I wish you were, here at my favorite table across from Café Confictura’s front counter, you’d be getting that drink on the house because first-time customers drink free (well, you’d have to bring your own Scotch, or just ask the owner nicely for a shot from her private stash). “You gotta give to get”: that’s one of Mrs. Phillipa Creaverton’s rules of business. Her rules have kept Confictura up and running for nearly forty-five years. “You gotta give to get.” It’s sort of like “you’ve got to spend money to make money,” only a little more Dale Carnegie. And Mrs. Creaverton knows her Dale Carnegie. Although, he asked her in ’67 to please stop calling him “her” Dale Carnegie because even though their friendship was entirely innocent he was concerned people might get the wrong idea.

In the more general sense, “here” is our little Applewood, Connecticut, right smack in the heart of the state. If you have occasion to come through town, don’t mind our main street, Beech Street--they’re working on fixing it up after what happened a couple Novembers ago. Maybe you saw it on the news? We netted a minute and fifty seconds on the nationals: “freak geological event.” We even made it to Canada: “mysterious orogeny.” Whatever you want to call it, it means we all woke up that November fifth to shards of asphalt heaving upward, leaving the street impassable.

Thing is, though--and this is what none of the news reports understood--it wasn’t just geological, and Beech Street wasn’t the only place affected, though it was hit the worst. Storefronts all over town were suddenly chipped, stinking of mold. You know those grassy strips between the curb and the sidewalk? Those turned dry as straw. Café Confictura was one of two businesses spared, even though it’s right on Beech Street too. The other was Ambrosia, a bakery across town. Bizzaro. But that’s Applewood’s only weird thing, I promise.

Oh, and the ghosts. I mean, we’re a small town in Connecticut. Of course we have ghosts. But ever since the “mysterious orogeny” they’ve kicked the hauntings up a few notches, from freaking out cats and knocking over Hummels to all-out Amityville. Even Mrs. Creaverton’s husband has reportedly popped up, and he’s been gone four years.

For the most part, though, Mrs. Creaverton has other things on her mind than the inevitable visits from her deader half. Her own mortality, for one. Case in point, the scene from earlier today.

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