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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