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.
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