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.
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