Hot Dish (26 page)

She tipped open the oven door and peeked inside. The top of the macaroni was bubbling nicely; the golden crumbs needed only a minute more to turn crispy-crunchy good.

“Not that I begrudge the town their every effort. I hope it works. I don’t think it stands a chance in hell of doing so.”

“How come?”

“There’s no seed money here, Steve. Most of the people make less than twenty-five a year. In order to survive, this town needs a bunch of people willing to invest in little cottage industries. And that means someone needs some cash or a reason to invest here. And there is none!

“There’s no freeway within ten miles, no industry to attract people—except for Ken’s hockey stick plant and”—she glanced right and left and lowered her voice confidingly—”rumor has it that Minnesota Hockey Stix is not as financially stable as it ought to be, despite its recent expansion. If Ken pulls out, there goes another forty or fifty families. The economy of a small town is sort of like a coral reef. The balance is incredibly intricate and delicate. Ten families leave and the ripple effect is felt everywhere from the public school assistance from the state to the amount of gas sold. Fifty families leave and the impact is devastating. It’s not just his
employees. It’s the people who plow his parking lot, the local drivers he uses to ship his products, and the maintenance service he employs, the café where most of the people at the plant eat lunch every day.

“It doesn’t help that the casino has siphoned off a lot of what tourism the town had. The snow has been crappy for three years running and that means no snow trade tourists.” She took a sip and mused. “There’s nothing here but lakes and woods, and in case you haven’t tumbled to it, Steve, Minnesota isn’t exactly short on lakes.”

“Then the town must be happy with what’s happening outside,” Steve said, pointing out the window at the near whiteout conditions on the street.

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Jenn said with a little sigh. Fawn Creek just couldn’t seem to catch a break. “All this snow is great,
if
it had either shown up earlier or held off a little longer. As it is, it’s just going to keep travelers from heading up here for the sesquicentennial.”

The whole conversation was depressing her way out of proportion to what this town meant to her. Time to change the subject.

She opened the oven, slid on a mitt, and took out the concoction, setting it in front of Steve. She found silverware and handed him a fork. She spooned a portion onto a plate and slid it in front of Steve. “Dig in but blow on it first or you’ll burn your mouth.”

He perked right up, shoving his fork under a huge load of food and impatiently blowing at his fork until she nodded. Then he stuffed the whole forkful into his mouth.

Euphoric revelation transformed his face.

He swallowed, forked up another mouthful, puffed quickly on it, shoved it in, chewed, and swallowed.

“What is this?” he asked through another mouthful of food.

She shrugged.

“No. No, I have to know the name of it,” he insisted. “This is … I’ve never had anything like this. Well, like it maybe, but this is … this is transcendent.”

She understood. She felt that way about good food, too.

“What’s it called?” he persevered.

“I dunno. Hotdish?”

“Hotdish,” he breathed rapturously.

8:30 p.m.

Smelka’s Café

Steve, finishing his first plate of hotdish in record time, heaped his plate full again and began on that. Jenn watched him eat, sipping aquavit, and nodding contentedly. This was what she loved most about cooking: people loving what she made, discovering their inner gluttons, realizing their sybaritic potential. So many people went through life with their palates dulled by convenience and expediency. Steve had an appetite. He enjoyed things, people, food, conversation. He probably really enjoyed sex, too. Not that she’d ever find out. But a woman could wonder, speculate. It had been so long since she’d even speculated, she felt a guilty enjoyment in it.

She wondered if underneath that white shirt, Steve had any muscle tone. He didn’t look like the type who belonged to a gym. But he had a nice, flat stomach. Nice broad wrists, too, probably from the sculpting. Strong-looking, tensile.

“This is what you do?” he interrupted her pleasantly lascivious thoughts. “Teach people how to make hotdish?”

If only. She cupped her cheek in her hand and smiled at him. “There’s no recipe for hotdish. It’s just what you have on hand and how you put it together. It’s never the same twice. I couldn’t make that again if I tried.”

“It’s art,” he intoned soberly.

“It’s food,” she corrected, pleased nonetheless by the compliment. Steve might just get it. Whatever “it” was. She wondered if he was a good kisser. He’d taste like aquavit and hotdish. She took another sip.

“Where’d you learn all this?” he asked. “From your grandmother?”

She snorted again and wondered what was up with that. She generally eschewed snorting but this was Fawn Creek. She wasn’t trying to impress Steve with her femininity—not because she didn’t want to; she just figured it was a moot point—and what the hell? “Hell, no. My grandmother had staff.”

“Staff.”

“Yup. You know. Maid, cook, housekeeper, gardener. Staff. My parents did, too, once upon a time. That’s where I learned a lot of my stuff. From Tina, the housekeeper. She was Jamaican and she could cook anything.” She wondered where Tina was now. “I think of everything my mom misses, she misses Tina the most.”

“And you? What did you miss?”

A face popped into her head, a square face covered in freckles, surrounded by bright copper curls. Tess. She didn’t think about Tess too often anymore. Time had healed that wound, at least. But thinking about Tess now, Jenn felt like there was something undone about her memory. Like Jenn had missed something important, somehow. Like she’d missed the funeral (she hadn’t). It was weird. She couldn’t think what it would be.

Jenn tipped the rest of the aquavit into her mouth and gave a little involuntary shiver.

“I’m sorry,” he said so quietly that she wondered for a second if she’d said something aloud, something revealing. She looked up and found him studying her, appealing and somber and concerned. She didn’t want that. If he was concerned, it made her suspicious that there was something to be concerned about and there wasn’t. She had everything under control. On autopilot. Best to steer this conversation back to safe—to less uncomfortable territory.

She leaned over the counter. The room rocked a little then steadied. “What are you doing here, Steve? What are you really doing here?”

“I want to see my—your—butter head,” he said.

“Nah.” She wagged her finger under his nose. “There’s more to it than that.”

“There is?”

“Yeah, you’re looking for something. Something you’ve lost.”

“Jesus!” He blinked. “What else did you learn from that Jamaican housekeeper? Fortune-telling?”

“A killer jerk chicken.” She eased back onto her side of the counter, feeling very wise and very, very old. She sighed. Oh, well, if you couldn’t be a nymph, you might as well be a kick-ass crone. Her and the Delphi oracle, sistahs.

The thing was, the real thing was, that she
liked
Steve. She liked his honesty, his charm, and the open-faced pleasure he took in almost everything, including his own mythology. She also liked his … wrists, a lot, and she suspected a lot of women did and that made her feel a little low because undoubtedly they were all glamorous young women, and a man as famous as Steve would take pleasure in all that young adoration.
Ah, hell. Steve would take pleasure in any adulation. “Answer the question.”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking thoroughly guilty. “Inspiration, I suppose. Why?”

“You need my advice,” she said, coming to a sudden decision. That in itself should have raised warning flags. She didn’t make sudden decisions. Ever. Oh well, one for the books … “I’ve been following your career—”

“You’ve been following my career?” he interjected, flattered.

“Come on. You’re being coy again, right?”

“No!” he denied.

“You’re
Steve Jaax
. You’re like an art icon. And
you
carved
my
head in butter and then went on to tell the whole world that while you were doing it you rediscovered your talent and found your focus. How could I not follow your career after that?”

She nodded. Her vision swam. No more nodding. “I’ve seen pictures of everything you’ve done. I’ve seen most of it in person. The stuff that’s not in private collections, that is.”

She waited. He waited. “You’re not going to ask me what I thought of them, are you?” she finally said. “‘Cause you’re afraid of what I’ll say. Me. A nobody. Well,” she said because false modesty was something she never could stand, “really someone pretty big but not someone whose opinion you would normally care about.”

“I care about everyone’s opinion,” he said.

Damn. He was telling the truth. “God, that’s gotta be rough.”

“You have no idea,” he whispered.

“Look. Ask me.”

“Really?” he said, doubtfully.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Do you like my stuff?”

“The older work is terrific. Your new stuff sucks.”

He stared at her for a full five seconds before slamming his palms down on the counter and surging up over it like Swamp Thing. He looked pretty impressive standing above her, snarling. “
You set me up
!”

Hastily, she reached under the shelf and uncovered the domed plate of
semlor
she’d seen on her earlier forays there. She plopped three small, golden, cream-filled buns on a new plate and slid it under his tensed jaw. At once, his jaw untensed. Slowly he melted back into his seat, his scowl replaced by an unwillingly interested expression. Food, the Great Leveler.

“Eat.”

She didn’t have a clue where she had grown the
cajones
to talk to him like this. She wasn’t an art critic. She wasn’t even the kind of person who
liked giving advice. Okay, that was a lie, but she didn’t give advice out about stuff she didn’t have any expertise in. Okay, another lie. She’d never given out art advice. Whatever. The whole impulse was bizarre. Maybe it was being here in Fawn Creek where she wasn’t so much Jenn Lind as Jenny Hallesby. Maybe it was because he seemed so oddly isolated.

Maybe it was because she was drunk.

He took a small, grudging bite of the bun.

“What do you think?” Now she was being coy. She could tell what he thought from the look on his face.

“Oh … Oh!” He took another bite and closed his eyes, the cream filling oozing out the back end of the bun. “What is this?”

“A cream bun.” She laughed at the look on his face. He finished the first one and started on the second. “Want some coffee?”

“No,” he said, chewing away. Then he paused and cast her an aggrieved look. “You hurt my feelings.”

“Look, Steve, art-wise you’re coasting. If I can see it, others can. The real question is why your manager or agent or whatever the hell you guys have didn’t say anything.”

“Because you’re wrong?” he suggested around a mouthful of almond cream.

“No, I’m not.” She leaned over the counter again. “Steve, you’re making money off being you.”

There. She’d said it. She drew back and waited for his reaction. He licked the tips of his fingers clean.

“’Course, there’s a chance you just don’t have anything more to say,” she suggested. “Maybe you’ve reached a place where anything you come up with will be the epitaph for your career. It’s been a good career.”

“It’s still a good career,” he said as he reached for another
semlor
.

“Have you ever considered hanging it all up?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should,” she suggested kindly. “You have to be pushing fifty. Maybe the best isn’t yet to come. Maybe the best is all in the rearview mirror. If all any of it means to you anymore is a chance to see your name in
People
magazine …” She trailed off. “I mean, I’m not trying to be cruel here or anything but—”

“Man, then I’d hate to hear you when you were.” Remarkably, he no longer sounded all that offended. He sounded …
flattered
? Whatever Steve Jaax wasn’t, he was seriously odd.

“You’re tough,” he said admiringly.

“On you,” she admitted. What had gotten into her? The burn of “make it righteousness” had left, leaving an empty feeling behind. What right did
she have to bitch anyone out about pandering to their own celebrity? She was exhibit number one. “I’m a marshmallow when it comes to me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Do you realize I have spent twenty years becoming the consummate Minnesotan in order to escape Minnesota? How’s that for irony?”

“So what? You created a persona, an image. Nothing wrong with that.”

He was a much nicer man than she was a woman. She still had a crush on him, she realized.

“The thing to keep sight of is that at least you’re doing what you love to do, and you’re really, really good at it,” he said. “You must be to have attracted Dwight Davies’s attention. The man’s an asshole but he knows quality when he sees it.”

“Crass commercialism,” she said tonelessly.

“Why would you say that?” For the first time since she’d met him early that morning, he looked annoyed. “You’re doing what you love and getting paid a shit load to do it. What more can you ask?”

“Is this what I love?” she mused quietly. “I don’t know that it is. I’ll bet you always wanted to be an artist or something like it. I bet you had a soldering gun when you were eight or something, right?”

“Yes. So?”

“Well, I never set out to be a lifestyle coach or a cooking maven or felt some inner calling to bring the torch of domestic enlightenment out of the hinterlands to illuminate the chaotic modern world.”

His mouth twitched into a smile. “So what did you want to be?”

“I can’t remember,” she said, a little sadly, a little drunkenly. “Probably a lawyer. Don’t all ambitious little suburban girls want to grow up to be lawyers? It doesn’t really matter what I wanted. I just know it wasn’t this. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be anything. I’ve just wanted to succeed. And here I am, forty years old, speeding down a highway straight to the Promised Land of Commercial Success. And you know what I see when I look in the rearview mirror?”