Hot Dish (2 page)

How the hell had she come to be sitting in a poker tournament across the table from Ken Holmberg, a middle-aged, small-town potentate sporting a
mosquito
:
the minnesota state bird
cap, with a hundred thousand dollar cash prize for first place and the fate of a town, and one she wasn’t all that fond of to begin with, riding on the outcome? She wasn’t a gambler.

Oh, yeah, Before the Fall, before gambling had led to the collapse of the family dynasty, she’d played poker. Her whole family had. It had been the Hallesby family’s recreation of choice and damn good at it they’d been. And Jenn, as early as age eight, had been something of a prodigy.
But after the family’s leisure pursuit had led to the demise of the family’s leisure lifestyle, she’d seen poker for what it was: a fool’s game. One’s dad losing the family fortune on the turn of a card could bring about such epiphanies and Jenn was no fool.

So what was she doing here?

She scoured her memory for some past misstep that would have turned the Powers That Be against her and found nothing. All she had done was accept an invitation to be the Grand Marshal of Fawn Creek’s sesquicentennial. Nothing even the most vengeful Greek god would have gotten pissy about. But then, this was Minnesota and its Nordic gods were a whole lot more particular about what constituted a yank of the old celestial wang.

How had everything gone so wrong? She’d come to town with no other plan than to lead their Snow Pack Parade perched atop an ATV beside that damn butter head….

That damn butter head
.

Oh, yeah.

That’s
where it had all gone wrong.

11:50 a.m.

Monday, August 27, 1984

The Hippodrome, the Minnesota State Fairgrounds

“… and
that
is how dairy products changed my life,” finished seventeen-year-old Miss Fawn Creek, Jennifer Hallesby. Behind her, Duddie Olson’s prizewinning 4-H milk cow, Portia, also representing Fawn Creek, mooed approvingly.

“Thank you, Miss Hallesby,” the emcee said. “Miss Delano?”

Jenn bobbed a little curtsy and was rewarded when the Minnesota Dairy Farmers’ Federation’s only female judge winked and mouthed the words, “
Very nice
.”

Jenn step-glided her way back to her plastic lawn chair among the other Buttercup finalists, no easy feat while navigating the minefield of mementos left by the nine blue-ribbon cows now stationed behind their respective princesses.

Please let my bangs stay up
, she offered heavenward as she took her seat and smoothed out her pink satin skirt. Though she’d sprayed the magnificent prow of bangs three times and the Hippodrome was relatively cool, it
was
August and it
was
humid. Maybe she should have gelled it, too.

She looked up into the stands as Miss Delano launched into her prepared speech, the last portion of the competition. Only five of the cavernous Hippodrome’s thirty-six tiers were filled, mostly with finalists’ family and friends, but also with die-hard pageant enthusiasts and a few hundred marginally interested fairgoers who’d wandered in seeking relief from the noontime heat. Here and there clusters of people in like-colored T-shirts frantically waved banners emblazoned with the names of proud hometowns.

Fawn Creek was not represented.

What a crappy thing.
Someone
should be here. She was representing their town, wasn’t she? You’d think they would at least show up to hear Fawn Creek’s name called out if she won. She couldn’t figure them out.

But then, she’d been confused ever since her parents had appeared in her walk-in closet almost two years ago as she’d sorted through clothes for the Poor People—little suspecting that within a few minutes she would be revealed as one of them.

“
There’s no pleasant way of saying this, Jenn,” her father had announced. “We’ve been living on credit for years and the business has filed for bankruptcy
.”

“
Huh
?”

“
Compounding the situation, while we were in Vegas, your mother and I got to thinking ‘in for a penny, in for a pound,’ and my luck was running really hot
—
honey, I had a straight flush
!—
so we went for it. All of it
.”

What was he talking about
?

“
It was a crap shoot. Unfortunately, well, the bottom line is that we lost everything
.”

Crap, she recalled thinking, she supposed this meant she and Tess would be flying coach rather than first-class to Cozumel next winter vacation
.

“
Everything except your grandfather’s hunting camp in Minnesota,” her father had gone on. “So we’ll be leaving Raleigh and moving there at the end of the month
.”

She’d just looked at him then, because his words had ceased to make any sense. His mouth moved. Sounds came out. He looked serious. Then why couldn’t she figure out what he meant? It had sounded like her father thought they should move to Minnesota. Which was ridiculous. Minnesota was cold. And there was snow. And it was cold
.

“
That’ll never work,” she’d finally said. “I have a white convertible
.”

How could they have forgotten? They’d given her a white BMW convertible for her Sweet Sixteenth birthday. It had only been a couple weeks ago. “You can’t drive a white convertible in Minnesota
.”

“
Had a white convertible, Jenny,” her mother said. “I’m afraid we’re all going to have to make some sacrifices for a while. But it’s just temporary, dear. Just for the summer
.”

That had been twenty months ago. A summer had since come and gone and the second was disappearing as she sat half listening to Miss Delano attempt to convince the judges that Dairy Was Her Life.

Movement halfway up the tiers of seats caught Jenn’s eye. She smiled. So she wasn’t completely abandoned, after all.

An unlikely duo sat together, the younger one waving a red bandanna: Jenn’s fellow student and fellow outsider, Heidi Olmsted, more comfortable with animals than people and more manly than any guy in town, and little, gray-haired Hilda Soderberg, not an outsider at all, but undisputed Ruler of the Lutheran church’s basement kitchen, from whom Jenn had covertly acquired every bit of knowledge she owned about Scandinavian cooking. Not that Jenn had started from base zero. She’d always loved cooking….

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Miss Delano had taken her seat and the emcee was tapping on the microphone. Jenn straightened. “Just a few minutes now and we’ll announce our winner.”

Please. Please, please, please
.

With the scholarship that came with the Buttercup crown, Jenna could afford the out-of-state tuition to Chapel Hill and rejoin her friends from Raleigh there. All of her friends except for Tess, because Tess had died six months ago, just after she’d returned from the winter break vacation Jenn was supposed to have gone on, too.

Jenn’s decision not to go hadn’t only been because her parents couldn’t really afford to send her—Tess’s parents had made it clear that once Jenn landed they’d pick up the tab for everything else—but because she’d discovered a wiser way to use the money earmarked for the plane fare: she’d used it to enter regional pageants and to buy her first sequin and satin gown. It had seemed like the most practical decision at the time but Tess had been furious. Jenn had called Tess long distance to explain that ten days on the beach was a small price to pay for four years at Chapel Hill but Tess hadn’t listened. She’d refused to take the call. And Jenn, angry her friend could be so shortsighted when it was her future they were talking about, had reacted by not calling again.

Six weeks later Tess was dead, killed in a traffic accident. And Jenn had never gotten a chance to explain.

Jenn shoved the thought away, focusing on the future because it hurt too much to do anything else. If she won this pageant, that future would mean not only that she could return eventually to her remaining friends next year but it could also make her last one at Fawn Creek High School bearable. As Buttercup Queen, she was bound to get invited to some of the things she heard the other kids talking about in Monday morning study hall. A party or two, a shopping trip to “the cities”? Hell, at this point, she’d be happy to be invited to join the debate team.

Okay, she might have been partly responsible for her lack of a social life. She hadn’t made any huge effort to “blend.” She hadn’t really seen the need; she was only passing through. And then, after Tess had died,
she’d just been too angry to care what the hell anyone thought of her. But lately, the last few months or so … well … she missed having friends.

She missed late-night phone calls that lasted hours; swapping jeans and shoes until no one knew who the original owners were anymore; silly, ardent feuds about stupid things; and impromptu puppy piles in front of the television set. She missed Tess—

And she missed
boys
! She hadn’t had a date in over a year. She missed their posturing, their crude jokes, their bravado, their flirting. She missed openmouthed kissing and steamy car windows and yearning looks behind the current girlfriend’s back.

She missed movies, and malls, and beach parties and being someone and a part of some group. She missed not having to be careful about what she said, or how she sounded, not having to be vigilant about not appearing too urban or too Southern.

It was like some evil magician had snuck into her house one night and disappeared her whole life and she had woken up here, in Minnesota, among strangers. But she’d found a way out of here … a way back … a
way
….

“Okay, then!” the emcee announced. “We’re ready to announce the first annual Queen Buttercup. But first, I think we should assure all nine of our Buttercup Princesses that in our eyes they are all queens, eh? So let’s hear it for the Buttercup Princesses!”

The crowd applauded, and banners waved.

“And you all know, don’t you, that throughout the week all the Buttercup Princesses, not just the Queen, are being carved in butter over at the Emporium Building?”

Again the crowd applauded.

Okay, she knew it was lame, but she was sort of excited about the Butter Head thing. How many seventeen-year-old girls got their heads carved out of a hundred-pound block of butter to be displayed in front of thousands of people? And if she
won
the Buttercup Crown—
please, oh please
—then they would put that head in a specially designed, all-glass, refrigerated unit at the entrance.
Her
smiling butter face would be the first thing the public saw upon entering the fairgrounds, with a voice-over—
her
voice—saying, “The Minnesota Dairy Federation welcomes you to the Minnesota State Fair!” Which was totally cool.

“So go have a look-see, okay?” the emcee said. “Great. Now the moment you’ve been waiting for!”

Beneath her nosegay of artificial buttercups, Jenn crossed her fingers.

“The second runner-up is … Miss Thief River Falls, Tiffany Gilderchrist!”

Tiffany bolted out of her chair and jump-skipped toward the lady judge, who received her with a kiss on the cheek.

“First runner-up is … Miss Young America, Karen Wexler!”

Oh, God, Jenn thought, her heart pounding, she was going to win! She’d caught a glimpse of the deportment tally sheet and she’d won that—no surprise, five years of cotillion had to be good for something, didn’t it?—and the lady judge had winked at her and that had to mean something, right?

“And here she is, ladies and gentlemen …”

The fat pink cabbage rose decorating Jenn’s décolletage was quivering violently. She was losing sensation in her lips.
Smile. Please, God! Smile
.

“Our 1984 Queen Buttercup is Miss Fa—huh?” One of the judges was tugging at the emcee’s jacket, hissing something up at him.

There was no other princess from a town that began with an “f.”
Fawn
Creek. He’d been about to say
Fawn Creek
!

She tucked her feet under her chair, preparing to rise. It was all going to be worth it. Her future was going to get right back on track, starting right now.
This one’s for you, Tess
.

“Ah … hold on a sec.” The emcee held his hand over the mike.

A man in plaid short sleeves had appeared out of nowhere and was leaning over the judges’ shoulders, talking excitedly. The lady judge scribbled something on a sheet of paper and handed it to the emcee, who looked at it, blinked, and uncovered the mike.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to announce the Minnesota Dairy Farmer Federation’s first ever Buttercup Queen …

“… Miss Trenton Mills,
Kimberly Dawn Ringwald
!”

Jenn froze halfway to her feet as Kimberly Dawn erupted from her chair, squealing with delight. The lady judge stomped over, stuck the rhinestone crown on Kimberly Dawn’s head, and shoved an enormous bouquet of silk buttercups into her arms.

The crowd went wild. The princesses exploded out of their seats, bouncing and crying as they swarmed Kimberly Dawn, who was whooping into the mike the emcee had thrust in her face. Somehow, Jenn made it to her feet and managed a few face-saving hops.

The emcee had been about to say, “Fawn Creek,” she knew he had!

“Would you like to say a few—”

Kimberly Dawn grabbed the microphone from the emcee, and sobbed, “Thank you! This is so cool! Thank you! I don’t believe this!”

Neither did Jenn.

12:15 p.m.

The Hippodrome tunnel entrance

Dismissed, the princesses fell into line and trudged across the arena toward the tunnel leading from the Hippodrome. At the door, the line broke as a sea of jubilant Trenton Millsians engulfed Kimberly Dawn and swept her away while smaller, and somewhat less jubilant, groups carried off their own princesses, leaving Jenn alone inside the passage.

What had just happened
?

She’d been a second away from being Miss Buttercup and then, a tug on a polyester sleeve, a whisper to some guy with a farmer’s tan, and poof! Gone. And with it all the things she’d worked for: validation for all the hours spent in the Lutheran church’s basement kitchen learning the art—and yes, it was an art!—of Scandinavian cooking; the money for Chapel Hill; maybe even some sort of social life this year.