Julia's Child (9781101559741) (21 page)

She shrugged. “No, but you'll bring it back. What's the harm?”

And so the chalkboard came along too. And by midnight, my hundred square feet looked much better than an empty concrete bin. Mack even made an extra trip back to the office for a couple of clip-on lamps, which now shone from the corners of the blackboard, like spotlights, onto our posters.

Yona's table also had a light inside. “Yeah, I sprang for the light-box top,” she'd explained. “Stupid idea, it cost me a thousand dollars. But hey, your stuff will look great on it.”

I gave Mack my credit card. “Have a lunch party, and cross your fingers for us.”

“It will be killer,” he said. I took that as a good sign.

Chapter 17

I
t had been years since I was up until two in the morning for any reason other than puking children. But our booth looked so much better by the time I left the Javits Center that I didn't care how late it had gotten.

I happily woke at seven the next morning, because this was the day we would make it happen. My company would finally share airspace with some of the biggest buyers in the land.

I took a speedy shower and threw on pants and a sweater. Marta had ordered two matching Julia's Child aprons for us to wear at the trade show. They cost thirty-nine dollars, plus shipping. God bless Marta, I thought, as I blew my hair dry before dashing out the door.

The subway ride from my apartment to the convention center took only twenty minutes. The energy of New York City coursed through my veins. There were plenty of seats in the car, but I stood up, watching the stations come and go. Not only was my booth in decent shape, but I had a home-team advantage. The biggest organic trade show in the nation was in my own backyard. Getting off the train at Thirty-fourth Street, I rode the escalator back toward street level, an anthem playing in my head. Today would be my day.

I flashed my participant pass to the security guards at the door of Javits Center and trotted, through the glittering trade-show city, in the direction of our booth. It was a sleepy city, just waking up for the day. Plastic sheeting still covered the wares on many of the tables.

Turning into our aisle, I slowed down to take in the neighboring displays. They were just as beautiful and intimidating as they'd seemed the night before. But at least the shock had worn off. I passed an enormous display for Samba Smoothies, which appeared to be one of those whole-meal-blended-into-a-drink products. An enormous faux smoothie in an enormous faux glass towered overhead. The red-and-white striped straw, probably seven feet tall, was particularly cheerful. Jasper and Wylie would have loved it.

But the world was already full of smoothies, wasn't it? And that sort of product was often chock-full of sugar. I strode on. I passed Organic T, which proudly displayed a whole lot of shirts. I passed Herbal Cure, some kind of cold remedy. Its booth sported a giant-beanstalk-size box of tissues.

I had made it to the middle of the row without finding our booth. Could it have been on my left while I passed by, gazing at the products on my right? I spun around, scanning the other side of the aisle. And that's when I saw them.

It was the photograph that grabbed me. It must have been five square feet—a high-resolution shot of a baked good with a strong resemblance to a muffet. The photography was obviously professional: the crumb appearing moist and tender, bits of carrot emerging from the crust.

I tore my eyes from the image to read the gigantic gold lettering above: “Melissa's Munchers, Philadelphia, PA.” On the left panel, clippings were stylishly arranged to highlight media attention the company had received. The right-hand panel showed, in giant type, the ingredients list and nutritional information for each muncher. It was a gorgeous booth, telling Melissa's whole story in a couple of easy-to-read images. And it seemed to be standing in the very spot where my own things had been the night before. I began to wonder if I was dreaming.

“Julia!”

I spun around. Marta was waving both arms at me from the next aisle. I could just barely see her behind part of a display. I ran toward her, ducking under a rack of hemp dresses to reach the next aisle.

“Julia, are you lost?” Marta grinned at me.

“I . . .” I gulped. “Did you see that booth over there? Melissa's Munchers?”

“No. Stupid name. What are they?”

“They're . . . They look a lot like muffets.”

Marta stopped, her bloodred fingernails frozen in place on a carton of muffets. “Oh.”

I took a deep breath. “It had to happen sooner or later, you know? Maybe ours taste better?”

Marta nodded. “Damn straight.”

“Maybe ours are cheaper.”

“Doubt it! Not with our expenses.”

“Well, Melissa just blew several grand on a convention display booth. That's all I'm sayin'.”

Marta laughed, shaking her head. “Where are the platters?”

“Oh! Here.” I held up the shopping bag I'd been carrying. I put two platters onto Yona's table. I switched on the lights, and the surface was suffused with a white glow. “Where's the box of brochures?”

Marta pointed at a carton with her foot. I set about arranging our literature in piles. We would talk to as many people as we could; hand out samples, business cards, blessings. Whatever it took. We were there to network.

We tied on our new green aprons. It was time to set out the merchandise.

“Let me show you what I was thinking,” Marta said. On the cake stand I'd brought, she arranged one muffet of each flavor. Into each she inserted a little toothpick flag, carefully printed with the flavor's name.

“Gorgeous! I'm going to start calling you Marta Stewart.”

She grinned like a cat. “You go ahead,
chica
. Because that old blonde lady makes a lot of money. But wait until you see this.”

We'd brought about five hundred muffets. Some were packaged as if for sale, but most sat in plastic bins, unwrapped, for tasting.

“See—I made loaves,” Marta informed me. She took the plastic off, revealing giant, rectangular muffets.

“Wow. I guess if we're cutting them anyway, that makes sense. Do you think the centers are cooked?”

“I'm Marta Stewart, remember? I fiddled a bit with the moisture content and the baking temperature. Worked like a charm. Greasing every one of those muffin tins wasn't working for me.”

We sliced the muffet loaves into one-inch cubes, each with a little toothpick for easy tasting. We arranged them as attractively as we could on the platters I'd brought.

At eight thirty, convention attendees arrived like a tidal wave, just as Marta and I were managing to eat a bite of bagel and sip coffee. It was showtime.

The first plates of muffets disappeared in a heartbeat. Marta cut up more while I attempted to greet each visitor. The trade-show attendees drifting into our booth were men and women, young and old. Any adult who wanted to pony up thirty dollars for a badge was welcome to the show. Attendees all wore the same square plastic passes, usually hung around the neck. We looked like so many items at a tag sale.

I studied the faces in the crowd. Some would be food store buyers (yes!), writers for the trade press (okay!), and a few were probably competitors (boo!). I scrutinized everyone, wondering how I would identify the VIPs.

“I'm Elmer,” an older man said, offering his hand. His long gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail, atop of which he wore a ten-gallon hat. “I run a health-food store in Dallas. And I
love
your product! Do you think you can ship these to me?” He munched an Autumn Harvest Muffet.

Flattered, I tried to imagine how that would work. Styrofoam coolers with dry ice inside? FedEx overnight? That would just about double my production cost. “I'd sure like to think about trying,” I said. “Do you have a business card?”

“Sure, little lady.” He tipped his hat to me. I put the card in my pocket, holding a hand over it protectively.

But then that conversation began to repeat itself. I met scads of buyers with tiny retail operations far from New York. Sure, a few of my admirers were more local. It was possible to imagine delivering to Jersey or Long Island. But for every friendly buyer from within a hundred miles there were three more from the ends of the earth. As much as I enjoyed chatting about muffets, in my gut I knew that these smaller orders would not save my company.

Still, I repeated my pitch dozens of times to these buyers who had traveled so far. I didn't mind. It was like attending an enormous party where every guest was just as excited as I was about natural kids' products. I recited ingredient lists. I extolled the virtues of flash-freezing. I waxed nostalgic about my organic farmland in Vermont. I tried to believe my own hype.

I grew sweaty in my efforts to greet everyone, all the while scanning the crowd for Mr. Big, whoever he might be. And sometimes I would actually sense the presence of heavier firepower. More than once I watched as a stealthy attendee sidled into our booth. I would invariably be trapped in conversation with one of the Elmers from Dallas. The stealthy ones held a folder in front of their ID tag. They would take a taste of the product, or inspect the brochure, and then disappear again into the crowd.

“Marta, did you see that?” I asked once. “Was that guy covering up an ID that said Costco? Or am I having paranoid fantasies?”

She stared after the man, probably in his forties, slipping away into the crowd. “I don't know,” she said. “But if I were a buyer for a company that big, I'd keep it under wraps. A guy from Costco would practically need his own security detail in this place.”

I nodded grimly as another clump of people arrived at our booth.

Then, after the initial rush, the pace of muffet consumption slowed. I began to realize that our earlier popularity had more to do with the hour—breakfast time—than buyer interest. Now people began to skip our booth. I had to hope that it was because they were, say, apparel buyers and not because we looked like shabby losers.

Sometime around noon I ducked behind our chalkboard and wolfed down the congealed cream-cheese bagel I'd brought that morning. I took gulps of bottled water, stretched my arms and legs. There was music pulsing from somewhere nearby. I realized that it had been on all morning, but I had internalized the driving tempo as the soundtrack to my ambitions. Things were happening, right here in this room. While some of the mom-and-pop exhibitors were bound to come away with nothing, others would be discovered, their dreams brought to fruition.

The products around us varied from inspired to downright stupid. On my only sprint to the ladies' room, I'd glimpsed heirloom-quality wooden toys and gorgeous children's clothing made domestically, not by child labor in China. But I'd also spied a group marketing the Sick Bunny Bowl, for kids to puke into in the car. That one left me scratching my head. “Two handles! Just the right size! Comforting for upset tummies!”

The product that tickled Marta's funny bone was the PeePee TeePee. “It's a paper cone that you're supposed to set over your baby boy's weewee while you're changing his diaper, so he doesn't pee on you.”

“So he . . . pees on himself instead?”

“I guess. They got a twenty-foot booth, and five people working it, all dressed like Indians.”

“Then at least we're not the craziest people in the room.”

“Not even close.”

I dove back into the fray. We had another wave of muffet consumption around lunch hour. I unwrapped more muffets while chatting about sodium levels with a health-food-store owner from Berkeley. I quartered them while discussing distribution with a store owner from Northampton, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, my pocket filled up with business cards for far-flung buyers, the likes of whom I could only support if I went truly national. They weighed me down, like another missed opportunity.

Then I watched a pair of people enter our booth, a man and a woman. He was tall, with a prominent mustache. She had rather heavy calves poking out from underneath her skirt. But the oddest thing about them was their empty hands. Unlike every other visitor to the trade show, they weren't laden with pamphlets or samples.

“Morning!” I greeted them cheerfully.

“Hiya,” the man said. He went right over to the chalkboard and began to read our signage.

“Would you like to try a muffet?” I asked the woman.

“Sure.” Her brown eyes darted between Marta and me. She took up a chunk of the Autumn Harvest flavor and nibbled daintily on the corner. “Delicious,” she said.

Mr. Mustache came around to the front of our table. “You make these products yourself?” he asked.

“We sure do. Every one of them.”

“And you do that where?”

“In sunny Brooklyn,” I answered. His manner was abrupt, but I was all charm and salesmanship today.

“You store them where? Who do you use for distribution?”

So many questions. I looked for his convention tag. But he wasn't even wearing one, which was against regulations. I tried to keep the smile on my face. “We have freezer space in Brooklyn. Our truck driver does local deliveries, and we're just now working on our national, um, distribution. Would you like a sample?”

“Sure,” he said. He reached for the nearest muffet—Focaccia Fiesta. He popped it in his mouth. “Nice to meet you,” he said. He nodded at his partner, and they retreated quickly down the aisle.

“What was that all about?” I asked as they walked away.

“Spies!” Marta had a flair for drama.

I shook my head. “I doubt it. A spy would ask about the recipes.”

“Not me,” Marta argued. “I'd want to know about production. Let's send somebody over to grill Melissa's Munchers. Let's ask if they manage to make their product during daylight hours. We're like vampires, you and me.”