Chapter 5: I Sell What I Like

The Chamber of Commerce met in my shop at seven on Monday morning, and nobody had brought a coffee.

There were five of them, and all five looked like people reading bad news.

The mayor stood at the front, twisting her visor in both hands.

"The bus company called," she said. "Two cancelled groups by lunchtime. The video has made us look friendly."

"It's a video of two people asleep," I said.

"Holding hands," said the tour guide, in a tragic voice from the back.

"We were unconscious."

"The public does not know that, Lotte."

"We need a re-escalation," said a man from the hardware store. "Something big."

"The Reenactment," said the mayor, and the whole room nodded, like a congregation.

Every year at the Fish Fry, two people re-staged the Great Pecan Incident of 1984, the night my grandmother threw the first kringle.

"Vlasta and Aksel have always played themselves," said the mayor. "But since they're away..."

"Not a chance," I said.

The door opened, and Soren Vinter walked in with a pencil behind his ear and a very small amount of flour on his collar.

He looked at the five faces, and then at me, and I watched him understand.

"No," he said.

"Wednesday," said the mayor.

We rehearsed in the alley on Tuesday night, because neither of us wanted a witness.

I had on my grandmother's 1984 sweater from the trunk upstairs, which had shoulders you could land a plane on.

Soren held a fake gray mustache in one hand.

"Take it from the top," I said. "Vlasta says, 'How dare you sell my customers a cherry.'"

"How dare you sell my customers a cherry," said Soren.

"That's mine. You're Aksel."

"What does Aksel say?"

"'I sell what I like, woman.'"

"I am not saying woman."

"Aksel says woman. It's the whole show."

"I sell what I like," said Soren, "woman," in the exact tone of a man reading his gas bill.