Chapter 12

  I checked bluesky and #Willowsdad was trending in the arts. Pretty good for a little town like Lake Placid, and well deserved credit for some fantastic artwork. I’ll call Willow later and congratulate her, our little mobile bookstore might just do some good. Maybe I worry too much about the country and its corrupt leadership and maybe I should focus more on what I can do to make this world a better place. Urge is a great place to start. How about a mini Urge, a VW microbus stripped bare with bookcases bolted to the walls. We could specialize in used children's books, and instead of selling them, we just give them away. We could go to schools and little league parks. Maybe we could pay Monique to paint the roof of mini Urge but instead of trippy Yes Album covers she could do kid friendly trippy artwork of humpback whales and dolphins that swim through the sky. Or better yet, let the kids vote on the artwork they’d like to see on the ceiling, while simultaneously letting the kids paint the exterior of the bus.

  We could buy the initial load of kids books, then after we start the program, we could ask for book donations. The store would cover the gas and repairs to the vehicle and let parents help other parents. If micro buses are cost prohibitive we could just buy used panel trucks instead. White would be ideal, because it would probably be the best color for the kids to paint over. Then we could add a second this would be called ‘Urges Roving Reading Repository’. In this one we could stock only banned books, we try and get used, but we could appeal to banned authors for donations. Then we could drive to middle schools and high schools and give the kids banned books that for whatever reason they no longer have access to through their school library. Not only would it raise attention that good books are disappearing off our kids shelves, it would give those same books back to the kids.

  All well and good for the future, right now I have to see if I can convince Roberta she is about to make a big mistake. I found Roberta sitting next to the mayor, which was perfect, I could kill two birds with one stone. Where did that brutal idiom even come from? If it’s brutal it must have been inspired by a biblical saying.

  “Roberta, Mayor, you are about to make a horrible mistake.”

  “What are you talking about Laura?”

  “I was just chatting with Amy and she said you are sending Jovana home. Now sooner or later, you will have to reveal your scores that you gave each of the bakers. When those scores come out. You two are going to look very foolish.”

  “Mayor, did you know that a USC study shows that attractive people are much more likely to be hired and actually receive higher pay than average or unattractive people. It’s a built in bias. When you look at the first two challenges people are going to want to know why you scored them the way that you did. The two challenges made each of the bakes indistinguishable from each other. The only judge who is a baker, rated each baker exactly the same because their bakes were identical. Mayor, when your wife sees that you unconsciously gave the young and very pretty Grace extremely high scores every round, what do you think that she is going to think? Not just here, if any of your constituents see the show, it only takes one #pervert mayor post to hurt your chances of reelection ”

  He gulped hard and his eyes darted around to see if anyone could hear what I had been saying.

  “Roberta, I don’t know if you saw it, but just after the break started, Jovana went out into the crowd and handed out her sugar cookies and kissed her wife. That created a lot of good will for Jovana, not one of the other bakers did anything like that. As a matter of fact, I watched Niall toss his plate of cookies in the trash. Do you really want to boot off the generous Lesbian, in the very first round. It makes you look a little homophobic. Especially if anyone in the crowd took video of Jovana handing out food and kissing her wife. I know you are not bigoted, if you were you wouldn’t have accepted her on the show in the first place, but just one viral post and the network might shut down your show before it even streams.”

  “Laura, we can’t just reshoot the first two episodes, we are already behind thanks to the saboteur.”

  “No but those episodes were inherently unscorable, so just throw out the scores. Use the last round where the bakers actually had to do the work themselves, as the basis for who goes home, and who remains. In the future, you might run the challenges past Amy, she is a fantastic baker. So she can help you make them fair, and don’t coddle the bakers. Let them rise to the top or get booted off on their own. People want to see amazing bakes, but they don’t mind seeing disasters either. It’ll remind them these are real people, and they make mistakes. Just like every home baker has made. It’ll add drama and humor to your show all at once. I’m sorry but the challenges look like they were made up by people who have never baked before in their lives.”

  “She’s right, Roberta. When my wife sees those scores she will kill me. We have to throw them out.”

  “We don’t have to show anyone the scores. It’s my show and if I don’t want to show the scores. I don’t have too, that solves the problem right there, by nipping it in the bud”

  “Roberta, if you don’t show the scores, people will claim that it is fixed. Look at every other cooking competition ever aired. Remember the other day when you said to me the Giants don’t help out the Cowboys.”

  “Yes you were talking about the bakers helping each other it was ridiculous.”

  “Okay, but who would watch a football game if they didn’t keep score. Only the parents of the players, and they probably wouldn’t want to watch it either.”

  “Roberta, she’s right, we have to scrap those scores and start listening to the one baker on the judges panel. If you don’t, I’m withdrawing from the contest.”

  “You are the one who insisted on being a judge.”

  “Yes, well I thought it’d be good for my reelection campaign but I’m out if it’s going to hurt my marriage or my campaign. I’ll post about the inherent unfairness, as my reason for quitting. I’m not homophobic and I won’t be made to look like I am.”

  Roberta doesn't like it when anyone tells her what to do. She thinks her money gives her the right to tell everyone how things would go. But she has less than an hour to find another judge. I’m surprised the mayor took the strong stand that he did. But it was good that he put his wife’s feelings ahead of his reelection campaign. Another thing that I was sure of, Roberta would do the right thing, for herself. She is determined to make this stupid show. So if she can get past her aversion over being told what to do. Then she might be able to save the show. If she genuinely asks for Amy’s advice, it could be a nice little local baking show. Desire versus aversion, which one will win out in the end?

  Honestly I’d be just as happy if they packed up the trucks and took all of these kitchens with them. The writers will still get three years without property taxes, that was the whole point of doing this in the first place. Then I could finish the protest eBook, that really was the important thing to focus on, before ICE guns down another peaceful protestor.

  “I’ll leave you two to talk it over. Let me know if you need anything.”

  I had just had a wonderful idea, and I needed to talk to Amy. So I went where she was sure to be found, our kitchen finishing up dinner for the writers.

  “How did it go Laura? Did Roberta refuse to listen?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. The mayor did threaten to quit, so I didn’t expect that to happen.”

  “You didn’t blackmail him did you?”

  “No, not at all. I merely pointed out that when the scores came out his wife and the voters of Lake Placid might not look kindly at his time as a judge. I might also have implied that a #pervert judge or a #pervert mayor wouldn’t go over very well with his wife and would definitely hurt his reelection campaign. That of course sent him over the edge, but I never expected him to threaten Roberta. He’s been bending over backwards for her just to get that park’s department donation. But that wouldn't help him at all if he got labeled a pervert. But that’s not what I came here for. I had a great idea for you and Jovana.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “No uh-oh, this could be great. How about you and Jovana do a cooking and baking show on youtube. You could use all the hoopla around this whole event to launch the channel. It would give your new show a little buzz to start off with.”

  “Now why would I want to do that?”

  “Two reasons, first Jovana’s plan for the one hundred thousand dollars is to pay for college for the foster daughter that she and her wife are hoping to adopt. Second if you don’t want or need the proceeds from the channel you could donate it to the food bank. While you’d be teaching people how to save money by making their own food instead of eating out, take-out or those ultra processed frozen meals. All three unhealthy choices. Then if you wanted to we could publish a Cook-eBook through my new publishing firm. To start it could just be the two of you on the show, but then after you both are comfortable doing it you could have Lucy or Lis on and teach them to bake something. Someday you could even have me on, the only thing I really only know how to make breakfast, you could teach me to make chicken noodle soup. That way if you ever got sick I could make you soup, so you got better.”

  “You know Laura, you would make a wonderful advertising executive.”

  “Amy, how can you insult me like that, I’m just thinking of you, Jovana and all of your viewers. But if you want all of the glory for yourself we can drop Jovana and give you one hundred percent of the screentime. But you surprised me, I never thought you of all people would let being a celebrity judge go to her head.”

  “Get out of my kitchen, before I throw a wooden spoon at your head. I’ll think about it, after this disaster of a baking show is over.”

  “Well I think that the show might go a bit better going forward, because I suggested that they run all of the challenges by you before actually doing them. I pointed out that you were the only person that knew anything about baking. I hope that I didn’t make a lot of extra work for you.”

  “I don’t care how much work it is, those first three challenges were the worst, especially the first two. But look, it's almost five we should get out to the tent.”

  “But you’ll think about baking and cooking lessons?”

  “Yes, I will. I like the idea of supporting the food bank.”

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  “You wouldn’t be wasting food, cooking it on camera, we and the writers could all have it for dinner.”

  ***

  Amy and I arrived in the tent around four forty five. I was interested to see what Roberta had decided to do. Take a hit on her pride or watch her show circling the drain. Even though I had stirred the pot, I just went back to my vantage point by the far right corner of the tent as you face the kitchens. Both Amy and Roberta had changed as this was supposed to be the first challenge of week two. The mayor still sat in his judges seat so either Roberta capitulated to his demands. Or she’d up her donation to the parks department so much he just couldn’t say no.

  Roberta hadn’t even looked at me when I had walked into the tent with Amy, so I knew, I wasn’t her favorite person at the moment. If her daughter Bobby applied to be in the writers collective and Bianca accepted her, well I’m sure at that point I’d be dead to Roberta. I don’t particularly care though. If Bobby would leave her mansion, for a tiny room in another. That was Bobby’s affair, there is tough love and there is treating your family like dirt. Roberta practiced the latter. While proclaiming it was just tough love to motivate her daughter.

  It seems to me that people that are doing what they want to, don’t need to be motivated. Just getting to do what they want is enough motivation on its own. Then I got to thinking about how everything has to be growing for capitalism to work. In a pyramid scheme everything works great in the beginning, maybe capitalism is a pyramid scheme, if it stops growing it starts to fall apart. Then only if it is propped up its little engine starts to crank again. People fall back under the scheme again only to have it falter again.

  Now the republicans want to pay people to have babies, because the birthrate has fallen. If they were worried about having enough workers they could just let people immigrate, but they wouldn’t be the right people. We need white christians, no others need apply.

  But then Roberta approached the center of the tent. ‘Week Two’ of the TV show was about to begin. Even though filming had just begun yesterday and Week Three would start tomorrow, if we kept up with the schedule, that is. The magic of television, folks.

  “Welcome back to the Superb Lake Placid Bake Off, last time we told you that after tallying the score we were going to boot off a contestant. However when I said that, I hadn’t known just how close those scores were. So we have decided that this week, no one goes home. But those bakers on the bubble have to watch out, because after our third challenge today, two bakers are getting the boot. So bakers remember your training. The challenges are twice as hard here in round two. The judges would like you to make two dozen peanut butter cookies, they should be perfectly uniform and of course they must taste delicious. A printed recipe and all the ingredients you need to bake your cookies are there on your station. Good luck bakers. You have twenty minutes starting now.”

  I have no idea how to bake peanut butter cookies. The only things I knew for sure were that peanut butter was an ingredient and I absolutely love them. I’m hoping for a couple of samples, after the judging is completed. Twenty minutes hardly seems like enough time to mix, and bake a batch of cookies. But I had asked them to bump up the difficulty level and it seems that Roberta had embraced my suggestions.

  The twenty minutes passed quickly if quietly. I wondered what they would do in post production, add a pair of commentators perhaps, some background music I hope.

  When there was around four minutes left Roberta went back to the center of the tent and counted down the minutes, when she reached one minute to go, she went back and resumed her seat at the judge’s table. Meanwhile the bakers were moving frantically in their kitchens dragging cookies out of the ovens and plating them. From her seat at the judges table, Roberta counted down the final ten seconds and called for the bakers to bring their peanut butter cookies up to be judged.

  The tent smelled heavenly. When I was a vegetarian back when I lived in New York City, my workday breakfast was a bowl of cinnamon oatmeal with two tablespoons of peanut butter, pop it in the microwave for thirty seconds and the peanut butter melted, making it easy to spread over the oatmeal. It was a meal that powered my walk to the office and kept me satisfied until it was time for lunch. I still make it sometimes for a late night snack. I truly pity those people on low carb diets. I lost about forty pounds once I stopped eating meat and replaced those calories with fruits, vegetables and grains.

  The mayor smiled broadly when he bit into his first cookie, it must have been good because he ate the whole thing. It was only after he had taken a cookie from the second contestant that he remembered to jot down a score. He may not know much about baking but he did like to eat, and he did it with gusto, I have to say that for him. Roberta’s face was so pinched she could have soured milk. But she took a tiny bite of each cookie before noting her score.

  Amy looked like she was thoroughly enjoying herself for the first time since the challenges began. After all the bakers were back at their stations the director called cut. Everyone looked pretty wiped out, after three challenges in one day, but we have another nine days of this, so the bakers better start pacing themselves.

  Amy headed back inside to finish dinner. While I went straight to Jovana’s table.

  “Jovana, could I please have a cookie? I love peanut butter cookies”

  “Sure, Laura, then I have to hand them out to the crowd. It seems that someone told the head judge that was the best way to get the crowd on your side and favorable posts on social media. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

  “If I can have two of your cookies I’ll gladly answer that, for you.”

  She laughed and held out the oversize plate. I grabbed three cookies. Bit into one and told Jovana, “This is absolutely delicious.”

  She said, “Glad you like them.” As she moved to go distribute the rest into the crowd. I savored every bite of the excellent cookies. Before I went over to Urge and the line to get on the bus was longer than it was earlier. I cut in line to get on the bus, again explaining that I was a staff member and wouldn’t affect their place in line. Pappy had started an occupancy limit, to keep everyone safe and also to make it easier to take photographs. The top shelf that had been jam packed with entertainment and food related books was now half empty. We didn’t have any more of either of those subjects, but since Urge was also taking off as an art mecca, I thought we should pull all of the art books we had in storage in the storeroom and also in the boathouse.

  “Pappy, is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No Laura, this is a lot of fun and we are closing in another hour and a half, but thanks for asking.”

  I made my way off the bus, there seemed to be more interest in the bus than in the TV show. Which is strange because they came to see a TV show being made, but it looks like the crowd fell in love with the bus and the yippies running it. Phoebe had been chatting with groups of customers both times I had been on the bus today. So I never got to speak with her but she looked happy.

  I went in and the store was busy but not like it had been before. So I thought that the three young women were fine on their own. I went into the stockroom and while I sorted through the used books looking for anything art related, I called Willow.

  “Hi Laura, your store went a little nuts today huh?”

  “Not just my store, you see the Willowdad hashtag is trending, I think Pappy and Phoebe sold half of the Food and Entertainment books we packed into Urge.”

  “I know, I can’t believe it. Do you have another empty bedroom?”

  “Sure Willow, are you coming up?”

  “Yeah, if Pappy is going to turn himself in tomorrow, I want to be there for him.”

  “If you have room in your car, we need all the used cooking, entertainment and art books you got.”

  “You got it, I should be there by midnight, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “No, honey, I’ll be up and the back door to our house is always open just so you know. But I’ll be in the reading nook, reading and I’ll leave the store open. We’ll have a hashtag Willowdad sale. You must be so proud that your father is getting the recognition that he deserves.”

  “I am Laura, I really am. All right, I still have to pack and sort through some books to bring with me.”

  “If you start to get sleepy or bored while you are driving, just call me and we can chat, and be careful driving, see you tonight.”

  I found a box full of Artbooks and brought them out to the counter. Lucy was counting out the register. Zoe had already left, but Lis was still hanging around.

  “Lis, you can stay for dinner if you like and make some overtime if you come with me to the boathouse. I'm looking for any artbooks that we may have in stock. Urge seems to be more popular than the TV show. You too, Lucy if you’d like. Willow will be here by midnight. We can play Ticket to Ride in the RPG room if you two would like to. I need to call Anais and invite her too.”

  I called Anais and invited her to dinner and board game night, while Lis and I went out to the boat house to search for Artbooks. It was a while before Lucy joined us.

  “Sorry it took so long, Laura. But I had to run to the bank and make a deposit.”

  “That could have waited, Lucy.”

  “You don’t have a safe and we had over two thousand in cash in the register, so I thought that it would be a good idea.”

  “Two thousand? That has our best day ever beat by a mile.”

  “Two thousand in cash and another fifteen hundred in credit card receipts.”

  “Wow you girls really worked your tails off today, you better eat two or three desserts.”

  We managed to collect another two full books of artbooks, while we might not be able to fully stock the space, hopefully Willow will have a few boxes of books with her as well.

  Anais arrived and the writers and the rest of us all had a nice dinner, Lucy and Lis took me up on my offer of multiple desserts. It’s a good thing that Amy had baked three pies this morning. I wondered if I should hire a couple more part timers for the next nine days.

  “Lucy, should I hire two more part timers temporarily for the next nine days.”

  “No, we were fine, but you could hire Luke, our Dungeon master for nine days and pay him in RPG books. He collects them and they are expensive, but with our discount it’d be worthwhile. Plus he’s strong so he could always move the used books around when we need to.”

  “Okay, good idea. I like the increased sales but I don’t want you girls killing yourselves. Work should be fun, stimulating, sometimes exciting but not make you bone weary, day after day. Call Luke in the morning and offer him the job, starting tomorrow if he wants.”