Shortly before noon he set out for his lunch date carrying his canvas tote bag from the Pickax library. At the restaurant outside the town of Brrr he was greeted by Mrs. Linguini, who recognized his moustache. Ah! Mr. Grape Juice! No wine!…Poppa!” she shouted toward the kitchen. “Mr. Grape Juice here!”
Mr. Linguini came rushing to shake hands, his right hand damp from the steam of boiling pasta, then rushed back to the kitchen.
“Sit anywhere,” said his wife with a grand gesture. “You want grape juice?”
“Wait till my guests arrive,” he said. “I think they’ll want some of your good red wine.” It was commonly believed that Poppa Linguini made his own wine in the basement; also, someone was growing wine grapes on a rocky slope outside Brrr - where the days were sunny and lights were cool - and it was most certainly Mr. Linguini.
Qwilleran took a table for four and propped the canvas tote bag on the fourth chair.
Soon his guests bustled in excitedly, saying, “There he is! … He’s always early… Qwill, you look wonderful! … Your vacation agrees with you!”
Standing to pull out their chairs, he responded with a frown: “I haven’t had a minute’s rest since coming to the beach! I do more loafing in Pickax… You two look as if you’d won the lottery!”
“We’re excited about your secret project!” Hixie explained.
“We’ve been making wild guesses all the way up here,” Fran added.
In Qwilleran’s opinion they were the two most glamorous women in the county - in personality, dress, and grooming. The publicity woman was always recklessly vivacious; the interior designer was always coolly dynamic.
“First, some wine!” he proposed. It was immediately served in squat tumblers, with grape juice for the host. He said, “You’d be drinking imported pinot noir from thin-stemmed wine glasses, if Owen’s Place hadn’t closed.”
“I feel bad about that. I really do,” said Hixie. “When the Bowens first arrived, I called on him to set up an ad campaign for the summer. He didn’t have much personality, but he was incredibly handsome and rather conceited - what locals call uppity.”
“Do you know exactly what happened to him?” Fran asked Qwilleran.
“Only what I read in the paper.”
Roguishly, Hixie said, “I think he was leaning over the rail, admiring his reflection in the surface of the lake, and he fell in.”
“That’s an uncharitable thought,” Qwilleran rebuked her, “but possibly true. The good news is that Owen’s Place will reopen next Tuesday evening with Derek as manager.”
“He can’t work that weekend!” Fran objected.
“It’s the last week of our play, and he has the title role!”
“I’ll be glad to sub for him at the restaurant,” Hixie volunteered. She had managed the Old Stone Mill before joining the Something. “He was our busboy at the Mill. It’s good to see him making progress.”
“Onward and especially upward,” Fran added.
Qwilleran told them how Derek had introduced skewered potatoes as a luncheon dish, deskewering them at tableside with the dramatic flourish of a Cyrano de Bergerac.
“More wine!” he called to Mrs. Linguini, “And then we’ll order.” After selections were made, he presented his proposition:
Moose County has never been associated with a prominent literary figure. No local boy ever made good as a famous writer. So I suggest we adopt one and observe his birthday, just as the men’s lodge observes Robert Burns Night on January 25. I’ve had tremendous reader response to my column about Lisa Compton’s great-grandmother’s diary. She was a Mark Twain fan in the nineteenth century and as goofy, in a Victorian way, as an Elvis fan in the mid-twentieth. Mark Twain made Pickax one of his stops on a lecture tour, and the locals flocked to hear him speak, bought his books, wrote letters about him, and made entries in their journals. He had a fantastic way with audiences of that era. He was a journalist, a humorist, and a prolific creative writer… So I propose an annual Mark Twain celebration to honor an American icon who never passed this way again.”
Hixie’s eyes were shining as she thought of the possibilities. “How far do we want to go?”
“We could easily fill a week with special events. Proceeds could go to the county’s literacy program. Samuel Langhorne Clemens would approve of that.”
Fran said, “The theater club could do readings from his books or dramatizations from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.”
“We could have a parade - with floats!” Hixie said ecstatically. “That would draw the TV crews from Down Below.”
“We could stage a banquet. Does anyone know what he liked to eat?”
“How about a lecture by some university bigwig from Down Below?”
“Why not rename a street Mark Twain Boulevard?”
“The Something could offer an annual Mark Twain scholarship to a student going into journalism.”
Then Qwilleran suggested, “When the renovated hotel opens in September, perhaps we could name one room after him and hang a large portrait.” He unsheathed Mark Twain A to Z from the canvas tote bag, displaying the splendid photograph on the book jacket.
Hixie squealed with delight. “We could have a Mark Twain Look-alike Contest, and Qwill would win!”
“You’d never get him into a three-piece suit,” Fran said.
“Their eyes are different. Their brows are different.”
“Qwill is handsomer.”
“And sexier.”
He huffed into his moustache. “Here comes the nutrimento.”
Mrs. Linguini came from the kitchen, balancing three plates. She banged one down in front of Fran, saying, “Stuffed manicotti… Very good!” The next landed in front of Hixie. “Veal marsala … Very good!” Qwilleran got the third. “Lasagna… The best!”
After the frenzied brainstorming, they enjoyed lunch quietly with only desultory conversation.
Qwilleran mentioned that Owen’s widow was anxious to sell their boat and might consider any offer of cash.
Fran announced that the next play at the barn theater would be Life with Father, and they were looking for five
kids with red hair - to save the cost of wigs. Hixie said she was stuck with fifteen thousand large lapel buttons in a polar bear design, rendered useless when the Ice Festival thawed out. She wondered if they could be returned to the manufacturer and reworked for another purpose.
Qwilleran confided that he might work on a scenario for a film in collaboration with a corvidologist - not to be confused with a cardiologist.
Then Fran shocked them with the news (confidential, of course) that Amanda Goodwinter was quitting the city council and running for mayor. Qwilleran said he would campaign for her.
Finally, Hixie said she had seen proofsheets of the first “Ask Ms. Gramma” column and had brought a set with her. “I want to know what you both think of it,” she said. “I think she wrote it with a pitcher of martinis on her desk.”
At her suggestion, Qwilleran read it aloud at the table:
Dear sweet readers… Ms. Gramma was thrilled to pieces by your response to last week’s announcement. It shows you really care about saying it right. Stick around, and we’ll have some fun, too. Ms. Gramma loves to step on toes and upset applecarts. For starters, here’s a note from a brave guy who dares to challenge Ms. Gramma’s grammar.
Dear Ms. Gramma … You goofed. “Say it right” is wrong. It should be “say it correctly.” - Bill, in Black Creek.
Dear Billy Boy… “Right” can be an adverb or an adjective. Look it up in your dictionary, sweetheart.
Dear Ms. Gramma … My husband and two grown sons are educated and know better, but they still insist on saying “he don’t” instead of “he doesn’t.” What to do? - Pauline, in Pickax.