He certainly wasn't conventionally good-looking. He was balding, with lank brown hair that flopped over his ears. He had small, rather watery blue eyes and a pot-belly. None of this explained his undoubted appeal. Despite his height and rather flabby appearance, ex-Senator Al Santini definitely had charisma. The charisma might have been due to his voice, which was deep and resonant. Since he had a heavy Long Island accent, Quill didn't think so. It'd be a challenge to paint his portrait. She'd have to capture the charm and still get across the greed, vulgarity, and boys-in-the-back-room politics that had - finally, after three terms - lost him the race for the Senate.
"Quill?" Santini rapped his knuckles on the butcher block counter. "I got snot on my face or what?"
"Sorry, Senator," Quill said. "You were saying?"
"We got a few more people coming than we'd planned on."
Meg clutched her forehead, groaned, and said mildly, "Your mother-in-law-prospective mother-in-law, I should say - has been taking care of everything just fine. Senator. Did you check this new number with her?"
Senator Al waved largely. "She's busy with the other stuff. My guys've been on the horn. I'm telling you, we've gotta be prepared for a crush." Meg and Quill carefully avoided looking at one another. Senator Al had been unseated in a rash of very bad publicity six weeks ago; Newsweek's editorial on the demise - of his career had been scathingly final. Earlier in the week, they'd wondered if anyone would show up at all.
Meg said patiently, "Your fianc‚e Claire booked our Inn in April for a December wedding. In May you gave us the count for the reception - small, you said, since you didn't want a media circus. Forty, you said. Twenty of the immediate family, and twenty of your nearest and dearest friends. In the last few days you've gone from twenty to forty to seventy. Now, four days before the wedding, you want to bounce it to two hundred!?"
Meg's face got pink, which made her gray eyes almost blue. Her voice, however, remained soft, although emphatic. "Our dining room won't take two hundred. I can't cook for two hundred. Not in four days."
Al Santini waved expansively. "Hire all the help you need. Money's no object."
This blithe disregard for the fiscal gave Quill a clue as to a possible reason why the senator's campaign finances had occasioned such investigative furor from the national media.
Meg stared at him expressionlessly. "If I could hire somebody else to do what I do, do you think I'd be doing it?"
"Say what?"
Quill, grateful for Meg's unusual equanimity, and not too sure how long it would last, interrupted, "My sister's a great chef, Mr. Santini. A three-star chef. There aren't a lot of people who can cook with her style. I know that's one of the reasons your fianc‚e and her family wanted to have the wedding here. And, honestly, this last-minute change just isn't possible. You can't expect Meg to do a five-course dinner for two hundred. Not with this kind of notice. And not in our dining room. We don't have the space." Especially, she added to herself, for a guest list that was unlikely to materialize.
Senator Al put a large hand on Meg's shoulder and bent down to look her earnestly in the eye. "Five-course dinner? Am I asking you for a five-course dinner? Absolutely not. No question. But I got a problem here, you understand that? I got a hundred, maybe two hundred people that are going to be coming to my wedding."
"Which is it?" Meg asked patiently.
Santini shrugged. "Who knows? All I'm saying is we gotta prepare for the contingency."
"Contingency," Meg said. "Right."
"I got a couple of Supreme Court justices, a couple a guys from the Senate, ambassadors, and what all coming to this shindig. Important people, you know?"
Meg rubbed her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut. "Which is how come I can't give you an exact count.
If there's a war, or something, or like Bosnia heats up again? You gonna tell General Schwarzkopf he can't hightail it to the action on account of he's supposed to be at my reception?"
"General Schwarzkopf's coming?" said Quill. Senator Al shrugged. "He got an invitation. I expect him. Look, I don't want to say too much, okay? But there's something of national significance coming down pretty soon. And the eye of the nation is gonna be on Hemlock Falls."
Meg rolled her eyes at Quill.
The double swinging doors to the dining room banged open. One of the blue-suited men from the Santini entourage stuck his head inside the kitchen, a portable phone in one hand. Quill couldn't remember which of the men it was; they all looked and sounded alike. "Senator? We finally got Nora Cahill to agree to the interview. We have her in the conference room."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be right there. You see? It's starting already. Now we got the media. So we bag the five-course dinner for seventy. We do heavy hors d'oeuvres. Stand-up. A buffet, like. The dining room can handle that if you take out the tables. So, Meg, dolly. No dinner."
"Dolly?" Meg said blankly. "Dolly?"
"We're looking at serving two hundred, right? If we can't seat 'em, let 'em stand. That pig, there?" He flicked his finger at the holly under its ear. "You roast a couple of those, we're all set."
"Heavy hors d'oeuvres for two hundred," Meg said stonily, "means a steamship round, pasta and shells, and baked BEANS!" She planted both hands on either side of the pig and drew breath. If one didn't know her very well, the expression on her face might pass for a smile. It put Quill herself, who knew her sister better than anybody, in mind of the wrong side of an outraged baboon. To Quill's amazement, Meg swallowed twice, and said merely, "Why don't we take the change in the menu up with Mrs. McIntosh?"
Santini, clearly unaware he'd escaped a verbal tsunami, continued, "So, no roast pig. I can live with it. If the food's a little less fancy than we planned - don't sweat it." His pat on Meg's shoulder was dismissive. "I gotta take this interview. So, look. You got more questions about the menu? Talk to the ball and chain."
"The what?" Meg demanded.
"Claire. My fianc‚e. Or her ma. Either one. Same-same." He waved at Quill, gave Meg the high sign, pointed a pistol-like forefinger at them, and went pow! "Catch you all later."
The double doors swung shut behind him.
"I don't believe it," said Meg. "Ball and chain? Dolly? Oh, God. I can't stand it!" She ran her hands through her short dark hair.
"Steamship round?" said Quill. "And pasta and shells?"
Meg grinned. "It's tempting, isn't it? That idiot."
"That's all you've got to say? That idiot?"
Meg shrugged. "Why should I waste my breath? It's kind of pathetic, thinking that all these people are showing up for this party. Mrs. McIntosh told me herself that one of the reasons they picked our Inn is because it's so hard to get to in the winter. He's got a guaranteed excuse for nobody accepting the invitations. I have no idea where all this last-minute agita is coming from."
"Maybe he's nervous about getting married," said Quill.
"Whatever. Anyway, Claire and her mother have had seventy acceptances. Almost all relatives. Five-course dinner with no expenses spared. That's what the Mclntoshes are paying for and that's what they'll get. General Schwarzkopf, my eye."