“May I offer you a beverage to accompany your lunch, sir?” The kitchen’s voice cut in over Marjorie’s.
“Well, thank you,” Boone replied affably. “I wouldn’t say no to a nice frosty glass of-”
“-wine? I would recommend an impudent little white, a sauvignon blanc from Chateau Kiwi. “The ’16s are eminently drinkable now.”
“Er, no. I can’t say as I really care for-”
“You’re sure, sir? The clean, fresh fruit notes will pair nicely with the sour cream and onion potato chips. Even the least sophisticated palate can appreciate it.”
“There it is!” Emily fairly crowd in triumph. “You heard it: this miserable machine just insulted my daddy!”
“Now, Emily June, I wouldn’t call that an insult.” Boone took another bite of his potato chip sandwich, a man at peace with the world.
“Mr. Newcomb?” Marjorie assumed a look of cautious optimism. “Was this what happened before? You asked for a… down-home dish and the Carème 6000 acted a little-?”
“Patronizing,” Emily broke in. “Condescending. Demeaning.”
Marjorie could take no more. “Oh, for pity’s sake, does your father look like a man who’s been mortally insulted?” She waved one hand at the happily munching Boone. “Even if the Carème 6000 did get a little snotty when he refused its wine selection, do you actually believe he’s stupid enough to be personally insulted by a freaking household appliance? Because if that’s your opinion of your own father’s intelligence, Ms. Newcomb, I think you’re the one who’s behaving in a demeaning manner!”
“How dare you?” Emily’s eyes were ablaze. “You think we don’t know what you’re up to here? When you contacted Daddy about doing this demo, you made it sound like it’d be nothing more than a fact-finding effort to be done privately and in good faith, not a media free-for-all! You and your employer, Mr. Joss Parker, are nothing more than a pack of PR hounds who’d roll over and play dead for extra airtime or another photo in the glossies!”
“Well, we’ve found our facts, haven’t we?” Marjorie gestured at Mr. Newcomb. “Your father got his potato chip sandwich at no risk to life or limb. Yes, the Carème 6000 does seem to be a bit of a wine snob, but if you think a mere touch of attitude is the same as hate speech, you’re not only trivializing a truly deadly social ill, you’ve also just committed it yourself, live and on the air!”
Emily gaped at the accusation. “You’re crazy!”
“And that makes your second offense,” Marjorie countered gleefully. “Casting aspersions on the state of my mental health and doing so using a term that demeans the mentally ill? For shame. Plus your previous statement, calling my respected employer and me PR hounds? Allegations of bestiality are simply not accept-”
“My apologies to the canine population,” Emily snarled. “One test demonstration of this death-tra-kitchen doesn’t settle anything.”
“Oh, I think it’s settled plenty.” Marjorie pressed the advantage, playing to the cameras. “It’s shown the world one litigious woman’s blatant attempt at extorting money from two respectable corporations on the flimsiest possible grounds. The Carème 6000 has just demonstrated that it works quickly, efficiently, and safely, that it is far from the big, bad, family-endangering oogie-boogie that you claim it is. Its grasp of so-called hate speech is about three notches below ‘I see London, I see France!” And if that makes you want to file suit against me for hate speech against your underpants, Ms. Newcomb, wait right here; I’ll alert the Supreme Court.”
Boone Newcomb finished his potato chip sandwich and tried to make peace. “Now, Miz Marjorie, you’ve gotta forgive our little girl. Maybe she did kinda overreact to the troubles we’ve been having with this newfangled kitchen, but she’s got her reasons. Something about the way the Carème gizmo talks about wine, it always set her off, carrying on about how it was an insult to the whole family, and how even though we weren’t all city-wise celebrities and such, that was no reason for us to take that kind of treatment lying down. Mama and me, we’d sooner have Merle Haggard than merlot, so we’d just laugh it off when that voice tried to get us to drink something besides an ice tea or maybe a beer. But poor Emily June took it all seriously, busting into tears at every dang meal until finally we told her to do what she wanted about it.” He looked sheepish. “So she did.”
“Daddy!” Emily’s face flooded with color. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, baby girl,” Boone said soothingly. “But let’s be honest: Mama and me never would’ve let you take things this far if not for all the heartbreak you were going through. We hoped it’d take your mind off the man who-”
“Man?” Marjorie stared at Emily. “There’s a man involved? You initiated this whole ugly mess-you endangered the reputations of two major corporations and my job security-not because of any real consumer safety issues, not out of simple, lawsuit-happy greed, but to take your mind off the fact that you got dumped by some man?”
And then, she did something that she knew she should not have done, under the circumstances: she looked Emily June straight in the eye with blatant, unambiguous, camera-readable pity. Not sorrow, not sympathy, not woman-to-woman understanding, but deliberate, lowdown, it-sucks-to-be-you pity.
Marjorie’s look hit Emily June like a slap across her beautiful face. Livid, she whirled back to the control panel. “Kitchen!” she yelled. “I’m hungry. Access freezer bin #4 and display the contents, now!”
What the-? Marjorie was taken aback by Emily’s bizarre reaction, but before she could say a word, a knee-high panel on the far wall moved aside and a silver platform slid up and out into the light. Upon it rested a row of furred, frozen bodies, each about the size of a small salami.
“Are those-?” A young reporter’s voice trembled. His microphone shook in his hand. “Are those really-?”
“Squirrels.” Marjorie had the guts to say what everyone else didn’t want to believe.
“His squirrels,” Emily June clarified. She crossed the room to gaze down at the row of tiny bodies. “He used to take me out to all the fancy New York restaurants. I’d tease him about how the food was good, but it wasn’t a patch on my favorite down-home meal. When he offered to get me the makings for a good old-fashioned squirrel stew, I thought he wanted to show that he cared about me.”
“Of course,” Marjorie muttered too softly for Emily to hear. “What girl wouldn’t be thrilled to have her boyfriend say it with squirrels?”
“He shot them himself one weekend when the two of us were staying at his place in the Berkshires.” Tears brimmed in Emily’s eyes. “And after he had them cleaned, quick-frozen, and packed for travel, he told me that it was all over between us, that I was squirrel, he was Sevruga; I was possum, he was pâté; I was slumgullion, but he was done slumming it with me.” She raised her chin sharply. “My looks were what hooked him, but they couldn’t hold him. You see, I wasn’t a celebrity. He said that any two-bit billionaire could date a beautiful woman, but the media only cared if you dated someone famous, and he only cared about making the media pay attention to him. Well, how famous am I now, Joss Parker?” she hollered at the cameras. “Because I’ll tell you what, it’s nowhere near as famous as I’m about to be!”