LITMIR.BIZ

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a little snappish, are we?”

      Libby began biting her cuticle, realized what she was doing, and stopped herself. “Anyway, I have nothing to wear.”

      “What’s wrong with the tweed skirt and fitted pale blue blouse we bought down in the city last week?” her sister asked.

      Another mistake, Libby reflected. Now she’d have to tell Bernie she’d returned them. She took a deep breath and let it out. “I took them back. They were too tight.” She took another deep breath while she watched her sister roll her eyes. “Well, they were,” Libby said in what she realized was a defensive tone of voice as she looked at Bernie standing there in her burgundy leather pants and hot pink V-neck sweater. It wasn’t Bernie’s fault she didn’t understand, Libby reminded herself. She’d always been the thin one.

      “They made me feel like a sausage.”

      “No, what you’re wearing makes you look like a sausage. I keep telling you, loose clothes make people look fatter, not thinner. And anyway, you’re not that fat.”

      “That fat?” Libby squeaked. “That’s a little bit like saying I’m not that ugly.”

      “I’m not doing this.”

      “What’s this?”

      Bernie ignored her and gestured to the black pants and shirt Libby was wearing. “At least don’t wear black on camera.”

      “I’m not going to,” Libby said, even though she had been planning to. She felt more comfortable in it. It made her feel invisible. “I’m wearing my brown pants and yellow shirt.” When Bernie didn’t say anything, she added, “I’m sorry. I just think that spending two hundred dollars on a blouse is a little much.”

      “Two hundred and ten dollars to be exact,” Bernie said absentmindedly as Libby watched her look around the studio. “And it was a Krista Larson for heaven’s sake.”

      “So what?”

      “It made you look great, that’s what.”

      Libby watched Bernie walk over to one of the sinks and turn on the faucet. Nothing came out. She walked over to the second sink and tried that faucet. Water poured into the sink, but it didn’t go down. It was clogged.

      “Good,” Libby said.

      Maybe they wouldn’t have to tape after all. Maybe she and Bernie could go back to the store, and she could finish the batch of Christmas cookies she was in the middle of decorating. After all, they couldn’t cook if things in the kitchen didn’t work.

      She was sighing with relief when Bernie put her hands on her shoulders and said, “Look, let’s forget about the clothes. Let’s forget about everything. Let’s just concentrate on winning.”

      Libby took a step back. “We’re not going to win.”

      Bernie dropped her hands to her sides. “Why shouldn’t we win?” she countered. “We have as good a shot at it as anyone else.”

      And that interchange, Libby decided, pretty much defined the difference between herself and her sister.

      “I think I need a cookie,” Libby said.

      “Or a stiff drink,” Bernie observed.

      “A cookie.” And Libby started rummaging around in her backpack for one of the chocolate chip ginger cookies she’d made earlier in the day. Given the circumstances, what was another pound or two? She took a bite. The cookie was good, but not good enough. Usually chocolate did it for her, but it didn’t seem to be working today. Maybe Bernie was right. Maybe she needed a drink. Something like a Long Island iced tea. Or a large bottle of Pinot Noir. Or a tranq.

      Libby took another bite of her cookie anyway as she contemplated what was in store for her and Bernie this evening. It was no big deal. Why should she be nervous? There’d just be thousands of people out there watching her cook. What was the problem with that? Just because she probably wouldn’t be able to get any words past her vocal chords because they would be constricted in terror.

      And so what if she dropped say … a chicken … on the floor, or burned it, or it didn’t cook all the way through? What then? The great Julia had done things like that all the time on her television show. But, Libby told herself, she wasn’t Julia Child. And Julia didn’t have the Heavenly Housewife, aka Hortense Calabash, of the Hortense Calabash Show critiquing her food.

      Not that Julia would have stood for Hortense’s nonsense. Julia would have bashed Hortense over the head with a frozen leg of lamb or a Christmas goose if she ever pulled any of her stunts on her. Just the thought of that made Libby smile. But Libby knew she’d never raise a strand of spaghetti to Hortense, let alone a blunt instrument. Ever.

      Libby took a third bite of her cookie. As she swallowed, she could almost see the slight flare of Hortense’s thin nostrils, the miniscule lifting of one of her eyebrows when she didn’t like something. What had she said to Rudolfo, the chef from Mesmerize, after she’d tasted the pâté he’d made? Wasn’t it something along the lines of, “My, what an interesting group of ingredients you’ve chosen to use. This tastes rather like a mix between raw eggplant and liver I once sampled in Uzbekistan.”

      Libby had never seen a man turn white with anger before. He’d spluttered, but no sounds had come out. Needless to say, Mesmerize had gone out of business two weeks later. A week after that, Libby had heard through the caterer’s grapevine that the pâté had actually been fine. Hortense had just needed a little something to boost her ratings that week. No wonder Rudolfo had sent her a chocolate cake filled with a mixture of ganache and pureed hog intestines as a thank you for being on her show.

      Or how about the time there’d been that woman on the show demonstrating one of the recipes from her new cookbook on how to use a pressure cooker, and Hortense had taken a bite of the stew she’d prepared and said, “My this is tasty"—then came the dramatic pause, never a good sign—"if you’re partial to the kind of canned stew they sell in the supermarket.”

      And another career had bit the dust. Libby shuddered as she finished her cookie. What if Hortense said something like that to her about something she and Bernie made? And while it was true that her store, A Little Taste of Heaven, had a loyal and devoted clientele, people were fickle. They tended to believe what they heard on TV.

      “What do you think she’s going to give us?” Libby asked Bernie.

      The surprise-ingredient thing was probably the worst part of the whole contest deal as far as Libby was concerned. She spent hours and hours planning out her menus, and here she and Bernie were being asked to cook a whole Christmas dinner with some strange ingredient that Hortense was going to give them in an hour. Then if they won the first round, they’d have to do it again and again.

      “A boar’s head,” Bernie replied. “She’s going to give us a boar’s head.”

      “Be serious,” Libby said.

      “I am. Boar’s heads were the most popular item associated with medieval Christmas feasts.” Bernie paused for a moment. “Although they didn’t have Christmas foods the way we think of them. Well, that’s not entirely true. They did have plum pudding and mincemeat pies.”

      Libby sighed. Her sister was full of more information than you’d ever want to know.

      “I wish there was a way we could find out,” she mused.

      “You and everyone else on the show.”

      Of which there were seven. Actually, five if you didn’t count her and Bernie. Five caterers. Libby rubbed her forehead. She never watched reality shows on TV as a matter of principle and now she was going to be on one!

      “Of course, we could always sneak into the cooler and take a look,” Bernie said. “I bet they have the ingredients stored in there.”

      Libby ignored her. It was bad enough they were in the

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