Killer Pancake

“Sure, of course.” He managed a mirthless smile. “When we were talking during the storm, Arch told me—real serious, you know how he is—that he was going to stick to me like epoxy all morning while I was cooking. He swore he’d call an ambulance if I went into shock.” Julian chuckled morbidly. I sighed. “So I told him to concentrate on the Mothers of Invention and I’d worry about the fathers of commerce. Tell you what, Goldy. I didn’t want to mention that even if he finds some of those old LPs, he’s never going to get hold of a system that’ll play them.”

“Who’s fighting?” demanded a sleepy Arch. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen. “I heard you guys.”

“Nobody,” I assured him. This morning, my son was wearing an oversize black T-shirt that said GO PANTHERS! on it. Looking for memorabilia from the civil rights movement, Arch had been overjoyed to find the tattered thing at the Aspen Meadow secondhand store. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him it was the booster uniform from the Idaho Springs High School football team.

He pushed his glasses up his nose. His straw-brown hair stuck out in all directions, like a game of pick-up sticks. “Don’t you need to leave, Mom?”

“Yes, yes.” But I didn’t move.

Arch turned to Julian and frowned. “Okay, here I am. Why don’t you give me something to chop for the brunch you’re doing?”

Julian said, “Why don’t you sit down and have breakfast, Eldridge, and then I will.”

Arch plopped into a kitchen chair, caught my eye, and gave me a nodding scowl: Everything’s going to be okay here, his look said. Sometimes our clan felt like a pride of lions, everyone protective of everyone else. I scooped up the first chafing dish and walked outside.

With all their more harmful consequences, at least the storms had brought a welcome break in the weather. A breeze ruffled my chef’s jacket. I hustled past Tom’s garden. Cabbage butterflies and iridescent hummingbirds flitted from red dianthus to purple Corsican violet. Aspen leaves that had stirred so languidly on their pale branches two days before now quivered, as if in anticipation of a change in season. In Aspen Meadow, fall usually begins in the middle of August, which was just six weeks away. In the distance, patches of brilliant sunlight on breeze-rippled Aspen Meadow Lake quilted the water with sparkles.

When I came back in, Arch was eating one of the cranberry-orange muffins Julian had made on Wednesday. I packed the food and the second chafer into the van. Julian insisted on hauling out the dry ice and the speed cart, where the cups of salad would stay cold. At the last moment I remembered the bleach water. The vat of bleach water is a necessary hygiene element for utensils when no running water is available. I packed the closed chlorine-smelling vat in last. With a coffee-deprivation headache percolating, I fervently hoped that one of the food fair booths would offer espresso, and plenty of it.

The van choked, coughed, and wheezed before moving unenthusiastically out of the driveway. An inch-thick spew of stones and gravel covered our road and Main Street. When I exited Interstate 70 and moved into the heavy stream of summer-in-the-suburbs traffic, my temperature gauge flickered upward ominously. The first surge of Denver’s hot air filled the van, and I thought of Julian, with us for a year, part of the family. After his outburst in the kitchen, he had warned me brusquely to have something to eat before I started working. He’d said, You don’t want to faint in that heat. I took a bite of one of the muffins he had placed on a napkin in the passenger seat. The tart cranberries and Grand Marnier combined for a heady taste. I remembered how energetically Julian had banged the tin into the oven before Claire arrived. And then his agonized questions from this morning echoed in my ear: Who would do this? Why …

I put on the turn signal to go back to Aspen Meadow. Turned it off. Turned it back on. Leave him alone, my inner voice warned. If you do the chamber brunch, you’ll only be saying you think he’s incompetent. Reluctantly, I turned off the ticker and resolved to stick with the day’s plan. After all, the mall opened at eight for special sales in all the stores, and folks were going to come up to the food fair famished from shopping. At least, that was my hope.

“Hey, lady! Make up your mind! The light’s gonna change!” came a shout from a convertible behind me.

When the light turned, I gritted my teeth and urged the van forward. I decided to concentrate on the morning ahead. But I had never done a food fair before, and the idea filled me with unhappy anticipation.