Chapter Eleven
The Saturday morning of the Anti-Festival dawned clear and cold. It was one of those falls when it felt like someone had flipped the switch from “summer” to “not summer.” Jake didn’t mind. Fall meant the town would slow way down and shed its seasonal tourists. The lake would become less welcoming and make you work harder to love it. He didn’t mind that, either.
He had never actually been to the Anti-Festival other than to attend the plays Maya directed, and only when Sawyer’s sister Clara was in them. Generally he would spend the days leading up to the weekend building whatever sets or stages were needed for the play or other events like the bachelor auction and the dunk tank, and then he would get the hell out of there until the play on Sunday afternoon.
But not today. Today, he was installing a giant sign on the Vaccine Machine that said, “Do No Harm; Stick Out Your Arm” and a companion one that showed a mermaid fighting off a giant cartoon flu virus.
Because that was apparently what he did now.
He was unloading the signs Maya and Pearl had made from the back of his truck when the van wheezed around the corner. It was sputtering like a dying old man.
He jogged to get ahead of it—he didn’t have to jog very hard—so he could remove the traffic cones that had been blocking off a spot for it in the parking lot behind the Mermaid.
Maya hopped out of the driver’s seat, and Pearl and Eiko emerged from the bakery. Pearl generally left the back door open on account of how hot it got in there with the ovens going—but maybe also so she could eavesdrop on everyone.
“I’ll get the new signs installed for you and get out of your hair,” Jake said.
Pearl laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you for helping with this. I know it can’t be easy.”
It was and it wasn’t. Yeah, helping with the flu-shot clinic made him think of Jude, but thinking of Jude wasn’t as gutting as it used to be. And he certainly didn’t want anyone else to lose a kid to the flu. So here he was.
“All right.” Pearl, back to her chairperson-of-the-festival persona, spoke brusquely. “I have to find Law and get him to release Amber from her bartending duties to cover the flu clinic while Nora’s in the auction.”
Wait. What?
“I thought Amber quit the bar when she finished school,” Maya said.
“She did, but now that Law is doing pizza for the festival, he needs more help. Amber agreed to work the outdoor bar while he mans the pizza oven, but that was before Nora agreed to stand in the auction.”
Once again: Wait. What?
“Anybody can bartend,” Pearl went on, “but only Nora and Amber can give flu shots, so I need Amber over here for the auction and aftermath. That was the only way Nora would agree.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Logistics!”
“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised you got Nora to agree to be in the auction,” Maya said, voicing a severely understated version of Jake’s sentiment.
“Yes! And isn’t she going to be a catch?” Eiko said happily. “Jason Sims told me he’s been working on his hamper all week. Isn’t that adorable?”
Adorable. That was not the word Jake would use. Jason Sims was not Nora’s type. He was boring, and he had bad hair.
But whatever. Nora was probably just doing a good deed. And with Pearl on her case, she probably hadn’t stood a chance. It was just lunch.
With Jason Sims.
He started setting up the van. Pearl was still hovering, so he asked, “When you said Jason was working on his hamper, what does that mean?”
“Oh, well, you know, the lunch hampers that are part of the auction.”
He didn’t know. He had never attended or apparently paid any attention when it was talked about. He hadn’t known, for example, that they’d added bachelorettes to the lineup.
Pearl must have interpreted his silence as her cue to explain. “The idea at the beginning was that the person doing the bidding would pack a lunch for the person they won in the auction. People have started getting really creative with their lunches. It’s become part of the theater of it all. You announce your monetary bid, but you also say what’s in your hamper. And I have to say, last year, a lot of people got really creative about presentation. We had some crystal goblets and fine-linen picnic blankets.” She paused. “And you know Jason.”
He did not know Jason, not really, on account of the whole as-boring-as-watching-paint-dry thing. But he gathered that Pearl was saying Jason was going all out. Which sort of went with Jake’s impression of him, and of his profession in general. He would fuss over details that ultimately didn’t matter and be rewarded for it.
He never would have said that to Kerrie, who was also a lawyer. And of course he understood the principle of people needing lawyers in certain circumstances, but it wasn’t like lawyers were out there, say, saving lives. Or delivering babies on the town green.
He had finished installing the new signs. He stood back. “Well, there you go.”
All three women started oohing over it.
“Do you know where Nora is?” he asked. She was the one he was doing this for.
He’d thought he was talking to Maya, but Pearl answered. “Oh, she was on her way over, but I sent her out for some chocolate chips.” She smiled. “I had a little chocolate chip emergency this morning.”
Nora felt like she’d lived an entire life before she got to the flu clinic just as it was set to open at nine. First she’d encountered Pearl in the lobby of the Mermaid freaking out over chocolate chips, which she’d apparently not ordered enough of for the massive batch of chocolate chip cookie pies she was making for the festival.
She’d been in such a panic that Nora had offered to go buy some, but Pearl had needed so many bags that she’d had to drive not only to Grand View but up to Bayshore because she’d bought out the store in Grand View. She’d texted Maya, who assured her that she and Jake were fine getting everything set up without her.
Then Eiko had cornered her on the street and insisted that the interview she kept putting off simply had to be done. Nora wasn’t clear on why it had to happen at that exact moment, but she acquiesced, reasoning that it would be good exposure for the clinic—and also that actually doing it would be faster than arguing with Eiko about it.
Then she had to go back to the clinic to get her supplies and the cooler of vaccines. By the time she had lugged everything to the van, a small line of people had already formed.
She paused and took in the current incarnation of the van. As before, her response was Wow. There was a mermaid sucker punching a green flu-virus cartoon with three eyeballs and another mermaid getting a shot from a smiling but slightly demented-looking doctor Nora sincerely hoped wasn’t supposed to be her.
“Wow,” she said again, this time out loud.
“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Karl Andersen, who was the first in line, asked.
“It really is.” She shook her head. “Just give me five minutes to get set up and we’ll get started.”
“Thanks. I’ve got emcee duties at the Pie Walk, and then I need to move the prizes for the three-legged race and the egg toss from the store to the Mermaid—we’re staging the awards ceremony out of the kitchen there.”