A Catered Christmas. Isis Crawford

asked.

      “Not at all,” Libby retorted, even though she was. If she had had even two months notice, she would have gone to Weight Watchers or Atkins or booked a cruise to Antarctica. Or Siberia.

      Libby shut her eyes. She could picture Bree Nottingham, real estate agent extraordinaire, breezing into her store the day she’d made her announcement. Even though it had been cold and gray, she’d been dressed in pink, the color of the moment according to Bernie: pink tweed Chanel suit, pink slingback heels, pink Chanel purse.

      “You’re so lucky to have this opportunity,” Bree had trilled after she’d explained to Libby what she’d done. “I had to fight to get you on the show, but I said, ‘Hortense, we have to use some of our local talent. It’s only fair.'”

      Lucky was not the word Libby would have used.

      “Maybe I could come down with typhoid or bubonic plague.”

      Bernie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It would probably be bad for business.”

      “Worse than me on television?”

      Bernie shook her head. “Get a grip.”

      “But I’m not a competitive person.” Libby moaned.

      “You are now,” her sister said.

      “You sound like Dad.”

      “I am like Dad.”

      “I know.”

      Libby reflected that her dad was extremely excited that she was going to be on the show. So was her boyfriend, Marvin, for that matter. In fact, that’s all her father or Marvin had been talking about for the last three days.

      “The whole world will be watching,” Marvin had told Libby, a comment that had sent her straight to the freezer for some homemade coconut ice cream.

      As Libby looked around the set again, she wondered who the hell had a television studio built onto the back of their house anyway? Hortense Calabash, doyenne of the cooking channel, queen of sauces, and resident of Longely, that’s who. Libby couldn’t even use the excuse that she and Bernie were too busy in the store this time of year to take the time out to do this.

      “Hortense’s house is only fifteen minutes away,” Libby remembered Bree Nottingham telling her.

      Like she was some kind of moron. Of course Libby knew how far away Hortense’s mansion was. They lived in the same town for heaven’s sake. Not that she ever saw her. They didn’t exactly move in the same social set, which was fine with Libby. But then everyone in the world knew where Hortense’s house was. Okay. They had known a couple of years ago. According to the latest polls, her popularity was being eclipsed by a show on cooking caveman style. But it was still pretty popular.

      “We’ve been friends since camp,” Bree had chirped.

      “Good for you,” Libby had wanted to say to Bree. That woman had been the bane of her existence since the fourth grade.

      “I should kill her,” Libby observed. “I’d be doing the universe a favor.”

      Bernie raised an eyebrow. A well-manicured one, Libby couldn’t help noticing. Maybe she should get hers done too. Before tonight. But the thought of having someone put hot wax on her eyebrows and then ripping the hair out made Libby shudder.

      “Hortense?” Bernie asked as Libby was contemplating what the wax thing would feel like on other parts of her anatomy. “What would her legion of crazed fans do? How would they know what to cook or how to serve it?”

      Libby frowned. “No,” she said. “I meant I want to kill Bree Nottingham for making us do this.”

      “She didn’t make you,” Bernie pointed out in her most reasonable—albeit irritating—tone of voice.

      “Not in the literal sense, no,” Libby conceded. But when the social arbiter of Longely tells you to jump, and you’re in the catering business, you ask what hoop she has in mind.

      “Well then. There you go,” Bernie said. “Anyway,” she continued, “this will be good exposure for the store.”

      “A Little Taste of Heaven doesn’t need any more exposure,” Libby replied. “We’ve got more customers than we can handle as it is.”

      “Not if you hired on more staff,” Bernie pointed out.

      “We don’t have the room.”

      “We could expand,” Bernie replied.

      “That would mean moving,” Libby said.

      “And we’re fine where we are,” Bernie finished for her.

      “Well, we are,” Libby retorted as she watched Bernie saunter over to the sink.

      She and her sister had had the “moving discussion” at least once a week for the past year. But Libby was holding fast to her convictions. She knew too many other places that had been doing well until they expanded. What Bernie didn’t seem to be able to grasp was the amount of planning that the kind of expansion Bernie was talking about would involve.

      But then her sister had always been like that. Diving headlong into something seemed to work for her, Libby thought to herself. She didn’t know how, but it did. It was like Bernie’s shoes. How she could walk, let alone work, in them was something that Libby had never been able to fathom.

      As Libby watched her sister pass by the mini Christmas tree sitting on the end counter, she reflected that it felt strange being on the set. It wasn’t as if she was a big fan of Hortense, because she wasn’t. In fact, she hated her, hated everything she stood for. But still. She’d watched Hortense’s program on TV from time to time with her dad.

      She’d seen those cabinets with the red door pulls, the signature gleaming dark red Viking range while sitting in her living room, and here she was on the set looking at them for real. Somehow they seemed smaller in real life than they did on the screen. It made her feel odd in a way she couldn’t explain.

      “I’m not sure we should be in here,” Libby repeated. She knew she’d said it before, but she couldn’t help herself. After all, the doors to the studio had been closed, and a sign posted had the words NO ENTRANCE clearly written in big black letters. “We should be in the green room.”

      “We will be there—eventually,” Bernie said. “That’s one of the advantages to living nearby. We get to come early.”

      “But the sign …”

      Bernie gave her the look. “I didn’t see it. Did you?”

      “Not after you hid it behind the table.”

      “I didn’t hide anything,” Bernie protested. “Is it my fault if the thing slipped?”

      “But—” Libby started to protest.

      Bernie cut her off before she could say anything else. “I just wanted to take a look around before everyone else comes on the set.” She pointed to a door over to the right. “According to Bree, the real cooking is done in the other kitchen. This set is just for the show.”

      “What are you doing?” Libby demanded as Bernie crossed the room.

      “Taking a peek, of course.”

      “They probably have an alarm,” Libby told her.

      “Don’t be ridiculous.” Bernie opened the door and stepped inside.

      “Looks like our kitchen,” Libby heard Bernie say.

      “I shouldn’t be doing this,” Libby told herself. But she followed Bernie inside anyway. What was it her father always said about in for a penny, in for a pound?

      There was a metal table in the center, clusters of pots hanging from the ceiling, steel racks full of assorted pans, and two large ovens that looked as if they’d seen a lot of use.

      One