Chapter Twelve

Brandy

“Still nothing?”

I shook my head, putting my phone down on the counter and glancing at the door. A car had pulled in, and I was hoping it would be a customer. We’d actually had a pretty good week so far, enough that we weren’t losing money at least, even after expenses. But today had been slow, and I had made the decision to make a call I wasn’t excited about.

“I just don’t understand,” I said. “What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, hon,” Basil said. “He’s just being a guy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s a reason I only date men when one bowls me over, Brandy,” she said. “Individually, men can be great. But as a group, they are terrible. Most of them think the same way, and if I had my guess, he is, too. He thinks he looked weak or stupid or something and you won’t see him the same way.”

“Why wouldn’t I see him the same way?” I asked. “It wasn’t like he did anything wrong. If anything, I admired him for not making it a thing. He could have fought the guy and given him something to really sink his teeth into.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Most men’s instinct is to fight. It’s the wrong instinct, but it’s their first one. This guy, he thought through it and realized fighting would only make it worse. But then, he was in front of a lady he wanted to impress. He probably feels emasculated that he didn’t fight back and thinks you think less of him.”

“Do men really think that way? Because he didn’t get into a fight with a cop ?”

“I hate to say it, but yes. Men absolutely think that way. It’s ridiculous. Have you tried calling him?”

“Twice,” I said.

“And I assume a couple text messages?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But nothing. No response at all.”

She shrugged. “Sorry babe,” she said. “I think he might be a lost cause.”

“Ugh.”

The door opened, and a customer strolled in, an older gentleman I recognized from previous visits but whose name I hadn’t nailed down yet. I took his order and went about putting together the signature white box meal. As I did, the door opened again, and I looked up briefly to see a man I didn’t recognize at all. What stuck out about him was he was wearing what looked like a very expensive suit and had an earbud in, on which he was in the middle of a conversation.

“Just tell him I said it’s a go,” the man said. “Bring the SLR too. Just in case. I know. I know, Dan. I want it down here for BTS. Just bring it.”

He clicked his earbud unceremoniously, without saying goodbye to whoever Dan was, and it clicked. I knew who this was, most likely. The network had already sent a producer.

I caught Basil’s attention, and we switched places, allowing me to stand in front of the tallish man in his mid-forties. His expensive hairstyle showed traces of gray so perfectly smoothed through his dark hair that it looked like it had to be dyed in. What kind of man would intentionally dye black hair to gray?

One with a vision, I thought. One who knew exactly not what he was, but what he wanted the world to believe he was.

“Hello, welcome to Madie’s, how can I help you?” I asked.

“Brandy?” he asked, pointing a finger gun at me. It took everything I had not to throw up in my mouth a little.

“That’s me,” I said.

“Phil,” he said. “Phil Danielson. I’m a producer with Food TV.”

“Wow,” I said. “I just called Nikita Brooks this morning. They sent you down already?”

“Yeah, well, Nikita was very big on us snatching you up before you changed your mind again,” he said through a fifty-thousand-dollar smile.

“Ahh, yeah, I guess I led her on a bit. Six years ago.”

“She doesn’t forget,” he said. “And neither do I. I was her assistant back then. Perhaps you remember me? I wore a hat all the time and was constantly typing away on an iPad.”

I tried to find his face in my memories, but nothing came up. Politely, I shook my head no.

“Ah, well, it doesn’t matter. You’re meeting me now. Right? Excuse me, sir. How do you like this place? Good food?”

“I like it,” the older man said.

“What do you like about it?” Phil pressed. “Do you have a favorite order? Is it the two beautiful ladies we have here? Hello.”

Basil waved and finished boxing the older man’s lunch, handing it over the counter to him.

“Just like it,” he said.

“Nothing specific pops out at you?” Phil tried.

“I like that it’s quiet.”

The two of them stared at each other for a beat before the older man, whose name suddenly popped into my head, opened the door to leave.

“Thanks for coming in, Mr. Ross!”

“Thank you,” he grumbled and left.

“Well,” Phil said, “he wasn’t the most effervescent. I’m sure some of the other people will be more interesting.”

“Oh, interesting is a good word for it,” Basil said. “Hi, I’m Basil Harrison.”

“Basil Harrison,” he said. “If I got my notes right, you were her assistant on the Great American Bake Challenge , right?”

“I was,” she said, looking surprised. “I’m surprised you remember. We only lasted one round on that show.”

“It was rigged,” I muttered. “No way that dumb team from New Hampshire beat us. I will maintain that to my dying day.”

“Oh, that sounds fun. We will revisit that on camera,” Phil said. “Now as for being on camera. I have some questions for you ladies before we go any further.”

“Sure,” I said. “What do you need to know?”

He popped open a satchel that I hadn’t even noticed he’d had flung over his back and pulled out a tablet. As he turned it on, he gave me a knowing look, and I started to get a vague memory of a younger version of him back when I was first contemplating doing this kind of show.

“All right, so I have some personal questions for each of you, but we will start with this. How comfortable are you with cameras in the home?”

An hour later, I’d hammered down some very unpopular concessions from the producer, including several that Basil was willing to completely give in on. One in particular involved them having unfettered access to the house. That was not going to work. Instead, they could access the top floor through the staircase outside, from back when Mom wanted her own entrance and exit and had someone build her a staircase to get out of her window. That way, if Basil wanted to give them full access, she could, but they were not to have that kind of access to Granny.

As for me, I didn’t care what they filmed of me inside the building, but I expected to have veto power to them following me off the property. Anything I did off site was up to me to decide to invite them. After hammering out some of the language of the contract and dealing with a surprisingly steady line of customers in the meantime, we had a rough outline of a contract.

“So I am going to send this off to legal,” he said. “They will look it over, make any modifications, and send it back to you with changes highlighted. We can meet up here and go over them tomorrow. It might be in as early as tonight, but I am staying in Odessa, so I’d like to get back there.”

“Why Odessa?” I asked.

“I just… I prefer having certain creature comforts,” he said, in his least creative way of saying Foley, Texas was a nothing town with nothing in it.

“Oh, all right,” I said.

“Perfect,” he said, “I will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you, ladies!”

As he walked out of the door, I found I was holding my breath. When he was finally completely out, it was like I deflated. Basil, on the other hand, completely exploded.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, Brandy!”

“I know,” I said.

“Brandy!”

“I know.”

“That is insane!”

“I know.”

“You… you don’t seem nearly as excited as I thought you would be.”

“I am,” I said, “I’m excited. It’s just… it’s a lot.”

“Yeah, a lot of money ,” Basil said. “Come on, babe! Just the guarantee alone is enough to keep this place running for years. And make improvements. All the equipment we need, everything, we can get it all. And that’s just for one season!”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I agreed to it.”

“Then why don’t you seem happy about it?”

“Because I feel like there’s something I’m missing,” I said. “Something just doesn’t feel right. It’s too easy.”

Basil rolled her eyes and went to the back, doing prep work for the afternoon that we hadn’t gotten to because of the meeting.

“You do this, you know,” she said. “Something good happens, and you immediately torpedo any excitement.”

“Because I’ve had the excitement before, and it got torpedoed on me,” I said. “I just don’t want that to happen again. I want to see it coming.”

“What is there not to be excited about?” she asked. “This is going to be great! You even got him to agree to your terms about filming in the house and when you aren’t here. He bent over backwards to get you to sign.”

“Yeah, that’s what worries me. He didn’t even really fight about it.”

“Brandy, you need to accept this win. It’s going to do great things for you, for the shop, for everything. Take a breath. Enjoy it. We are standing on the edge of a super successful future.”

I sighed. Basil was incredible like this. She always had an optimistic view of life, even with as hardnosed and tough as she was. The world could beat her up, and she would fight back like a lion, all the while being peppy and optimistic about how life was going to be once she finally bested this giant cat.

“All right,” I said. “You win. I’ll try not to be a dud.”

“Look, I know it’s hard,” she said. “Especially with all that craziness with Collin. But it will all work itself out. You just focus on you and making sandwiches. We can do a year of this show, make our money, and then decide if you want to do it again. No pressure. Okay?”

“All right,” I said. “Now I think we need to rethink our open schedule.”

“Why?”

“Because for some reason, I don’t think our very limited breakfast crew of eighty-year-olds are going to enjoy a bunch of cameras in their faces.”

“Fair,” she said. “We can work on that tomorrow when we have the meeting.”

“You’re in this with me?”

“Like always,” she said. “One sandwich at a time.”