Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Ivy arrived the next Saturday morning, he'd already moved her menu board.
Not far. Three inches, maybe four, in the direction of her side and away from the shared edge of the sidewalk. She picked it up and moved it back. Behind her, she heard him exhale.
"Good morning, Finn."
He looked at her new banner. She'd spent the early morning on it: hand-lettered in the warm brush script she'd developed over three years of market content, Sugar there's a—"
"Tomatoes," he said, "do not care how you say their name."
"Of course they don't," said Ivy. "They don't have a brain. Can you imagine if they did? They'd scream when you bit into them."
Finn narrowed his gaze at her. Then he inhaled. Looked away, looked at her again. Then let out a heaving sigh. He turned back to the customer.
"Would you like to buy a batch?" he asked.
"Sure, but I'm mostly here for the show," grinned the woman.
Ivy became aware, at approximately this moment, that the argument had an audience.
Not just the original customer, who purchased two Cherokee Purples almost as an afterthought and drifted off with the dazed expression of someone who'd gotten more than they came for.
Dot and Clarence had the full chair deployment.
Three other nearby vendors had found reasons to face the north lane.
At the edge of the canopy, a woman Ivy half-recognized was watching them with a calculated gaze.
She was older, unhurried, wearing jeans and a silk top the color of turmeric and deep rose.
The fabric looked as if it had started its life as something ceremonial and had been repurposed over the years.
"To-MAY-to," Ivy said, one more time as she passed Finn and headed inside her truck.
"To-MAH-to," he said, as if it was the end of the argument.
And then a customer asked about the olive oil cake. As Ivy bagged their purchase, she realized that her phone was recording live. She had captured the whole to-MAY-to versus to-MAH-to incident live on her feed.
The view count moved while she sold out of the cupcakes and Finn sold out of tomatoes. The comments kept growing as the afternoon set in.
Ivy and Finn didn't exchange anymore words for the rest of the day. After she closed shop, she opened the clip again and watched the end of it. The to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to exchange. Her own face in the warm light. And Finn in three-quarter profile.
By the time she went to bed that night, nearly half a million people had seen the clip. By morning it would get another million views, making The Tomato Couple, by all standards, a viral video.