Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
The text came in at six forty-three in the morning.
Finn. Community center before the market. Important. — Best wishes, A. Patel
Finn sighed. Both Pastor Patel and his wife were the only people who had his phone number who signed their texts like a written letter.
This text was from Mrs. Patel. He set his phone face-down on the truck seat and pulled out onto the street in the direction of the community center —even though his fingers itched to make the left turn to the market instead.
A summons from the pastor's wife could not be good.
The fact that she had gone to the trouble of typing something out and sending it meant that whatever this was, she wanted him there before he had a chance to think of a reason not to come. He thought of several reasons not to come during the seven-minute drive to the community center.
He respected the Patels. That was the problem.
You couldn't dismiss a summons from someone you respected.
It wasn't in how he'd been raised, and it wasn't in how he'd chosen to live.
Pastor Patel had quietly arranged the line of credit that got Boots the square quiet in the hour before everything started.
He could hear the first vendors setting up across the lot; the sound of a canopy frame going up, a dolly on asphalt.
He walked toward the community center doors with the energy of a man approaching a court marshal, or better yet, a firing squad.
He saw her at the same moment she saw him. Ivy came through the entrance from the other side, her camera bag over one shoulder, a coffee cup in her other hand. She looked up. Their eyes met.
She smiled. Not the audience smile, not the one she aimed at the phone. This smile made him stutter-step in his boots.
He reached the door first. Held it because (again) he'd been raised right. She stepped ahead of him, and he got a lungful of vanilla and brown sugar. Finn was not a sweets man, but for the first time his mouth watered for something that had nothing to do with the harvest.
"Do you have any idea what this is about?" she asked.
"No," he said, which was mostly true.
Mrs. Patel was already at the front of the room.
There was a projector screen pulled down behind her, which Finn had never seen deployed in this building before.
A laptop sat open on the table, and a plate of something that smelled like cardamom was beside it.
Pastor Patel was not present. Finn noted the absence, and it worried him. Mrs. Patel was a force on her own.
She looked up when they came in, and her expression did absolutely nothing to reassure him.
"Good," she said. "Sit down."
There were two chairs. Finn and Ivy sat in them simultaneously, with approximately eight inches between them.
Mrs. Patel clicked something on the laptop. The screen behind her lit up with a number.
Finn looked at the number.
"That's—" Ivy started.
"The view count on your social media account," Mrs. Patel said, "as of this morning. And this."
She clicked again. The follower graph for the Valor Farmers Market social account appeared. The graph line had been flat for eighteen months prior and then, in the last two days, the line went up like something had startled it.
"And this."
The next slide showed the Farmers and Food Truck Rally festival's budget spreadsheet. The deficit column was not small. She let them look at it for a moment.
"The internet has decided it is interested in Valor. Specifically in this year's festival. Specifically…" she looked at them both with the measured patience of someone who had been waiting for slow people to catch up, "…in the two of you."
Finn said nothing. Beside him, Ivy had gone very still.
"It's clear that one of you will win the rally. But there's a bigger prize: the State Cook-Off."
Finn knew the Cook-Off. Every serious food vendor in the region knew about the Cook-Off.
It ran the third weekend of spring in the state capital; three days, outside judges flown in from three cities, the kind of media coverage that could change what a small operation was and wasn't. He'd watched two vendors from neighboring counties come back from it different.
Not famous, exactly. But established. The kind of established that meant a line before you'd finished setting up, that meant wholesale inquiries and catering calls and the credibility that came from having been seen and measured by people who didn't know you and had said yes, anyway.
He had not entered it before. The entry required a brick and mortar address or a permanent fixed location, and Boots & Roots was still, for one more season, a truck.
"Valor has an exhibition slot. A Community Spirit entry.
It's a newer category, added three years ago to bring regional attention to smaller markets and food economies.
It has never been filled by anyone from this county.
" She paused. "We're filling it this year.
Valor's entry will be a partnership entry.
" Another pause, deliberate as everything she did.
"The two of you will represent this market, this rally, and this town. "
"The two of us?" Finn started.
"Partners?" Ivy said at the same moment.
"You share a market space," Mrs. Patel said, with the serenity of a woman who had anticipated this objection and found it unpersuasive.
"You are, as of two days ago, known quantities to approximately two point three million people who are now watching what happens next.
The committee agrees. The slot is yours. "
Finn looked at the projector screen. He looked at the budget deficit. He looked at the follower graph with its startling vertical line.
He could feel Ivy not looking at him.
"There's a prize," Mrs. Patel clicked one more time.
"The exhibition winner is eligible for the State Harvest Prize.
A separate fund administered by the regional agricultural board.
" She let them read the number. "It does not go to the Cook-Off winner.
It goes specifically to the Community Spirit entry, if the judges determine the entry represents genuine regional food culture and community investment. "
The number on the screen was specific and real. A real kitchen. Four walls. A sign over the door. He looked at the number for a long time.
"The State Cook-Off is broadcast. Judged in public, in front of a regional panel, with full media coverage. The visibility from a win at this level—" Mrs. Patel clicked to the final slide, which showed the Cook-Off's media reach numbers, "— would be of a different order than a viral market clip."
Ivy's coffee cup was on the table in front of her. She was looking at the screen with an expression Finn recognized, because it was probably close to his own. The expression of someone doing the math and knowing it would change her life.
"We don't have the same food," Ivy said finally. "My truck is—"
"A dessert concept built around seasonal produce," Mrs. Patel said, smooth and immediate.
"His truck is the produce. The exhibition requires a complete food story: field to table, start to finish.
You are, between the two of you, exactly that.
" She closed the laptop. "The entry deadline is in three weeks.
I would suggest that you begin immediately. "
Finn looked at Ivy. Ivy looked at Finn.
She had a pen tucked behind her ear that she probably didn't know was there, and she was chewing the inside of her cheek, and she was looking at him like she was trying to figure out what she was dealing with before she committed.
He looked back at the screen. At the number.
Three years. He had been building toward this for three years.
He turned back to Mrs. Patel. She didn't wait for either of them to agree. It was a foregone conclusion.
"I'll have the paperwork ready by noon."