According to Arlo, Barrett Vane is the most famous chef in America who has never been nice to anyone on camera.
He is fifty-one. He has hosted Vane Glory on the Copper Pot Channel for nine seasons. In each episode, he walks into a struggling restaurant, tastes one thing, and says, "Mm. No."
That is his catchphrase. It's printed on aprons. Arlo showed me a coffee mug.
"People love him," Arlo said. "He made a man in Tulsa cry over a meatball. It got four million views."
"And he wants to throw a pie at me."
"He wants to throw his pie at you." Arlo scrolled. "Which, honestly? That's content."
I did what I do with every large donor. I called the number on the bid form. A woman answered on the first ring, already talking.
"Delphine Marr, producer, Vane Glory. You're the pie lady."
"I'm the executive director."
"Love that. So, Barrett is extremely passionate about community. We're doing a heartland arc for season ten."
I heard a keyboard clatter.
"We'll be in Fernhill Tuesday. Small crew. Very low-key. You won't even notice us."
They arrived Tuesday in two black SUVs and a box truck.
Barrett Vane got out of the first SUV the way some men enter a room they've already decided to renovate. He was tall, with silver hair swept back so firmly it looked load-bearing. He wore a white chef's jacket with his name embroidered on it three times. Once on the chest, once on the sleeve, and once on the collar, in case the first two failed.
Delphine got out behind him. She was thirty-six, wore a headset that wasn't connected to anything, and held a tablet the way a knight holds a shield. Behind her came a cameraman named Hal, who was fifty-eight and ate sunflower seeds constantly and in total silence.
"Ms. Albright," Barrett said.
He did not shake my hand. He looked at it, as though grading it. "Show me the kitchen."
"We don't have a kitchen. We're a food pantry."
"Then show me the food."
I gave him the tour. It took four minutes, because the pantry is four rooms. He stopped in front of the canned corn and read a label.
"Mm," he said. "No."
"It's corn," I said. "It's for people who need corn."
"I'm not criticizing the people. I'm criticizing the corn."
Then we reached the back room, and he stopped in front of Frosty. He tilted his head. For a moment he looked almost like a person.
"That freezer is humming in B-flat," he said.
"Our volunteer tunes his guitar to it."
"A healthy walk-in hums in C." He laid one palm flat on the door, the way a doctor checks a fever. "This one is singing its own funeral."
Behind him, Arlo mouthed, Is he right? I nodded. Arlo filmed the freezer, vertically, with great respect.
The meeting was in my office, which has three chairs. Cil took one. Delphine took one. Barrett took mine, which nobody has ever done, and which I decided not to mention because of the twenty-five thousand dollars.
I stood. Hal stood in the doorway, eating sunflower seeds.
"Let me tell you about the pie," Barrett said.
He described it for six minutes. There was a brown-butter shortbread base, baked twice. Above it was an Italian meringue, torched with a hand blowtorch. Above that was a mirror glaze of blood orange, so shiny you could check your teeth in it.
"Tarte Vane," he finished. "It's a statement."
"It's a brick," I said.
Barrett blinked. I don't think anyone had said a short sentence to him in years.
I took the green notebook out of my desk drawer and opened it to Rule 4. I read it aloud.
Soft pie only. Whipped cream on a graham-cracker crust. If it would hurt to drop on a cat, it is not a pie.
There was a pause.
"Graham cracker," Barrett said.
He said it the way other people say head lice. "Ms. Albright, I do not throw graham cracker. I have a reputation."
"So do I," I said. "Mine is soft."
Cil made a small sound that might have been a laugh or an indigestion. Delphine tapped her tablet twice and smiled at me with every one of her teeth.
"Let's not get stuck on crust," she said. "Here's where we've landed.
"Barrett's bid stands. The network adds fifteen thousand on top. That's forty."
Cil sat up very straight. I could see her doing the math. She didn't need to; she had done it on the drive over.
"In exchange," Delphine continued, "Barrett supplies the pie. We get three cameras.
"One of them goes right up close. We want to see the moment. The before, the during. The face."
I turned to Rule 30 and held the notebook up. No camera closer than the front row.
"That's from last year," I said. "It's about a drone."
"June," Cil said quietly. "Forty thousand dollars is a hundred and twenty thousand meals."
"Rule 2," I said. "The pie is for the pantry."
"It is for the pantry. It's forty thousand dollars of for the pantry."
She had me there, grammatically and otherwise.
Nico came in at that moment, which I would later learn he had planned.
He was carrying a coffee carafe and a paper plate with one slice of the usual pie on it. Graham crust. Plain cream. He set the plate in front of Barrett without a word.
Barrett looked down at it. Then he looked up at Nico. Nico looked back, his eyes narrowing behind his reading glasses.
"Barry?" Nico said.
Something happened on Barrett Vane's face. It was very fast, like a fish turning under water.
"Mm," said Barrett. "No."
"You look like a boy who used to break my plates."
"I have never broken a plate in my life." Barrett pushed the slice an inch away. "I don't eat graham cracker."
"As my grandmother said in Thessaloniki," Nico said, "the man who doesn't eat the pie should not throw the pie."
"Your grandmother didn't say that."
"My grandmother said many things." Nico poured him a coffee anyway, and left.
Barrett looked at the slice for a long moment. Then he stood up, and the moment was gone, folded and put away like a napkin.
"Here is what will happen," he said. "Delphine will send a contract. You'll read it, or more likely you won't. And my team will deliver the Tarte Vane on the night."
"I haven't said yes," I said. "Rule 1. Out loud, on the day."
"You'll say yes. Everyone says yes to forty thousand dollars." He buttoned the top button of his jacket, the one with his name on the collar. "I'll see you at rehearsal."
"We don't rehearse."
"Everyone rehearses, Ms. Albright," said Barrett Vane. "Some people just do it in public."
He walked out. Delphine followed, typing. Hal followed Delphine, chewing.
Cil and I stood in my office for a while without speaking. Through the wall, Frosty hummed his tired B-flat.
"I know," Cil said finally. "I know he's awful."
"He took my chair."
"He took your chair, and he insulted the corn, and he wants to hit you with a stained-glass window." She picked up the abandoned slice of pie and took a bite. "But June, it's the freezer. It's the whole freezer, and a new loading-dock door, and fuel for the van until spring."
"The rules are the rules for a reason."
"I know. I've heard every reason. I was there for Biscuit."
She sighed. "Just promise me you'll think about it."
I said I would. I meant it, mostly.
My phone buzzed that evening while I was in the bathtub with the rulebook. It was Delphine.
Rehearsal booked! Grange Hall, Thursday at two. Barrett has test pies, so bring a volunteer. Heads-up: we're bringing Gerald.
I typed back: Who is Gerald?
The three dots appeared, vanished, and appeared again. Then a photo came through. It showed a store mannequin in a beige cardigan, sitting in the back of the box truck with a seat belt on.
Under it, Delphine had written: Gerald has never survived a Tarte Vane. We're hoping Thursday is different.
Up next: Six Paces
Continue to Part 3 →