Cil had signed the agreement with the network at 8:14 on Thursday morning. She told me so herself, that evening, standing in the pantry's back room with her coat still on.
"I should have called you," she said. "I know. I'm sorry."
"You should have called me."
"The repair guy came at seven. He put his ear on Frosty for a full minute. Then he said, 'Ma'am, I'd start saying goodbye.'"
She pressed her hands together. "June, I did the math in the parking lot. Forty thousand dollars is a hundred and twenty thousand meals. I couldn't make the math say anything else."
I wanted to be angry. I was angry, for about a minute.
But Cil has served on our board for nine years. She has never once taken a salary, a parking spot, or the last donut. She was not the villain of this. She was a CPA in a parking lot with a dying freezer.
"Okay," I said. "We'll figure it out."
Behind us, Frosty hummed his tired B-flat. We both looked at him, the way you look at an old dog on the porch.
At 11:40 that night, my phone rang. It was Arlo, who had stayed late to film a time-lapse of the loading dock for reasons he could not explain.
"June," he said. "It's quiet."
"What's quiet?"
"Frosty. He stopped."
Arlo's voice was small. "I don't know what key silence is in. But it's not B-flat."
By midnight, eleven of us were in the pantry in our pajamas. We had six hundred pounds of frozen chicken, peas, and ground turkey to move before it thawed. Nico opened the diner and cleared out both of his walk-ins. He did it without being asked, and in a bathrobe with his name stitched on the pocket.
Hattie Sorensen arrived at 12:20 with the wire cart from the Grange Hall. She was also in a bathrobe. Hers was lavender, and she wore it like a general wears a greatcoat.
"I heard on the scanner," she said.
"There's nothing about freezers on the police scanner, Hattie."
"There is if you know how to listen."
She made fourteen trips. I made eleven. Nobody asked her to slow down, because we had all met Hattie.
At two in the morning, everything was in Nico's freezers. The volunteers went home. Nico put a pot of coffee on, and I sat at his counter with a thirteen-page contract and the green notebook. I had brought both because I couldn't sleep, and because reading is what I do instead.
The agreement was written by people who are paid to make sentences long. Most of it was about camera rights and who owned the footage. The phrase "in perpetuity, throughout the universe" appeared twice. I underlined it both times, out of respect.
On page eleven, I found Section 7(b).
All Event activities shall be conducted in accordance with the Pantry's existing written event policies.
I read it once, then again with my finger under each word. Then I put my coffee down very carefully, as though it might startle.
Here is something nobody in Fernhill knows except me and an insurance agent named Doreen. In year three, our insurer called. They had heard there was a pie involved in the supper. They wanted to know if the pantry had a written policy for it.
I did. It was a green notebook with a coffee ring on the cover.
I photocopied it and mailed it in. Every year since, I have mailed in the new pages. All thirty-eight rules are on file with the Fernhill Mutual Insurance Company. They are, legally speaking, the Pantry's existing written event policies.
"Nico," I said. "I think the rulebook is in the contract."
Nico wiped the counter. "As my grandmother said in Thessaloniki," he said, "a notebook is a fence you can carry."
"That one's actually good."
"They're all good. You just don't listen."
The bell over the diner door rang.
It was Barrett Vane. At least, it was a version of him.
He wore a gray sweatshirt with nothing embroidered on it at all. His hair was no longer load-bearing. He looked like a tired man who had been circling a small town at two in the morning. He looked like he didn't know what else to do.
He saw me and stopped.
Nico didn't stop. Nico took a plate from under the counter and cut a slice of the plain cream pie. He set it in front of the stool beside me. Then he poured a coffee, black, and set that down too.
Barrett stood in the doorway for a long moment. Then he came and sat.
"Forty-one plates," said Nico.
Barrett picked up the fork. He looked at it for a while.
"It was forty-three," he said. "You stopped counting after I broke the gravy boat."
Nico nodded slowly, as if a long and complicated bet had finally paid out. Then he went into the kitchen to give us the room.
I didn't say anything. I have learned from fifteen pies that if you wait long enough, people tell you things.
"Barry Venczel," he said finally. "I washed dishes here the summer I was sixteen. I was terrible at it. Nico kept me on anyway."
He cut into the pie with the side of his fork.
"My mom got a box from your pantry every month that year. Every Thanksgiving there was a pie in it. Graham crust. Plain cream."
"Nico's."
"Nico's."
He took a bite. He chewed. He closed his eyes for a second.
"Mm," he said.
I waited for the no. It didn't come.
He told me the rest in short pieces, between bites.
The bid was real. It was his own money. He had seen a post about the dying freezer, shared by somebody from his high school.
Chef will supply the pie meant exactly that. He had wanted to bake something for Fernhill. He had wanted it to be the best pie the town had ever thrown.
Then the network found out.
"My ratings are down thirty percent," he said. "People are tired of watching me be mean to meatballs.
"Delphine heard about the bid and saw a rescue. Celebrity chef, small town, big splat. She pitched it to the network in an hour."
He pushed the crust around his plate. "I let her. I always let her."
"Why?"
He was quiet for a while.
"Do you know how many takes it takes me to crack an egg on television?" he said. "Forty-one. Like the plates, almost.
"Every time it goes wrong, they cut. And then they keep the one where I look like I've never been wrong in my life."
He put the fork down. "I've never done anything live, June. Nothing. I say Mm, no first so nobody gets the chance to say it to me."
I slid the green notebook across the counter. I opened it to page one and let him read.
He read all thirty-eight rules. He read slowly, the way people read a menu in a language they half know. He laughed once, at Biscuit. He stopped for a long time at the last page.
Nobody gets laughed at. Everybody gets laughed with.
"I'll do it your way," he said. "Six paces, count of three, Nico's pie. All thirty-eight."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. That's Rule 17, and it's for after."
He almost smiled. Then his face went serious again.
"There's a problem. Delphine doesn't need my permission. The network owns the segment."
"The contract says they follow my rules."
"Delphine doesn't read contracts. She makes the second take happen."
He turned his coffee cup in a slow circle.
"This afternoon, she had the crew bake a fresh Tarte Vane. She said whatever I decide, that pie is getting thrown on Saturday. And then she said something I didn't like."
"What?"
"She said," Barrett told me, "'If the chef won't throw it, I'll find someone in that town who will.'"
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