Guardian Angel
27 TV Romance
MY DEMO Monday afternoon was flawless. I’d been practicing what I should say along with the demo and had a couple of funny jokes that I tossed in. I really liked having an audience and it was great that Mom and Betts came to watch. Dad was taking Thursday off for the rodeo, so he couldn’t get off work to watch my demo. I got one of two blue ribbons. The other went to the girl I’d seen before who could slice and dice with the best of them. Man! She was good and fast with a knife. The grand champion in our division went to a girl with the simplest recipe I’d ever seen. It was a no-bake brownie recipe that only had four ingredients and was ready to serve in fifteen minutes. And she had us all in stitches.
She was a real motor-mouth and told this long, involved story about how her brother stole her real demonstration. She was going to bake an Eifel Tower confection, but he ate the struts and making an Eifel Pancake just didn’t have the same appeal. As she talked through the story, she paused occasionally with an instruction for what she was cooking. Heat the condensed milk. Shred the unsweetened chocolate so it melts quickly and stir it into the milk. Let it heat until it thickens. Crumble up graham crackers. Chop nuts. Mix it all together and pour it in a pan to cool. Instant chocolate brownies! I was still laughing when it was my turn to demo. When I did my tomato Jack O’Lantern, I suggested that next time Candace wanted to make an Eifel Tower maybe she could feed her brother a tomato Jack O’Lantern to keep his fingers out of the struts. That got a big laugh, but people were pretty amazed when I put the ingredients for the gazpacho in my Vita-Mix and poured out cold tomato soup. It was too bad that the demos were done in such a way that only the judges could sample the food.
Miss Sullivan and Mom were standing nearby while I cleaned up my dishes and drank the soup when a lady came up to me. She wasn’t the typical fair patron since she had on a skirt and blouse and heels. But she came right up to my table and addressed me by name.
“Brian, I’m Miss Polly.” Meant nothing to me. “I’m wondering if you’d be willing to do your demo on television tomorrow.” Me? TV?
“I… um… should introduce you to my teacher and my mom,” I stumbled out. “Miss Sullivan. Mom. This is Miss Polly and she’s asked me to do my demo on television tomorrow!”
“Oh, Miss Polly,” Miss Sullivan greeted her warmly. “It’s so nice that you were here for the demos. Weren’t they great?” Mom was standing there with her eyes as bugged out as mine.
“Miss Sullivan, your protégé is a credit to your Foods club. I just asked Brian if he’d like to appear on “The Homemaker’s Hour” tomorrow. I don’t think he’s found his tongue yet.” What? The Homemaker’s Hour with Miss Polly? She didn’t say she was that Miss Polly. Everyone knew that show. It came on after the news at nine in the morning. Of course! I should have known her name. Miss Polly! “We’re broadcasting from our booth at the Commercial Building all day. A few of the shows are being done with a live audience and we want both Brian and Candace to be featured tomorrow. I’d say it was a close race between the two of them this afternoon.”
“What do you think, Brian?” Miss Sullivan asked me. “You had a pretty good audience today. It wouldn’t be that much different.”
“Sure! But there’s… cameras!”
“Don’t worry about them. That’s one of the reasons we do The Homemaker’s Hour in front of a live audience. It lets us forget about the cameras and we just talk to our audience like you did this afternoon.”
“Okay. What do I have to do? Mom, we need to go shopping to get more ingredients.”
After I finished cleaning up, Miss Polly led our crew and Candace and her sponsor to the booth in the Commercial Building. There was nothing live happening right now because a network show was broadcasting. I could see the news guy getting make-up on, though. I wondered if I had to wear make-up. We finally plotted things out. Candace was going to do her whole story and demo. They asked me if I’d cut out my caprese salad from my demo because they’d only have ten minutes for my segment and they wanted to add a bit at the end of it. I met Betsy, Miss Polly’s assistant and she showed me where the coffee pot and cups would be. They had this whole portable kitchen that sort of rolled in from the side. Right now, they were rolling in the news desk and putting a blue curtain behind it.
Monday night I called all my friends to tell them to watch the show in the morning. I even called Jennifer and Courtney. They got our local TV station all the way down in Kokomo. I was up at four o’clock Tuesday morning prepping my ingredients and baking. At four-thirty the phone rang and Hannah wished me good luck before she went out to deliver her papers.
When the demo started, there were about fifty people seated in the little audience area and people were standing in the aisles. Miss Polly was really popular. Candace was on a roll with her spiel and everyone was laughing. I about choked when she said her brother stole struts from her tower, but then she looked over and pointed me out to the audience. “That wasn’t as bad as Brian stealing my jokes yesterday, but I tried the trick with tomato salad last night and my brother was fine while I built this!” She reached under the table and pulled out a little Eifel Tower. Well, it sort of looked like an Eifel Tower, anyway. It was chocolate coated pretzel sticks all stuck together. “But Miss Polly wanted me to make the no-bake brownies for everyone this morning, so now that my milk is hot I’ll stir in my shredded chocolate.” Gee, she was good!
With Candace’s intro, people were really into the tomato Jack O’Lantern. There was applause when I turned it toward the audience. I had all the ingredients for the soup cubed and showed them as I put them in the blender. I decided on the spur of the moment to change my patter just slightly.
“I like garlic in the soup,” I said holding up a clove. Then as I split it I continued. “Unfortunately, Candace doesn’t like to kiss me with garlic on my breath.” I glanced over and saw that she was howling with laughter. She pointed at me and made a kissy face. I almost lost my place. “If you split the garlic clove, though and pull out the yellow core in the middle, you can get all the flavor and none of the lingering hot bitter aftertaste of the garlic.” I tossed it in the blender, whirred it for about thirty seconds and poured out the soup into a bowl. I garnished it with a basil leaf. “Now we have great soup and can still kiss.”
There was a lot of applause and after the commercial break Miss Polly and Betsy brought our sponsors and us back in front of the audience to ask us questions about what we were doing.
“These are two amazing young people,” she said. “How long have you two been dating?” Both Candace and I broke up laughing.
“Actually, we just met in competition yesterday,” I said. “This is our first date. Candace is pretty cool.”
“I’m going to test that garlic thing, though,” Candace chimed in. She waggled her eyebrows at me and the audience roared. Miss Polly about lost it. She recovered and interviewed Candace about her goals with cooking and how she got to be such a good presenter. Turns out Candace is planning to be an actress and studied drama. When she turned to me with the same questions, I’d practiced the answer.
“I’m a chemist,” I said proudly. “In chemistry you have to be able to repeat an experiment and get the same results every time or it’s not valid. Cooking is just like that. When my… best friend gave me a cookbook for Christmas last year she said we could experiment together and we did. You just follow the recipe and it comes out the same every time.”
“I want to sample this soup,” Miss Polly said. “We didn’t get to sample at the demonstration yesterday.” She picked up the bowl and spoon like we’d arranged. I was a little tense. “Oh! This is delicious.” I breathed a sigh of relief and reached under the table for my own surprise.
“It’s really good if you have it with fresh bread,” I said, holding out the cutting board for her.
“No. Don’t tell me you made fresh bread this morning, did you?” Miss Polly asked.
“Brian got a blue ribbon for his bread this week, too,” Miss Sullivan said proudly. Miss Polly turned to Betsy.
“I told you, you could be replaced.”
“Yes, but will he get you coffee in the morning?” That was our rehearsed cue and I reached under the table again and brought out the coffee pot and cup. The audience roared and we went to another commercial break as we quickly cleared the set. They brought in comfy chairs as we rolled the kitchen off-stage and Miss Polly interviewed the director of the 4-H Foods Division. Candace and I cleaned up our dishes.
“You are so bad,” Candace said as she elbowed me.
“You’re pretty wicked yourself,” I smiled.
“So, I heard you stumble over who gave you the cookbook. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Um… not anymore. We broke up in June.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“We’re still best friends and cook together sometimes.”
“Would you like to hang around the Fair with me today?” Oh wow!
“Let me think. Hang out with a cute funny girl who likes to cook or go home and muck out the horse stalls? I choose the cute funny girl who likes to cook! I’ll need to clear it with my Mom, though. She’d have to come and pick me up later.”
“I can drop you off. Where do you live?” I told her and she said that wouldn’t be too far out of the way. When the show was over and they’d gone to a network broadcast, Mom came over to help pack up. I asked her if I could stick around and that Candace said they could drop me off this evening. Mom said she thought that was okay, but not to be out too late and to call if I needed anything.
“Uh… Mom? I didn’t expect to hang out with a girl today and I didn’t bring any money with me. Can I borrow twenty dollars? I’ll pay you back tonight.”
“I don’t know, Brian. Are you sure twenty dollars will be enough for this one?”
“Mom!” she handed me a twenty and a ten and we all carted our demo stuff out to the car.
“You need to take all your demo dishes home and wash them tonight,” Miss Sullivan said. “We’ll arrange a time next week for you to drop them off at school.” Mom and Miss Sullivan left and I went to join Candace.
Cute funny girl who likes to cook? Oh yeah!
Candace and I clowned around all over the fair. She was a few inches shorter than me. That made me feel good, even though I was as tall or taller than most of the girls I knew now. We went through the exhibits and she wanted to see my ribbon for bread. She’d snagged a piece before we left the set and munched it as we loaded our stuff. On the way through the Commercial Building, we saw a sign at the Vita-Mix booth that said, “Brian’s Gazpacho as seen on The Homemaker’s Hour: 11:00, 1:00, 3:00, and 5:00.” It was hastily lettered and was sitting next to the recipe card that we handed out to the audience.
“Are you demoing here?”
“Not that I know of. Let’s go before they ask me!” We wandered on over to the Foods Exhibit Hall.
“That’s cool that you won two blue ribbons in 4-H Foods. You are probably the only boy who has ever done that.”
“Yeah but look at that loaf above mine. I’ve got to meet this Claudia Leoni. That bread looks fantastic and I want to learn her recipe.”
“Oh, you know Claudia,” Candace said. “You can’t miss her in the hall. She’s almost as wide as she is tall. I’m sure you’ve seen her.”
“Um… Candace. Maybe I should have mentioned this earlier. I haven’t really been in the high school halls much.”
“Did you just transfer?”
“No. Crap. I’m just going to be a freshman.”
“You’re kidding.” She stopped still in her tracks and just stared out into space for a minute. “You’re that kid.”
“Do you have any idea how ominous that sounds?”
“It’s not. It’s a thank you, really. I wasn’t in school the day you took out Kirby’s gang. I was at a speech competition. I sure heard about it though. And I am very thankful they aren’t in school anymore.”
“No matter what you heard, I didn’t really do anything but taunt them into confessing. It was their own stupidity that got them arrested.”
“And your brain. Kirby’s girlfriend broke up with him in April and suddenly transferred to another school, right in the middle of the semester. Kirby was looking for a replacement and kept stalking me. It was too creepy.”
“I didn’t realize she was his girlfriend. She was with him when they beat the shit out of me, but apparently it was too much for her. This summer, I found out she’d gone to the police and confessed everything they did and then testified against him. She’s on probation now, but she did her part to put him behind bars.”
“Nonetheless, you getting him arrested made the rest of my school year safer.”
“I suppose you’re a junior or something.” I thought of the fact that Jessica wouldn’t date me or be with me because she was two years older than me. I figured I could be home in time to make dinner tonight if I called Mom now.
“Senior, actually.” We walked on through the building in silence for a few minutes. Then I felt her hand in mine. “I don’t care,” she said. “I’m going to test that garlic theory today sometime.” My heart skipped into my throat.
We went into the show arena and watched the dressage riders for a while. It was cool in the arena and we could lean back against the bleachers behind us. Candace didn’t let go of my hand. Dressage is a very calm riding sport. You get points for speed, but you get docked points for errors. The best riders weren’t always the fastest. I guess it was the same in barrel racing. You got disqualified if you cut the barrels too tight and knocked one over. That usually slowed you up anyway. Candace and I talked about everything. She told me some of the secrets to getting around the various classes and who to watch out for. I told her about my interest in chemistry and my hope that I’d be able to take mostly advanced placement classes by the time I’m a junior.
And she was funny! The stories she told about people had me laughing so hard my stomach hurt. They weren’t mean stories and I couldn’t tell which ones were true or even based on something true, like the story of her brother eating the Eiffel Tower. We had to move up to the last row of the bleachers so we wouldn’t disturb the riders and even then, a guy finally came up and asked us to leave. I didn’t care. We just kept walking and talking and holding hands. We went through every single hall and barn at the fair and got to pet the rabbits and watched the pig races. We entered the craft hall and there was hardly any one there. We were looking at a photo exhibit and I turned and kissed her. I only intended to kiss her on the cheek, but she turned toward me at the same time and our lips met. It was soft and a little tentative since I hadn’t intended to kiss her lips.
“Mmm. No taste of garlic yet,” she said when we parted. “I’ll have to test further later.” We walked over to the quilts and she squeezed my hand. I looked at her and could tell something was brewing. “I have to be honest with you, Brian. I don’t want a full-time boyfriend.” We’d had so much fun, but that damned kiss and now it was going to be over.
“Yeah, I know. What would a hot senior be doing with the littlest guy in the freshman class? People would think you were my babysitter.” I started to pull away, but she tightened her grip on my hand.
“Don’t tell me you are a guy who doesn’t listen to his girlfriends, Brian. Where’s the quick wit that talked about kissing me on television? I said I don’t want a full-time boyfriend. That doesn’t mean I never want to date. If you continue to not have a girlfriend or just have part-time girlfriends, I wouldn’t mind being with you sometimes. You just have to understand that I’m just one of the girls and either one of us might go out with someone else. You’ve probably got your eye on some of your cute classmates already, haven’t you?” I thought about Rose and even Jennifer and Courtney. I laughed.
“Do you really mean that, Candace? That sometimes if we were feeling like it we might go on a date?”
“I mean it. Can you stand to ask an older woman out or am I too much of a cougar?”
“So far I don’t have any idea if you’re a wild cat.”
“Maybe I’d better show you.” She put her hand behind my head and pulled me in for a kiss. It was short, but it left me out of breath. “No garlic yet. We’ll try again later.”
When we decided to leave, Candace led me to her car and got in the driver’s seat.
“You drove? Man! I thought your parents were going to pick us up.”
“Did I say anything like that? I said I’d drop you off. Now fasten your seatbelt and put your hand here on the armrest.” I obeyed. Hell. Maybe I just enjoy being ordered around by girls.
She pulled out of the parking lot and once we were back on the road she reached over and took my hand again. Instead of going straight to my house, though, she drove me over to the high school and parked around back.
“I figured I shouldn’t do this in your driveway,” she said. With that, she pulled me in for a kiss that curled my toes. I wrapped my arm around her and held her as we kissed. It was a little awkward with the armrest between us, but we both stretched to get as much body contact as possible.
Every girl I’ve kissed like that has pulled away because she was afraid if we did it again she’d lose her virginity. This was the very first time I thought I would. She could do anything she wanted and I’d be happy with it.
“You’re not inexperienced, are you?” she said as she started the car again. “But you really are a gentleman. Thank you.”
“Really, thank you. You might be the best kisser I’ve ever met. Or at least close.”
“Thanks. I don’t want to know everyone you’ve kissed, and you don’t want to know about me. But the gentleman part really goes a long way with me. No girl likes to be pawed just because she kisses a guy. For me, if a guy tries that, he’s history. You’ll probably hear people at school say I love ’em and leave ’em. That’s not exactly true. I’m not saying I’m pure as the driven snow, but I’m not going to let anyone make me feel like I owe them sex.”
“Candace, I’ve only been out with you this one time. Kissing you was a lot further than I ever expected us to go.”
“Even with what you said on TV?” she laughed. “I don’t usually do that much making out on a first date, either, but we had a really good time and you kept your hands to yourself.” We pulled into my driveway and she stopped the car so I could get out. I leaned over and gave her a soft quick kiss on the lips and opened my door. “Hey Brian.” I stopped. “It doesn’t mean your hands will never be welcome. Just that I’ll tell you when, okay?” All I could do was grin at her.
“I’ll see you in school, Candace,” I said.
“You bet you will!”
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