The Merchant of Menace

up. Tiffany looked startled, then trotted to a door at the back of the living room and said, 'Billy, Miz Jeffry's here to visit.' She shut the door firmly. 'Billy plays them computer games and sometimes prints out hints and stuff,' she said.

Why's she explaining? Jane wondered. Andthen had the realization that Tiffany was lying. Billy was printing out something else entirely. She was sure of it. Maybe someone had put the Concerned Neighbor note on their door, too, and he was writing a rebuttal to pass out.

Jane explained about the neighborhood caroling party and suggested tactfully that the John-sons join the others and perhaps could turn off their own sound system tonight. 'It's hard enough for some of us to carry a tune at all, without hearing something else at the same time,' she said. 'Then everybody's coming to my house for a supper. Nothing fancy.'

“That's real nice, Miz Jeffry—'

“Please, call me Jane.'

“Okay, Jane. Can I bring something to the dinner? I could do up some hog jowls and beans. Or a mess of beets—?'

“No,' Jane said more forcefully than she intended. 'I've got everything taken care of. All we need is you and Billy to join us.'

“We'd be proud to,' Tiffany said.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Jane thought dismally. 'Then tomorrow, I'm hosting a cookie party and I'd like for you to come to that, too. Just you. It's a girl thing.'

“What's a cookie party?'

“Everybody brings two dozen of their best cookie recipe,' Jane explained. 'All the plates are put out and then everyone goes around and chooses two dozen of other people's cookies. That way, everyone goes home with a nice variety. Sometimes the ladies make up pretty little recipe cards to go with their contribution. But you don't have to. Some like to keep their recipe a secret and that's okay.'

“Oh, Mi— Jane, what a nice neighborly idea. I'd love to come. I got a real good recipe for my granny's tarts. That's okay, isn't it, if they ain't exactly cookies? Or maybe I could make some of them little fluffy things.”

Jane had visions of bottled marshmallow dip slathered on graham crackers. 'That's fine, Tiffany. Just so it's not a cake or pie that has to be cut. Now I better get going. I've got a lot to do today.”

Jane was as good as her word. Purse-sized notebook in hand, she started with the grocery store. She'd been so compulsive that she had several lists. First, the list of dishes she was serving, with the ingredients as subheadings, then she'd rearranged the individual items into shopping aisles so she wouldn't have to go back for celery when she already had the onions. I'm so well organized, she preened silently, Shelley would be proud.

She was able to get her groceries in record time and even made it home before the bags of ice started melting. To her surprise, Mike was awake, dressed, and watching for her. He brought in the bags of food and put the ice in the basement freezer while she set everything out in the order she was going to need it. 'Mike, I need a favor. I have two hams ordered and ready to be picked up. I've already paid for them. Could you run and get them from the ham shop?”

While he was gone, she started cooking. She filled several disposable aluminum pans withpackaged scalloped potato mix, added thinly sliced red and green pepper rounds, and topped them off with extra cheese. No room in the fridge for them until it was time to put them in the oven, but she'd cleared a space in the garage, put down brown paper, and they could sit there under foil keeping cool until later. She threw together the five-bean salad, tossed it with the dressing, and added the big bowl to the garage stash of food.

The cats were charmed by this unusual activity. Jane noticed them watching her and laid a cardboard box over the food.

When Mike returned with the hams, she asked him to take them to Shelley's. 'They're going in her oven this afternoon since I don't have room,' she explained. 'Oh, and take along the parsley to decorate the plates. God, I'm good, aren't I?”

Feeling devastatingly domestic and terribly smug, Jane took on the dining room. She'd already struggled to get all the table extensions put in place, which hardly left room to squeeze around the end of the table, and had put the big red tablecloth and centerpiece in place. Now she put out the sturdy paper plates (she'd sprung for far more than was sensible for them because she loved the colorful wreath pattern around the edges), cups, and plastic silverware. She fished around in the drawers of the china cabinet for hot pads and scattered them artistically.

Jane closed the door on the dining room after a last, admiring look, to keep the cats and Willard out of the room, and she tackled the broccoli.

“Anything I can do?' Mike asked, coming in the kitchen door. 'By the way, Mrs. Nowack said parsley is passe and she's doing a pineapple and Chinese mustard sauce for the ham.'

“Parsley is passe? How dare she?' Jane said with a grin. 'I'm the hostess with the mostest today.'

“Be careful,' Mike said, pouring himself a soft drink and sitting down at the table.

“Of what?'

“Of getting too cocky.”

Jane went on cutting broccoli flowerettes. 'Are we talking about me or you?'

“Me, I guess,' Mike admitted. 'School?' Jane asked.

“Yeah. Do they send my grades to you, like they did in high school?'

“Either that or you'll send them to me. Won't you?”

He nodded. 'You're not gonna like them much. All C's, unless some instructors take pity on me.'

“Oh, Mike,' Jane said, knowing she sounded terribly disappointed in spite of her resolve to be supportive. 'You were a straight-A student in high school.'

“Yeah, but I knew why I was doing it. I was working at getting A's so I could get into college and now I'm there and don't know why. See what I mean?'

“Not exactly.'

“I don't know what's next… why I'm doing this… where I'm headed.'

“But you know wherever you're headed you need a college degree to get there.”

“Sure. But in what? One of my nerdy roommates knows he wants to be an accountant so he's taking all these math and business courses besides the basic stuff and he's acing everything. Mom, he doesn't know the difference between a fork and a spoon, but he knows what he wants to be. Another one is taking all this science stuff and likes it so much he wants to talk about it all the time. Genes and DNA and that. I'm just taking all this dumb college freshman stuff. English, algebra, earth science. I've already aced those in high school.'

“And now you're getting C's in the same things? They're that much harder?'

“No, the courses aren't hard at all. In fact, some are a lot easier than high school. It's just 'cause they're so boring. I want to be really, really interested in something. I want to be like John, spouting about double helixes because I think they're so neat I can't keep it to myself.'

“But Mike, you're interested in — and knowledgeable about — a lot of things.'

“Uh-huh. Too many. I'm pretty good at sports, but I don't have dreams about making touchdowns. I can play a couple instruments, but I'm not good enough to make it my life's work. I know all the grammar rules and have big chunks of Macbeth memorized, but you can't make a living with that stuff. Besides, I don't want to.”

Jane dumped the broccoli flowerettes into a bowl and started peeling the stalks and cutting them into slices. 'Okay, I'm getting the picture. Yesterday I was asking Shelley for advice and she said she'd like to be the wise woman and give it to me, but had none. I feel sort of the same way. But I do have a few suggestions.”

“Yeah?'

“First, get the grades in the dumb courses u 'Yeah, I know that. I will. Piece of cake, really.'

“Second, get it out of your head that you have to decide right now what you're going to be for the rest of your life. You've got at least two years before you have to even pick a major — and even then you can change it. Third, go get the college catalog. I saw a copy in your room when I was cleaning it up after Thanksgiving.'

“Why the catalog?'

“Because I want you to go through it and mark the weirdest courses you can find and take at least two of them every semester. If they're upper level and you can't actually enroll for credit, at least you can audit them. It doesn't matter if your first two years of required courses take two and a half or three years. There's enough money