The other contestants were all happily chatting with their partners about their bake-off desserts. I shifted the basket to my other arm. Merrie set down orange number twelve and picked up orange number thirteen.
“This is absurd,” I hissed at her.
“I don’t show up at your office and tell you how to run your business into the ground,” she retorted.
“You don’t know anything about my business.”
“If you treat your business with the same lack of attention you treat the bake-off, I don’t have high hopes,” she shot back.
I reached around her and started grabbing oranges and throwing them in the basket.
“What are you doing?” she squawked. “Those aren’t good oranges.”
I ignored her and moved on to the pears. “How many do you want? Three?”
“I don’t want any of them; they’re mushy.” She tried to take them out of the basket.
I grabbed containers of raspberries and blueberries.
“They have no flavor. I’m not putting those in my jelly roll.” She glared at the containers of produce. “If this were Manhattan, the fruit selection would be of much higher quality.” She picked up a bag of cranberries and put it in the basket. “I guess I’ll have to adjust my recipe.”
I stroked my jaw.
“What kind of fruit do you want?”
“Really, at this point, I’ll take anything good.”
“Raspberries, blackberries, strawberries?”
“The blueberries are all mealy,” she said. She opened a box of blueberries and held one out to me.
My brain froze. Did she want me to eat it out of her hand?
I went with the safe option and took it out of her hand with my fingers.
“Gross and flavorless,” she said as she ate one.
“Not great,” I concurred.
“Maybe I’ll just add a lot of lemon to give it some brightness, I hope.”
“Or,” I said, “what if I had a place to find fruit that didn’t suck?”
“We haveto listen to Christmas music,” Merrie said. We were in my SUV, zooming down the country roads to the vertical farms.
Merrie fiddled with the radio, and Bing Crosby singing about a white Christmas blared out.
“I’m dreaming!” Merrie belted out along with the radio.
“This is going to be a long drive,” I said over the music
“A fun festive drive,” Merrie shouted back and turned up the radio.
“This is the best song ever! ‘Of a White Christmas,’” she sang. She dug in her purse and pulled out a glass container and opened it.
“I would offer you some, but I know you don’t like Christmas food,” she said as the smell of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce permeated my car.
“Did you bring a whole Christmas dinner?”
