"When it's actually to-MAH-to," Finn said, without inflection, like a man correcting a mathematical error.
Ivy turned to look at him. "Nobody says to-MAH-to."
"I say to-MAH-to."
"You're one person."
"The British say to-MAH-to. The origin of the word?—"
"We're in the Midwest," Ivy said. "We say to-MAY-to. My grandmother said to-MAY-to. Every person I grew up with said to-MAY-to."
"Maybe you should call the whole thing off," sang the woman between them.
Both Finn and Ivy turned and glared at her.
The customer took a step back. She called to Ivy's mind someone who had wandered into a wildlife documentary and was making herself as non-disruptive as possible.
"To-MAY-to," Ivy said.
"To-MAH-to." He wrote something on his board.
"To-MAY-to."
"To-MAH-to."
"You're doing this on purpose."
"I'm stating a pronunciation."
"You're statingapronunciation, notthepronunciation; there's a?—"
"Tomatoes," he said, "do not care how you say their name."
"Of course they don't," said Ivy. "They don't have a brain. Can you imagine if they did? They'd scream when you bit into them."
Finn narrowed his gaze at her. Then he inhaled. Looked away, looked at her again. Then let out a heaving sigh. He turned back to the customer.
"Would you like to buy a batch?" he asked.
"Sure, but I'm mostly here for the show," grinned the woman.
Ivy became aware, at approximately this moment, that the argument had an audience. Not just the original customer, who purchased two Cherokee Purples almost as an afterthought and drifted off with the dazed expression of someone who'd gotten more than they came for. Dot and Clarence had the full chair deployment. Three other nearby vendors had found reasons to face the north lane. At the edge of the canopy, a woman Ivy half-recognized was watching them with a calculated gaze. Shewas older, unhurried, wearing jeans and a silk top the color of turmeric and deep rose. The fabric looked as if it had started its life as something ceremonial and had been repurposed over the years.
"To-MAY-to," Ivy said, one more time as she passed Finn and headed inside her truck.
"To-MAH-to," he said, as if it was the end of the argument.
And then a customer asked about the olive oil cake. As Ivy bagged their purchase, she realized that her phone was recording live. She had captured the whole to-MAY-to versus to-MAH-to incident live on her feed.
The view count moved while she sold out of the cupcakes and Finn sold out of tomatoes. The comments kept growing as the afternoon set in.
Ivy and Finn didn't exchange anymore words for the rest of the day. After she closed shop, she opened the clip again and watched the end of it. The to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to exchange. Her own face in the warm light. And Finn in three-quarter profile.
By the time she went to bed that night, nearly half a million people had seen the clip. By morning it would get another million views, makingThe Tomato Couple,by all standards, a viral video.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The text came in at six forty-three in the morning.
