Fakers (Licking Thicket 1)

I glanced around the table. Kale looked smugly satisfied, and so did the three members of his “team.” Meanwhile, General Partridge and his entourage—two granddaughters and a nephew—stared at the screen in slack-jawed horror even after the montage ended. Paul’s pale eyes were wide behind his glasses. He fumbled in his pocket and pressed his asthma inhaler to his lips.

And me? Weirdly enough, I was angry.

I didn’t get angry often. Emotions twisted me up, so I usually tried to keep things calm and logical. But watching that travesty, I remembered sitting in my parents’ living room back in Licking Thicket, Tennessee, on football Sundays, singing the Partridge Pit jingle with my brother and sister at the top of our lungs, just to drive my mama crazy. It was one of my happiest memories from home, one of those times I’d actually felt like I belonged.

I felt vaguely like Kale Storms had just gone and crapped all over my childhood.

Kale brought the lights back up, and we all blinked like prisoners emerging from a dungeon.

“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands together with a happy sigh. “Have you seen enough, Mr. Partridge?”

“More than.” Beauregard T. Partridge sat straight as a rod in his chair and slicked his hair down with a trembling hand. His shoulders looked a bit frail beneath his dark gray suit, but his eyes positively burned as he gripped the polished wood of his walking stick and stared at Kale like he wanted to cosh him over the head with it.

I was just about ready to help him.

“You know—” General Partridge’s cute, twinky nephew tried to summon a polite smile. “I think what Uncle Beau is trying to say is that we’re not quite sure—”

“Hold it right there, Parrish. I’ll handle this,” the General told the younger man gently. He turned back to Kale with no trace of that gentleness. “I have never in my entire life been so insulted. When my Pattie”—he pointed at a young brunette who looked remarkably like him, but for the fact that she’d hung her head in shame—“told me we needed to come to New York City to get newfangled branding, I admit I was skeptical. But after this?” He shook his head, and it made his jowls quiver. “Under no circumstances will my company ever pay one cent of our hard-earned money for this… this… horseshit, or my name isn’t Beauregard T. Partridge!”

Paul’s eyes pleaded with me across the table to do something. The Partridge Pit BBQ Sauce line would be a huge coup for Storms Marketing. Securing this account would guarantee our annual bonus, and I knew Paul had approximately ten billion nieces and nephews to spoil and a younger sister getting married this year. So I did something I’d sworn I wouldn’t do the day I’d left Tennessee.

“Why, General Partridge!” I said, rising to my feet. “Sir, I am just so, so sorry for this misunderstanding.” I let the no-nonsense, unaccented voice I’d worked so hard to achieve soften back into its natural lilt, let the flat vowels and consonants go round like I had alllll the time in the world to craft the syllables before I released them. I flattened my tie to my chest with my left hand and extended my right as I moved around the table. “You might not remember me. Brooks Johnson? I have to apologize on behalf of my colleague here.”

General Partridge’s instinctive good manners meant he couldn’t fail to stand and shake my hand, just as I’d anticipated, so I was sure to shake once, firmly, look him in the eye, and smile, the way my daddy had taught me.

“I don’t know about a misunderstanding,” the General began. “I think I understood very well. The throne was made of forks and knives, Mr. Johnson. You don’t eat barbecue with forks and knives! It falls off the bone.”

“I know. I do know.” I clapped Kale on the shoulder so firmly he stumbled into his chair looking shell-shocked and uncertain. “But you remember how it is with young folks, don’t you, General? Eager to impress, but not always sure how?”

Kale looked about as eager to impress as he was to learn ballet, so I carried on quickly.

“I was just thrilled when I heard we’d have the opportunity to speak to y’all. My family’ve all been… big, big fans for years,” I lied, crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping my mother never heard about this.

My family was pretty fine with folks loving who they loved and worshipping whatever entity they worshipped, but Cindy Ann Johnson had been devoted to Susie Dupree’s Deluxe Barbecue since they’d had a single storefront back in my hometown, and she’d rather give my grandmother’s secret sweet tea recipe to all the ladies on the town beautification committee than darken the door of a Partridge Pit.