The Chicken Sisters(109)
“Where do you want us, Sabrina?” Mae spoke with an ease Amanda envied as much as the boots. They had agreed that Amanda would do the talking for the big reveal, and Mae had refused to allow her to write something out. “Know the three things you want to say,” Mae had insisted. “Hold three fingers in your pocket if you need to. Say each one, end your sentences, then stop.”
That last point, Amanda knew instantly, was exactly the piece of advice she needed to hang on to. Say what I want to say. Then stop. If she could have done that for the past week she would be so much better off. Although—she glanced back at Andy and found his eyes on her—her way hadn’t been quite the disaster she had thought it was. This wasn’t anywhere close to what she had thought she wanted when she sent that first e-mail to Food Wars. And yet somehow it was.
Sabrina ushered them up to the fireplace end of the room, where the three chefs were settling in behind a table. “I was thinking Mimi’s here, and Frannie’s here,” she said, pointing, then stepping back out of the scene.
Without even a glance at any of her co-conspirators, Mae released Amanda’s hand, walked to the side Sabrina had gestured to for Mimi’s, put a hand on her hips, and turned. “Nah,” she said. “Come on up here, everybody.” The rest of them scrambled around the Inn’s rearranged dining tables and joined her. “We’re good all here on the same side, Sabrina,” said Mae, and a wicked grin crossed her face.
Sabrina surveyed them. “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on, are you?”
“Nope.”
Unexpectedly, then, Sabrina flipped at the waist, fluffed her hair, then grabbed a mirror from a table to the side and looked herself over critically before turning back to face them. “Okay,” she said. “As long as it makes good television.” She shifted, took up a central position right next to Mae and in front of the group, and then gazed into the camera, morphing, before their eyes, into the warm, friendly host of Food Wars.
“Hello again! We’re back here today for the final moments in the Fried Chicken Food War, where two century-old institutions have been facing off in a battle for who can claim the title for the best, most authentic fried chicken the little town of Merinac, Kansas, has to offer—and maybe the best fried chicken in the state of Kansas. Little Mimi’s, which started as a chicken shack serving passengers on the railroad line, still serves nothing but chicken, biscuits, salad, and French fries. Frannie’s, which grew from a coal-mining hangout to a full-service restaurant, has a bigger menu, a bigger dining room, and a bigger reputation. Midway through the competition, we had a big surprise—the restaurants, which were started by a pair of sisters in the 1880s, use what amounts to the same recipe—prepared differently and served differently, but all made with the same ingredients. So it all comes down to this: who does it better?”
She stepped forward, in front of the table, and addressed a different camera. “Our chef-judges, Simon Rideaux, Cary Catlin, and James Melville, have eaten at each establishment. They’ve had the experience and they’ve tasted the chicken, and then they’ve gone back to each restaurant with exactly that question in mind. Fried chicken, they say, sounds simple. But execution is everything. And only one of the restaurants can win our hundred-thousand-dollar prize.”
Amanda felt Mae squeeze her hand. In the doorway, behind Sabrina and the cameras, Kenneth and Jay stood ready to carry in the sign she had painted last night. The sight of it made her feel better. It was a good sign, and this was a good thing. And Sabrina couldn’t ruin it.
Finished with her opening speech, Sabrina turned. This was what they’d been unable to plan for. Would she start with Mae, who would then throw it to Amanda, or come straight to Amanda? Would she ask them to talk before the judges, or after? It varied, on previous episodes; plus it would be clear to Sabrina that something out of the ordinary was going on, so who knew what she’d try.
In the moment when Sabrina began to walk back toward Mae and Amanda, Amanda saw a challenge in her eyes and knew that Sabrina was coming straight to her, to the weak spot. There was no wink in her eyes, either, as she took up that weird stance that meant she was talking to you and to the camera at the same time.
“Amanda, you grew up with Mae at Mimi’s. And then you married Nancy’s son, Frank, and started work at Frannie’s, where you’ve been ever since. Of everyone here, you know most about what goes on behind the scenes at both restaurants. What are you thinking now, when we’re about to declare one the winner?”
Amanda squeezed Mae’s hand back, and then, resolutely, let go. “I’m thinking we all win, Sabrina,” she said, to the camera, not Sabrina, as Mae had coached her. This actually made it easier. “When we found out our recipes were the same, we found out something else. The feud between the sisters that we’ve built our own feud on never existed. Mimi wanted Frannie’s to succeed. Frannie wanted the best for Mimi’s. There was room for two chicken shacks in this one little town.” She had to take a breath, and Sabrina jumped in.
“But there’s no room for two winners of Food Wars,” she said. “One of you is going to take home a hundred thousand dollars, and the other gets Miss Congeniality. We’ve seen a lot of strife between you two sisters over the course of the last week. You look like you’ve settled things now—but are we going to see something different once the winner is revealed?”