The Chicken Sisters(39)
Amanda could see that Nancy was concentrating on trying to even out the table assignments, and thus the tips, so she agreed with Sabrina on her mother-in-law’s behalf.
“Great.” Sabrina made a mark on the pad she was carrying. “Now, are you guys doing anything specific for tonight? A Food Wars deal, an appetizer or a drink special?”
Amanda thought of the Mimi’s special, dinner plus pie, which she’d seen all over Instagram. They could do so much more than that, but she didn’t want to imitate Mae in any way, either. She drummed her fingers on the table, thinking, while Nancy got up to take the new table map to the hostess stand. “Not a dessert special. Mae’s doing that. And if it’s food it has to be chicken, and those are already our best deals . . .” Trust Mae to have already taken the easiest idea. What could Frannie’s do that Mimi’s couldn’t?
She had it. “Drink specials,” she said. “Alcohol and virgin, too. Like, a Food Wars theme.”
Sabrina looked thoughtful. “Not bad,” she said. “But what about something a little more competitive? Mae was saying last night that she wanted to bring a little Brooklyn to Mimi’s. You could kind of play up that you don’t need to change anything. I mean, I know she’s your sister, but it’s all in good fun, right?”
Amanda felt a wicked urge rise in her. “We’ll give the drinks local names. Sex on the Prairie. The Missouri Mule.” She saw Mary Laura walk in and called to her. “We’re renaming your cocktail menu tonight, ML. It’s the anti–New York drinking fest.”
“Ooh,” said Mary Laura. “The MOhito, like Missouri MO. The Soured on the City.”
“Long Way from Long Island Ice Tea,” said Amanda. “Or here’s one just for Mae—the Not-So-Sparkling wine. Because we don’t need making over.”
Sabrina ripped a sheet of paper off her pad with a grand gesture and handed it to Mary Laura. “Your menu for tonight, then,” she declared. This was perfect, except that Mae might never even hear about it. After the morning, Amanda wanted to rub Mae’s nose in the distance between Mimi’s and Frannie’s—and between Mae’s idea about what people wanted and the way things really were around here.
“How can we make sure everybody knows?” she said. “People around here would come in just for the drinks, but all we can do is put it up on the sign outside.”
Sabrina gestured with her phone. “Put it out there,” she said. “Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Get it on all your accounts now and set it to keep going all day.”
Amanda shook her head. “We don’t do that,” she said. Amanda loved Instagram, but she was more of a follower than a poster, and Nancy had long been adamant that it wasn’t Frannie’s style. We don’t need to advertise, she’d said, quoting Daddy Frank, even when they clearly did.
Sabrina sighed. “You’re going to have to start,” she said. “But for now—get those guys at the coffee shop to do it. The 1908 Standard. They’re probably one of the biggest accounts in the state.”
Amanda picked up her phone, then hesitated. Kenneth was fundamentally loyal—and he’d been sharing Mae’s special all over the place, even if she had been dissing him for years. But didn’t he want Food Wars to succeed for the town, not just Mae?
Sabrina, irritated, took the phone from her hand. “You can even put it on their Facebook page yourself,” she said. She started arranging bottles and glasses into a cluster on the bar and handed Amanda the chalkboard they always used for drink specials. “Write up a couple and make them beautiful,” she said. She opened Amanda’s camera app and looked through it, then started carrying the bottles to a table closer to a window.
Amanda started to letter quickly. Frannie’s Proud Flyover Country Drink Specials, she wrote across the top, then listed their genius drinks. She sketched in a cocktail and handed it over, and Sabrina propped it up behind her improvised photo studio.
“There,” she said after a minute, handing the phone back. “I put it on their page. Ask them to spread it, and send them the Instagram shots and some tweets.” Amanda took the phone, trying not to reveal her confusion, and as Sabrina walked away, Mary Laura slid the phone from her hands again.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll tell them it’s me.”
Amanda smiled at her, relieved. “I mean, tell them it’s me, too. It’s all of us.”
From then on, the night sped up. There were no more one-on-one chats with Sabrina, only a few awkward moments in front of the microphone to offer a cheerful take on how the night was going, which was great. Given how many people there were at Frannie’s, there couldn’t be many at Mimi’s. She’d had a hard time holding on to their usual corner table for the Aarons, who came in every Thursday with their three boys after baseball. Sabrina wanted to give it to a big, noisy crew who must have come over from the local college, but Amanda held firm and slipped her loyal customers past the crowd in the bar, where they were making it abundantly clear that they loved the drink specials—and, Amanda knew, would order another round while they were waiting.
It felt like everyone in town was there. She saw Morty Rountree, famed for never wearing a shirt on his tractor between April and October, but wearing one now and braying cheerfully into the camera with his arm around his wife. “I don’t want her to cook every night,” he was declaring. “We like to get over here once every couple weeks or so, have the chicken.” Morty was a big presence, his wife more retiring and turning as best as she could away from the camera, but the affection between them was, as always, visible.