My Bluegrass Baby (4 page)

“The Hillbilly Days festival raises thousands of dollars for charity. Waverly Hills
is a haunted site so famous that it’s been featured in about a dozen movies and TV
shows. And how could we not create a pamphlet encouraging people to take road trips
across the state to see all of the marvelous things they could only see here? Why
wouldn’t we show that off?”

He gave me a condescending smile as he opened his laptop and cued up another PowerPoint
presentation, which was broadcast on a screen on the opposite wall. “I believe you’re
thinking too small, Ms. Hutchins. Driving to the middle of nowhere to see a copy of
a monument isn’t exactly a day trip I could sell.” Suddenly all those statistics about
workplace violence made so much sense to me.

Through clenched teeth, I responded as politely as I could. “I don’t see the harm
in providing information so people can find what they want.”

“The harm is that what they want isn’t necessarily good for the state’s image, which
ultimately isn’t necessarily good for the bottom line,” he said, clicking into place
another slide, this one showing several newspaper clippings.

“Now, these are a few of the news stories concerning Kentucky that have made national
headlines over the past few years.” He nodded to the screen, where the headlines read,
LAWRENCEBURG MAN FORCED TO EAT HIS OWN BEARD
and
MCCLURE COUNTIANS TURN HOUSE INTO A GIANT BONG
.

“This is the image we are trying to get away from,” he said. “Kentucky as a punch
line.”

“Yeah, if you take a couple of isolated incidents, it’s easy to pick on us. But I
think you’ll find that most Kentucky residents don’t really care what the media thinks
of—”

“Well, those ‘isolated incidents’ are the ones that make it into the late-night monologues.
Perception is reality,” he said.

He did not just interrupt me to spout Marketing 101 claptrap.

“You’re kidding me!” I scoffed. “You don’t know the people here. You don’t know how
they think or what they want. And I’m sorry to tell you this, O marketing guru, but
the locals really don’t like to be
told
what they want!”

Vaughn ignored my outburst as if I hadn’t even spoken.

“Kentucky has other resources to offer than moonshine and country ham,” he said, with
just enough emphasis to make me think I’d insulted him somehow. You know, outside
of my head.

“Oh, please, tell me all about the state where I’ve lived for most of my life,” I
retorted.

Vaughn clicked through another slide, showing a beautiful shot of a thoroughbred racehorse
straining toward the finish line, mane streaming in the wind. And there was another,
of rolling green hills bracketed by a white fence, and a pink-orange sunset on the
horizon. A third shot showed a picture of UK’s sprawling campus, with several small
close-ups of the medical research facilities. Another showed a large room filled with
wooden barrels, where two men sipped on amber liquor. “Kentucky’s polished underbelly.
With the exception of the Derby every year, no one seems to remember the state’s traditions
of gentility, refinement. We’re going to reintroduce the idea. Kentucky is a place
where you can come to rest, refresh, explore some of the wonders of nature without
getting too far from a high-end hotel or B and B.”

“That sounds exactly like every marketing campaign used by every state. Ever,” I said,
shaking my head. “What’s going to draw people here, specifically? Because other than
what I assume was bourbon, you could find those things almost anywhere.”

“Being different isn’t always a good thing. If you were going to spend your hard-earned
vacation dollars, would you rather go to someplace ‘safe’ like Florida, or a state
where people handle snakes in church and eat their own facial hair?”

“Look, I know we’re a state with problems and the occasional newsworthy weirdo, but
I don’t think that we’re worse off than any other place. It’s like having a crazy
cousin. You don’t pretend they don’t exist. You place bets on whether they’ll get
arrested during Christmas dinner. And, by the way, even the high-profile tourism states
have issues. Earthquakes don’t keep people from going to California.”

He snorted derisively. “No, but
Deliverance
probably cut into the river tourism in Georgia.”

“I happen to think that the people in Kentucky are unique and interesting and we should
do everything we can to preserve and promote that character,” I countered.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, you’re one of those.”

Kelsey very subtly put her hand across my forearm to keep me in my seat as I repeated,
“One of those?”

“An armchair sociologist who thinks dysfunction means character.”

“Okay, I think we’re done with the review,” Kelsey said, popping up from her chair
like it was spring-loaded. “Josh, let me show you to your office. We’ll get you settled
in and maybe we can get you acquainted with some of the unwritten office policies,
like not taking the last jelly donut . . . and maybe not baiting already hostile coworkers
into beating you senseless.”

Clearly ignoring the warning, Josh leaned across the table with a predatory leer that
should have had me cowering back in my chair. “You know, I understand that you’re
a bit disappointed by your
lack of progress
up the ladder here, but I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’s cute that you think that,” I shot back, rising to my feet. “I’m surprised you
managed to find your way here in the first place. It’s not like the state advertised
the job on Monster.com.”

His face brightened and the sincere pleasure of sharing the next little bombshell
with me made his eyes sparkle an even truer blue. “I didn’t have to
look
. I was
recruited
. An old fraternity brother heard I was looking for a job—”

“Of course, you were a frat rat,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.

“Pi Kappa Alpha,” he said, pointedly ignoring my derisive snort. “C.J. heard I was
looking for a position and gave me Commissioner Bidwell’s card. I sent Bidwell a résumé.
The next thing I knew, I had the job. I guess they weren’t completely comfortable
with leaving the office in your ‘capable’ hands.”

I made an embarrassing combination of squawk and squeak. The idea that he’d been brought
in because he was connected to the right people was somehow mollifying and infuriating
at the same time. At least I knew for sure that Ray and Commissioner Bidwell hadn’t
worked behind my back, promising me the promotion while they’d planned to hand it
to Vaughn. He’d been hired because he had a good introduction through the right people.
I just had to work harder over the next few months to convince the commissioner he’d
been wrong.

It was, however, interesting that he mentioned a C.J. as his frat brother, because
I knew a guy named C.J. around Vaughn’s age and he was—aw, sonofabitch.

I wanted to yank on my hair and possibly plop my head against the table hard enough
to knock myself unconscious. Instead, I kept that inscrutable mask in place and asked,
“Your frat brother, was it C.J. Rowley, by any chance?”

Vaughn’s sandy eyebrows rose. “Yeah, he was in the pledge class ahead of mine. We
weren’t really close, but Pikes always help each other out. Do you know him?”

And suddenly, everything made so much more sense. I knew C.J. Rowley much better than
I ever wanted to. Rowley was a political leech, a wannabe kingmaker who had attached
himself to the administration and wormed his way into the good graces of most of the
decision makers through campaign contributions and sponsored parties. He seemed to
think he could just skip over the fledgling stages of a political career if he secured
some sort of position or appointment for himself. It affirmed my belief in the good
judgment of my state government that this hadn’t happened for him so far.

Rowley and I were not friends. Primarily because of his tendency to proposition Kelsey
in the vilest manner at every opportunity. Therefore, I’d eliminated him from the
guest list of any event we held and if I saw him on any guest list of a department
where I had influence, I got him blackballed there, too. And I’d made sure he knew
I was doing it. Which probably wasn’t smart.

So. Mr. Perfect Pants Vaughn was C.J. Rowley’s payback.

I finally unclenched enough to stand and give Vaughn my scariest, sweetest serial-killer
smile. “I am really looking forward to this.”

Vaughn gave me an amused look, as if I were a cute little Pomeranian puppy attacking
his shoes. “You look forward to watching me walk away with your job?”

“I look forward to the work, to putting together the right campaigns, which is why
I
am going to walk away with the job,” I said.

Kelsey, who had so far remained virtually silent as she absorbed the unfolding drama,
shut her notebook with a definitive snap. “We will end you.”

“You are aware that the two assistant marketing directors will be sharing secretarial
staff, so I’m technically your boss, too,” Vaughn said, frowning at her.

Kelsey’s face shifted to a more neutral expression. “I look forward to working with
you.”

Vaughn snorted and walked out of the conference room, whistling a stupid, jaunty tune.
I thunked my head against the conference table, muttering unintelligible threats against
Vaughn’s anatomy. And his suit, no matter how well tailored it was.

“He does not like you,” Kelsey observed. “Which is weird, because most people like
you.”

“I
am
trying to steal his job,” I muttered into the table.

“Good point.” Kelsey tried to lift my chin, but I resisted. She wrapped my hair around
her fingers and pulled up my head.

I yowled as she forced me to meet her eyes. “Listen to me. You have worked harder
than any person I know for the past six years. This is your job. I think we can both
agree that I would not do well with a man that hot as my direct supervisor.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, nodding. “Options, hit me with them.”

“We pull a
9 to 5
and swap his Splenda for rat poison,” she suggested.

“Options that won’t land us in jail.”

“We put together a kick-ass campaign because you are one of the smartest, most creative
people I know. You know the audience better than Abercrombie McDouche ever could.”

I took a deep breath and smiled up at her. “Thank you, Kels.”

She patted my shoulder. “Besides, if we went to jail, I would sell you for cigarettes.”

In Which I Turn My Workplace into
Animal Planet

3

Remember that scene in
Bambi
when one of the little forest creatures whispers, “Man has entered the forest,” and
all of the woodsy denizens flirt with furry nervous breakdowns?

That pretty much summed up the next few weeks at the office.

None of my coworkers knew what to do or what to say to me about my jettisoned promotion.
I knew they were furtively discussing it in the break room in hushed, clipped voices,
but the moment I walked in, their mouths snapped shut. Other than Bonnie bravely trying
to encourage me to decoupage my feelings of rejection away, they kept their heads
down, occasionally peeking over their cubicle walls like timid little meerkats.

For my part, I kept a pleasant, tight-lipped smile on my face, acting as if nothing
had changed. I brought Melody her baked bribes in the mornings, as usual. I joked
around with Charlie about maybe simplifying his reports into one-sheet summaries with
lots of pictures. He didn’t laugh, because Kelsey wasn’t there to translate my humor,
but that was normal.

Kelsey’s nerd herd hadn’t been able to turn up much in their research, other than
learning that Vaughn had worked for Hewitt-Messing, an incredibly impressive large-scale
marketing firm in Atlanta, for four years. And his credit rating had improved significantly
over the last few months. Frustrated at the lack of useful dirt, Kelsey suggested
creating a fake criminal history, listing him as an identity thief with a penchant
for destroying policemen’s mailboxes. But I’d like to think that sort of thing was
beyond even her evil genius friends. I was probably wrong, but I chose to believe
it for my own peace of mind.

I was surprised to find that Vaughn was born in nearby Ohio County. Frankly, it was
strange that Ray didn’t mention it. Usually, when you met someone else working for
the government, they were introduced with, “This is Seth. His family’s from Farmington,”
or, “This is Jennifer; she hails from Beaver Dam.” It helped establish a sort of camaraderie
among us all and provided small talk at parties.

And if you were maneuvering through Wildcat Country—where the blue and white UK logo
plays prominently on license plates, salt and pepper shakers, wallpaper, and tattoos—you
told everybody from your dental hygienist to the guy who sold you your morning coffee
that you were a UK alumnus. That’s how deep UK basketball ran to people’s hearts around
here. And it was the very reason University of Kentucky alumni and University of Louisville
alumni tended to have tense relationships, good-natured or otherwise. I supposed it
was inevitable. The schools vied to be
the
major university in the state. Both competed for the state’s top high school students.
Both had prestigious athletic teams that frequently faced off in NCAA championships.
The rivalry went back so far, I sometimes imagined the first cavemen who settled in
ancient, primordial Kentucky splitting into team groups and painting their rocks blue
and red to play . . . whatever passed for sports entertainment in ancient, primordial
Kentucky.

But Ray hadn’t mentioned Josh’s alma mater when he introduced us and neither had Vaughn.
It was like he was hiding a card up his sleeve. Why wouldn’t he play it?

Hell, I wasn’t a native. I’d been born in Michigan. But when people asked, I told
them I was from Wickliffe, Kentucky, even though I’d lived in Ann Arbor until I was
ten. I moved to Wickliffe to live with my grandparents after my mom died in a car
accident. My father left when I was a baby, and wasn’t exactly available to take over
single-parenting.

Gran was a sweet woman who tried to coax me out of my mother’s old room with peanut
butter cookies and strawberry shortcake. She was always so happy and upbeat, which
made me feel like I was the only one mourning my mom. It took me a while to figure
out that she processed her grief through false cheer and baking.

And if Gran confused me, Grandpa was a total mystery. He was a state trooper with
a bristly iron-gray mustache and a gravelly voice that reminded me of actors in old
cowboy movies. He was definitely more comfortable watching sports and fishing with
my teenage cousins, Guy and Jake, than he was with me. Gran insisted I should have
equal time, but Grandpa had no idea what to do with me. In desperation, he started
picking stuff out of this big guidebook of
Hot Spots and Happenings in Kentucky
—printed by the Kentucky Commission on Tourism, thank you very much. As we got to
know each other better through a lot of great road trips and bad truck-stop meals,
he realized I wasn’t that different from my cousins. I didn’t mind being told wildly
inappropriate work stories or him using what Gran called “salty language.” I was just
happy to be included.

Where Grandpa had a rough exterior, Gran was a secret finishing school. She’d lived
in the elbow of nowhere for most of her life, but she’d hoarded magazines like
Vogue
and
W
whenever she could find them. She took great pride in teaching me how to dress, how
to build a quality wardrobe on a small budget. She insisted that staying well dressed
and coiffed gave you confidence, so even if you felt like the world was caving in
on your ears, you had one less thing to worry about. If not for her classic sense
of style and nose for bargains, I wouldn’t have survived the well-heeled circles in
which I was expected to travel.

Finding security in my grandparents’ Wickliffe home, I burrowed in. And maybe I’d
done the same thing at the office. I was so determined to make a place for myself
that I’d taken it to an unhealthy extreme. I hadn’t dated anyone seriously in years.
I hadn’t dated anyone
flippantly
in years. I just couldn’t find someone I clicked with. The majority of the men I
met seemed to be stuffed shirts or political climbers who didn’t take me seriously
at all.

Not that I found their inattention upsetting—it was mutual. Of course, Kelsey had
taken to leaving convent brochures in my purse, which I did not find amusing.

“This is a clear abuse of the power of brochures,” I told her as I found yet another
pamphlet for St. Anne Convent in Melbourne, Kentucky, in my handbag. “Also, if enough
of these things pile up in my purse and I can’t find my wallet, that interferes with
paying Angie, which she objects to.”

“I really do,” slim, sandy-haired Angela Moser told Kelsey as I tossed the brochure
at my irascible assistant. Kelsey and I were scouring Angela’s shop for something
suitable to wear to the Derby, having put it off for a bit too long due to my “distractions”
at the office.

Unique Repeats was housed in a discreet restored Victorian in the historic Main Street
district in Shelbyville. The location, halfway between Louisville and Frankfort, was
close enough to service shoppers in both cities while offering the privacy of distance.
No one wanted people to know they were selling their clothes, or that they were buying
someone else’s clothes, but they definitely wanted the bargains.

While Angela lived in the upstairs quarters, the shop level was done up like a lived-in
lady’s parlor. The furnishings were beige and ivory, providing a neutral background
to show off the clothes. Angela kept carefully organized racks of clothing, divided
by size, in the downstairs bedrooms. She wheeled the racks into the parlor for customers
to peruse while they sipped iced tea. Because we were friends, Kelsey and I got to
come in after hours, drink margaritas, and put our feet up on the sacrosanct refurbished
Ethan Allen coffee table while Angela made us into her personal Barbie dolls.

Most of her clothing stock consisted of perfectly respectable Calvin Klein and Donna
Karan pieces, with the occasional precious Chanel thrown in. But what drew in Angela’s
customers was the shoe collection, displayed in the dining room like a sumptuous banquet
of foot candy. Somehow she always managed to sniff out when small shoe boutiques or
high-end department stores in surrounding states overstocked, then swooped in to buy
up their untouched stock at rock-bottom prices. Jimmy Choo. Manolo Blahnik. Prada.
Newer, edgier brands like Alexander McQueen. She had it all, and she was willing to
sell it to us at a deep discount because she’d roomed with me junior year and she
knew how I loved and cared for shoes. That, and I had never snored or asked her for
money.

Kelsey had cemented Angela’s affections with comments like the following:

“Well, if you would relax that damn list of yours and take a spin on the next man
that asked, maybe you’d be a little less cranky, Prudie McClosedKnees.”

“I’m not a prude; I’m selective.” I sniffed as Angela pulled out a peacock-blue cocktail
dress with a low-cut draped back. I shook my head while Kelsey gave her the thumbs-up.
“And frankly, not many of the candidates were worth refreshing my condom stash. I’m
not going to waste it on people I don’t count on seeing again. And by the way, I’m
not going to take any crap from she who dates a man named Darrell.”

“Darrell is okay,” Kelsey said defensively as Angela held up a sleek gray suit with
pencil-thin slacks. I gave it two thumbs up and Kelsey vehemently shook her head.
“It’s a little too power-suit for Derby Day. And you have two like it already!”

“Don’t change the subject. Darrell is a rash on the ass cheek of humanity. He refers
to himself as a ‘theoretical entrepreneur.’ He sits at home all day playing Guild
of Dominion while he’s supposedly gathering ideas for some earth-shattering Web site
that would allow people to hold online yard sales instead of going to the trouble
of setting up card tables in their front yards. Which sounds an awful lot like eBay,
but when you bring it up, he stops talking to you. You’re only dating him to keep
your mom off your back,” I shot back as Angela huffed out a sigh and dug deeper into
the rack.

“Hey, hey, keep the gloves above the belt, Hutchins,” Kelsey muttered, a flush staining
her cheeks as she sorted through Angela’s tray of recently acquired bracelets and
costume rings.

I instantly felt a prick of shame. Kelsey’s mother was a former runner-up in the Miss
Kentucky pageant who had done her damnedest to turn Kelsey’s childhood into one long
scene from
Toddlers & Tiaras
. When Kelsey’s body type and pesky “personality” interfered with her mother’s plans,
Elizabeth Wade basically washed her hands of her daughter and told her she was her
future husband’s problem. As long as Kelsey had a man, her mom seemed satisfied, no
matter how screwed up that man happened to be.

“I’m sorry,” I told her as Angela rifled through the rack. “That was going too far.”

“It is what it is,” she said, shrugging. “And I am changing the subject—are we really
going to spend our girls’ night going over campaign ideas? Because with a couple of
drinks in me, I’ll agree that most anything is a good idea.”

Well, that certainly explained Darrell. But I wasn’t going to say that aloud, because
I’d already pushed her that night. Instead, I nodded toward the boxes of files she’d
toted with us to Shelbyville. Far from the office, we were going to decide, once and
for all, which theme I was going with.

The first idea—“Bizarrely Bluegrass”—was my original concept, emphasizing the quirky
aspects unique to the Bluegrass. Where else could you find oversize fiberglass chickens
and school-bus derbies alongside all of the sophistication of multimillion-dollar
research hospitals and horse culture? I would spotlight attractions like the Jefferson
Davis Monument (the aforementioned miniature Washington Monument look-alike in the
middle of nowhere), the Mother Goose House in Hazard, and, of course, Cave City. It
was fun, and a little funky, but I couldn’t help but hear Vaughn’s voice say “quirky”
in that disdainful tone.

To which I heard my own inner voice reply, “Amen!”

My other idea, “Kentucky—Something for Everybody,” was a bit sketchier. It was more
of a middle-of-the-road approach—a little bit country gentleman, a little bit redneck.
Bourbon, Fort Knox, quilt museums, barbecue festivals, and strangely themed little
roadside motels. But I didn’t like the idea that I was toning myself down, which I’d
never done before, because of Vaughn’s concerns about my quirkiness.

Vaughn’s ads and press releases promoting the Derby as a runway, as an opportunity
for ladies to come out and strut their stuff in their most ostentatious hats and suits,
was considered widely successful. And that had eliminated any sense of humility or
new-guy awkwardness. He was letting it all hang out, so to speak. He kept his office
door wide open, proudly displaying sketches and rough storyboards for all the office
to see. His concept was definitely themed around the idea of Kentucky as a bastion
of gentility and manners. He was calling every well-known horse photographer in Lexington
to get rights to elegant “horses running across a pasture” shots. And bourbon distilleries
had taken to sending him sample bottles, hinting that they would love to provide a
location for television or photo shoots.

I was going to have to be better. And I was going to have to be quick about it.

“I know it seems paranoid to work outside of the office, but I want to keep Vaughn
guessing,” I told her. “If he doesn’t see any progress, he may think I’m slacking
off and let his guard down.”

“Still calling him Vaughn, huh?” Kelsey asked, tossing a black-and-green enameled
bracelet at me.

“Josh is too friendly a name for that guy. Vaughn is just detached enough,” I told
her, catching it and clasping it around my wrist. “Vaughn is the name of that guy
who hears you’re having a party from a mutual friend, shows up, drinks all your beer,
and asks why you didn’t serve better chips. You know him, but you don’t want to.”

“I have mentioned before that this is a place of business and not your personal girly-girl
dress-up palace,” Angela said drily as she approached with a boxy pink suit reminiscent
of Jackie Kennedy.