All That and Then Some

ALICE - Hit Me With Your Best Shot

I'VE CALLED AN EMERGENCY meeting of the All Good Things cafe 'executive team' to align on this emergent PR problem. I can feel my old corporate self taking over my brain like a dormant but never eradicated parasite. Corporate Alice has been lurking in dark corners, just waiting for her opportunity to come blazing back out into the light and ruin everyone's tranquil Sunday Dinner Hour by calling them in. I am horrified when I realize this is exactly the kind of thing my old Brooks Brothers clad American CEO would have done. The one I quit a huge salary to get away from.

Suddenly, I'm him. Dylan Stern. Me! I will have to watch myself carefully for any inclination to move into a vast Forest Hill mansion, hire family members to c-level positions they aren't qualified for, take up cocaine and blast the email universe with my thoughts in the middle of the night.

Between our tiny house in Riverdale and the mortgage on the cafe, I can't afford another property. As Buddy is increasingly pointing out, I can barely afford to keep the ones I've got.

As Natalie and I sit in the almost-dark waiting for Buddy to arrive, I check the time impatiently but warn myself against any further Dylanisms. I called the meeting for 6 pm, and it's now 5:57. Dylan used to lose his shit when people were 'only' on time. I will not be Dylan.

We're sitting in the kitchen, hidden from the front-of-house where the doors are locked after closing time. There were no dancers outside when I arrived, but I came through the back alley door just in case.

"Is the cat still in the milk fridge?" I ask Natalie, who is wringing her hands together in a very stressed-out fashion. She doesn't adapt well to sudden changes in circumstance, which is counter-intuitive to (but probably a direct result of) having lived on the street as a youth. Now that her life is stable, she really prefers it to be exactly as advertised, and that, it seems, does not include having young people shaking their asses all over the cafe and scaring off proper customers.

"No, I put oven mitts on and dragged him out. I think he's in the coat closet now."

I nod. "I'll froth him some milk," I say, needing urgently to self-soothe as a response to all this excitement.

Natalie puts her hand up to stop me. "Alice, stay where you are. Can we really afford to start frothing milk willy-nilly?"

Willy-nilly!

But I take her point. Expensive plant-based milks are not for giving to obese cats just because they've had kind of a bad day. They're for selling, preferably at a profit, to teenagers with latte addictions.

Exactly on time (which feels to Corporate Alice like exceedingly late), my co-owner Buddy finally arrives. He is carrying 2-year-old Angel, who is red-faced and furious at this departure from her normal routine.

"Sorry, sorry," he says, whipping a high chair out of the corner and depositing his angry toddler into it unceremoniously. "Daddy-James is in Montreal running ethernet through a client's new office space. 5 days! Luxury boutique hotel, wining and dining. Leaving me with..." He nods in the direction of the child he carried in here.

He settles heavily onto a chair across from me and puts his face in his hands. "He says he hates being away from us, but... I know which of us I'd rather be right now. Do you know how long it's been since I slept in boutique hotel sheets? Since I enjoyed a rain shower with body massaging jets? Since I went out for a nice meal with anyone who didn't put vegetables up their nose and scream bloody murder when I told them it was time for bed?"

Poor Buddy sagged visibly until his face was almost touching the table.

Ouch. I remember those days. Do I ever. While Vic didn't travel as much as James, any time he spent away from the house when the kids were young would have me seething with jealousy. Why does he get to procreate, then pop off to work, leaving me to run after the miniature monster we'd created with a dirty wet wipe in one hand and a full diaper bin liner in the other? The diaper bin was never full when he was home. It would exclusively jam up every time I was single-handedly cleaning some monumentally catastrophic amount of shit that had not only filled the diaper I was now trying to thrust into a full bin but had also gone right up the child's back and into their hair.

With a big surge of empathy, I leaned over, patted Buddy's arm and said something idiotic:

"How about I take her off your hands tomorrow? Daddy-Buddy needs a little me-time, and Auntie Alice would be happy to spend some quality time with Angel."

I realized immediately, of course, that I'd made a terrible mistake. It's been a decade since I'd spent any amount of time with a toddler, never mind one that was dubbed 'temporary satan' by her own loving parent. But how could I take it back when Buddy lifted his face hopefully from the table and said, "Really, Alice? Would you? Oh my god, that would be AMAZEBALLS. I'll bring her around after lunch."

What could I do at that point? Just smile and try to look confident, that's all. I put Corporate Alice back in charge and redirected the conversation back to the matter at hand.

"All right, let's bring this emergency meeting to order."

My no-nonsense tone startled Angel into a momentary break from screaming, so I plunged ahead into the breach.

"We all know about the video. The video is now a fact of life since I am assured by the teenager who so rudely took said video and posted said video without consent 'because it was hilaire' that there is no way to turn it off at this stage. We are in viral territory. Basically, the thing has a life of its own."

"Okay," said Buddy, all calm and reason now that he'd secured himself a parenting hall pass for tomorrow. "But I don't understand why we're viewing this sudden notoriety as a bad thing. You worked in PR, Alice. Any publicity is good publicity."

"Not true!" I counter authoritatively. "Especially if said publicity is a video of myself twerking to a problematic song."

I look to Natalie to back me up on that, but she has nothing to say except, "I don't think it's problematic. I mean, lyrically, it's a little...."

"It's a lot!"

"Okay, sure. But it's of its time. And you're... well, you're of its time, too."

"Listen," I say. "That's not a valid argument. You don't see them airing "All in the Family" anymore, do you? Why not? Archie Bunker was 'of his time' — but at a certain point, we wake up to the wrongness of certain previously overlookable things, and then we CANCEL them. For good reason."

"Are you afraid of getting Cancelled, Alice?" Buddy asks me with wide eyes. I think he's seeing my side of this until he adds, "Because only celebrities can get cancelled. And, while you might qualify as internet-famous for the next nano-second and a half, you're only famous for doing something you think is cancellable. That makes you uncancellable. The only way you could get cancelled might be to come out and say you *don't* like big butts."

At this, Angel shrieks and throws a slightly chewed BabyMumMum cookie at my head.

He continues (without reprimanding his child for using food as a projectile, I notice), "Anyway, are we assuming that this is going to be bad for business? I realize you think it's bad for you, but... if it brings more young people to the cafe—"

"—to make fun of me!" I interject.

"—to possibly buy expensive coffees, I was going to say, then isn't it just possible that this is all a very good thing? Natalie, did any of the dancers buy anything while they were here?"

She nods uncertainly. "I told them they had to. But they all did. Almond flat-whites, Coconut-milk Macchiattos, one of them even took a whole box of Pain Au Chocolate away. Said she needed to make her butt bigger."

I roll my eyes.

"See?" says Buddy smugly. "How is turning an actual profit for once a bad thing? Maeve's right. This is going to be good for us."

Another soggy cookie flies through the air and hits him in the face this time.

"And I think we could use a good thing around here," he finishes.