The Death of Pie by Tamar Myers

Magdalena!’ Poor Agnes, I couldn’t rightly blame her. I wouldn’t want to be at the end of my weenie-roasting pole either.
    â€˜Calm down.’ I took my time removing a small yellow tablet from my oversized, plain brown leather pocket book.
    â€˜My, but aren’t you the technocrat,’ Wanda said.
    I smiled pleasantly. ‘Really dear, you ought to list sarcasm on your menus as a side dish. As it so happens, I prefer to think of myself as traditional.’ I cleared my throat as a symbolic way of cleansing my thoughts of Wanda’s rudeness.
    â€˜Now, Agnes,’ I said, ‘in her ghastly tell-all novel, Butter Safe Than Sorry , the deceased depicts you as a somewhat-nervous-Nellie-like, anal-retentive roly-poly but fiercely loyal and exceedingly bright friend of the gracious, but less than comely, proprietress of the charming PennDutch Inn. Did that description in any way upset you?’
    When Agnes is astounded, her open mouth forms a perfect but very small circle. Imagine a pink Lifesaver candy, if you will. Unfortunately, if she is to speak, this most attractive arrangement is but fleeting.
    â€˜ No ,’ she said, ‘what you just described did not upset me, because clearly that woman and I have nothing in common.’
    â€˜Harrumph,’ Wanda said.
    I treated Wanda to a glimpse of my bared and gritted teeth. ‘Nobody actually says the word “harrumph,” Wanda, except in British novels. One is supposed to just clear one’s throat.’
    â€˜Then consider my throat cleared,’ Wanda said. ‘The Agnes character in the book fits the real life one to a T. Ask the real one sitting here about her uncles.’
    â€˜What about my uncles?’ Agnes said. I suppose that I would have gotten around to that question sooner or later, but frankly I was rather glad that Mrs Buttinski Hemphopple diverted some of the inevitable heat.
    â€˜Well, dear,’ I said, ‘there is the small fact that – no pun intended – both your uncles spend more time naked than Prince Harry.’
    â€˜If only they looked like His Royal Hunkiness,’ said Wanda, waggling her eyebrows. Given that said brows resembled giant black caterpillars with their antennae intertwined, it was like watching them perform a mating dance. Surely Wanda’s unplucked eyebrows are illegal in several Southern states.
    â€˜Lust does not become you,’ I said to Wanda, merely by way of imparting information.
    I turned my full attention back to Agnes. My best friend, my confident, my bulwark against the slings and arrows of whatever life would send our way since we were a pair of giggling lasses (perhaps she more than I), looked absolutely crestfallen. Given that we Mennonites of Amish derivation feel more guilt than Catholics and Jews combined, I wanted to crawl across Wanda’s cheap laminate table and clasp Agnes’s head to my scrawny bosom.
    But I had a job to do, and besides, the same inbreeding that produced the overabundance of guilt genes in my people also made us even less physically demonstrative than the English English (perhaps even more so than the English English upper class), so that I would never actually hug someone in public. There is even a joke that goes: how can one tell if a Mennonite woman is having sex? The answer: she stops moving. Of course, I find that joke offensive and repulsive, albeit somewhat titillating. I knew for a fact that this scenario did not apply to all Mennonite women – well, enough said.
    â€˜Agnes,’ I said, ‘surely you were deeply embarrassed by the way Ramat Sreym portrayed you in her book. Not to mention the fact that she had your uncles leading a nudist parade through the streets of Hernia. A month after the book was published, and had been passed all around the county, you said yourself at the time that you couldn’t go anywhere without people snickering behind your back. As I recall, didn’t your