Karen Walker

I bring my entry for class #33 to the big stripey tent at the fairgrounds. I arrange the items for the judges, posing the teddy bear so it hugs my letter. 

“Hello Shut-In!

I’m one too. I clean the Shangri-La Luxe Hotel.  

Hope you like lemon bread. Mine has the citrusy punch of the disinfectant spray I use.

Psssst. A Rolex watch went into the batter just before baking. The oven won’t have hurt it, and the heiress in The Grand Suite won’t miss it. Will just buy another. The Rolex tells the date, but, as a shut-in, whether it’s March 4 or November 30 doesn’t mean much. I work fifty hours a week. 

Tea biscuits. Inside one, there’s a second surprise. Will look nicer on your finger than on whoever forgot it in Room 614. Who forgets a gold ring? The rich of Shangri-La that’s who.

My tea biscuit recipe:  

2 cups whole-wheat flour  

My whole world is steam showers and bidets and triple-sheeted king beds. Yours? A room with a single, a nightstand and chair, and five hangers in the closet?

1 tsp baking powder  

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar 

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract   

Are your walls, like the hotel’s, painted vanilla? 

Combine flour and baking powder, butter and sugar. Add the wet ingredients and form a dough. Knead, then roll out, cut into circles. Prick each with a fork. 

Whoever was in 614 sure was a prick. Excuse my language, but every morning, an awful mess. Intentional, I think.  

Bake the biscuits for twenty minutes at 350°F. Let cool.   

I was cool when they interrogated me about the ring. ‘Nope, haven’t seen it. Nope.’

For the tea biscuits, a teacup. I schlepped room service dishes back to the kitchen, but saved this for you. I looped and swooped the fancy Shangri-La lettering into Shangri-Angry with a thin brush dipped in gold paint. Ha, ha. 

I made you a lap quilt. The black squares are silk pyjamas and the pink from a Chanel blouse courtesy of the hotel laundry located deep underground. The tan squares are bits of my scratchy housekeeping uniform.

I had no pattern. Do you have a routine? Clock the day by breakfast, lunch, choice of chicken or fish fingers at 5:30? I sewed blocks of Monday to Saturday into rows like long hallways.

Here’s a crocheted teddy bear, though I’m not very crafty. Not very nice were the ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’, who demanded fresh sheets and bathrobes twice daily. They did leave plane tickets to Paris on the coffee table. One for you and  one for me are inside the bear’s arms.  

Let’s go, Shut-In! Let’s yell, ‘Bye-bye, One Blue Pine,’ and ‘Toodle-loo, f* you, Shangri-La.’ 

Think it over with a cuppa and lemon bread. Talk it over with the bear and the quilt, then call me at 306-247-3273.  

Be free. 

Warmest, 

Stacey Marie”

If I win this class, I’ll give the Shut-In my blue ribbon. Will even frame it so he or she has at least one thing on the wall.

Karen’s prompts were: At a Fairground, a Hotel Cleaner, Tickets

Karen Walker draws and paints and writes in Ontario, Canada. Her recent work is in Club Plum, Weird Lit Magazine, Switch, Underbelly Press, MoonLit Review, FERAL, and Temple in a City. @kawalker.bsky.social