Whole Latte Life (5 page)

But he wasn’t, and Sara Beth was. Rachel had turned forty a month after her friend. And it felt good. There’s something
new
about it, something exciting. And she always celebrates life’s good days, buying herself little presents, chocolates, or silver hoop earrings. Something! And Sara knows this about her! She knows that this weekend is about celebrating a long friendship while turning the corner on forty together. And while shopping and getting mini-makeovers. The fun stuff, like the voucher in the hotel gift bag for a discounted haircut at Frederic Fekkai in Bendel’s. Now she’s gone and made it something else.

Rachel turns in her seat when this cop waves back to Joe as he pushes open the door to leave. Friendship or not, she is not going to lose this weekend and just sit around. Forty gives her nerve, is what it does. Is there a limit on that? On nerve? Does the pot ever run dry? Because suddenly she feels like she’s been dipping in a lot.

“Excuse me!” she calls out as the door starts closing.

Michael catches the door with his boot heel and backs up into the room, holding his keys in one hand and Maggie’s apple in the other. She waits for him to say something, anything, as he looks over his shoulder at her.

“And exactly where would I find a bowling alley in this city?” she finally asks, frustrated that her weekend has come to this, to killing time and worrying, worrying in spades.

“Well,” Michael begins, walking back to her table. “Down at the Piers—”

“The Piers?”

He stands at his chair, looks back at the door, then checks his watch. “Okay listen. If you want, I can take you there. A little later on. I have to stop home first.”

“You’d do that? You don’t even know me.”

He shrugs. “I’ve got a general picture of the situation here.”

“Okay,” she finally agrees after a long silence, one in which she actually has to glance away, his stare is so darn steady. Maybe it’s because there’s some tenderness in his look, too, in his offer of time in the city that took her friend.

“You’re sure?” he asks, checking his watch again. “I’ll pick you up then? At seven. Okay?” He waits, watching closely until she nods. “Get that report done too, okay?” When she agrees, he tosses the apple in the air and catches it before walking out the door.

Seven o’clock. Sometimes you have to set a precedent. Yes. This is what it will be on
her
girl’s weekend out. Forty will be
her
choices. If Sara Beth returns by this evening, fine. If not, well. Well okay.

Sara Beth has to do her thing, but so does she. Forty is forty, after all.

So, at forty she thinks she did something she hasn’t done in twenty years. She checks her cell phone for any messages from Sara Beth, and stands then, collecting her purse and the police report before heading out the door back to The Plaza.

She accepted a date. Well, kind of a date, anyway.

Chapter Three

S
hop lights are coming on and Rachel catches her reflection in a glass building on Fifth Avenue. The city is doubled in the fading afternoon light, its image reflected in the windows, doubling her panic at the same time. There is two of everyone now. She turns quickly and squints at a passing reflection, auburn hair catching her eye. “Sara!” she calls out, brushing past people until she can reach out and turn the woman. “Sara Beth!” The woman tugs away and keeps moving in one swift motion, a few pigeons flapping in agitation around her feet. Every auburn head will draw her now, there’s no getting around it.

It’s strange, looking for someone so familiar, so much a part of her life. At sight of the New York Public Library, she crosses the busy street and climbs the grand staircase, finding an available computer terminal she can use inside. She takes a seat at a long wooden table with reading lamps spaced evenly across it. If Sara Beth can’t be found physically, maybe there’s some sign of her virtually. Maybe she updated her Facebook page, leaving some clue to her behavior today. Or tweeted her whereabouts in one hundred forty characters. Maybe someone friended her, someone who knows something Rachel doesn’t know.

First she checks her own email, scanning the inbox, looking for Sara Beth’s name there. Not seeing it, a feeling of vast emptiness settles on her. She glances around, moving from her cyber world on the screen to the gothic doorway rising beside her, right next to the table. Two stone pillars reach up to the soaring ceilings, framing the doorway. What a juxtaposition of old and new, the past and present. Online mailboxes and intangible correspondence exist in harmony with the substantiation and strength of this building.

Sara Beth’s Facebook page isn’t any help. Rachel scrolls over her friends, recognizing different town groups who’ve left messages on her wall…The Friends of the Library, asking her if she can collect book donations; the Beautification Committee planning the summer plantings; other local names Rachel knows well. And what they all do is suggest a virtual portrait of her friend through their connections. She clicks on Sara Beth’s photo albums, coming across several of Sara with her mother in a pumpkin patch, antiquing, at Christmas. There are others, with her sister Melissa, the kids, one with her arms wrapped around Tom.

“What are you doing?”

Rachel looks up at the sound of the harsh voice. A young mother grabs a pen from her child’s hand, looking around quickly to see if anyone noticed the scribblings the boy made right on the table. “Let’s get out of here,” she says, standing and leaving behind a messy pile of books and paper.

Rachel turns back to her screen and blocks out the distraction, focusing intently now on Google and missing person statistics. The mother and son voices echo back even after they’ve left the room, continuing through the building, indifferent to the people around them.

Sara Beth looks at the screen for a few seconds, aware of the massive concentration in this huge room. It’s amazing how a place so large and full of people can be so hushed. Her eye is drawn to the endless line of long wooden tables, each with reading lamps evenly spaced across them. The old and new. Read a book beneath golden lamplight, or log on to the Internet and read virtually. Her mother loved that sense of contrast, the new adding a whimsy to her old antiques. She misses her so much.

“What are you doing?”

The voice unnerves Sara Beth, as though it would be the exact question her mother would ask. It came from the far end of the long room, but carried well. “Let’s get out of here,” a woman says, and she sees a harried young mother push back her chair and grab the hand of a toddler beside her, rushing out. She looks around the room at the rows of long wooden tables and brass desk lamps and computer stations. Near the loud woman, a grand doorway is framed by two towering stone pillars. The other patrons tune out the woman, intent on their readings and research. In all her life, she’d never been in the New York Public Library, never walked up the steps between Patience and Fortitude. Until today.

Chapter Four

Y
ou know how to play, right?”

Rachel looks from the illuminated bowling lane before them back to Michael beside her, his words reeling her away from thoughts of her friend. But isn’t that the purpose of all this? Frames and strikes and pins and gutters? “Roll the ball, knock down the pins?”

Michael bends to tie his bowling shoes. “Did you know that Manhattan is where the colonists first played this game? Lower Broadway. Place still called The Bowling Green.”

“You sure know bowling,” Rachel says, scanning the music video playing above the lane. “Bet they didn’t keep score on plasma TVs.”

“No.” That’s it. Nothing else. She feels him watch her and it makes her touch her hair, the feel of his look.

“What?” she asks finally.

“Nothing. And it’s not really bowling I know. It’s more the city stuff.”

“Colonists bowling on Broadway?”

He walks to the ball return and picks up Rachel’s ball. “You didn’t get one that’s too heavy, did you?”

She reaches for the ball but he steps back. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not going to throw out my back.”

“It’s happened, is all I’m saying. Now are you a lefty or righty?”

“Righty.”

“Okay, so cradle the ball in your left hand. Never pick it up with one hand. You can hurt your wrist.” He gently places the ball in her hands.

“Do you know how old I am?”

“It’s just, well I don’t want you to get hurt.” Michael takes a seat laneside, waiting for her to start the frame.

Rachel turns and pauses, bringing the ball up, then running and releasing it to knock down seven pins. “I’m a little rusty,” she says.

“Given the circumstances, I’m impressed. But watch your timing.”

They bowl quietly for a few frames until Rachel sits beside him on the settee.

“You know,” she tells him as they watch the other bowlers around them. “I changed my mind two times today about coming here.”

After a few long moments, she begins to wonder if he didn’t hear her over the noise, the music and balls rolling. “I’m glad it wasn’t three,” Michael finally answers. He motions for two cold beers from a waitress. “To friends, old and new,” he toasts, right before he touches his glass to hers.

Okay, she has to take stock. So this New York City mounted police officer knows their bowling alley outing is only keeping her busy while she waits out her friend, that’s it, hoping that after the game, after they get back to The Plaza, Sara Beth will feel better and return to the hotel too.