Whole Latte Life (7 page)

“Yes. Yes, I’m pretty sure.” Rachel heard her own voice then, some sort of cry, low and disjointed, as though it came from someone else. It made her first look at the phone, then cup it tighter to her mouth, containing the sound. “But his face, oh Sara, his face.”

“Rachel, listen. Is an ambulance coming?”

“Yes. But I need you, too.”

“Don’t worry, I’m coming right now. As soon as I hang up the phone. You go sit with Carl, okay sweetie?”

She nodded, tears wetting her face, the phone pressed close.

“You have to hold his hand.” Her friend’s words were so kind. Why did the kindest words hurt so much? “Don’t let go. And speak softly to him. Tell him you love him.”

And that cold reality washed over her: Her husband lay dying. He was leaving. That same feeling comes now. Something is very wrong.

All that matters is that she find her friend. Or talk about her. Or think, or plan. She touches Michael’s arm. “Do you think we could leave?”

When their eyes meet, hers must have said it all. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll get you back to The Plaza.”

“You don’t mind?” she asks, gathering her handbag. As if she wouldn’t leave alone if necessary. A few deep breaths of the fresh air outside make her feel more optimistic. They stop at Billy’s Bakery on 9
^th
Avenue on the way.

“Listen, if she’s back, you both have some hashing out to do. Billy’s cupcakes, I don’t know, maybe they’ll make it easier.”

Walking into the bakery, with its sweet aromas and pale cream brick walls, feels like walking into someone’s charming home. They stop in front of a glass case, each shelf filled with trays of cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla, frosted in browns, yellows, whites, pinks. The mere sight of all those sweet pastries does something to her, lifts her somehow. They’re little puffs of happiness. Cupcakes.

“Let me have a couple Yellow Daisy, three Red Velvet, and a Chocolate. Throw some sprinkles on a few, would you?” Rachel stands behind him, watching, and he catches her eye. “Food helps,” he whispers.

After walking a few blocks trying for a cab, Michael, holding the bakery box, breaks their long silence.

“Twelve thousand five hundred miles.”

“To where?”

“Around the city. That’s how many miles of sidewalk are in Manhattan. One of the busiest transportation systems in the world. Don’t you think so?”

“What I think,” Rachel says as Michael snags a cab, “is that Sara Beth better be back. She better not disappear in a twelve thousand mile maze, of all places.” What she doesn’t say is that Manhattan is where they drank their first cup of coffee together. On an eleventh grade art class field trip, sitting at a tiny table in a shop-front window, leaning sixteen-year-old close, they watched the city go by. Doesn’t Sara Beth think of that walking past the city cafés?

At The Plaza, they stop at the front desk to see if there’s any word, any message, any indication that Sara Beth had been there to get in touch with Rachel. But there’s nothing.

Rachel turns to Michael. So now there’s this: It’s nighttime in the city and it’s different. She doesn’t know what to do.

“Do you want to go somewhere quiet? Talk a little?” He takes her gently by the arm and they walk to The Plaza’s nightclub. “I’ll buy you a glass of wine before I leave, if you want.”

Contrary to the dim lighting, an undercurrent of energy moves through The Oak Room. Low voices, tinkling glasses and impeccable waiters moving about charge the room perfectly. After tasting her wine, Rachel scans the patrons. Maybe Sara Beth is as close as this. Maybe she hasn’t the nerve to wander much further alone at night.

“Do you really think she’d be here?” Michael asks. He shifts his seat over so that he can see the doorway into the club and sets the cupcake box off to the side.

“I don’t know. I can’t picture her alone out in the city, either.”

“Have you called her husband?”

“Almost, but she asked me not to in her note.”

Michael raises his eyebrows. “Rachel.”

“Okay, okay. I know. She’s asking a lot. But she
did
ask. And I almost called Tom, that’s her husband, at work today, but then I thought I’d give her more time. She must have a valid reason to do this, right?” He’s studying people at another table and Rachel wonders if he’s even listening. “Right?” she asks again.

“A few days head start on leaving him, covering her trail maybe.”

“No, Sara’s not like that, I’m telling you. I mean, they have their problems. She’s said a little here and there. But nothing big.”

“You’ve known each other for long?”

“We met in the eighth grade when she was intrigued with my messy haircut and divorced family. I was the dangerous friend.” She sips her wine and it goes down as easily as she needs it to.

“Do you have a picture of her?”

Rachel pulls her wallet from her shoulder bag. “It’s a couple years old, but it’s all I have. I forgot to leave it with the police report.” The photograph has been trimmed to fit into her wallet and shows a close-up shot of two women, one with shoulder length auburn hair and a multi-colored silk scarf tied around her neck. Their heads are tipped together, smiles grinning wildly.

“I was feeling sorry for myself one day after my husband died. She hauled me into an instant photo booth at the mall.”

Michael looks up from the picture, past her shoulder at a couple talking, then back at her.

She scans the nightclub with a quick sigh. “She’s always been there for me, so why didn’t she trust me to be there for her?”

“Maybe she does. Can I keep this?”

“What will you do with it?”

“Give it to the right people, put it into the system.” He tucks the photograph into his shirt pocket. “I checked with the department before I picked you up. Nothing fit her profile. No arrests, no Jane Does.”

“I thought the police couldn’t do anything at this point.”

“Let’s say you have a connection now. Anything else I should know about this Sara Beth Riley?”

“You’re very kind.”

“Kind?” he asks.

“I’m sure you have a life to get back to.”

“Maybe.” He raises his glass and after taking a swallow, scans a small group of friends entering the room. “And maybe we can’t always be too sure about people.”

She studies his face, considering. He shaved after work, but the day has been long. Shadows beneath his eyes hold either fatigue or his own stories. And she notices a bead of perspiration; he’s nervous now. “It’s late…”

“Tell me whatever comes to mind. Maybe something will click. A clue, an idea.”

“Sara was my Maid of Honor, my daughter’s Godmother. When Carl, that’s my husband, when he had his heart attack, I called Sara Beth after I called 911. And she drove over faster than the ambulance. She was six months pregnant, driving all crazy like that.”

“For you.”

“And for my daughter. She stayed with her that night while I sat at the hospital.” Rachel pauses, thinking back. “So am I repaying her now,
being there
for her? They say these
girls’ weekends
are about the bonding, and celebrating friendship. So is this what I’m
supposed
to do? Respect her wishes?” She holds up her wine glass in a toast to their long friendship. “In twenty-five years of stories, what’s scary is that none of them explains Sara Beth’s behavior today.” She also can’t explain how she suddenly wants to be where she can wait for the door to open or the telephone to ring. She needs to be in their room, purely waiting now.

“Do me a favor then. I know you’re tired. But think about those years of stories.” He pats his jacket pockets. “Do you have a pen?”

She finds a pen and pad of paper in her bag and watches while he jots down information. He folds the paper and slides it across the table. “That’s my home number in Queens and my cell. If you think of anything, let me know. Anytime. If she shows up, if she’s in trouble. Anything. And give me your number, too. You know. In case I have to reach you, okay?”

She does, watching him write it down, crossing out a number he writes wrong, glad for someone, at least, to know where she’s at.

Sara Beth drops her purse in the bathroom sink and digs her hands in, searching blindly for the aspirin bottle. Her headache is so bad, she could barely see straight at the registration desk, dropping the room key as the clerk handed it to her. Finally she dumps the whole thing, keys and wallet and makeup and cell phone and sunglasses, clattering into the sink. She fishes out the aspirin bottle and shakes three tablets into her palm.

But something happens when she reaches for the glass of water. Her reflection stops her. With it, a memory comes of her mother not in her seventies, but at this age, looking just like Sara. And she imagines the incredible lightness of talking to her, a lightness she could always float on, it is so beautiful, the closeness she shared with her mother. The idea could make a stunning abstract painting, the way her mother, the way family, can be sweet rays of light. The mirror frames her face. A Picasso, maybe.

So standing in the tiny bathroom with its pale green tiled wall, she looks again at the three aspirin tablets in her palm, then back at her mother in the mirror, imagining what she would say if she called her, pressed the phone tight to her ear.

“
Sara?”
her mom would ask, to be sure she was okay. Then she’d listen to Sara Beth telling how she had stepped out of her life, and rented this tiny room, and risked losing a dear friendship, and her mom would, well, she’d worry of course. First, there would be a long silence. Oh Sara Beth knew that silence. It happened when her mother didn’t really like something.
“Well then,”
she’d say.
“We’re going to have to get to the bottom of this. And soon. I’m not sure I really understand what you’re saying. You know I can’t be there, and I think you’re strong enough to find your way without me. To finish the things we started. But walking out, Sara? Are you sure that’s the way to clear your thoughts?”

Looking in the mirror, her fingers light on her face like a painter brushing in the strokes, pulling her eyes up, her cheeks back. It wasn’t easy walking out on forty years of life today. One uncertain step at a time, right through the restaurant doors. She couldn’t go on the way she’d been, so tired, calling her mother daily, not moving forward. If she didn’t take these few days to find a way to change, she’d be no use to anyone.

But her headache. She pours a glass of water and swallows the three tablets. What if it’s serious? What if it’s a warning headache before an aneurysm? “A brain aneurysm is a bulge in the artery in your brain,” she recites quietly. “Unruptured, it presses on the brain, causing severe headache. More common in adults than children.” Who would know where she is? Would anyone help her? How would Tom know? And then she can’t breathe, gasping in a deep breath. When she opens her eyes, it’s her mother in the mirror.

“Oh but I love what you’ve done to your hair,”
her mother might say if she saw her now, with her hair cut short, the new layers highlighted and tousled. But she wouldn’t see her. She would never see Sara Beth again.

Chapter Five

W
hen she wakes up, through a wall, or ceiling, Rachel notices the muffled intonations of a man and woman talking. It’s hard to tell if it comes from another room or out in the hallway. But what she hears is the masculine drone of Carl’s voice and it brings her to tears. “For your birthday,” he had said one morning a few years ago. “Would you like that?”