Whole Latte Life (10 page)

“Oh, you New Yorkers,” Rachel says.

“Happy birthday.” He takes a sip of the champagne.

“Thank you,” she answers, watching him closely. The music moves through the room like wisps of fog, winding round tables, visiting at the booths. “I’ve been so wrapped up in Sara Beth, I don’t know a whole lot about you, Officer Micelli.” She reaches forward and clasps his hand briefly. “Tell me about yourself.”

What that does is make him feel very aware of himself as she looks from his eyes, to his face, weathered from a life out-doors patrolling the city streets, to the gray creeping into his dark hair at the temples, sitting in this club in Manhattan.

So how do you tell someone that there isn’t much to tell? That you haven’t gone out two nights in a row for months? How do you explain mundane, that your life is lacking? Empty, even. Until suddenly, one screwy Thursday when you least expect it, that same someone inches right into that big empty space.

He spins his glass slowly, looking at Rachel, then beyond her, in the dim light. “There’s not much to tell. You’ll wish you’d never asked.”

“No sir. Come on now,” Rachel says, smiling.

“Okay. Well, I’ve been on the force for fourteen years. Five on horseback.” He’ll make the rest quick and painless. “I’m divorced. I live alone in my childhood home in Queens, am a Yankees rather than a Mets fan and I have a daughter, too. She’s fifteen and so far on the straight and narrow.” Does he mention that he’s afraid that is about to change? He shifts in his seat. “I don’t go out much. A drink here and there, catch some ball games, you know, see my daughter, go to the movies. Really, Rachel. It’s pretty lame.”

“Sounds nice to me.” She watches him still.

“Okay then. Let’s see…I’m forty-four years old and liking it these days, and I love music.” The piano notes tiptoe past and he nods toward the band.

“Go on,” Rachel urges.

He pauses, not having put his life under a microscope like this for a long time. Does she really want to hear about his horse and what it feels like to patrol the city streets from a saddle? Does she want to know his daughter’s name and what style house he lives in? What it is about forty-four that has him liking it? Would she understand the security he finds in it all?

“Only one more thing.” Really, Rachel DeMartino seems too urbane to care much about a New York City cop. He doesn’t want to lose her on the trivia of his days. Funny, he’s finding that he doesn’t want to lose this abandoned friend at all.

“I’m waiting…”

It’s Friday and the hot spots are jumping in the city. Other dance floors are filled to capacity. Here, well, here the crowd swells after midnight. He pauses, then reaches for her hand. “I like to dance.”

They walk to the edge of the dance floor, his hand reaching around to the small of her back as they dance a slow song that has her glance around the room briefly before she’s looking right back at him.

He senses that gaze stopping at the shadows of his face, seeing his features up close, trying to catch his eye. It feels different tonight, holding her like this, compared to yesterday’s coffee at Joe’s deli, hearing her story. The music plays and he moves his hand over the smooth velvet jacket on her back, up to her neck, drawing her close. She rests her head on his shoulder.

“And there’s one more thing,” he says, bending close to her ear. “I haven’t had a weekend this interesting in a long, long time.” He doesn’t see her smile and close her eyes as he folds her hand to his chest and they finish the dance.

“Your turn.”

“For what?”

“Who are you, Rachel?”

After two dances and a drink, it seems he wants to know more. So far he only knows her as the blonde widow deserted in Manhattan on a weekend birthday jaunt. He folds his arms on the table and leans closer.

“Well, you know all about me. I’m a pesky Connecticut widow,” she says, pulling out her cell phone. “Wait, let me try her again.” A few seconds later, she sets it on the table with an apologetic shrug. The damp weather brings a wave to Michael’s short, dark hair. His eyes that look tired at the end of a day, at the end of the week, soften now. “And I’m just waiting for my friend?”

“This isn’t about Sara Beth. Last night was, bowling. The Metropolitan Room was about her too. And later we’ll bring her back into the fold. But now?” He shakes his head. “Sara Beth’s doing her own thing and so are you. This here,” he motions between Rachel and himself, “this is about us. This feels more like a date, I think, and I’d like to know you better.”

The waitress sets down two glasses of sparkling wine. Even though Rachel considers last night’s bowling a date, sort of, he is right. This feels more like the real thing, with the dinner and music. This feels nice.

“If this is a date, then you’re the first guy I’ve dated in twenty years,” she finally says.

“How am I doing?” Michael asks seriously.

The thought that comes to her is that she never expected someone like this to supplant her thoughts of Carl.

“Rachel.” He leans closer. “How are you with this?”

“I’m okay.”

“Okay.” He leans back, turning a little so his shoulder rests on the booth back. “So I’m your first date. Now tell me your story.”

“The condensed version or Chapter One, which means we might not get out of here tonight.”

“Chapter One, by all means.”

Yesterday afternoon she had been so impatient with his slow, roundabout way of making a point when she wanted answers about her wayward friend. Now she’s seeing that he never rushes anything. In fact, he has a way of savoring every fast moving moment in this city. Of catching each one and saying
Whoa! Slow down now.
Of carefully listening to and seeing every frame on the reel.

“Chapter One,” she muses, filling in the background with her parents’ divorce when she was thirteen, describing how it tore her childhood neatly in half. She adds detail with Sara Beth, safe and enviable at the time, coming into her life in the eighth grade courtyard. And then there’s her marriage to Carl during her last year at college. With Carl she had the chance to finally heal, with her own marriage, that gaping wound left by her parents’ divorce. She’d never had the Norman Rockwell stuff and she craved an old-fashioned family life like a chocoholic craves her drug of choice.

Carl was ten years older and their relationship satiated her. She started her new family right away, having Ashley within a year. “And now she’s finishing her first year of college, in upstate New York.”

“You miss her.”

“We’re very close, even when we’re apart.” Rachel tells him about the book Ashley had the front desk send up on her breakfast tray. “We’re really mushy that way. Always thinking of each other.” She waits for his eyes to meet hers; he’s studying people at a table beyond them. “But I’m boring you. I’m sorry.”

“What? Boring me? Far from it.” He pulls his chair closer. “Ashley.”

“Yes. I miss her a lot, but I’ve got my gardening and night courses and my walking club. That whole part of my life… marriage, raising a child, family…” She snaps her fingers. “It flew by.”

“You were happy then.”

“Why do you say that?”

“That’s when time flies. When you’re happy.”

“True. Feeling connected and at home, well you know. Like you feel about Joe and Lena. It gives you a provenance. I’ve been in my home for twenty years and hadn’t planned on ever leaving before Carl died.”

“Where would you go?” Michael asks.

“I don’t know. With Ashley away at school now, maybe a condominium.”

He looks her dead on. “You? The woman who managed to snag a reservation in The Plaza? You are definitely not the condominium type.”

“What type am I then?” She’s curious as to how he sees her, curious about why he’s folding and unfolding the napkin.

“How can I say this? You’re a homebody, in the best sense of the word. You need to have a comfortable home of your own.”

“But you live alone. Doesn’t the quiet get to you?”

“Don’t forget where I spend my days. To me, quiet’s beautiful.” He reaches for her hand and they dance a little closer this time, a little slower. This time, when he doesn’t hold her gaze, he leans in close. “Can I see you tomorrow? Whatever you had planned with Sara Beth, we’ll do together.”

She pulls back, a little surprised. “We planned to do some shopping, then check out the Empire State Building.” The breakfast at Tiffany’s she keeps to herself. You have to keep plans like that secret, like the street vendor croissants they’d buy, the dark sunglasses. If she tells them, the holes show and become the places where you lose hope, the tiny grains of it slipping through.

“I’ll wait with you, okay? Say, two o’clock?” he asks.

“You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine.”

“Well I’d like to. But it’s up to you. You know, if it’s okay.”

“All right, maybe for a little while. I don’t want to impose though.”

He clasps her hand and folds it into him, pulling her in close to his shoulder, holding her near, in a small jazz club in Manhattan.

Once Michael dropped Rachel off at her hotel, he stopped at the Precinct to check the night’s reports. Dispatch said it was a slow night. The rain’ll do that. Nothing on a Sara Beth Riley. No nameless arrests that fit. Now that he’s finally home though, he can’t relax. He thought he’d be ready to crash, but something’s off.

In the kitchen, each chair is tucked up to the table. Pulling the bottled water from the refrigerator, he waits, then takes a long drink. The house is still, which only makes his noises louder. He screws the cap back on, puts it away and walks into the living room, moving open the drawn drapes. The houses outside stand neatly aligned, but different in their own way. A porch on one, two car garage on another, some stone fronted, some brick, some clapboard siding. Here and there, a lamppost shines. He turns and goes through the living room to the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. At the top, he snaps on the hall light. The spare bedroom door is ajar and so he knows.

His daughter never sleeps with the door closed tight. For all her airs of independence, whenever she spends the night, the door is opened.

The hall light falls into her room. Summer lies curled up, facing the wall, her breathing deep and regular. Her backpack sits on the floor. It isn’t surprising, really, that she came looking for him tonight. He’s lived in this house forever and she must have thought that she could, too.

How can he do what is best for her? How can he possibly keep her here and happy, when her mother wants to uproot her to Long Island to her big new house, upsetting the apple cart with only a couple years to go?

He grabs the backpack to check in his own room. So long as her cell phone is in it and there’s no evidence of that Facebook stuff or any dope, she’ll be all right. He’ll call her mother in the morning and try to get a straight story out of her. If she won’t budge on moving, they’ll have to make joint custody arrangements. And then it’ll start, her argument that Summer should spend most of her time on Long Island. It always comes down to image. It’s why she left. When he didn’t move up the ranks to her liking, she walked.

He pulls his keys from his coat pocket and sets them on the dresser. It’s funny how with one bedroom door ajar in the upstairs hallway, his empty life begins filling up quickly. Rachel and Summer and an ex-wife and joint custody and a missing person. And a small jazz club. And tomorrow. Lunch and the Empire State Building.