by Elaine Viets
“Give me a break. I’ve been working all morning. I still have to write my report.”
“We don’t have time to waste. Call him now, before you forget.”
Under Katie’s watchful eye, Angela made an appointment to have her roots colored at nine tomorrow morning. When she hung up, Katie said, “You should be rehabbed by noon. You can lunch with Ken tomorrow.”
“Ken? You mean Kinkade Rushman, the lawyer?”
“He’s a hunk, Angela, and Monty says he’s a good guy.”
“Then Monty can have lunch with him.”
“He already has. That’s why he thinks Ken would be someone you’d enjoy. Look, I promised I wouldn’t lecture you, but it’s lunch. You can go anywhere you want. How about Gringo Daze? You like the place. Just sit down and have a freaking tamale with the guy. What’s the big deal?”
Angela felt the panic freezing her heart. She hadn’t been on a date with another man for almost twenty-five years.
As if she had read Angela’s mind, Katie said, “It’s not a date. When you have lunch with Butch, is that a date?”
“No, that’s business. I can’t go out with this Ken. I don’t want another man. I won’t be able to eat.” She could feel herself starting to sweat. She’d throw up. She tried to make Katie understand, but her friend barged ahead.
“Angela, you owe me. You owe me your life. I found you after you had the strokes. I’ve never asked for anything, but I can’t stand to watch you bury yourself alive. Go to lunch with Ken, please? That’s all I’m asking.”
Angela hesitated, then managed one word. “Okay.”
“About fucking time,” Katie said.
CHAPTER 24
Day nine
“You wish to cancel your appointment with Mario for this Friday, Mrs. Hobart?” the Killer Cuts receptionist said into the phone. Raquel’s artfully made-up face was frowning, and she poked her shiny, wavy, dark hair with a pen.
Angela could hear garbled shouting from Raquel’s receiver, then the Cuban receptionist said, “Oh! You want to cancel your appointment for every Friday. As you wish.” Her voice was freezingly polite.
Angela glanced over the top of the salon’s black marble counter and saw the elegant black appointment book, as big as a ledger. Nearly all the appointments were crossed out on both pages. No wonder she’d been able to get an appointment yesterday on such short notice.
“Have a good day.” Raquel ended the call and smiled at Angela.
“How’s Mario?” The salon was unusually quiet for 8:50 in the morning. Angela heard the lonesome roar of a single hair dryer. She missed the customary cheerful background created by chattering customers and laughing staff.
Raquel lowered her voice so Angela could barely hear. “He’s hanging in there, Angela, but customers are canceling left and right. Ungrateful people! Mario helped so many of them. He flew to New York, to Newport, even to Paris, to do the hair and makeup for their daughters’ weddings. He went to their homes and did their hair when they were housebound. If they were in the hospital, he brought them flowers and visited them.”
“I know. He brought me orchids and Cuban coffee when I was in SOS.”
“See? You remember. You’re loyal. But the others? Pfft! They forget. After everything he did for them, this is how they repay him!” She opened her arms to the empty salon. The group of client chairs looked like elegant leather-and-steel sculptures. Untouched magazine racks held the latest fashion news. Kendra’s abandoned manicure station looked forlorn, the vibrant nail-polish colors lined up in racks. Next to Kendra’s station was a second one, where a ponytailed blonde read a gossip magazine.
“Is it because of Kendra?”
“Yes. He refused to denounce her. He hired another manicurist, and he’s made it clear that she’s temporary until Kendra returns. The old Forest families have been boycotting him, starting with that b—” She stopped, and her caramel-colored skin blushed red. “With that awful woman Priscilla Delor and her witchy daughter, Eve. Then the Du Pres and the Hobarts started canceling—one of them just canceled now.”
“I heard.” It was Angela’s turn to blush for eavesdropping, but Raquel shrugged.
“It’s no secret. Eve and Priscilla are leading the campaign. All the blue-blood wives and their hangdog husbands have boycotted Killer Cuts. I don’t know how much longer Mario can keep going. This is a one-man shop with beauty services, and he’s paying the staff out of his own pocket—the cleaners, the manicurists, the facialist, the massage therapist, and me. Right now, there’s no income except for a few faithful customers like you. I’m so grateful you’re here, and he is, too. We’re learning who our real friends are.”
She glanced at the wall clock. “It’s almost nine. And I talk too much. Mario will have a fit if he finds out I told you this. Change into a smock, and I’ll take you back to his chair, then get you a café Cubano.”
“My lips are sealed.” Angela headed for the purple dressing room with the lavender curtains. All the cubicles were empty. She unzipped her dress and put on a black robe. She’d dressed so she could go straight to lunch when Mario finished her hair, and wore a pink sheath with beige heels. She couldn’t risk getting hair dye on the light-colored fabric—Donegan had loved that dress.
Katie had never asked her for a favor, so despite her reluctance to lunch with Ken, Angela worked hard to look good. She kept her serviceable pantsuit in widow’s black and sensible shoes in her closet. She wore a dress with color for the first time since she came home from the hospital. She’d changed her clothes—but she couldn’t do anything about her feelings. Every nerve in her body longed for Donegan. Katie was right. She’d buried her feelings along with her husband, and resurrecting them was too painful. But she’d honor her promise.
The dressing room’s gold-framed mirror revealed she was past due for a color touch-up. She had a good half inch of gray roots, and her hair was slightly frizzy. Mario’s magic would tame it. Angela hung her dress on the dressing-room clothes rack, and the hangers rattled and jangled. On a normal day, she would have had to fight for an empty hanger.
She pasted a smile on her face, and Raquel escorted her to Mario’s station, a light-filled alcove at the back of the shop. Peach orchids perched on clear Lucite shelves, and sun spilled through the high, arched window, gilding two feathery palms. Mario was dressed dramatically in his signature black.
“Angela! So glad you came!” He hugged her. Mario’s English had only a trace of a Cuban accent. He carefully examined her hair and shook his head. “You waited too long again. But I can fix it. You need a trim, too.” He looked down at her shoes. “And what’s this? Where’s your cane? You’re wearing heels.”
“Katie talked me into having lunch with a lawyer. I can’t handle heels and a cane, and this dress doesn’t look right with sensible black shoes.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you out of your uniform. What kind of lawyer?”
“No idea. She claims he’s handsome and entertaining.”
“It’s about time. Don’t frown at me. You’re a young, beautiful woman. You should be with men.”
“I don’t need a man.”
He mixed her touch-up color in a bowl on a small rolling table. “You don’t have to fall in love with him, but you need friends, especially people who aren’t connected to your work. I know you love your job, but it’s hard. What’s so difficult about lunch with a handsome man? You eat good food, you listen, you laugh, you think about something besides the sorrow you encounter in your work.” He used a small brush to paint her gray roots with a creamy brown solution.
“It’s just that—that—I still love Donegan.” She stumbled over her words, but she had to let him know why she dreaded this lunch.
“Of course you do.” He deftly divided her hair into sections so he could paint the roots. “Are you afraid you’ll stop loving Donegan because you have lunch with this man?”
“No, but—”
He leaned across her head to paint a swatch by her
ear, then began sectioning and painting the back of her head. “No one can take away your love for Donegan. That’s real, and you’ll always have that. But make room in your life, if not in your heart, for new people.”
Raquel arrived with two tiny shots of Cuban coffee so strong, sweet, and thick Angela could almost eat it with a spoon. She and Mario drank it in respectful silence. The caffeine bomb gave Angela the courage to change the subject. “I heard that some of the Forest old guard are boycotting you.”
“They’re going to that fraud, Nikolai of New York. Ha! Nick of Newark is more like it. Nicolai claims to be ‘just back from New York with the latest styles.’ Oldest scam in the stylists’ book: he goes to Manhattan for a few days, takes an overpriced class from some celebrity stylist, then opens a salon and announces that he’s ‘just back from New York.’
“Wait till Nikolai starts working on those ladies. He better know how to keep a straight face. Mrs. Du Pres told me, ‘I may be seventy-two, but I have amazing skin, Mario. I’ve never had a face-lift.’ I’m combing her hair as she tells me this. I can feel the face-lift scars! But I am polite and pretend she’s telling the truth. And Miss Eudora Hobart—cheapest woman in the Forest. Tips me fifty cents for doing her hair—what’s left of it.”
“You’re joking. Everyone tips you at least fifty bucks. Why do you put up with that?”
“Because her caregiver usually remembers to tip me for Miss Eudora. And if she doesn’t, my book is full next time until she gets the point. Priscilla, the ringleader, is a piece of work. Last time, she was eating a banana while I did her hair. She ate half and then handed it to me, asking, ‘Would you like the rest?’”
“She tried to give you a banana she’d been eating?”
“Yes! With her teeth marks in it.”
“That’s revolting.”
“They’re all revolting.” Mario dabbed hard at her gray roots with the brush. “I’m glad to be rid of them.” They both knew that wasn’t true.
“Do you like Kendra?”
“I love Kendra.” Mario’s voice was soft. “Such a sweet, innocent girl.”
“Why didn’t she go to college? She’s smart enough, and her parents had the money to send her to the Forest Academy.”
“She got good grades there, but she was miserable. The students, especially the girls, called her ugly names.”
“I can imagine.”
“I’m not sure you can, Angela. I know your parents were servants, but you at least looked like the other students. Kendra is brown-skinned.”
“And beautiful.”
“That made it worse. Kendra told me she’d come home crying at least once a week.”
“Didn’t the school have rules about bullying?”
“Gracie would talk to the principal, and it would stop for a while, but then it would start up. Her tormenters had rich parents.”
“And the school didn’t want to offend major donors.”
“Exactly.” Mario gave Angela the ghost of a smile. “She said she’d go to beauty college, which was not the same. I hired her right after she graduated. Her parents thought she would meet good people here. Instead, that Bunny Hobart—that doctor—went after her. I never liked that man. He’s a snob with a silly name. He seemed to sneer all the time. What’s wrong with him?”
“He was born that way,” Angela said. “The silver spoon did something to his lip.”
Mario’s laugh was bitter. “He walked in like he owned the place and we should be grateful he’s here. He went straight for Kendra, like all the men did. I tried to warn her, but she was dazzled. She thought he was sophisticated, when he was just another preppie. She thought he was courting her with those long walks and supermarket bouquets, when he was cheap and didn’t want his fancy friends to see him with a Mexican girl.
“I knew he was dating Esme Du Pres, who was away at college, and escorting her to the Daughters of Versailles Ball. Kendra was his part-time . . .” Mario stopped, then said, “girlfriend” because he didn’t want to insult Kendra. “I warned Kendra that Bunny would never marry her. But she said they were in love, and to her, love meant marriage. She had visions of being a Forest doctor’s wife. A lady.”
“She’d be bored silly,” Angela said. Kendra didn’t have the social skills or connections to advance Bunny’s career, but Angela didn’t need to say that. Mario knew.
“He used Kendra until the woman he was serious about came home. I tried to get up the nerve to tell Kendra about Esme, but she found out right here at the salon. Esme’s mother booked a day of beauty for her daughter before the DV Ball—facial, massage, manicure, and then I did her hair and makeup. Esme showed Kendra the photo of her dress on her iPhone and asked Kendra what color nail polish she should choose. Then she spent the rest of her manicure chattering about Bunny. I knew Kendra would never be engaged to Bunny. It wasn’t long after that he tried to pass her around to his disgusting frat friends like a door prize. You know about that?”
“Her Aunt Connie told me. The man’s a pig.”
“People don’t understand why someone as beautiful as Kendra took up with a wrinkled old man like Luther. They think she’s a gold digger. But she wasn’t like that until Bunny Hobart.” He spat the name. “After what he did to Kendra, I wouldn’t let him soil my shop. Every time he called, Raquel was instructed to say I was booked. He was one of the first who went to Nikolai.
“After Bunny betrayed her, she was a different girl. Like shattered glass. I was afraid she’d been assaulted. She lost weight; she couldn’t eat. People judged her harshly when she took up with Luther. They didn’t understand. She was devastated. She didn’t care about men anymore. Luther started asking her out. He treated her well—I made sure of that. He said he’d left his wife, and he was waiting for a divorce. Some women won’t date a man until the divorce is final, but Luther could be persuasive. He offered her two million to wear his ring and another two when they married. Kendra said no, at first.
“Then Esme came in waving her engagement ring with an outrageous diamond. It was so big it looked fake, but she swanned around, calling it the Hobart Diamond. She wanted a manicure. Kendra did her nails and told her the ring would look best with green polish.”
Angela laughed.
“The next day, Kendra came in wearing Luther’s diamond. It was even bigger than Esme’s rock. She’d accepted his offer. She showed it to me and then put it away. She knew better than to wear that diamond to work here, but the Forest women knew anyway. They called her a gold digger—but not around me.”
“What other kind of woman puts up with abuse from a man like Luther?”
Suddenly, Mario’s eyes were lit with fire. “You don’t understand, Angela. You were born here to American parents. You never had to listen to the cruel words that Kendra did. You don’t understand what a hard, harsh life she’d had. She did what she could to survive.” Mario’s accent was suddenly thicker, and she remembered he was a Cuban refugee. “We all do.”
CHAPTER 25
Day nine
Kinkade Rushman was waiting in the nearly empty bar at Gringo Daze with a frosty Dos Equis in front of him. Angela recognized her lunch date—no, the man she was supposed to have lunch with—by Katie’s description. “He’s tall, about six two,” her friend had said, while Angela had silently objected to every attribute. “Nice shoulders. Brown eyes.”
But not like Donegan’s, Angela thought.
“A jaw so strong he could crack walnuts with it.”
Why do I want that, Katie?
“He’s got thick, dark hair any woman would want to run her fingers through.”
She means me.
“It’s frosted with a little gray, so you know he’s a freaking grown-up. He’s forty-two, and works out, but he’s not a frickin’ fanatic.”
“If anyone needs a shirt model, I’ll recommend him,” Angela said out loud. Katie sounded like a used-car salesman, and she wasn’t buying.
“Hey, there’s a good bod in that shirt. Wo
men are dying to go out with him.”
Angela started to say, “Don’t let me stand in their way,” but she sensed Katie was getting seriously ticked. She owed her so many favors, she couldn’t pay them back in this lifetime.
Now that Angela saw Ken, he was everything Katie described and well dressed, besides. He wore a tailored charcoal suit, blue shirt, and blue-and-navy striped tie. Predictable, bland, and dull, she decided, as she crossed the bar to meet him. Kinkade was a name destined for some pompous profession like the law.
You’re judging the man already, before he even opens his mouth. He can’t be all bad if he drinks beer. Still, she wished she’d lingered in her car until noon. She was five minutes early for their lunch.
Her heels clicked on the Spanish tiles, and she walked carefully to keep from stumbling. She wished she had her cane. The heels pinched her toes. She felt like a poodle fresh from the groomer. Mario had tamed her dark hair into a stylish long bob and insisted on doing her makeup for free. “Just a little shadow to make your eyes look bigger.” But he’d put on layers of makeup, and even false eyelashes that weighed ten pounds apiece.
“I’ll look like a hooker,” Angela said, then saw Mario’s face. She’d insulted her friend, and he was going through a bad time. His makeup was skilled and subtle. She let him finish. When she saw the results in the mirror, she knew she looked good. Now Angela noticed appreciative males eyeing her long legs and body-skimming sheath, including Ken. She should have been flattered, but she vaguely resented the unwanted attention. He stood up to meet her, an old-fashioned courtesy she rather liked.
“Angela Richman.” She smiled and extended her hand.
“Ken Rushman.” He had a firm, straightforward handshake. “Glad you suggested this place. It’s a hoot.”
A hoot? She hated that condescending preppie compliment.
Eduardo showed them to an alcove near the fountain, the most secluded, romantic table in his restaurant. He reminded Angela of the man in the Spanish bullfight poster in the bar: dark-haired, lithe, and neatly made. He presented them with menus and lit the candle on their table with a flourish. “This is nice and quiet, so you can talk, yes?” Angela wished he hadn’t done that. Now she was aware that their booth was dark and cozy, and felt even more awkward.