“That’s easy for you to say,” Fernando said to Eric, giving the ladder a small tug. “Suzanna listens to you!”
“I do not,” Suzanna grabbed the ladder for balance as she looked down at the top of Fernando’s head. “I mean, no more than I listen to you.”
“Oh, really? Then why can Eric have a book club when I can’t have a swing?”
“Not again,” Suzanna said, jumping down from the ladder.
She turned to Eric for support, but he just smiled his “you’re on your own, sister” smile, scooped up another pile of books, and picked his way through the haphazard stacks of books and periodicals toward the back of the nook. Fernando crossed his arms in a well-
rehearsed huff.
“First of all, a book club doesn’t cost any money,” Suzanna said. “And second, if I recall, the book club was your idea.”
“That’s because I’m supportive,” Fernando said.
Suzanna tried not to roll her eyes. If memory served, Fernando had actually come up with the book club idea for the tearoom. He had just read a book by Michael Cunningham called Land’s End, about Provincetown in Cape Cod, and he wanted to share it with the world.
If you made any sort of “I’m an outsider” comment to Fernando, he was off and running. Suzanna tried to gently point out that you couldn’t form a club of outsiders . . . it was an oxymoron. The whole point of being an outsider was aloneness. Did Johnny Depp run around starting book clubs? He understood the allure and mystique of being the Outsider. The Stranger. The Silent One.
Oh, if only Fernando understood how to be the Silent One.
“You start signing up outsiders and you’re just going to look like a bunch of losers,” Eric had said.
But Fernando was not to be dissuaded. He had been in a fever and Suzanna had finally given her consent. Fernando bullied all his ladies (including Harri and Erinn) into attending the book club meeting in the tearoom. Eric took pity on the group and was able to get them a substantial discount on a bulk order, and the session came to order with each participant clutching her own new copy of Land’s End.
Fernando’s flirtation with the book club idea lasted less than one meeting. Instead of discussing Land’s End, the ladies wanted to discuss the more famous of Cunningham’s tomes, The Hours, a lovely book which was turned into a movie starring Nicole Kidman wearing a prosthetic nose.
“All the old bats wanted to talk about was how brave Nicole Kidman was to wear a big fat ugly nose,” Fernando said, as he reported the end to his book club. However, the ladies who attended the book club loved it and badgered Eric to keep things going. Now there were monthly meetings in the nook. Fernando alternately insisted on taking credit for the idea or used it as leverage that Eric had something exciting going on and he didn’t.
Suzanna’s cell phone rang, mercifully cutting off Fernando’s swing bid. She looked down at the screen, which was signaling that her friend Carla Caridi was calling from Napa. Suzanna furrowed her brow, hoping that it looked to Fernando like she had a very important business call to take. She indicated that she would take the call in the office and Fernando rolled his eyes. As Suzanna headed to the office, he called after her.
“Say hi to Carla for me.”
Rats!
Suzanna closed the office door as she clicked on the phone.
“Carla, hey!”
“Hey! How’s the beach?”
“Coastal.”
“As usual.”
Suzanna smiled. Carla always had a comeback—the story of their lives.
It always amazed Suzanna that people in Los Angeles seemed to change friends every ten minutes, and here she was, still tied to all three of her childhood cronies. Until high school, when Suzanna, Fernando—and sometimes Eric—became attached at the hip, Carla had been Suzanna’s constant childhood companion. Suzanna’s parents had moved to Napa from New York City when Erinn was nine, before Suzanna was born. Suzanna couldn’t remember a time without Carla. Carla was as much a part of her life as her own family. Good thing, too, or Suzanna would have dumped her a million times.
Suzanna and Carla’s relationship had had some pretty breathtaking ups and downs over the years, but since they really were almost family, they always managed to patch things up. Carla was always ready to jump in with an insightful insult any time Suzanna had had it with either of the boys.
“Boys treating you like the jewel you are?” Carla asked.
“More like cubic zirconium, but yeah, things are fine.”
The two women caught up on friends, family, and jobs. Carla might have stayed in Napa where her family owned a winery, but she had gone on to study architecture. She lived on the East Coast after college, got married, then divorced—and returned to Napa. She not only had become somewhat of a big muckety-muck in architectural design around the wine country, she also helped run her family’s winery with her father.
Carla always was an overachiever.
Luckily for Suzanna (and Erinn), Carla’s family’s winery was right next door to the Wolf residence. Carla made it a point to check on Suzanna’s mom every week, now that Suzanna’s father had passed away. This eased Suzanna’s guilt about not seeing more of her mother—and anything that eased guilt was a good thing.
Suzanna had resolved to tell no one about her big secret, but Carla’s voice, which was like a magic carpet ride back to the past, always broke down her defenses.
“I’m taking dance lessons.”
“Dance lessons. That sounds fun. We’ve had some dangerous frost up here . . . how’s the weather in L. A. ?”
“The weather is fine . . . like it always is . . . .” Suzanna said. “Aren’t you amazed that I’m going to take dance lessons?”
“Well, I’m sure Fernando is pretty coordinated . . . but I’m surprised Eric would agree to dance lessons,” Carla laughed. “I mean, he can barely put one foot in front of the other sometimes.”
“It’s not for the three of us. It’s only me.”
Dead silence.
Suzanna rejoiced—inwardly. Now she had Carla’s attention.
“Really?” Carla asked.
Suzanna could tell Carla was measuring her words. “You’re going to do something without Fernando and Eric? Is everything OK there? Do you need me to fly down?”
“No . . . Everything is great. I just want a little breathing room.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’? You’re always telling me I should be a little more independent and now you’re criticizing me.”
“I am not criticizing you. This just isn’t like you, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s like me now.”
“Okay, whatever,” Carla said.
“Fine.”
“Isn’t Fernando jealous? I think he would love dance lessons.”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Oh my God, Suzanna, you haven’t told them!”
“I just told you—I need a little breathing room. I don’t need their permission to breathe and I don’t need their permission to take dance lessons.”
“I’m not arguing with you.”
“Did Eric ask my permission to go to business school?”
“How should I know?” Carla replied.
“Well, he didn’t. Did Fernando ask my permission to invest in a run-down gymnasium?”
“I’m going with no—just a wild guess.”
“You’re damn right he didn’t.”
“Look, don’t get all defensive about the dance lessons. I think it’s great.”
“You do?”
“I do. Suzanna, you’re almost thirty-three and this is probably the first decision you’ve made on your own. This is very mature of you—except for the lying part.”
“I’m not lying. I’m just evading.”
“OK, this is very mature of you—except for the evading part. Better?”
“Well . . . thanks,” Suzanna said. “Look, I gotta run. Smooch.”
“Smooch.”
; Suzanna heard Carla’s phone click off and she stared at her iPhone as if it were going to impart some sort of techno-wisdom. She had almost told Carla why she was taking dance lessons, but decided against it. Carla was a little on the practical side, if truth be told, and Suzanna was pretty sure she would fail to see the charm in the car– bicycle encounter. Carla thought dance lessons were a mature thing to do.
Why muddy the waters?
CHAPTER 5
After getting off the phone with Carla, Suzanna spent a half hour tidying up the office before dinner. She stared in irritation at a pile of receipts sitting on her desk. Now that he was within sight of his business degree, Eric was constantly revolutionizing Suzanna’s bill-paying system. He had started her out slowly, with a software program called Quicken. But as soon as she’d gotten the hang of that, he’d fallen in love with another program that caught his eye, which he then threw over for something even more financially glamorous.
I should have known. He has the same fickle attitude with operating systems as he does with women.
Currently, everything related to expenses and bill-paying was meticulously entered in a computer program called QuickBooks. Eric was very patiently teaching Suzanna how to handle each program, but it always came down to her having to spend an awful lot of time entering numbers into the computer. Suzanna grabbed a handful of receipts and started typing.
The bills could be paid in the time I spend doing this!
As she entered the last bill into the Mac, she glanced at the clock. It was after seven. She’d better start thinking about dinner. Suzanna looked around the office, trying to think of something else to do. She had a habit of keeping an eagle eye on her business, so when she wanted to stall for time, “catching up” was never much of an option. She shut down the computer, locked the office, and headed home.
She walked out into the small yard behind the bookstore and tearoom and headed up the backstairs to the second story. A great feature that she took advantage of more and more frequently was that there were two sets of stairs leading up to their living space. One set of rickety wooden steps snaked up the back of the building, while another ran right through the center hall that divided the tearoom. Eric, Fernando, and she lived together in what they referred to as the Huge Apartment. The door at the top of the stairs opened directly into the kitchen. Suzanna stepped inside and smiled. She loved this room, and every time she walked into it, her spirits immediately lifted.
The room was oddly shaped, something it had in common with all the rooms in the tea shop/bookstore/apartment compound. The kitchen was a perfect square, which made it look massive, but a large percentage of the square footage had been wasted floor space until Eric had built a large workstation, now center stage on the black-and-white-tiled floor.
Fernando was at the stove, and Suzanna braced herself for a complaint. Fernando had redesigned the kitchen at the Bun about two years ago, and had been campaigning ever since to redo the upstairs kitchen as well. But Suzanna loved the kitchen just the way it was. If the vintage stove was finicky, so be it. If Fernando was cooking something that needed precise heat, he could always work in the Bun kitchen.
“I’m starving,” Suzanna said, relieved to find it wasn’t her turn to make dinner. “What are we having?”
“Salad, peanut soup, and fresh bread.”
Suzanna felt her throat constrict. She and Eric tended toward the shepherd’s pies and angel-hair-with-tomatoes-and-garlic-variety dinners. Suzanna had often wondered why Fernando refused to cook normal dinners like everybody else.
“Oh?” Suzanna said. “That sounds. . . peanuts, huh?”
“I know! I found the recipe online. It’s an African dish. Slaves apparently brought it to the American South. They still serve it all over Virginia, according to the article I read. Try it,” Fernando said, nodding toward the pot.
Suzanna often relied on bread to cut the weirdness of many of Fernando’s creations, but when she eyed the bread maker, it was still ticking away. She clearly was going to have to go cold turkey on this one. She grabbed a spoon and tentatively tried the soup. She often chided herself for not being more adventurous—after all, she owned a restaurant—but she usually gave herself a pass on this particular flaw. She had other things to worry about.
“Wow!” she said. “This is good.”
“I know! I’m thinking about putting it on the menu.”
Suzanna’s whole mood shifted. She thought the tea shop customers would really enjoy this new treat and it would get him off her back about the swing. Win–win!
“I’ll call it ‘Slave Soup,’” he said.
Suzanna’s good humor tanked.
“You can’t put ‘Slave Soup’ on the menu.”
“Sure I can . . . I’m part Cherokee.”
“Sure he can,” Eric echoed, coming in to join the conversation. “It could be a post-racial-era statement.”
Fernando snorted.
Suzanna stared at the boys. Were they joking?
It was obvious that none of them harbored any prejudices. After all, they were two men (one gay) and a woman, living together with not a hint of sexual tension—unless you counted Suzanna’s tamped-down feelings for Eric, which she didn’t. And Eric, who was firmly heterosexual, didn’t even have a type. He dated casually, as far as Suzanna could tell, and the women he went out with were all over the map—tall, short, curvy, thin, and of every race and religion. He could have been the poster boy for Benetton. Even so, the boys made politically incorrect jokes that she never would have dared to utter.
Eric took a quick look at the stove and countertop. Determining that they would need soup bowls, bread plates, and flatware, he started to set the table, which was tucked into a corner of the room. The table was built into one of the walls and sat three, not the conventional four. When they had first seen the apartment, they had all happily taken that to be a sign that they were meant to be together. Nowadays, to Suzanna, it seemed more like a commandment carved in stone.
The three of them sat down to eat dinner. Suzanna poured wine and Fernando passed around a wire basket with a checkered napkin placed over the sweet-smelling warm bread. Suzanna took the basket and inhaled the fragrance of the bread—one of her all-time favorites—before she opened the napkin. Only when her nostrils had had their fill did she reach in and pull out a slice of warm bread.
It was lavender.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” asked Fernando.
“What is this?” Suzanna asked.
“Bread,” he replied.
Suzanna looked at Eric.
“It is bread,” he said.
“Did you know about this?” Suzanna asked Eric.
“Was I in charge of dinner?”
“It came to me while I was making tea sandwiches for the billionth time,” Fernando said. “I thought, ‘What if I dyed some of the bread a nice mountain laurel?’”
“Oh!” Eric said. “Mountain laurel bread . . . like the walls! Very cool.”
Suzanna could feel her eyes welling up with tears. As far as she was concerned, the boys were being totally passive-aggressive. They always said that the walls were lavender but only referred to the color as mountain laurel because Suzanna insisted on it.
“This is about the swing, isn’t it?” Suzanna asked.
“No, Suzanna, it’s about my spirit being drained of any creativity.”
Suzanna turned to Eric.
“Are you going to help me out here?”
Eric swallowed his soup, put down his spoon, and looked at Fernando.
“I know what you mean. I felt my spirit dying, too. That’s why I decided on business school. Just the creative outlet my soul was looking for.”
The boys howled and high-fived. Suzanna stood up and threw down her napkin.
“I have had it with you two!”
The boys looked startled.
“Hey, Suzanna, chill out,” Eric said. “It was just a joke.”
Suzanna picked up a slice of purple bread
and thrust it under Eric’s nose.
“Oh?” she said. “Does this look like a joke to you?”
“No,” he replied. “It looks like a science experiment.”
“Hey!” Fernando looked at Eric. “I thought you were on my side.”
“I’m not on anybody’s side! What the hell, you guys. Come on. Calm down.”
“I will not calm down,” Suzanna said, still holding the bread. “Forget it—I’m not hungry.”
She threw the bread on the table.
“And for your information, the walls are mountain laurel and this bread is lavender.”
Suzanna stalked out of the room and headed down the hall toward her room. She stopped, turned around, and stalked back to the kitchen. When she got to the doorway, she waited until the boys noticed she was standing there. They looked at her and waited.
“And I don’t want to hear that I’m probably just having my period,” she said, and turned on her heel.
As she walked down the hall again, she heard the boys speaking in low voices.
“God, heterosexual women can be so Gothic sometimes.”
“Well, you got to admit, this bread looks pretty gross,” Eric said.
Suzanna’s anger subsided a tiny bit as she walked into her room. Eric had at least defended her.
The next morning Suzanna, feeling a little sheepish at her outburst, decided she should give Fernando a hand in the Bun’s kitchen. She slipped in quietly. Fernando was already hard at work mixing shredded chicken, homemade mayonnaise, and curry powder. He looked at her sullenly and pulled several mountain laurel loaves out of the oven. They stared at each other. Suzanna didn’t have the energy to fight.
“You’re in charge of the kitchen, Fernando.”
“Thank you. Well, if I can’t have a swing . . .”
“Let’s just leave it, OK?”
The Merchant of Venice Beach Page 5