Praise for A Pinch of Ooh La La
“Renee Swindle writes about the complications of love with great humor, compassion, and sass. A Pinch of Ooh La La is a pure delight!”
—Ellen Sussman, New York Times bestselling author of French Lessons and A Wedding in Provence
“I dare you to read Renee Swindle’s delicious new novel, A Pinch of Ooh La La, without pulling out mixing bowls and scanning your music collection for the perfect jazz-fueled accompaniment. Swindle hits all the right notes with this unique and satisfying tale of love, friendship, and family.”
—Julie Kibler, bestselling author of Calling Me Home
“Touching and honest, with humor and romance in just the right measures. Swindle’s novel confirms the healing power of family, and her writing sparkles with endearing characters. A fully satisfying read, A Pinch of Ooh La La left me with heaping spoonfuls of hope.”
—Amy Sue Nathan, author of The Glass Wives
“You might think you know where A Pinch of Ooh La La is going when you begin reading it, but you are in for a surprising and outrageous journey. I laughed, I nodded, I shook my head and said, ‘Girl. . . .’ I could not put this book down, and when I finished, I felt like I was saying good-bye to now-dear friends. I’m still missing the likable lead and her colorful family. So worth a read.”
—Ernessa T. Carter, author of 32 Candles and The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
Praise for Shake Down the Stars
“Yes, I know you hear it all the time, but get ready for an absorbing story told with a unique and compelling voice. Shake Down the Stars is a treat. Renee Swindle’s writing is funny, sharp, heartbreaking, and quirky, and her non–stock characters wonderfully memorable. . . . Enjoy the ride.”
—Lalita Tademy, New York Times bestselling author of Cane River and Red River
“Renee Swindle’s Shake Down the Stars is a rich, savvy exploration of the many kinds of love, loss, and dysfunction that can unearth us or save us, bedevil us or deliver us . . . as complex and hilarious as it is surprising and lovely. Shake Down the Stars holds a mirror up to our best and worst selves, and Swindle writes with unflagging compassion and irresistible humor.”
—ZZ Packer, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
“This novel is a true gem. Beautifully written, it’s full of emotional impact that touches the heart without weighing the reader down. Themes of love, loss, and addiction will reach into the soul.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)
“I love, love, love Renee Swindle’s Shake Down the Stars! It’s fresh and unfamiliar—which is quite the trick these days! I love the protagonist and the very unlikely yet charming love interest. The novel manages to be both light and heavy all at the same time. I cannot tell you how much I liked it. Well, I can . . . I loved it. Seriously. One of my favorite reads of the past couple years.”
—Nichelle D. Tramble, author of The Dying Ground and The Last King
“You are about to get a big treat. . . . Renee Swindle’s novel Shake Down the Stars is funny, bitter as coffee, sweet as sugar, and as moving as an earthquake. Enjoy!”
—Farai Chideya, author of Kiss the Sky
“I love this story of a woman trying to pull herself together after a tragic incident. Renee Swindle is a great writer and storyteller. Her characters are smart and witty and will stay with readers long after the novel ends. I hope you love Shake Down the Stars as much as I do!”
—Jacqueline E. Luckett, author of Searching for Tina Turner and Passing Love
“Renee Swindle’s novel Shake Down the Stars has lyrical, poignant prose that promises to resonate with readers. The characters are emotionally and culturally charged, and their lives remind me of my own. While reading, I was transported inside an unbelievable world of crazy, wonderful folks.”
—Deborah Santana, author of Space Between the Stars: My Journey to an Open Heart
ALSO BY RENEE SWINDLE
Please Please Please
Shake Down the Stars
New American Library
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
First published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC
Copyright © Renee Swindle, 2014
Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Swindle, Renee.
A pinch of ooh la la/Renee Swindle.
p. cm
ISBN 978-1-101-59646-3
1. Divorced women—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.W537P53 2014
813'.54—dc23 2014004118
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise
Also by RENEE SWINDLE
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1: Intro
2: Pick Yourself Up
3: Let’s Face the Music and Dance
4: Pent-up House
5: Say It Isn’t So
6: Stay as Sweet as You Are
7: In the Middle of a Kiss
8: I Fall in Love Too Easily
9: Don’t Worry About Me
10: For Heaven’s Sake
11: My Mother Would Like You
12: You Don’t Know Me
13: Out of Nowhere
14: Hesitating Blues
15: You’re Driving Me Crazy
16: But Not for Me
17: A Simple Matter of Conviction
18: Yes, I Know When I’ve Had It
19: Cool, Cool Daddy
20: Sneakin’ Around
21: This Night Has Opened My Eyes
22: I’m Beginning to See the Light
23: What’s New?
About the Author
Readers Guide
For my father
Acknowledgments
I’m a lucky writer because I get to work with Ellen Edwards. I’m humbled by and grateful for her eye to detail and the magic pixie dust she tosses on my sentences. Thanks as well to everyone at New American Library, including Elizabeth Bistrow and Courtney Landi.
Hugs and smiles to my agent, BJ Robbins.
Thank you to the Finish Party—Alyss, Deborah, Farai, Jackie, Lalita, Nichelle, and ZZ.
For generous feedback on the early pages of this novel, I’d like to thank Kelly Allgaier, Kelly Damian, Toni Martin, Emily Morganti, Eric Pfeiffer
, Molly Thomas, and Sean Whiteman. It has been an honor and pleasure to work with “the group” over the years. Each of you inspires me. Emily was kind enough to help me with my Web site. Thanks, Emily!
Thanks to Bryce Giddens for years of friendship and fun times. I’d also like to thank Tim, Sari, Taya, and Ziggy Henry; Donald Weise; Jerry Thompson; Melody Fuller (hugs and love, mademoiselle); Deborah Stalford; Valari Thomas; Amy Nathan; Bonnie Azab Powell; Linda Lenhoff; Ayize Jama-Everett; Tim Milot; Linda Childers; Nick Allen; Margaret Johnson-Hodge; and Chris and Claudia. For her friendship and support, a very special thanks to Liz Gonzalez.
Thanks to friends and family in Vallejo, Kentucky, and Texas. I appreciate you and love you.
Thanks to John, Alison, and everyone at Diesel Bookstore, Oakland; Kathleen Caldwell of A Great Good Place for Books; and thanks to Blanche Richardson of Marcus Books. Each of you proves that local bookstores really do support local authors and I can’t thank you enough.
Mom and Pops, you make every book possible. Thank you.
1
Intro
Whenever I was at my lowest about what happened between Avery and me, I’d conjure a list of other women who, like me, had been publicly humiliated by a man. My list was usually made up of a handful of women who’d married politicians—a particular breed of woman who’d inevitably stand by her man while he looked into the TV camera and apologized for lying to his constituents, and, oh, by the way, I’m sorry, honey, for cheating on you with the hot young intern, or the twenty-year-old house aide, the thousand-dollar call girl, or whomever. The only difference between women like this and myself is that they at least received some form of apology. Avery had disappeared on me altogether.
When it comes to love, there’s nothing worse than public betrayal. I was thirty-three when my heart was drop-kicked and sent flying through the air. Months later, when one of my stepmothers suggested I “get back out there and start dating again,” I looked at her as if she’d asked me to pour hot oil over my body and roll in dirt. You want me to date? After what I’ve been through? Are you insane?
Three years later, though, and you wouldn’t have known I was that same sad sack of a woman who didn’t want to do much more than sleep on her couch. Thanks to hard work and determination, I became the living, breathing embodiment of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” A mere three years later and I’d opened my own bakery and bought a home. I had arrived. I was woman—hear me roar! I needed a man like a bicycle needed a fish! Or however that feminist saying went.
There was just one teensy-weensy problem. Years of living alone, and as chaste as Mother Teresa, and I was beginning to wish for—actually started to crave—the attention of those hairy, non-emotive creatures that often left the toilet seat up. What do you call ’em? Men. Yeah. That’s it.
My heart, bruised and beat-up, began holding sit-ins with lit candles and music playing in the background to the tune of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” All we are saying, my heart sang, is give men a chance.
But a part of me was scared of men. One particular man. Not that any of this is about him, Avery, but he turned out to be a catalyst, if you will, the goad, the hot prod that convinced me I needed to make changes in my life. I saw his face in the New York Times and felt all my I-am-woman bravado diminish. My best friend, Bendrix, had a point, after all. My vagina was aging and my eggs were shriveling and I needed to move boldly from behind the wall I’d created, my comfy, safe wall of work, work, work, and cable on Sunday night.
By now, though, I suppose I should start from the beginning. Enough with the preamble, my stepmom Bailey would say. If you’re gonna tell it, tell it.
To that end, imagine the interior of a bakery with wood floors and a menu written on a large blackboard in chalky pastels, high ceilings dotted with low-hanging silver retro lamps (which cost the owner a fortune), an exposed brick wall behind the counter, and, near the entrance, a mahogany bar where the regulars like to sit. The smell of freshly baked croissants hangs in the air, and the sound of bass, piano, and drums pipes through the stereo system.
Actually, since I’m the daughter of a jazz musician, I’d like to start things off like my dad might, right before playing a gig with my uncles: his fingers poised above the keys of his piano, and just under his breath, a quiet A one . . . a two . . .
2
Pick Yourself Up
Brad Mehldau’s song “Intro” blared through the stereo system the morning I finally decided to make a few changes in my life. His drummer, Jorge Rossy, moved into a six-four beat that forced the trio to amp their groove. It was seven a.m. and my bakery, Scratch, was empty except for a handful of early- morning regulars. While Dad had a more soulful sound and was an honest-to-goodness jazz legend, Brad was a technical powerhouse and one of the best of his generation, and his takes on “Intro” and Nick Drake’s “River Man” were just two of my favorites.
Jazz—not that smooth jazz Muzak crap that literally made me want to puke anytime I heard it, but rather authentic jazz—was almost always playing at my bakery. Some days we tossed in singers like Otis Redding or Sam Cooke, Etta James or Frank Sinatra—singers who, as Daddy would say, saaang, but more times than not, patrons stepped inside Scratch and heard Louis Armstrong’s trumpet over the hiss of the espresso machine, or Bill Evans playing a melodic solo just when they needed to hear Evans most.
Dad taught us that we should listen to every genre of music out there and shun nothing, but I always returned to jazz. Coltrane. Bird. Billie. Ella’s version of . . . anything. Jazz was pretty much all I listened to. Even the menu at Scratch paid homage. There was the Chet Baker cupcake, made with Madagascar vanilla; the Sarah Vaughan, a bittersweet chocolate truffle tart; and the Miles Davis, a dark chocolate cupcake with chocolate chips, topped with chocolate icing. Other items on the menu included the doughnut of the day, old-time favorites such as cobblers and sweet potato pie, and seasonal items like plum tarts and strawberry shortcake.
I hummed along to Mehldau as I helped Beth, second-in-command pastry chef, roll out the last of the sourdough loaves for the lunch crowd. Bendrix was there by then, drinking espresso at his favorite booth in the back and reading the paper on his tablet. He’d been on twenty-four-hour call at the hospital and, as was his habit, had stopped by for coffee before going home.
After making a cappuccino for myself, I took out two pains aux raisins and joined him. He continued reading while I began returning e-mail on my laptop. After a moment, I heard him mention something about the People’s Republic of China and mumbled a noncommittal reply. I wasn’t in the mood for world events so early in the morning but didn’t want to flat-out ignore him either.
“Not China, silly,” I heard him say. “Va-gina.”
I looked up from my laptop, knowing I’d missed something. What is going on with the Chinese and their vaginas?
Bendrix shook his head ever so slightly and continued to peruse his tablet. “I was at the hospital and trying to remember the last time you went on a date. I went as far back as the eighteenth century.”
I played along. “Ah, right, that dreaded Count Vladimir. Hated that guy.”
“It’s been too long, Abbey. If you don’t have sex soon, that vagina of yours is going to forget what it’s there for. If you don’t have sex soon, that vagina of yours is going to dry up and wither away.”
“Thanks for thinking of my—vagina,” I whispered, “while you were at the hospital, supposedly saving lives.”
“Call it multitasking. It’s been close to three years.”
“Almost four, but who’s counting?” I made a show of glancing around the bakery before going back to my e-mail. “Unlike you, I’m not good at multitasking. I’ve been busy creating a business. Besides, my”—I whispered—“vagina is perfectly fine.”
“Your vagina is as dry as the Sahara. Your vagina is so dry it crunches. Your vagina is so—”
“Okay, okay. I get the point. What’s with you this morning? Why are we talking about my you know what? It’s too early. Go back to your paper or whatever you’re doing. I don’t need sex right now, okay? I’m in my celibate phase. Besides, whatever is going on with my . . . private body parts is none of your business.”
“Private body parts? You sound like you’re five years old. It’s a vagina and you have one for a reason.”
I shushed him, thinking of my customers trying to enjoy their muffins, not that anyone was nearby. I also wouldn’t dare say the word muffin aloud. I knew Bendrix would run with it: You need someone enjoying your muffin. Your muffin needs attention. And whatever else he’d say.
He swung his tablet around and I stared at a series of cupids fluttering alongside four couples who kissed and smiled. LoveMatch.com floated at the top of the screen in a swirly font.
I shifted my gaze from the dating site and looked at him directly. “Uh . . . you need to go home and get some sleep; you’re obviously delirious.”
“It’s time you got out there again. Your dream of Prince Charming walking in here and sweeping you off those clogs you’re wearing isn’t gonna happen.”
“And neither is online dating.”
“‘Meet your perfect match,’” he read. “‘Find love by browsing our top singles, all at your convenience.’”
“It’s not going to happen, Bendrix.”
“It’s time, Abbey.”
“Is not.”
“It is.”
Thankfully, Noel, one of my baristas, walked over to tell me my eight o’clock appointment would be late. A definite hipster, Noel had good looks and a superior talent for chitchat and remembering names, all essential to our early success. He had the required tattoos and his hair was perfectly coiffed to look messily neat. His interruption gave Bendrix and me a momentary break from sounding like children.
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