Adventures with Max and Louise (36 page)

I love the pitchers. “Okay, don’t worry, I’ll be there soon.”

“All right, darling; I was a little nervous,” she admits.

“Call me at this number if you have any questions before I arrive.” I give her Trina’s cell number. “See you soon.”

I
SIT ON
the front steps of my house, watching the clouds roll in, obscuring the stars. I’ve lost the desire to shower, fix my makeup or even care about anything other than letting each moment drip into the next until I arrive at Food Fest. No one cares what the consultant wears. It’s comforting to know that this event really is all about the food. Glancing in the direction of Chas’s skyscraper, I wonder if he’s thinking of me at all.

“ ’e’s a man, luv. There’s nothing going on in his head but ‘Wonder what’s on the telly?’ ” Max says.

I snort with teary laughter.

“Louise, do you realize that this is the first time I’ve thought I was in love?” I’m not sure; maybe this is love.

“Maybe this is, honey. You take two people and all their emotions, you got endless variations. All you need to know is, does it make you happy? That’s all.”

“It does, and it doesn’t.”

“Then there better be more does. Give it some time.”

“It’s easy to talk to you about it. You were there for the whole thing.”

“Every single moment,” she replies. Her voice is growing fainter.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I
’M SITTING ON
the front steps when a silver Jag speeds up to the curb. Hami’s at the wheel, elbow hanging out jauntily. He waves as Trina jumps out, looking as though she’s climbed from the pages of
Vogue.
I immediately regret not taking a shower.

“You look like you’ve been hit by a bus,” she says cheerily, grabbing my arm.

“Gee, thanks.” Maybe I should have gone with Dad.

Hami climbs out of the driver’s seat, making a big show of opening the back door like a chauffeur. He is dashing in an open-throated sky blue shirt and sharply pressed gray pants. His thick black hair is shorn close. “Don’t listen to my wife. She’s jealous of your natural beauty.”

“She doesn’t deserve you.” I kiss him on his bristly cheek.

“You two make me sick,” Trina laughs as we slide into the backseat together. Aman slithers over the console into the front seat beside his father, leaving us with Grace.

“Auntie, where’s your clothes?” Grace is decked out in her soccer uniform.

“That’s a long story, Gracie.”

“We won our game. I scored three goals,” Grace brags, picking her scabbed knee.

“Two,” Aman corrects from the front seat. “One was an assist.”

“Liar,” Grace fires back, flicking the scab at her brother.

“You two need to be quiet and let your mother talk, or I take your jet skis away,” Hami says.

“The jet skis are broken,” Grace snorts. “Aman did it.”

“Did not,” snarls Aman from the front seat, flicking the scab back.

“So!” Grace smacks his head with her open hand.

Hami twists in his seat. “Just be quiet, or I’ll take those noisy, expensive things to the dump.” He pulls the Jag into the street. I sink into the squishy leather seats, letting the luxury of their gorgeous car soothe me.

The kids are quiet until Grace pipes up: “Will ya fix ’em?”

“Shhhh!” Hami hisses and they are still for at least eight blocks.

Trina’s makeup and tan contrast perfectly with her lily white suit. My grime grows thicker, hair greasier as the car glides onto an arterial. Just to torment myself further, I look down at her feet. White pumps shine out of the car’s darkness.

“So what happened to you?” Trina asks as she files a nail.

“Chas,” is all I can muster. “I left in a hurry. My dress is at his place.” We talk quietly, which makes Grace very still as she eavesdrops.

“We’ll have to stop somewhere fast and get you something else to wear. You cannot show up at your own event looking like that.”

I don’t respond. I gaze out the window at the neighborhood we’re passing. It’s full of apartments and parks bordering downtown. Maybe I should branch out and move.

“Who started it?” Trina asks.

I shrug. “What difference does it make?”

“Oh, honey, it makes all the difference in the world. You were crazy about him the last time we talked. What happened?”

“It was amateur night. I talked to him about my feelings on the third date. I know: the kiss of death.” My face assumes a horrified look. Both Trina and Grace grin. “He reacted like any man.”

The Jag purrs into rush hour traffic heading downtown. “Sorry, ladies, but I’m very hungry. Do we really have to stop somewhere and get a dress, Molly?” Hami asks.

Trina leans into me. “What size are you?”

“None of your business.”

“Humor me,” she says, tapping Hami on the shoulder. “Pull into that parking lot right there.”

“But we’re four blocks away.” Like a good husband, he turns the Jag down a ramp leading into an underground parking lot. “I don’t know what you are doing, Trina, but you are keeping me from my dinner.” The car grows dark as we descend.

“Hush,” Trina says. “Don’t be a crab.”

Hami pulls the car into a half-empty underground parking lot with dim yellow lighting.

“Pull into that spot,” she directs Hami. “Down there a little farther, against the wall.”

We pull into a corner with one parking stall between us and a large concrete wall. Trina jumps out, dragging me behind her.

“We’ll be back in a sec,” she waves to her husband and Grace, whose nose is pressed against the car window.

“Trina, what are you doing? I don’t have time for this. I’m going to be late.” I follow her behind a concrete pillar, where I find her stripping off her clothes as quickly as she can.

“Take off your sweats. You can wear this.”

I shake my head. “No way.” A car engine starts somewhere. “You’re just going to strip in a half-empty parking lot during rush hour? There are people getting out of work.”

“So hurry up and let’s do this,” she huffs. “Honey, I know you’d rather be home eating ice cream from the carton, but when you feel your worst is when you should look your best.”

She’s quoting Mom. “But I can’t fit into your clothes!”

“Yes, you can.” She takes off the jacket of her suit and hands it to me.

“No, I can’t.” The jacket’s beautiful, cut tight at the waist, with three buttons and a shawl collar.

“What are you going to wear?”

“Your sweats,” she says without missing a beat, then slips out of her skirt and holds it out to me.

I have to laugh at the idea of Trina in my grungy sweats. From inside the car Trina’s cell phone trills. She ignores it. Hami’s busy talking to the children.

“That might be for me! Can you get it? Please? It’s really important!”

Annoyed, Trina tiptoes toward the Jag just as a car winds its way down from the upper floor. Rubber squeals on concrete. Trina runs, but is too late. The surprised commuter glimpses a long-legged woman in a black lace bra and panties dashing to her car. She shoves Grace aside, giggling like a teenager. The car pauses for a long moment at Trina’s car.

Hami steps out of the car and shouts angrily. “Show’s over. Beat it!” The commuter shakes his head and continues driving. “For the love of God, Trina. This is insane!”

Trina stomps back and hands me the phone, her eyes flashing. “Get dressed.”

I take the phone, undressing as I talk. “Hi, Sasha, what’s up?”

“Someone left the freezer door open. The homemade ice cream melted.”

Shucking my sweats and handing them off, I hike Trina’s skirt as high as it will go over my hips. The zipper sticks at half-mast on a roll of fat. Grace and Aman, stuck in the car with their father, howl with delight, trying to catch of glimpse out the window of the crazy sisters trading clothes.

“Can you refreeze any of it?”

“No, it’s in a puddle.”

“Okay, send someone to the QFC on Madison. Tell them to buy ten gallons of the best-quality vanilla ice cream. Tell them to check the butterfat content and get the highest available. If they have to buy it in pints, tell them to do the math and get enough. It won’t taste as good as the homemade stuff, but no one will notice. I’ll be right there.”

I hand the phone to Trina and keep dressing. The more progress I make, the giddier I become. Managing to cram myself into Trina’s suit is a triumph, even if the seams are about to burst. After I jam the skirt zipper down at the halfway mark, praying it will stay, I drag Trina’s whispery nylons over my much fatter thighs.

“Hey, watch it,” Trina says. “Those are Fogal stockings. Fifty bucks each.”

“What? They’re five bucks in a grocery store!”

“Not these babies. I order them from San Francisco.”

“Whatever.” I hop on one foot, hiking up the stockings.

“Remember all those L’eggs I used to have? Dozens and dozens.” She pulls the string on my sweats so tightly she can wrap it around her waist twice. “You and Denise tied them on the antenna of Dad’s squad car when he came home for lunch.” My sweats look great on Trina.

I can see Dad’s black and white as I speak. “And he drove off without noticing? Oh, boy, that was great.”

“Seven pairs of perfectly good L’eggs flying down the street.” Trina shakes her head.

Still cheaper than these lousy things.” I point out a long snag in the pale Fogals.

Eyeing me, she says, “You’re going to ruin that suit tonight too, aren’t you?”

I shrug. “Trin, I’m a food consultant, a messy one. And I drink red wine.”

“I got that suit in Paris.” She thinks for a moment. “Remind me why I am helping you.”

“It was Denise’s idea to tie those nylons on the car. I just carried them.”

“You two tormented me when in I was in high school, stole my clothes, made fun of me.”

As I tug on the jacket, the nicest garment I’ve ever worn in my life, the unspoken truth slips out. “Oh, come on, Trin, you were a snotty bitch 90 percent of the time.” I look up, worried I’ve hurt her feelings.

She glances over at Hami, who was drumming his thick fingers on the car door. She gives him a little grin and waves at the kids. Turning to me, she breaks into a huge, overly white grin. “More like 95.”

The jacket won’t button over my huge breasts. “Tell me the truth. I look like a linen-covered sausage.”

Stepping back, Trina plants one finger on her chin. She yanks the jacket down over the half-zipped skirt and steps back again. “It’s silk.”

“What difference does it make? A sausage is a sausage is a sausage.”

Trina places both hands on my shoulders, eyes threatening tears. “I know you are never, ever going to believe me, but you are the beautiful one in this family. Everyone knows it, and if you don’t get it, too bad. Someday you will.” She grabs me, hugging me hard against her bony frame. “I love you, kiddo.”

My eyes fill with tears; I’m surprised I have any left. We hold one another in the dim light of the parking lot until we hear the mechanical glide of the Jag’s window. “Can you two please do this someplace with food?” Hami asks.

Trina waves him off. “As soon as she puts on shoes.”

“My tennis shoes, right?”

Trina glances at my mud-encrusted Reeboks and wrinkles her nose. “They’re filthy.”

“It’s work. I cannot fall down on my face.”

“You won’t.”

“Heels are for masochists.”

Trina crosses her arms. “You are not wearing my suit without my shoes.”

Gingerly, I dip one stocking toe into a towering five-inch white toe shredder. They really are amazing feats of engineering. One on, there’s the second. I tower over Trina.

“There, now you’re dressed,” she sighs happily.

I take a wobbly step toward the car. “Okay, but if I fall and break my neck, you do not get my Le Creuset pans.”

Trina knots my hoodie around her tiny waist. “Don’t worry, sis; I wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

H
AMI DROPS ME
off in front of the restaurant, already packed with Food Fest diners. People cluster under tents glowing with lanterns like a hobbit’s hideaway. Garlands of flowers and white gourds run down each table, accented by flickering white candles. Chamber music floats up the canyons of skyscrapers, echoing down the street. Perched on bales of hay, well-heeled people help themselves from the silver trays of wine and appetizers. Sasha and I agree that people arrive hungry and feel self-conscious about taking too much off roving trays. They end up following the waiters instead of the conversation. The hunt for drink and food, we’ve decided, will die here. Small stations of appetizers and wine bars are manned with waiters, refilled with hot or cold food as needed. Spicy smells of slow-cooked barbecue waft down the street, carrying the promise of a succulent feast.

Other restaurants have decorated the street with billowing tents, glowing torches, and twinkling fairy lights. The liquor board, after I promised twenty off-duty cops, gave us a special permit, allowing people to stroll down the street arm in arm with glasses of wine. It is an enchanted scene, so unexpected in the dark shadows of skyscrapers.

Sasha sees me and motions me to the back of the restaurant. I wobble toward her on Trina’s heels, waving at the people I recognize. Trina, Hami, and the kids join Angeli, Dr. Hupta, Martin, and a handsome man I don’t recognize. I fight the urge to grab a chair, flop down, kick off my heels, and unload on Martin and Angeli while drinking myself senseless.

Sasha looks so desperate I don’t dare say anything but “Have a great time, you guys,” as I rush past.

I follow Sasha into the kitchen, where she surprises me with her lack of hysteria. “Whew,” she exhales deeply, grabbing a bottle of wine from a passing server. She pours us each a quarter of a glass. “I was worried you weren’t going to make it.”

“I’m so sorry for all of this. Tomorrow I’ll explain. I like your dress.”

“And you look lovely.”

I raise my glass. “Everything seems to be going well.”

“Well, let’s just say we skipped the staff meal. I hope you ate already.” I nod, thinking back to the debacle at Chas’s condo, with the horrid nuts and soggy cheese balls.