Woman in Blue

by Eileen Goudge

  Grant’s expression remained neutral, but he hesitated a beat too long before replying, “Of course. The more the merrier.”

  For some reason, he and Miss Honi had never clicked. They were always polite to each other, but it was obvious to Lindsay that neither saw the other’s appeal. Grant, despite his urban polish and Ivy League education, retained at his core many of the old-fashioned values instilled in him by his small-town upbringing—about as far from the freewheeling nightlife of Reno, Nevada, as the Promised Land was from Sodom and Gomorrah. Although he’d never said so to her face, Lindsay knew he was mystified by her decision to have someone who wasn’t, strictly speaking, a family member move in with her. He didn’t understand that for Lindsay, those ties ran deeper than blood.

  She ducked into the bathroom, where she showered while Grant made some calls. He was still on the phone when she emerged, wrapped in a towel. From the garment bag she’d brought from home, she pulled her trusty black dress. She kept a toothbrush, a pair of pajamas, and a change of clothing at her boyfriend’s, but other than that, she had yet to establish her presence in any real sense. Not that Grant spent much time here, either, which was why his condo, a short drive up the coast from her place, still seemed a bit sterile, almost like a model home, even though he’d lived there nearly a year. Now, standing before the closet door, zipping up her dress, she could see his reflected image in the mirror as he sat on the bed, the phone to his ear. He was looking her way but not seeing her, he was so deep in conversation. She couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit ignored. There was a time when her boyfriend couldn’t keep his hands off her, when the sight of her naked would have been an open invitation and the bed an excuse to postpone their dinner reservation. Not that she was in the mood for lovemaking right now. Still …

  I’m thirty-eight years old, she thought. Why do I feel as if life is passing me by?

  Grant caught her eye as he was hanging up. He let out a low whistle. “Better hurry up or I won’t be responsible for my actions,” he said, getting up and strolling over to her. He planted a kiss on the nape of her neck as she struggled to fasten the clasp of her necklace. She smiled into the curtain of hair over her face as she stood with her head bent forward, his breath warm against her neck. Okay, maybe she wasn’t going to be hanging it up just yet.

  She turned to give him a real kiss, but he’d already moved past her and was reaching into the closet for his jacket. “Shall we?” he said, holding out his arm.

  She smiled, doing her best to quell the tiny bubble of unrest lodged at her center. Together they stepped out into the cool of the evening, where a handful of high-flung stars glimmered.

  The following morning Lindsay was at work stacking books on the center island when she glanced up to find Miss Honi gazing thoughtfully at the display, her ruby lips pursed in disapproval. “Sugar, you got to save yourself before you can save the planet,” she said.

  “And what makes you think I need saving?” Lindsay tossed her a distracted smile, blowing at a wisp of hair tickling one of her eyelids that she couldn’t reach with her arms laden.

  “Here you are giving over valuable display space to books only a green Nazi would love, and you have to ask?” Miss Honi was taking a break after a spirited reading from James and the Giant Peach for a group of rapt preschoolers and their moms. She was seated in the chintz easy chair tucked into a corner by the front window, where she could keep an eye on things.

  “How would you know if you haven’t read them? I’m sure some of these are very interesting,” Lindsay defended her choice of titles. “And don’t forget, Earth Day is a big deal around here.” As if it would be possible to overlook with all the flyers circulating for the rally on Thursday, a small stack of which sat next to the cash register here at the Blue Moon Bay Book Café.

  “Sure, but folks want to be fired up, not put to sleep.” Miss Honi waved a hand dismissively toward the display. “We’ll be lucky to sell half a dozen of those dust catchers. The rest’ll end up in some landfill, polluting even more of the planet.”

  Miss Honi heaved herself from the chair and clip-clopped over to the island in her dainty, wedge-heeled espadrilles, from which her red-painted toenails peeked coquettishly. In her midnight-blue velour slacks and matching top, gold necklace the color of the hair piled in ringlets atop her head, and a whole percussion section of bangles jingling on her wrists, she was, as usual, impossible to ignore. As if to prove her point, she picked up a book bearing the less than scintillating title Sustainable Agriculture for the Modern Age, giving an exaggerated roll of her turquoise-shadowed eyes before replacing it on its stack.

  What made it so aggravating was that, in her heart, Lindsay knew Miss Honi was right. If the book café was struggling financially, it was mostly her fault. Too often she was guided more by her social conscience or personal preferences than what she knew would sell. She forgot she was running a business, not teaching a course. If it weren’t for Miss Honi, a self-proclaimed lover of “trashy” novels and tireless advocate for the kind of books that were a guilty pleasure for a number of their customers, they would surely have gone under by now.

  But Lindsay didn’t give in easily once her back was up. Growing up, she’d had to be tenacious in order to survive, the proverbial weed pushing its way through the sidewalk. “Whatever we don’t sell, we can always return,” she reminded Miss Honi, adopting a breezy tone as she set out one of the more approachable titles, an environmentally friendly book aimed at kids titled It’s Easy Being Green! “And if they end up in a landfill, I’m sure it’ll be a sustainable one,” she added with a wry smile. “Anyway, don’t knock the green Nazis. We’re going to need them if the Heywood Group has its way.” A vocal show of support from one of those organizations would force the bastards into the public eye, where they’d have to explain why one of the community’s last unspoiled stretches of coastline should make way for yet another bloated golf resort.

  “It’d help, too, if your boyfriend got off his bee-hind,” declared Miss Honi.

  Here we go again. Miss Honi seldom missed an opportunity to take a jab at Grant. Lindsay lowered an armful of books onto the table and turned to face her. “What makes you think he isn’t helping?”

  Miss Honi snorted in derision. “Actions speak louder than words.”

  “Well, you’ll be seeing him tonight, so you can tell him to his face.”

  “Oh, what’s the occasion?” Miss Honi inquired idly.

  Lindsay repositioned a book on its easel. “He’s throwing a party, and you’re invited. Remember, I told you about it last night.” Miss Honi must not have been fully awake at the time.

  “A party?” Miss Honi perked up like an alley cat at the scent of chicken bones.

  “It’s for his clients,” Lindsay went on. “They’re part of a coalition that’s trying to save some fish from extinction—the spiny-backed something or other. Grant’s been working overtime on the case.”

  Miss Honi gave another snort. “Figures. The man don’t have the time of day for his two-legged brethren, but give it fins or fur and he’s all over it like a cheap suit.”

  If Grant was circumspect when it came to expressing his feelings about Miss Honi, she had no compunction when it came to voicing her opinion of him. While she’d allow that he was “easy on the eyes” and “smart enough to give lawyers a good name,” she was convinced that Lindsay was wasting precious time waiting for him to marry her. “I know the type. You’ll always come in second with a man like that,” she’d say when pressed for an explanation. Lindsay always defended him, but the truth was, she had her own doubts. She and Grant had talked about moving in together, but Grant couldn’t see himself living with Lindsay and her elderly and somewhat disreputable housemate, and under no circumstances would Lindsay ever abandon Miss Honi. If they couldn’t agree on something as basic as that, she wasn’t going to hold her breath as far as marriage was concerned.

  “Well, if that’s how you feel, I guess there’s no point in your go
ing,” Lindsay said with feigned regret even as she smiled to herself, knowing what Miss Honi’s reaction would be. She was as transparent as a Frederick’s of Hollywood negligee. No one loved a party more than she. Once a performer, always a performer, even if it no longer involved taking off her clothes.

  The glint in Miss Honi’s eyes gave her away even as her chin tipped up, setting her saucer-sized hoop earrings wagging. “Did I say that? Lord, can’t a girl catch her breath without you putting words in her mouth? You tell him I’ll think about it.”

  “Well, don’t take too long.”

  After pretending to give it some thought, Miss Honi relented with a noisy exhalation. “What the hell. Count me in. It ain’t like I got something better to do.” Her expression turned briefly wistful, as if she were thinking about her most recent boyfriend. They’d been going hot and heavy for a while—even at the age of eighty, Miss Honi was nowhere near ready to “pack it in”—until, sadly, Charlie had dropped dead of a coronary one night while bowling with his friends. That had been six months ago, and Miss Honi hadn’t yet taken up with anyone new. “You sure he won’t mind my tagging along?” she asked.

  “Of course not. He made a point of asking me to invite you,” Lindsay fibbed. A little white lie wouldn’t hurt, would it? “Everyone knows you’re the life of the party.” True enough, which was why Lindsay had her own, selfish reasons for wanting Miss Honi there. Gatherings of Grant’s business associates tended to be dull affairs—green Nazis, for all their zeal, were a fairly humorless bunch, she’d found—and with Miss Honi to keep it lively, Lindsay wouldn’t have to work so hard.

  Miss Honi was trying not to show it, but Lindsay could tell she was pleased to be asked. “That may be, but come party time these old bones are gonna need a kick start, ’cause it don’t look like I’ll be getting any rest before then,” she bitched good-naturedly, watching a customer, a young woman in jeans and Polar fleece, approach the register with a stack of books in hand.

  Miss Honi hurried off to ring up the purchase, and Lindsay went back to arranging her display. It had been a slow day so far, not that you’d know it from the number of people browsing the aisles or lingering at the café tables in back. The trouble was, she knew from long experience, a lot of those customers would leave without buying anything. The Blue Moon Bay Book Café was that sort of place: It encouraged reading for reading’s sake, not just to sell books. If someone wanted to spend the whole day parked in an easy chair or at one of the tables in back with a book or their laptop, there was no one to discourage him or her from doing so. In the children’s section, the more popular titles were as well thumbed as library books. But Lindsay wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Grant often chided her for not being more hardheaded when it came to business, but she couldn’t part with the notion that books were for everyone, whether or not everyone could afford them. As a young girl, before she’d gone to live with Ted and Arlene, where would she have been without books? Her library card had been her lifeline and books her lone escape. Caught up in her imaginary worlds, she would see, looking out the window of the motel, not the flat gray parking lot below, its cars gleaming under the relentless Nevada sun, but the misty, windswept moors of Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. She would see caped figures on horseback riding to the rescue where disreputable-looking men in baseball caps and toe-sprung cowboy boots lurked. She could even convince herself that one day she and her sister would escape.

  That dream had come true for one of them at least.

  At the same time, Lindsay couldn’t ignore the cold, hard facts. She had bills to pay and expenses to meet. Not only that, when her lease came up for renewal in December, it would probably mean an increase in rent. There was no question that if she were to accept the Heywood Group’s latest offer, it would solve her financial worries. Not just in the short term: She’d be set for life. She could open another bookstore in addition to this one with that kind of money.

  But at what price? The house and property she’d inherited from Ted and Arlene were all she had left of them. How could she give that up? Mornings, watching the sun come up over the mountains to the east, she was reminded of her dad and the leisurely hikes they had often taken, with Ted, an avid birdwatcher, pausing frequently to press the binoculars into her hands as he pointed up at some bird perched in a tree. In the evenings, watching the sun sink into the ocean, she would think of her mom, Arlene, and how she had loved to stroll on the beach, picking up seashells and bits of beach glass that were still displayed in decorative bowls and jars around the house.

  “From the time I was little, I knew I would one day live by the ocean,” Arlene had told her once, smiling at the irony of it—she, a girl from Minnesota for whom the ocean had been but a lesson in geography until a trip to the seashore with her parents when she was ten. They’d been standing on the beach in the little cove below their house, watching the waves pound into shore as a storm brewed. Arlene’s long, graying brown hair, the color of salt-silvered planks, which she normally wore braided, was blowing in the wind, making her look, in her navy peacoat and billowy skirt, like a character out of an eighteenth-century novel—a sailor’s wife keeping watch for her husband’s ship. “I wanted to be where I’d always know it was there, even when I couldn’t see it. Where I’d hear it whispering to me at night. Does that make sense?” She turned to Lindsay, her eyes bright and cheeks flushed. Lindsay, all of fourteen at the time but in many ways wiser than most adults, nodded in response. It made perfect sense. Didn’t she feel the same way?

  “I hope I never get married,” she told her adoptive mom with all the passion of a young girl who hadn’t even been kissed. “That way I’ll get to stay here always.”

  All these years later the grown-up Lindsay smiled, thinking, Be careful what you wish for.

  But would she have wanted anything different? This was where she belonged, where she’d always belonged, even before she’d known of this place. She was as sure of it as she was that her being placed with Ted and Arlene had been no accident of fate. To lose her home would be cruel enough, but to be an accomplice in her own eviction—no, it was unthinkable.

  She’d be a traitor to the community as well. Not everyone in Blue Moon Bay was as gung-ho about the proposed resort as those with a vested interest in the jobs and tax revenue it would generate. There were the recent transplants, like her closest neighbors, Bill and Janice Harkins, who’d moved here to escape such rampant development, as well as those like Ollie’s dad, a third-generation fisherman, for whom a sprawling resort and all it would spawn—a plethora of Jet Skis and pleasure boats, kayaks and whale-watching expeditions—wouldn’t be just the end of a way of life but a threat to his livelihood.

  She glanced over at Ollie, manning the café in back. His full name was Sebastian Oliveira, but everyone knew him as Ollie. He caught her eye and grinned as he sent a cloud of steam hissing from the fancy La Pavoni espresso machine he’d insisted would be the best investment she could make—which it had been, though she suspected the increase in business had more to do with Ollie himself. Since he’d taken over managing the café, its revenues had doubled.

  Ollie was one of those people for whom every obstacle was a movable object and every problem a challenge to be met. Whenever a customer approached the counter with a long face, he’d joke until he had the person smiling and laughing. In cases of true suffering, Ollie would do his best to console the person with a kind word or gesture. It didn’t hurt, either, that he was cute in a goofy-kid-brother kind of way: tall and loose-limbed, with thick hair that shot straight up, like the bristles on a brush, and that no amount of gel could tame. She knew his parents well—his mother and Arlene had been great friends—and Ollie was a perfect mixture of both. He had his Irish mother’s dimples and wide, mobile mouth and his Portuguese father’s olive skin, black hair, and brown eyes—eyes that perennially forecast clear weather, however cloudy the actual skies might be. The thing that was pure Ollie, though, was his smile. If scientists
could find a way of tapping into it, she thought, it would solve the energy crisis. There would be no further need for books like the one she was presently holding—The Great Thaw: Global Warming and What the Future Will Look Like.

  She wandered over to have a word with him about tomorrow’s event, for which he’d need to have a good supply of coffee and baked goods. She was expecting a sizable turnout for Wall Street wunderkind-turned-author Randall Craig, whose first novel, Blood Money, was the buzz book of the moment. It had been quite a score landing an appearance from him. Luckily for her, he was a local author—he lived just up the coast, in San Francisco.

  Before she could get a word in, Ollie observed, “You look beat, boss.” He smiled knowingly. “Don’t worry; I have just the cure.” From the glass display case alongside the marble counter, he withdrew a decadent-looking chocolate cake and slid a slice onto a plate. “It’s my newest creation—chocolate with coffee whipped cream. I named it Devil’s Slide.” As in the aptly named stretch of Highway 1 just north of Blue Moon Bay. His smile widened into a grin, showing the chip in one of his front teeth from when he’d run afoul of an iron gaff at age fourteen, the one disastrous summer he’d apprenticed on his dad’s boat.

  “Mmm … hmmmnnhh,” she mumbled around the bite of cake he forked into her mouth. It was delicious. She didn’t know which was the biggest draw here—the books or Ollie’s baked goods. She only knew that when he moved on, once he’d saved enough money for his own business, he’d be impossible to replace. “Divine,” she pronounced when she could speak without spraying crumbs. “I’d eat the whole thing if it wouldn’t go straight to my hips.”

  He heaved a sigh. “That’s what skinny women always say.” Women who watched their weight were the bane of his existence.

  She laughed. “How do you think I stay skinny?” Admittedly it wasn’t just that she managed to refrain from sampling all but a sliver here and there of Ollie’s treats; luckily for her, she was built this way. Her boyfriend had once likened her to a Modigliani, all vertical and no horizontal, with her long lines and narrow features, her gray-green eyes that looked, he said, as if she were thinking deep thoughts even when she was doing nothing more intellectually demanding than going over a grocery list. He appreciated, too, that she wasn’t the least bit flashy, though his image of her could be a bit confining at times. The night before, when they’d been leaving for the restaurant, he’d paused as they’d passed under the porch light and used his thumb to rub away some of the blush she’d applied to her cheeks. “There. Better,” he’d said, smiling at his handiwork. Lindsay knew she should have felt flattered that he preferred her au naturel, but instead she was left feeling the way she supposed teenaged girls must when their parents disapproved of the way they were dressed or thought they were wearing too much makeup.