by Robbi McCoy
Ellie took a deep sniff of her rose again before turning toward the kitchen. “Come on back and let’s unload your cheese.”
Sophie rolled her cooler into the kitchen. The chef preparing vegetables was someone she didn’t recognize, a middle-aged woman who paid no attention to them.
“I hope you brought me more of that sage,” Ellie said. “People loved it.”
Sophie pulled the lid off her cooler. “I’m glad to hear you’re still enthusiastic about my cheese.”
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the Threlkeld review.”
“Yes, I’ve seen it. It was my restaurant he reviewed, after all. I’m so sorry about what he said about your cheese.” She looked distraught. “I mean, I’m really sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Sophie said.
Ellie bit her bottom lip. “Well—”
“What do you mean, well?”
“It sort of is my fault. But I’ve fixed the problem.” Ellie gestured toward the stranger at the prep station. “That’s Maria. She’s our new cook. I fired Johanna this morning as soon as I found out what she did. She was an excellent chef, but—”
“Fired Johanna?” Sophie interrupted. “Why? What does she have to do with it?”
Ellie looked apologetic. “She took it upon herself to serve store-bought chêvre when we ran out of yours.”
“What?” Sophie stared. “But it says right on the menu, Tallulah Rose Creamery.”
“Yes, I know. It was my firm policy that when we were out, we were to stop serving the dishes. But she thought that was a mistake. She thought that if somebody wanted a beet and chêvre salad, they should get it. She decided nobody would know the difference.”
“She never did like me,” Sophie said dejectedly.
“I had no idea she was doing that until this morning when I found the cheese in the refrigerator. Some supermarket brand. Some mass-produced stuff from California. Apparently, we ran out of yours even earlier than usual this week.”
“Is that what Threlkeld got, the store-bought stuff?”
“I have to assume that. Why else would he be so unimpressed with it? If you taste that stuff she was serving, you’ll understand. His opinion was right on. Johanna doesn’t respect her customers. She thinks they’re unsophisticated ninnies, that they can’t tell a good goat cheese from a bad one. I couldn’t believe she did that, especially knowing Threlkeld was in town.”
“You fired her for that?”
“Yes! Not just the cheese. She’s made other decisions that were in direct defiance of me. She’s taken way too many liberties, as if she thought this was her restaurant, but this was the final straw. I’m proud to feature Tallulah Rose Creamery on my menu and I damned well know the difference. And so do my customers.”
Sophie hugged Ellie, feeling grateful. “Thank you!”
“There’s nothing to thank me for. I’m responsible for your bad review. I wish that Eno Threlkeld would make himself known so I could have another shot at him.”
“You still have no idea what he looks like?”
“No. Johanna was serving her store-bought stuff Tuesday through Thursday. He must have come in during that time.”
“Even if the review still stands, I feel a whole lot better knowing this.” Sophie took a deep breath. “I was beginning to wonder myself if my cheese was merely passable.”
“Trust me on that, Sophie. It’s much better than passable. It’s your perfectionist nature that insures that. You’re not very fast and you don’t produce very much, but what you do make is heavenly.”
“Thanks,” Sophie said.
“I’m sorry about the mix-up. I’ve told Maria we’re going to be putting your cheese front and center for a while. We’ll come up with some new dishes and make sure it shines, give it the place of honor it deserves. So give me as much as you can.”
“I can give you three extra this week.” Sophie unpacked the cheese from her box. “I’ve been working harder than usual to make more. But, ultimately, it’s up to the goats and the supply of milk.”
Ellie put the cheese in the refrigerator. “What’ve you got there?” She indicated the cardboard tube.
“It’s a caricature.” Sophie opened the tube and unrolled the drawing, holding it up for Ellie.
She laughed for several seconds. “That’s wonderful! You’ll have to frame it and hang it up. “Who did it?”
“A guy across the street.”
She led Ellie to the front window where she pointed out Kyle who was no longer drawing, but standing beside his easel as a woman fluttered up and gave him a hug. Sophie all but choked. It was Wren hanging on Kyle’s neck.
In the many days since their tryst, she’d forgotten how lovely Wren was. She was surprised by the rush of emotion that swept over her at the sight of that face, even the slant of her forehead and the way her dark hair curled around her ear. She vividly remembered lying beside her as she slept, staring at that delicate and lovely ear, feeling overcome by its simple beauty.
So Wren was still in town. It occurred to Sophie that maybe she lived here. If everything else was a lie, maybe her story about living in San Francisco was also a lie.
“I should have him do me too,” Ellie said, standing beside her.
Sophie roused herself from the quicksand she felt herself sinking into. “Yes, you should.”
Her gaze was drawn back to the couple across the street. They were looking at one another, talking animatedly. Neither of them glanced her way. Which was just as well. She didn’t know what she would do if Wren actually looked at her.
“Attractive couple, aren’t they?” Ellie noted.
“Couple? Why do you assume that?”
“I’m not assuming. They were in here for dinner the other day. They referred to each other as husband and wife.”
“Oh, no, that couldn’t have been her,” Sophie said. “It must have been another couple. Or he was with another woman.”
“No.” Ellie shook her head. “I know it was her. That’s the same woman who was in here with her twin brother last week. You were here that day too. Maybe you remember them. They looked so much alike, it was hard not to notice.”
Sophie’s stomach knotted up.
“No, that’s ridiculous,” she began, then stopped abruptly because she realized she knew nothing about it one way or the other. All she knew about Wren was what Wren had told her and she already knew at least some of that was a lie.
“Is something wrong?” Ellie asked. “You look pale.”
“I need to sit down,” Sophie said, feeling weak in the knees.
She let herself sink into a chair at the nearest table.
“What is it?” Ellie asked.
Sophie tried to compose herself. “That’s her. That’s the woman I—”
Ellie looked confused for a moment, then she suddenly seemed enlightened. “Your date!”
Sophie nodded.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Ellie slapped her hand over her mouth and gradually calmed herself. “Why? Why would you sleep with that gorgeous man’s wife? Maybe I should say how? If I had a husband who looked like that… Not to imply you’re not all that, Sophie.” Ellie laid a reassuring hand on Sophie’s shoulder.
Sophie shook her head forlornly. “I had no idea she—”
“You didn’t know about him?”
“Of course I didn’t know about him! If I’d known about him, do you think I’d have—”
Ellie looked stricken, glancing back through the window at the couple across the street.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised she’s a liar and a cheat,” Sophie said bitterly. “In my experience, that’s very common.”
“Look, Sophie, you don’t know anything about them. It’s possible her husband doesn’t mind. There are couples who have arrangements like that. Maybe she likes to be with a woman now and then.”
Sophie stared, frowning her discontent.
“I can see I just don’t know
the right thing to say,” Ellie said. “Sorry, but this isn’t a situation I’m familiar with. How about this instead?” Her face turned into an exaggerated scowl. “That bitch! Using you like that. Who does she think she is? I hope her hair falls out and her teeth rot.”
Sophie forced a smile. “That’s a little extreme. After all, I used her too. It was mutual. I knew what I was doing, sleeping with a stranger. That’s part of the bargain, that you don’t know why she’s in your bed. You’re just grateful for it.”
“Oh, so now you’re defending her. You see, I can’t win here.” Ellie stamped one foot on the floor with mock indignation.
“It bothers me more than it should,” Sophie said. “It reminds me of Jan. Cheating. Lies. But you’re right, I know nothing about Wren’s marriage. If that’s her name. Did she tell you her name?”
“No.”
“Are you really sure they’re married?”
“All I can tell you is he referred to her as his wife and she referred to him as her husband. I didn’t ask to see a marriage license. They seemed very fond of one another. Talkative, laughing.” Ellie cringed. “Oh, maybe that isn’t what you want to hear either, is it?”
“The thing is, I really liked her. I thought she was sweet and sincere. Why am I such a terrible judge of character?”
“I’m sorry, Sophie. I need to get back to my customers. Sit here as long as you want. Have a cup of tea.”
When Kyle had said he was neither straight nor narrow, Sophie had assumed he meant he was gay and open-minded. Maybe he was bisexual. Wren apparently was. Maybe that was something they had in common.
As Sophie watched unobserved, Wren snatched the cap from Kyle’s head and put it on, modeling it for him. She tilted her head this way and that, then spun around in a circle. She looked adorable. Kyle eventually took his hat back, then Wren hugged him again and took off at a fast walk toward Main Street.
Sophie rolled up her drawing and returned it to its tube. When Ellie passed her, she laid a comforting hand briefly on her shoulder before moving on. A few minutes after Wren had gone, Sophie said goodbye to Ellie and left the restaurant. Kyle saw her across the street and waved his cap at her cheerfully. She waved, forcing a smile, thinking about how agreeable he was and how different he would be if he knew she had spent a deliriously passionate night with his wife.
She was disturbed and saddened by her new knowledge. Despite everything she’d been telling herself, she’d been secretly hoping for some happy turn of events, a little magic or just a quirk of circumstance that would defy everyday life and deliver her a dream. She was disappointed in herself. By now she should have known better.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ah me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, Scene I
Wren was able to get two great seats for the Friday evening performance of Private Lives. She hoped Raven was okay with her not coming to see him yet again. He couldn’t really expect that, she was sure. Almost sure. She’d go once more before she left Ashland and hoped that would prove her enthusiasm. Kyle, too, was glad for the chance to see something different, but hadn’t been bold enough to suggest it. “Just wait,” she’d told him. “After three years together, he’ll have to bribe you to go to his plays even once.”
She tucked the tickets into her bag, then walked downhill to Main Street where she strolled along the sidewalk, window-shopping. There was an endless number of interesting gift shops here, not just the usual T-shirt and tacky souvenir places, though those were also available. But there were lots of shops with unique crafts and art objects. She stopped to peer into the window of an antique store at some old toys, some of them she remembered from her own childhood, some older, like the adjustable metal roller skates. There was a Care Bear that reminded her of her own and one of the original My Little Ponies, a pink one that looked identical to the one Raven had had. Of course, as had always happened, people gave such toys to Wren and then she swapped them with whatever Raven had gotten, like Transformers. She momentarily considered buying that pony for him, but it would probably seem like a gag gift and she didn’t mean it that way at all.
She turned from the window to continue down the sidewalk. Up ahead, through the crowd, she saw a woman walking away from her who had a familiar and heart-stopping swing to her hips. Wren caught her breath and stared. The woman pulled a Styrofoam cooler on a wheeled cart and was wearing jeans and a blue and white striped blouse. It had to be Sophie, she realized, then started walking rapidly toward her.
Sophie stopped at the corner and waited for the light. Now that she’d turned to cross, Wren could see her face in profile and her identity was confirmed. The sidewalk was crowded. By the time she made it to the corner, Sophie was across the street and the light was red again. Cars passed between them.
“Sophie!” Wren called loudly, jumping up and waving. “Sophie!”
Sophie turned and looked, and her eyes seemed to lock directly on Wren’s for a split second as Wren continued waving, but then she walked off down the street. She seemed to be walking even faster than before. Frustrated, Wren decided she hadn’t actually seen her, or at least she hadn’t recognized her if she did. The line of cars finally stopped and Wren raced across the street and headed after Sophie, who was already a block ahead of her.
She dodged through the strolling tourists, feeling like a fish working its way upstream. Then suddenly she caught sight of someone who brought her to a dead stop. Only fifty feet ahead was Ellie’s sister Cassandra. She wore her long brown cape and was moving slowly in Wren’s direction, though she didn’t appear to have seen her yet. Holy Crap! Wren said to herself.
She ducked through the door of the nearest shop, moving around to the front window so she could keep an eye on Cassandra. Standing a few feet back, she watched, resting her hand on top of a tall, inflated plastic toy. Cassandra came into view and turned to look at the display in the window. She seemed to be looking straight at Wren, who froze. Cassandra’s icy eyes were vacant, her expression neutral. For once, she didn’t look threatening and Wren realized she hadn’t seen her. She was looking at something in the window. She apparently couldn’t see past the window display. Wren let out her breath and relaxed. Finally, Cassandra moved on.
It was then that Wren glanced around to see she was standing next to a wall of DVDs. She read some titles: Saturday Night Beaver, Rambone, Star Whores. Confused for a second, she suddenly realized these were porn movies. She then took a better look at the plastic balloon beside her. At first she’d assumed it was a kid’s punching bag. But now she saw that her hand rested atop a three-foot inflatable pink penis with realistic looking red arteries, ridges and a tip she had mistaken, in her distraction, for a clown head.
She jerked her hand away, wiping her palm on her jeans. What would anybody do with a three-foot inflatable phallus? Maybe it was a punching bag, after all. She looked at the base, wondering if it was weighted like her mother’s oft-remembered Bozo the Clown. Her mother had loved that toy, the way she could punch it and punch it with all her might, knock it all the way to the floor and it would pop right back up, still smiling with that garish mouth and signature orange hair. Wren hauled off and punched the thing, smack, right in the middle and watched, horrified, as it sailed into the arms of a person who had been quietly watching her. There stood a freakishly tall Goth-styled girl, her black hair shaved on the left side of her head and hanging down about five inches on the right. She had four silver rings in her nose and a diamond stud in her cheek. The hardware in her ears was too much to count. The expression on her face was inscrutably passive.
“Can I help you?” the young woman asked in a calm, measured voice hinging on irritation. She set the penis balloon aside.
“No thank you,” Wren said, disconcerted. “Just looking.”
The girl nodded very slowly, once, as Wren caught sight
of a shelf of vibrators.
“Oh,” she said, “on second thought, I could use some batteries. But I’ll have to come back. I’ve got to run.”
She dashed out of the store and took off in the direction she’d last seen Sophie, scanning the sidewalks on both sides of the street. She waited for a while, leaning against a building at a busy intersection. This sucks, she thought, then wondered what she’d been intending to do when she caught up with her. She’d had nothing in mind. She just wanted to… Yeah, that was the problem. Even if Olivia had another lover, Sophie was still married. A potentially very messy situation there.
Wren gave up and walked up Second Street to Kyle’s makeshift studio. She fell into his customer chair, feeling discouraged.
“Hey, don’t sit there,” he said, “people will think I’m not available.”
Wren frowned. “Or maybe they’ll think you’re popular and start forming a long line around the block.”
“Why so sullen? Couldn’t you get tickets for tonight?”
“No, I got them. Then I saw Sophie and I lost her. Didn’t even get to say hi.”
“Sophie?” Kyle said, clearly not knowing who she was talking about. He looked suddenly enlightened. “Oh, right, the girl you…the goat farmer.”
She gave him a brief, sarcastic grin.
“That’s funny,” he said, wiping his hands on a white rag, trying to get the graphite off. “I had a customer named Sophie earlier today. It’s gotten to be a popular name, hasn’t it? I know a guy who just had a baby and they named her Sophie. Of course, the Sophie here earlier was around thirty, so not part of the current trend, after all.”
Wren stared at him in disbelief. “Sophie was here this morning?” she asked.
“A woman named Sophie was here this morning. I drew her.”
“What did she look like?” Wren leaned forward in the chair.
“A few inches taller than you, blonde with hair down to about here.” He held his hand at the base of his neck. “Blue eyes.”
“Blue? Or more like gray? Sort of gray-blue?”
“Maybe gray-blue. I don’t worry much about color with the black-and-white drawing. Just light or dark.” He picked up a pencil and began drawing with short, rapid movements. “I remember she had a little cart with her.”
