May the Best Man Die

by Deborah Donnelly

  I explained the situation, and she responded in high executive gear. “You'll stay here, of course. The guest room is always made up, and I don't stay over all that often anyway, especially when Charles isn't well. Is your luggage at Solveto's?”

  “Actually, it's in my van. But are you sure—”

  “Frank can bring it up for you.” She strode back into the living room. “Frank, take your hands off my daughter for a minute and run down to Carnegie's van with her.”

  So that was that. Within the hour I was unloaded, unpacked, and walking down Post Alley toward Boris Nevsky's studio in Pioneer Square, enjoying the remarkably blue December sky and feeling ridiculously cheered to be Ivy Tyler's houseguest. I'm not just a consultant; I'm a friend. That felt good.

  I was even pleased that Sally's wedding was still on, and not just because of the money. Everybody's got their own ideal New Year's Eve, and mine involves music and dancing, not video rentals or a good book. I wouldn't have a date for the Tyler/Sanjek bash, but at least I'd be at a party at midnight. Maybe I'll kiss a waiter, or one of the drummers. Or all of the drummers . . .

  I stopped at an MFC, where a table full of preschoolers was crayoning Christmas cards, and treated myself to a piping hot latte with a shot of chocolate syrup. Sipping as I walked, I positively beamed good will at the passersby. Lily and I will make up soon; I'm sure we will. And when I do move back home, I'll have actual water pressure in the bathroom; imagine that.

  The sky was blue but the air was biting, and I was grateful to step inside the fragrant warmth of Nevsky Brothers Flowers. There weren't actually any brothers, just Boris and his Aunt Irina, the shy and tiny crone who tended the bucket shop up front. Today Irina was surrounded by her usual tubs of single irises and ready-to-go roses, but also by gift-wrapped pots of scarlet poinsettia and gaily beribboned mistletoe balls.

  I was admiring them when her nephew blew into the room like a gust of wind off the steppes of Mother Russia.

  “Kharrnegie!” Boris pulverized my rib cage with a grizzly bear hug. The Mad Russian did nothing by halves. “You come to luke at Tyler flowers! I have outdone even myself. Which only I could be the one to do, no?”

  “Only you, Boris. But let's get Bonnie Buckmeister's numbers nailed down first, OK? Do you really need six dozen amaryllis?”

  We settled on five dozen, with corresponding quantities of ruby-red hypericum berries, bright-leafed English holly, and crimson roses—not to mention a forest-full of pine and cedar boughs—enough to turn the Arctic Building's ballroom into one big Christmas card.

  Boris signed the estimate impatiently, then drew me into his studio. This was a high, brick-walled space, banked with flower coolers and ranked with shelves of wire, ribbon, foam, and other necessaries for making floral magic.

  Down at the far end, two of Boris's darkly handsome assistants—all named Sergei, as far as I could tell—were working with lilies and stephanotis. I closed my eyes and breathed in the heady scent that floated above the smoky vapor from the grand gilt samovar in the corner. Everything about the space—the delicious perfumes, the tender shapes and textures, the heart-lifting colors—was as far as could be from the cold white chamber where I'd last seen Jason Kraye. I could happily have stayed for hours.

  On the long table in the middle of the room, Boris spread a series of colored sketches for Sally's flowers. We needed only two bouquets and a few corsages, because the ceremony itself would be small and private: just the bridal pair and one attendant each, plus the four parents and Frank's sister. They would gather at six P.M. on New Year's Eve in a judge's chambers at the King County Courthouse, and then dine in a private room at an elegant bistro farther uptown. All very discreet and intimate.

  The reception to follow would be quite another kettle of martinis: an all-night party at Neurolux, a trendy new Belltown club that we planned to decorate in high, not to say startling, style. Other brides chose soft, girlish color themes for their weddings: dusty rose and powder blue, or peaches and cream. But not Sally Tyler. Sally had opted for black and silver. She was even wearing a black gown, a long bias-cut number in silk charmeuse that made her look like a 1940's movie siren. As Eddie would put it, va-va-voom.

  I had to admit, it was fun getting away from pastels for a while—and from Bonnie's relentless red and green. I planned to drape the interior of the Neurolux with black velvet hangings, and set the tables with silver candelabras holding ebony tapers. At midnight of the old year, the guests would be showered with glittering confetti, dazzled by a laser light show, and serenaded by an African percussion ensemble. At Sally's insistence, the guest list was long on stylish young people and short on her famous mother's business colleagues. The buff bride would have the limelight all to herself.

  As always with a Nevsky Brothers wedding, the bride's bouquet was both gorgeous and unique: against her black satin, Sally would carry a scepter of enormous white calla lilies, each bloom as pale and shapely as the bride herself, the long stems braided with black velvet ribbon. For the Neurolux, Boris had designed silver pedestals draped with thick garlands—he called them flower boas—of anemones and roses in deep burgundy and indigo, with wandering strands of bird's-foot ivy and dangling clusters of fat black grapes. Very Deco, very decadent.

  I ooh'd and aah'd over the sketches, as I always did. It was our little ritual, and Boris and I both enjoyed it. But then came a less-enjoyable interrogation.

  “So, Kharnegie, you don't speak of Aaron anymore. Why is this?”

  “I told you already, Boris, he was spending a lot of time in Boston. He's back now, but we've agreed that it's not working out. It wasn't serious, anyway.”

  “Bah!” Boris swept up his sketches, almost toppling his ever-present, ever-potent glass of tea. Russians must have asbestos stomachs. “Not serious, she says to me! First her eyes light up like candle when she speaks of him, and now she says not serious. Did he break your heart, my Kharnegie? I will break his head!”

  “Leave it alone, Boris, would you? Aaron just wasn't the right kind of guy for me.”

  “And what is right kind, eh?”

  I answered quietly, half to myself, as I tucked the estimate and sketches in my briefcase. “I don't know, exactly. Someone more straightforward, not such a smooth talker. Someone solid.”

  Boris clamped a brawny arm around my shoulders. “Then you should come back to me! There is no one more solid than Boris Nevsky!”

  I laughed aloud at the thought. Then I noticed that the Mad Russian wasn't laughing. Uh-oh.

  “Come on now, Boris, we settled all this.”

  “But we should settle again, different!”

  “I don't think so.”

  I began to put on my coat, but Boris snatched up my hand and kissed it. I pulled it away, more roughly than I meant to, and took a few paces back. We stared at each other, wordless, uncertain. The Sergeis, I realized, had made themselves scarce.

  Boris wears his heart on his face. He glowered, but only for a moment, and then I saw a flicker of regret, which gave way in turn to a crafty grin that gleamed through his thicket of black beard.

  “Kharrnegie! You don't know joke when you see one!”

  He laughed, a little too heartily, and I joined in, much relieved. I liked Boris, and the way things were going, I couldn't spare any friends. Besides, Nevsky Brothers was one of my best vendors.

  We ended the encounter with smiles that were only slightly forced, back on the safe shore of friendship. Good old Boris. I gave him a quick bear hug of my own, then I fetched Vanna and headed north out of Seattle, to what I blithely expected would be a routine appointment at Habitat Coffee.

  Chapter Eleven

  DOES ANYTHING ON EARTH SMELL AS GOOD AS COFFEE? NO. Not bacon, not lilacs, not even new bread. As I waited for Kevin Bauer in Habitat's front office, I was getting a contact high from the dark-roasted atmosphere, and loving every deep breath. Now that I had a bed for the night, my trip out of town was feeling like a mini-holiday.

  The roa
sting plant was nestled in a forested area near the little town of Snohomish. (The Snohomish River is fed by the Skykomish and the Snoqualmie, not to be confused with the Skagit, or for that matter, the Klickitat or the Dosewallips. I love Washington State.)

  I got off the freeway early, just for the change, and drove north through the odd jumble of development along Highway 9. One minute you're cruising past some ticky-tacky housing development called Ridgecrest Meadowview Estates, next minute there's an outlet mall, and then you're back in deep stands of Douglas fir and big leaf maple, and the occasional Christmas-tree farm.

  The maples were bare this time of year, of course, but in spring the Habitat property would be positively sylvan. A grassy field surrounded the series of low, interconnected buildings, and a towering Doug fir made a backdrop for a massive steel silo.

  Most of the complex was drab and industrial—no photo op there—but the front office doubled as a visitor center, with a wooden porch and an old-fashioned air of welcome. Inside, I was greeted by a smiling woman in her early forties, wearing long handmade earrings and her brown hair in braids. She took my name, offered me a candy cane from the little decorated tree on her desk, and asked me to wait just a moment.

  The visitor center was a single large room, painted in Habitat's signature red and white, and crammed with fascinating coffee-themed paraphernalia. A row of fine old cabinets in glass-fronted oak held displays of coffee cans and bags going back decades, like a general store for caffeine fanatics. Above them hung a long row of framed burlap coffee sacks from Costa Rica, Panama, Indonesia, all with exotic names and eye-catching folk-art logos.

  On the opposite wall, a series of lively posters illustrated the whole shade-grown issue. Coffee that's farmed in the open, they declared, forms an ecological desert, shunned by wildlife and greedy for oil-based fertilizers. Indigenous shade trees, if left in place over the coffee bushes, will fix nitrogen in the soil, discourage weeds and erosion, and provide shelter for the billions of warblers, orioles, and other songbirds that funnel through Mexico and Central America every winter.

  Hmm. I'd always passed on Habitat beans because of their price, but now I made a mental note to pick up a bag. Who can say no to a homeless warbler?

  The far end of the room was a sort of coffee-roasting museum, with antique scales, grinders, and roasters bearing neatly-typed cards explaining their use and history. One glass-topped display was missing its card, and the contents were puzzling: an array of bent nails, bottle caps, gum wrappers, pebbles, keys, even a lottery ticket, printed in a language I didn't recognize. Also a small pen knife, nicked and dirty. I was bending closer, curious, when I heard a gruff voice behind me.

  “Imagine finding those in your mug.”

  The man who spoke was fortyish and six foot one—funny how fast we gauge these things—with arresting blue-gray eyes in a square, weathered, notably unsmiling face. He was a redhead, though not a copper-top like me. His short, straight hair was the color of chili powder, the dark smoky kind, and it continued down into a matching, neatly-trimmed beard. Crisp corduroys and a pressed flannel shirt completed the effect: casual, but controlled.

  “In your mug?” I repeated.

  “That's what I said. All that debris was found among the beans, sometime in the last few years. We sieve stuff out or snag it with a heavy-duty magnet along the line from the warehouse to the final package. I'm Kevin Bauer. Come on up to my office and we'll start your tour.”

  Upstairs, with his door discreetly closed, Bauer changed his tour-guide tune. “This press party is a lousy idea, you know that?”

  “I . . . I guess that's something you'd have to discuss with Ivy.”

  “I have discussed it with Ivy, at length. The woman's a goddamn brick wall.” He scowled at his telephone, as if she were still at the other end of the line. “The buyout's a good move for Habitat, I'm not saying it isn't, but I don't need a bunch of freeloading reporters and MFC management types spilling chips and dip all over the damn place and attracting vermin to my beans.”

  “Aren't you a management type yourself?”

  Bauer glanced at me sharply. “I suppose I am, but my job is roasting coffee, not putting on a show for the Wall Street Journal.”

  “Well, my job is to plan successful events for my clients, and my client wants to hold a reception and press conference here. So can we get on with it?”

  He scowled again and yanked open a desk drawer. First he handed me a sample bag of Habitat coffee beans; apparently, even unwelcome visitors got one. Then he pulled out a small paper envelope and tossed it to me. “Hair net. We're a food-processing facility, we've got rules. Are you wearing any rings?”

  I showed him the hammered-silver band that I'd bought myself the week before in the Market.

  “Not a problem,” said Bauer. “We just worry about stones that could come loose, earrings that could fall off, that kind of thing. You see what I mean about a bad idea?” He didn't wait for me to answer. “And for God's sake, keep quiet about MFC out there. I don't want to tell my people till next week, after our company Christmas party.”

  “I'm just a casual visitor,” I said solemnly, scooping my hair into the industrial-strength net. “I won't say a word, and if you give me your home number, I'll call you there with any questions I have about the arrangements. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” he allowed, and we set off on our tour.

  It was fascinating, really, even with my ill-tempered companion—and Bauer warmed up as we went, his pride in the operation gradually overcoming his annoyance at my errand.

  We began by going outdoors and entering the Habitat warehouse from the gravel parking lot, the way that party guests would arrive. And what a sight would greet them when they got inside: the vast space, open in the center, was surrounded by row upon row of shelving units that ran at right angles to the warehouse walls, like the stacks of a giant's library.

  The units rose in lofty tiers that stretched up from the concrete floor at our feet to the shadows of the girdered roof above our heads. Some of the shelves were crammed with stacks of unassembled cardboard boxes, or huge spools of laminated bags destined for the supermarket, in Habitat's signature red-and-white design. But most of the space around and above us was filled with rough burlap sacks, fat with coffee beans. Thousands of sacks, billions of beans. Just looking up at them made me feel caffeinated.

  The aisles between the tiers were barely wide enough for a single one-man forklift. Three or four of the toylike, bright green machines were grunting and whining their way around the area, busy as ants, bearing unwieldy-looking pallets of coffee sacks that looked far too top-heavy for their little electric motors. Bauer called them “VNA reach trucks, VNA meaning ‘very narrow aisle.' ” But they looked like forklifts to me.

  As we walked, Bauer reeled off more facts and way too many figures: 132 (pounds of beans in a sack), 600 A.D. (when coffee was first consumed in ancient Ethiopia), three billion (cups the world now drinks in a day). I made the appropriate interested noises, but statistics bore me. I was thinking party.

  A red-and-white color scheme, of course, with some of those nice bright posters, and maybe stacks of Habitat boxes. The boxes could wall off a space inside the warehouse for the speeches and the buffet, and I could give strict orders to keep refreshments inside the perimeter, and out of the coffee. That ought to satisfy the dour Mr. Bauer.

  The forklift operators, like the rest of the workers, just nodded nonchalantly as we went by. No putting on a show of extra effort for Mr. Bauer. In fact, the atmosphere throughout the plant was brisk and upbeat, a happy, hard-working family, with good-humored chatter and lots of personal snapshots and funny clippings taped here and there. I wondered how these folks would feel about joining the MFC family, with Ivy Tyler as the stepmom. Not my problem, thank goodness. Sometimes managing Eddie was all I could handle.

  Beyond the warehouse, but connected to it, was the large, windowless roasting area. It felt like a submarine movie, if the sub
had high ceilings: steel walls and bare light fixtures, hoppers and catwalks, pneumatic ducts and tubes snaking everywhere, moving the beans from one stage of processing to another. Amid the constant thrumming roar of machinery, I half-expected to hear a sonar ping, and some square-jawed actor shouting, “Dive, dive!”

  But submarines don't smell like fresh coffee, and they probably don't have parts labeled “Made in Perugia, Italy.” One wide upright duct, thus labeled, caught my eye. It had a square transparent panel in it, and behind the panel a swarm of dark brown coffee beans raced in blurring, ricocheting flight upward, like furious bees from a shaken hive.

  “Cool!”

  I'd broken my vow of silence, but Bauer smiled for the first time. “That's what everybody says. They're coming from over here, where the actual roasting takes place.”

  He pointed at a huge, gleaming tank with an octopus of pipes and tubes emerging from it. We walked over, and he pulled on a handle sticking out from the tank's side wall. The handle drew forth a steel cylinder, open along the top, with a cluster of dark beans nestled inside. The warm, intense fragrance rising up from them was nearly erotic.

  “This is called a ‘tryer.' Every roaster has one, from the oldest to the newest. You can computerize all you want, but you still have to—”

  “Wake up and smell the coffee?”

  The smile broadened. “Exactly. You listen to the beans pop as they heat up, and then you use the tryer to look at them again and again, until they're just the way you want them. This batch needs a few seconds more.”

  He reinserted the tryer, winked at the roaster operator, and went on with his technical spiel, while I went on with my imaginary reception. It had become an imaginary wedding reception, to tell the truth, a mental habit I have whenever I find an intriguing venue. We could put huge tubs of champagne on the forklifts, and dress the tables in those cool burlap sacks, and serve espresso mousse cake studded with coffee beans . . .

  “This is the nerve center of the whole place,” Bauer was saying. “Hang on to the rail, OK?”