Month of Sundays (3 page)

When Griffin handed Rachel the final shot of tequila, her bracelet caught the light and Rachel could clearly see the words etched into the metal.
Don’t let reality get in the way of your dreams
.

Rachel drank the
añejo
,
and the room started to spin.

“It was a pleasure meeting you. I hope we see each other again soon.” Griffin extended her hand. “And I hope the second time is less traumatic than the first.”

Griffin flashed a disarming smile, and Rachel nearly changed her mind about leaving. But, sticking to her guns, she said her good-byes and finally slipped out the door. On the street, she buried her hands in the pockets of her coat in an attempt to ward off the cold, but it was no use. The chill she felt had nothing to do with the frigid temperatures. Her pilot light had gone out when Isabel walked out on her. Tonight, she had felt the flame begin to flicker back to life. When she had held Griffin in her arms, the flame had turned into a wildfire.

As she headed to the subway, she wondered if she were about to get burned.

Griffin tossed her keys on the console table in the foyer and hung her coat in the closet. “Better luck next time, old friend.” Normally her good luck charm, the black leather jacket seemed to have lost its magic. The blind date Jane and Colleen had arranged had been awkward at best. Rachel had been interested in her, if her body’s reaction to their accidental collision was any indication, but her interest had quickly faded.

She acted like she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Is she still too haunted by memories of her cheating ex to move on, or did I forget to take a shower this morning?

She sniffed her shirt to see if she smelled like the fifty servings of Chilean sea bass she had dished out tonight. The CK One she always wore was mixed with something else. Something bold but not overpowering. Rachel’s scent. She closed her eyes and breathed her in.

She was usually attracted to hard-driving Type A personalities. Women who were headstrong and so confident they bordered on cocky. Women she could compete with, butt heads with.

As one of her former instructors loved to say, “Steel forges steel.” She needed someone who kept her sharp. Clingy, emotionally needy types blunted her edge.

So what was it about Rachel that excited her so much? She was nothing like the women who usually found their way into her bed. The others were like ghost chilies—so hot she couldn’t enjoy the flavor. Rachel was like a bell pepper—sweet with a hint of spice.

Griffin remembered looking into Rachel’s warm brown eyes. Eyes the color of hot chocolate and just as comforting. She had never needed an introverted counterpoint to balance her sometimes forceful personality, yet she was definitely attracted to one now. Was she drawn by the challenge of cracking Rachel’s tough protective shell or the fact that Rachel seemed to have absolutely no idea how sexy she was? Rachel was shy and reserved, which made her even more alluring. Yes, she was a little heavy, but Griffin liked women with meat on their bones. And Rachel had curves for days, even if she insisted on camouflaging them under ill-fitting clothes like the shapeless sweater and baggy Chinos she sported tonight. Griffin would love to see her in something that showcased the voluptuous body she was trying to hide. The body that had molded itself to hers for a brief, tantalizing moment.

She remembered the feel of Rachel’s hands on her hips. Rachel’s arms around her waist. Rachel’s full breasts pressed against her back. She could have ended the contact much sooner than she did, but she had lingered, longing for more.

She turned on the record player and continued to the kitchen. The phonograph needle hissed and popped as it slid through the well-worn grooves of her favorite album, adding another layer of sound to the trailblazing jazz played by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Max Roach. She grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and returned to the living room to read the thirty-page contract her personal assistant had delivered while she was out.

Two months ago, she sent in an audition tape for
Cream of the Crop
, a cooking competition/reality show that attracted hundreds of applicants each year and was watched by millions of viewers each week. A few days ago, she discovered she was one of eight contestants chosen to appear on the show. If she performed well, she could prove that female chefs were as talented as their male counterparts and they didn’t need to rely on their looks to be successful, two stereotypes she and her peers often struggled to overcome.

She longed to prove herself against the best of the best, but she didn’t want to put her life on hold to do it. If she agreed to do the show, she’d have to leave the restaurant in the hands of her sous chefs for three weeks. Her team was good, but she didn’t know if they were ready to take the heat without her around to douse the fires. Match was on a roll. Momentum, once lost, was difficult to regain.

She took a sip of her beer and leaned back on the sofa. She closed her eyes and tapped out a staccato rhythm on her blue-jeaned thighs. The music washed over her. At its best, jazz was like aural sex, lifting her spirits, relaxing her body, and freeing her mind. Tonight, she desperately needed to come.

She hadn’t become a chef for the attention. She had done it because she loved to cook. She was as ambitious as anyone in her profession, but unlike her celebrity counterparts, she didn’t want to have her face plastered on the cover of her own monthly vanity magazine or hear her name bandied about on
Entertainment Tonight
. She simply wanted to make good food and have people enjoy it.

The two hundred fifty thousand dollar check and prestigious magazine spread awarded to the winner of
Cream of the Crop
were tempting, but she wanted to claim an even bigger prize. Winning the show could help her earn the respect of her peers, an honor that had eluded her for far too long.

She read through the contract, wincing each time she came across a clause she didn’t like. When the show began filming in June, she and the other contestants would be sequestered in a spacious Central Park apartment, where they would be deprived of all contact with the outside world for three long weeks. No cell phones, computers, or TVs. Their every move would be filmed by a camera crew or shadowed by a stringer from the show.

Before they reported to the set, they would be sworn to secrecy, unable to tell anyone they were involved with the program or spill any of the behind-the-scenes secrets until after the winner was crowned during the live finale in August.

She looked at the last page of the contract. At the line on which she was supposed to sign her name.

“Do I really want to put myself through this?” she asked, thinking out loud. She weighed her reasons for going on the show against her reasons for staying put. “I don’t have a girlfriend, my family’s in California, and work will be there when I get back. What have I got to lose?” She rolled her pen between her palms like a dice player hoping to roll a lucky seven. “If I lose early, my critics will rake me over the coals and I’ll never hear the end of it. But if I win, it will feel so good to say, ‘I told you so.’”

She signed the contract.

*

“Good evening, Fernando.”

The concierge on duty looked up from a copy of a Spanish-language newspaper and returned Rachel’s greeting. “How was your evening?”

“Let’s go with interesting.”

“In a good way?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

Rachel crossed the lobby and headed to the mailroom. Orderly rows of locked steel boxes lined the walls. Her box was full but didn’t contain anything she wanted. Just the latest round of bills and a couple trees’ worth of catalogs. Nothing said the holidays like a boxful of retail therapy. She tossed the catalogs into a nearby recycle bin and returned to the concierge desk.

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, tax season was about to kick in to gear. Rachel was going to be up to her ears from now until the following April. Some clients came to her with their supporting documentation neatly organized in color-coded notebooks. They were the easy ones and, in her mind, the most boring. She preferred the filers who showed up with shoeboxes overflowing with dog-eared receipts. Sifting through the mess to see what she could keep and what she needed to ignore made her job more difficult but more fun as well. She enjoyed the challenge.

Besides, accounting wasn’t as cut-and-dried as it was perceived to be. From those boxes of disorganized receipts, she could re-create a year in people’s lives, one scrap of paper at a time. What could be better than that? Oh, yeah. Having a life of her own.

Fernando and his wife, Montserrat, were two of her early birds. Each year, they made a beeline to her office as soon as they received their W-2s from their respective employers. They left her their paperwork, she phoned them if she had any follow-up questions, and she produced their completed return as quickly as she could.

“Montserrat brought me some of your information this morning. If all goes well, I should have your return ready the same day you provide me with your W-2s.”

Fernando’s eyes lit up at her news. According to Montserrat, the couple planned to use their refund to book a trip to Madrid to visit relatives and were eager to get the money in their hands so they could start searching the Internet for cheap flights.

“That’s fantastic, Miss Bauer.” Fernando’s thick eyebrows, which often seemed to move independently of each other, furrowed into a uniform line of concern. “But at the risk of offending you, please allow me to say I think you work too much. When was the last time you did something
you
wanted to do? When was the last time you had a…how do you say?” He motioned for her to provide the phrase he couldn’t come up with.

“A Me Day?” she said.

“Yes. When was the last time you had one of those?”

She tapped her utility bills against the edge of the desk. “Too long.”

“Then why don’t you take the weekend off? You could see a movie. Perhaps go to the park. Maybe invite a nice lady out to dinner?”

His grin was infectious. His enthusiasm was, too, but she was too tired to catch either.

“We’ll see.” She bade him good night and headed for the elevator. Before the doors closed, she heard him call Montserrat and relay the news that their travel plans could begin in earnest. As the elevator car rose to her floor, she felt her spirits sink even further than they had when she left Maidenhead.

She felt completely and utterly alone. Before tonight, she thought being alone was enough for her. Now she wasn’t sure. Seeing Jane and Colleen together made her remember how much she enjoyed being part of a couple. Being half of a whole. Would she ever experience that feeling again?

She unlocked her apartment door and stepped inside. “Honey, I’m home.” Her voice echoed dully off the Spartan interior.

She lived in Long Island City in a building across the river from Manhattan. Most didn’t know the building by name, but by sight. It was the tall orange edifice next to the red neon Pepsi-Cola sign. Many TV shows and films featuring New York locales normally used the area for scene-setting exterior shots.

Isabel kept their old place, a duplex on the West Side. They were supposed to get a brownstone in Brooklyn, but they could never find one that suited both their tastes. Rachel’s new digs were a good thirty minutes away from the city—twice that when the Midtown Tunnel was clogged. Most days she took the train. It was cheaper and less of a hassle.

In need of comfort—the kind that came in a cardboard carton with Ben and Jerry’s emblazoned on the side—she kicked off her shoes and padded to the kitchen. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the cocktail napkin Griffin had given her. She ran her fingers over the unfamiliar script. The words slashed across the paper like knife cuts. Griffin’s invitation piqued Rachel’s curiosity. She was tempted to attend the party if only to see how many A-listers she could spot before she lost count. If she did decide to go, would she walk into the fray alone or drag a friend along for moral support? A decision for another day.

She used a Betty Boop magnet to affix the napkin to the front of the refrigerator. Then she pulled a pint of Cherry Garcia out of the freezer, grabbed a spoon from the cutlery drawer, and prepared to dig in. The first bite was exhilarating, but as the sugary frozen treat slid down her throat, it didn’t taste—or feel—as good as it normally did. The second bite was just as unrewarding. She was so far gone nothing could reach her.

She finished the ice cream not because she wanted it but because it was there. When she swallowed the last treacly spoonful, she felt full but unfulfilled.

If I want answers, I’m going to have to look somewhere other than inside my refrigerator.

She tossed the empty container in the trash and rubbed her bloated belly. “That’s it,” she said after unleashing a very unladylike belch. “Enough’s enough. On Monday, I start spending lunch at the gym instead of my desk.”

She said the same thing at least once a week, but this time she told herself she meant it.

Needing to decompress, she headed to the living room, turned on a twenty-four hour sports channel, and watched the scores scroll by. When that didn’t work, she headed over to the window and stared out at the city. In the distance, the iconic metal exterior of the Chrysler Building was bathed in bright white light and the top floors of the Empire State Building were lit up in red and green. The clouds around them were an odd battleship gray, threatening to bring snow but not yet living up to their promises.