The Merchant of Venice Beach (22 page)

Ever since she was a kid, before Suzanna went to sleep every night she put an X through the day on the calendar. Carla always said that it creeped her out—crossing out the days made everything seem so final. But Suzanna always saw the X’s as a marker for the future. That was especially true now. Every morning, she stared at the calendar and counted.

One day closer to dance class.

This morning, she looked at the calendar in alarm. She had been so focused on her dance class schedule that she had forgotten that her birthday was just around the corner.

Usually she looked forward to her birthday, but this year was different.

She practically sleepwalked into the kitchen, sniffing some heavenly scent coming from the oven. Fernando, still in pajama bottoms, was just pulling a banana-bread loaf out of the oven.

“Perfect timing, as usual,” he said.

Suzanna sat at the table, put her head in her hands, and groaned.

“What’s up, Moan-a? You’ve only been awake ten minutes!”

“My birthday is right around the corner.”

“I know you’re bummed that we promised the tearoom would be done for your birthday and that it’s taking forever, but we’re going as fast as we can.”

“It’s not just that,” Suzanna said, although she had to admit she was annoyed that the tearoom would not be operating again as promised. “It’s a big birthday, and I’m just not ready!”

Fernando put a mug of honeydew oolong tea and a piece of banana bread in front of her.

“What are you talking about?”he asked, sounding confused. “It isn’t a big birthday.”

“Oh, yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you going to be thirty-three?”

“Yes. Exactly!”

“Thirty-three is not a big one,” he said. “Thirty is a big one. Thirty-five is a big one. Thirty-three is a big fat nothing.”

“Tell that to Jesus.”

“Tell what to Jesus?” Eric said, yawning and joining them at the table. His nose had gotten as good as Suzanna’s when it came to Fernando’s baking.

“That thirty-three isn’t an important birthday.”

Eric grabbed a cup of coffee—he boycotted tea in the morning—and sat back down.

“I wasn’t aware he had opinions about birthdays,” he said.

“Jesus was thirty-three when he died,” Suzanna said. “And look at everything he accomplished. I haven’t done anything worth noticing.”

“Don’t worry about your birthday,” Eric said. “We’ll throw you a party Jesus would be proud of.”

“I don’t want a party,” Suzanna said, suddenly exasperated beyond words at her roommates. They never understood anything! “I mean it.”

Carla came into the kitchen already dressed with makeup on and ready to go to work.

“Good morning, everybody,” she said.

Suzanna got up from the table.

“I can’t even get a tearoom reopened,” she said as stalked out of the room.

“Well,” Fernando called after her, “if you went around curing lepers and raising the dead, you’d get noticed, too.”

“Jesus loves you,” Eric added for good measure.

She could hear the three of them laughing. She brushed her teeth with all the negative energy she could muster.

The next couple of days went by in a flash. Andy proved to be heaven-sent—Carla couldn’t stop raving about him. And he seemed to get along great with Harri, which brightened her mood considerably.

Suzanna tried to steer clear of Fernando and Carla in the tearoom. There were enough strong opinions flying around in there and she thought adding her two cents would just slow things down. Every time she went into the tearoom, they seemed further and further behind.

On her birthday, Suzanna sighed heavily as she realized it had finally happened. She was finally as old as Jesus was when he died. The only thing she had in common with him was that she was also vastly disappointed in some of her friends.

But at least they were honoring her wish to treat her birthday as any other day.

“We’re ignoring your birthday,” Fernando said. “As ordered.”

“Good.”

“I’m not even baking a cake.”

“Noted.”

“You’re being a jerk, Suzanna.”

Just like any other day.

She decided that she should spend spent the day with Eric in the book nook. He was the least likely to be irritating about her birthday. He was preparing for the book club meeting. It took him days to get ready. This month’s selection was The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas—a book he deemed of equal interest to men and women.

Harri showed up early to get the tables set for tea.

“Maybe we should keep these tables here when the tearoom reopens,” Harri said to Suzanna. “Then we wouldn’t have to set up chairs every month for the book club.”

“That might be a good idea,” Eric said as he stacked notepads and pens for the club members. “When you’re not serving tea, a lot of people grab a book and just sit for awhile. Since you brought the tables in, customers stay in the store an average of thirty percent longer.”

“How do you figure that?” Suzanna asked.

“I made it up,” Eric said. “It sounded so business school. I thought it would impress Harri.”

Harri laughed.

“Well, you won’t be able to impress me much longer,” she said. “We’re graduating in two months.”

Suzanna jerked her head up.

“Two months? Are you kidding?”

“Did you think we’d be in school forever?” Eric said.

Actually, Suzanna did think they’d be in school forever, but she couldn’t admit it. She sat down at one of the tables.

“Do either of you have any plans. . . I mean, for after you graduate?”

She saw them exchange a look.

This can’t be good.

“Well, I guess I might as well tell you,” Harri said. “I’ve gotten an offer at Bash Gesas and Company.”

“Who? What?”

“They’re a really prestigious accounting firm in Beverly Hills.”

“Did you know about this?” Suzanna asked Eric.

“Sure,” he said. “I wrote her a letter of recommendation.”

“Do they care what one student thinks of another at . . . prestigious accounting firms?”

“I think I hear Fernando calling me,” Harri said, and dashed out of the bookstore.

Eric sat down with Suzanna.

“I didn’t write the letter as a fellow student,” he said. “I wrote it as the manager of a bookstore.”

“Oh, and who wrote letters for you? Fernando?”

“I wasn’t actually planning on going anywhere just yet.”

“What do you mean by ‘just yet’?”

“I really hadn’t thought about leaving,” he said. “But I’ve always assumed when I do leave, I could count on you to recommend me.”

He stood up before Suzanna could think of anything to say. She watched him leave. Her head was pounding. She grabbed her bike from the backyard and pedaled to the bike path as fast as she could. As the scenery flashed by—outdoor cafés, swing sets, lifeguard stations—Suzanna tired to make sense of her life.

She had been so wrapped up in herself—her annoyance at her friends, her need for a change, her . . . whatever it was she was having with Rio—that she never stopped to think that other people in her life might be feeling the same way. Yet, the evidence was all around her. Fernando needed a new tearoom. Carla wanted a break from Napa. Harri would be gone after graduation. And the unthinkable: Eric might one day leave, too. Was it her fault that everyone was so discontented? Had she taken her eye off the ball for too long? Suzanna turned her bike back toward the Bun. Perhaps it was not too late to make everyone happy again.

I should not have been a jerk about my birthday party.

I should have been more understanding about how long the tearoom was taking.

I should forget about Rio.

Suzanna rode morosely down the bike path, so lost in her thoughts that she pedaled farther than usual and was panting when she finally got home. She locked her bike in the backyard and let herself in the back office, where she sat in cool darkness. She closed her eyes and put a bottle of cold water to her forehead. She got up and walked down the hall, realizing that she had abandoned Eric, which was hardly professional. She peeked in the bookstore and saw him standing behind the counter, head inclined toward a woman whose face she couldn’t see . . . although she seemed familiar. She watched as Eric came around the counter and took the woman in his arms. She gasped as the woman laid her head against his chest.

It was Carla.

Suzanna swiftly retreated to the hallway. She tried not to listen, but couldn’t help hearing Carla saying:

“I feel bad lying to her.”

“I know. I know. But this isn’t like the last time we lied to her.”

“Lying is lying,” Carla said. “Maybe we should just tell her. Not ambush her.”

Okay, maybe they aren’t talking about me.

“It’s not going to be an ambush. Suzanna will find out soon enough, right?”

So much for that.

“Right.”

“So just keep it quiet for now. Promise me.”

“Okay. Okay.”

Suzanna leaned against the wall, trying to make sense of what she had just heard.

It’s like high school all over again.

Suzanna heard a steady pounding coming from the construction area and realized Andy must be at work.

Suzanna walked determinedly toward the sound of the hammering.

Time to get back in the game.

Andy stopped hammering when Suzanna came in the room. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself,” Suzanna said, looking around the room. “You know, to the untrained eye, it really doesn’t look like you’re making a lot of progress.”

“Yeah, well, to the trained eye, it doesn’t look much better.”

“I won’t keep you,” she said. “I was thinking. We really should go salsa dancing soon. Tonight.”

“Tonight?” he asked. “Wow—that is soon.”

“Well, why put it off? Let’s say seven-thirty?”

“Uh . . . well . . . isn’t this your birthday? Don’t you have other plans?”

“No . . . I don’t want any other plans. I want to go dancing.”

“I don’t know, Suzanna. I’d have to go home, shower . . .”

Suzanna looked at her wrist—still no watch.

“What time is it now?” she asked.

“It’s four o’clock . . . but I haven’t finished for the day.”

“Sure you have,” she said with a huge, slightly addled smile. “I’m the boss, and I’m saying you’re done for the day.”

“Are you sure that will be cool with Carla?”

“I guess you didn’t hear me . . .I‘m the boss and I said you could go home.”

“Oh . . . OK. Monsoon on 3rd Street sound good? I’ve heard they have an awesome dance floor.”

“Perfect,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”

Andy scratched his head with a hammer as she turned on her heels and stalked up the stairs to the Huge Apartment.

Four can play at this game.

Suzanna took a quick shower, then wrapped her hair in a towel and her body in an oversized bathrobe. When she opened the bathroom door, Fernando was standing in the hallway, waiting for her.

“Carla is being impossible,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yes! I’m ready to tear out my hair. She’s taken over the whole renovation—she doesn’t give a crap about my vision.”

“I thought the design was her vision.”

“No,” he snorted. “It was my vision . . . and her execution. She’s added a whole new dimension to the word ‘executioner. ’”

Suzanna took the towel off her head and handed it to Fernando, who started vigorously rubbing her hair. Nobody could subdue her curls like Fernando.

Suzanna bent at the waist and braced her arms on either side of the hall, so Fernando wouldn’t pull her off her feet while he worked furiously.

“Well, you guys have to work it out.”

“She’s a tyrant,” he said. “Even Andy said so.”

“Andy said Carla was a tyrant?”

“Not in so many words. But he’s definitely on my side.”

Fernando flapped the towel—the signal that her hair was done—and Suzanna straightened up.

“Do you like the tearoom?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“We all have to make sacrifices,” she said. “Besides, we’re in the home stretch.”