This Place of Wonder (16)

“Really.” It’s a comment more than a question. And even though that snide part of my brain wants to dismiss the artisanal part of it—Rory’s set are all hipsters—I’m intrigued. “Like wine, in a way.”

“Exactly what my husband says. Maybe you’d be good at it, with your history. It’s really fascinating, honestly.”

I appreciate her not avoiding the elephant in the room. “Interesting.”

She stands. “Let me show you around. Have you ever been a barista?”

“Nope.”

“C’mon. I could do with a good espresso.”





Chapter Ten


Norah


I recognize Maya the minute she comes into the café. She moves like her dad, with the same long, loose limbs, and her face is a feminine version of his, the heavy brows and wide mouth, and the same sprinkle of freckles over her nose. It sends a little stab through my heart, and I can’t help staring. She sees me looking at her and gives a quick smile.

It makes me feel guilty.

Long before anyone in the house was stirring, I slipped out with my backpack and washed in the outdoor shower, hidden from the windows behind a wall of shrubbery. I dried off with a towel I’d taken from the linen cupboard, and squeezed my hair, shivering in the gloomy morning. For the moment, I have plenty of clean clothes, but I’ll eventually have to figure out how to do my laundry.

Not today. I tucked the towel away on a branch behind the guesthouse to dry and headed down the hill toward town, feeling absurdly good. I’d forgotten how great the payoff could be in the survival stakes. Not that I want to stay in this difficult space, but I take pride in my ability to be adaptable no matter what. I can eat for days on five dollars, get shiny clean in a gas station restroom, hustle a job from almost anyone, anywhere.

I spent most of the morning at the local library, doing research in the local newspapers from the seventies and eighties and nineties, trying to trace the story of Peaches and Pork and whatever other news I could discover about Augustus, or Meadow, or both. It gives me something to do besides freak out over my precarious situation. And maybe I’ll find a story in the whole thing.

One thing I found was their wedding announcement.

LOCAL LUMINARIES WED

Local restaurateur Augustus Beauvais wed organic farmer Meadow Truelove in a ceremony on a moonlit beach last Saturday. In attendance were the daughters of each, Rory Truelove and Maya Beauvais, with Jared Humphrey officiating.

The bride and her attendants wore simple white lace accented with red velvet, and bare feet, with headdresses of white dahlias and red roses. The groom’s suit was hand-tailored by Georges Durant, Montecito.

The couple met at the farm, discovered kismet, and joined forces in celebrating the growing farm-to-table movement in Central California.

Neither couple has living parents or grandparents, but they were held in love by their restaurant and farm families. They will reside in Santa Barbara in the famed Belle l’été house, built in 1922 by director Simon Greenfield and occupied by him until his death in 1990.

One color photo showed them kissing against a setting sun, Augustus so much taller, his stance so possessive that I felt an unexpected surge of jealousy. She’s dipping slightly backward, trusting in his embrace, her left arm falling toward the earth, her hand holding her bouquet, as if she’s been chased and captured somewhat unwillingly. Augustus pulls her pelvis into him, bending forward to kiss her. So hungry.

The other photo was one I’d seen before in innumerable articles about them, Augustus standing slightly behind her, his arm circling her rib cage, right below her breasts. She leaned back into him, secure, her face serene. Her red hair sprayed across his black shirt, glittering. He looked sensual and commanding. She looked like Demeter, taming the god of the underworld. Hades? Poseidon? I can’t remember.

This was the photo that gave me a girl crush on her. They’re both thirty years younger than now, Meadow in her twenties, Augustus a decade or more older. She was impossibly beautiful in that way that’s hard to pin down, her skin fresh and perfect as milk, her eyes long and blue, her lips full and red. A fairy-tale being, a creature from another world.

So very, very sensual, both of them. It oozed from their pores, the slight upturn of their lips, the placement of his hand, the angle of her arm, reaching up behind her.

I felt it again, the surge of longing. For Augustus, my lost lover, but also for Meadow. Not exactly sexual, but not exactly not sexual, either.

My gut started to rumble with hunger and I caved, packing up my notes and carrying my backpack to the coffee shop I like. I checked the balance on my debit card—$241.32. I had to find a job as fast as possible, and plan to make the rounds at restaurants after 2:00 p.m., the classic dead time.

Damn. Restaurants. I thought I was finally free of them.

Whatever. For today, I had enough for a meal. At the Brewed Bean, I ordered a hefty sandwich and a bottomless cup of coffee with cream to give me more time to sit.

Settled, I pulled out my notebook and leafed through the pages, trying to puzzle out the answers to certain gaps in Meadow’s life. I mean, maybe I should be mad at her over the way she kicked me out, but I get it. If I were her, I wouldn’t like me, either.

Over my generous sandwich of thinly shaved Black Forest ham and chicken and slices of provolone, stacked with sprouts and cucumber and tomatoes, I went through my notes—sketching out the timeline backward. Now, of course, she’s the highly regarded ruler of a small empire of organic farms, author of a famous history and a cookbook, and former wife of Augustus. The story of her life in central California is well documented, especially in conjunction with Peaches and Pork.