You Only Live Nine Times, page 2
“Hello, gorgeous!” Daisy threw herself into Rachel’s arms. “I need coffee as black as my soul—preferably in an IV drip, if you have it.”
Homer twitched his ears at Daisy’s familiar voice, recognizing the faint trace of cigarette smoke and the remnants of a sultry perfume wafting from her disheveled blond hair. There was also the barest whiff of something else, something maddeningly elusive, that he couldn’t identify.
Rachel laughed and disentangled herself from Daisy’s arms, heading for the café. “Morning, stranger,” she said. “Salvation awaits right this way.” She pulled an aqua-blue cup and matching saucer from the stack next to the coffee maker and poured generously. “You look like you had fun last night.”
“If by fun you mean dancing until I practically passed out, then yes.” Daisy breezed over to the counter and collapsed onto a stool. Rachel watched, amused, as she took a deep gulp from the coffee cup, looking grateful for the jolt of heat and caffeine. Nevertheless, her complexion paled slightly, and she pressed a hand to her forehead as if willing away a bout of queasiness.
“Late night?” Rachel posed the question mostly out of habit—she could guess the answer from Daisy’s smudged eyeliner and the body glitter still clinging to her skin.
Daisy exhaled a playful groan. “I think my night actually started two nights ago. I have this vague recollection of closing the bar at Sabrosa after that Palm party and heading down to the Marlin on South Beach.” Rachel herself had attended the party at Sabrosa to celebrate glossy Palm magazine's fifth anniversary. She’d stayed late enough to feel it the next day—although clearly she'd still gotten home at a much more reasonable hour than Daisy had. “Then an after-hours,” Daisy continued, “then home for a disco nap.” She sipped again at her cup. “Mmmmm, you really do make the best coffee in Coacoochee. Anyway, last night a friend scored us an invite to a celeb party out on Mercury Island that didn’t end until about an hour ago.”
Mercury Island was an exclusive, manmade island nestled in Biscayne Bay off the coast of Coacoochee. Infamous for its privacy, its over-the-top decadence, and the occasionally off-color hijinks of its famous denizens, it was a difficult place for paparazzi to access—which made it an eminently good place to be bad.
“Julian Singer-Adams himself gave me a ride back,” she added, name-checking a well-known philanthropist and real-estate developer who owned half of Hibiscus Road. Julian divided his time between Los Angeles and Coacoochee, and a few years back Daisy had been his part-time assistant. “I always forget he knows actual movie stars like—” Rachel raised an intrigued eyebrow, but Daisy caught herself and shook her head. “I can’t give away all my secrets. Yet. But trust me, you’d recognize them if they walked in here right now.”
Rachel smiled. “I’ll have to pry it out of you later. At Danny Elliott’s book-signing tonight?”
“Deal.” Daisy drained the last of her coffee in two gulps and set down the empty cup. “You’re the best. Thanks, babe!”
With that, she fished a couple of crumpled bills from her sparkly evening bag, set them on the counter, and started for the door. She paused long enough to blow an airy kiss toward Rachel—then she was gone, the clang of the bell announcing her exit.
Calm descended on Title Wave once again. Rachel began her morning walk-through of the store, re-shelving stray titles and straightening display tables, as she made mental notes about what would have to be adjusted or pushed out of the way to accommodate the expected crowd that night. She’d already hosted smaller author events for local writers, but so far nothing as well-attended as the Danny Elliott signing looked to be.
Title Wave was divided into intimate reading nooks and browsing areas by tall maple bookshelves, with plushly comfortable vintage armchairs scattered throughout. Rachel noted with amusement that Vashti had wasted no time in claiming her favorite, distinguishable by its thick white coat of marshmallow-soft fur. That same fur speckled Rachel’s own furniture and about two-thirds of her wardrobe, no matter how diligently she deployed the lint brush.
“Rich people may have designer labels on their clothes,” she often said, “but happy people have cat fur on theirs.”
Amusement now turned to dismay, however, as Rachel observed the deep claw marks Vashti had gouged into the chair’s back. Groaning slightly, she maneuvered the chair—which was heavier than it looked—so its scarred back was pushed up against a wall, rendering Vashti’s handiwork invisible to the casual observer. Still, it was only a matter of time before Dorothea discovered it. Even though Dorothea herself was proudly owned by two enormous Maine Coons, Rachel didn’t want to test the limits of her tolerance.
“Stop clawing up the chair, Vashti,” Rachel admonished breathlessly, as she finished shoving it into place and Vashti leapt delicately to the ground. “I mean it.”
Vashti regarded her with innocent green eyes. “But how will everyone know it’s mine?”
As Rachel continued her morning walk-though, Homer began his own daily inspection. He’d long-since memorized the store’s layout, mapping in his mind exactly where the bookshelves stood, where the aisles turned, and where chairs and display tables had been set up. Brushing his body and whiskers gently along floorboards and shelves helped orient him, as did the scent markers he’d thoroughly rubbed into every inch of the place over the past six months.
Despite Homer’s intimate familiarity with Title Wave at ground level, subtle things were apt to change from day to day. Without consciously thinking about it, he now adjusted his mental map of the shop to account for the wounded chair Rachel had just moved, his hyper-sensitive ears acting as a kind of sonar that told him it was now over by Caribbean Travel. Right next to the earthy aroma of coffee brewing in the small café.
Skimming his whiskers lightly against the lower shelves of New Fiction and Beach Reads, Homer made a sharp left into Latin American & Caribbean Literature. One of the store’s speakers was directly overhead, piping the low-level thrum of jazz and Spanish guitar Rachel had mostly stopped hearing. This told Homer it was time to make a right through Tropical Gardening & Landscaping. Another right brought him into Biographies, and from here it was one left and a straight shot past Memoirs, Self Help, and Florida History all the way to the back of the shop. A final right turn took Homer past colorful arrangements of calendars and greeting cards until he arrived at the cash register.
With practiced ease, Homer leapt gracefully from floor to countertop, deftly wending his way around stacks of bookmarks, pens, journals, and prominently displayed copies of Palm. The closest friend Rachel had made since moving to Coacoochee—Tommy “Mr. Nightlife” Duvall, who’d recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend of his own—wrote a weekly column for Palm, which accounted for its pride of place.
Homer gave the stack of glossy magazines a cursory sniff, satisfied that nothing in his immediate surroundings required further investigation. Then he hopped lightly from the countertop to the floor. He’d just begun to examine an intriguing bit of tile, which still bore the trace aroma of a fish taco dropped by a careless tourist the day before, when a familiar sound caused him to raise his head.
“Natalie’s coming,” he announced to Scarlett and Vashti. The recognizable human stride, still a few blocks away, was confident yet measured, its soft thuds on the pavement accompanied by the faint swish of denim. Alongside this familiar sound, Homer also caught the gentle jingle of a metal leash and the distinct panting of a large German Shepherd.
“I doubt it.” Scarlett, still sprawled in the front display window, stretched lazily and flipped onto her back, exposing the fluffy white mound of her belly. This front-window perch was, to her way of thinking, the best in the whole shop. It allowed her to keep an eye on the store’s goings-on—a queen surveying her realm—while basking in the hot Miami sun. All from a spot that was agreeably inaccessible to the humans who filtered in and out over the course of the day. “If she were coming, I’d be able to see her.”
“Your eyes are closed,” Vashti pointed out.
“Homer doesn’t have eyes at all, and you never question him,” Scarlett retorted.
Vashti didn’t bother responding; everybody knew that when Homer said he’d heard something, you could stake your last can of tuna on it.
Only a few minutes later, the bell above the door jingled merrily once again. “Hello, swee-tie!” Natalie’s brassy voice filled the shop, her Australian accent making sweetie sound like two separate and distinct words. “How’s my favorite bookseller on this fine Miami morning?”
A large, auburn-haired woman in her late thirties, Natalie Dunbar was an investigative journalist and a field producer for Australian 60 Minutes. Her claim to fame was having tracked Australia’s most-wanted criminal to South America and capturing him there. Uniformly cheerful and endlessly resourceful, Natalie lived in a coral-colored stucco house only a few blocks from Title Wave.
Rachel set down the stack of new paperbacks she’d been shelving and smiled as she headed back to the café. “So far, so good. How are you?”
“Can’t complain. Hot Mike and I are out for our morning constitutional.” She paused to pat the enormous head of the eighty-pound German Shepherd by her side. Gesturing to the small board propped on the café’s counter, which announced daily specials in colored chalk, she added, “A café con leche with coconut milk would hit the spot.”
Homer was already headed for the clean-dog smell of Hot Mike, which was accompanied by a gruff, “Morning, Homer.” Hot Mike turned his muzzle toward Vashti, now balanced casually atop the Hardcover Bestsellers front table, and added a respectful, “Ma’am.”
“Miss,” Vashti corrected gently, and commenced grooming the lustrous fur of her back. Scarlett rolled her eyes for what would undoubtedly be the first of many times that day.
Natalie was always accompanied on her morning coffee runs by her two-and-a-half-year-old German Shepherd, Hot Mike. As a puppy, Hot Mike was in training to be a police dog, but a tendency to hesitate when given a direct command made him unsuited for service. Natalie happened to be friendly with the K9 officer looking to rehome the six-month-old, and a tight bond between woman and dog had instantly formed.
The day she’d adopted Hot Mike, Natalie had asked Daisy, then working as her part-time assistant, to do two things: call the veterinarian to make an appointment for the puppy, and then transcribe a recording taken from a “hot mic,” i.e. a microphone left on after an interview had concluded. Daisy had dutifully booked a vet appointment later that same afternoon for one “Hot Mike.”
Nobody had laughed harder than Natalie at the inaptly bestowed moniker, and two years later it still made her chuckle. Despite this—or perhaps because of it—Hot Mike was an exceptionally serious dog. He never chased his tail or barked at squirrels or rolled around on his back in the grassy dog park. Natalie’s attempt to alleviate his seriousness a tiny bit by dressing him as a hot dog last year for Coacoochee’s annual Halloween parade had been, as she’d observed dryly, rather like putting Christmas antlers on Sam the Eagle.
Hot Mike’s commitment to Natalie was absolute and his guiding North Star. Deep down, though, he had the nagging sense he’d failed at fulfilling his life’s true purpose, and he secretly hoped for an opportunity to prove himself.
For his part, Homer liked Hot Mike immensely. He knew Hot Mike would have protected Natalie with his life, if it ever came down to it. Which was exactly how Homer felt about Rachel.
Natalie unhooked Hot Mike’s leash from his collar and perched on one of the café stools. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said, “but you make the best café con leche in Coacoochee.”
“Daisy Locarro said the same thing not one hour ago. Ironic, since I never touch the stuff.” Having finished steaming the coconut milk, Rachel combined milk and coffee in a wide, shallow white coffee cup, which she slid across the counter to Natalie.
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” Natalie took an appreciative sip. “How is it possible for a Miami native to reach the age of thirty without developing a taste for coffee?”
“I know, right? I lived with a Cuban man for three years, and even that didn’t…”
A darting pain shot through Rachel unexpectedly, cracking her voice and bringing a sudden dampness to her eyes. It had been six months, and most days Rachel was mostly okay. But there were still moments, like now, when even an oblique reference to Henry was enough to derail her. Natalie gave her a moment, sipping coffee and reaching down to pat Hot Mike’s head.
Rachel took a deep, steadying breath. “You’d think six months would be long enough to get over it.” Gesturing at the shelved books all around her, she added, “Working here, you realize it’s the oldest story in the world: Girl meets boy, girl and boy plan a future together, boy breaks girl’s heart by sleeping with other women.”
Natalie grimaced sympathetically. “I could write a chapter or two of that book myself. How’d you figure it out?”
“I found a piece of paper with another woman’s name and phone number.” Rachel paused to shoo away Vashti, who had leapt onto the counter and was sniffing a small pitcher of cream with interest. “And then it was like everything clicked into place at once—all the late nights ‘at work,’ all the excuses for suddenly not being around.” Rachel laughed ruefully and brushed a lock of curly hair—impossible to tame in Coacoochee’s seaside humidity—from her forehead. “Having my nonprofit lose its funding a week later was the cherry on the sundae.”
Homer had instinctively moved closer to Rachel and was now rubbing his head furiously against the backs of her legs. An unpleasant sort of feeling bloomed in his belly. If he’d been a human instead of a cat, he might have called the feeling guilt.
Even though he’d only been six months old at the time, it was Homer who’d first detected the scent of a female human who wasn’t Rachel clinging too closely to Henry’s skin to be explained by casual contact. It was Homer who’d been able to hear the tiniest pauses in Henry’s speech—indiscernible even by Vashti and Scarlett—when he’d smoothly explained why he was working longer and coming home later.
And Homer had been the one who’d nosed a small, discarded scrap of paper out of Henry’s coat pocket. Scarlett and Vashti hadn’t noticed anything amiss at first, but to Homer it had reeked of this mystery woman’s scent.
Although all three cats were perfectly capable of understanding human speech, none of them had ever even tried to decipher the gobbledygook humans were forever writing down. Nevertheless, Vashti had sensed something damning about this particular piece of paper. Its very brevity was incriminating. Some woman had wanted to tell Henry something sharp and urgent. Something he’d deliberately kept hidden from Rachel. And even though she’d liked Henry just fine (“You always like men,” Scarlett pointed out waspishly), Vashti had been the one who’d left the incriminating slip of paper conspicuously placed on the couch.
“If Henry isn’t doing anything wrong,” she’d reasoned, “there’s no harm in Rachel finding it.”
Scarlett had never had the smallest particle of use for Henry, who’d refused to acknowledge that the spot on the sofa closest to the lamp was reserved by rights for Scarlett’s exclusive use, and who never cleaned the litterbox to Scarlett’s exacting (but entirely reasonable!) standards, and who acted as if typing things into the computer on his desk was more important than crumpling up a ball of paper for Scarlett to play with.
But even Scarlett had grieved for Rachel’s obvious heartbreak during those first few post-Henry weeks. Surprisingly, it was Scarlett who’d spent the most time curled up reassuringly on Rachel’s chest while she’d cried. “We’ll be all right,” she’d purred, nuzzling deeper into the crook of Rachel’s neck. “You’ll see.”
Rachel bent down to grab a plastic bottle of water from the café’s small refrigerator, rubbing Homer behind the ears as she did so. When she stood again, she was smiling. “Still, I can’t say I’m sorry to have ended up here.” Her eyes slid appreciatively over what had to be one of the finest sights life had to offer: a sunny, beautiful room filled with books. Then she sighed. “Now I just need to get through tonight.”
“The big shindig with Danny Elliott!” Natalie's eyes lit up. “Got a case of the jitters?”
“Maybe a little,” Rachel confessed. “Press and photographers and an actual VIP guest list make it a bit more complicated than I’m used to. Plus, I’ve been looking for our black Sharpies for two days now. I can’t have Danny autographing books with a blue ballpoint.”
Homer’s ears flicked. It was the second time this morning Rachel had mentioned the Sharpies. Feeling a sudden need to do something nice for her, he crept quietly over to where Hot Mike still sat attentively next to Natalie, using his nose and whiskers to guide him toward Hot Mike’s sturdy paws.
“Hey, Hot Mike! Did you catch that about the Sharpies? Do you know what they smell like?”
Hot Mike gave an affirmative dip of his head. “Natalie uses them to label all her tapes. I know the scent.”
“What do you say we try to find Rachel’s before she drives herself crazy?”
“Copy that.” With a clatter of well-trimmed claws, Hot Mike hoisted himself to his feet.
“I’ll help too,” Vashti announced, and leapt gracefully from the hardcover display table.
“Great!” Homer replied. “Let’s fan out.”
Scarlett, half-dozing in the warmth of the front window, opened one eye. “I saw her writing up shelf talkers the other day for some Agatha Christies that just came in. The ones on the top shelf of the bookcase toward the back of the store.” Scarlett heaved a mighty yawn. “She got distracted when the phone rang. Maybe she left them up there?”
Rachel and Natalie found themselves highly entertained, if somewhat bemused, by what sounded like a sudden clamor of meows from the cats and low rumblings from Hot Mike.
“They’re certainly chatty this morning!” Natalie noted. “It’s amazing how Homer isn’t intimidated by Hot Mike. Most cats see all that bulk and run for the hills.”
