Yerba Buena, page 13
The hostess was a stranger, friendly in the way all the staff of Yerba Buena were friendly, a smile for Emilie, a sincere hope that she could find a chair at the bar for her without a reservation, and then—Aha! Success! Come with me. Emilie followed, past the table where she’d spent so many mornings, past urns of flowers arranged by someone else, past the front bar to the main one in the back of the restaurant, where the handblown glass pendants hung in a row, glowing gold, over the honed slab of marble bar. She was struck anew by the beauty of it. And she was relieved to see so many unfamiliar faces. Apart from a knowing smile from a junior chef who happened to be out greeting a table of friends and a quick kiss on the cheek from Megan, she could have been anyone.
She hung her purse on the hook under the bar, and sat.
Then—a rush of movement. Sara turning toward her, menu and water glass in hand. Emilie saw strong, slim arms, the tattoos on the underside of one of them, words still too small to decipher. Her face: eyes deep blue, blond lashes fading lighter at the tips.
“Hey,” Sara said. A dimple when she smiled, teeth white and little crooked. “I’ll be right back.” Tap-tap with one hand on the menu, as though she were knocking at a door. Swift turn away, high reach for a bottle. At the curve of her hip, a sliver of skin between shirt and belt. Emilie watched her, face ablaze.
She remembered the first time they met—the way she’d snuck a glimpse of Sara at work right here at this bar, in the restaurant that morning. How right Sara’s hand had felt in hers when they shook. And how Sara had heard about the breakfast table, made the logical assumption, and put a stop to what might have begun.
Emilie wondered if Sara remembered her, too. Hoped she didn’t, so she’d have a second chance at a first meeting.
She turned to the menu but Sara was in her periphery, all Emilie could see. Minutes passed while she tried not to stare. She knew she should read the menu so that Sara could take her order when she came back. But Sara coming back now seemed impossible; Emilie wanted it so much. There were two bartenders. Each of them had half the seats. This was how it had always been, and yet Emilie found herself irrationally worried that they’d trade sides.
She needed to concentrate. She would choose a drink. Better yet, she would choose two and ask for Sara’s opinion so she’d stay longer in front of her. So Emilie would hear more of her voice. Maybe they’d introduce themselves, and Emilie would take Sara’s hand in her own again.
But when Sara reappeared at Emilie’s place, she leaned against the bar and asked, “When did you stop doing the flowers?”
Oh, Emilie thought. Okay.
“A while ago,” she said. How long had it been? “Almost a year ago.” She wanted to say, I’m a different person now. She wanted to list the ways. The thing with Jacob was over. She was through with school. She’d moved out of her shithole studio—into a place even worse, true, but still—she’d left it. She’d attended to the decline and death of a person she loved. I am different. I am different.
“So, what do you want?” Sara asked.
Emilie smiled, looked down in an attempt to hide it.
Sara laughed. “What?”
Emilie shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “I just…” She pointed to the first salad on the menu without noticing what it was. “This,” she said. “And a Yerba Buena.”
“You got it,” Sara said.
Emilie didn’t care about the food anymore; she only needed a reason to stay. But when Sara appeared again with the coupe glass, the chartreuse liquid up to the rim, the sprig of mint that hadn’t been part of the drink before, Emilie sipped hungrily. It had been good when Jacob made it. Now it was extraordinary.
“How’s your drink?” Sara asked, stopping by a moment later.
“Delicious,” Emilie said. “I love the mint, too.” She noticed Sara, considering the glass. “What are you thinking?” she asked, knowing it was an intimate question for an almost-stranger.
“It’s spearmint,” Sara said. “Yerba buena would be better.”
Emilie smiled.
“Spearmint’s stronger, tougher. Yerba buena’s a little more delicate.” Sara shrugged as if to banish the thought. “It’s also harder to find. So, spearmint it is.”
Next came a ceramic plate of goat cheese and pea greens and radishes, carried out by a runner. Emilie took one bite and then another. She had forgotten how good food could taste. And eating it reminded her of a time before Jacob, when he was only the famous owner of her family’s favorite restaurant, and she was only herself.
She finished the salad and looked at the menu again. The ragout wasn’t on it, so she had to choose something different. She’d thought it was still winter, but here were artichokes, spring onions, green garlic, and apricots. Time had passed and she’d barely noticed. She chose a pasta with fava beans, black olives, and ricotta salata. Sara came back, each return a miracle, and Emilie ordered.
“Want another?” Sara asked, picking up Emilie’s glass.
“Yes. But something different this time.”
“I’ll grab you the cocktail list.”
Emilie shook her head. She waited for long enough that Sara had to look at her, and then she said, plainly, “I want whatever you’ll give me.”
She watched as Sara’s face changed, as Emilie’s invitation registered, and she let a brief smile escape. Emilie didn’t look away, even when she felt herself blush, and the blush only made Sara smile wider.
“All right,” Sara said, and she waited for another moment before turning away, still looking at Emilie as if to make sure that this was what she thought it was, and then she smiled again, and again said, “All right.”
Instead of the workspace a few steps away, Sara returned to Emilie’s seat with the bottles she’d chosen. Sara didn’t look at her, but Emilie was meant to watch. There was something rich brown with a gold label. Something lighter in a smaller bottle. Sara measured the first and then the second, stirred them with a long brass spoon in an ice-filled crystal beaker. Emilie caught another glimpse of her tattoos as she stirred, still too far away to read them. She wanted to ask Sara, but didn’t trust herself to stop at only one question. She felt her insatiability; she knew she needed to corral it. And she knew Sara must be asked that all the time, by dozens of people a night on the nights she left her arms bare, and Emilie didn’t want to be among dozens of people. So she forced herself to keep the question silent and relied on the hope that, later tonight, she would have the chance to see for herself.
Here came a tiny bottle of bitters—two dashes. Sara flicked open the top of a silver jar, took a pinch of what was in it. She stirred again. And then with a tiny knife perilously close to her thumb, she cut a perfect sliver of peel from an orange, dropped it in. She placed the drink in front of Emilie, met her gaze, and smiled. Emilie was aware of how close Sara’s fingers were to her; she could have grazed Emilie’s breast if she reached just an inch closer.
Then Sara was off to the far corner of the bar to tend to someone else, and Emilie felt alone without her. But here was the drink, a gift if she’d ever seen one, so she raised it to her lips and sipped. It was powerful. She was not disappointed. Somehow, each time she went back to it, she tasted something different. Black tea or cherry or clove. It was difficult not to consume it too quickly; she had at least a couple hours left here; she needed to pace herself. At the same time, she wondered if Sara would be drawn back to her if she emptied her glass. She watched her float from one patron to another, rarely scanning the bar, somehow intuiting who might need her. When Emilie’s drink was half-consumed, the couple next to her left and a new one arrived. They must have been around her age, still in suits after their days in offices. He wore a striped tie; she wore pantyhose. Emilie took a sip. Star anise this time. Sara breezed past her to leave menus for her new neighbors. The anticipation of her return was almost too much.
“Can I make you a couple drinks?” Sara asked the people next to her. Emilie felt the current between them, knew Sara felt it, too.
Emilie’s neighbors at the bar were chatty, asked Sara questions that Emilie was glad to overhear. She learned that Old Tom was Sara’s favorite kind of gin, that she was from a town up north, farther north than the Bay Area, but she didn’t name the town and Emilie was crushed by a need to know all of her. She kept her head down, took another sip. And then Sara’s hands appeared at the edge of her glass.
“I want to make you another one, but I don’t want to get you drunk.” She was leaning in so close, this exchange just between the two of them. Emilie bit her lip. Tonight, she thought. “Although…” Sara said, “I do have another hour here, at least. One more?”
So it had been decided. So Sara had understood.
“Sure,” Emilie said. “One more.”
* * *
Megan left an hour before closing, followed by the waitstaff, one by one, as their tables cleared. And then the last dessert orders were taken and plated, and the chefs tossed their aprons onto the laundry pile, and they ate the food they’d cooked for themselves and then they left, too, and it was only the dishwashers and waitress on the closing shift, and Sara and Emilie, and a table of friends in a corner who had paid their bill but didn’t want the night to end.
“I live just a few blocks from here,” Sara said, and Emilie nodded and walked out with her, not caring that she was leaving her car behind.
The streets were quiet and they didn’t speak. They listened to their footsteps on the sidewalk, a faraway car alarm, their breath. At the intersection of Sunset and Marmont, Sara, as though without a thought, took Emilie’s hand. Their fingers laced together. The light changed.
They crossed and walked farther, up some winding blocks, through an ivy-covered archway to a courtyard with a fountain in its center.
“This way,” Sara said, and Emilie followed her up a flight of stairs and into a spacious living room overlooking the courtyard. Sara flicked on the light.
It was spare and clean, with a simple wood table surrounded by chairs. Near the window was a sofa.
“Can I get you anything?” Sara asked, shrugging off her jacket. Emilie ran her fingers along the spines of the books. She touched the throw blanket that draped over the sofa’s arm, would have buried her face in it if she could. She was hungry to know all of her.
“Show me around?” she asked.
Sara poured herself a glass of water from her kitchen sink. She leaned against the wall of her hallway. “There’s not much to the place,” she said. “But yeah, I’ll show you.”
Emilie followed her to the kitchen, noticed its intricate tilework and original art deco light fixtures. She saw the inlaid wood pattern that ran through the hallway. Paused in the doorway of the darkened first room, made out a twin bed and a small desk.
“Someone lives here with you?”
“My brother,” Sara said. “But only sometimes. Less often these days.”
Emilie waited to hear more.
“He’s eighteen and in love.”
Emilie smiled.
They went down a short hallway, past the pink-tiled bathroom to the door at the end.
Sara opened it and Emilie flipped on the light. She wanted to see.
An almost-bare room. A half-made bed with crisp sheets and a white duvet on a low wooden platform. T-shirts and jeans folded on a chair in the corner. A California flag, old and tattered and push-pinned at the edges, was the only adornment. A stack of books sat by the bed and Emilie let go of Sara’s hand to learn about other parts of her. There were a handful of novels, an essay collection by James Baldwin, and poetry collections by Mary Oliver. And then she caught sight of Passing by Nella Larsen. She picked it up on impulse, opened it to a random page.
“I love this book,” she said.
“Me, too,” Sara said.
“I don’t know many people who’ve read it.”
Sara sat on the edge of her bed. “I started working in restaurants when I was sixteen,” she said. “Never went to college or anything, but I wanted to learn on my own. For a few years, I’d look up the reading lists of UCLA classes each semester and work my way through them. That’s how I found it.”
“What class was this from?”
“Women of the Harlem Renaissance.”
“That must have been a good list.”
Sara nodded. “So,” she said. “Is that a deal-breaker for you?”
“Is what a deal-breaker?”
“That I never went to college.”
“Of course not.”
“You seem like you’re from a family where everybody goes to school.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I didn’t finish high school either,” Sara said.
“Is this confession? Were you raised Catholic, too?”
“Definitely not. Just want to put it all out there. Avoid future disappointments.”
“I’m not so easily scared away,” Emilie said. She turned back to the book in her hands. It was an edition she hadn’t seen before, the title in bold red, pencil drawings beneath. She thought of how she’d stayed up all night writing her paper after the trip to the canyon. All the meaning she’d found in its pages when her life had felt empty. She wanted to know what it meant to Sara. “What’s it about, to you?”
Sara leaned back. “I guess, how they both come from the same place but end up with completely different lives. Just based on their choices. It’s fascinating. You?”
“I think it’s … like, when you’re a passing person, other people believe what they want to about you. Whatever is easier or better for them. They see what they want to, in you. So if you don’t really know what you want—or if you know what you want, but it’s bad for you—you can veer off in the wrong direction.” Emilie closed the book, set it back on its shelf. “But if you do know, then, I guess, you have a lot of freedom.”
When she turned, she caught Sara watching her, and before Sara could look away Emilie began unbuttoning her dress.
Agony, Sara’s slow swallow, her eyes locked to Emilie’s fingers, undoing button after button, all the way down. Emilie’s dress fell to the floor. She stepped out of her stockings, unfastened her bra. She had never felt such simple and pure desire for another person.
Sara, still in shirt and jeans, shook her head and grinned. Rose from the bed. Crossed toward her.
THE FOREST & THE BED
When Sara pushed open the doors of Yerba Buena that morning and found Emilie at the community table, arranging flowers, she hadn’t been searching for anything.
Two years had passed since she’d bought Spencer a bed and turned her alcove into a room for him. He’d stayed with her there for just over a month, until the cell phone rang early one morning, waking them. Their father, calling him home.
Sara took Spencer to one last breakfast and then to the train station, where a ticket to Healdsburg was at will call. She waited with him on the platform, watched him board, waved goodbye.
Then she’d sat back down on the station bench. She waited for the rumble and tremor of approaching trains. Dreaded the quiet between them. She wanted a physical pain to match the grief. Wanted to be marked, changed forever.
She dug the fingernails of one hand into the soft underside of her forearm. Pushed so hard she could have broken the skin. And then she rose from the bench, finally knowing what to do.
She’d propped the framed drawing on a bookshelf in the living room, hadn’t ever wanted it there but wasn’t going to let Spencer know. She slipped it into a canvas bag and found a nearby tattoo parlor online, called and was told she could come right in.
The door was locked when she reached the storefront. She knocked, peered through the glass. A woman waved from inside before unlocking the door.
“I’m Mindy. You’re Sara? Just give me a minute.” Her voice was raspy and low, her full body draped in a burgundy dress, laden in beads and fringe. “Have a seat,” Mindy said. “Here, look through this.”
Sara took the chair that was offered, accepted the binder of tattoo designs.
“Butterflies are what I’m most known for,” Mindy said as she lifted blinds and turned on overhead lights. Sara opened to the first page. So many butterflies, so much pattern and color.
“I can see why,” she said. And it felt good, to genuinely mean it, to offer a kindness to someone even while she was hollowed out.
Mindy was prepping her station now, and Sara closed the binder, wondering what it would be like to have a butterfly tattooed onto her body. To choose something beautiful.
“You know what you want already?”
Sara nodded. “I brought it with me.”
“Bring it over. Let’s take a look.”
So Sara took the frame from the bag and carried it to Mindy. “Not the whole picture. I just want—”
“Let me take a look first,” Mindy said. “At the whole thing. And then you can tell me what we’re doing.” She took the frame and turned on another light. Sara studied the image along with her, remembered how they’d drawn it together at the kitchen table by the window, sunlight filtering through the redwoods outside, steam rising from the coffeepot. Their father had started while the three of them watched. He drew one line at the bottom, and then another. “A street!” Spencer said. Next came the steps and pillars of the old bank on Main Street. They leaned in, eager to see what would come next. Their father moved his pencil, faint lines that turned—as if by magic—into places and things they recognized. At the far left side of the paper, a man appeared, twirling a tiny baton and marching.
“A parade!” Sara said, and her father winked at her, handed the pencil to her mother.
Her mother drew a marching band and a float. Sara drew their family on the steps of the bank, cheering. Spencer drew a happy sun in the top right corner, hesitated, and then added a happy cloud. When it was finished, they signed their names: Sara, Mom, Dad, Spencer.
“So which part are we doing?” Mindy asked.
“Just the signatures,” Sara said.
