Latte Trouble

Special thanks to Martha Bushko, an editor of buoyant brilliance, and John Talbot, a literary agent of the highest caliber, for their valued support.

“H
ow
do you like your poison?” whispered the voice in the dark. “Light or black?”

Hearing the voice, the body in bed twisted back and forth, choking pillows, strangling bedcovers, sleeping, dreaming, considering…Light or black?…

“Tomorrow you’ll make it happen,” continued the voice. “So many egos will be there, watching themselves walk, hearing themselves talk, none will notice that bit of venom in the cup…”

A splash of cream…a dash of sugar…

“Then it will be over. And, after the deed is done, only one person in the room will now the reason.”

Me. Only me. Only I will know.

“It won’t even be murder. It will simply be—”

Justice…

“
M
EN
are pigs. They should die!”

Tucker Burton’s words were audible over the steam wand’s hiss, the buzz of conversation, even the throbbing electronic dance music pulsing out of the Village Blend’s speakers. To punctuate his declaration, my best barista butted the bottom of the stainless steel pitcher against the steam wand’s spout. The result was a tooth-grinding clang of metal on metal. Then Tucker, who should have known better, pulled the pitcher away too quickly. A geyser of milk froth flowed over the brim, scalding his hand. He cursed, dumped the excess into the sink, and doused his reddening fingers in a rush of cold tap water.

It wasn’t that I disagreed with Tucker about men. When they acted like pigs, I wanted blood too—so to speak. But Tucker’s lethal tone, like the pounding Euro synth-pop, which was temporarily replacing our typical mix of new age, jazz, and classical, was disquietingly out of place. Not five minutes before, my buoyant barista was pulling espressos and chatting amicably to anyone within earshot. Obviously someone or something had thrown the nasty switch on the lanky, floppy-haired actor-playwright, who was now slamming around behind the coffeehouse counter like a jealous yenta.

And, believe me, it takes one to know one.

Twenty years ago, I’d been a naïve bride destined to discover that my handsome husband’s extramarital romps were as commonplace as his rock climbing, mountain biking, and cliff diving expeditions during his buying trips to third-world coffee plantations. Matteo’s defense—that his sex-capades were no more meaningful than any other extreme sport—was supposed to have assured me of his emotional fidelity. I’d responded by pouring a latte over his head. At least, I think it had been a latte. It may have been a cappuccino. In any event, I vividly remember white foam dripping down his bewildered features, so froth most definitely had been involved.

Behind the low-slung silver espresso machine (out of which a properly trained barista can pull 240 aromatic shots of ebony an hour) Tucker’s platonic gal pal Moira McNeely paused to reassure him with a friendly touch to his shoulder. A young Bostonian now studying at the Parsons School of Design, she’d taken an interest in the art of coffee preparation (and, I suspected, my thespian-cum-barista) and had volunteered her services for this Fall Fashion Week “after dinner coffee and dessert soiree”, now well underway. And I was thankful because, at the moment, the Blend was severely understaffed.

So what, might you ask, is Fall Fashion Week? Well, for concrete-loving, highly caffeinated New Yorkers, who seldom take their cues from nature, the magical appearance of the white canvas runway tents amid the tall London plane trees of midtown’s Bryant Park is the quintessential sign of autumn’s arrival.

Every September, the peaceful, green, eight-acre rectangle behind the imposing granite edifice of the New York Public Library is transformed into a fashion mecca. Inside the hastily erected tents, the “Seventh on Sixth” organization (whose name defines the temporary moving of the fashion industry’s usual Seventh Avenue address to Bryant Park’s Sixth) stages an international fair where top designers drape their spring lines on reed-thin models for all the trade, and, via the intense media coverage, the world to see.

During this week, countless parties are held in top restaurants and locations as diverse as the Museum of Modern Art and Grand Central Station. The Village Blend had never before hosted a Fashion Week party—and now that it had started, the space was admittedly tight. At the moment, even with most of the coffeehouse’s marble-topped tables crammed next to our roaster and storage areas in the basement, there were so many hyper-dressed bodies jostling for elbow room, not one inch of the polished, wood plank floor was visible. However, designer Lottie Harmon had insisted her party be held in this century-old, Greenwich Village coffeehouse. For one thing, she said,
she
was practically an historical landmark herself.

Two and a half decades ago, Lottie’s name had been almost as recognizable as Halston’s. Then, suddenly, Lottie had dropped out of the business—only to return last year to take the fashionistas by storm with an accessory line as successful as any she’d ever created, which is the second reason she’d wanted her Fashion Week party held at the Blend. Her new collection of “Java Jewelry” had been inspired by the many coffee drinks she’d consumed here.

As I moved to get behind the coffee bar and check on Tucker, I spied Lottie herself. The designer was chatting with Christina Ha, fashion critic from the Metro New York Full Frontal Fashion television network. Lottie wore her auburn hair long and dyed a bold scarlet. She’d been thin to begin with, but tonight she appeared to have dropped even more weight. She’d also shed the simple flowered skirts she’d favored since Madame (the eighty-year-old owner of this landmark coffeehouse) had introduced me to her over eighteen months ago, when Lottie had first moved back to Greenwich Village from her former residence in London. Now, clad in a chocolate Fen suit accented with striking pieces from her line—a caramel latte swirl brooch and sheer espresso scarf sprinkled with “coffee-bean” beads—she appeared at least ten years younger than her fifty-something years.

Luminaries of the fashion world surrounded her—designers, critics, models, magazine editors, along with a sprinkling of pop singers, HBO stars, and supporting actor film types. Her two young business partners were here as well. Tad Benedict and Rena Garcia had risked everything, along with Lottie, to see this spring collection succeed. Her fall line (launched last February) was already selling out in Saks and Herrods, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorfs, and Fen’s international boutiques. Now it was imperative that Lottie prove herself with her spring line to be more than a one-season wonder, a fashion fluke.

So, of course, the last thing I needed right now was for Tucker to lose it in the middle of this production. For the past two hours, I myself had been the one making the coffee drinks, but I needed a break and had assumed Tucker could handle it for at least the next thirty minutes. If he couldn’t, I’d have to get back in the saddle—pronto.

I moved behind the counter to speak with him, but Moira was already hovering protectively and blocking my path. “Is he all right?” I asked.

Moira frowned, brushed aside a lock of auburn hair with the back of her long, narrow hand. “I don’t know, Clare. I’ll take care of him and find out what’s wrong.”

I waited for Moira to step aside, but the girl gestured toward the crowd. “Seems like Esther needs help at the door.”

She wasn’t kidding. The Village Blend’s front entrance looked like the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel on a Jets game day, so I hurried over. On my way, I tried not to worry about Tucker’s uncharacteristic freak out and prayed it was not some kind of omen for the deterioration of what had been, up to this point, a fairly smooth running affair.

Shoot me, but I believe in omens. My Italian grandmother who primarily raised me while my father ran a bookie operation in the back of her Pennsylvania grocery had given me the “411”—as my twenty-year-old daughter Joy would put it—on the
malocchio
, the evil eye, the curse. And although I liked to think I’d shoved this vaguely primitive philosophy behind me, I still could not dislodge an increasingly uneasy feeling that something bitter was brewing.

I arrived at the door to find the line of new arrivals fronted by a young man with short, blond-streaked brown hair. He wore a charcoal gray suit over an electric blue Egyptian cotton shirt with a lime green handkerchief blooming out of the suit’s breast pocket. On his arm were two women.

The first was a typical, barely twenty-year-old model with streaked blond hair uptwisted and a tangerine leather outfit. The other, however, was memorably striking, even in this air-brushed crowd. She was well over six feet in her spike-heeled boots, had beautiful Asian features—straight black hair, worn all the way down to her hips, and almond-shaped eyes of an unusual deep blue-violet, which she’d emphasized with violet eye shadow and a matching violet minidress that glittered with metallic threads.

The trio was obviously impatient to make their entrance, but they had been stopped for a guest list check by the Blend’s resident iconoclast, New York University comparative literature student Esther Best (shortened from Bestovasky by her grandfather), who chose to make a consciously
un
fashionable statement with faded khakis, an oversized green sweatshirt, her long dark hair done up in four tight anti-fashion braids, and “so five minutes ago” glasses with thick black frames.

I understood where Esther was coming from. Trendy, flamboyant dressing wasn’t my style, either—mainly because I could never pull it off. On the other hand, at forty, I thought protesting “the frivolous pointlessness of high fashion” (as Esther put it) by deliberately dressing down was pretty much a pointless gesture in itself. So, I’d at least attempted to dress appropriately for the evening in the boring, prototypical New York outfit—black dress, black stockings, black boots—with my chestnut brown hair pulled into a high ponytail for barista work with that oh-so-elite fashion accessory, a discount store velvet scrunchie.

As I approached the crowded doorway, I heard Lime Green Kerchief man coo to Violet Eyes. “You should have seen it. The model’s wardrobe was deconstructing on the runway. It was Milan, of course, but my god. How post-modern can you get? Use a stitch or two for chrissakes.”

Violet Eyes smiled and nodded.

“And what about the Timmy Thom show?” offered Tangerine Leather Girl. “It was so…you know…” She bit her lower lip and searched the ceiling for the right word. Possibly any word. “You know,
done
before.”

“Yes, it was
derivative
, darling,” replied Lime Green Kerchief man. “Everybody’s talking about how Timmy’s just out of ideas. A barely disguised re-tread of the ’02 line. And did you see the mandals he put on that hairy-legged boy toy?”

I pulled Esther aside. “Where’s Matteo?” I asked.

Esther pointed across the room, but there were too many men wearing black Armani to make out which was my ex-husband.
He
was supposed to be checking invitations against the guest list at the door—not Esther. She’d volunteered to wipe spills, and gather the empty glass latte mugs and lipstick-smeared napkins.

“Boss,” she whined, “these people are ridiculous.”

“Only one more hour, Esther,” I whispered. “And, remember, Lottie’s paying you very well.”

“Not well enough to be repeatedly told I’m a fashion victim and should immediately call 911. I’ll call 911, all right—after I strangle one of these half-wits!”

I sighed. As diverse a town as New York City was, cliques and enclaves tended to reinforce the idea that everyone around you thought the way you did—and should dress, speak, and think like you, too, for that matter. The fashion industry was really no more unique in that regard than a cadre of New York University undergrads—and I should know, having listened to every butcher, baker, and candlestick maker prattle on from behind my espresso machine.

Theater people, stock brokers, publishing professionals—everyone had their forged attitudes, jargon, and fakery, their what’s hot and what’s not lists, their correct opinions, perceived winners, losers, and arbitrary size-’em-up yardsticks. Institutions meant institutional thinking, after all, but the dirty little secret after you’ve lived in New York long enough was that the “arts” were no more immune to this than the advertising industry, and, in fact, even “rebellion” was an organized racket—with its own line of coffee mugs and T-shirts.

I pulled away from Esther to check Lime Green Kerchief man’s gold embossed invitation. “Lloyd Newhaven, Stylist, and Party,” I read, then checked the name against the guest list, greeted him with a smile, and gestured for them to join the flowing mass of hyper-dressed beautiful people.

“By the way, what are mandals?” I innocently asked Lloyd the Stylist before he and his party walked away.

“Male sandals, sweetie,” he answered with a brisk snap of his fingers. “And in my opinion the only man who ever looked good in sandals was Jesus Christ.”

“Really?” I said. “What about Russell Crowe? In
Gladiator
?”

Violet Eyes actually laughed. “Oh, yes,” she agreed, her words tinged with a slight exotic accent. “I did like that movie.”

I turned back to Esther and asked her to handle the door a little longer. Then I went looking for my wayward ex-husband—something I’d done far too many times in my life to count.

As I crossed the room, I nervously dodged willowy young women dressed in Fen’s new fall line—brown suede skirts, matching silk and suede blouses and mid-calf boots. All night, they’d been precariously balancing trays of lattes, biscotti, and a dozen specialty pastries while simultaneously modeling preview pieces of Lottie’s spring line—from faux roasted coffee-bean Y necklaces and frothy cappuccino scarves to caramel loop bracelets and raw sugar earrings and brooches.

Unfortunately, Lottie had hired the models for their beauty and not their ability to handle full trays of hot liquids. Thank goodness Tucker had volunteered to give them all a crash course on serving customers—including a bonus lesson on the bunny dip, made famous by a once upscale but now defunct men’s club.

Dressing them in Fen was calculated, too, of course. An internationally known clothing designer, Fen had worked with Lottie during her heyday over twenty years before, and he was now the key to her current success. He’d not only given Lottie a substantial financial investment to mass-produce her line, he’d also provided a spectacular launch pad by agreeing to pair her jewelry with his fall collection on runways around the world. Her new spring line would be showcased on Fen’s models once again—at the end of this week.

I had hoped to see what the legendary Fen thought of one of the Village Blend’s lattes, but he hadn’t attended. “Too busy finalizing the upcoming show,” Lottie had informed me.