God, you’re home.” I was so relieved that I actually leaned my head on the dirty phone box. “You’re not in Palm Beach.”
“Palm Beach? That was months ago.”
A chilly feeling passed through me. “Lane, something’s wrong.”
“I know, sweetie. Now hold on for a second, so I can sit down.” I heard Laney closing her refrigerator and, a moment later, her slight exhalation as she sat on the couch. “Okay. Shoot.”
How did she know something was wrong with me? “Well, uh, for starters, apparently Ben and I aren’t dating anymore.”
“Apparently? Honey, he dumped you months ago, and you’ve got to move on. Really. He’s just not worth this moping around.”
“Months ago?” My voice came out tiny and scared.
“On your fucking birthday, remember?”
A group of women came into the bathroom, giggling and shoving past me.
I ducked my head and cupped my hand around the receiver. “That’s just it. I can’t remember.”
“Where are you?”
“Chuck’s.”
“The bar by Ben’s place?” Her voice went a little high. “You didn’t go to his apartment again, did you? Kell, you’ve got to—”
“Laney, listen to me. I don’t remember.” I enunciated my words. “I don’t remember selling my town house. I don’t remember Ben breaking up with me. I can’t seem to remember anything about the last five months.”
A small silence. “Are you kidding?”
“Why would I kid about that?” My voice got loud and one of the women swung around, raising her perfectly arched eyebrows at me. I ducked my head again. “I need your help. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Whoa. Okay, look, I’ll jump in my car and be there in ten minutes. Wait for me outside.”
Laney’s light blue, beat-up Mustang convertible screeched to a stop in front of Chuck’s. Before I could take two steps, she’d jumped out and was running around the side of the car. Her dark brown hair was in its usual perfectly messed style with a swoop of bangs over one eye. She wore a black miniskirt, black knee-high boots and a fuzzy orange cashmere sweater.
She gave me a quick hug, then pulled back and held me at arm’s length. “You okay?”
“Not really,” I said, but then I couldn’t help smiling. Laney did that to me. Just being around her made me feel better.
“What are you grinning at, girl? You’ve totally freaked me out. Get in the car.” She gave me a pat on the ass and opened the passenger door.
“So what’s going on here?” she said when she’d taken the driver’s seat.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“First things first.” She lifted a cardboard coffee carrier, two white cups from Starbucks tucked inside, steam seeping from the openings in the top. “You sounded like you hadn’t gotten your fix yet.”
“Oh!” I said. “White chocolate mocha?”
She nodded.
“Nonfat?”
“Of course.”
“I love you.” I took a sip, the warm, creamy concoction sweet on my tongue.
I know that lots of people hate Starbucks. They complain that these little green-and-white stores are the devil’s work, the corporatization of the coffee world, but I just don’t care. I’ve tried the others, the mom-and-pop coffee shops, the trendy little tea places, and nobody—and I mean nobody—makes anything close to my white chocolate mocha. It’s comfort in a cup.
Laney squeezed my hand, then put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. “All right, tell me what happened today.”
I went through the whole thing—the dry cleaners, my town house, Beth Maninsky, and finally my talk with Ben. As I spoke I stared at the hula girl that was stuck to Laney’s dashboard, the one that made swivels of her hips each time the car bumped or turned. For some reason, the movement of the girl’s tiny hips soothed me. Laney had owned the hula girl since high school, and it had been on the dash of every car she’d had since. It was a permanent fixture, something I could recognize.
“Kell, I don’t get this,” Laney said. “Your memory was fine last week.”
“Was it?”
“Yeah.”
Silence filled the car.
“Jesus,” Laney said. “Are you telling me that you really can’t remember anything about the last five months?”
“Nada.”
She stared intently at the road. “What do you remember about your birthday?”
May 3. May 3. May 3. I chanted the date in my head as if it might conjure up some images, but I could only remember my thoughts about my birthday in the weeks leading up to it. I’d been expecting Ben to propose on that date. I’d told him in February, a few weeks after Dee died, that I wanted to get married, that I wanted to be engaged by my birthday, and Ben had indicated he wanted the same thing. So as that day drew near, I made sure to have my nails done to perfection. I’d shaved and plucked nearly every stray hair on my body. I’d even bought a new black dress to wear to dinner. But the actual day of my birthday? I couldn’t recall a thing, and I told Laney as much.
“Oh, boy.” She sighed.
“What? What happened?”
She gave me a sidelong glance. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there just yet. You should sleep, you know, then see how you feel.”
“Other than scared shitless, I feel fine. Tell me.”
“I don’t know…”
“Laney!”
“Are you sure?” she said. “Do you really want to hear it?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, well, I told you Ben dumped you that night.”
I felt my mouth form a tight line. “Yes, so you said.”
“He’s a complete shit. Absolutely no sense of timing. But that’s not the only thing that happened.”
“What,” I said, “is the other thing that happened?”
Laney stopped at a light and gave me a look. “I hate to be the one to tell you this.”
My stomach twisted. “Just get it out.”
“Bartley
