Chapter 35

The Healthy Life Café smelled of lentil soup and carrot juice and roasted garlic. Men in short-sleeved dress shirts were hunched over the small wooden tables, gobbling down soy burgers while they read the sports pages. An emaciated woman with bulging eyes and bright red lips sipped at a green milkshake—she reminded Jimmy of a dragonfly. Handmade banners on the walls proclaimed FREE TIBET! and MEAT IS MURDER and DEATH BEGINS IN THE COLON! He wondered why vegetarians always used so many exclamation points.

“Table for one?” asked the hostess, a clear-skinned young thing in a paisley sarong.

“I’m looking for some women from the McMahon Building. I was told they ate here.”

The hostess waved a hand toward the back patio. “Smoker’s gulch.”

Jimmy heard laughter as he opened the door to the patio. He made his way through the haze to a table at the rear of the deck, where three women were puffing away over their salads, large women in loud dresses, their eyeglasses big as scuba masks. They quieted slightly as he approached. “Do you ladies work in the McMahon Building?”

“Who wants to know?” said a matron with a Kool Light bobbing at the corner of her mouth.

“I bet he’s the guy Barbara talked about,” said a younger, henna redhead, dropping ashes onto her enormous salad. “Barb said he walked sexy.”

“You the one’s been asking all over about Stephanie?” said a busty blonde with black roots, her eyes undressing Jimmy. “Why don’t you walk for us, let us decide?”

“I like to hold back, maintain a little mystery.” Jimmy pulled a chair up to the table, smiling. “I’m Jimmy Gage. I’m looking for Stephanie Keys.”

“Not Keys anymore,” said the bottle blonde, dipping pita bread in the dip. “ ‘First comes love—’ ”

“ ‘Then comes marriage,’” said Kool Light.

“ ‘Then comes Steffy with a baby carriage,’” singsonged the bottle blonde, grabbing Jimmy’s leg.

Jimmy howled along with the three of them.

“What do you want with Stephanie?” said Kool Light. “She’s a good kid.”

“Not like me,” said the bottle blonde, blowing smoke in Jimmy’s face. “My old man works nights, and I’m sick of making love to my pocket rocket.”

“Angie, you’re awful,” said Kool Light. “Is Stephanie in some kind of trouble? She run up her credit cards?”

“I just want to talk to her about her old boss, April McCoy.”

“That was so sad,” said the henna redhead.

“No, it wasn’t,” sneered the bottle blonde. “April treated her like crap.”

“April was depressed, that’s why she killed herself,” said the henna redhead. “My brother is the same way. He’s on Prozac now.”

“Everybody is on Prozac now,” said the bottle blonde. “That don’t mean you can treat people like crap.”

“Suicide is a sin.” Kool Light stubbed out her cigarette in the hummus.

“Stephanie took it hard when April killed herself,” said the henna redhead. “She changed overnight. In some ways I guess it was good, because Stephanie had been in a real rut, overeating and letting herself go. April’s suicide was a wake-up call for her soul.”

“Like on Oprah,” said the bottle blonde.

“Like holy communion,” said Kool Light.

Jimmy rocked in his chair, listening to the conversational rhythm they had going. The three of them had probably been having lunch together for the last ten years, working on their moves, graceful and fluid as double Dutch street champs. Jimmy could watch them eat and smoke and talk all afternoon. He wondered if Stephanie had been part of the group. He hoped so. She would be honest then too, and straightforward. She would tell him whatever she knew.

“You got a nice smile, mister.” The henna redhead bit a carrot in half. “Don’t he have a nice smile, girls?” She chewed noisily. “Anyway, after April did her thing, Stephanie went to work for this homecare-products distributor on the second floor and lost just a ton of weight. What was Stephanie on? Jenny Craig? Herbalife?”

“Weight Watchers.”

“Slim-Fast.”

“Whatever,” said the henna redhead, “she lost a lot of weight. It seemed like every time she came back to visit, she had dropped another ten pounds.”

“She’s not working on the second floor anymore,” said Jimmy. “Her last employer said she moved in with her boyfriend and that was the last he saw of her.”

“The boyfriend didn’t last six months. I told her he was all wrong for her,” said the bottle blonde, “but she didn’t want to listen to me. I’ve only been married three times—what could I possibly know about the male of the species?” She flipped her cigarette over the hedge surrounding the patio. “The boyfriend was some kind of sweaty sex machine or something from the way she talked.”

“That gets old,” said the henna redhead.

The three of them burst out laughing. Jimmy pretended to be embarrassed.

“Stephanie dumped the sex machine and found a hard worker willing to marry her,” said Kool Light. “She said he was a hard worker, anyway.”

“I couldn’t find a marriage license issued in her name,” said Jimmy. “I checked.”

“Aren’t you the eager beaver?” Kool Light narrowed her eyes. “Stephanie got married in Mexico. She showed me pictures of the ceremony. It was beautiful. The water there is bluer than ours. At least in the pictures.”

“I got married in Vegas,” said the bottle blonde. “Dipshit lost five hundred dollars shooting craps, and we had to come home the next day.”

“Do you know where Stephanie is living now?” said Jimmy.

The henna redhead shook her head. “Someplace out in the desert, I think. She sent me a Christmas card a couple years ago. Her little girl was dressed as an elf. Even fixed her ears so they looked pointed.”

“Did you write down the address?” said Jimmy.

“No, sorry.” The henna redhead brightened. “I might have kept the card, though. I got a big box full of pictures and photographs that I’m saving for this big decoupage project. I want to do all my kitchen cabinets in pictures of little kids. My husband’s sterile—at least he says he is—but I like kids.”

“Decoupage is so over,” said the bottle blonde.

“Could you check your box of pictures and see if you kept the Christmas card?” Jimmy asked the henna redhead.

The bottle blonde picked up the check and fished a calculator out of her purse. “Okay, I had the potato blintzes, the hibiscus iced tea”—her manicure flew across the keys—“and the eggplant appetizer, which we split three ways.”

“I hardly touched the appetizer,” said Kool Light. “Eggplant gives me gas.”

“What’s Stephanie’s married name?” asked Jimmy.

“I had the hummus, the wheatgrass surprise—” The henna redhead glanced at Jimmy. “Something Spanish, I think. Or Jewish. One or the other.”

“Jews don’t move to the desert,” said the bottle blonde.

“Moses led the children of Israel into the desert for forty years,” said Kool Light, watching the bottle blonde add the bill. “My hearts of palm was three ninety-nine, not four ninety-nine.”

“My second husband was a Jew,” the bottle blonde said, “so don’t go telling me about the children of Israel.”

“Your Christmas cards?” Jimmy reminded the henna redhead. “Will you see if you have Stephanie’s address?”

“You’re sure you’re not from a collection agency?” asked the henna redhead.

“Yeah, like he’d tell you the truth if he was,” said the bottle blonde. “You need to stop trusting everything in pants. Okay, your share, with tax and tip, make it eight twenty-five.”

“I’m a reporter,” said Jimmy. “I’m writing a story on April McCoy. I just want to talk to Stephanie—”

“Let me see the bill,” the henna redhead said to the bottle blonde.

“What, you think I’m cheating you?” asked the bottle blonde.

“I had a small wheatgrass surprise,” said the henna redhead.

Jimmy plucked the check from the bottle blonde and pulled out his wallet.

“Look girls, we got a real strongman here,” said the henna redhead. “He picked that check up like it was nothing.”

The women laughed so hard that people at the other tables turned to see what had happened.