Just Add Water (1) (2 page)

1

FIVE YEARS LATER

From our window table at a trendy waterfront eatery in the
People’s Republic of Berkeley, Jan and I commanded a postcard vista of where
Tony Bennett left his heart. Piped music spared us Mr. Bennett’s signature
song, but not
Dock of the Bay
.
 
San Francisco Bay sparkled despite washy
late summer sunshine. A fog bank glowered on the horizon, held in abeyance by
the famous red steel guardian at her gate.

Settling into velvety, overstuffed armchairs under a
canopy of Boston ferns, and surrounded by enough stained glass to compete with
a European cathedral, we projected a studied
image
. Our makeup was meticulously applied to look as though we
weren’t wearing any. Chic, sleek, blunt-cut coifs, hers long and naturally ash
blonde, mine a short “naturally enhanced” red, were designed to look oh, so
casual. After all, we were on a mission.

Jan’s Brooks Brothers jacket draped gracefully on her tall
frame while my Armani tested its button’s tensile strength across my
unfashionable boobs. We both wore
de
rigueur
Gap khakis. Chunky gold bracelets, rings, Rolexes, and loop
earrings—no
démodé
dangles or
diamonds—along with Fendi bags and Ralph Lauren turtlenecks completed our
ensembles. I sported my favorite red Converse hightops for a touch of whimsy.

Jan’s tall, slim, blondness contrasted with my short,
chunky, perkiness, saving us from Tweedledee and Tweedledum-dom. Cute enough to
draw looks, but not so done up as to telegraph “gals on prowl.” Even though we
were. If, that is, one could call two aging broads out trolling for triceps
cute
. And since I seem to operate on an
ecologically correct catch-and-release system, one might wonder why I even
bother baiting up.

As we sipped cheap complimentary champagne between forays
to an overpriced buffet, a boat peeled off from the winged flotilla plying the
bay, sailed toward the guest dock, executed a smart turn, dropped its sails,
and coasted gently alongside the restaurant’s courtesy dock. Two
windbreaker-clad men bounded from her decks, tied the boat, and strode up the
ramp towards us.

“Well lookee here,” I drawled, “fleet’s in.” I hummed a
couple of bars of “It’s Raining Men.”

“Hetta Coffey, you are not,” Jan whispered as the mariners
neared, “going to use your
 
‘Hi there,
sailor, new in town? Wanna buy me a drink?’ line, are you?”

“Why not? It worked fine in that Greek dive on the Houston
ship channel.”

“Don’t remind me. It’s a freakin' miracle we haven’t spent
the last ten years rolling grape leaves into dolmas in some leaky cargo ship’s
galley.”

“
Au contraire
,
y’all. You would be. I, at least, had the good sense to pick up the captain
instead of the cook. You are, at times, far too plebeian. Hush, here they
come.”

Seemingly studying my newspaper and ignoring the
newcomers, my legendary crawdad vision raked the men as they chose a table next
to us and ordered coffee. They turned down the free champagne.

It was too much to bear. Looking over my rumpled
San Francisco Examiner,
I said, “Hi
there, sailors. New in town? Wanna give
us
that champagne?”

“Sure,” the tall one said, dazzling me with a show of
perfect teeth set in a fashionably tanned face. Ruffled, grayish blonde,
razor-cut hair and Ralph Lauren shirt bespoke “man with a job.”
Hmmmm
.

His shorter, nerdier looking companion called the waitress
back and waved his hand in our direction. “Please give our champagne to the
ladies.”

Tres charmant
.
Double
hmmmm
. “Y’all are too kind,” I cooed, letting my on again, off
again Texas drawl transform the word
too
into two syllables. Jan gave me a sour look and buried her head in the Business
Section. Or Bidness Section, as we say back home.

The men went to the sumptuous spread and returned with
heaping plates of salmon pâté, quiche Lorraine, croissants and tiny red
potatoes stuffed with caviar and sour cream. Jan stared at their plates.
“Shit,” she mouthed, “gay.”

I always say if one can’t have love, then settle for
knowledge. While my new friends, Joe and John, munched on brunch, they
graciously answered my barrage of questions about boats and sailing. Finally
feeling I had garnered all the men had to offer, I left them to their quiche
and turned my attention on two women who had taken a table on the other side of
us. I like to think of myself as a keen observer of humankind.

“Will you
puhleeze
quit ogling and pestering people?” Jan hissed, mistaking my sentience for
snoopiness.

I forgave her her misconceptions and continued to
snoo…observe.

Sheathed in spandex that left no doubt as to their
cellulite free status, the aerobically buffed women passed on the buffet and
champagne, opting for dry English muffins and decaffeinated coffee. The chef
was obviously out of tofu. Why bother going to brunch? But I knew the answer.
Brunch lures singles like chum entices piranhas, Berkeley is prime fishing
ground and these two had all the proper tackle. That superior specimens such as
these were reduced to using my own angling tactics was a lit-tle disheartening.

Joe and John finished brunch, said good-bye, left
arm-in-arm and raised their sails.

Buffed Buns next to me sighed as she watched them flutter
away. “I’m seriously thinking of moving back to Arizona,” she told Titanium Thighs.
“I mean, I love the Bay Area and my job, but my bio-timer? At least there are
real men in Tucson.”

Her friend nodded, took a dainty nibble of naked muffin
while managing to flex a bicep. “There are men here, too, but they’re all gay
or married.”

“Or both,” I interjected. The women eyed Jan and me with
distrust and lowered their voices, obviously wishing to continue their
conversation in private. I grabbed the paper and sulked. People are so touchy
these days.

The spandex twins departed, prompting our waitress to look
hopefully in our direction, sigh, and uncork another bottle. As she filled my
glass, I was on the very verge of asking for the check when, in a tidal wave of
white water, a large powerboat entered the channel and bore down upon us.

“I hope that sucker has brakes,” I said, striving for
nonchalance while mentally judging the distance to the nearest emergency exit.

Jan looked up and eeked in alarm, but sat her ground.

The waitress grumbled, “Idiots at the helm,” and hustled
off to safety behind the bar.

Although tempted to follow her, we were held in thrall,
gaping as the boat suddenly turned and was washed against the dock by her own
wake, a tsunami that sent several tons of water crashing against the building’s
pilings. The restaurant swayed slightly, or maybe it was the affects of free
champers catching up with me.

“Cradle robbers,” Jan pronounced as we watched three
men—one stout, one tall and lanky, one medium—and three very attractive women a
couple of decades their juniors reel towards us on the wave-pitched landing.
They took the table recently abandoned by the treadmill twins.

The tallest man, a Nordic type with that big boned, square
shouldered look I love, had his arm slung casually around a stunning brunette
who couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five. The other two men, my piercing
peripheral vision confirmed, were also fortyish. They, too, sported twenty
types. And all six wore red windbreakers embroidered with the name of the boat:
Sea Cock.

“Oh, my ears and whiskers, Miz Alice,” I whispered,
twitching my nose as I pictured White Rabbit would, “do you suppose there’s
truth in advertising? And there, my dear girl, is why you and I are eating
brunch with each other. The men we should be with want twenty-year-olds. Maybe
we should start looking for a couple of seventy-year-olds.”

“Hush, they’ll hear you,” Jan whispered. Then she added,
“Besides, the septuagenarians want duagenarians, too.”

“I don’t think there’s such a word as duagen—hey, the
chubby, windburned guy in the middle is staring at you. Don’t look.”

She never listens. Her cherry cheeked admirer gave Jan a
wide smile and bid us good morning. We nodded and lifted our glasses. I
bestowed the sextet with a recently bleached smile of my own, hoping I didn’t
have spinach quiche or caviar stuck to my dazzling dentistry. Evidently not,
for after a few pleasantries were exchanged, we were invited to join their
table. A couple of the women didn’t seem all that pleased, but Jan swears I
could talk myself past a White House marine.

The waitress returned to take their orders, noted our
change of locale, sighed, and with her flair for the obvious, asked if, by some
wild
chance Jan and I would care for
another glass of champagne.

Lars Jenkins, Jan’s hefty admirer, made introductions. I quickly
dismissed the women and concentrated on Lars’s brother, Tall Nordic Bob, and
Garrison, the owner of
Sea Cock
.

Bob, after complaining about the prices, rudely ignored my
witty badinage, preferring to converse quietly with his nestling. Too quietly,
even though my acute auditory antennae were aimed in their direction. He had
pulled off his
Sea Cock
jacket to
reveal a truly ugly, polyester print shirt. For shame: poly-ugly on a guy who
could wear almost anything and look good. I could forgive the shirt, but not
his blatant disregard for my precious self. But so what? Who needed the badly
clad Viking cheapskate? And who dressed this guy? The Salvation Army?

 
I turned my
attention to the more receptive and nattily attired Garrison, who at least had
a boat and supported the cotton industry.

An hour later, when our newfound friends made a splashy
departure, I proffered my American Express Platinum to our long-suffering
waitress. She grabbed it, rushing away to tabulate before we changed our minds.

“My stars, Miz Jan, that was purely depressing. Three
men—chronologically, geographically, and heterosexually suitable for us
thirty-somethings—glommed up by Campfire Girls.”

“I never saw any Campfire Girls who looked like that.
Let’s face it, we ain’t spring chickens any more,” Jan said, “and you are
swiftly taking leave of thirty
anything
.”
This from a thirty-five-year-old. The young can be so cruel.

The waitress returned with my charge slip, I signed my
name and then, as she hovered, I started to write in the tip, stopped, and
squinted at her nametag. “Nicole,” I asked, “how old do you think I am?”

Nicole looked at the ballpoint pen poised above the tip
line, then at me. “For . . . uh, . thirty, uh, one?”

I shot Jan a self-satisfied grin and wrote a gratuity
generous enough to win a smile and a topped off champagne glass.

“Shameless bribery,” Jan huffed.

I sat back, watched
Sea
Cock
power out of sight, and took the sip of champagne that tipped me into
stage two inebriation: Socratic.

“Dog years,” I slurred.

Jan sighed. After over fifteen years of friendship, she
knew whatever fell out of my mouth next could range from abjectly stupid to
moderately brilliant. I could tell from the look on her face she was not going
to encourage either. But, of course, that didn’t stop me.

“Men 'n' dawgs. Dogs ain’t worth a diddlydamn until
they’re five, and men 'til they’re fifty. Canine maturity must have something
to do with getting their pockets picked at an early age. And they skip the
infernal midlife crisis stuff. Must be why dogs don’t buy corvettes and
yachts.”

Jan giggled at my convoluted conjecture, we clinked
glasses, and another profundity effervesced as I squinted in the direction of
the departed
Sea Cock
. “Buy it and
they will come,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Remember that movie? Where Kevin “the hunk” Costner
builds a baseball diamond in a cornfield? Buy it and they will come,” I
repeated. “If we had a boat, Miz Jan, we could get men.”

2

Our morning, before my champagne inspired and somewhat
specious pronouncement about using a boat as a mantrap, started out crappy.

“Men 'n' dawgs,” I told Jan as we sat in my living room
earlier that day.

My friend dabbed a tear and snuffled, “They sure are,
Hetta.”

“Jan, I didn’t say men
are
dogs. I said men
and
dogs. In my
opinion, men aren’t worth a damn until they’re fifty. And dogs until they’re
five.”

Jan bobbed her head and said with a pout, “Nice dogs are
easy to find. Not like men.”

“So true,” I agreed. “Of course, some say that men and
buses come along every fifteen minutes, but I say most aren’t headed in the
right direction. That Richard of yours? He sure ain’t no first class ride, so
to speak, but never fear, because,” I cranked up the CD player and sang along
with Martha Wash as she belted out, “It’s raining men, hallelujah!”

For effect, I added a few Holy Roller moves to my routine
and finished by tossing a chenille throw over my shoulders à la James Brown. It
was a spectacularly uplifting performance, should you ask me.

Jan, however, gave me a dolefully and decidedly
un
lifted and sodden gaze while blowing
her nose into her equally sodden Hermes kerchief. Critics abound. “Buh . . .
but, what should I
do
?”

“Dump him. BD… ” I caught myself before using my nickname
for her boyfriend: BDR. Big Dick Richard. I didn’t think this the suitable
moment to remind Jan of, in my opinion, Richard’s sole asset. “The man is a
roué
. A common
boulevardier
. A gigolo, if you will.”

An unwelcome image of Richard Farnsworth III—he pronounced
it
Ree
shárd, the phony—popped into my
mind. Tall, honey hued, honey tongued, and handsome. Charming in a smarmy sort
of way. I slapped my mind from his crotch and concentrated on his
bad
points.

“Richard Fartsworth has no job, unless you count those
brief stints modeling briefs, and no prospects. He’s been mooching off you for
over a year, all the while screwing some fat twenty-year-old across town. And
goodness knows who else. Dump him,” I repeated, using my best “off with his
head” pose and sloshing a drop or two of vodka and V8 Picante onto my
peach-toned carpet.

This
she found amusing. Jan smiled crookedly at my
antics and wiped salty rivulets from her laugh lines. Then, unfolding to a full
five eleven, she focused her baby blues down on me and announced, “You know,
you’re right. I should and will dump the sorry SOB.” Then her face fell as she
plopped back down on the couch. “But then I’ll be all alone. Like you.”

I flumped down beside her. “I’m not alone. I have RJ.”

“Humph,” she grunted.

“Humph, yourself. RJ has many desirable attributes.
Beautiful red hair, big brown eyes with lashes to die for, keen intelligence.
And he’s totally devoted to me. I can quite overlook his house rattling snores
and noxious farts.”

“RJ is a dawg,” Jan declared unkindly.

“Yeah, well, so is BDR. At least RJ has a pedigree. Reechard’s
a cur.”

“I suspect RJ’s papers are forged,” Jan challenged. “How
come a yellow Labrador has red hair?”

“How come I do?” I asked, handing her a huge opening in an
attempt to get her mind off BDR. The things you do for your friends.

It worked. She chortled. “In your case it’s Preference by
L’Oreal when you’re feeling cheap and René l’Exorbitant when you’re flush.”

RJ, who had been following our repartee with the
concentration of an avid tennis fan, thumped his tail in agreement.

“Tattle tail,” I growled.

Jan suddenly recalled her crisis
du jour
and sniffed, “Okay, so you’re not all alone. You have a
dog. But you don’t have a boyfriend.”

My hand automatically flew to the small key hanging from a
chain around my neck, a reflex Jan didn’t miss. “Sorry, Hetta.”

“No big deal.” And I meant it. I only wore the key, I told
myself, as a reminder to be more careful. I also had myself convinced that I
was fully recovered from my disastrous affair with Hudson “the jilter”
Williams, in Tokyo five years before. Shoot, it’s not like I’d been
totally
devoid of male companionship for
eighteen hundred and forty two days. Just sex. And that didn’t count, did it?

Mulling over my manless state, I took another sip of
Saturday morning heart starter. “You know,” I mused, “we both need a change.
New horizons. First things first, though. Brunch.”

* * *

Our Zairian taxi driver, after politely putting up with my
chatty Kathy self all the way from Berkeley, just as politely passed on my
invitation to stay for a drink. He pocketed his tariff and fat tip and chugged
away from my Oakland hills home in a yellow and rust clatter.

RJ, who had been whining and snuffling through the mail
slot, pounced when I opened the front door to my house. He circled, his
ecstatic tail walloping the air as he sniffed for doggy bags. I scratched his
ears with one hand while punching numbers on a blinking alarm pad with the
other. Once the security system was disarmed, Jan began to pace and wail.

“Are you out of your mind, Hetta Coffey? It’s a jungle out
there. You can’t invite strange men into your house anymore,” she railed.
“Don’t you watch the news?”

“Oh, pshaw, Miss Kitty, I reckon I only
know
strange men. Besides, that hombre
weren’t no danger to the likes of us.” I broke with my
Gunsmoke
routine and added, “Jesus, what’s the world coming to? Our
mothers only had to worry about getting knocked up, then the seventies came and
no one cared. Along came the eighties with herpes horror and killer sex. And I
don’t mean that kindly. What happened to the good ole days when our motto was,
‘A shot of penicillin in the ass ain’t much fun, but neither is sleeping
alone?’ Now you tell me I can’t
talk
to people?”

Jan gave me that look, the one that says,
imbecile.
“Gee, Hetta, I can’t even
imagine it. You’ll talk to a fence post. I mean you need to be more careful. A
little more discerning, perhaps?”

 
“Jean-Luc is an
exchange student and taxi driver, not a mass murderer. And he isn’t from the
jungle, as you would know if you’d learn to speak French.”

“Oh, get off your high horse. Not all of us were lucky
enough to learn French as a child like you did. Or go to college in France.”

“Hey, Daddy built dams all over the world, and I was a
camp follower. What can I say? I like speaking French and rarely get to, what
with consorting with the unlettered and all.” Jan launched a throw pillow at
me. Touchy, these
bourgeoisie
.

“Jan, that’s not why they’re called throw pillows,” I
said, tossing back the cushion. “And to get back to the subject of Jean-Luc,
it’s taxi drivers like him who’re getting mugged. He probably figured we
were gonna mug him and—
zut, alor!
RJ, put a brake on that
tail,” I scolded, righting a potted palm that fell victim to his derriere of
doom. I headed for the couch, an unrepentant and still-wriggling RJ in close
pursuit.

“You know, Hetta, he probably thought you were coming on
to him.”

“Who?”

“The cab driver. Not
everyone
understands your,uh, friendliness. Especially men. You come off as sort of
forward.”

“Forward, fooey,” I said with a wave of dismissal while
sinking into down-filled cushions. “I don’t know why everyone takes themselves
so damned seriously. I like meeting new people. I can’t believe....” My hand
settled onto the middle of a cushion. “Ah-hah! What do we have here? A warm
spot? Bejeweled with goldy red hairs? On my chamois leather Roche-Bobois
settee?”

RJ averted his eyes and raised a paw, the one attached to
the leg he’d broken in a dustup with a truck several years before. He’d led
with his left.

I fought a smile and asked, “Auntie Jan, do you think such
a
really bad dog
deserves a dollop of
pâté?”

RJ’s ears moved with each dreaded word. REALLY, twitch.
BAD, half-mast. DOG, flat out. He gave me his best hangdog look and inched
forward.

“How warm is the spot?” Jan asked.

“Medium warm.”

“Give him a medium dollop.”

Slowly, teasingly, I dug a soggy napkin from my pocket
while RJ trembled with anticipation. His patience pushed to the limit, he
raided my hand and gulped down the napkin and contents, belching liver breath
in appreciation.

“Would you care for a Tums chaser with your
papier-mâché
treat?” I asked. He nosed
my hand for more.

“You should buy him his own couch, Hetta. Hell, you bought
him his own car.”

“I paid more for this couch than I did RJ’s Volkswagen,
and I’ll thank him to keep his furry rump off my overpriced Roche.”

“You heard her, RJ, come sit here on the floor with your
favorite auntie while we watch a little tube.”