Roller Coaster Read online

  "I'm twenty-two next month." Laura wasn't sure if she should be offended. She sounded old?

  "I'll be twenty-seven this fall."

  "Why, do I sound old?"

  "Oh. I don't know. You're so calm when every time the wind kicks up a little bit I think we're going to blow right off the track."

  "They've had near gales and nothing's fallen off."

  "People do this in gale-force winds?"

  "Well, no..."

  Helen arched an eyebrow. "You don't say 'like' and 'you know' every other sentence either."

  "I could, like, change that, you know, if that would help."

  Helen gave her a smile, which faltered when someone in a car behind them started shouting as if someone on the ground could hear. Laura angled over the side to look, but didn't think anything new was happening below. Maybe ten minutes so far? Or it could be fifteen? Her watch was hanging on her backpack, down on the ride platform.

  "It can't be much longer."

  The shouting continued behind them. Having looked at the track, Laura tried not to think about how they would get down if the ride didn't resume. There were no ladders to this part of the track, no safety walkway. So they had to have a plan to let them roll back to where they could exit the cars, didn't they? To get them from here to somewhere safe to walk down? She opened her mouth to say this, then realized she'd only upset Helen more. She'd have to keep her speculations to herself, for a while at least.

  "So where in New York did you live?"

  "Queens," Laura said. "Took the bus to work. A bistro near Wall Street. It paid pretty well and they let me do more than prep."

  "And?" Helen closed her eyes again, but it seemed more to fight the relentless sunlight than in panic. "What went wrong?"

  "Why do you think something did?"

  "It's in your voice. Something went wrong."

  When you lie about your addiction you give it power over you, Laura told herself. But a stranger on a roller coaster? Did she really have to? But this is an anniversary, she told herself, and you should start the rest of your life the way you mean to go on. She seems interested, so she gets the truth.

  "I did something stupid. I didn't know enough to wonder why there was so much cash around. Restaurants are usually cash-strapped, and at New York rents, it's brutal. But there was a lot of cash. Sometimes I got paid in cash. I was working at a better place than my mother ever had, and I was training to be a real chef. Then I found out where the cash was coming from and I thought I was invulnerable and one of the chosen cool people. There are users in my family in Jamaica, but I figured I was smarter than them, somehow immune to the fact that one line of coke leads to another and then to another. I took a freebie and I was hooked." She paused for breath, feeling a little lightheaded.

  Helen's eyes had opened. "I know people-talented, together people-who fried themselves on cocaine. Smart people. A couple went from powder to that crack-rock poison. And you've stopped?"

  Laura couldn't meet Helen's gaze. "After I burned through everything I had. No more school, and, of course, the restaurant got raided finally-the owners were selling out of the bar. The raid happened when I wasn't there and I never got dragged into it, which was really lucky. I could have a record." She decided not to go into the different treatment someone with her skin color faced on drug charges. She had reminded herself all through her twelve steps that not having a drug-related record hanging around her neck was through the pure grace of God.

  "And I had to leave New York because...it's my sense of smell." She had to pause to swallow, because talking about it reminded her of the aroma of oil, garlic, burnt sugar and grilled veal mingling with the smell of the subway and on many nights, the dank, heavy scent of rain on dirty sidewalks. "Restaurant kitchens in New York smell a certain way."

  "You mean a way other than with their noses?"

  "Wise ass."

  "I truly can't help myself. It got me into so much trouble in school. Anyway..."

  "Anyway, maybe it's how old they are. Right now that smell reminds me of how great the drug made me feel, not how awful my life became because I used it. I was turning into my kin. But I've been fine out here. The world smells different here. My sponsor said there's research that links sounds and smells to craving triggers and it seemed smart to get away from it all. I'm kind of nervous about going back..."

  Helen pried one hand off the lap bar to rest it gently on Laura's arm. "You're stronger than it is. You made it a year and you're not freaking out about this damn roller coaster."

  "Actually, one of the steps is admitting you're not stronger than it, God is."

  "Hooey."

  "Hooey?" Laura looked at her in shock, both because Helen was scoffing at one of the really big steps, not to mention divine power, plus she'd said hooey and who said that nowadays?

  "Sorry, I don't mean God," Helen said hurriedly. "I mean if you're strong enough to place faith in God, you're already stronger than it is. It's strength, not weakness, that makes a person realize they need help, and ask for it."

  "Is that from a play?"

  "Maybe. I don't know," Helen said unexpectedly. She smoothed some of her escaped hair behind her ear. "But I think it's true. Granted I've never been in those shoes, so what do I really know?"

  "Believe me, plenty of people who've never been addicted to anything have all the advice a person could want about how to kick it. Nobody has a cure. Nobody is forever and always cured. I'm trying to be strong. It's a choice I make every day."

  Helen put her hand back on the bar, wrapping her long fingers tightly around it. "Well, sounds like you have pulled it together. Why don't you stay here in California?"

  "Because..." Laura had thought about it a lot. "Because I'm afraid to go back, that's one thing. Kind of like being afraid of heights and proving you're over it by going on a roller coaster."

  Helen gave her a wry nod. "Okay, you have me on that one."

  "I'm afraid if I don't go back I'll always be afraid, and culinary America is in New York, if you want to learn, and I really do. And if I can't handle it, even feel a spark of temptation, I'm outta there. I have a great sense of smell-that's another reason not to use the stuff. I could have lost my palate and that's my livelihood. So how can I be afraid to learn there, work in kitchens there? If I can't do it, if I start thinking that we had a really great dinner service and wouldn't the best dessert be powdery white stuff, I'll come back here. I could easily become an Alice Waters acolyte."

  As she explained who and what Alice Waters and Chez Panisse were she realized she was babbling about things she'd never said outside of an AA meeting. It felt good to tell someone besides her sponsor about her fears, actually, and it was wonderful that Helen didn't seem shocked or put off. Her response was probably atypical-there'd be plenty of people who would think very poorly of her and wouldn't be afraid to say so. No doubt she'd meet them everywhere she went.

  She'd made mistakes. She'd made the amends she could. She'd sniffed her mother's life insurance, her only nest egg, up her nose. What should have taken her three years was going to now take six or seven, and self-pity over having to eke out the means to pay for culinary school was not acceptable.

  "There's something about live performance," Helen was saying. "The thrill of it. There's a rhythm backstage, this controlled furious outburst of energy all being directed out over the audience. I love being behind the curtain before it rises. There's always a little dip-a warning. Then it goes up and I feel like I'm flying."

  "It sounds like a kind of drug." Laura put one hand over her eyes. The sky was an eye-searing blue, even with the sun behind them.

  "It is, I guess." Helen gave her a half-smile. "I crave it, no doubt about that. I think about when I'll get it again, I scheme and worry and fuss to have it as often as possible. In between parts I feel like a piece of me is missing."

  "Yep, those are the classic signs-but there's one thing you don't do."

  "Yeah?"

  "You don't do it
in private and lie about it." She had done a lot of lying, but not as much hiding. It had been used so openly in the restaurant stock room that there'd almost been no need. She'd been a fool-times were tough and no break in sight. The Reagan and now Bush years were seeing to that. But their customers had happily paid outrageous sums for simple cocktails, and she'd simply refused to see what was under the cocktail napkin and the meaning of the cash flowing from hand-to-hand.

  "True. I have a hundred witnesses at least, every time I do it."

  Laura wasn't sure why her voice suddenly quavered. "I'm not going back to it. I won't."

  "Good for you," Helen said. She opened her eyes and Laura fancifully thought she was being wrapped in comforting blue-gray velvet. "I know you can do it."

  Not sure why she cared so much, Laura said intensely, "You should go back to Broadway. Marry the sweet guy and go after what you love doing."

  "I don't know if I'm brave enough."

  "You're on this damned roller coaster."

  Helen was shaking her head.

  "You have the money to live wherever you want. So what's the real excuse for not doing it?"

  Helen took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I won't be famous anywhere. If I go back and wash out...then I don't have anything at all."

  "Except the sweet guy and a pile of money. If you don't go it seems to me that you'll have a sweet guy, a pile of money and a lifetime of regret."

  "Is that from a play?" Helen frowned.

  "Not that I know of-shit!"

  Helen swore at the same time as their coaster jolted underneath them. They slipped backward and they both screamed, as did everyone else behind them. The car squealed to a stop again.

  Helen was breathing in short little gasps. "I'm going to throw up." She gave Laura a look of pure panic.

  "No you're not," Laura said firmly. "Tell me about Juliet. About Eliza Doolittle." Helen gave her a blank look. "Tell me about the first play you were ever in."

  Helen was trying, Laura could tell. Her breathing took on a forced, steadied pace and her lips moved as if she was repeating some internal mantra. "Amateur? Or professionally?"

  "When you got paid, the first one."

  "Camelot-anonymous teen. A singing role, before I'd had any voice training."

  "Training helped?"

  "It did. But back then... 'If an anvil could sing, it would sound like Helen Baynor.'"

  "Ouch."

  "From a review in the local paper."

  "That's mean."

  "It was truthful and it hurt." Helen swallowed hard. "My friends didn't tell me the truth so I'm grateful someone did. I took six years of vocal training. My voice got better. I'm no show-stopper, but I can carry an ensemble part. And I've gotten better about reviews. Sometimes they're dead right. Sometimes they're dead wrong. Sometimes a critic ought to be dead."

  Laura nodded. "I know what you mean. You can either stick the so-called critic with a cleaver and go to prison or smile and let them choke on your success. I plot to poison people years later when no one would suspect me. It passes the time."

  "If I ever need someone poisoned, I'll call you."

  Pleased that Helen's color was coming back, Laura decided that getting her to talk was the best way to cope. "So what do you think about Cats?"

  Helen made a strangled sound that was probably as close to a laugh as she could get in their situation. "It's good theater. I'm not a snob-entertain the masses. But I wouldn't want Broadway to be nothing but Cats. There has to be some Death of a Salesman or Angels in America-that was fantastic, I saw it when it was still a workshop in L.A. It will go to Broadway, to the West End, it's amazing. You have to have theater like that, plus Cats. The world would be so dull with only one or the other." Helen took a longer, steadier breath. "I've lost some people I know to drugs, but so many more to AIDS. After I moved out here I'd call up people I'd worked with and they'd read off lists of men who'd died recently. All those funerals. And it's still going on."

  "Nobody's doing anything much about it-at least not that I can tell." Laura wondered if Helen would be ready for her other secret. The irony of being able to trust Helen with her drug-use history and yet doubting she could tell her she was a lesbian brought a wry smile to her lips. Would it ever change?

  "That's another play-what if I was the Angel? That's on a wire, and being afraid of heights would make it impossible to take the part."

  "You're doing great," Laura said. "This will be a fantastic accomplishment. Tell your agent you had a near-death experience and you're going back to New York. Your heart tells you what it wants and you're a chump if you don't listen. I didn't get to go that much, but I saw Cats and Edwin Drood."

  "Drood was good fun-what's that?"

  "Loudspeaker." Laura leaned well outside the car, straining to hear. "I think..." She listened as the message repeated. "They're going to finish the run. Oh." She sat back in the car. "They want our heads and hands inside again."

  "You mean we're going to go the rest of the way?" Helen's ashen pallor returned. "I was just getting used to this. I could do this for a while longer."

  "It'll be okay." Laura peeled Helen's hand free of the bar. "Hold on to me. We're going to be just fine. And it's a roller coaster. You're expected to be scared and scream."

  The clack-clack-clack sounded ominous as they jerked up the track.

  Helen was holding her hand so tightly Laura knew it would ache later. She didn't mind.

  "When I am a rich and famous stage actress," Helen said, "I will bring my rich and famous friends to your restaurant because I know you're going to be a rich and famous restaurateur."

  "I'll make you a fantastic meal," Laura promised.

  Clack-clack-clack.

  "I know you'll be fine." Helen squeezed her hand even harder.

  Touched at Helen's blind faith, Laura wasn't sure which of them was acting as the lifeline to the other. She squeezed back. "We'll both be fine."

  The chain released their car. Laura screamed too so Helen wouldn't feel so alone. Gravity took over, but neither of them let go.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Twenty-Three Years Later

  Be calm, be cool, be composed. The last thing Laura Izmani wanted was to show her anxiety to the woman on the other side of the vast mahogany desk.

  Not looking up, her interviewer scanned the document in her hand again before commenting, "I can't seem to find it on your résumé. That you've worked as a private chef before."

  "That's because I technically haven't." She kept her voice steady, striving for her usual modulated tone, but her prospective client chose that moment to make eye contact again.

  Laura wasn't the type to stammer and blush over beautiful eyes, but these were not just any pair of eyes. These eyes had stared out at Laura from dozens of Playbills during the ten years she'd worked in Manhattan, and from numerous Internet pages since she'd left the Big Apple more than a decade ago. In the natural light sifting through the study's gauzy draperies, she could tell that the thick, dark lashes were natural and no tinted lenses enhanced what was already an ever-mutating sky blue-to-gray gaze. Wide and expressive, they were the kind of eyes that radiated emotion on connection-then, with a blink, shut it off.

  Those eyes had not changed in twenty-three years.

  Helen Baynor blinked now, and Laura felt an absurd chill at the loss of focus. She was breathless, waiting for that next glance. Good lord! Finish your answer, you fool.

  She stumbled, caught herself, then plowed forward, words tumbling out in a goofy rush. "I spent ten years working in several Michelin-rated restaurants in New York, then more than ten moving around in the Cunard line of resorts." Thankfully, she calmed and was able to go on more normally, "It's there that I was called on for private banquets, to prepare custom meals for high-value customers during their stays, and so on. I've also done catering on the side from time to time, but catering and making meals for a family are two very different results, even if they use many of the same skills."

&
nbsp; Belatedly, she added a smile, which froze when Helen Baynor once again looked her in the eye.

  "Why are you making this kind of change? This is-well, it seems to me that someone who has been an executive chef at some high-profile establishments would find the work of a private chef a bit..." The chiseled, full lips curved into an expectant smile.

  "A bit menial?" She was ready for this question too. Maybe captains of industry couldn't fathom why anyone would downgrade their employment, but she thought that Helen Baynor would understand. She let her gaze fall to the lovely bonzai plant at the corner of the mostly empty desk. The other object of note was an oddly painted and unfired clay figure that might have been a human or a gorilla. A child's handiwork, she guessed, by one of the twins, probably, and years ago. "This is the stage in a lot of chefs' lives where they take the money they've been working too hard to spend and they sink it into a restaurant. I could do that. But it's likely I'd lose my shirt-which happens to most restaurants in the first year even when the economy is strong. The way things are now, I can't think of a more foolish risk to take."

  Helen Baynor nodded, and her expression remained attentive. That could be an act, Laura thought. She continued her explanation, "Or I'd end up working more hours than I've ever worked before in my life to avoid losing my life savings, and then I'd be fifty and wondering where my life had gone."

  She at last scored a reaction: a tiny wince around Helen's eyes. Laura did the math-if she was forty-five then Helen would be fifty next month. Way to go, she chided herself, remind the potential client of her age. But in her mind's eye, Helen looked almost the same as she had for decades. Flawlessly elegant, innately beautiful, year after year. The only significant change was her hairstyle, which had gone from shoulder-length to much shorter, with a little bit of wave that let it curl around her face-easier to accommodate stage wigs, Laura supposed.

  "I have substantial savings, and I live a very simple life. No time for living large," she plowed onward. "I've been restless for a while. My repertoire was shrinking to nothing but bland final dishes, even if they did have good quality ingredients. Flair and one-of-a-kind dishes based on what's fresh that day weren't on the list of what management thought was successful, and a change in managers at the latest resort gave me the push I needed. I want to be part of an artisan community where every night isn't a major competition with people you'd otherwise love to call friends. I do have a number of references, and one pointed me toward this area of California. Many years ago, I lived in Santa Cruz, so this region is also a bit like home to me."