Chapter 2

This particular Monday morning (well, afternoon, for you sticklers about detail) found Katie with her hair pulled back and sleeves rolled up, swearing over a Singer Touch-and-Sew. I knew the tinkling bell on the front door would annoy her, because she only tied her hair back with a vacuum fan belt when she was particularly frustrated with a repair, so I loudly announced myself straight off, shouting, “It’s Todd!” as I ducked under the counter.

She didn’t look up or give me more than a “hey,” just slid her head far enough in my direction for me to give her our traditional peck on the cheek. I set down the white paper bag I had brought from Paris, grabbed my mug off the wall rack, and helped myself to a cup of her famous smoky, black French roast. I sat without speaking for the first several sips. The soft clanking and cussing indicated clearly that Katie was engrossed in her work, and I knew she understood how tired I was, although she had quit flying nearly five years ago.

Shortly, she let out a frustrated “Ack!” and her screwdriver clattered across the table. “This thing is messing with me, Todd!” she cried. “It should be running better than new, and it gives me nothing. Nothing!”

She backed away from the sewing machine. “I’ve been dying to take a break! I thought you’d never get out of bed,” she scolded, pulling the fan belt from her hair and smoothing the honey-colored curls. With her naturally ebullient hair and sassy Irish freckles, Katie would probably be a smash in one of those Real Women in Their Underwear ads. Two pregnancies had thickened her in the hips, and two hungry newborns had helped her chest stay plenty curvy. “How was Paris?”

“Great, of course.” A pretty standard answer concerning the Paris layover. “You never got to stay at this hotel, but oh, Katie, the coffee! We get this great breakfast in the morning; you can have it brought up to your room or go down to the café. It just feels, so, you know…”

“Like home?” she said, indicating her office.

“I was gonna say ‘French’, but I see your point,” I admitted, as her office was basically the downstairs café to my apartment. “Anyway, it was fine. I worked with a good crew. I worked with Bobby Dutta, and we went out the first night and had fun. That boy is crazy!”

“No wonder you look so tired!” she pointed out. “I’m scared of you two loose on a town full of French boys.”

“I was very well-behaved, thank you very much.” She cocked an eyebrow, but I forged ahead. “I did meet one nice guy who bought me a few drinks. We ended the night at a bear bar in the Marais. We probably would have hooked up, but when a 300-pound French biker takes the stage at karaoke and stumbles drunkenly through Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire,’ you know it’s time to go home.”

She laughed, acknowledging the universal truth of this statement, and rinsed the old, cold coffee out of her cup, the better to enjoy a fresh round.

“I brought treats,” I told her, nodding towards the white paper bag next to the coffee maker.

Her face lit up. “Croissants?” she asked hopefully.

“Oui. Regular, and chocolate ones, too.”

“Hooray!” she exulted, rubbing her hands together before plunging one into the bag and withdrawing a pain au chocolat. The proprietress of the establishment, Katie had a selection of personal mugs, all of which had been painted by one or the other of her children at one of those paint-your-own pottery places. She lived right around the corner from one in Noe Valley, and had been putting her kids’ handiwork on gifty items pretty much since the day she brought my goddaughter Liliana home from the hospital. Today she was drinking from my favorite, on which her son Anthony, all of three years old, had drawn his impression of himself and his older sister in Katie’s convertible. Their dog Mavis, inexplicably, is driving.

Ever the hostess, Katie topped my coffee off before filling her own cup, then took her usual spot, half-sitting on the counter, one clogged foot firmly planted on the floor, the other swinging free.

“You look beat,” she informed me. “How many days off do you have?”

I held up five fingers, reveling in the one element of this job that will never grow old: time off.

“Must be nice.”

“Oh please, like you’d ever give this up to go back to flying.”

See, that’s where I met Katie, in Stewardess School (as we called flight attendant training) at Globe Runner Airlines twelve years ago, as fresh-faced, hot-bodied new hires barely out of college. We attached ourselves to one another on the first day of training, bonding over our shared passions—for France in general, where we had both studied abroad, and in particular for a big-nosed, handsome French fellow trainee named Philippe. He had been “released” (i.e. fired) from training before we even went on our first training flight, but Katie and I had each had an opportunity to become intimately acquainted with his charms and compare notes, and by the time we had basically forgotten all about him, we were already best friends. Although we no longer fly together, we are still joined at the psychic hip; Katie and I tell each other everything, and I rarely make a decision more complicated than what to have for lunch without at least a quick consult with my former flying partner.

She sipped her coffee and pondered the sewing machine she was finishing up.