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She called back, “Then you can have waffles.”
“I do not like them either,” he said, but he was following us out the door.
“What do you like for breakfast?” she asked.
I resisted saying, “The blood of his enemies,” because it wasn’t true. That was Edward’s style and mine. Olaf was much more a blood-of-the-innocents kind of guy.
31
SUGAR CREEK RESTAURANT and Bakery was so crowded that the sound of the customers made white noise like crowds at a sporting event or a concert. The waitress at the podium in front said, “We’re at a two-hour wait and longer for large groups. Sorry.”
Kaitlin said, “Our party is already here at a table.”
“Name?” the waitress said as if she didn’t believe Kaitlin.
“Livingston.”
“Oh, sure. Just follow Mandy. She’ll take you back.”
Mandy—who was either a second hostess or our waitress; only time would tell—took the menus the first woman handed her, and we followed her back through the tables and booths. The place was a lot deeper than the narrow front had hinted at, so we got to go through several rooms until we finally found Livingston sitting with his back to a wall in the center of a horseshoe-shaped booth. There was a dark-skinned woman in a black suit jacket sitting with him. His arm was across her shoulders, and their faces were so close together that her thick black hair had swung forward to hide her face completely and some of his. Her hand, with its perfectly red nails, caressed the side of his face. What I could see of his face was smiling.
He pulled back, and his professionalism came over him like he had put on another set of clothes. One minute all cuddles and romance, and the next Captain Livingston was there again. “Pamela, you remember Kaitlin.”
Pamela looked up at us and smiled with lipstick the same crimson as her nails. The black suit jacket framed a crisp white shirt, and there was an engraved gold nameplate on her lapel that read MANAGER. I was beginning to see how we’d managed a table during the restaurant’s busiest time of day.
“Of course I remember her,” Pamela said as she started scooting out of the booth. Since it was a deep booth, that took some doing, but she did it with ease, even grace. I’d have looked like a five-year-old getting down from the dinner table. Of course, when Pamela stood up, she was about six feet tall. Longer legs help the whole scooting thing, or so I’m told.
Pamela shook Kaitlin’s hand graciously. I could see she was wearing red designer flats that matched the lipstick and nails, so the height was all her. Her hair was black like mine, but a different shade and texture. I couldn’t imagine what kinds of hair products she used and what careful blow-drying she’d done to get her hair to lie in a smooth, shoulder-length hairdo. Maybe I was wrong, and Pamela’s hair in its natural state wasn’t as curly as mine, but I’d never met anyone with her skin tone and rich facial features who didn’t have my curls or more.
Livingston scooted out on the other side of the booth and introduced us one at a time. It wasn’t until Pamela was shaking my hand and giving me great eye contact out of big brown eyes that I realized she was wearing very nice and understated makeup, except for the red lips. But thanks to Jean-Claude’s lessons in color and style, I knew the red gave just the pop of color that the severity of the black-and-white outfit needed. You also had to be staring right in her face to feel the full force of her personality and let the impact of it change her from pretty to beautiful, or maybe it wasn’t beauty exactly, but whatever it was, the force of it made me smile as she shook my hand.
The only one who didn’t smile back at her was Olaf, and he frowned, which meant he felt her beauty, her personality, whatever it was, but he didn’t want to be moved by it. Or maybe he just didn’t like tall women, and I was way overprojecting.
“I’ll leave you to talk business, but unless it’s a life-or-death emergency, you’d better come find me and give me a kiss good-bye.”
Livingston smiled. He was wearing a line of her lipstick already. “Unless it’s an emergency, you know I will.”
Pamela used her thumb to rub the lipstick off his lips, which was a strangely intimate gesture. It made me sad that I wasn’t wearing my own shade of red and that I was too far away from any of my sweeties to paint it across their mouths. It’s funny what can unexpectedly make you homesick for the people in your life. I was suddenly almost aching to be home.
Livingston waited until Pamela had disappeared to the front of the restaurant before he sat back down. I was pretty sure he watched her ass as she walked away, but apparently, he was allowed to do a lot more than just watch, so it was okay. Then it was the fun of sitting down. When you have a bunch of police, or certain types of military, sitting down in public is harder than it sounds. The booth was against the wall, so that was good for everyone, but there were pros and cons to it all. Sitting in the middle of the booth meant your back was securely against a wall and you had a clear view in all directions; the farther from the center you were, the more easy viewing you lost on one side or another. Of course, if you were in the middle and there was an emergency, you were trapped behind the table. You couldn’t run either toward the emergency or away from it, depending on what was happening. You were sort of committed to doing something from where you were sitting. On the ends of the booth, you could move easily if you needed to, but you had your back toward one side of the room or the other. Did you keep your field of view and sacrifice maneuverability, or lose the view and maintain your ability to move? I expected that sitting arrangements would be complicated. What I hadn’t expected was for Olaf to complicate them even more. I shouldn’t have been caught off guard; that I had been meant I was in a certain amount of denial about him and me.
Livingston went back to the center of the booth, which surprised me until I noticed that the table moved freely as he scooted into his seat. Obviously the table wasn’t bolted down, which gave him an option if he had to move fast. He could just tip the table over and get out. Despite what you see in movie shoot-outs, most tables won’t stop bullets from hitting you, because they are soft cover, not hard cover. Hard cover is what it sounds like, something so hard or dense that it will absorb or block bullets before they hit you.
Kaitlin slid in on Livingston’s left side, and Newman slid in on his right. I started to slide in beside Newman, and it would have been normal for Olaf to sit beside Kaitlin on the other side so we’d be even, but he slid in beside me. I scooted as close to Newman as I could get, or thought I had until Olaf moved all the way in and suddenly Newman’s sidearm was digging into my hip. I was also in danger of hitting my head against Olaf’s shoulder.
“Can someone please move down? I’m getting squished,” I said.
Everyone else moved down enough for me not to be in danger of getting stabbed by Newman’s holstered weapon. I moved over enough so that my face wasn’t pressed in against Olaf’s shoulder or any other part of him. Of course, I could only go so far before I bumped into Newman again, and I was not going to make them all scoot down again. I had enough room—we all had enough room—I tried to convince that part of me that wanted to crawl under the table and go to the other side of Kaitlin, but I wasn’t a child. I could do this with a modicum of cool. Sure, I could, and I told that tight feeling in the pit of my stomach that it could fuck off and let me be a grown-up.
I really expected Olaf to push the chance to sit close to me, but he didn’t try to put his hip or leg up against mine. Even with him behaving himself, it felt tight. I think it was the height difference, and his shoulders, though not as broad as Livingston’s, still crowded me. Olaf seemed to realize that he was a little close because he raised his arm and put it across the back of the booth. He wasn’t trying to be smooth or even aggressive; his shoulder was just at a bad height for us to be this close. With his arm up, we fit better. The span of his arm was so long that his hand went all the way past Newman to the edge of Livingston’s shoulder. God, Olaf was just so big. Even if he hadn’t been creepy, he was over my height preference for dating. I didn’t like to feel this physically overwhelmed just sitting next to someone.
“I don’t have cooties, I promise,” Kaitlin said. She tried to make a joke, but I saw her eyes flick to Olaf, then to me. She was doing some sort of girl math in her head, or maybe just girl-plus-boy math. I did not want her to come up with an answer on this one.
“Anita and I work together frequently,” Olaf said, “and I prefer dark hair to light.”
That last remark made me glance up at him. He was wasting a smile on her, the one that filled his eyes with warmth. To me, it was like one of those fireplace channels where you can watch TV images of a crackling fire. It was pretty to look at, but you couldn’t warm yourself by it.
“I always wanted to know what I’d look like as a brunette,” Kaitlin said, and she gave him a smile that said, Yes, I am flirting with you. Was she serious or just teasing him? He wouldn’t like either much.
