It was half past noon when they met as planned at the Valley Fair Mall on the border of San Jose and Santa Clara.
Megan Breen had exchanged a Louis Vuitton Suhali handbag that she’d purchased the week before, her eye having discriminated a flaw in the stitching of an inner zipper compartment once she got it home. At the price she paid for the bag, this seemed a shameless crime.
Julia Gordian had come for an advertised sale at the aromatherapy and herbal cosmetics boutique. She liked using the tea tree antioxidant facial scrub, lavender and ylang oil body lotion, and rosewater skin restoration gel with “bio-intrinsic essences,” whatever that meant. All she really knew was that the products made her feel fresh and clean out of the shower and didn’t contain too many artificial ingredients, or so their labels said.
Now Megan sat keeping an eye on their shopping bags and other personal articles at the table they had pulled up to in the mall’s big, sunshiny food court after doing their errands. In front of her were two cranberry scones, a paper cup of dark Italian roast coffee, and a stack of napkins. The coffee was piping hot and tasted good and had been served with one of those cardboard sleeves that slid around the cup so you didn’t have to double it.
She sipped and looked around for Julia, whom she’d last seen getting in line behind her for a garden salad. Then she located her in the crowd of shoppers, leading with a plastic tray as she pushed toward the table. On it was a flat mini-pizza box and some paper plates.
“Sorry it took me a while.” Julia said, putting down the tray. “Hot stuff.”
She sat opposite Megan. Her black hair cut short and deliberately mussed, she wore avocado-and-cream striped lowrise bellbottoms, a black midriff blouse, and white lace-up Keds sneakers. The blouse was loose and sleeveless with a flared lapel and some kind of complicated sash tied above her exposed navel. On the right lapel was a silver marcasite brooch shaped like a gecko. On her left shoulder was a small dark blue tattoo composed of a pair of stylized kanji ideographs: Ji, which means “oneself,” and Yuu, which roughly translates into the word “reason” or “meaning.”
Together they form the traditional Japanese symbol for liberty and freedom.
“Changed your mind about that salad, I see,” Megan said.
Julia got comfortable at the table, flapped open her pizza box, and pointed inside. The pie was cut into four slices and topped with a huge pile of onions, peppers, mushrooms, and sausages.
“Wrong,” she said. “I just decided it would look better on runny mozzarella, hot tomato sauce, and crust. A nice, thick carbohydrate-ridden crust.”
Megan looked into the box.
“No arugula?” she said, straight-faced.
“Or sprouts.” Julia smiled. “Those little pieces of spiced ground pork stuffed into intestinal lining do more to zest it up.”
Megan cocked an eyebrow with amusement. She had come from the office in a charcoal gray blazer with the Chanel logo on its penny-colored buttons, a matching skirt, an ice blue blouse, and gray mid-heel dress shoes.
“I can’t believe you intend to consume that whole pie,” she said.
Julia shrugged. She reached for a napkin, put it in her palm, took a wedge of pizza out of the box, put it on the napkin, and bent it slightly along the middle to form a sort of runoff channel for the excess grease. Careful not to lose any of the topping, she tipped the slice down to let the grease drip onto the foiled cardboard liner that had been underneath it. Then she pushed the pizza box toward Megan.
“Mangiare bene,” she said. “Take one.”
Megan shook her head.
“I already bought these scones.”
“Eat ’em afterward.” Julia pushed the box closer to her. “Go on, be a lioness.”
Megan smiled.
“No, thanks, really,” she said. “I have a conference at three o’clock and would rather not belch my way through it.”
Julia gave another shrug. “Your loss,” she said, starting in on the pizza.
Megan carefully broke a piece off her scone and looked over her business suit for stray crumbs. At the table to her right, a plump woman shopper and her tyke-ish, buddingly overweight daughter had reached the conclusion of their fast-food pit stop. As the little girl started gathering their crumpled waxed wrappers, empty paper cups, and used napkins into the tray between them, Mom admonished her to leave it, somebody who worked in the mall would clean up. Megan saw them stroll away out the corner of her eye, wondering if the kid also caught heat for scrubbing her teeth before bedtime.
“Things moving along okay with your exhibition?” she said to Julia.
“They’d better be.” Julia shrugged. “I’ve got a week to go before the opening, thirty pieces left to hang, and a thousand rapidly multiplying butterflies in my stomach.”
Megan took a bite of the scone.
“Still plan on sticking to watercolors?”
“Mostly,” Julia said. “I’ve decided to take your advice and go with a limited mixed media presentation.”
“So you included the batiks.”
“That abstract series you like, yeah,” Julia said. “I brought a few to the gallery yesterday, and have the rest set to go for tonight, which should just leave me needing to drive over my oils.”
“Those two great big canvases.”
“Right.”
“Think they’ll fit into the Celica?”
Julia shook her head.
“Not unless I plan on strapping them to the roof.” She paused and briefly lowered her glance. “It almost makes me wish I hadn’t gotten rid of the old SUV… but, hey, you’re followed, kidnapped, and almost murdered by professional assassins, you wonder if maybe you ought to appease the gods and trade in the vehicle you were driving that day.”
Megan had seen Julia’s eyes flick downward as she spoke. It was the same, or nearly the same, whenever she mentioned what happened to her. She would leave it out there, the remembered terror thinly wound in defensive humor, making it difficult to know how to pick up on it, or whether that was even something she wanted.
Julia would talk about it one of these days, Megan thought. Eventually she would need to talk about it in an open way. But the timing was hers to decide.
Megan ate another piece of her scone. A couple of high-school-age boys with McDonald’s bags sat down at the table vacated by the round and purposefully untidy mother and daughter. They swept the rubbish and dirty tray that had been left behind to one side of the table, took a bunch of hamburgers from their bags, and plowed into them with enthusiasm.
“I’d be glad to help with the paintings,” Megan said. “Far as your transportation problem, though, my car’s smaller than yours.”
Julia made a swishing don’t-worry-about-it gesture.
“Dad’s got me covered,” she said. “He’s coming over tomorrow in the Land Rover.”
Megan scrunched her forehead. “Roger?” she said.
“He would be my one-and-only father, right.” Julia gave her a puzzled look. “Why the funny face?”
“I didn’t know I made one.”
“That’s because you couldn’t see it from here,” Julia said, and tapped her side of the tabletop.
Megan lifted her coffee to her mouth, sipped. “Guess I was wondering about your handsome curator friend,” she said.
Julia frowned slightly.
“Richard is an assistant curator,” she said. “One among several at the museum.”
“Uh-oh. This already sounds ominous.”
Julia sighed.
“We’re over,” she said.
“Over?”
“And done,” Julia said. “I broke things off last weekend.”