Stephanie Evanovich - The Sweet Spot

IT WAS A top-down kind of day. The sky was blue, with a few passing clouds, and just a hint of breeze, indicating that winter was waving its final good-bye and that summer was just around the corner. The sun was bright and warm, encouraging buds to blossom into fragrant, glorious flowers. The very atmosphere spoke of all the things possible as the earth renewed itself after a cold East Coast hibernation. The day was just too tempting to leave the top up, even though Amanda never put the top down anymore—not since that first summer she’d had the Chrysler Sebring, anyway. She’d always wanted a convertible. At least fate had been kind enough to wait until August two years ago to sport around before a wasp tangled itself in her hair at forty miles an hour on her way to opening day at the Cold Creek. It ended up stinging her hand, her neck, and, inadvertently, her front bumper and an unsuspecting fire hydrant. She spent the night she had been meticulously planning for months moping in the ER with a slight concussion and a burn from the airbag. From then on, it had been air conditioning whenever she was in the car. But when she walked out the front door this late April afternoon, greeted with that first you-know-you-don’t-need-a-jacket day, she was willing to take the risk. Today felt different. And wasps would still be drowsy. As she drove past Maxwell Place Park, Amanda watched ducks and geese and squirrels roaming in pairs, actually looking love-struck, ready to extend their respective species. People on the streets were smiling as they hustled about their day; others were acting flirty. It was nothing short of spring fever, and she couldn’t help but catch it. At a stoplight, she tilted her face up toward the sun to let it shine on her for a moment as she offered up a quick prayer of thankfulness for this beautiful day, her wonderful life, and all the possibilities that came with it. Maybe she’d do some flirting herself. With that thought, she turned up the radio and began to bounce to the music. Yeah, it was a top-down kind of day.

And then the seagull flew overhead.

Amanda watched it all go down from the rearview mirror as she checked her makeup after pulling into the Cold Creek Grille’s small parking lot. The white and green gloppy goo fell perfectly onto the right side of her head, a stark contrast to her long black waves. She stared at it for a few moments as the reality and the poop sank in.

“That didn’t just happen.”

But it did happen, and once again, Amanda Cole had been reminded: Never get too cocky. Avoid using words like perfect or wonderful. Never attach your own name. It was just an invitation to comeuppance. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she considered herself particularly unlucky; she just knew her boundaries. She couldn’t pinpoint when she’d learned it for sure, but it was probably somewhere in between not making cheerleading squad and being, as her mother put it, “twenty pounds away from prom queen.”

Her mother wasn’t cruel, but she was blunt. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference, and every now and then, someone you loved said something thoughtless, and it stuck.

Catherine Cole didn’t really want her daughter to be a prom queen, anyway. As Essex County DA, she wanted Amanda to be smart and shrewd and strong.

Amanda was beautiful and sensitive, in spite of herself, her retired family court judge father never failed to remind her.

Amanda stomped in through the Cold Creek’s front door and slammed her purse on the bar with a loud thud. Two of her employees, Eric and Nicole, were going through the beer cooler’s inventory, seeing what they would need to bring up from the basement for the evening ahead. Eric was a lanky, blond, blue-eyed surfer boy who had been accepted to Harvard, but opted for bartending school instead when he realized how late he liked to sleep. All his savings and vacation time were spent in search of the perfect curl. In between budgeting, he felt New Jersey waves were as good as anyplace else’s, and here he could be close to his family. Nicki was a free-spirited Seton Hall dropout whom Amanda had known since high school who was trying to break into acting. She was a petite, vivacious brunette who had a great horror-movie-victim scream, but her booking-to-audition ratio was often disappointing. She did her best to stay optimistic, paying her dues, as they all called it. Eric was a few years younger but that didn’t prevent him and Nicki from becoming fast friends as well as roommates. Although they weren’t involved, it was common knowledge that the two were known to hook up now and again, usually the result of her not getting the call and his ability to make the best commiserating cocktail. Amanda didn’t care if they shined the bar with their butts, as long as they could work together, did it after closing, and cleaned up afterward.

Eric looked up briefly from his clipboard and then did a double take as Amanda approached their end of the bar.

“Yikes,” he said, his face scrunching up in distaste. “Hope that’s not a fashion statement.”

“Bird” was Amanda’s one-word reply as she proceeded past them.

“Geez, what was that thing eating?” he said, casting a quick look at his counterpart.

“It’s supposed to be good luck!” Nicki called out as Amanda disappeared into the ladies room.

“Not feeling it,” Amanda snapped as the door closed behind her. She walked up to the mirror over the sink to best assess how to clean up the mess. The goo had begun to drip farther down and appeared to be soaking into the thick black hair she’d spent a half hour blowing dry. She took a deep breath. This was nothing more than a problem that needed solving—she had this. First she took some toilet paper and tried to scoop as much of the poop as she could with one grab. She managed to get the bulk of it, but what was left behind was now successfully smeared deeper into her hair and beginning to clump together. She wet some more tissue and tried to get the remainder out, but the tissue started to decompose in her hand and her hair, leaving bits behind and adding to the mix. She took one more handful of tissue and wet them again, but this time she got them too soaked. When she tried to gently squeeze it over the affected hair, the overflow dripped down her hand and onto the front of her blue silk Jones of New York blouse, leaving a wet spot directly over the center of her ample right breast.

“Really?” She shook her head in disgust at her reflection in the mirror. Not only did she have bird shit and toilet paper remnants in her hair, now she looked like she was lactating.

She had only managed to make things worse. Giving the shirt priority, she tried the hand dryer on it. After a minute, it dried up the moisture but left a rather large off-color stain where the water had been. It no longer looked like she was lactating, but merely that she had lactated. The right side of her head was now crunchy.

Strike two.

Amanda stormed out of the bathroom, back to the bar where Eric and Nicki were now waiting.

“You can barely notice it,” Nicki said after staring for a minute.

“Are you kidding?” Eric took the more direct approach. “It looks like a pterodactyl flew over her after a chili cook-off.”

Amanda closed her eyes, bit her lip, and began counting. When she reached eight the phone rang. She quickly fired off nine and ten out loud and went back near the front door.

“Cold Creek Grille. How may I help you?” She answered the phone as if her day were right as rain. She was a businesswoman, first and foremost.

“I need a reservation for tonight,” a gravelly voice barked into the phone. The caller was either on a cell phone with a bad connection or had a mouthful of marbles.

“Of course, sir. What time are you looking for?”

“Seven,” he said impatiently, and Amanda pictured him running to catch a subway.

“Let me make sure I have that available,” she told him, trying to buy time while she booted up the computer at the podium a few feet away. She moved the phone to the other side of her head, forgetting it was a war zone, and her hair crackled near her ear.

“Trust me, sweetheart, you have a table available.”

“Sir?” She didn’t know what to be more offended by, his use of the word sweetheart or the underlying threat that she’d better be able to seat him. She came to the conclusion that he was just some arrogant blowhard who was sitting with his feet on his desk, overlooking the water with a fat stogie in his mouth.

“A superstar is having dinner at your restaurant; you don’t want to make him wait.”

“All of our guests at the Cold Creek are VIPs, Mr.—?”

“Maybe I should speak to the owner?” he said, cutting her off. She thought she heard more spit squish out of the end of his cigar.

“I am the owner. My name is Amanda Cole. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“Don’t seat us someplace high traffic like near the front. He’s not there to be an advertisement. You’ll get your photo op.”

It sounded so scathing, as if she were some sort of a bistro whore looking to make a buck, as if she would be interested in taking a picture with him in the first place. Supreme Court justices and past presidents dined at the Cold Creek without incident. “Mr. Whatever-Your-Name-Is, I’m concerned not only for the comfort of our guests, but the safety of my staff. And we have had some high-profile guests in the past. Several are regulars.”