One Cold Night

anxious for Dave to know that he would soon get his wish!
    She took a sip of her orange juice, then thumbed her BlackBerry to see if any new e-mails had come in since she’d last checked five minutes ago. Nothing. It wasn’t unusual, though, for her electronic lifeline to bleep alive this early. The first shift of workers arrived at her small factory at six to begin making the basic daily chocolates and accept early deliveries. The intimatechocolaterie she started three years ago had grown faster than she had ever imagined, and now Water Street Chocolates was supplying fancy treats to some of the best restaurants in New York. Since Lisa had come to live with them last year, Susan had started the nerve-racking habit of letting her most trusted apprentice — like Susan, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute — open her business without her so she could stay home until Lisa left for school. Passing on a measure of control was the natural progression, and she shouldn’t have worried, having come up the same ladder of apprenticeship to a somewhat startling early success when she’d branched out on her own, but worrying was in her nature. She checked her e-mail again; again, nothing.
    Dave peered over a folded-down corner of the paper — finally — and a smile flourished on his handsome, unshaven face. “Anything now? How about now? Better check again. Watch out! I think I feel an e-mail on its way in!” He mock-rubbed the side of one arm. “I think that one grazed me. Got a Band-Aid, sweetie?”
    “Ha, ha, Dave.” She kicked his foot with her fluffy pink slipper. “I have to make up for you never checking your e-mail.”
    The corners of his dark brown eyes crinkled up. “In the cosmic balance, you mean?”
    “Yup.”
    “Yin to your yang.”
    He leaned through the space separating their breakfast stools and kissed her. They had made love in the predawn darkness and his salty lips lingered now. She ran a hand down the back of his soft black T-shirt and slipped two fingers through a belt loop at the back ofhis jeans. The taste of his mouth reminded her of the moment they had first met, three years ago, during a work shift at the Park Slope Food Coop. “Taste,” he had told her, offering one of the garlic-stuffed green olives they were bagging for sale. It was that moment, the tangy taste, she still recalled as a life-altering talisman. They kissed each other again, pulling away at the sound of the bathroom door opening and Lisa’s footsteps padding up the hall.
    She appeared, barefoot on the wooden floor, and went straight to the refrigerator. She had already put on some makeup and brushed her long hair, which made a pale blaze down her back. The outfit today was borderline: tight low-rise jeans and a cropped tie-dyed camisole exposing a rhinestone belly-button stud. Susan knew that if she were a teenager now, she would have body piercings, too. But she wasn’t a teenager anymore; she was the adult entrusted with Lisa’s care.
    “I realize it’s a style,” Susan said as soberly as she could, “but you’re only fourteen and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to dress so... provocatively. Especially in the city.”
    “Thanks for the tip, Suzie. Did Dave mention you looked pretty hot in those hip-huggers you had on yesterday?” Lisa swung open the fridge door and gazed inside.
    Dave was staring at the newspaper again, but Susan heard his gentle snort and saw the right side of his mouth pucker.
    “‘Mama never told me...’” Lisa’s honeyed voice trailed into a hum. Another nascent song. She grabbed a plastic bottle of drinkable peach yogurt and shut the fridge door. “I hate to say it, Suzie, but...” Sheshrugged, uncapped the yogurt and shot the blue plastic coin across the narrow kitchen into the garbage can. “Score!”
    Were all teenagers masters of the half-finished sentence? The loaded opener, the unspoken refrain? Generally set to music? Susan could hear the rest of the lyric: But you’re not my mother. Lisa took a long swig of the yogurt drink, leaving behind a pale ghost that hovered above her upper lip. Susan held herself back from reaching over with a napkin and wiping clean Lisa’s awkward but achingly lovely face.
    “You know what I just remembered?” Lisa took another drink of yogurt. “When you were eighteen and I was around two?”
    “Three,” Susan corrected her, then sealed her lips, not saying what she was thinking: that no one could remember that far