Page 10 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls
Skye got home, accessed through her private entrance, and tumbled onto the couch under her loft bed, expelling what little breath she had left. While she never forgot a face, being stranded on a dark back road had compromised that skill.
Because she knew Celene.
From twenty-five years ago.
A slow smile crawled across Skye’s lips. Her friend returned.
A harsh floodof sunlight accompanied Skye’s buzzing phone alarm in a distinctly hot, overstimulating wake-up call. In the forty minutes of her shower and morning rituals, that dash of hopefulness about Celene fizzled to unpleasantly warm doubt.
Celene probably didn’t remember Skye. A very strong possibility considering they’d been preteens the last time she’d watched Celene’s family’s car depart, turning off the street and essentially going to another realm altogether.
They were as unknown to one another today as they’d been last night, cloaked in rural darkness.
From ages eight to eleven, Skye and Celene spent their summer days together. Roaming the woods, entire afternoons playing by the lake. Celene had an air about her that made her feel years ahead of their shared age. Self-awareness as well as a quiet fire. Skye smiled to herself, remembering how Celene used to keep her dark hair in a fishtail braid that reached her butt. Once, a neighborhood boy yanked it, and Celene cussed him out so expertly, Mr. Meyer sprinted from his porch to scold them.
Skye’s memories played vividly, the dams into those summers broken. Celene would read interesting parts of hardcover books aloud while Skye hunted for whimsically shaped rocks or lay on a tree branch, visualizing the scenes. One time, after getting snagged in a super thorny bush, Skye rebraided Celene’s hair into a three-piece twist, adorning it with smooth aster. Celene had shown it off to her mother, she loved it so much.
“Skye, come get these boxes!” Luce’s distinct, pitchy voice blasted from the intercom installed next to her desk. It shook her back to her fuzzy rug; her toes had curled on their own.
“On it,” Skye chirped, thumbing the mic button. That whole loft setup maximized her space to better mirror the nifty complexes she’d grown used to for her career stay in New York.
This suite used to belong to her parents, a massive add-on when they combined households with Skye’s grandparents. Post college, it’d been handed off to Skye and she’d done away with its beaded doorway, kept some of their wall ornaments, transforming it into a beloved hideaway.
The natural wood interior, custom bay window, and all her earthly possessions stored in agreeable disarray gave Skye the illusion of being on her own. Living alone wasn’t an across-the-board adult requirement, but she missed that independence in the city.
Skye donned her ochre messenger bag and left her room, padding down the long hallway rug with the floral ridges. She noticed one of its corners beginning to curl, thinking on how she’d correct that.
“You came home late last night,” Luce said from the stove, plating an omelet piled with seared peppers. “Did you have a date?”
Dates? In the meagre sapphic population of Yielding? “No. Where are those boxes?”
“By the door. Get your breakfast.”
The kitchen could be bigger—June offered to give them a quote on knocking down the bar and opening the space up, but Luce wasn’t having it. She shuffled her slippers over vintage tiles patterned with interwoven sunflowers, folding the omelet onto two thick slabs of rye from Yielding Bread. Just how Skye liked it.
After ripping off a square of foil, Skye bent to kiss her grandmother on the cheek in greeting. Over the decades, Luce developed a bit of a hunch. She was still spry, speeding to the thirty-gallon aquarium to shake brine to her beloved Pearl Gourmanis. Named Phish and Swindle—inspired by her most-watched show,Vengeance: Retired, a procedural drama about a vigilante group of seniors avenging scam victims. It played in the background on the mounted television.
“Where were you, then?” Luce asked, washing her hands in the sink. She swatted Skye away to wrap the sandwich primly within the aluminum. “Out with June?”
Skye treaded carefully, not unused to this fixation. Luce would probably throw a party when Skye found a girlfriend; she’d begun asking her rec center pals if they knew any lesbians. “I went foraging and got sidetracked. Was thinking of making blueberry muffins.”
Luce smiled solemnly, nodding white, tightly coiled hair in a neat cut. The younger crowd complimented it often. “The box marked with a purple X should go out front. The red X box is backup inventory. I autographed them all.”
Relieved, Skye scooped up the sandwich and fit it into her bag. Explaining the run-in with Celene would only complicate matters. Plus, they lived in a chatty community—info on a car in the yard of a rarely visited house would make its way to Luce’s ears.
Skye passed by the table once meant for dining. Instead of the standard plates and placemats, the long oak table held various metal nippers, trowels, scattered beads, and trays of mosaic squares. The nearly finished showpiece in the center was a custom order for a lady in Tucson, if Skye remembered correctly.
Luce’s projects often overlapped. Next, she’d work on festival pieces while finishing up a three-piece relief set forChromatique Flair Magazine.
Skye toed on her shoes by the door before unfolding a dolly to stack the boxes. Her grandma typically didn’t overload them, but that bottom one took Skye’s breath away. The contents lightly rattled as she tilted them up on the dolly’s wheels.
When people asked Skye how it felt to be related to a highly acclaimed mosaicist, Skye leaned toward ‘warm,’ ‘liberating,’ and ‘colorful.’ Lucille Florentine often strayed outside the norm, preferring anyone to address her as her mononym, Luce, finding people’s fumbling over the respectable “Mrs.” or “Ms.” for a woman over 80 too clumsy.
Skye loved it—she grew up in a Black household that encouraged eclectic expression.
And Luce lived moderately by choice, regardless of the prices she invoiced for her elaborate creations, like the showpiece—a three-foot mosaic vase easily in the thousands. A decade ago, Skye’s parents highlighted Luce’s art on their social media, catapulting her reach. Her custom orders remained in backlog until the winter of next year.
Thus, the family acquired a shop at the local artisan collective. There, her smaller pieces could be sold locally at Luce’s Mosaic Wonderland, where Skye managed.
