Free Live a Little by Kim Green Page B

you pulled up. They’re coming home from the park.”
    “Thanks, Soodle.” I lay my hand on my friend’s plump arm.
    She squeezes it and inspects my nails. “You need a mani.” Her gaze drops to my feet, long and battered in old sandals. “And a pedi.”
    “Yeah.”
    “How about we go over to Mani/Pedi? My treat. They can meet us over at Klein’s after,” she says, naming a delicious delicatessen near the neighborhood nail salon.
    “Let’s go.”
    I follow my friend out the bright blue door. Sue and I have been friends since college. We met at U.C. Santa Barbara our first day. I knew instantly, taking in the pretty, curvy girl with wild curly hair, retro granny glasses, and Dalmatian-spotted suitcase, that we would be friends for life. Unlike my self-diagnostic romantic forecasts, which have been accurate only in their tendency to culminate in marriage—to somebody else, in every case but Phil—my friendship oracle has remained true.
    I’ve stuck with Sue through thick and thin. Through her parents’ divorce in college and the financial disarray that followed. Through her first, unplanned pregnancy and the abortion that ended it. Through the menial jobs and bad relationships with bad men. Through culinary school. Through the commune. Through Sarafina’s birth. Through the long drought between her daughter’s commune leader–musician father and the gentle motorcycle mechanic Arlo. Through the restaurant’s lean early months, before Sue’s unique blend of Mediterranean ingenuity and California freshness became the toast of the neighborhood and, later, the town.
    She was there for me when Ren broke up with me and pursued Laurie and I could eat nothing but jelly beans and creamy peanut butter for six weeks. When I pounded NoDoz and Diet Coke for five days to finish my thesis project, and when—courtesy of Sue’s tenaciousness and contacts—I won my first private commission. When I foundered in creative dry spells. When I married Phil. When we had the kids. When Phil dropped out of the Ph.D program and I went back to work.
    When our paths led Sue and me circuitously—me to marriage and stay-at-home motherhood in the suburbs, her to bohemian entrepreneurship and single motherhood in the city— we sought the other out like a tonic, basking in everything our life wasn’t.
    For the most part, it worked.
    “This one or this one?” Sue asks, holding up two bottles: demure pink and vixen red.
    “That one.” I point to a silver chrome instead.
    “Okay, but I get to pick yours.” She scans the rows of neat bottles and plucks out an iridescent blue.
    “Sue! It’ll look like toe fungus!”
    “No, it’ll look cool. You’ll see. It’s a good color for you. It matches your eyes and brings out your olive skin.”
    We sit down for a heavenly interlude of cleansing, exfoliating, massaging, and gabbing.
    We are just finishing up when Sue’s lover, Arlo, and daughter, Sarafina, come in.
    “Quel!” Sarafina flings her lanky six-year-old body into my arms. She smells of that scent unique to small girls, a heady mixture of grape juice, Play-Doh, grass, and string cheese.
    “Fina, watch out for Raquel’s nails, okay?” Sue admonishes.
    “It’s okay.” I tug on one of Sarafina’s tight faun-colored curls and peer into her face. The marriage of her father’s bronze skin and regal bearing and her mother’s enveloping sweetness produced a beautiful, strong-willed, sweet-spirited child.
    “Do you like my bindi?” she says with just the right amount of gravitas.
    “Yes. You look very spicy and Indian.”
    She giggles madly. With her coltish body squirming in my arms, I feel gifted and cool-mom and fantastic, Ellen De-Generes on a good day.
    “Hey, Quel. Nice to see you, baby,” Arlo says. We lean over and exchange a quick, fond hug. After I got over the initial surprise of Arlo Murphy’s intricately inked arms, grizzly-bear bulk, and grease-monkey dress code, I came to appreciate— love—what he