Hydraulic Level Five (1) by Sarah Latchaw, Gondolier Page A

Samuel didn’t want to clean house because you definitely didn’t stand up for yourself. After looking over those public records, I’m willing to bet you knew a lot more than you told me.”
    I banged my fist on the table, rattling the saucers and silverware. “I was barely twenty-one! Most people haven’t even met their spouses at that age, you know that? I’d already married the love of my life, lost him, and I was only just old enough to cry over a drink at happy hour. What do you want me to say? I failed at love. Even if he’s the one who left, I failed , and I wasn’t about to start airing our dirty laundry for the world to see. Especially to you.”
    Jaime let me rant, simply pursing her lips until I finished. “Does this mean you aren’t going to tell me what happened in New York?”
    “You’re a ruthless bitch, you know that?”
    “Yes. Feel better?”
    I took a shaky breath. “Yeah.”
    “Good. That means I don’t have to play your shrink and remind you how you started your own business, managed to keep your friends, learned new hobbies—none of which you failed at, blah blah blah. So, Plan B. Are you in or not?”
    I closed my eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Sorry for calling you a bitch.”
    “Shut up, Kaye. Welcome to the club.” She raised her cold cup of coffee to me and threw the last drops down her throat.
    I wondered to which club I’d just gained membership.
    I wrote a check to the LA Guinea Pig Charitable Fund. My hand quaked the entire time—I could buy a beach-front property for the same amount I’d just scrawled across the line. Jaime had the check couriered, along with a letter explaining the anonymous donation given in Samuel Cabral’s name. The letter also told the sad, sad story of Mickey Cabral—the ill-fated family pet who’d been poisoned by tainted radish leaves.
    It actually felt relieving to get rid of some of that insane alimony stockpile, knowing it was going to a (sort of) good cause and I wondered if Jaime had stumbled onto something here.
    We made plans to meet at the café again Friday night, when I was back in Lyons, to hammer out post Operation Mickey-gate. She wanted to do lunch, but I had a lunch tradition that I wasn’t about to forgo.
    Every Friday at noon, my group of friends gathered at Paddler’s Outdoor Adventures to kick off the weekend. Our Friday lunches were a convenient way to make plans and let off steam. We originally started eating lunch together years ago on Saturdays, the summer after Samuel, Danita, and Angel graduated from high school. I was sixteen and worked next door at the Garden Market, saving up for college. When college was over and Saturdays often booked, we switched to Friday lunch.
    So much of our lives were encapsulated in that hour spent hunched over kayaks spread with carryout and sodas.
    Cassady introduced us to the joys of eco-sneakers at a Friday lunch a year ago, when Paddler’s shelved a trial stock. I fell in love with a pair of green and white Veja slides, made from reclaimed rubber and plastic bottles of all things, and never looked back. Molly never looked back, either—that was the first time she met Cassady.
    It was during Friday lunch that Danita first confessed her love to Angel, who was home on two weeks’ leave for our Glenwood Canyon trip.
    Then there were the weekends Samuel came home from college. When he rolled into town, he’d go straight to Paddler’s, pull me away from my lunch, and kiss me soundly. Sometimes that kiss continued in the Garden Market back room with tangled tongues and frantic groping. That is, until Audrey Wexler’s elderly mother caught us behind crates of whole grain bread, rounding second base and heading for third. After the word “underage” passed her lips, we tried to be more discreet.
    Though life shifted and changed, the tradition continued.
    When I pulled up to Paddler’s around noon, I was already beyond frustrated. The morning had been spent calmly arguing over the phone with