Chapter 18

The Potent Flower was four blocks down and three blocks over from the Palace on a busy section of Divisadero Street. I showed my driver’s license to the guard outside the door and walked into what looked like an upscale boutique.

The shelves were light glossy wood, and the walls were a soothing gray-green. There were a few free-standing display cases with glass tops, and the overall vibe was of the kind of place you’d find in Malibu selling hundred-dollar candles endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow. Except it was much more crowded.

And there were no candles. Instead, the shelves on the right side of the shop held a multitude of small jars containing buds of every possible shade of green. Each strain was labeled, and available for purchase au natural or already rolled. The other side of the store had more shelves, these containing beautifully packaged chocolates, caramels, teas, ointments, and other goodies, presumably all made with THC. The whole place reeked of stoner chic. It also, to a lesser extent, reeked of weed.

I looked for Monica.

She was behind the sales counter that ran along the back wall, helping out three employees who were busy at three cash registers. She spotted me at about the same time I saw her, and an expression I couldn’t identify flashed across her face before she smiled hugely in greeting.

“Nora!” She came out from behind the counter as I approached and gave me a quick hug. “I’m so glad you came! What can I do for you? Tell me what you need.”

I needed answers about Kate and Raul Acosta, but it seemed a little hasty to just plunge right in without a few polite preliminaries.

“This place is gorgeous,” I told her.

She glanced around the store, which was brimming with customers. Most of them women, and most of them my age or older. “It fills a need,” she said, straightening a row of little bottles. “I can’t tell you how tired I get of the stoner dude culture in this business. I wanted to create a safe, welcoming space for people to explore all the beautiful possibilities provided by one of nature’s most perfect plants.” She beamed at me.

“I think you’ve done it,” I said. “Um, Monica, I can see you’re busy, but I was hoping we could talk. Is this a really bad time?”

Again, that something flickered across her face and was almost instantly replaced by a smile. “No!” she said. “This is a perfect time. I don’t think the lounge is busy. Let’s go have a nice quiet cup of tea.”

“Thank you,” I said. Then, “Plain tea?”

She laughed. “Well there might be some caffeine in it, would that be a problem?”

“The more the better,” I said, and followed her past the cash registers, through a doorway that led to a windowless space almost the size of the shop out front. This room was painted a darker gray. A comfortable-looking leather bench ran the length of one wall, scattered with pillows. Small tables were arranged down the length of it. Two more tables, large enough to seat six or eight, were in the center of the room. I’d been expecting a Hollywood version of an opium den. Instead it looked like the dimly-lit common room of a very nice college dorm.

“Have a seat,” Monica said. “I’ll go get that tea.”

A huge TV was mounted on the far wall, playing a nature documentary at low volume. There was only one person in the room, a fortyish woman, who was ignoring the TV and working on a laptop, earphones connecting her to the computer. I watched the documentary until a snake showed up—as they always seem to do in nature documentaries—then I turned away and tried to come up with the perfect movie to watch in this space.

I had just settled on Sunset Boulevard (1950, William Holden and Gloria Swanson) when Monica came back, bearing a tray with tea and cookies. “Plain cookies,” she assured me with a grin.

I’d chosen a spot in the corner away from the other customer, where I didn’t think anyone who happened to walk through the lounge to the employee-only area beyond it would be able to overhear us.

“Now.” Monica sat, pushing up the sleeves of her jacket. She was once again wearing workout clothes, the kind of trim, put-together outfit that yoga types seem to live in. “How are you? Are you settling in to your new life?”

She looked at me, really looked at me, with eyes that were filled with compassion. And although I’d intended to ask her what she knew about Kate and her possible connection to a diversifying Columbian crime lord, I found myself answering her with something quite different.

How was I? “I don’t know,” I heard myself say. I was alarmed to feel tears welling. “I can’t bring myself to look at the texts my husband is sending me, I haven’t returned any of the messages from my lawyers, and I don’t really feel like I’m settling into any sort of new life as much as I’m running away screaming from my old one.”

She placed her hand on mine, which was suddenly shaking. I didn’t know where the burst of emotion had come from, but it was clear that everything I’d been doing my best to ignore was simmering much closer to the surface than I’d thought. One kind word from a virtual stranger was all it took to have me spilling my guts.

She squeezed my hand. “You poor thing.”

Which is what I realized I’d been wanting someone to say to me ever since Ted’s face had first been plastered across the tabloids.

At which point I didn’t interrogate the pot dealer about Kate’s possible criminal connections. Instead I sobbed in her arms.

 

  

“Okay. There it is. Let it out.”

The woman at her laptop took no notice of my breakdown. It’s possible that scenes like this happened all the time in the cannabis lounge. She typed away while Monica gave me the kind of comfort I hadn’t known I needed.

Eventually I sniffed hugely and wiped my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“What in the world for?” Monica said. “Everybody needs a good cry now and then.” She handed me a napkin from the tea tray. “All kinds of terrible happens if you don’t let it all out once in a while.”

I blew my nose. “Are you some sort of witch?” I asked her. “It feels like you’re putting a spell on me.”

She laughed and made a woo-woo hand gesture toward me. “You will get your groove back,” she intoned.

“I don’t know if I ever had a groove.”

“Then you’ll find one,” she said simply. And, for whatever reason, I believed her.

  

“I lost it,” I told Robbie. “I mean, I really lost it, right there in the smoking lounge of a pot shop.”

I’d used an app to call for a ride-share car when I left Monica’s shop. Robbie had called just as I was telling the driver where to take me.

“Well, if you’re going to lose it, that’s probably as good a place as any,” she now said.

“I feel like an idiot.”

“Okay, but do you feel better?”

I took a deep breath. “Oddly, I think I do.”

“There’s nothing odd about it. Everyone needs to lose it sometimes, and you’ve kept it together far too well for far too long. It was almost getting weird.”

“Well, then consider me normal,” I told her. “Painfully so.”

“I consider you my best friend,” she said. “I’m just sorry I wasn’t the shoulder you cried on.”

“You’re the shoulder I lean on for everything else,” I reminded her. “Remember, I’m working in your theater and living in your house.”

“Only my guest house,” she said dismissively. “And it’s not like you don’t have several houses of your own.”

I winced, watching the scenery of San Francisco pass me by. “Maybe I do. I really should look at all the emails the lawyers have been sending me.”

“You really should,” she said. “But maybe not right this minute.”

“Maybe I’ll think about it tomorrow,” I suggested.

“That’s a good little Scarlett O’Hara,” she agreed. Then, “Um…”

Robbie never hesitated without good reason. “Um what?” I asked. “Tell me.”

She blew out a breath. “I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, but Ted dropped by last night.”

Every muscle in my body clenched. I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I didn’t.

“I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow recap,” Robbie said. “All I’ll say is that never in my life have I ever met anyone more self-centered than that man. And you know the list of divas I’ve worked with.”

I did. It was a long list.

Robbie’s voice changed. “Nora, I have to ask you this, and if you don’t want to answer that’s fine, but I had the feeling that, over the last few months—I mean before this insanity all started—I had the feeling you were getting pretty fed up with Ted. Am I wrong?”

I blinked. Had I been?

“I’ve been frustrated,” I admitted. “I mean, it just seemed like every single inch of space I had in my head, in my life, had been taken over by taking care of Ted. It’s like he was the Blob, and his needs just kept expanding and expanding, and sometimes…”

“I get it.” Robbie sounded relieved. “And I just hope you remember that, as he’s putting you through all this hell. The way I see it, if Ted hadn’t run off with that woman—” she knew better than to utter the name Priya Sharma in my hearing “—you might very well have left him.”

That thought hit me like a revelation. It was a totally new way of looking at things.

“Do you think he knew?” I asked. “Do you think, on some level, that he wanted to pull the ripcord before I did?”

“Well,” Robbie considered. “If he did sense your frustration, it would be totally in keeping with his narcissist character to run away from you rather than doing something crazy like asking how he could make things better.”

I blinked, thinking of the implications. I’m ashamed to say that my first reaction to this line of thought was a self-hating Ah ha! So I am to blame for him walking out on me! But in Robbie’s careful silence, I had another thought. One that gave me much more comfort. No matter what I did or might ever do, Ted is always going to be a hopelessly self-centered shit.

I decided to go with that.

“I don’t think I was ready to leave him,” I finally told Robbie. “But I think I was ready for him to completely change several fundamental aspects of his personality and magically turn into the man I wanted him to be.”

“Show me anyone who’s married who isn’t ready for that.”

I laughed.

“Now that sounds good,” she said. “Hey, I have to go. But I wanted to tell you that I’m still playing phone tag with Naveen. I’m going to try to set up a conference call for tomorrow so the three of us can figure out what the hell has been happening with the Palace books.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “Let me know when.”

“I love you, you normal person,” she said.

“You too, you weirdo.”

We hung up just as the car pulled up at my destination.

Golden Gate Park. Stowe Lake. Strawberry Hill.

The place where Kate had died.