Latte Trouble - By Cleo Coyle Page 0,6

he handed Lottie her drink, Tuck crossed the center of the room, strolling past Ricky’s group. The fashion writer lifted his latte, saluted Tucker. After swallowing a huge gulp, he passed the glass mug to his partner, who drained it dry.

Tucker shook his head in obvious disgust, then returned to the coffee bar. Just then, a commotion broke out among the audience. A woman cried out, “Are you all right?” Then a man shouted, “Someone help!”

I looked up, saw Ricky Flatt grimace as he clutched his throat. His mouth opened and closed like a fish on a dry dock.

“Oh god, I think he’s choking,” cried Esther.

My pulse racing, I pushed through the crowd toward Ricky. When I reached him, however, I saw Ricky Flat’s face wasn’t turning blue from lack of air, but a bright shade of pink! Then he slumped over his table and slid to the wood plank floor.

“Ricky! Ricky!” keened a hysterical voice. Ricky Flatt’s muscular date knelt at the man’s side and shook him.

“Get away from him,” a short, older man in a Truman-Capote-wannabe white fedora said. “Give him some air.”

Suddenly, Ricky’s boyfriend also turned a bright shade of pink and clutched his stomach.

Standing over the pair, I felt someone at my shoulder—Tucker. The kneeling boyfriend looked up, his eyes wide. He raised his hand and pointed an accusing finger at my barista.

“That…that bastard poisoned me and Ricky!” he cried, then collapsed across the inert form of Ricky Flatt.

THREE

TO say a hush fell over the crowd would be a cliché. What really happened was this.

First every human noise fell silent—no more uproarious laughter, catty banter, or jostling for position around a B-list celebrity. Every fashionable body in the room was suddenly doing an impersonation of a dummy in a Bloomingdale’s window. The only sound remaining was the relentlessly throbbing electronic dance music, which seemed to swell until it filled every corner of the place. Behind trendy glasses and black liner, wide eyes stared at the two young men sprawled, one atop the other, on the polished hardwood planks.

Ricky Flatt, the unfortunate victim on the bottom of the two-person pile, remained motionless. The unconscious boyfriend was still gasping for air, his labored rattle barely audible against the pounding, insistent rhythm of the synth-pop beat.

Someone bumped past my shoulder, suddenly shaking me from my paralyzed stupor. It was Esther, the house emergency First Aid kit clutched in her hands. But she was beaten to the stricken men by a tall figure in black Armani—my ex-husband.

Matt rolled the gasping man off his still partner, opened his gaping jaw even wider to peer inside, then carefully probed the victim’s mouth with two fingers.

“No obstructions,” he announced.

Esther was still holding the First Aid kit, unsure what to do next. It was Tucker who snatched the kit and dropped to his knees beside Ricky, checked his ex-boyfriend’s mouth and throat, tilted his head back to open the airway, then unwrapped a plastic CPR mask, placed it over Ricky’s bright pink face, and began the first stages of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

So what was I doing during all this? You would think after everything I’d been through—enduring a harrowing attack on a Greenwich Village rooftop, braving the business end of a loaded gun in this very coffeehouse, raising a teenaged daughter at the dawn of the twenty-first century—that I would instantly spring into some sort of competent action.

But you’d be wrong.

Like an idiot, I stood there, silently gawking, along with everyone else in the room. That is, until I heard someone urge—

“Clare? Clare? Shouldn’t you do something?”

It was Esther, and she was addressing me as Clare. Not “boss” in that urbane, near-sarcastic tone she typically used. She called me “Clare”—a word that only came out of Esther’s mouth when things were bad.

“Call 911,” I heard myself say.

Esther pointed to the crowd around us. “I think that ship’s already sailed.” Dozens of beautiful people were whipping out color-coordinated cell phones from designer bags or secret hidden pockets in their skin-tight rags. A few standing close to us were definitely talking to 911 operators—others, unfortunately, were calling their limo drivers and car services to arrange hasty retreats.

Within minutes, the front door opened and two NYPD officers came through, dark blue uniforms, nickel-plated badges, squawking radios. I recognized the pair at once—Officers Demetrios and Langley from the nearby Sixth Precinct. The Village Blend wasn’t just part of their regular beat, they were also regular customers (Turkish coffee and House Blend drinkers, respectively.)

Tucker was still giving CPR to Ricky.