Даниэла Стил: All That Glitters

Sam and Coco complemented each other as best friends. In some ways, he grounded her, and in others Coco encouraged him to spread his wings, in spite of what his parents said, and the limits they put on him. She tried to give him the courage to fly free of them, but he always felt earthbound compared to her. He wanted to soar as she did, but he didn’t know how to do that yet. It was one of his many goals. To be free and try new things. He admired how fearless Coco was and how brave.

Bethanie and Tom enjoyed dinner with their daughter. They walked on the beach after dinner, and went to bed early. On Saturday they swam in the ocean, lay by the pool, and went out to dinner that night at a restaurant Tom and Bethanie wanted to try, and hadn’t yet. During dinner, Coco told them more about her work at Time. Her parents were always proud of her. She had always had all the emotional support she needed from them. It was freely given, and they had always encouraged her to have confidence in herself. Her mother reminded her that there was nothing she couldn’t achieve if she tried. It had been an atmosphere in which Coco had thrived.

When they were out to dinner on Saturday night, Coco’s parents were excited about their trip to France the next day. Hearing them and talking about it made her miss it more than she had thought she would. But she didn’t want to make a bad impression at work by asking for a vacation right after she started the job, so she had decided to pass on it this year. She had wonderful memories of their many trips together during school vacations and in the summers.

“Are you all packed, Mom?” she asked her mother when they got home from dinner. Bethanie laughed guiltily with a glance at her husband.

“More or less,” she said and Tom laughed.

“You know your mom. She’ll be slipping more things into her suitcase and another one will suddenly appear as we walk out the door.” He always pretended to grouse about how much luggage she took, but in truth, he didn’t care. She liked to wear pretty clothes, and he enjoyed indulging her. Once in Paris and the South of France, she’d buy more, he knew. It was a trait Coco had inherited from her. Tom traveled light, but all he needed for the trip were white jeans, some linen jackets, a blazer, and a suit or two. It was so much easier for a man to pack less, as his wife always pointed out to him. She often had a whole suitcase of purses and shoes, to match every outfit. But at the hotel where they stayed in Cap d’Antibes, people dressed well. It was an older crowd, an expensive hotel, and they went there every summer for a week or two. Coco loved it there too.

It was a relaxing weekend, and Bethanie made them a big brunch on Sunday. After that, Tom drove Coco back to the jitney to return to the city. They had to finish packing, and were leaving on a nine P.M. flight to Paris, where they would spend several days seeing friends, going to art exhibits, and visiting their favorite museums and restaurants. And then they would head to the South of France, followed by a few days in Venice, and ending the trip in London, as they always did. They were planning to be away for just under three weeks, a luxury of time Coco couldn’t afford this summer, for a worthy cause. It was her first serious summer job.

She was in a good mood all the way back to the city after seeing them. She’d had a nice time with her parents, and she went to a movie with two of her girlfriends from Columbia that night. She knew that Sam had a date with the daughter of friends of his parents and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

“How was it?” she asked when he called her after the movie.

“Painful. She was nice looking, but a huge bore. My parents’ only criterion is that the girls are Jewish. I don’t think she said ten words all evening. I was home by ten o’clock.” He made a date with Coco for later that week, to go to dinner and a movie they were both dying to see. They never ran out of things to talk about. When they hung up, she knew her parents’ flight to Paris was already in the air. They had called from the airport to say goodbye again. After talking to Sam, Coco turned on the TV in their den for a while, and then went to bed early so she’d be fresh for work the next day.

The next week at Time flew by and kept her busy, so she didn’t have a chance to miss them. Her parents called her from Paris, and told her what they were doing, what restaurants and galleries they’d been to, since they were major collectors and passionate about art. By the end of the week, they were in the South of France, happily at their favorite hotel.

That weekend she and Sam went out to Southampton, and spent the whole time relaxing and swimming, and sleeping by the pool. They slept chastely in separate rooms, as they always had, since there had never been even a hint of romance between them. He had met a new girl that week, at the deli near his office where he’d had lunch. She was Irish Catholic, but he said he didn’t care, as long as his mother didn’t find out. Coco told him about several guys she’d spotted at work, whom she hadn’t met yet but looked promising. Sam always said that he was closer to Coco than to his own sisters, and he could tell her anything, as she could with him. There were no secrets between them.

They had lain in the sun all weekend and relaxed. Sam had borrowed his father’s car for the weekend, since his father didn’t drive on Friday night or Saturdays anyway. He turned the radio on, on the drive home. The news was on, and Coco was about to hunt for a music station they both liked, when a bulletin came on, announcing a major terrorist attack in France, on the Promenade de la Croisette in Cannes. She looked at Sam with fear in her eyes.

“Don’t be crazy, Coco. Don’t jump to conclusions,” he told her calmly. He knew how her mind worked, and that she would panic at what they’d just heard, thinking of her parents. “They were probably at their hotel.” It was late evening in France, and Coco knew they were most likely at dinner somewhere, at one of their favorite restaurants, but she worried anyway. She took out her cellphone and called both of them. Each call went directly to voicemail. She was silent for most of the ride home after that, flipping through the stations for further news. What they’d heard so far was that several bombs had been detonated. The terrorists had been shot and killed. Several hundred people had been injured and well over a hundred were dead, after an initial count. It was one of the worst attacks so far. When they got to her building on Fifth Avenue, Sam parked on the street and went upstairs with her to watch the news on TV. It was heartbreaking to see; people carrying dead children, and other children screaming in fear and running after the blast, looking for their parents, husbands kneeling over their wives, parents over children, lovers dying in each other’s arms, riot police everywhere.

She watched the scene intently in terrified silence, holding Sam’s hand, but there was no sign of her parents in the carnage they saw on TV. Her face was tense and Sam didn’t speak as Coco continued to call their cellphones, with no answer. When she called the hotel, they said that the Martins were out and not in their rooms. When she checked with the hotel restaurant, they had not dined at the hotel that night.

“Shit, Sam, where are they?” she said nervously.

“They’re probably walking around somewhere,” he said, but he could see the terror in her eyes, and didn’t know how to reassure her.

Sam and Coco spent the night on the couch in front of the TV, watching the same footage again and again. He called his parents and said he was staying at a friend’s.

The call finally came at six A.M., which was noon in France. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before she answered, praying it was them. But an unfamiliar male voice with a French accent asked for her by name. He pronounced it like a French name. “Nicole Martin.” Her name was on her parents’ documents and travel papers as next of kin, so if something happened to them, she would be called.