“Hmm.” Aruni's earnest brown eyes crinkled in thought. “Well, what are you best at?”

“Everything.” Serafina made this pronouncement without a trace of shame, and perhaps a soupçon of healthy arrogance. She slung her arms across the back of her side of the booth, gesturing broadly. “From macaroons to pain au chocolat, meringue to petit four, I pretty much rock the confectionary spectrum.” Seeing Aruni's eyebrows shoot up, she smiled. “Seriously, I’m like the puff pastry whisperer. I can make a choux paste that’ll float your éclair on a sea of mocha yumminess. My lady fingers and biscotti scoff at the need for coffee. My chocolate mousse is so rich it makes Rupert Murdoch feel poor. And my wedding cakes—well, husbands may come and go, but my cakes are timeless. I’ve never wanted to do anything else with my life—the truth is, I’ve screwed up everything else I’ve touched—but pastries? We just seem to understand one another. It’s been that way since I was a little kid.”

What Sera didn’t say was that, as a painfully shy child with limited people skills, cooking had been both creative outlet and peace offering. Pleasing others with her pastries had been one way to placate them, make them like her, ensure she always had an invite to the party. Well, until alcohol had taken over the role of social lubricant… and subsequently ruined her life. But Sera wasn't thinking about that today.

“Now,” she continued, “all I have to do is master the altitude adjustments, and I should be wowing the taste buds of you Fe-heads in no time—that is, if they haven’t been burnt off from eating all those chile peppers.”

Aruni looked a bit nonplussed by Sera's vehement speech. But then a wide grin spilled across her face. “You're going to make me fat, aren’t you?”

“I might try,” Sera said with a smile of her own. “But maybe if we swap baked goods for yoga lessons, we’ll manage to keep it in balance.”

“Rock on,” Aruni said, high-fiving her across the table. “I like the way you think. And as for your menu and the need for sleep—girl, you’re going to need not just your z’s but plenty of time to hang out with your new gal-pals now that you’re living in Santa Fe. What about doing like those ladies on TV do—the ones on the Food Channel that have the cupcake chain stores? Like, just only do cupcakes?”

Sera had considered it. “Well, I still want to be around when the cupcake craze dies down—not that I think people will ever get tired of cupcakes, but a store that sells nothing else may get old. Back in New York they’ve already moved on to donuts and even ‘cronuts.’ Don’t ask me how to describe those,” she added with a smile, “but trust me, they’re delicious. Anyhow, I also want to have coffee and some savories like quiches or simple sandwiches available for people who come in throughout the day, so I can have a constant flow of customers from breakfast through teatime, you know?”

“Totally. People are always poking their noses into our placita, asking if there’s a place they can grab a coffee and a Danish or read a newspaper and just hang out for a few minutes, instead of having to have a formal sit-down meal at some spendy tourist joint. I know I’d love to have a place to pop by and get some tea or a veggie wrap once in a while. Coffee doesn’t fit into the yoga lifestyle, but a girl does get thirsty.” She dimpled. “Speaking of which, are you gonna keep Big Mama around?”

“I have a feeling my aunt would go into mourning otherwise,” Sera said drily.

“Not just her,” Aruni said seriously. “All us girls. We love it, and it does wonders for our… well, you know.” She gestured below the belt. “Don’t worry. I'm sure you'll find a way to please your customers and yourself as well, whatever you decide to serve. And speaking of pleasing…” Grinning conspiratorially, she leaned even farther forward across the laminated wooden table and lowered her voice. “Pauline tells me you’ve agreed to keep the back room going. I can’t tell you what that’ll mean to the girls.”

Hm. Her new friend seemed to be quite adamant about this “girl power” thing. “‘The girls’?” Sera asked cautiously. She had the feeling she’d just been ambushed by the real reason Aruni had invited her out to lunch.

Aruni waited until the waitress had come over with their drink orders, pouring Sera a satisfyingly deep ceramic mug of black coffee and providing a decaf green tea for the yogini. “Y’all enjoy,” said the woman with a wink, bumping elbows with Aruni. Her Texas accent gave her away as another nonnative in a town full of transplants from other, less eclectic places. “Give a holler when y’all are ready to order. Oh, and ’Runi-baby, I’ll see you next Friday at the shindig, right?” She sashayed off, a sway in her ample hips.

“You sure will. Thanks, Janice,” Aruni said to the waitress’s retreating back. She turned to answer Sera's question. “Yeah,” she said with exaggerated relish, practically rubbing her hands together. “The Back Room Babes.”

Sera was getting tired of playing the straight man. “All right, lady,” she said to the woman she was already slotting into her social solar system on a tight orbit, “let me have it. What’s with these ‘Back Room Babes,’ and just how much is it going to embarrass me?”

As Aruni explained it over delicious burgers—sans meat but rife with green chiles—the Back Room Babes were a society of local women who had come together over the past few years under Pauline Wilde’s auspices, mainly in the evenings after work and kids were squared away, to gab, commiserate, empower, and educate themselves. Drawn by the titillating sexual aids—er, “pleasure enhancements”—offered at P-HOP, but unwilling to be seen shopping during regular hours, women had begun trickling in around closing time, begging Pauline for just “one quick peek” while no one else was around to see them browse. Pauline, fired up with outrage over the shame her fellow femmes felt exploring their natural needs, had arranged special “viewing hours” and began offering talks, videos, and even workshops for the women. Though Pauline hadn’t been crazy about the group calling themselves “babes”—a feminist to the core, she wasn’t keen on infantilizing women—she’d bowed gracefully to the alliteration and rah-rah spirit of the thing. Also out of deference to their sensibilities, she’d kept the lights nice and dim, served nachos, margaritas, and lots of Big Mama kombucha, and before she knew it, she had a regular group meeting twice monthly to catch up, shoot the shit, and do their damnedest to spice up their love lives.

“I got lured over to the back room for the first time when I heard howls and coyote yips coming across the courtyard one night while I was locking up the studio,” Aruni said. “I was a bit leery, because quite honestly it sounded like someone was throwing a Twilight convention in there with all the werewolf noises, but I had just moved out here from Chicago and I didn’t know many people. Plus,” she said with an edge to her voice, “the farkackte schmuck I had come out here following had just dumped me on my ass. And this after he begged me to drop a thriving practice in Bucktown and come out to the desert so we could meld our chakras and have babies and ohm our way happily ever after into the sunset. That shmendrik.” She shook her head in remembered disgust, quivering curls adding dimension to her indignation. “So anyway,” Aruni concluded, touching a little charm on a string around her wrist and visibly shaking off her bitterness, “I went over to investigate what all those loony women were up to, and before I knew it, I was one of them.”

Had Sera not been born and raised in New York City, she might have had trouble following, but since she had, she mentally translated the Yiddish in her new friend’s description of her ex-boyfriend easily enough. Roughly: “Bastard of Blake-like Proportions.” Aruni’s general aura of good-natured Zen had fallen away for a moment there, and Sera had seen a bit of the tough yet wounded Chicago girl she was clearly trying to leave behind. It had the effect of endearing the yogini to her more than if Aruni had taken the breakup with enlightened good grace. She felt a twinge of outrage at any man who would ask a woman to uproot her whole life like that, only to leave her high and dry. At least it sounded like Aruni’s ex had mercifully exited the picture. For Serafina, Blake Austin was like the cat from Pet Sematary—he just kept coming back, stinkier and more psycho every time. Even a year later, he was still doing his damnedest to ruin her name. It was one of the reasons getting out of New York City had seemed so appealing.

But she didn’t want to spend a single second of her new life dwelling on old regrets. She’d much rather focus on the possibilities of the present.

“Wow. Sounds like the group’s really meant a lot to you.”

“Oh, totally.” Aruni nodded emphatically. “I couldn’t imagine my life now without the girls and our little get-togethers. And pretty soon, you’ll feel the same. Not that you’ve got much choice in the matter.” She laughed. “As the owner of the former P-HOP/soon-to-be-Bliss, you’re pretty much already inducted into the club.” Aruni chucked her on the arm in a congratulatory way. “Pauline’s going to want to pass the torch on to you sooner or later. She’s not getting any younger, and I know she sees you as the carrier of her legacy. You’ll be running the whole show in no time. But don’t worry,” she continued bracingly, perhaps sensing a bit of Sera’s hesitance. “You’re gonna love the Back Room Babes, and the women are all going to love you, too. I can’t say enough about what it’s done for me to be a part of our little federation. Socially, spiritually, and especially sexually. It’s a real source of transformational opportunities, you know? And isn’t that what life’s all about?”

A few weeks ago, Sera might have looked askance at that. But it occurred to her that, cloaked in New Age-ry as it sounded, “transformational opportunities” were exactly what she was after—what she was, in fact, betting her future on. “Well, ah, yes, I guess it is…”

“Anyhow, our next get-together is right around the corner,” Aruni continued blithely. “You’ll be there, right?”

“Isn’t it a bit soon for the Back Room Babes to be meeting again?” Sera asked, surprised.

“Soon?” Aruni said, a mystified expression crossing her mobile features.

“For Pauline—after losing Hortencia, I mean.”

Aruni clicked her tongue, expression clearing with understanding. “Such a senseless thing,” she murmured. “They didn’t have to part that way. Two stubborn personalities like that, though… it was bound to end in heartache.”

Sera raised a brow inwardly. Odd way to put it…, she thought, but she couldn’t argue Pauline’s stubbornness, and from what she’d heard, Hortencia had been more than a match for her feisty aunt. What it had to do with Hortencia’s passing, however, she couldn’t fathom. “Er…”

“Seriously, it’ll do Pauline good to get back in the swing of things,” Aruni pronounced, barreling through Sera’s bemusement. “And I know it would cheer her up to introduce you to our little club. So… you in?”

“I doubt I can make it,” Sera hedged. “I’m going back to New York tomorrow. I have a lot of things to wrap up back East. I’ll be packing and shipping not only my personal stuff but my catering and baking equipment as well. At least, what I don’t leave behind for my assistant Carrie,” she amended. “Then I have to deal with my apartment, and there are a lot of people I need to say good-bye to. I’ll be gone all week, up until Friday,” she said apologetically. “Maybe next time.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Aruni said brightly. “Friday means you’ll be back just in time. And it’s a lucky thing, too, because believe me, you don’t wanna miss what’s going on next week! It’s Zozobra, and there’s no better way to experience Santa Fe than to rock out at the big Z-fest.”

“Zozo-wha?” Sera asked.

Aruni just shook her head mysteriously. “It’s something you have to see to believe. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Just meet us at P-HOP—well, I guess it’s Bliss now—next Friday evening and you’ll find out. Oh, and bring your dancing shoes.” She gave a little shoulder shimmy, as if she just couldn’t wait. “Ooh, here comes Janice with dessert. Awesome.” Aruni bounced in her seat, utterly enamored with the world.

Sera had the urge to lean over the booth and give her new friend a squeeze for being so cute, but she contented herself with a smile and mental promise to herself to bake the yogini something special, first chance she got. Perhaps a matcha green tea mousse, with a white chocolate base and a marzipan yoga teacher performing warrior pose on the top… Her mind drifted happily with sweet visions of custom confections until the reality of their dessert landed with a clink of china and the rattle of a fork before her widening eyes.