Eating With the Angels (15 page)

‘A fine old mess I got myself in this time, huh?’ I said, sounding far more flippant than I felt. My stomach may have been concave but there was still room in it for butterflies.

‘Fleur says you have some sort of amnesia,’ Tom said. He looked so worried. ‘That you can’t remember the past few years.’

‘Yup,’ I agreed, ignoring the involuntary clench in my internal organs at the sound of my best friend’s name. ‘Where I’m coming from I’m still happily churning out reviews for the
Voice
and married to you.’

We looked each other in the eye and it was a seriously weird, sad moment.

‘Tom, I know this is —’

‘Connie, you have to —’

The clumsiness was hard to handle. I mean, you’ve gathered I’m no stranger to the awkward moment but none of them, not even one up until that point, had ever been with Tom. When you’ve known
each other since kindergarten, there’s not much call for awkwardness. We’d been watching each other pee for more than 30 years, for heaven’s sake.

‘You first,’ I said with forced amiability, trying to break the cycle of discomfort. ‘Go on. You have all your faculties.’

Tom shook his head. ‘This is all so, I don’t know, bizarre, Connie. I just keep trying to put myself in your situation and I can’t for the life of me even begin to imagine what you are going through but — Jesus, does that thing on your head hurt?’

‘My hair?’

‘No, babe, the scar.’

Hearing him call me babe made a lump rise up in my throat. I had forgotten what a sexy voice he had. How long had it been since he had called me babe?

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Part of me wanted to jump out of bed and fall into his arms but chances were I would trip before I got that far and end up with a whole new coma and a completely different bunch of lost memories. Instead, I abandoned any attempt at a tearful reunion or polite chitchat and cut straight to the chase. ‘What happened to us, Tom? I just don’t get it.’

‘Jesus, Connie.’ At that moment Tom looked older than his 36 years. His skin was lined around eyes that were droopy with weariness: whether from being up all night with an 11-month-old or finding out his wife couldn’t remember leaving him I didn’t know, but either way he wore his troubles on his face for all to see.

Still, my blood pumped warmly around my body at the sight of him. Not quite as warmly as it did when a certain neurosurgeon/ gondolier was in the room but it pumped all the same. Put it this way, I certainly did not feel like I wasn’t married to him. Not at all.

He was reading my face as much as I was reading his, his eyes flitting from one to the other of mine. Did he think I looked older than 36? Did he like my new body, my new hair? Did he still think I was cute like I thought he was? Had I known how lucky I was to
have him when I had him? It was hard to imagine how we had gotten there, to that point, staring at each other across a sterile hospital room wondering what we liked about each other and what we didn’t, wondering why we weren’t married any more.

‘What happened?’ I asked him again. ‘Tell me, Tom, please. I know it must be hard for you, seriously I do, but I’m in the dark here. It’s like I’ve woken up a whole new person and I don’t know what the old person did but from what I’ve heard, I can’t say I like the sound of her. But I still need to know what happened and you can tell me, so please, please, please do.’

He hesitated for a moment, but I knew he would do what I asked. We were old, trusted, tried and true friends, no matter what.

‘Ty Wheatley,’ he said flatly, ‘that’s what happened.’

Well, that much I knew. ‘But how?’ I asked. ‘I hardly know the guy and suddenly we’re engaged? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t sound like me, Tom. And on top of everything you know how I feel about crumpled linen. Jeez, like who can afford the dry-cleaning? How could someone like Ty Wheatley have happened to us?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ he answered showing some signs of irritability that I suppose were not exactly unwarranted. ‘It’s your story. I wasn’t there, you know, as events unfolded.’

‘Yeah, well I’m a little hazy on the details too, what with the whole pretzel thing,’ I shot back, feeling fairly irritable myself. ‘So as far as I’m concerned I wasn’t there either.’ I checked myself, though, because Tom was still my best chance of gathering the details of how my life had gone off the rails so I couldn’t afford to alienate him. ‘Come on,’ I pleaded again. ‘Help me out here.’

He softened. ‘All I know is that one minute you’re walking through the Village talking to me on your cell-phone and the next you’re cutting me off to take a call from someone else. Then I’m at Kennedy Airport waiting for you and finally,
arrivederci
, I’m in Venice on my own.’

I saw myself again on Bleecker Street, the beautiful brisk
morning after the lobster tails at Gotham, my coat pulled close, tears in my eyes, Ty Wheatley on the cell-phone, the smell of vanilla frosting thick in the air. I checked myself. I was confused again. Things weren’t connecting. Ty Wheatley on the phone? I felt something horribly like guilt curdling inside me. But why would I feel guilt? What had I done?

‘Dinner.’ My Pucci-clad mushroom-seller interrupted us with a plate of something that looked like an old sneaker boiled in slimy green pond scum. Pieces of corn and carrot slid across the top in a slick of something oily and the plate was stone cold. The whole thing looked repulsive.

‘No thank you.’ I pushed it away, although frankly flushing it down the toilet would have been doing the poor sucker in the next room a favour, if that was where it was headed.

‘Suit yourself,’ Mrs Pucci said. ‘Like I care.’

‘You were much better as a mushroom-seller,’ I told her as she left the room.

‘Ain’t we all,’ she answered as she disappeared out of sight.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Tom suggested and his face brightened, making him look more like the old (younger) him that I remembered. ‘Why don’t I ring the restaurant — they won’t be busy yet. Want me to order for you? They can deliver before the rush.’

What a husband, I thought to myself. What a perfect husband.

‘Bring me the
mozzarella di bufala
,’ Tom instructed whoever answered the phone at work, ‘and the
insalata di noci
with extra gorgonzola.’

My eyes glazed over at the thought of that sharp, creamy cheese with caramelised walnuts and pear. Something soft, something crisp, something crunchy. I could hardly wait.

‘I’ll have the
gnocchi di patate al tegamino
and use the primo basil from my private supply,’ Tom was saying, ‘and throw in the
galletto al mattone
as well, not too heavy on the mushroom sauce either, Paolo, I saw how you were plating up last night, don’t drown the
poor bird. Bring some spinach focaccia as well, and make it snappy, huh, I’m dealing with a very hungry woman here.’

He looked so loose and happy talking about food, my Tom. So at peace with the world and himself. So … unfamiliar to me when it boiled down to it. Had I not been able to make him loose and happy when we were together? Had he not been at peace with me?

‘Keep going,’ I said when he turned back to me. ‘Tell me what you know.’

‘It was the day we were going to go to Venice,’ he said, ‘you know, to try to start afresh. We got into a fight in the morning. About butter. God, Connie, this is such ancient history … are you sure we have to go over it again?’

‘It’s not ancient history to me,’ I said. ‘Please, Tom. Keep going.’

‘We had a fight — you really don’t remember? You stormed out, said you were going for a walk.’

I did vaguely remember us shouting at each other over the breakfast dishes although it could have been a generic memory, I couldn’t pinpoint the specifics. And I had been known to walk off a head of steam in my time.

‘And?’

‘And so I turn up at the airport at four in the afternoon like we planned and fly off on our second honeymoon alone while you stay in New York, move out of our apartment and start your new job as the queen of dining and wining.’

This just sounded so unlike me I still could not believe it. I was just not the fail-to-turn-up-on-your-second-honeymoon type. Even in my dreams, my subconscious, I was the one who turned up, the one who did what was expected, who obeyed the rules … for a while, you know, in the case of Venice, until I decided to do unto someone else what was not being done unto me. And on my second honeymoon, when you really should expect things to be done unto you. Big-time.

‘You’re sure nothing else happened to me?’ I asked Tom, determined to find an explanation for my out-of-character behaviour.
‘I wasn’t mugged or kidnapped or drugged or brainwashed or something? It just doesn’t seem like me, Tom. You have to admit it. Maybe I was suffering from Stockholm syndrome.’

‘I don’t think so.’ His face had hardened and I decided to steer clear of any suggestion that Ty Wheatley had kidnapped me in case there was incontrovertible proof otherwise.

‘So you stayed in Venice. Without me.’ All the same, I thought it might not hurt to try pointing the finger back at Tom a little.

‘It was some second honeymoon, let me tell you,’ he said in a surprisingly genial fashion. ‘The food was crap but the markets were okay. Of course, I pretty much only left my room to buy vodka.’

Was this really happening? My life was getting more and more peculiar as the minutes ticked by.

‘And Fleur?’ Tom looked uncomfortable again and took off his jacket. He was wearing a cool striped shirt with floral collar and cuffs and he looked good. Very good. Delectable even. Like the Tom I had married. Better, possibly.

‘Christ, Connie, the way things have turned out I feel so bad, you know, I feel like a real fucking shit but you have to remember that you left me. It wasn’t the other way around.
You
left
me
.’

I did have to remember that. But it wasn’t easy. ‘But didn’t you try to get me back? Didn’t you try to talk some sense into me? Didn’t you fight for me?’

‘Are you kidding me? You dump me from a great height for that, that fucking
faggot
without so much as a moment’s notice and I am supposed to kill myself to get you back? I don’t think so, Connie. I’ve got my pride. I mean, fuck that.’

I had hurt him, horribly, that much was plain. He was still so angry.

‘You just take up with Old Money Bags and start your new life like you never even had an old one. Shit, Connie. Forget it. Then I bump into Fleur one night and we end up having a few drinks and talking about stuff, and you know …’

‘… one thing led to another. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve read the book, I’ve seen the movie.’

‘It wasn’t like that, babe.’ The anger whooshed out of him.

‘What
was
it like, then?’

‘It was like I didn’t know you any more, Connie, that’s what it was like, but I knew her. She was still the same old Fleur I had always known. And she took me under her wing and bolstered me.’

‘And I didn’t?’

‘I don’t know that you are the bolstering type, babe.’

He was right. I needed bolstering myself, more likely. But had Tom bolstered me? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that my heart was breaking all over again and there was no surgeon in the world that could put that back together.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, tears I did not want to shed suddenly leaking out of me. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I could turn back the clock and try harder, Tom. I don’t want to be with Ty Wheatley. I don’t even know him. I’m just so scared of what’s going to happen. I want to go back to the way things were.’

Poor Tom, he looked as unhappy as I felt and next thing I knew he was sitting on the edge of the bed, rocking me slowly, just like he always had when I’d been hurt or upset. I felt so safe there, wrapped up in his arms, his warmth, his concern, that it took me quite a while to notice that he didn’t smell like himself. He didn’t smell of anything.

‘Don’t tell me you’re not using sage any more,’ I said, pulling back from him to reach for the Kleenex.

‘Too much, according to you,’ he answered and there was an edge to his voice. ‘Oh yeah, you’ve probably forgotten,’ — he was rueful rather than mean, but still nowhere near as warm as he had been before — ‘Pippo passed away not long after you and I broke up and he left me the restaurant. Yeah,’ he said, smiling with his mouth if not his eyes at my reaction. ‘Pretty cool, huh? I mean it broke my heart to lose him but to get my own restaurant, well. So, anyways, I relaunched it — man, I can’t believe I am having to tell you this — as Tom’s and …’

‘And?’

‘And you reviewed it and gave it one star.’

One star?

The nicest way to kill a restaurant. The kiss of death. A no-star restaurant people would go to just to see how awful it was, a two-star restaurant they would go to because they knew it would be good value for money, a three-star restaurant they would go to because they couldn’t afford a four-star restaurant, and a four-star restaurant they would save up for so they could stick it to their friends who hadn’t been there yet.

A one-star restaurant they would most likely ignore.

‘Wow. Fleur told me I was a bitch,’ I said sorrowfully, ‘but I’d hoped she was exaggerating.’ I waited for Tom to argue but he didn’t. How it must have hurt to have the woman who had been by his side half his life deal such a horrible blow at such a crucial time. I hated me. I was a bitch. ‘So what happened to Tom’s?’ I asked in a small voice.

‘I closed it and turned it back into Il Secondo,’ Tom replied. ‘Then I got a guest spot on the Food Network and actually things kind of looked up from there. Don’t worry, Connie, you didn’t kill me. Just knocked me out cold for a while.’ He looked shamefaced when he realised what he’d said but I just laughed and said: ‘Hello. Anybody there?’

The truth was I was so relieved that I hadn’t killed him that I nearly kissed him. And the other truth was that I had been thinking about kissing him for a while. The only thing that stopped me was that it would have meant betraying Fleur, cheating with her partner, and I didn’t think I could do that, even though as far as I was concerned she had done it to me, but then I probably wasn’t a good person to judge.