Eating With the Angels (3 page)

My younger brother Emmet got mildly excited when he put together in his pot-addled head that I might one day meet big rock stars with fantastic drug connections, but my dad merely smiled and said, ‘Ah, good on you, darling,’ like he did when I brought in the newspaper or told him I’d pooped the dog, Frankie the first, second, third — briefly — and fourth. (They’d always had dachshunds and they’d always called them Frankie, which I personally thought was a poor choice of name given the typical dimensions of the breed.)

Even Tom neglected to get wildly enthusiastic about my chosen career path, which was perhaps my fault as I had failed to mention in the decade or so we’d known each other that I wanted to be a journalist.

‘But babe,’ he said, worriedly, ‘do you really think you have the killer instinct for all that?’

‘For all what?’ I wanted to know. To be honest, I had not thought much further than wearing power suits and going to the Four Seasons to interview important people. Did Leeza Gibbons need killer instinct, for heck’s sake?

‘For chasing ambulances and fingering crooks and flushing out mafia goons,’ Tom answered. ‘You do realise that’s what journalists do, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ I answered. When he put it like that, though, I started to wonder if I did have what it took. A crack developed that day in the pitcher of my faith in my professional ability and I’m not sure I ever completely plugged the ensuing leak. Tom sometimes did that, my mom too. Tapped into tiny hidden pockets of doubt that rocked my foundations. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I told him back then, trying to keep the uncertainty out of my voice.

I suppose I was. Fine, I mean. So, I wasn’t at the top of the class, or even in the middle, but I got by and even managed to put a little bit of money away pulling shifts at Il Secondo, where my boyfriend continued to impress his employer by being more Italian than the Italians.

Then I got the gig doing restaurant reviews for a giveaway downtown newspaper. The eating-out editor (also the fashion/decorating/automobile editor and advertising sales manager) was an Il Secondo regular and after ’Cesca showed off about me a couple dozen times, he got me to review a slightly unsavoury collection of Thai restaurants in the Village. Next thing you knew, I had a regular job. Of course at $20 a shot, plus expenses, I wasn’t exactly about to retire to a Soho loft but the glow of seeing my name on the pages of a tatty little tome other people were going to pick up and read or wrap their potato peelings in, well, that was worth all the tea in India (the world’s biggest tea-producing nation, by the way, not China).

‘Here she comes, our own Lois Lane,’ Pippo would crow when I came into work after that, blowing his basil and oregano breath all over me. ‘Whatcha gonna do with her, Thomas. Whatcha gonna do?’

I’d smile, slip on my black apron and start chopping scallions, grating Parmesan, doing whatever was needed, even if it meant helping ’Cesca out front of house or stepping in to assist her
special-needs
nephew Mikey with the dishes. We had fun, back then, in that
hot, noisy kitchen, Pippo and Tom floating around the grill and the pizza oven, glowing with heat and happiness at doing what they both loved best.

Me, I was there because my schoolbooks cost money and other than the guy from the giveaway newspaper, nobody else had offered me a job. And I felt safe with Tom there. And Pippo and ’Cesca watching out for me. College was hard. I felt poorer and dumber and less ambitious than everyone else. I didn’t know exactly what it was I wanted to do and it drove my teachers almost as mad as it drove me. After I graduated and put in a few years doing reviews and other rats and mice, though, I found myself enjoying minor notoriety as fill-in and ultimately full-time restaurant critic for the
Village Voice
. Now this made sense of everything about me. Tom and I loved the Village. We had escaped there permanently as soon as we could afford it and loathed the return trips to the Upper East Side. Our new neighbourhood seemed so eclectic in comparison. You never knew who was going to jump out of a cab on Bleecker Street: a starving artist, a supermodel, a bum, a broker. Everyone fitted in down there, no matter how much they failed to do so elsewhere, and I loved being associated with the famous
Village Voice.

‘You know, with your looks, you could end up being a news anchor on a TV station,’ Fleur insisted once. ‘They love that pretty all-American thing you have going, sweetie. Or you could end up sitting there with Regis, crossing those legs and smiling that smile.’

‘Yeah, right,’ I laughed and changed the subject, embarrassed. At one level, I knew I was not bad-looking, I really did. But my mother had been onto this pretty early in my life and made it her mission to make sure I never got too big for my boots. Sure enough, I never did. I got too big for pretty much everything else, mind you. While Mom is only just five feet two, I grew to a whopping five nine by age 12, a sin she found hard to forgive.

‘Who else is this gigantic?’ she would ask, pulling at sweater sleeves that were too short, tugging at the hem on my skirt. ‘Who else
doesn’t know when to stop growing?’ She acted like my height was something I had asked for just to spite her and I found myself compensating by curling my shoulders towards my stomach, trying to take up less space.

‘She’s such a shiksa,’ my mother would say to my father’s newspaper as she pulled at my hair. You would think this would make her happy but it didn’t, nothing I did could make her happy. I could never work out why not looking Jewish didn’t thrill her to the core given that she converted from Judaism to Catholicism when she married my dad and has been holier than the Pope ever since. Of course, her main motivation in life has seemed to be pissing off my grandmother. Never mind nose and face, Mom would cut off her entire head to spite her body if given half the chance. It started with marrying the doorman’s son, extended into moving into a
rent-controlled
tenement right next door to the white-glove building where she grew up, continued when she had a daughter and called her Mary-Constance, and progressed further when she sent me to Catholic school in my cute little uniform knowing that my grandmother would look out her window and see this every weekday of her life and presumably wish herself dead so she could spin in her grave.

Although I’d never spoken to her, I knew what my grandmother looked like. My dad had pointed her out to me in a rare moment of not-toeing-the-Estelle line. She was petite and dark and perfectly turned out and had a nose that pointed upwards as if anything below 10 feet was disgusting. She had a dog, a butt-ugly British bulldog, which must have been replaced every few years like Frankie because every now and again it got smaller, and her preferred method of transport was a limousine service. I tried to talk to her once even though I was born knowing this was the only cardinal sin not mentioned in catechism. I must have been six or seven and was walking home from school, skipping along minding my own business, trying not to step on a crack, break my mother’s back, when
my eyes happened upon a pair of tiny black patent-leather pumps with a delicate set of ankles above them. I lifted my eyes and there she was, my grandmother, staring at me with a look I took to be horror. I started to say something, hello I guess, but one of her hands flew up to shield her eyes and the other shot straight out in front of her. I took it to be a shutting-up gesture and obliged. So much for having no intuition, huh? She was dressed in black and was wearing a beautiful pearl necklace with matching over-sized pearl earrings and a tailored coat like something Audrey Hepburn might have stepped out in. Her dog chose that moment to cough up something disgusting onto the sidewalk and in the absence of knowing what to do next, I sidestepped the two of them and went on my way.

I guess we were dysfunctional before dysfunctional was even invented. That’s only on my mom’s side of the family though. My father’s parents, the Conlans, were pretty normal even though Grandma had more than the usual number of cats. Actually she kind of put me off cats but she baked her own bread and it was something else.

Anyway, as you would imagine of someone who changed her faith just to annoy her mother and moved right next door never to speak to her again, Mom had issues with maternity and these manifested themselves in her giving me the impression that below average was about as high as I should aim. Anything more would be showing off. When I turned 13, though, my face kind of settled into itself and my bosom caught up with my puppy fat and gave me an undeniably girlish shape. Almost overnight every acne-riddled testosterone-fuelled goofball in school started hitting on me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Cindy Crawford, I’m generally 10 pounds (okay, more like 15) heavier than I should be but I have been blessed with good skin (thanks for that, at least, Mom) and a passable face with turquoise blue eyes (even if, as my half-witted brother Emmet is so fond of saying, I look like I store nuts in my cheeks for the winter). My hair is kind of a boring brown but it’s thick and if I torture it with
enough electrical equipment it can straighten and look positively Sandra Bullock-ish. Of course, back when I was a goofy teen, I hadn’t mastered the art of the blow-dryer and I wasn’t quite such a dab hand with the make-up brush either but frankly no boys my own age looked anywhere other than my boobs anyway and the horny little toads liked what they saw. At the time, this new-found attention came as something of a surprise to me. I was used to being a too tall, too heavy, too brunette bit of below-average background scenery so when I ended up being bumped out of that category, it kind of freaked me out. In the circumstances, I was more than happy to start going steady with Tom. He made me feel safe.

I hiccupped into my champagne at this thought, and allowed a tear to slide down my cheek and onto my cocktail napkin. The emptiness in 6B where my husband should have been left me feeling exposed and, I suppose, scared. But that wasn’t why I was crying. I no longer felt safe, that was for sure, but even worse, the feeling wasn’t new.

Between New York and Venice I had at least four hangovers, all doozies. The flicker of a headache that had started on the tarmac at Kennedy Airport, obviously fuelled by one too many a glass of Moët, grew with a vengeance during the Atlantic crossing, stayed with me when I transferred at Rome, and lightened up only on approach to Marco Polo Airport where the effervescent blue and indigo of Venice opening up beneath me managed to quell if not quash the pain.

Not even having been so recently abandoned by my childhood sweetheart could wipe the smile off my face as the plane circled the city, a tiny glittering jewel set in the shimmering sprawl of vast lagoon. My heart skipped a beat, not with anxiety but with something approaching delight — and a little bit of gas thrown in for good measure. That airline chicken or fish will do it to you every time. Now I know some food writers make a big deal out of taking their own food on an airplane — a sourdough sandwich with prosciutto and arugula from some particular Second Ave deli, maybe, or a fresh goat-cheese salad with blanched asparagus made by a woman in a poncho who comes to town on a donkey every 15th Thursday — but I liked food to be brought to me. Even if it was desiccated fowl or unidentifiable sea creature. And accompanied, thanks to the likes of Ashlee, by enough champagne to give a girl reflux all the way through immigration control.

I pulled my bag full of party dresses into the silvery air outside the terminal and took a deep, long breath, feeling that Venetian oxygen attempting to replenish my oomph. I tried not to fixate on the phalanx of happy couples pushing past me, glowing with the joy of finding themselves there. Where were all the single people, I wondered? Was I the only solitary honeymooner in town? Why did everyone have to look so deliriously in love? These and other questions cluttered my addled mind as I pulled my bag, which chose that moment to develop one wonky wheel, to the water-taxi stand. What was I doing there? Why hadn’t I turned around in Rome and gone straight back home to sort out my life? How could I even consider checking into a romantic hotel without Tom? What was the matter with me?

‘Hello. Hello. Can you hear me?’

Of course I can hear you, I felt like telling the water-taxi driver on the pier: your face is only two inches away from mine. The sinking sun was behind him and I couldn’t make out his features, but his voice sounded loud and slightly supernatural. I stepped back. ‘Hotel Gritti Palace,’ I instructed him. I would think more clearly when I got there perhaps. He led me to his pristinely kept wooden motorboat. It looked like something in which Grace Kelly would have been at home, posing in a white halter neck and head scarf, head back, eyes closed, mysterious smile tripping across her lips. A mysterious smile was beyond me just at that point, my lips remained un-tripped upon, but I stayed outside the cabin at the back of the boat, my head thrown back, just the same.

The water-taxi driver didn’t speak again, just hurled my bag inside the cabin on his way to the bow, then pulled out into a shimmering sea-lane that seemed to stretch forever towards the outline of the magical city I had dreamed of for so long. All I could see was water and sky and the silhouettes of distant spires, blurry domes, swaying towers, precious gems strung along a chain of sterling islands.

It was twilight, the sun was setting spectacularly and in front of my very eyes, my whole world suddenly haemorrhaged pinks and purples and a sparkling sort of silver — the exact hue of which I can still picture to this day if I just half close my eyes and smile a certain way. It was like being in fairyland. It took my breath away and, in the hole in my heart left gaping by my lack of husband, I felt a lurch of unexpected joy — at being alive, at being there in the city of my imaginings. It didn’t seem right, yet I could feel the glow of something unbelievably like optimism as we approached the back of the floating collection of enchanted islands, leaving the endless watery blue of the sea, the airport, the rest of Italy, the world, behind us.

As we moved gently into a wide canal Venice sucked me into her bloodstream, took me to her heart. The ancient, crumbling walls of the city rose up on either side of me, crooked and leaning. The buildings had that look of an old woman’s baggy pantyhose, still trying to keep up appearances despite inevitable decline. Endearing was not enough of a word.

Once I was there, in the middle of it, I was surprised though — and not unpleasantly — at the suburban nature of my ancient surroundings. Well, not so much suburban, I guess, as residential. I had seen pictures of the basilica, the campanile, the square, of course. Who hadn’t? But that particular canal, those particular buildings, that was where people lived; real, normal Venetian people. I could see their laundry. I was passing by their windows as they sat at their kitchen tables sipping coffee and doing crosswords. I was catching a glimpse of their everyday lives. I was marvelling at this in the awestruck way people do marvel at things when they arrive in Venice, when at one window an extremely fat man picked his nose so violently I half expected his hand to penetrate the top of his head. That was just a little too everyday for my liking.

Then as quickly as she had breathed me into her bosom, Venice thrust me out of the canal at the other end and into the gleaming lagoon. It was like entering the world’s most extravagant theatre set
through the stage door. My jaw dropped open as we made a right turn in the ocean waters to follow the curve of the city. To my left the milky blue-green ocean stretched to faraway islands, the water bobbing and bejewelled with the lights of different vessels. Up ahead, the sky cascaded down in different shades of violet and mauve into a carpet of pink and orange around the edges of the magnificent church of Santa Maria della Salute, giving the impression that its silhouetted domes and bell towers radiated colour outwards.

On my right, the wide quay of the city was still pulling crowds towards the Piazza di San Marco, their numbers thickening as we approached the Doge’s Palace. I craned my neck to see the Bridge of Sighs. The Bridge of Sighs! Just the name left me breathless.

The water taxi sped on past the twin columns at the entrance to the famous piazza, and so we entered the Grand Canal.

Nothing I had ever seen or heard or dreamed about Venice did it justice. It simply smouldered like no other place I had ever been. Of course I had known that it was a collection of hundreds of tiny islands separated by canals and joined by bridges; but it had never really sunk in that there were no cars, no motorbikes, no street noises. Sure there was the thrust and whoosh of the chunky
vaporetto
, Venice’s public transport system, as it crashed into stops, spewing out and sucking in crowds of commuters and tourists on either side of the canal. And there was the gentle vroom of the smaller boats delivering people, wine, chairs, even caged birds to my amazement, but other than that there was no aggressive bustle, I suppose you would call it. No honking of horns, no crunching of metal, no squealing of brakes, no changing of gears.

A tiny bashed-up motorboat with two teenage boys chugged past us, a ghetto-blaster modestly pounding out hip-hop: the Venetian equivalent of big-city boy-racers without the bass to shake your bones. A grizzled fisherman put-putted past in his humble vessel, his mongrel dog sitting proudly right up on the bow, eyes straight ahead. A
traghetto
, a commuter gondola, crossed the canal up ahead, its
passengers standing up reading the paper, smoking, staring into space. And the sleek black tourist gondolas — curved like modest smiles — swarmed in front, around, behind us, the gondoliers calling to each other, leaning on their oars, raising their hands in salutation, leaning down to listen to their awe-struck passengers. I was transfixed by their grace and camaraderie. They were such a gang. Such a fixture in time and history, with their ancient traditional boats and their matching outfits, shouting Italian shorthand over the uncomprehending heads of blissed-out visitors to their magical city. I would take a gondola ride, I decided then and there, even though it was a sad and lonely thing to do on your own but, hang it, I was damned if Tom’s failure to show up was going to stop me from having a romantic break.

My charming taxi driver swerved at that point, yelling what I took to be obscenities and causing me to lose my balance and practise some obscenities of my own. When I straightened up I saw who he was swearing at: a tall, well-built gondolier who had cut right in front of us, his shiny coal-coloured boat gleaming and glinting, temporarily blinding me in the last of the sinking sun.

I heard the gondolier laugh and I shaded my eyes against the glare so I could see him better. He was dark and good-looking, as all gondoliers should be. I watched his biceps, smooth and brown and bulging, as he expertly turned his empty craft in the opposite direction to us. It was almost balletic, the way he travelled gently back and forth on the back of his boat, manoeuvring it this way and that with the single wooden oar. I could not keep my eyes off him and they slid up his body as he passed by — it was that sort of body, a lot of eyes would have slid up it in his time, trust me. But to my embarrassment, when my eyes finished with his hips, his stomach, his shoulders, his neck, his ears, the shape of his head and made it to his eyes, they were there to meet me, ready and waiting. He smiled and raised an eyebrow.

For a moment the world stopped spinning.

Lust, the Jackie Collins sort, completely overpowered me.

It was the most sensual experience I have ever had. And I know what you’re thinking: on her honeymoon? But it was only a second honeymoon with the same husband, remember, not very meaningful at all when you think about it. Especially, you know, in the circumstances.

Anyway, so there he was, smiling and raising an eyebrow. It was a moment to die for. My mouth was hanging open in awe though and I hadn’t had the presence of mind to shut it, so it was probably not quite so sensual an experience for him. I just kept staring,
slack-jawed,
as he laughed and slid further away from me. I drank in the breadth of his shoulders as they twisted with his oar, the swivel of his hips as he danced gracefully back and forth on those long, lean legs. Then without so much as a backward glance he turned off the Grand Canal and disappeared into Venice’s vast watery network, leaving me panting in a way most inappropriate for an until-very-recently happily (yes, well …) married woman. Luckily my water taxi pulled up outside the Hotel Gritti Palace, where a smiling doorman reached for my hand and pulled me onto the pier.

Thoughts of the delectable gondolier evaporated as I took in my home for the next week. The Gritti Palace had none of the Moorish extravagance of some of its neighbours but was one of the
best-known
hotels in the city. I had chosen it because it was a favourite of Ernest Hemingway and because I’d heard of someone who’d stayed there during the famous Venice
acque alta
when the waiters had worn waders and carried people to their tables through the flooded restaurant. Naturally that kind of dedication to the experience of eating appealed to me.

My room was perfect. Truly. It was painted a perfect green, not a shade I had cared too much for until then. It was the colour of a pistachio, real pistachio (my second favourite nut after the macadamia) not the colour called ‘pistachio’ that shows up in the windows of chainstore clothing shops dumping end-of-season lime-green pants.

With its smoky gilt mirror, ornate gold-leaf bed-head, glass lanterns and luscious brocade drapes and wall hangings, it was a room made for honeymooners. I looked around, expecting this thought to bring with it a tug of misery, a burr of terror, but none came. I didn’t want to be there in that beautiful room without Tom; of course I didn’t. It was far from what I had imagined. But on the other hand it wasn’t all wretched. This unnerved me. It wasn’t right. I stood in the silence of the beautiful room and tried hard not to think of those bronzed arms stretching and bending in the fading sunlight outside. What the hell was the matter with me? I should have been vomiting with grief and crying till my ears bled at the way things had turned out, not feeling vaguely pleased at having immediately found someone new to ogle. The silence grew suffocating so I squared my shoulders and threw open the picture-postcard window, letting Venice in. It was like being hit in the face by the smell of onions caramelising, the promise of things to come, and it distracted me. A peal of laughter floated up from the terrace below, accompanied by the faint clink of glasses and the tinkle of cutlery. I propped myself up on the sill and drank in the view. Across the canal to my left the dazzling dome of the Santa Maria della Salute was now standing in shadow, the pinks and purples of the city and sea dulled to a hundred muted greys. To the right, I could see the sculptures in the canal-side terrace of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Below me a vaporetto chugged along the canal, its wake sending water to slap at the sunken hotel walls. Someone shouted, a throaty roar bounced back, more clinks and tinkles, water lap, lap, lapping. I was starting to feel very odd. The city seemed to be disappearing and appearing again in waves of misty pastels like a dream. My eyes were suddenly desperate to close, my mind was calling out for darkness, and it occurred to me I was exhausted. Being left by my husband might not have been what I was expecting but it was hard work all the same. Leaving the window open, I climbed into the great big bed, my eyes lingering on the telephone. I should call Tom, I thought. Of course I should.
Instead, lulled by the sounds of my Venetian fantasy, I slept.

Sometime in the night I woke up, confused by where I was and without whom. I dragged myself out of bed and over to the open window again, my eyes travelling across the terracotta tiles of the hotel roof and down to the Grand Canal. It was almost silent now; the city was asleep. But in the darkness I could sense something out there, something to do with me. It seems crazy, I know, but haven’t you ever had the sensation someone was watching you? Weariness clouded my vision as I peered into the blackness. I couldn’t see a thing but I could hear something — a watery something, an oar perhaps, moving in the murky waters of the midnight canal? Yes, there was a boat, moving so slowly it was almost stopped. I could almost make out its shape, an inky grin, opposite the hotel entrance on the far side of the canal. I squinted and peered further out the window but it was pitch-black and my eyes didn’t seem to be adjusting. All the same, I thought I could identify a figure, and I thought the figure was not altogether unfamiliar. The breadth of those shoulders, the width of those hips. I shook my head. Impossible! What would a man with whom I had only exchanged one look (albeit a humdinger) be doing outside my hotel in the middle of the night? Either I was losing my mind or it was an extraordinary coincidence or a total outrage. I pondered this, my heart hammering, breath held tight in my lungs. My mind did not feel lost, I didn’t believe in coincidences and, to my shame, the thought of a total outrage held a certain allure. Enormously. In places separated from my husband for less than two days.