‘Here,’ she said, thrusting the note at me. ‘I don’t know what you did to get it but this is for you.’ She shot me a nasty look before the elevator door closed and I opened the piece of paper. I’m not joking about seeing you blonde, it read. Call me. And there was Marco’s phone number.
My feet hardly touched the ground as I glided up to 14th Street and across the avenues to Ninth. Marco, the cutest guy I had ever seen in my whole entire life, the man who caused a party in my pants, wanted me to call him. The new me was hot! And I was open to that, wasn’t I? I was the new me. I could be anyone I wanted to be. Sinful thoughts infiltrated my brain and I saw myself thrashing around various unmade beds, my legs wrapped around Marco’s hips, his lips on my throat, my hands on his chest.
After spotting Signora Marinello through the window, I sailed into Nick’s diner with a spring in my step. She was sitting in a booth wearing a Starsky and Hutch cardigan over her uniform, even though it was sweltering outside. She looked like a big knitted mountain and my heart swelled with love as I all but skipped across the linoleum to her table.
‘Signora Marinello!’ I cried with excitement. ‘It’s me! Buòn giorno!’
She lifted her beautiful smooth face up at the sound of my voice and lit up at the sight of me, filling me with such hope and warmth that I didn’t even notice she was sitting with someone. I launched myself into her arms.
‘Oh, I’ve missed you,’ I said into her 12-ply woollen shoulder. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’
‘Me too,’ Signora Marinello said. ‘Let go now, Constanzia. You squashing me.’
I stood back, still beaming. She was halfway through a mighty fine-looking grilled cheese sandwich, an ice-cream soda foaming next to it.
‘Well hello,’ a gravelly voice at my elbow said. ‘Will you take a look at this.’
My heart skipped a beat. My loins stopped pounding. I knew that voice: that voice had spoken words to me once that had made the sort of sense I’d never heard before.
It was Luca.
He was sitting on the booth seat opposite Signora Marinello wearing a pale denim shirt that brought out the green in his eyes and the silver in his hair. He looked like just about the healthiest human being I had ever seen in my entire life and for a moment I forgot about my lack of taste, my fucked-up family, my homelessness and my giant crush on Marco, and all I felt was the excruciating warmth of his words at the squero.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ he said, sliding over. ‘Take a seat.’
I did so, zombie-like.
‘Wassa matter, Connie?’ There was a mischievous note in Signora Marinello’s voice. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
‘I know you?’ I asked Luca.
He raised his eyebrows, eyes twinkling. ‘Well, no,’ he answered. ‘But I know you. Luke Scarpa.’ He held out his hand and I reached for it, my fingers pressing against the dry crinkled lines of his palm. ‘Pleased to finally meet you.’
‘Scarpa?’ I repeated dumbly, still holding his hand.
‘Scarpa senior,’ Signora Marinello pitched in. ‘Marco’s father. I wonder should I have fries. I feel like fries.’
I finally let go of Luca’s hand but then didn’t know what to do with my arms. They flopped uselessly on the table and I had to make a special effort to put them down in my lap. Marco’s father. Of course he was Marco’s father! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I knew that already. Why hadn’t I asked anyone about him? Where was my head?
‘So, how you doing?’ Luca asked quietly.
‘How do you know me?’ I could actually feel him sitting next to me. And while I couldn’t smell him, couldn’t smell anything, my head was suddenly filled with the memory of the faint scent of lemons that had bewitched me at the boatyard in my dreams.
‘Well, I don’t, exactly,’ he said. ‘But I sat with you a few times at the hospital when I came to see Marc and Eugenia.’
‘Your name is Eugenia?’ I asked Signora Marinello, who nodded and stopped a grouchy waiter to order her fries. I had never thought to ask what her first name was and felt momentarily ashamed of my self-absorption. Not that I was finished with being self-absorbed, you understand. Not by a long shot.
‘But why would you sit with me?’ I asked as Signora Marinello munched on her sandwich, the sound of the working deep fryer underscoring a crackling Fleetwood Mac track being piped around the diner.
‘I had business at the hospital,’ Luca said, contemplating the cheeseburger in front of him, ‘which didn’t take as long as I planned so I found myself with some time on my hands, came by to see Eugenia and there you were.’
‘And what better way to spend your time than with a pretty girl who don’t answer back, hey Luca,’ Signora Marinello teased.
‘Well, you looked like someone who could do with some company,’ Luca said simply. It was just like in my dream. He had this way of making me feel I had known him forever, of dropping precious jewels into the conversation as though they were common or garden pebbles.
‘You the best visitor she has all the time she’s there,’ Signora Marinello told him. ‘You wanna meet the mother. Wheee.’ She said something in Portuguese that sounded like a lot of swear words, the flow of which was halted by the arrival of a big plate of perfectly cooked fries.
‘What about Tom?’ I asked her. ‘He came to visit me. Eventually. And Fleur. What about her?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Signora Marinello agreed. ‘Her husband marry her best friend but she can’t remember.’
‘They’re not married,’ I pointed out. ‘Officially, he is still married to me.’
‘You have retrospective memory loss?’ Luca seemed impressed.
I nodded sadly.
‘Huh,’ he chewed on his burger. ‘Unusual. Doesn’t seem to be much else wrong with you.’
‘I’ve lost my sense of taste,’ I said, dipping one of Signora Marinello’s French fries in ketchup, something I never would have done before. I had been something of a fry snob ever since Tom told me to be. He would rather shoot himself in the head than serve fries. And as for ketchup … Over his dead body or yours should you attempt it, or even ask for it. ‘Which is kind of a tragedy because they tell me I am the New York Times restaurant critic.’
Signora Marinello took a slurp out of her soda. ‘MC Conlan,’ she said, nodding at me.
‘That so?’ Luca nodded. ‘And you’ve lost your sense of taste? Too bad. Was it injury to the cribriform plate or olfactory nerve damage?’
‘What are you, a brain surgeon?’
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘I’m a doctor. We’re two different species.’
Snatches of my gondola-building dream scenario kept floating by like puffy summer clouds, changing shape as soon as I tried to latch on to them. What he was saying had some sort of relevance, I knew that, but I couldn’t work out what it was.
‘You don’t like surgeons?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. My son is a surgeon. A very good one too.’
‘But you don’t approve.’
‘I’d like him to spend a bit more time with the living,’ Luca said, finishing his burger and pushing the plate away.
‘But if it weren’t for him there wouldn’t be so many living,’ I argued, patting my pocket where Marco’s phone number sat although not feeling so inclined to call it as I had before. ‘He saved my life,’ I said. ‘He saved my life.’
I heard the tremor in my voice before I felt it and to my enormous embarrassment, I exploded into tears. I hoped it wasn’t a developing pattern, this crying uncontrollably in restaurants, because all the hats in the world would not be able to disguise my identity if it was going to be a regular thing.
Signora Marinello did not stop attacking her fries but used her free hand to pull a bunch of napkins out of the dispenser and thrust them at me.
‘Is better out than in, Constanzia,’ she said matter of factly. Then with the use of just one eye, she attracted the grouchy waiter again. ‘I think we need pie.’
‘I thin
k I still love Tom even though he’s had a baby with Fleur,’ I sobbed. ‘But I’m engaged to a man who wears pony-skin shoes. I’ve written a horrible book and I sound like a bitch plus I have no sense of taste but I’m supposed to be the best restaurant critic in the world.’ I blew my nose wetly on a napkin and tried to regain some control. ‘I hate living at home; I’m too old. My dad’s glued to the TV, my brother is into his 20th year of experimenting with drugs, my mother is vacuuming the oxygen out of the air, and,’ I wailed this bit, ‘I have nowhere else to go.’
‘Aw, come on,’ Luca said soothingly. ‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘I stole Woody Allen’s pretzel,’ I cried. ‘And everybody knows about it except me.’ Strangely, though, blurting out my woes proved quite therapeutic and the tidal wave of emotion that had engulfed me started to recede until eventually I was down to just a basic snivel.
‘People have done worse for a good pretzel, you know,’ Luca said, and the kindness of that notion floored me.
‘Cherry pie,’ Signora said appreciatively as hers approached the table. ‘Now there’s something people do crazy things for. My cousin Cleber, he marry a woman because of her cherry pie even though he is gay. Now that’s plenty more crazy than stealing Woody Allen’s pretzel.’
She had me there, I had to admit, as I admired her pie: the crust was indeed crisp and golden, the brilliant red fruit spilled out onto the plate like a homemade filling would.
‘Why you got nowhere else to go?’ Signora Marinello asked between mouthfuls. ‘What happen to the man in the white suit?’
‘He has Italian decorating magazines on his coffee table and he doesn’t even read Italian,’ I said. ‘We sleep in separate rooms. Everything is beige. I tried going home to my old apartment but unfortunately my husband lives there with his new girlfriend and their baby.’
‘You’re divorced?’ Luca asked.
I nodded. ‘Nearly.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. I didn’t go on our second honeymoon. Tom ended up in Venice on his own and I ended up engaged to Ty Wheatley.’
‘You passed on Venice? Well, that explains the divorce.’ Even his gruffness was sort of nice.
‘You like Venice?’ I was curious about that, of course.
‘My grandparents were from there,’ Luca said. ‘Little island called Mazzorbo out in the lagoon, famous for its duck.’
My heart was in my mouth. What did this mean? ‘Your grandfather wasn’t a gondola-builder, was he?’ I held my breath waiting for him to answer.
‘Nope, he grew tomatoes. Came to America to give his sons a better life.’ He looked out the window as if to check that his grandfather had come to the right place and my eyes followed his. I got something of a shock. Last time I had looked out on the intersection of Hudson and Ninth at West 12th there was practically nothing there except jammed up traffic and empty warehouses; now it heaved with restaurants and bars and barely clad bodies.
‘When the hell did all that happen?’ I was aghast. Three years before, the blood of freshly slaughtered cattle beasts could still be found on the cobbled stones of the Meatpacking District. Now it was stilettos as far as the eye could see.
‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Luca. ‘There goes the neighbourhood.’
‘You live here?’ I ventured.
Signora Marinello spluttered.
‘Hell, no,’ Luca answered. ‘Shelter Island. Been there?’
I shook my head. I knew it was between the north and south forks of eastern Long Island but I’d never been there. I’d only ever been to the Hamptons once. Fleur and Roberta and I had got a holiday share with some of Roberta’s friends one summer. I had missed Tom, who’d refused to join us, and was intimidated by all the other people with holiday shares so hadn’t really made the most of it.
‘I think you’d like it there, Connie,’ Signora Marinello said, licking her spoon with great gusto. ‘Sounds nice and only two hours on the bus.’
‘What would you know?’ Luca asked her. ‘I’ve been trying to get you to visit for the past 10 years and you still haven’t.’
‘I’m from Jersey,’ Signora Marinello said as though this explained anything. ‘But Constanzia, she has no place to live and you have a great big empty house so sounds to me like you two should get together.’ She pushed her plate away, replete.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Luca agreed.
Signora Marinello shrugged her shoulders. ‘You need a roof over your head and some peace and quiet,’ she said to me, ‘and you,’ she turned her attention to Luca, ‘you need to stop spending so long on your own or with people in comas. You getting kind of cranky.’ She then extricated herself from behind the diner table and stood up, arching her back and pulling her Starsky and Hutch cardigan around her bulging middle. ‘Me, I have a date with the foot spa and the man who unplugged my cousin Nicola’s drainpipes.’
She gave me a quick hug, leaned across to accept a kiss on each cheek from Luca and was gone, leaving us sitting squashed together in the booth looking at the space she had vacated.
‘Technically, if I need peace and quiet and you need company, it’s not such a great match,’ I said to Luca, who just smiled his comfortable smile. He then pointed his finger at his empty coffee cup as a waitress came by. She was young and pretty and looked at him flirtatiously under her lashes but Luca didn’t seem to notice. He was in pretty good shape for 51. And even better, he didn’t seem to know it. ‘You want some coffee?’ he asked me but there was no point.
We sat there in companionable silence for a while, watching the ebb and flow of the diner as though that’s what we always did on a Monday morning. A foursome of worn-out party boys bitched about someone called Clarence at the next table, a smart tourist couple fed toast to their baby across the aisle. I can hardly find words to explain to you the weirdness of the connection I felt with Luca because it was so low-key, so comfortable, it almost slipped below the radar.
‘So you come and meet Eugenia often?’ I finally asked.
‘As often as I can,’ he said.
‘You used to work with her?’
‘I did. You were lucky to have her on your side. They’re not all like her, you know. Far from it.’
‘They’re not?’ I mean I knew she was special but I’d assumed everyone with a job like hers was.
‘She had a good feeling about you, Connie,’ he said, ‘and sometimes that’s all someone in your situation needs, despite what the doctors will tell you. The right person with a good feeling. She had faith in you. Good old-fashioned faith.’
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said to Luca. ‘I don’t know anything.’
He smiled that certain smile of his. ‘The truth is,’ he said, ‘no one knows.’ We looked at each other and then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he slipped his hand across the Formica table and took mine in his. It felt so good, so at home, I just left it right there and kept my eyes on his. I didn’t want anything else but for that moment to keep going forever and ever and ever. It was the weirdest thing and not at all creepy. Just natural. Unbelievably, comfortably, wonderfully natural.
‘For crissakes, Dad, don’t you ever get sick of this Good Samaritan shit?’ The sound of Marco’s voice pretty much sucked the comfort and wonder out of the scenario and I snatched my hand away again.
‘Marco,’ I cried with forced jollity. My, he was good-looking when he was angry but the guy seriously needed to sound an alarm on approach.
‘Sit down, son,’ Luca said, indicating Signora Marinello’s empty side of the booth. ‘Take a load off.’
Marco shook his head. ‘Jesus, give it up, Dad.’
Luca shrugged. ‘Just having a cup of coffee and catching up with old friends. What brings you here?’
‘You can hardly call Connie an old friend, Dad. And I came to give you this. I won’t be needing it.’ He threw a manila en
velope on the table and turned to me. ‘You got my message?’ I nodded. ‘Good.’ And he swivelled on those hips and strode out of the restaurant. Most people would have found this unsettling or embarrassing, but not Luca, he just calmly soaked it up.
‘Why is he so angry with you?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, many reasons,’ he said. ‘Too many to mention and most of them perfectly legitimate. But lately,’ he held up the envelope, ‘it’s because I want him to give up surgery and come back to Shelter Island, to help me run the medical centre. My partner’s retired to Florida and I want Marc to replace him.’
I laughed. ‘But he’s in a different league, isn’t he?’
‘He certainly is,’ agreed Luca. ‘That’s why I want him to come home. Boy needs to spend more time with the upright and talking folk.’
‘If the patients at your medical centre are all upright and talking then do you need two doctors?’ I pointed out, quite cleverly, I thought.
‘Well, they’re more upright and talking than the patients he deals with over the road there,’ Luca said gruffly. ‘Present company excluded.’
‘Oh, he didn’t really deal with me as a patient,’ I said. ‘He just did the operation. That whole recovery thing is not really his field.’
Luca drained his coffee. ‘My point entirely,’ he said, then looked at his watch. ‘So, anyway, I have a train to catch.’
I forced a smile and looked out the window at the swarming crowd.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
I was asking myself that same question but finding the options all still sadly lacking. Perhaps I would get a hotel. I had not checked my bank balance yet but surely it could cope with a hotel room for a few nights while I got my head together (ha ha). But if it took more than a few nights for that to happen?
‘Connie?’ Luca said. ‘Do you have someplace to go?’
‘Not entirely.’ I answered.
He cleared his throat. ‘Because, Eugenia is right. I guess I do have a big empty house. So if you’re in a spot and you want to come and stay I guess it would be okay.’