Georgia's Kitchen (22 page)

Sergio and Claudia kissed while Georgia swallowed half her drink.

“Wow!” she said, coughing slightly. “That’s fantastic!” She polished off the second half. “Claudia, I’m so happy for you. And you too!” Her voice was too loud, her smile too big. After she’d based her entire theory of happiness on Claudia’s not needing a baby or a husband, after that stupid mantra she’d repeated day and night, this was not what she wanted to hear.

Claudia giggled. “Last night I pretended to drink so no one would suspect anything. I think Elena caught on, but she was too tipsy to remember. Anyway, it’s still very early in the pregnancy, and we’re not telling anyone, but I wanted you to know.”

Georgia tried to smile serenely but suspected she looked more like a baby passing gas.

“So, Georgia, it turns out that I was wrong. Sometimes things do work out just as you want them to.” Claudia interlaced her fingers with Sergio’s and gave him a hip bump. He looked down at their locked hands.

“I guess sometimes they do,” Georgia said. “Well, I’d love to stay and celebrate, but I’m really, really tired. I’ve got to go to bed.” And this time she meant it.

N
ursing a hangover as big as the Ritz, Georgia arrived at Bar Bodi, the Dia crew’s local hangout, wearing Jackie O sunglasses, sweats, and flip-flops, perfect day-after attire. Her head was still reeling from the baby bomb Claudia had dropped at the end of the party. That the father/fiancé was the only guy Georgia had asked out in a decade didn’t help her head—or her hangover—one bit.

Vanessa and Effie were already at the café, sitting at a small table flipping through
Corriere della Sera,
wearing shades. It was that kind of morning for everyone. Over
uovo,
taleggio, and pancetta panini (what Georgia would have done for a good old bacon, egg, and cheese), her friends dropped another bomb, though this one was more Katyusha rocket. Apparently, Gianni had left the party wearing the bodacious blonde.

“And I’m pretty sure they weren’t going apple picking,” Effie said, his mouth full of panini. “If you get my drift.”

Georgia found the news more distressing than she’d like. For the first time in seven years, she was single. Up until that awkward
moment in the kitchen when Claudia poured out her heart, along with those shots of grappa, she’d been fine with it. Not loving it, but definitely dealing. She’d even stopped worrying about the twin time bombs ticking away in her ovaries. Granted, after a handful of cocktails she’d wanted to jump Gianni’s bones, but that was more boozy lust than a real desire to couple up. Then she learned about Claudia’s baby and marriage, and all she could think about was how far she was from either, and how badly she wanted both. To make matters worse, she couldn’t even score a lousy one-night stand with Gianni, the Italian Stallion.

“Is it possible,” she wondered aloud, “that I could really be the only single American woman not to hook up in Italy? Is that even legal?”

“Don’t tell me you’re seriously upset about some greaseball who uses more hair products than you.” Taleggio oozed down Effie’s chin and he wiped it off with the back of his hand and then sucked it back up.

“It’s not just Gianni. I mean, I almost smoked my first cigarette in five years for that guy!”

Vanessa looked at her quizzically. “Gianni doesn’t smoke.”

“You know what I always say,” Effie interjected, pulling a pack of Camels from his front shirt pocket. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em!”

“Thanks anyway. But if getting dumped and axed in six short hours didn’t make me start smoking again, I don’t think a womanizing wino will either.” Georgia sighed. “At least this time.”

Effie and Vanessa walked outside, he to smoke, and she to inhale his secondhand smoke, since she was now “nine months off the Reds,” as she frequently reminded her friends. Georgia gulped down the last sugary drops of her second double cappuccino. Being totally solo with zero prospects smarted more than she cared to admit. It smarted a whole lot.

With graying walls covered in beer posters, a chewed-up linoleum floor, and a handful of grubby Gateway computers parked on one long simulated-wood table, the local Internet café was more low-budget frat house than high-tech hot spot. Georgia had been there once before, got weirded out by some greasy-faced guy who kept staring at her, and avoided it ever since. She probably had a thousand e-mails in her in-box.

Aside from the cashier, the place was empty. She sat down at the computer closest to the door so she’d see Effie and Vanessa, who’d gone in search of Happy Days, some over-the-counter all-natural vitamins that were supposed to cure hangovers. No one was feeling too swell after the friends-and-family party.

In a dozen e-mails, her friends back home reported on new restaurant openings (Clem), and not-so-hot dates (Lo). Buried in e-mail number eleven from Lo, between lame dates at Orsay (snooty banker) and Buddakan (sleazeball banker), was a late-night Glenn spotting at ’inoteca. Seeing his name on the screen made Georgia’s belly flip, though it could have been that Campari-tini coming back to haunt her. Lo said he looked “tired.”

“Tired?” Georgia muttered to herself. “That’s all I get?”

Who was he with?
she typed.
How late-night? What day was it? How tired did he look? Tired or wired?
She reread her pathetic queries and deleted every last one of them. These were not the words of a girl
so over
her ex-fiancé. And she was. She really was. She wouldn’t have a crush on Gianni if she weren’t over Glenn, would she? So she typed the only thing that really mattered—
Did he say anything about Sals?
—and forced herself to move on to an e-mail from her dad.

She’d finally spoken with her parents after settling in at San Casciano. Though she was still annoyed with their Glenn-worshipping ways, she had to give her mother props for not mentioning him or Grammy in the entire twenty-seven minutes they spent on the phone. She even asked what Georgia had been cooking at Dia—the first time in her ten-plus years as a chef she could recall her mother asking a food-related question that didn’t have to do with her daughter’s weight. Since then, they’d had a couple of perfectly brief, perfectly benign conversations. Still, one never knew what scary news an e-mail from the ’rents might hold, and it was with more than a little trepidation that she opened her dad’s.

Not scary, terrifying: Dorothy and Hal were planning a trip to Tuscany in September. As Hal wrote, they hadn’t been to “the Continent” in decades. Now that Georgia was there, it gave them a great excuse to see their daughter and indulge their love of the Renaissance masters at the same time. The news smacked of a plot to whisk her back to Wellesley and enroll her in grad school (subject TK and TI—totally irrelevant) or maybe just lock her up in her childhood bedroom.

Great!
she wrote back, amazed at the false enthusiasm one little exclamation point could convey.
Looking forward to it!
Then, for good measure, she added,
Keep in mind that it could still be insanely hot in September. You might want to come in October for the grape harvest. I probably won’t be here, but will hook you up in Tuscany and Florence and wherever you want to go.
Though her parents had been fine on the phone, there was no telling what might happen in person. Georgia anticipated their visit as eagerly as she did a trip to the gynecologist.

Then she saw it, wedged between Daily Candy and Tasting Table NYC: Glenn Tavert, with an attachment. She took a sharp breath and clicked.

Hi Georgia,

Hope this email finds you eating pounds of pasta and drinking vats of Barolo in sunny Tuscany. Sals is great. She has become the neighborhood mascot and is best buds with everyone. We can’t walk down the street without someone stopping to say hello.

Georgia paused, looking up at an ancient Spuds MacKenzie Bud Light poster tacked on the wall. Everyone knew dogs were total chick magnets—even Spuds. Sally had probably scored Glenn a dozen dates by now.

I’m doing well. Started therapy a few weeks ago. Get to talk about my favorite topic—myself—to someone who charges as much as a partner at Standish and nods a whole lot. Not a bad deal for either of us, I guess. Anyway, it seems to be working as I am being a good boy and not doing anything I shouldn’t. Ha ha.

Attached is a pic of Sals at my folks out east. We’ve been going every weekend. The other dog is her new best friend, she just moved in to the house next door.

Email if you get a chance. Hope the friend part of our relationship can start now.

Glenn

In the photo, Sally sat on the beach with her back to the water, a cockapoo or some other hypoallergenic breed that cost a fortune by her side. Sally looked happy. Two lounge chairs draped with beach towels, a couple of magazines, and a minicooler were next to them. One of the towels was Glenn’s—Georgia
recognized the navy-and-white Ralph Lauren stripe, which his mother bought for her beach house by the boatload. The other one obviously belonged to the poo’s owner, who was decidedly female. No guy friend of Glenn’s would stretch out on an orange-and-hot-pink paisley print.

Georgia deleted the entire e-mail, including the picture. Glenn knew her well enough to know she’d scrutinize it, which meant he wanted her to know he was dating the poo’s owner or, at the very least, sleeping with her. This didn’t make Georgia feel especially friendly toward him; it made her want to punt-kick him across Mecox Bay.

By the time she finished wading through the rest of her 457 e-mails, she had a fresh response from her father in her in-box.
Don’t care about harvest,
he wrote,
care about daughter. See you in September, late September, per your advice re: insane heat.

Georgia sunk down in her plastic chair. Glenn had a girlfriend, Sally had probably forgotten her, and Hal and Dorothy were coming to visit. Next she’d hear Sam Sifton had given Marco three stars.

Startled by a rap at the window, she turned, semi-expecting the greasy guy from last time to be staring at her with a pair of scissors in his hands. It was Effie, who pressed his nose into the smudgy glass and held a white pill bottle with a neon-yellow smiley face on its label, grinning like a junkie who’d just scored powdered Dilaudid. Georgia logged off and walked outside, palm outstretched, to join him and Vanessa.

“Please,” Georgia said, “please tell me something in that bottle will cheer me up.”

“Happy Days,” Effie said, popping off the top of the pills. “Good for whatever ails you. It’s got mega doses of herbs, algae, and every vitamin you’ve ever heard of. If this doesn’t cheer you up, it’ll—”

“Make you vomit?” Vanessa asked.

“I don’t care. Just give me the bottle.” Georgia pictured Glenn and his new girlfriend lubed up and lying side by side on their pricey towels, Sals and the poo sprawled next to them, all of them basking in the Bridgehampton sun. The friend part of their relationship, she thought, as she swallowed two grass-green pills with a slug of water, definitely did not start then. Not then, and not ever. She closed her eyes, willing the Happy Days to work their magic.

Trattoria Dia opened its doors to the public on the summer solstice, a bright and balmy evening without even a hint of humidity. Claudia’s astrologer picked the date, claiming the alignment of the stars ensured a smash success. She was right. At half past four, groups of two, four, and the odd party of five began queuing outside the double doors for the six-o’clock seating. By five thirty, the parking lot was completely filled; by six a line of parked cars snaked past the villa, overflowing onto the road. With no advance notice to the press, a no-reservation policy, and no phone, Claudia had planned an under-the-radar open that would allow the staff to work out the kinks before the masses came. Despite her efforts, the masses came and they showed no interest in going anywhere else. They sat on the low brick wall lining the front courtyard, they gathered by the potted roses and hydrangeas, they spilled onto the grounds, over the back patio, and into the garden swilling tumblers of complimentary Chianti to ease the hour-long wait. They all wanted one thing: to eat a meal at Trattoria Dia. And when that was done, they wanted to do it all over again, but this time with a dozen of their closest friends.