“Charming!” said Warren, giving Valentine’s hand a little squeeze. “Absolutely charming.”
Now she couldn’t look bored: no way could she pull that off. Her eyes under their gobs of dark green liner got very wide, and I knew she’d be bragging about tonight for weeks.
Our ices came, and Clover said, “Tell them a story, Warren. They’ll like that. Tell them the story of how you met Theo.”
Here is the story that Warren told us while we were eating our ices.
“It was in Harvard Square in the seventies. I had just moved to Boston and I was very young, oh, twenty-two, twenty-three. Theo was older. She’d graduated from Radcliffe in the mid-sixties and had been living in Paris for a number of years. Modeling and all that. But when she was about thirty, she moved back to Boston for a while, I think it was around the time her father was dying and he wrote her, begging her to come home—”
“It’s like something out of The Ambassadors,” interrupted Clover.
“What’s that?” asked Valentine.
“Henry James. Oh, you’re probably too young for him. Daisy Miller, maybe. Warren, continue.”
“I met Theo one autumn day at the Blue Parrot. Which was a wonderful place that like a lot of places isn’t there anymore. Anyway—I used to be a waiter there. At the Blue Parrot. By the way, being a bartender is totally different from being a waiter: whole other set of skills. It relies on more of a human dimension. Back then I was waiting tables at the Blue Parrot and one night Theo and her cousin Honor come in wearing these new dresses they had around that time, they were all the rage, this Swedish brand called Marimekko.”
“Finnish actually,” interrupted Clover.
“Whatever. Point is, pow! A lot of girls, they couldn’t pull off those dresses. They’re real short and this kind of square cut with all these crazy graphic patterns. They’re really alive, you know? They just bring back that whole time to me. I remember that the one Theo had on that day was black and white actually, and that just shows you. She didn’t need to wear a bright color to just pop. Her cousin didn’t look too shabby either, she went on to become this famous modern dancer here in New York, Honor Linden, but Theo was the one who took my heart, right then and there, and she never gave it back.
“Now, a good waiter is not supposed to eavesdrop. But: I was not a good waiter. Never was. Bartending’s the thing, with me. So I couldn’t help eavesdropping on Theo and Honor, and what I figured out was that Theo had left behind some guy in Paris and now it was all over and Daddy didn’t understand, he’d been the love of her life. Who was this guy in Paris? I never knew. When I had to bring them the check, it was like my heart was breaking, I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. Well, lucky for me, I was pretty good-looking in those days, I don’t mind telling you, and I didn’t have too bad a time with the ladies. So I remember that after they had paid I put my hand out and I said, ‘My name is Warren,’ and I asked for her number.
“She said, ‘What’s your last name, Warren? Honor here and I believe in using one’s last name when introducing one’s self.’”
“‘Vittadini,’ I told her.
“She said, ‘You’re tall for an Italian.’
“I said, ‘My mom’s side’s Irish.’
“She turned turned to Honor and said: ‘Honor! Give Warren the Irish-Italian waiter my number.’ And she did, and the rest is history. Many years have passed, there have been other women. But she was the great love of my life.”
The next morning, I remembered that Aunt Theo’s letter had said, “Report back to me your progress.” She was expecting me to write her a letter. But, oh dear—on what? I didn’t have any stationery. So I found this great Italian stationery store called Il Papiro, up on Lexington Avenue Clover had told me all about it when I told her I needed to get stationery, and I’d been excited to check it out. Once I finally got there, I chose this cream paper with two lonesome-looking silver swans painted on the bottom. And then a navy-blue pen. I’d never had a fancy pen before, but I thought that when you wrote to Theodora Bell, you couldn’t use just any old pen.
But that night Val saw me writing the letter and said, “Oh God, Franny, are you writing a letter? I mean, letters are okay for an old lady like Aunt Theo, but for you? Nobody sends letters anymore.”
“Just because nobody does a thing anymore,” I said, “doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it to do.”
“But the world changes! Why not keep up with it?”
“Clover says—”