“He’s dead, if you must know, and I had just one crappy plan for tonight, which was to lie on my lumpy rental couch and read that book, and now, thanks to you and your bloody long arms, I can’t even do that.”
He looks mortified, understandably, apologizing in broken sentences as he pushes the book into the space toward me, but I’ve hiked too far up my moral-high-ground mountain to be able to reach down and take it. The air up here is so thin it hurts to breathe, so I huff one last furious time and stomp out of the store, hacking strings of paper love hearts out of my path as I go.
Shit. I made such a scene back there. Why did I say that? Shame sears me. It’s one thing trying to life-hack my brain into believing Adam Bronson is dead so I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder, it’s another thing entirely to say it out loud to a stranger in a bookstore. Because the exact truth is that while Adam’s dead to me, he’s still alive, was not ever my husband, and right now is no doubt being a monster to someone else back in London. I pull my blue-and-white-striped bobble hat down over my ears and bury my burning face in my scarf as I slip and slide my way along the slushy sidewalk toward home. I should have stayed inside today. I’m too heartsore for windows full of glittered roses and racks of lurid pink greeting cards. Valentine’s Day pushes all the wrong buttons in me, a manufactured event that feels designed to remind me of all my bad decisions and their terrible consequences. I’ve been to hell and back over the last couple of years, spiraling downward from being a rising star of the London chef scene to a woman afraid of her own shadow. Or, being kinder to myself, to a lonely, grief-stricken daughter who found herself targeted by a controlling man who dismantled her life and all but imprisoned her in his home. It took Herculean courage to extract myself, even more to book a one-way ticket to New York. I landed here six weeks ago with all my worldly possessions shoved into a couple of bashed suitcases, clinging on tight to the last shreds of my dignity.
I don’t actually want to stargaze in the back of a pickup truck or have dinner at the top of the Empire State Building tonight. I’m happy to leave that kind of cutesy stuff to unacerbic women like Meg Ryan. And yes, I know my eighties romcom references are dated, that there are a million cooler films I could cite instead. I won’t update my list, though, because memories of watching those movies with my mother while we ate our homemade gelato from her vintage pink melamine bowls are the glue that holds my bones together. Her beloved stories about this city have carried me here on a wing and a prayer, fanciful Sinatra-inspired nostalgia that if she could make it here, then maybe I can too. A fresh start in a new place, somewhere my dead-to-me ex can’t trouble me. I sigh and decide to go easy on myself about that lie, making a silent promise to never say it again. At least it was to a total stranger.
1.
“WAS I RIGHT OR WAS I right?”
Bobby links his arm through mine as we pass beneath the illuminated red, green, and white “Welcome to Little Italy” arch and find the place alive with street vendors, drumbeats, enticing smells and throngs of people as far as the eye can see.
My landlord-slash-best-friend has twisted my arm into spending the afternoon with him at the Feast of San Gennaro—an Italian food and culture festival that, according to Bobby, New Yorkers look forward to every year—knowing my love of food is just about the only thing strong enough to entice me from the safety net of my apartment these days. To say I’ve become a New York homebird since I pitched up on his doorstep nine months ago is something of an understatement. I arrived desperate for change, dreaming of the New York I knew only through my mother’s favorite movies. It’s laughable really, knowing what I do now, but I genuinely thought there was a chance I’d land a job filling pastrami sandwiches in Katz’s Deli, or that there might be an Iris-sized hole waiting for me in the bustling kitchens of the Plaza.
Neither were hiring, as it turned out. I wasn’t even brave enough to stick around at Katz’s Deli long enough to ask—the queue was crazy-busy and so long it was out the door and wrapping the block. The Very Tasty Noodle House was hiring, though. Bobby Han hadn’t long inherited the entire building, from his swish top-floor penthouse down to the ailing noodle restaurant at the bottom, even though he’d never so much as touched a wok in his life. I like to think that my brilliant mother walked beside me in spirit as I trudged the darkening New York streets fresh off the plane, turned down by place after place. Blind instinct guided me along Chrystie Street and straight into the path of Bobby Han, who at that precise moment was sticking a CHEF NEEDED notice in the dusty window of his restaurant. Within the hour I’d accepted not only the job but the keys to the minuscule, old-fashioned apartment above, recently vacated by his ancient noodle-queen aunt. My pokey home is the buffer between the penthouse Bobby shares with his husband, Robin, and the ground-floor restaurant, a sponge to soak up all the noise and cooking smells so they can live in peace without the faint linger of peanut oil on their clothes or their Egyptian cotton bedsheets.
What I didn’t realize back on that first day was that I’d also just found the biggest platonic love of my life. Bobby has turned out to be best friend and big brother all rolled into one gloriously loud, sarcastic package, human gold dust for a lonely girl starting again over three thousand miles from home.
This afternoon’s rain-laden sky does nothing to dampen the atmosphere at the festival and there’s an infectious energy and buzz in the air that carries people from stall to stall, tasting, savoring, collectively groaning in pleasure.
“You were so right,” I say, drinking in the carnival of color and noise. “I want to try everything!”
We pause to observe the golden statue of Saint Januarius, patron saint of Naples, a brief tranquil moment before allowing the throng of people to carry us farther along the street.
“We need to start with sausage,” Bobby says, steering me toward an impressively large catering truck bedecked with fluttering Italian flags. Rings of sausage sizzle on huge metal plancha grills, ready to be chopped and loaded into rolls piled high with slippery onions and peppers. I watch in fascination as an aproned guy behind the grill curls the sausage with fast, skillful hands, and another chops and fills sandwiches with the confidence of someone who has done it a million times before.
“Food of the actual gods,” Bobby says, ordering two.
I’m so ready for it when I take it from him. It’s how I imagined, only about a hundred times better.
“If I eat all of this I’ll be stuffed,” I say.