Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth) (15 page)

The shift was clear on her face. Her thoughts, so carefully guarded on her tongue, were easy to see. The slow sifting of information until she moved the smooth photographer to the possibly homeless, smart-ass until she had melded the two into a perfect blend.

Angelo cleared his throat and returned his chair to the next table.

“For dessert I will be giving you Sfogliatina alla Angelo’s, a puff pastry filled with a fig and cream custard. And,” he bowed to Cassidy, “I hope you will approve of the wine choice.”

Angelo managed to kick him under the table without Cassidy noticing before heading back to the kitchen.

It hurt.

“You like him.” She aimed those hazel eyes at him.

He had to look down to think up a reply and still couldn’t.

“He’s a great cook.”

“The best.”

“How long have you two been at this?”

Russell shrugged, “I can barely heat a can of soup.” For years he and Angelo had cooked together. He was a fair cook, but Angelo was in a whole other class.

“You know that wasn’t what I meant.”

“How long have you been with those two girlfriends of yours I saw at Cutter’s?” Real nice. Right back where you started the meal, Brutus. Time to stab her with it again. Dufus.

“College. Freshman year. First day.” She brought that nice chin up a bit higher. She was a proud woman, who was sure enough of herself to let him know he was being a jerk.

“Right, sorry, you told me that already. Add another decade or so, that’s me and Angelo. Practically from the same womb. His mom… was a friend of the family. Very close.” She had been his parent’s cook.

He’d learned to protect his name, to not mention that he was a part of the Morgans who ran the shipping empire. Women always got weird when they found out you had that kind of money. Melanie had been different. Maybe it influenced her in the beginning, hell, he knew it had. And he’d let it to get her in bed. But by the end it hadn’t been about the money. He simply hadn’t had the brains to notice the change in her feelings, because he was happy enjoying the fruits of the former not even aware of the latter.

The dessert arrived. He jabbed at the pastry and a small geyser of cream shot out the end and smeared across the tablecloth. Before he could reach for a napkin, a small flock of waiters appeared. Without appearing to hurry, they lifted each item and replaced the tablecloth in about ten seconds flat.

“Happens all the time, sir,” the waiter hurried off with his soiled cloth. It was all a fucking façade, from glossy ads to glossy women. What would his date do if faced with something that wasn’t perfectly prepared? If the world weren’t perfectly arranged for every step she’d taken since birth?

“So, Cassidy, what is it you want to do? Spend the rest of your life being a critic?”

“I don’t know.” She dragged her voice out, slowing the reply. She could obviously feel his change of attitude and she wasn’t going to answer, at least not completely.

“Hadn’t really thought about the long term,” she continued with caution. “I wanted to get out of New York, expand my horizons.”

“Have they been expanded?”

“I think so. My syndication has grown. I’m not Robert Palmer or even close to what Craig Claiborne was, but I’m becoming known.”

“And is that what you want?”

She poked at her dessert. “As I said, I hadn’t really thought about long term.” He could read the lie on her face. She had every minute of her perfect little life mapped out.

He could hear the note in her voice. The clipped tone that a date always used when they wanted a subject change. Well, screw that.

“Always the critic. Always a step back. A step away. You know all of these wines, but do you really know the true heart of any of them?” He’d met more real people in three months at the marina than he had in twenty-five years in the city. ‘Oh, you’re one of those Morgans.’ And the whole fake-friendly façade would appear. Out here, no one knew but Angelo. And most of his new friends probably wouldn’t have cared.

Again that stillness dropped over her. During the meal he’d learned that’s when her emotions were working the hardest and was the only time they were hidden. She could be polite and funny, even, he had to admit, interesting. But whenever he’d asked a loaded question, she’d shut down and turned into zombie girl. She picked up her wine glass and eyed it carefully. Her expression unreadable, as if he suddenly didn’t exist.

He needed to shut up. That’s what he needed to do. He knocked back a glass of the dessert wine. It was so sweet he almost choked.

“Christ, I need a beer.”

She was sipping the wine. Holding the glass just below her nose as she sucked in her breath. Her lips pursed as if ready for a kiss.

What would she look like spread out on a bed, hair undone, clothes askew or missing? Missing except for that sweater.

He really did need a beer if that’s what he was thinking. If he was going to go there, he might as well go back to New York and beg Melanie’s forgiveness. Melanie at least knew what she was, knew what she wanted from life. And he’d been involved in it, had helped it along now and then even before they became an item.

This woman, so proud of her perfect acuity and ever so careful with her clothes. Clearly so full of herself for her achievements on something as futile as which damn wine was which.

“A lot of citrus,” she spoke to herself rather than to him. “Flowers.” She held the glass over the white tablecloth and looked down at it again.

“Amber. Not just gold. Amber.” Clearly she was puzzled.

“I thought you knew everything.”

“There are thousands of wines from nearly as many wineries.” Her voice was almost as chilly as the wine. “I can tell you it’s Italian, but I can’t place it. Perhaps Tuscan. Or close by.”

“Notice the lemon? The dry finish?” Why was he being such a jerk. She hadn’t earned this but he couldn’t help himself. He’d done it to Melanie without knowing, now he was fully aware he was doing it, but that didn’t stop the next words.

“Did you miss the high alcohol perhaps?” He couldn’t stop, even though he was being an asshole. He’d made Melanie think he loved her and then tossed her aside, practically called her whore with how he’d lavished gifts on her and then used her for sex.

“Obvious marks of
a Cinque Terre Sciacchetra.” He felt like the old monk with the whip scourging his own back until it bled. He had to strike out. Rake his claws against the pain within.

“Not Tuscan. Liguria. Very traditional. Very authentic.”
He was a fucking mess. He knocked back the rest of the oversweet wine.

Staggering to his feet, he turned to see the look of horror on Angelo’s face as he stood in the swinging door to the kitchen.

Turned back to the woman frozen with the wine glass an inch from her pursed lips.

“Hope you enjoyed the damn meal. Don’t bother to give me your number, you wouldn’t want me to call anyway.” He slapped a couple of hundred dollar bills on the table to pay for the meal and walked out before he could throw himself on his butter knife in atonement.

# # #

“The” Ristorante Italiano

There are moments in our lives that stand out. Moments when mother and daughter recognize the woman in each other. When the son finally throws the ball the father can catch. Those moments when a thousand different little things come together into a single event of perfection. When the symphony of players truly masters the composition and the composer’s intent is revealed, when the dancer disappears into the ballet.

“Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth” Italian restaurant has brought such finesse to the apparently simple task of a meal. Seattle has long been synonymous with salmon and other Northwest seafood. No longer. Now there is a restaurant that harkens us back to the Old World, when chefs were vied for by kings and cardinals alike. Their master is tucked away in Seattle’s Pike Place Market on Post Alley.

Cassidy described the meal easily and quickly. Reliving each taste as it had occurred. Making sidebars for tasting notes on the wines as she went. It was all part of her style, the “friendly, close, personal touch” that many column reviewers had so praised and more than a few had tried to copy. She explained the meal in simple terms that let the owner of an untrained palate imagine they were indeed a master of spice and flavor, of ambience and composition.

However, one must be careful to choose one’s dinner companions as carefully as one’s meal or you’ll end up with a jerk like Russell Morgan.

She glared at the screen, that wasn’t what she’d intended to write at all.

A couple of keystrokes deleted the sentence.

A fine meal can be destroyed as easily by…

Delete.

Then she was stuck.

The ending wouldn’t come. She scrolled back up and read down the page
again hoping that when she hit her stopping point, the flow of words would carry her to the end.

Nope.

She looked out the window of her twentieth floor condo at Queen Anne hill, the top of a partially submerged mountain rising hundreds of feet right out of Elliot Bay. Seattle’s finest homes perched along its cliff edges. She could also see northern Puget Sound, rough water beneath a glittering sun and clouds zipping by as if they wanted to be anywhere but here. And straight ahead lay Bainbridge Island, no longer her home.

She could empathize, but her column was due by midnight. Seven hours to go.

Her hand was halfway to the bookcase before she stopped it. She didn’t want to pull out her old columns. They’d just make her feel even less competent at the moment if that was possible. All those happy, fun meals. Meals where a stupid blind date hadn’t slapped at her so hard she could still feel the sting across her face.

The door buzzer jolted her out of the chair as if she’d been electrocuted. The only friends with the passcode to the street door were Jo and Perrin. She really didn’t want to face either of them. Through the front door peephole she could see it was worse, it was both of them, Perrin with a happy smile and waving a bottle of wine.

She did her best to put on a cheerful expression before she let them in.

“Oooo, sad face,” Perrin threw her arms around Cassidy’s shoulders. “Didn’t go well last night. In that case we come with consolation rather than cheers.”

“Hi, Jo.” Her hug was less fierce, but lasted a moment longer. The consolation of a good friend who understood.

“Well, come on. Give us the worst of it. Mr. Ugly, huh? Boy, doesn’t that just suck the big one. Why do we say ‘boy?’ If I said, ‘Girl, doesn’t that just suck the big one’ it wouldn’t work as well at all.” Perrin shed her yellow, woolen coat onto the hall chair.

Her outfit was ‘20s flapper, bright yellow with tassels. It looked perfect on her long, slender form. She didn’t remove the beaded hat that was nearly a skull cap and hid all but a few wisps of the bright green hair, that still managed to look cute. Even her perfume was a light lemony scent smelling like a blossoming tree rather than furniture polish. For a moment, Cassidy wished that she had a flat, lean figure like Perrin so she could wear such an outfit and look even half as beautiful.

“Remember that fashion model the last time we were at Cutter’s?”

Jo snagged a corkscrew and glasses from the small kitchen and continued into the living room. Perrin dug around for cheese in the fridge as Cassidy pulled out a selection of crackers and spread them around the edges of a cutting board. Jo sat down on one of the stools on the far side of the maple butcher block counter that separated the rooms and opened the wine.

Cassidy poured the Lindemans Shiraz. A bit tannic, but one of the most drinkable wines at the price. Fresh, a bit spicy. No real demands on the palate. Exactly what she needed right now.

“The one dressed like a centerfold?” Jo twirled her glass without really looking at it.

“That’s the one.”

“She was your date?” Perrin slapped her palm against her forehead. “Wow, Cassie, didn’t know you were walking both sides. If I’d only known, we could have had a whole different kind of fun in school. You remember Patty Jones? Ooo-wow did she have the hots for you.”

“Perrin!” Jo rolled her eyes.

“What?” Cassidy did her best not to laugh. “No. She wasn’t my date. No, Patty Jones wasn’t my type either. Patty? Really? Anyway, remember the guy who was with her?”

Perrin shook her head. Jo thought a moment and shrugged.

“I don’t know how you missed him. He was incredible in a broad-shouldered, rough-and-rugged sort of way. Not so much handsome as solid, able to take the weight of the world on his shoulders and amble along as easy as sunshine. And eyes, ocean-deep eyes.”

“Damn!” Perrin stamped her stocking-clad foot on the oak parquet and her tassels shimmered about her hemline. “I knew I should have gone and sat in the corner last night. Jo, next time Cassidy goes on a date with him, you and I are going double to spy.”

Cassidy cut Jo off before she could reply. “There won’t be another. Not with this guy. Not ever.”

“Ouch! That bad? Let’s go to the living room and you can tell us all. I want every sordid detail. I love the sordid details and its always me who ends up providing them. Much less fun for poor Perrin. Old Miss Boring Lawyer over there hasn’t been laid in over a year or else she’s hiding someone in her closet when she could be sharing all the good bits with poor Perrin.”