Georgia's Kitchen (37 page)

Bernard drew a giant grid and began filling in the columns with the various and infinite tasks that needed to be accomplished before Nana’s could open. Next to each task he assigned a
G
or a
B,
using a different-colored marker for each letter.

While the list grew, Georgia pulled out her notebook and began talking aloud, as much for Bernard’s sake as her own. “Okay, we signed the lease last week, so check that one off. That was a big one. The graphic designer is tweaking the logo based on our comments. The architect is presenting
final final
plans tomorrow—can you give us half a check for that one?”

Bernard kept writing.

“The demolition will be done at the end of next week. Don’t worry, I won’t ask for a quarter check, seeing how you responded to the idea of half. Continuing to interview kitchen staff, having a major problem with the kitchen-supply store, and the bar will take way longer to fabricate than we thought; need to rethink that one. Meeting with the liquor lawyer on Friday, he says it’s going to be tough to get the license. The contractor says water’s not the issue, since the space was a Laundromat, but that the HVAC is going to be a bitch.” She closed her notebook. “Bernard, how are we ever going to get this all done by March?”

Bernard had finally finished writing and took a step back from his color-coded masterpiece, which looked like a Damien Hirst spot painting. “How? You know how. The same way we created the business plan, raised all the money, and found the perfect space. Hard fucking work.”

Georgia frowned. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Several dozen people milled around the defunct restaurant, a midtown behemoth in a former bank that had lasted thirteen years, surviving 9/11, the economic meltdown, and three years worth of scaffolding—on either side of the entrance—before the landlord sold the building to a group of investors who were opening an H&M or a Zara, depending on whom you asked. Thirteen years was an impressive record for any city, but particularly New York, where failed restaurants were more common than off-duty lights on cabs during rainstorms. Boxes of china, flatware, linens, and stemware were piled on tables and chairs in the dining room; cases of wine were stacked on the bar; ice machines, coolers, pans, trays, and other equipment lined the kitchen. All of it was a little worse for wear, and all of it was for sale—down to the (bad) artwork on the walls. How many still lifes of bowls of fruit and dead pheasants did one restaurant need?

The owner, who stood outside smoking while potential buyers pawed through the various lots, was a friend of a friend of Bernard’s, which was how it came to be that Georgia was feigning interest in a box of scuffed Ginori soup bowls, waiting for the auction to start. The object of her desire was a practically brand-new La Marzocco GB5 espresso machine, the undisputed Rolls-Royce of espresso machines. The off-the-shelf price tag was way out of their budget, but Bernard swore they could get it for a fraction of that.

Smacking his gavel on the hostess stand, the auctioneer kicked off the action with a lot of racks. Georgia checked her phone for a message from Bernard, who was meeting with the contractor at Nana’s. The millwork had just been installed, including a work-around for the insanely expensive and nearly impossible to fabricate bar, and Bernard was inspecting the result. Despite his less than perfect vision, nothing got by Bernard. No message, no text. He was probably embroiled in an argument about the bar’s patina.

At last the auctioneer moved on to the big-ticket items, starting with an eight-burner Garland range. The Marzocco was up next. Georgia made her way to the front of the room and pulled the paddle from her bag, gripping the handle so tightly her knuckles turned white. It was her first auction. Still, the chances of its magically floating upward seemed slim, and she had to laugh at herself. At five hundred bucks she placed her first bid, surprised by how empowering it was to wield that flimsy paddle. She raised it again at nine and again at fourteen. By two grand, only two bidders remained: someone in back the auctioneer referred to as “the man with the dark black hair,” and Georgia, “the curly girl up front.” At four grand she turned around to check out her competition, but most of the light fixtures had already been sold and she could barely see him. At forty-five hundred she started
to sweat. She couldn’t go any higher than five, half the value of a new Marzocco. Luckily, the guy dropped out in the next round and the espresso machine was Georgia’s for the “low, low price of forty-seven hundred dollars.” Bang.

“I let you have it,” said a voice behind her as the auctioneer moved on to the next lot.

She turned around. “Marco. I had no idea—”

“Yeah, I figured. How’ve you been, Georgia?” He licked his lips and fixed them in a pout. His skin was so bronze he’d either just returned from South Beach or a session at Portofino Sun Tanning.

“Great. Good. Opening a restaurant.”

“Figured that too. Congratulations.” He jangled the keys in his pocket, then ran a hand through his black hair, which was now a shade beyond shoe polish. Anything to hide the gray.

“Thanks. What are you doing here? I thought you were in D.C.”

“Nah, that town sucks. It’s all politics and nerds. Boring with a capital
B.
I’m opening up a place in Jersey. It’s gonna be great.”

“I’ll bet,” Georgia said. “Well, sorry about the Marzocco.”

“No biggie. I’ll buy a new one. Money’s not a problem. Anyway, the used ones break down all the time.”

“Right.” Georgia stifled a laugh. He hadn’t changed a bit.

A burly guy in a plaid jacket wheeled out the espresso machine on a dolly. “Where do you want this?” he asked Georgia.

“My friend will be out front with a car in a second. You can leave it here for now, thanks.”

The guy turned to Marco. “What about you? I got all those plates and pots and pans and forks and knives and all that other shit you bought. Where do you want it?”

Marco glared at him. “I was bidding for a friend. You’ll have to ask him, since it’s not mine.”

“I don’t care who it belongs to. I just gotta get it outta here. Let me know when you find your friend.” The guy walked away.

“Where the hell is he?” Marco muttered, scoping out the restaurant over Georgia’s head.

She peered out the window, where Bernard had just pulled up, double-parking the van he’d borrowed for the day. After dropping off the Marzocco at their restaurant, they had a bunch of smaller equipment to pick up on Bowery, which would save on delivery charges. Every dollar helped. “I don’t know where your friend is, but mine’s out front. It was good to see you, Marco. Good luck with the new place.”

“Yeah, you too. Good luck with your new toy.”

Georgia walked outside to greet Bernard while Marco took off, presumably to look for his pal.

“Who were you talking to?” Bernard asked.

“Marco.”

“
The
Marco?”

“
The
Marco.”

“What’s he doing back in New York? What happened to D.C.?”

“My guess is that Marco was too slimy even for D.C. He’s opening a place in Jersey, and I beat him out on the Marzocco. He also cleaned out the whole restaurant, even the flatware, and then pretended none of it was his. I’d say our old boss is not in a good way.”

Bernard chuckled. “Awww, poor Marco.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I sort of feel bad for him. Two years ago he was on top of the world. Now he’s scrounging for chipped china. What if that happens to us, B?”

“Not a fucking chance.” Bernard pulled open the van’s doors. “And can you honestly feel bad for a guy who calls you ‘the chef-ette’?”

Georgia shook her head. “Not so bad, I guess.”

“Good. Now where’s the Marzocco? We have places to go.”

The guy rolled the dolly onto the sidewalk. “This your friend?” he asked, gesturing to Bernard.

“Yeah. And he’s also my partner.” Georgia squeezed his arm. “Thank God for that.”

Standing outside the Oven, wearing a wool hat pulled low, leather gloves pulled high, and a knee-length coat, Georgia hopped from boot to boot, trying to keep warm and to settle her nerves. She had a date. For the first time in her post-Glenn New York City life, she had a date. And he was eight minutes late. Normally, this wouldn’t faze her. But since it was already eleven o’clock, and her days now routinely began at dawn, the clock was ticking.

“Georgia,” a voice said behind her. A lovely voice.

She pivoted on her toes, and Andrew Henderson stood before her. As promised, he’d called, she’d called back, and they’d embarked on a game of phone tag so endless it could have become an urban legend. Finally, a few nights back, they’d connected; she couldn’t remember who’d called whom. What mattered was that they were here, together.

“Andrew. It’s great to see you.” Wearing her four-inch-high Louboutins—her lucky Lous, Lo christened them after Luca came through with the money—she and Andrew were just about the same height. They simultaneously bent in for the kiss, bonked foreheads a bit, and she got a whiff of his shaving cream, the drugstore kind that came in a peppermint-striped aerosol can. She liked it.

“You too.” He wore a thick, navy blue duffel coat and jeans and looked as if he’d stepped out of a Kennedy family photo. This was not a bad thing.

“So where are we going?” she asked. Midtown at eleven was not exactly teeming with options.

“I thought we’d stay here,” he said, looking around him.

“Here?”

He pointed to the ice rink below, which looked slightly forlorn now that the tree was gone. A few die-hard skaters stumbled around the rink, but with the windchill at ten degrees, and without the tree looming overhead, the romance was gone. Even tourists thought the rink looked plain old cold.

“You want to go ice-skating? Now?”

He nodded. “Why not? We’ve got an hour before it closes.”

“Ice-skating,” Georgia said, realizing how little she actually knew about Andrew. “At Rock Center. Is this a typical date for you?”

Andrew laughed. “Don’t worry, Georgia, I’m not some freaky Ice Capades fanatic. You’ve been in a restaurant all day, and when you weren’t physically in a restaurant you were thinking about restaurants, so that pretty much rules out going to a restaurant. Besides, it’s eleven o’clock, it’s a school night, and the rink is right here. What do you say?”

“All right. I guess I’m game.”

While Britney or some other deposed pop princess sang breathlessly about broken hearts and broken promises, Georgia and Andrew lurched onto the ice. Their ugly brown rental skates were as sharp as soupspoons, and within minutes Andrew’s feet flew out from underneath him and he landed smack on his butt. He pulled himself up while Georgia tried to look sympathetic.

“This wasn’t my idea,” she reminded him. “But it is sorta fun.”

On their first painfully slow loop, they skated single file, heads down, hands clutching the rail. Between the boppy music and the slippy ice, there wasn’t much room for conversation,
beyond the occasional “I haven’t been on ice skates in ages” or (mostly from him) “Oh, shit.” During the second, slightly less sluggish loop, Georgia dared venture away from the rail and next to her date, and they started talking, beginning with a topic they both knew: his mother. Andrew quickly put the kibosh on that one, and they moved on to another topic they both knew: restaurants, namely hers. By the fourth, still-speedier loop they’d covered favorite movies (his,
The Sting
; hers,
To Kill a Mockingbird
); first real job (his, runner at the New York Stock Exchange; hers, garde-manger at Simon Says); last relationship (his, the aforementioned Lisa; hers, Glenn); favorite thing to do on a rainy Sunday (both: matinee, followed by an overpriced late-afternoon lunch). On the fifth-and-fastest-yet loop, he took her glove in his, and they skated hand in hand without saying a word… for a whopping twenty feet, when the loudspeaker announced that the rink was closing.

“I guess our Tai Babilonia–Randy Gardner moment is over,” Georgia said.

They returned their skates and walked side by side to a nearly empty Fifth Avenue. Having reached that slightly awkward point of the date where they could either share a cab or go their separate ways, they both peered up the avenue, looking for the vacant taxi(s) that would determine their fate.

“Hmmm,” said Andrew. “Doesn’t look like there are any cabs.”

“No. I guess we could—”

“Walk?”

“Sure,” she said, glancing down at her Louboutins.

Andrew held out his hand, and Georgia slipped hers into his, instantly forgetting about her pinched feet. He took her other hand and they stood looking at each other for a second or two before he leaned forward and kissed her, softly, on the lips. When they pulled away, they grinned that first-kiss grin
at each other, the one that says “I like kissing you and I think I might really like kissing you.” She pulled him toward her and they kissed again, and this one was long and warm, and she felt that pinging in her belly, and she knew that she could absolutely learn to love kissing Andrew. He cleared his throat and looked down so she wouldn’t see the smile playing out on his face, but she did, and she knew he was thinking the same thing.

“So,” Andrew said, grinning, and this time looking directly at her. “Shall we?” He held out his arm.

“Yes. Let’s.”

“Want to take Fifth?”

“Nope,” she said. “I’m over Fifth. Let’s go Park.”

They walked slowly despite the frosty air, coming to a complete stop at every crosswalk. With the streets almost empty, their chances of getting mowed down by an irate driver seemed slim, but after the Sally incident Georgia wasn’t taking any chances. Besides, it was the best walk she could remember taking. They turned onto her block, stopping shy of her building’s awning, so they could say good-bye without an audience. Within seconds, they were kissing.

“You know, I’m glad you didn’t invest,” Georgia said when they finally broke their embrace.

“So am I.”

Georgia raised an eyebrow.

“Not because I don’t think you’ll be a smash success. But if I had, I couldn’t be here. And I’d rather be here.”