Georgia's Kitchen (4 page)

“Oh, guess what? I think I found our dress.” Clem and Lo were Georgia’s co–maids of honor and had been searching for their dresses for weeks.

“Can we not talk about weddings right now? At least not mine?” Georgia poured two glasses of champagne and handed one to Clem. “Cheers.”

“You’re the bride. Whatever you say.” Clem sipped her drink. “Is something wrong, George? I thought we were supposed to be celebrating.”

“Glenn almost got into a fight with the bouncer.”

“
Your
Glenn?”

Georgia nodded.

“Ouch.”

Georgia relayed the entire story, beginning with the Mercedes Sante review and ending with Glenn being seconds away from ramming his fist into the bouncer’s heavily padded belly. By the time she’d finished, Clem was halfway through her second glass of champagne, and the band onstage was making its exit. Lo was up next. Georgia rushed to the bathroom to ensure that both she and Clem would be front and center when Lo went on. Not exactly brimming with confidence, Lo needed all the support she could get.

Georgia took her place at the end of the short line for the lone unisex stall, which gave her a good view of the bar. She spotted Ricky, Bernard, and a bunch of the waitstaff, but no Glenn. After what seemed like ages, the restroom door opened and Marco staggered out. She considered slipping away before
he saw her, but after all that excitement, and all that champagne, she really had to pee.

“Hey, star chef.” Marco flashed a wobbly smile, and his eyes closed for a few seconds before a head bob snapped them open.

“Hey, yourself.”

“I didn’t have a chance to congratulate you.”

“Sure you did. You poured me a glass of Cristal, remember? Right before you stole my fiancé?”

“Oh, that’s right,” he mumbled.

“But I don’t think I’ve congratulated you, Marco. This will be great for the restaurant.” She took a step back. He smelled as if he’d spent the last few hours soaking in a gin bath. Or maybe it was just his pheromones.

“And great for you.” He tried to focus on her eyes but got lost somewhere around the hollow of her throat. “I hope you don’t have any plans to leave us.”

“Nope, no plans.” She turned her head and watched a hipster sporting muttonchops walk out of the bathroom. A guy in skinny jeans and a Unabomber beard took his place.

“You should take tomorrow off. Yeah, take it off. You deserve it.”

“Really? Saturday? You sure about that, Marco?” Head chefs did not take off Fridays or Saturdays, unless they really were star chefs with the cookbooks and TV shows to prove it.

“Yeah, take it off. I’m the boss, remember?”

“Okay, if you say so, boss.” A whole day together could be just what she and Glenn needed. “Thanks, Marco.”

“You know, I have contacts at the Food Network. I’d love to hook you up with them. You’d be awesome. Pretty, tall, sexy.” He dropped his chin and stared up at her.

“Sure, that’d be great.”

“I still think about that night we had together. Do you remember?”

“Just the hangover. Nothing else.” She wished it were true.

“Then you’ll have to trust me. It was incredible. You loved it. You know, if you weren’t engaged—” He lunged forward, one hand grabbing her waist and the other landing way too close to her breast.

She turned her head, and his large, wet lips caught a mouthful of hair.

“Wait,” he said, steadying himself. “I don’t—”

The bathroom door swung open and Georgia slid in, leaving him standing with his mouth agape.

“Georgia! Over here!” Clem waved her hands over her head. She, Ricky, and a bunch of Marco people had commandeered a table in front of the stage, which looked as if someone had pieced together a dozen or so milk crates and then stapled a sheet of plywood on top. The last act had walked off with their limbs intact, so Lo would be fine, especially since she’d just finished a ten-day master cleanse and was even waifier than usual.

Georgia started making her way to the table, but her eyes scanned the room for Glenn, the one person she really wanted to see after that mess with Marco. Please, she thought, please let him still be here.

“George!” Glenn stood at the end of the bar with a group of guys he’d never met before and would probably never see again. They were laughing. Holding up his hand, he mimed tipping back a drink, then pointed to Georgia.

Relief washed over her, and she smiled for the first time since arriving at the Rumpus. She walked over to join him, and before he could say anything, she slipped her arms around his waist and squeezed, resting her head against his chest and closing her eyes.

“Does this mean you’re not mad at me?” he asked after a minute.

“No. But this does.” Standing on tiptoe, she kissed him, knowing she’d catch flack from the line cooks, who were almost certainly watching, and not caring. “Although, even if I were still mad, I wouldn’t tell you. You might punch me out.”

“Funny, George.” He leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Real funny.”

T
he apartment door slammed shut behind her, and Georgia reached down to unclick Sally’s leash and collar, dropping them to the floor with a clank. It was eleven o’clock. An hour earlier and she might more carefully have closed the door, placed the leash and collar on the table. But it was eleven, the first Saturday in a long while that she and Glenn would be able to spend together, and he had slept long enough.

She walked into her living room, flopping down on the sofa. A sea-grass carpet stretched across the cheap parquet floor, and a large glass coffee table was stacked with books and magazines. The walls were painted a warm khaki and lined with vintage prints of Italian and Spanish food products. For an unremarkable Upper East Side rental, it felt like home. The fifty-inch flat-screen, dominating an entire wall, had arrived via special delivery the day Glenn moved in.

She left a voice mail for Bernard in case Marco forgot he’d given her the day off, which seemed likely considering the shit-faced shape he was in by evening’s end. When last she saw her boss, he was draped across a girl who looked as if
she’d gone to the Rumpus straight from an SAT prep course. Not one to moon, Marco either didn’t care or didn’t remember that minutes earlier he’d been trying to make out with his head chef. As long as her surname wasn’t Sante, he could sleep with whomever he wanted. Between Marco’s meandering mouth and Mercedes’s review, Georgia felt she’d more than earned a three-day weekend. “See you Tuesday, Bernard,” she said before hanging up.

En route to the kitchen, she cocked her head and pressed her ear to the bedroom door. Nothing. She continued into the kitchen and Sally followed, watching as Georgia scooped up coffee beans from the silver tin and dumped them into the fancy grind-and-brew Glenn had bought for Christmas.

“Whaddaya think, Sals? Do I tell him about Marco?” She purposefully hadn’t told him at the Rumpus or in the cab ride home. After the bouncer incident there was no telling how he’d react, but chances were he’d be much more levelheaded when he didn’t have five or six drinks sloshing around his stomach.

“You need a clip, my friend,” Georgia said, scratching the yellow Lab mix behind the ears. “And as usual, you’re right. Of course I should tell him.” Coffee in hand, she walked to the living room and took a seat at the dining table pressed against the wall. She nibbled a croissant she’d picked up from Via Quadronno and flipped through the
Times Magazine,
wondering what the Ethicist would think of her conundrum.

It wasn’t as if Glenn had always been Boy Scout honest with her. Like when he cheated on her. Had the girl—Tammy was her name—not called him, and had he not been too busy opening a bottle of Brunello to take the call, and had Georgia not been standing directly next to the answering machine as the call came, she might never have known. But she did, he was, and she was, which left Georgia no choice but to flee his apartment—though
not before throwing a glass of the ruby red wine all over his camel cashmere sweater.

But things were different now, and not being totally honest was not an option. In just nine weeks the cute guitar-strumming guy with the outsize dreams and the swishy black bangs she’d fallen for all those summers ago would become her
husband
. Things had to be different.

She finished off her coffee and stood up, tired of waiting. Knowing the kind of night Glenn had had, he’d easily sleep past noon. After dropping Georgia at home, he’d continued uptown to meet his client Diamond Tee. Business, he’d said, and, no, it couldn’t really wait. Too drained to protest, she’d kissed him good-bye. He crept into bed sometime around four.

A shopping bag stuffed with dry cleaning sat in the front closet, and she grabbed it, adding a pair of Glenn’s pants she picked off the floor. At least he’d managed to peel them off before falling into bed. Sally followed her to the door and Georgia leaned down, clicking on her collar. “Of course you’re coming.”

A black-haired girl stood behind a computer, her hot-pink nails poised at the keyboard. “Name?” she asked without looking up.

Georgia spelled her name, last and first, and started sorting through the pile of clothing. A week’s worth of Glenn’s shirts, a couple black sweaters, a top she’d worn to a party. She picked up the pants he’d worn the night before, folding them at the seat and then waist to cuff. A white paper square, no bigger than a packet of dental floss, fell to the counter.

The girl looked up. “Is that yours?”

Georgia stared at the packet, then at the girl, then swept her hand across the counter, scooping it up and placing it in her pocket in one fluid motion. “Just have them delivered, okay? Come on, Sal.” The door jingled closed behind her.

It wasn’t such a big deal. Marco did it. Probably lots of the line cooks too, and definitely some of the waitstaff. Practically everyone in the restaurant industry did a little blow now and again. But she didn’t. And Glenn wasn’t in the restaurant industry. He was a lawyer.

She paced up and down the little living room, her anger mounting. To think she’d been feeling bad about Marco trying to kiss her while Glenn had probably been snorting coke in bathrooms all over the city. This was no longer a question for the Ethicist, it was a question for a couples counselor.

The bedroom door creaked open, and Georgia’s shoulders reflexively shot up.

“Morning,” Glenn said from the hallway.

“Morning. How are you feeling?”

“All things considered, not too bad.” He smiled sleepily, too fuzzy to detect her frostiness. “When’s the last time I got to spend a leisurely Saturday morning with my fiancée?” He walked over, wearing the bottom half of the red pinstripe pajamas she’d given him for his birthday, and bent down to give her a kiss.

She turned so that his kiss caught her cheek. Even after a coke-and-champagne-filled rager, he looked good. Maybe his eyes were a little pouchier, his belly slightly softer, but if she squinted her eyes just so, she still saw the handsome launch-boat driver she met while serving gin and tonics at the Newport Yacht Club. That summer he lived in Levi’s and flip-flops, blasted Phish on his earbuds, and carried his guitar everywhere. That they would get together was a given for him and the realization of a fantasy for her.

“Is everything okay, George?”

“I got you a croissant when I was out with Sally. It’s in the kitchen.”

He walked into the galley kitchen, which Georgia had painted an unfortunate tangerine orange after taking a feng shui class at the Learning Annex. Instead of stimulating healthy appetite, as intended, it stimulated claustrophobia. She took a deep breath and followed him.

He raised his coffee mug. “Cheers to New York’s newest three-fork chef.”

“Thanks.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice and took a swig. “So I brought your dry cleaning in.”

“Yeah? Great.”

“Including the pants you wore last night.”

“They probably needed it after the night I had.”

“Something fell out of the pocket.” She pulled the bindle from her back pocket, holding it out in her open palm. “This fell out of the pocket.”

“What the fuck? How’d that get there?”

“Please don’t pretend it’s not yours.”

He exhaled loudly, looked down, then back at her. “Okay, George. I won’t lie to you. It is mine. So I do a line of coke every once in a while. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Oh, it’s not?” She threw the coke on the counter. “Maybe not to you. To me, doing a line of coke once in a while is a big deal, especially because I don’t believe it’s once in a while.”

“Believe what you want. I’m telling you it’s once a month, once every few weeks, max. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d overreact like you are right now. You look like you’re about to burst.”

“Maybe that’s because I am! Is this why you got into a fight with that bouncer?”

“This has nothing to do with that, and I
didn’t
get into a fight with him. Besides, he was a prick and you know it.”

“He was, Glenn, but that’s not the point. You never would have done that before.”

“Before what?”

“Before you started working all the time, hanging out with Diamond Tee—” She paused midsentence. “Is this why you had to meet him last night? To get coke?”