Off the Menu (14 page)

Oy. “Yes, once, very briefly, just over a year. Divorced in 1996.”

“Sounds like there is a story there.”

Boy, he said it. “I think I’ll save that one for when we have a decent bottle of wine.” Presumptuous me.

“Even better. What are the chances we can get that on our calendars? If it isn’t too forward or fast, I would love to take you to dinner if you’d be ready for that.”

My heart melts. Not afternoon coffee, or “Let’s meet for drinks.” No tester date just to be sure you can escape without risking too much time or laying out too much cash. A real, live dinner date. I frankly can’t remember the last time a guy asked me out for one of those. “I would love to have dinner with you.”

We check our calendars and realize that, despite it only being the first week of November, the first weekend night we can schedule our date for is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Which he also gets huge points for, not booking a weeknight dinner, when an early morning at work is a good excuse to cut things short. A real, live, Saturday-night dinner date. Be still my heart.

“Well, I’m glad we got that on the books!” RJ says. “I’m tempted to ask you to schedule a second date now, just to make sure the rest of your year doesn’t fill up!”

“Not fair, you have six business trips yourself, mister.”

“Guilty. I should probably admit that while I would of course rather see you sooner than later, the distance doesn’t really make me nervous. I feel like you and I are going to be friends, real friends, even if the in-person chemistry isn’t there for romance. So I don’t feel like there is pressure to move faster or try to squish in some short little first meeting. I hope you don’t mind my saying that.”

I love that he feels comfortable expressing that feeling, because it is what I have been feeling the whole time we’ve been talking. “I don’t mind at all, because I agree completely.”

Beep.
I am going to FUCKING KILL HIM.

“Do you need to?”

“No. I don’t really.”

“I would like to keep talking between now and our date if that is okay.”

Beep.
“I’m counting on it.”

“Well then, can I call you again tomorrow?”

I look at my schedule. “I should be home by nine thirty, latest.”

“So I’ll call at ten? Give you time to walk the dog and get settled?”

Beep.
“Wonderful.”

“Good-bye, Alana. I look forward to continuing this tomorrow night. Go tell your other boyfriend that he can have you back now.”

“I’m looking forward to talking again. Bye, RJ.” I purposely don’t deny that it could be another man. After all, it’s okay to retain some sense of competition with guys.

I turn and look down at Dumpling, who sits up to look back at me. “Oh. My.”

My phone rings. “WHAT. DO. YOU. WANT. NOW?”

“I was going to say that my masseuse has an opening at three, and I can’t take it, but you seemed sort of tense, so if you want the appointment, it’s my treat.”

I check my watch. Forty-two minutes. I have blown the record for staying annoyed at him out of the water. “That is very sweet. I’d love a massage. Thank you.”

“All righty. I’ll set it up.”

“Thanks, Patrick. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“And, Alana?”

“Yeah?”

“You really have to try to relax, nothing is that serious.”

I hang up the phone. “What am I going to do with that man? And more important, is it possible to lose twenty pounds in three weeks before I have to meet RJ? And what on earth am I going to wear?” Dumpling sighs, stands up, spins once, and then flops back down as if to say, “Don’t get your hopes up, Crazy Pants. You have no idea what he even looks like; he’s still just theoretically good. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment.”

Which, while logical, is looking like it is going to be much easier said than done.

My meeting with Patrick at Uncommon Ground coffeehouse is brief, and basic. I hand off the drafts of the first twenty-five recipes I’ve done for the new cookbook, so that he can play with them and make them more Patrick-y. He gives me a bunch of ideas he has been toying with, jumping-off points for me to play with for the next set of tests. We chat about the upcoming week of shooting, go over the ten shows we have scheduled, and I talk him through a couple interesting new gadgets I found that he is going to be using on-air. The person writing his blog for the Food TV website has agreed to freelance write a blog for his personal website as well to keep the same voice, but will need some help pulling the right recipes together. Just one more little thing to add to my plate.

“So. I think that is all I have. Do you have anything for me, Alana-cabana?”

“Um, I think that is probably it. Bruce says the network is planning on a Grilling Week around Fourth of July, so we might be on deck to shoot a special extra episode. I’ve pulled together an initial menu based on some of the better grilled stuff at PCGrub, thought you might want to do the shoot there, I know your PR team would be delighted.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a plan. It hasn’t been featured since last year’s ‘Check, Please!’ episode, so it will make the media whores happy.”

“Okay, I will see what I can do to get that in the works.”

“Great. And now you should go for your soothing forty-twenty.”

“What the hell is a forty-twenty?”

He grins. “A massage. Forty minutes of relaxation, and twenty minutes of trying not to fart.”

I can’t help but laugh, because the man speaks the truth. “It’s why I stopped doing yoga. My sphincter couldn’t take it.”

“Exactly. Have a good rubdown. What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Dunno. Dog park, laundry, some work, try to check in on the folks. You?”

“I have a meeting.”

“Anything fun?”

His eyes twinkle in a mischievous way that chills my blood. “Maybe. We shall see. I’ll let you know soon.”

Aw, crap. This is going to bite me in the ample behind sometime in the near future, I can just feel it. “Okay, well, I hope it goes well, whatever it is.”

“I’m sure it will.” He gets up, kisses the top of my head, and leaves. I sigh, and pay the bill. Patrick may be generous with health insurance, but he is a notorious skinflint when it comes to the nickels and dimes, and I am forever paying for his lunch and coffee and snacks, grabbing him a paper, picking up bottles of water. Andrea finally told me to just save the receipts and give them to her, and she expenses them and gets me reimbursement checks from the production company. I love Andrea. But even though I’m no longer personally out-of-pocket, it still ticks me off.

Lucky for me, I now have an hour-long massage ahead in which to become unpissed. I am a little concerned though … that extra granola breakfast followed by coffee doesn’t exactly bode well for getting through it without possibly perforating my colon from gas suppression.

I
’d like to propose a toast!” Patrick raises his glass from the head of my parents’ dining room table. Or tables. My parents have cobbled together from the regular dining room table, the kitchen table, and three card tables of various shapes and stability, a place for the family to gather for Thanksgiving. Eighteen of us, including Maria and Patrick.

It is the first time Patrick has joined us for Thanksgiving. Usually he gets adopted by another local chef, but this year one of his New York investors had invited him for a Hamptons Thanksgiving, so he turned down all other invitations. And then Chicago got slammed with a snowstorm, and his flight got delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed and then cancelled. Of course, because he was bored hanging out at the Admiral’s Club all day, he called me every ten minutes. Nothing more convenient when trying to help your family cook Thanksgiving dinner with six children tearing through the house, than your boss calling to ask, “What are you doing
now
?” forty-two thousand times. Then when his flight got cancelled, he called to say he was on his way. Not to ask if he could come, or if there was room at the table, or if we wouldn’t mind. Just called and said, “Tell Mama the prodigal adopted Irish son is en route!” Fanfreakingtastic.

Mama was, of course, thrilled. “So goot to have my Patreeck for Thanksgiving.”

Maria showed up early to wrangle kids and keep them out of the kitchen, bringing the one dish she cooks better than anyone I know, a truly spectacular flan. “Don’ you worrrrry,
mi amorrrrr
. Patrick will behave ’imself. With all these
ninos
, no one will notice him!”

I was surprised by how annoyed I was with him, at the presumptuousness of it. My sister, Natalia, called me out on it.

“What’s the big deal, Lana?” she said, extricating her slim leg from the grasp of Alexei’s youngest, eighteen-month-old Jon, and pushing him toward the door to the den where Maria and the rest of the kids were watching
Toy Story 3
. “Wouldn’t you have invited him anyway if he hadn’t invited himself? I mean, what? Were you going to just let him go home and be alone?” Nat is the opposite of me, tall and slender with bone-straight light brown hair, and a clavicle to kill for. I know I have a clavicle by virtue of my neck not flopping around like wet spaghetti, but I’m pretty sure no one has ever actually spotted evidence thereof. Nat’s clavicle is like a little poem.

“Who’s going to be alone?” Sasha’s wife, Jenny, wanders in and sneaks a piece of crusty stuffing from the corner of the casserole dish, while Nat slaps her hand away. Jenny is short and round, like me and Mama, but with the creamy fair skin and water-blue eyes that come with her English and Swedish background. She looks like a milkmaid, and is about the calmest, most patient person I have ever met. Which is good, because her three boys are darling, but high-maintenance. The oldest, Benjamin, has some really weird food issues, and there are only about six things he will willingly consume, making Jenny play magic chef, constantly trying to sneak nutrition into things that look and taste like the handful of things he likes. Their middle son, Jacob, is about the smartest
kid I’ve ever met, and as a result is endlessly curious, asking eight million questions a minute with machine-gun precision. And their youngest, Adam, has discovered a passion for taking things apart, so if Jenny turns her back for a minute, the phone is in sixty pieces all over the floor.

“Patrick invited himself to dinner and Alana is pissed.” Alexei’s wife, Sara, like all accountants, is brief and to the point. She and Alexei met in a study group for their CPA exams. She does a little bit of freelance tax work from home for a couple of her friends, and occasionally helps Alexei with larger projects from his firm, but mostly she manages their boys’ schedules. Alex, the oldest, and David, the youngest, are both athletes, so there are endless games to shuttle to and more stinky laundry than any one person should have to wrangle. Joshie, the middle son, seems to take up a new passion every three months or so, mostly in the sciences, and loves all the local museums. He knows his way around the Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, and the Museum of Science and Industry better than some of the staff, and is always begging someone to take him to one or another. Last week I picked him up from school and we did the Field Museum of Natural History. Joshie regaled me with the life of Australopithecus Africanus as casually if he were describing an episode of
SpongeBob
. I know aunts aren’t supposed to play favorites, but Joshie holds a very special, quirky place in my heart.

“I still don’t understand,” Nat says. “Would you or would you not have invited him to dinner once you found out his flight was cancelled?” Nat is solo today, her husband, Jeff, took their girls to the burbs to have dinner with his family, and will hopefully get back here in time for some dessert. Nat and her in-laws do not really get along very well. And Jeff
isn’t Jewish, so she gets stuck with extended command performances for Christmas and Easter. Jeff and the girls alternate Thanksgiving between our family and his, but for the sake of Natalia’s sanity, she gets excused from Thanksgiving in Winnetka, ostensibly to help Mom. Anytime they get pissy about it, he reminds them that they get their grandchildren every Christmas and it shuts them up.

“Of course I would have invited him.”

“So what’s the problem?” Sara asks.

“He didn’t give her a chance to invite him; he invited himself, which takes away Alana’s ability to feel good about inviting him. It was presumptuous and a little rude, am I right?” Jenny says, sort of nailing it.

“Exactly. There is just something that irks me about his not giving me the chance to be generous. And what if it would not have been a good idea for him to be here? He also didn’t give me a chance to apologize for
not
being able to accommodate him, if that had been the case. He just made a pronouncement, and the rest of us have to obey His Majesty.”

“I think you are wasting too much time and energy on it. The bottom line is that he is welcome; there is no reason for him not to be here, so either way, Patrick was going to be coming to dinner. So why on earth would you let your day get ruined? If the answer is nine, does it really matter if you get there by adding five and four or multiplying three by three?” Sara, turning everything into a black-and-white math equation.