Recipes for Life (18 page)

What were we thinking?

The next day we were busy wrapping our gifts, writing our cards, and decorating the house. Two hours before the party I went into the kitchen and discovered that the chili had never been put in the refrigerator. It had sat out all night and had spoiled. It had to be thrown out. Oh great, now what do we do?

If at first you don’t succeed, get a can opener! Thank God for canned chili. It saved the party. No one was the wiser. Most important, John felt loved and he was.

The Derek wives gathered to celebrate John’s life once again after he passed away. Bo invited us to the private memorial for him at their home in Santa Ynez. The day was filled with laughter and tears as many shared their stories about him. He would have loved seeing us all together again. Love never ceases. He will always be a part of my life.

The wives and Sean together at John’s memorial.

I
OFTEN MARVEL
at how life works. Shortly after I shot the second pilot for
Dynasty
, I was sitting with Ursula having lunch one afternoon when out of the blue she said, “Every woman should have a love affair with an Italian at least once in her life.” All of us who know and love Ursula always expect her to be outrageous and speak her mind. Even so, this time she caught me off guard. I just laughed because there was no way I would even entertain the idea of picking a lover based on nationality.

A few months later, shortly before
Dynasty
aired, I was stopped at a red light on Sunset Boulevard. I heard a horn honking and turned to my right to see an incredibly handsome man in a jeep motioning me to roll down my window. “You’ve got a loud noise coming from your carburetor and if you don’t get it fixed you could end up with serious problems,” he said.

Then he casually told me his name was George and that he owned an Italian restaurant called Santo Pietro’s in Beverly Glen. “Come up sometime, we have great food!”

As the light changed I said, “Oh okay, thanks,” while I was thinking,
Wow, what a strange way to meet a good-looking Italian
. . . .

Weeks later, Bridget Hedison and I planned to have dinner in one of the restaurants up in Beverly Glen. I’d told her the story about my encounter with the handsome Italian. Bridget suggested we check it out because she’d heard Santo Pietro’s had great food. We walked over and discovered a charming little place with candles and romantic music and delicious smells coming from the kitchen. But George was not there.

As we were walking out (with my wondering whether I was relieved or disappointed), we decided to walk down to the new sushi restaurant a few doors away, which she’d heard was great, too. And there was George. He and I looked at each other and said in unison: “Mercedes. Jeep.”

Georgio and me at Hazen.

Since he was standing behind the sushi bar, I was confused. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you owned the Italian restaurant.”

“I do. And I own this place, too,” George replied. Then he invited Bridget and me to sit down.

As I watched this charming, charismatic man pouring us sake, I wondered if this could be my “once-in-a-lifetime Italian.” As fate would have it, he was. And by the way, there was nothing wrong with my car. Which could just mean he was a lousy mechanic. The good news was that he turned out to be a wonderful chef who taught me lots of great recipes. George and I cooked together in my kitchen in Beverly Hills with Nena. She adored George and was in heaven anytime he cooked with us. He’d suddenly take her in his arms and dance around the kitchen with her. I loved that side of George; he’d often ask sweet old ladies at his restaurants to dance between courses. They would light up because they could tell he genuinely enjoyed it, too.

A
SIDE FROM COOKING
, George’s greatest passion was flying, a hobby he discovered when we were first together. When George put his mind to something, he did it all the way, which is probably why he was an A student and why his flight instructors respected him so much.

Once he got his pilot’s license, I was the first to go up with him (much to the horror of flying-phobic Bunky). After that, George’s romantic side would come out and he’d call to say, “Let me fly you to the moon!” And he did many times.

My “fly me to the moon” man in the cockpit.

One afternoon, a few months after he’d gotten his license, George needed to fly to Northern California for a business meeting and wanted me to come along. As we were preparing to take off, it was clear that weather conditions weren’t ideal. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the winds were still strong. I felt apprehensive for an instant, but then it passed because I had such confidence in George’s ability and he didn’t seem concerned. Well, that is until we were nearing the airport and he told me that he’d heard there was a very steep mountain at one end and a very short runway with a forest on one side. Aside from how difficult the mountain made the approach, if there was wind, it had to be coming from a certain direction for a “successful landing.”

In other words, this was one very tricky airport to maneuver, even when the weather was good. It looked like we were in luck. The tower gave George the okay to land, which meant the windsock was in our favor. But George wasn’t happy with his first approach and decided to abort rather than take any chances. So we went back up.

We circled several more times waiting for the tower to tell us the wind was right again. I was starting to get a little nervous. But finally we got the okay to come in.

Just as we were touching down, the wind suddenly shifted, but it was too late to abort. We were already barreling down the runway with the wind pushing us forward like a rocket. Up ahead I could see a chain-link fence with traffic speeding along on the other side of it.

Already knowing the answer, but hoping anyway, I looked over at George and, with surprising calm, asked, “That’s the end of the runway, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he answered with equal calm.

“We’re going to crash aren’t we?”

“Looks like it.” George replied.

An instant later, his survival instinct kicked in and he turned the plane so sharply to the right that it pulled us off the runway and onto the rain-soaked grass. We avoided crashing into the fence and speeding
cars, but the second the tires hit the grass, the plane flipped over and came to a jarring stop.

Hanging upside down from the ceiling in my safety harness, I felt incredibly relieved. I looked over at George hanging next to me and almost laughed because we looked like two bats. But then George said we had to get out of the plane immediately because it might explode.

Without another word, we both unbuckled our belts as fast as we could and, at the exact same time, landed on our heads. The crash didn’t hurt us, but we nearly killed ourselves trying to get out. Rubbing our heads and moaning, we crawled out of the plane together.

Already we could hear lots of emergency vehicles coming. I suddenly flashed on all the warning I got from the studio about taking unnecessary risks and realized that the press could have a field day with this. The last thing either of us needed was for this to end up on the front page of the tabloids. George was going to have enough to deal with.

Right before the fire engines reached us, I took off to hide in the woods that flanked the airport. There was so much chaos surrounding the crash; miracle of miracles, no one ever found out I was there.

Hours later, George and I were able to reunite and take a commercial flight home. He told me that they had suspended his license until a formal investigation into the crash was completed.

It took quite a while, but eventually George was not only exonerated but also the truth about this particular airport was finally brought to light. There had been several other crashes, most not as fortunate as us; those planes actually hit the chain-link fence and people were killed. As with us, the tower would okay a landing, only to have the wind shift so quickly there was nothing a pilot could do. So, as usual, there was a purpose for good in this, too; because of our crash, the airport was closed and no one else would ever be hurt there again.