Love on the Back Burner

by Barbara Oliverio

  “Since you started taking up with men named Rhett Butler. What happened to him, by the way? Wasn’t he supposed to be the date du jour?”

  It was late on the Sunday evening after the Saturday barbecue fiasco, and I hadn’t had the opportunity to tell her what happened.

  “No, he turned out to be super vegetarian.”

  “Like with a cape?”

  “No, like with an attitude. He doesn’t eat anything with animal products. He’s on a macrobiotic diet of only grains and beans.”

  Keira shrieked in laughter.

  “That’s rich! And you prepared half a hog!”

  “It wasn’t half a hog! Well. Maybe a quarter.” The full picture of the spread he saw when he walked in my door finally hit me, and I burst into laughter as well. “Oh, Keir, not only that, but he also must have been taken aback by my outfit.”

  “What did you do?”

  I explained to her how I subconsciously echoed Scarlett’s most famous outfit from Gone with the Wind.

  “Please tell me you didn’t have a curtain rod through your sleeve like that episode of The Carol Burnett Show?”

  “Oh, I might as well have.”

  We both howled.

  I wiped my eyes.

  “Keira. All was not lost. Natalie and Elliott came over. But Elliott brought over that human irritation, Cam Grayson.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “Just a bridge in the conversation, dear, as in ‘go on’.”

  “Annyway,” I continued, now wary of Keira’s hidden meaning in that “ah.” “Cam sort of became a normal human being, but the other two made me tell how I began cooking.”

  “Right, your Nonna story.”

  “Right, and you know I don’t like to open up too much to people I don’t know very well. And right at the end, he jumped up and ran from the room.”

  “What? As in leapt up with words hanging in the air and ran out?”

  “No.” Sometimes Keira could be so literal just to make a point. “He got a phone call and told the person that he wasn’t doing anything important, told them he’d meet them in half an hour, then nervously told us he needed to take care of something and left.”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean ‘so?’”

  “I mean so he is the IT guy at your company. He may possibly have had to go take care of an IT thing.”

  Possibly.

  “Well, then why didn’t he say that? Why—”

  “Ali,” Keira continued patiently, “you always overanalyze things. Why do you even care? You said you don’t like this guy. You should be happy he left.

  Unless ...”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless.” Really, Keira was impossible with the one- word sentences this evening.

  “Unless, you DO like him!”

  “No way! That’s what Natalie and Elliott said as well, and you are all wrong!”

  “I don’t know, honey. Sounds like a classic case of ‘leave me alone, why don’t you pay attention to me?’”

  “What is that? The title of a cheesy self-improvement women’s book from the eighties?”

  “Ha! Oh, hold a second.”

  Keira muted her phone. While I waited, I pondered. Did I really like Cam and therefore crave his attention? I mean he DID elicit strong feelings—but not of attraction, rather of annoyance. No. This wasn’t junior high, and my friends were all just way off the beam. I heard Keira come back on the line.

  “Keira, I think you are off-track here and—”

  “Alex, I’m really sorry and I hate to do this, but I really have to jump off the phone. I’ll call you tomorrow? In the meantime, maybe you just should calm down.”

  “Sure, tomorrow.” Humph. Even my best friend was cutting me off.

  I needed to leave the house to clear my head. Who knew? I might even run into an international man of mystery.

  Chapter Seven

  “British? As in Jude Law? Orlando Bloom?”

  “Why are the only British men you can think of actors, Keira?” I lost no time calling her after my latest encounter.

  She shot back, “Can you think of any well-known ones that are not?”

  I meditated on that for a moment then said, “Prince William!”

  “A royal? For all intents and purposes, he is a bigger celebrity than any actor. In any case, my dear,” she said, affecting a lousy accent, “how did one meet this Brit?”

  “Keira, your English accent is a little less Dame Judi Dench and a little more, oh, I don’t know, Liza Doolittle selling flowers.”

  “What? I was in a great many plays in high school! To fabulous reviews!”

  “Focus!”

  Had Keira been sitting next to me, she would have been subject to some sort of physical harm, but as it was, all I could do was throw a couch pillow up in the air and catch it. Really, her business trip to San Francisco was cutting into our morning gal-pal time.

  “Fine,” she continued in a patient tone. “Tell Auntie Keira about this perfect man.”

  “Well, I was going to the gym—”

  “Because the last guy you met at the gym worked out so well for you.”

  I decided to ignore this.

  “I was going to the gym and decided to stop at that antique shop that is near there on the way.”

  “Just how old is this guy?”

  “What? Very funny. Anyway, I was wandering around, and I heard these polished tones behind me ask if he could help. Not at all like Benson, the old curmudgeon that owns the shop.”

  “Nice.”

  “I turned around, and there was a guy I hadn’t seen before. Turns out he is Benson’s nephew visiting here from across the pond. We talked about andirons and things for a while, and he asked me out.”

  “Seriously? Andirons?”

  “Well, something like that.”

  Actually, exactly like that. I was standing in front of a pair of andirons. He stopped to help me, and he told me quite a bit about them. The conversation progressed to other things in the store, and half an hour and many glares from his uncle later, he asked if I wanted to have dinner.

  “So, where are you going?” “Welll …”

  “Oh, Ali, please don’t tell me …”

  “Keira, you had to be there! He was saying that he liked the home-cooked food that his family’s housekeeper made, and, well, naturally I volunteered to cook instead of find a restaurant.”

  Keira sighed. “But English food? What on earth would you make?”

  I hesitated. “See, that’s the thing. His housekeeper was from India.”

  Silence. I pictured Keira dropping her face into her hand.

  “India? Once again, as much as I know and love how you can experiment with cuisines of other cultures—Indian food?”

  “Look, I researched it, and I am going over to that amazing Indian market over in Aurora and get all the spices and makings for curry. They even have homemade naan bread there.”

  “You know, Alexandria, not that I would ever criticize—”

  “And yet, here you are, criticizing.”

  She began again. “You know, you’re right. Curry on, my child.”

  I ignored her pun.

  “Thank you, Keira. I need to go. I have a good feeling about this.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  The smells in the shop were divine. I strolled the aisles, marking off items on my list as I added them to the cart. I had decided on a recipe for vindaloo that I had found on the web and was debating on several packaged curry seasonings when a small, older Indian woman in a traditional sari came up beside me.

  “You don’t want to use that,” she said in tones that, except for the accent, could very well have been Nonna.

  “No?”

  “No, child. You’ll have to forgive me, but I can see by what you have in your cart and the way you shop that you care about what you are going to make. Don’t ruin it with that prepackaged mess.”

  Her tones
were polite, but I recognized in her the same thing that I saw in MariLu Babcock, Mrs. Olikara, and my own mother and Nonna: a respect and love for food.

  I turned to her and asked, “If you don’t mind my asking, could you go over my recipes with me and see if I’m on the right track? I’ve not prepared these before, and I want to make them correctly.”

  She smiled and asked me what region the recipes were from. I told her and explained why I chose these recipes. I had known enough to stick to one region, since Indian food, like Chinese food, has many variations depending on geography.

  “Ah, you have the touch!” she said. “My name is Mrs. Patel, and you are ...?”

  “Alexandria D’Agostino.”

  “Come, Alexandria, sit with me. She led me to the corner of the store where there were several small café tables. She motioned to the young man behind the counter, who brought us some tea.

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly let you—”

  “Don’t worry, my dear. This is my store and that is my grandson. If I want a cup of tea, I can have one. I can have as many as I want!” she smiled.

  “Your store? But you were steering me away from making purchases!”

  She tilted her head to one side. “My son stocks the convenience items for those who are not capable cooks, but you, you are a real cook. I could tell by the way you selected your ingredients.”

  “I’m flattered! But I’m just an amateur. My mother and grandmother taught me that if you cook, you should always cook with love.”

  “Exactly! And some so-called professionals take many years to understand that.”

  Mrs. Patel took my recipes and helped me readjust my menu. She shook her head over several of them and dictated some of her own recipes to me. During our conversation, she had her grandson take back some items from my cart and replace them with what I would need to make the meal as she adjusted it. At the end of our visit, I left with a fistful of authentic recipes, a new friend, and the confidence to prepare my dinner for Martin.

  I decided that dressing in a sari would be a bit much— after all, HE wasn’t of Indian extraction—so I settled on a simple green sweater and black slacks with slouchy leather boots.

  At precisely 8 p.m., there was a knock on the door. I opened it and greeted Martin, who was well turned out in a navy turtleneck and slacks.

  “I brought a bottle of sauvignon blanc. I hope that goes well with your meal?”

  “That will be lovely,” I trilled. Whoa. When did I start sounding like an extra in the screen version of Pride and Prejudice?

  “I’ve prepared a few things that I hope will suit. Nothing really. Just a vindaloo, some dal, green beans, a bit of rice, and some naan. You did say you liked spicy food, right?”

  “Marvelous!”

  Really, any minute now, he would be donning a monocle and I would be hiding my face daintily behind a lace fan. I mentally shook off the desire to slide into a bus-and-truck version of Downton Abbey.

  “Please have a seat, and I’ll open this wine.”

  “This is a really nice place, Alexandria! Have you been here long?”

  I brought the wine along with a tray of samosas to the coffee table.

  “My friend Keira and I found this as a steal when we first moved here after college.”

  “Does she still live here with you?” He took a bite of the samosa. “Gosh! These are great. Don’t tell me

  you made them!”

  “I did, and thank you for the compliment. No.”

  “No?”

  “No, Keira doesn’t live here any longer, unfortunately. Not long ago, her father died, and she moved back into her family home to help her mother attend to the family business.”

  “Really? Does she still do that now?”

  “Partially. What she did was get the affairs in order and hire a manager. She still lives there to be accessible, but her ‘real’ job is consulting for companies, setting up their databases and their customer relationship management systems.”

  “Is she happy living back home with Mum?”

  “Well, she’s very dedicated to family—we both are, which is why we get along so well. She’s happy doing things to make the family business work out well, and this arrangement does that.”

  Martin nodded and poured us each more wine. We had gone through the appetizers, and I went to the stove to check if the dinner was ready.

  “Everything smells fantastic, Alexandria.”

  “Thanks. If you don’t mind helping to move these serving bowls to the table, why don’t we get started?”

  We maneuvered in my small kitchen in a companionable fashion and, in a few moments, sat down at the table, which I had dressed with a cloth of paisley in oranges and golds. I used my gold napkins and had found brass napkin rings at Cost Plus World Market that were a nice accent. The finishing touch to the tablescape was a festive brass elephant that I had wreathed in silk flowers.

  “It’s almost too pretty to disturb this!” said Martin.

  “Oh, but it would be an insult to the cook not to eat, so dig in,” I smiled.

  Over the meal, Martin and I elaborated on the conversation that we had started in his uncle’s antique shop.

  “After I finished school and went to work in real estate, I realized that I had gotten my degree in a completely different field than what I wanted to work in for the rest of my life,” he said. “It was at that point I knew I had to take account of what I was doing before I turned around and was sixty and regretted it.”

  “But did you know what you would want to do?”

  “Hadn’t a clue. All I knew was that buying and selling houses wasn’t the thing for me.”

  “Did you just drop out and bum around for a while?”

  “What?” He looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean go on the dole and ‘find myself’? No, I didn’t have the luxury. I had loans to repay. I had to find a job.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I drove a taxi. I was a barista. I did any job that would put money in my pocket and pay toward my debt. All the while, I planned my next move. Eventually, I reached the point where I could move forward.”

  “So you came here to work in your uncle’s shop, which, by the way, is one of my favorite shops.”

  “He’d be glad to hear that, if he were the type to show happiness. In any case, after I made my decision, my father suggested that I come here and perhaps get an international perspective on it.”

  “In Denver?” I was dubious.

  “Well, anywhere was outside England for a start, and it is free room and board.”

  “Ah. So, is being a purveyor of antiques your dream?”

  Martin unsuccessfully held back a smile. “Well … actually, no. It is a bit constrictive. I’m more the outdoor type. When I was working after I left my previous job, I discovered I’d rather work with animals—horses, preferably.”

  I stopped just short of dropping my naan bread into my vindaloo.

  “Horses?”

  “Yes, I worked in a stable and loved it.”

  “And you seriously didn’t know who I was before you spoke to me in your uncle’s shop?”

  “No. Why? Do you run a stable down that hallway there?” He peered around me.

  “Well, no.” This was the type of thing that happened in uninspired movies. “But my best friend Keira? Her family’s business? It’s a riding stable.”

  “You’re joking! One of the reasons I moved here with Uncle Edgar is that he said there is a lot of horse country nearby. I was hoping that I could have the opportunity to work in an American stable. That’s the international perspective I meant.” He leaned forward.

  “You don’t suppose that you could …?”

  I thought about it. Why not? If I were in the same position, I would want someone to do me this favor.

  Of course, I MIGHT wait until at least the second or third date to ask. I mentally shrugged. There probably wasn’t going to be a second or third date. I mean, Martin was terribly cute and
polite—maybe even a bit too polite. And his green eyes were the wrong shade of green, after all.

  Wait. Wrong shade of green? Where did THAT come from. Focus, Alexandria, focus. I knew that Keira and her mom were not really happy with their current manager. Maybe the solution to their problems was sitting across from me, breaking off another piece of naan bread.

  “Of course, Martin.” I could feel Nonna’s approval. “I’d be happy to make the introduction.”

  “That’d be brilliant! You are such a star! And an amazing cook. How long have you been cooking Indian food?”

  “Well, to be honest, this is really only the first time I’ve put together an entire Indian meal.” I told him about my chance encounter with Mrs. Patel and the luck of having her guide me through this menu.

  “Honestly? You don’t cook for a living? But this is what the best cooks do—find the most amazing ingredients and learn from the best teachers.”

  “Nope. Like I said before, high-tech marketing. Cooking is just something I do for myself.” And for would-be suitors that don’t work out, apparently.

  “Are you happy doing the marketing thing?”

  I cleared the table while he brought our dessert—fresh fruit and ice cream—to the coffee table.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Happy enough, I guess.”

  “Ah! You ‘guess.’ You should be totally sure. Take it from the man who made a complete switch, it’s much better to follow your heart. And you’ll pardon me for saying so, but I think your heart really is in the kitchen.”

  I sat down and considered this. My heart, for all purposes, was tied up in doing the best job I could do as a marketing professional, to prove to my family that the money they supplemented me with while I was on scholarship at the university was not a waste. I couldn’t be the one who wasn’t successful, could I—not after my shining older brothers had done so well?

  “Oh, I’m sure that what you say has some truth in it, Martin. But for right now, I think I better stick with the plan.” I switched gears. “Anyway, I’ll arrange a meeting for you with Keira’s mom as soon as I can.”

  Looking on the positive side, this nice guy might get the job of his dreams, Keira’s mom may get a great employee, and I had another notch in my culinary belt. Everyone could turn out a winner.