Last night had been a surprise in more ways than one. It hadn’t just been a discovery of friends, it had also been a discovery of self. Of how much she’d enjoyed being with other women. Once over the initial surprise, the Terrible Trio had settled in and treated her no differently than they did one another. No layers of respect or distance.
Perrin had dubbed her Mama Maria and Cassidy had jumped right on board with the nickname. Only Jo, ever so reserved Jo, had called her simply Maria. And it hadn’t added distance, instead it had somehow been closer, as if she’d truly gained a daughter-in-law.
They had even debated about who to set Maria up with. Perrin had offered several actors, a rock-and-roll guitarist, two different lawyers she’d become bored with, and might well have kept going if Maria hadn’t diverted the conversation to who was going to someday capture Perrin’s heart.
Maria had now daydreamed past her normal rising time and the baking awaited. Angelo’s Pioneer Square condo had little personality, little to hold her here. When she first moved to Seattle, she’d considered fixing it up, imagining how she and Angelo would design it together. Place a large table in the middle of the dining room and always have it surrounded by friends and laughter and good food. Then Angelo had moved into Jo’s gorgeous high-rise.
He, of course, in typical Angelo fashion had decorated nothing other than the kitchen. The rest of the rooms were clearly the result of a single run to IKEA. The darkly rich hardwood floor had a few scattered rugs. There were some cheery posters on the walls, but no art and little family.
It didn’t feel neglected, it was far too nice a condominium for that. It was comfortable, but it didn’t feel like home either. Fixing it up didn’t seem important, not when it was just herself. As if it was temporary even though she had no reason to think it was.
There was so little to hold her here. So, she showered, chose a soft-wool red dress and a matching coat that always made her feel as if she were wrapped in a winter fire’s warmth, and headed out.
Pioneer Square was still dark and quiet on the cold December morning. Unusually, the sky was clear and she could see the brighter stars and a quarter moon despite the streetlights. A couple of very early risers were shuffling out of the Lawrence Shelter, grabbing a quick smoke huddled together on the sidewalk while waiting for breakfast. She could already smell the characteristic notes on the still air of warming griddles and hot coffee. She hoped the man was still tucked in somewhere warm, she liked picturing the stranger that way.
First Avenue showed only a little of its reputedly seedy past, especially at this hour. The streets were quiet except for the occasional bus. She knew from experience, these were the very first runs of the day. Some mornings she’d step aboard rather than make the eight-block, uphill trek, but today she chose to enjoy the walk. It would also help her work off some of the splendid excesses of last night.
The sidewalk trees were lit with white Christmas lights strung through their branches making them appear coated in crystalline sugar. Shop windows had acquired buntings and garlands. Magic Mouse Toys was, of course, a child’s dream of quirky toys. It wasn’t New York’s mad display at FAO Schwartz at a tenth the size, but it had a sweetness that the other lacked. The gray stone building and its brightly lit windows invited you in, even though the interior would be dark for hours yet.
A coffee shop, not yet open, had filled their window with an entire Santa’s village landscape of miniatures, ranging across imaginary coffee-cup icebergs, down bagged-coffee hills.
She enjoyed her walk, a refreshing stroll. The three women, her three self-declared and sworn-for-life daughters, had given her much to think about last night.
There was a change coming.
She didn’t know what it might be, but could feel it as surely as a sauce finally coming together. Maria felt that her life, like her cooking, was perhaps best if she let it run intuitively, so she would let it this time as well.
For thirty years her life had been about the stability of the Morgan household. Six months ago with her move to Seattle, it had become about Angelo’s restaurant and his courtship of Jo. Maybe this time it would be about her.
She decided that her new friends would approve. If Maria saw change for herself coming, well, she’d welcome it.
Hogan loved the city in the morning, before it was filled with people and crowds. Vera had been a night owl, but he was a morning person, often going for long walks while she still slept. Merely one of the thousand complaints she’d leveled at him.
He had leveled only one at her, infidelity. He only discovered in court the vast extent of her attempts to belittle his manhood, never mind their marriage. The worst part was that it had worked. His lawyer had made sure that she walked away without a single dime of his, and he’d crawled into his condo and disappeared.
Well, he was sick of that. It was time for him to climb back out of his hole. And he knew right where he was going to start. The next time he saw Maria, he’d straighten out all this nonsense of his being homeless and destitute. He might be a lost cause, but he didn’t need charity. Not like so many he’d seen. He just needed—
A vision riveted Hogan to the sidewalk by the flower stall at the top of the Market. It was as if his feet had been glued to the brickwork. A woman was walking toward him. She was a vision of fire in the dark, a flame-wrapped wonder with a shock of dark hair that caught red from the streetlights and offered it up as a beacon in the night.
Maria. Before he could react, she had turned down the sidewalk into the Market, a turn that led her away from where he still stood in the shadows.
There would be no better chance than the present. Before he could think of a hundred reasons not to, he called out her name. She turned, and then her face lit with a smile of recognition.
She stopped and waited beneath the bright triple-globe of the antique streetlight that highlighted her like a shop-window ornament.
It took consciously forcing his knees to bend, but he did get his feet moving.
“Good morning, Maria.” It didn’t come out as too much of a croak, more as if he simply hadn’t used his voice yet today. Didn’t it?
“Good morning. You know, I don’t even know how to call you.”
“Hogan,” Dummy would be appropriate as well. “Hogan Stanford.”
“A pleasure, Hogan Stanford.” She held out a gloved hand which he shook after too long a hesitation.
He had lost all social graces.
“You couldn’t have eaten before leaving the shelter. Aren’t their breakfasts any good?”
“I, uh, wouldn’t know,” he only volunteered afternoons to help with the dinner service.
“Then where do you normally eat?”
He almost turned and pointed up at his condo window. It hung a dozen stories above them and a block to the side. But that felt stupid as if he were too clumsy to speak or explain. He started to form a sentence in his mind.
“You don’t. Well, come with me. We’ll take care of that.” She slipped her hand about his elbow and began to lead him into the Market.
“No, wait, you don’t even know me. I could be—” What, a crazed psycho? Even in her most vile epithets, Vera hadn’t accused him of that. Hogan Q. Milquetoast had been her nickname for him in the courtroom, which had won her little ground with the judge.
Maria stopped and smiled up at him, as if she knew more about him that he did.
“I’m not poor,” he finally blurted out.
“Of course not,” Maria agreed amiably. “There are always people worse off than we are. That’s kind of you, Hogan Stanford.” She made to lead him off again.
The fishmonger, the one always loudly professing his undying love, began opening his shop. Just an easy shout away. He began relaxing on Maria’s behalf, not that she needed protection from him.
This was all getting too muddled.
“Maria,” he dug in his heels to keep them in place until this was settled.
She turned to face him once again with
absolute patience, as if she were dealing with the feeble-minded. Her face wasn’t angelic. It was far too filled with life to be so described. It was rich with laugh lines, full lips, and the most expressive eyes on the planet. Sophia Loren could envy such eyes.
“I don’t eat at the shelter, because I volunteer there. I help out, I don’t want to take their food.”
“And you dress…”
He looked down and reassessed his clothes from an outsider’s perspective, she’d judged him as broke because his clothes were old and worn. That wasn’t it at all. He shrugged, “I dress…comfortably.”
Maria covered her mouth with two gloved fingers of her free hand. In moments, he could see the look of consternation turning into a smile.
He smiled in response.
“Well, that’s one on me, isn’t it?” Her hand remained wrapped in the crook of his elbow. “Well, Mr. Stanford, I said that I was going to make you breakfast and I am. Come along.”
Her gentle tug got him in motion.
“And while I’m cooking, you can explain how a man who is not poor, came to be at my window with no money.”
Great. Once he explained that he’d only had hundred-dollar bills in his pocket, she’d probably think he was a drug-runner. No, they probably dressed better than he did.
Maria was first into the restaurant. She had always enjoyed this part of the day. The front of the house dark except for a few small sconce lights left on for safety. The kitchen lit only over her workspace, the rest of it filled with soft shadows and the fading reminders of last night’s good smells.
She placed Hogan on a nearby stool and started a small pot of coffee.
“Can I help?”
“No, you are my guest. You may sit and tell me about yourself while I recover from my deep embarrassment.”
“You don’t look embarrassed, you look radiant.”
She glanced up in time to see him blush. She was past blushing, but she wasn’t past being flattered. She allowed him a moment to recover as she sliced day-old baguette and put it in the toaster. A nice, ripe Roma tomato slice, paper-thin bits of prosciutto, a dusting of minced basil, and a drizzle of olive oil on the toast. It was all ready just as the coffee finished brewing.
He still hadn’t spoken, but it hadn’t been an uncomfortable silence. She’d rather enjoyed having him watch her cook. Radiant? That was a good word, she liked that one. She set the breakfast between them on a single plate, and two large mugs of coffee. That was one of the American innovations that she liked, the ridiculously oversized coffee mug. What they lacked was any idea of what coffee should taste like. Even Seattle, so famous for its roasts, was typically lacking.
“Wow! That will wake you up,” Hogan was staring down into his coffee mug as if it had just attacked him.
“What, you like weak American coffee?”
“No,” he ignored her teasing tone. “But I do think that it’s a good thing I’m not planning to try and sleep again this week. Have you seen my eyebrows anywhere? I think your coffee knocked them off my forehead.” He began inspecting the kitchen floor as if he were indeed searching for them.
She pointed above his eyes.
He reached up and tested that they were still there before releasing a huge sigh of relief.
Maria felt the lifting of her spirits, but masked them with a bite of bruschetta.
He joined her. “Wow, that’s perfect. ‘The perfect bite’ as they say on the cooking shows. But this can’t be all you eat.”
This time she actually laughed. “This is more than I usually eat. I make this for my guest. Italian breakfast is a biscuit or cornetto and strong coffee. It is enough.”
“So, your morning window service, that is more properly Italian?”
“If they are plain or filled with a little honey or marmalade, yes. As I make them for Americans?” she shrugged.
Hogan was finding Maria to be very easy to talk with. Casual conversation had always been one of his weakest skills. He could lead a programming team of a hundred individuals and a half-dozen supervisors. What he couldn’t do was meet them in the bar after work and not be stilted.
“I arrived at Microsoft just as they were launching their first really stable Windows platform. That was version 3.0a, back in 1989. Summer intern, hotshot geek straight out of the University of Washington.”
“Local boy?”
“Yep. Born and raised.” He became fascinated with watching her move about the kitchen. It wasn’t that she was so beautiful. Okay, it wasn’t only that. He liked to think he was above merely prurient fantasies, though Maria’s body could convince him otherwise. But he did enjoy watching how she cooked aside from that. There was a confidence, an assuredness as she mixed flour, yeast, butter and a half-dozen other ingredients. No recipe, no second guessing, rarely any measuring cups.
“True locals are pretty rare according to Angelo.” Her voice was as rich as her coffee was strong. He liked food metaphors for her, they seemed to fit naturally.
He shook off the fascination with what she was doing and refocused on the conversation. “We are. I always say that Seattle is forty percent California refugees, forty percent East Coast refugees, ten percent from the Midwest, though no one knows why, and ten percent natives, but we’re hiding.”
Her laugh was musical. It lit the darkened kitchen far more than the spotlight dangling over her station. He scratched his head and wondered how on earth he could possibly make her laugh again. It was a sound he could never tire of hearing.
“And you are in hiding? From what?”
That stopped him. Yes, he certainly was in hiding, but how to explain the darkness inside him to this brilliantly shining woman who stood before him. She’d have no way to understand something so polar opposite to who she was.
“Myself mostly.” Far too close to the truth. Couldn’t he have just said “Californians” or “lawyers” or “hipsters” or anything else funny? No, he never thought up the punch line until two beats too late. The first beat, when it would have been funny if he’d said it then. The second beat, right after he’d said something far too true.
Back in his old life someone might say, “The system crashes every time I run your code.”
He couldn’t think to reply, “Have you tried walking it instead?” No, he had to stammer and apologize and promise to work harder. Though he’d become a heck of a good programmer just so he could stop apologizing for his hard work.
“Who was she?” Maria took the dough she’d been preparing and put it in a big standup refrigerator, pulling out another large batch she must have started yesterday.
“My wife.”
He saw a brief flash of disappointment across Maria’s features. So fleeting that he wondered if even she was aware of it.
“My ex-wife,” he corrected.
“And she hurt you so badly?”
What was it with this conversation? Not only was he several steps too exposed, he couldn’t appear to catch up with it at all.
“She…” How to describe the impact her vast betrayal had had upon him. Who was he kidding, that it still had upon him.
No. He couldn’t face the next sentence. It was too hard.
“Perhaps I should leave you to your cooking. Thank you for—”
Maria aimed a slender rolling pin at his chest across the table.
“No. You can’t leave yet. You haven’t finished your breakfast.”
He looked down. There were still several bruschetta on the plate and his coffee was barely half empty. “If I drink any more of your coffee, I’ll need an FAA license for flying through restricted airspace.”
Her gentle smile was no less potent than her laugh. “Well,” Maria attacked the dough with a dusting of flour and a great deal of energy. “I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with the FAA. Perhaps you need a lesson in flying under the radar.”
“Nowhere low enough to escape Vera’s radar.” Even to himself he sounded bitter.
Maria stopped rolling out the do
ugh and studied him for a long moment. Her dark eyes were shadowed by the overhead light. He could feel himself spread as thin as the dough with all his faults clearly visible. Here was where she decided he was too damaged to bother dealing with and she’d send him on his way.
“There is now a new rule.”
“There is?”
“There is,” she nodded emphatically to herself. “Yes, it is a good rule. Until I tell you otherwise, Mr. Hogan Stanford, you are not allowed to say that name again or talk about her in any way. Not even to yourself if you can help it.”
All he could do was stare at her. “You’re serious?”
“You doubt that, you ask my son. Don’t mess with Mama Maria. Proibito! You will not talk about her, refer to her, what is the word I want, alludere?”
“Allude?”
“That simple? Yes, you will not even do that. Not until I decide you are cured of whatever cloud she made over your head.”
“She—”
Maria cut him off with a sharp gesture of a single finger to her lips. “I will stop you every time you mention her. Who else do you talk to about her? You must tell them also to stop you.”
“Uh, I don’t talk to anyone else.”
She turned back to her dough, setting a dinner plate rim-down on the dough. With a quick trace of her knife around the edge, she cut a circle. Lifting the plate, she sliced a dozen lines through the dough with the tip of a sharp knife creating long thin triangles that all met at the center.
“No one else?” She didn’t look up from her task. It was as if she was giving him a safe space to speak from.
“Not really.” He sipped his coffee.
She plopped spoonfuls of a light-yellow custard at the wide ends of the triangles. She rolled them up one by one and the cornetti came into being. Placing them on a baking tray, she gave a practiced flick to shape them as crescents. In moments they were lined up, smeared with butter, and adorned with slivered almonds and lemon zest. He could hardly wait to try one. Unbaked, they already looked beautiful.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 56
