The four of them sat upstairs at Lowell’s Restaurant in the Market, a small table close against the windows facing the Sound. She and Perrin were splitting a Chicken Apple Salad, Jo and Cassidy a Grilled Vegetable Panzanella, a Tuscan rustic bread salad.
“He made me an espresso.”
Perrin’s eyes practically crossed in her confusion, or perhaps disappointment. “You didn’t push him down on the floor and use his body until you couldn’t stay conscious any longer?”
Maria could hear Cassidy and Jo trying to leap in and cover for her. But they didn’t understand yet that Maria needed no protecting, especially not from Perrin.
“I thought about it, but not yet.”
Perrin didn’t look away, as if Maria’s love life was the most interesting thing on the planet.
“But I knew a part of him wanted me to. So, I left him something to think about.”
“Ooo, Jo was right. You are scary smart.” Perrin looked impressed. Impressed and thoughtful. She might do well with a little more thinking before she gave away her heart next time.
“So, espresso?” Cassidy went for the subject change.
“Yes, he had this beautiful machine that his wife had given him. He loved the machine, he just hated her connection to it. So I had him make me a decaf espresso which we drank with a delivered Chinese dinner.”
“So…” Perrin leaned back in, clearly still eager for more details. “You connected it to you.”
Maria guessed that she had, though that wasn’t her intent. Then she considered what else had happened last night.
She’d enjoyed herself. Immensely.
Hogan had been both interested in her and interesting himself. They had talked late into the evening. He had tried to call a cab for her, she’d insisted on walking, wanted the fresh air to clear her head. He had insisted on walking with her, her hand comfortable in the crook of his arm as they strolled along.
At the front door to her building Hogan had proven two things. One, that he was an absolute gentleman; she’d had to be the one to kiss him. And second, that first kiss hadn’t been a fluke at all. He was very gentle, but he was also very thoughtful. She could practically hear his brain working on how to improve the kiss moment by moment. Maria had let him, simply enjoying the experience. She’d hoped for electricity and had actually found the lightning she’d asked for. Maria Parrano had gone to bed alone, but very content with the world.
“Better he connects with me than that awful woman. I don’t know what she did to him, but it must have been horrid.”
“Damaged goods,” Perrin nodded sagely. “They can be so much fun to fix up.”
Maria nodded to let Perrin have the round, but it wasn’t what she was thinking.
Hogan Stanford wasn’t damaged, but she’d wager he wasn’t often understood. Probably not even by himself, perhaps especially not. He was absolutely forthright. What he said, he was. His words fit him. If he disagreed with someone, he’d say it, often so bluntly that it sounded offensive, but it wasn’t. Because when he agreed, he was just as blunt and to the point. Other than his occasionally quirky sense of humor, he was exactly as he appeared to be.
Jo and Cassidy had turned to a discussion of the latest bizarre-husband behavior that their new spouses were exhibiting.
Maria interrupted, “To quote Julia Morgan when talking about Angelo and Russell: They’re perfect. Because they are perfectly themselves.”
“That, Maria, is absolute truth,” Jo agreed. The two girls continued comparing notes over their salad.
“Perfect.” Just like Hogan, she thought to herself. Perfectly himself.
“What was that?” Only Perrin had overheard Maria’s whisper to herself.
“That’s what Hogan said I was.”
Perrin studied her for a long moment, and then wrapped Maria in one of her open-hearted hugs and kissed Maria on the cheek.
“Of course you are. If he didn’t see that in you, he wouldn’t deserve you.”
Maria held onto her for an extra moment. Now she knew exactly why she’d called Perrin.
Hogan met her, as promised, right after he was finished with volunteering at the shelter.
Maria had offered to make him dinner, but he’d insisted that he had that covered and she should dress warmly. She waited for him outside the shelter, not minding the cold air, though she had worn slacks and a bright knit vest under her coat. Seattle’s damp chill was still not as penetrating as the deep cold of New York City winters.
“You’re here!” Hogan came up beside her, his face still bright from the kitchen’s heat.
“You thought I wouldn’t be?”
He kissed her quickly, though not the least perfunctorily, taking the initiative this time, which she liked. He lingered long enough to heat her blood like a schoolgirl’s and then began leading her down Yesler Way toward the waterfront.
“I thought that I had made it all up and you couldn’t possibly be real. Do you have any idea what it was like to wake up in my apartment without all of Ver—herself’s detritus in it?”
He gave her an effusive hug whirling her around three times until her own head was spinning and she actually needed his arm to stabilize herself.
“You’re a miracle!” He practically shouted it to the sky. “I dealt with everything last night. After you left, I took out all of the garbage, dropped the books off here at the shelter, and that last box of questionable stuff is down in my basement storage locker. I’m free!” He shot his arms above his head for a moment as if scoring a goal.
His transformation was startling. As if someone had taken away the Hogan Stanford that she was just starting to know and replaced him. He continued to guide her along the evening-lit streets, his left hand clasped warmly over where her own was tucked in his right elbow, she allowed herself to bask in his new-found energy.
Nor was she immune to the compliment of his constant glances in her direction. No woman could be.
“There’s something terribly touristy, that any self-respecting local boy could never admit to wanting to do. But taking his girl on a date, that’s a good enough excuse, isn’t it?”
‘His girl?’ Maria could barely catch her breath. He made her feel absolutely giddy. “What happened to the Hogan Stanford I met only yesterday?”
“Only yesterday? Wow! That can’t be right.” He stopped for a moment to blink at her like a surprised owl caught unexpectedly in a searchlight. “Yesterday? And I just kissed you like…” He trailed off uncertainly.
She thought about repeating her warning to not say he was sorry. She didn’t want to be with a man who was sorry that he’d kissed her and made her feel so wonderful and desirable. Instead, she pulled him down to her and kissed him long and hard. He barely hesitated, wrapping her tight against him as they stood in the middle of a busy Seattle sidewalk.
They were quiet when they started walking again. It was as if they’d both gone too far and yet neither had gone far enough. She finally had to speak, to say something.
“You’re right. Yesterday can’t be right. If we met just yesterday then I would be a wanton hussy and you a hustler.”
“I dunno. A hustler?” He nodded to himself. “Never been accused of that, but it sounds kind of cool, doesn’t it?”
“I have no desire to be a hussy.”
“Couldn’t if you tried,” was his immediate response. “Too much of the lady in you.”
They continued until they crossed beneath the towering Seattle Viaduct. Two tiers, each three lanes wide, of highway that dominated the Seattle Waterfront. He had to speak up for her to hear him over the traffic noise.
“I don’t know if I’ll recognize Seattle when this comes down next year. My dad talked about this being built when he was kid. That would have been the fifties I guess.”
The change to the Seattle skyline would be dramatic. It was presently dark and dingy beneath the towering roadway. But old factories were being replaced with boutique stores in anticipation. The change was happenin
g slowly, but it was coming. Soon they would all be exposed to the sunlight and the waterfront would bloom.
They crossed Alaskan Way and reached the broad sidewalk that ran in front of the piers, stretching off down the entire Seattle waterfront. Just two nights ago she had said to the other members of the Fearsome Foursome that she was open to change. Suddenly, everywhere she turned, change appeared to be confronting her.
“So, Mr. Whatever-you-have-done-with-Hogan, what is this terribly touristy thing?”
Like a conjuring magician, he waved his hand to the left. They stepped clear of the cheerfully jostling crowd at the outdoor counter of the Crab Pot Seafood Bar, busy despite the cold.
There, rising above the end of the old wooden pier soared Seattle’s newest wonder. The Seattle Great Wheel towered seventeen stories above the waterfront. The massive Ferris wheel, sporting thousands of white lights and dozens of gently swaying gondolas, commanded the waterfront.
Maria looked up at Hogan, who had paused to await her reaction.
“You’re right. It is terribly touristy. So, Mr. Stanford, if we get a gondola alone, what kind of a good time are you planning to show ‘your girl’?”
That got the expected blush and made her feel rather better. As if he’d just confirmed that the real Hogan Stanford hadn’t gone anywhere at all.
They did indeed get their own gondola, not much of a crowd appeared on a Monday evening in early December. Three times around the Great Wheel, just the two of them. Maria knew exactly how horrified Perrin would be that they didn’t make some use of their unexpected privacy, but the view out the window was too spectacular.
They sat side-by-side on the padded bench seat, comfortably holding hands. First, they climbed toward the city. It revealed itself in layers, first Alaskan Way running along the waterfront, then the double-deck of the Viaduct, until it too lay far below. Finally the city itself, its soaring skyscrapers like torches lighting the night sky, striving ever upward.
“It’s such a young city,” Maria gazed out at the shining skyscrapers. So many of them clearly born just in that last decade or so.
“Are you implying that we aren’t?”
“I’m still young,” Maria laughed. “There is too much life still ahead of me for me to feel otherwise. How about you?”
He kissed her on the temple then turned back to the view. “You make me feel as foolish as when I was twenty. It’s quite an odd feeling. Had you asked me a week ago, I might have told you just how ancient I was feeling. But from the moment I saw you a dozen stories below, I began to understand that I was alive for the first time in far too long.”
As they reached the apex of the Ferris wheel, Maria tried not to feel uncomfortable. First, just how long had he been spying on her before she’d noticed him hovering beyond her take-out window? He was sounding a bit like a stalker.
Second, she was no one’s savior. She was no great heroine. And the man who saw her that way was due for a future let-down of immense proportion. Did she want to be around for that? For the chaos of his emotions? The fall was a long way down. The pity was that she really liked him and didn’t want to have to put up barriers between them.
Perhaps detecting her thoughts, Hogan leaned his shoulder gently against hers increasing their connection.
She considered pulling back, but was stopped by his soft voice, barely louder than the sighing of the wind around the gondola car and the gentle creak of its bearings.
“I’m not crazy, Maria. It is not because of you that I realized this, at least not really you.”
“You’re making even less sense than usual, Hogan.”
She could see his silhouette nodding in the dark as they started down. The wheel reached well out over the water of Elliot Bay, a vast darkness below lit only occasionally by ferries and other small boats.
“I know. I’m good at that, aren’t I?” He made it sound as if he were a little boy fishing for a compliment.
Maria laughed dutifully, but didn’t feel it.
“What I saw from my high window that drew me out into the world again was a woman walking through the Market, I didn’t know anything about her. She could have been eighteen or eighty. All I knew was that in a city of grays and blacks and REI jackets, she stood out. She wore a sky blue wool coat down to her calves and the brightest gold hat I’ve ever seen. I spent a week walking the Market, looking to once more find that flash of color. To find the woman who would dress so brightly and uniquely.”
He pointed out a shining ferry leaving dock from just a few piers down. It sparkled on the dark water. Maria knew they shared the same thought of it being pretty enough to point out, but not wanting to interrupt the conversation. Such simple communication between them. Perhaps he wasn’t really all that strange.
“That whole week I spent looking and hoping, simply wanting to see how alive someone like that must appear up close. Knowing there was little or no chance of finding her, still I searched. What I realized was that I was searching for something more important. I’d lost a piece of myself somewhere. Lost it so badly that I had to wander about pretending I could find it somewhere other than within myself.”
Maria liked this story. Could feel his absolute involvement in it. This wasn’t some tale a man told to a woman he was interested in. This wasn’t a stalker who had followed her, he was a man looking for himself. He was working it out even as they swung down closer and closer to departing ferry.
“I don’t know who it was that I saw from my high window. There’s no way for me to tell, but I like to think that it was you.”
Maria kept her lips tightly pressed together. The coat and hat he had described were indeed hanging in her closet, though she’d never thought of them as anything special.
“By the time I spotted you in your Botticelli window—”
“My what?” She turned to study him as they swung through the lights at the bottom of the wheel’s arc and started their second journey around the wheel.
“That’s how you look. Didn’t you know? Right down to the simple golden frame around your window at Angelo’s. I thought it was familiar, so looked it up online. It’s almost a perfect match for the one around Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring hanging in Florence.”
She was going to kill Russell. Maria had just thought it was pretty wood trim. But of course Mr. World-famous-photographer Russell, who had such an amazing eye for art and composition, would have known exactly what he was doing when he had so kindly offered to set her up with a way to sell breakfast treats and gain new customers for Angelo’s restaurant. She’d have to check the outside wall to make sure there was no little “description of the image” plaque bolted up as if she were hanging in a museum.
“Anyway, at that moment, I didn’t care if I found that lady or not. For what I saw before me was a woman who clearly understood that life was a gift. It’s something I lost sight of, maybe long ago.”
They climbed once more into the city’s night sky. But Hogan wasn’t watching it. He was staring out the window as if desperately searching for some earlier version of himself.
“Maybe that’s what Vera took out of me. Sorry, I know I’m not supposed to mention her.”
“I give you dispensation this one time,” she kept her voice gentle, not wanting him to stop.
He nodded his acknowledgement but his attention was still far away. “I’m not sure though. Maybe it was partly the job. Or a combination of things, some good, some bad. I had to see someone who reveled in the light, reveled in life itself to remind me of what was so important. You do that. It is so rare, so special, how could you not draw me like a beacon.”
Now he turned to face her, so close she could see his eyes clearly despite the dim lighting of the waterfront falling behind them as they again swung downward.
“From now on I want to surround myself with people who think being alive is a gift. It has essential importance. I now see that Eric, the man who founded the shelter I volunteer at, has that. You have that. All I can hope
to do is find some of that joy in myself and share that as well.”
Maria tried to still her pounding heart. Tried to keep her reaction inside her, hidden, to how wonderful a man sat beside her.
She didn’t remember the third turn of the Great Wheel at all. Her knees were weak and her lips ever so pleasantly sore as Hogan led her off the Ferris wheel and took her to dinner.
Chapter 8
“Are you okay, Mama?”
Maria blinked hard then looked down at what she’d been cooking. The ginger jam that she’d been simmering had scorched. A bagnomaria of chocolate had overheated and separated, which was exactly what the double boiler was supposed to prevent. She hadn’t done that since she was a little girl standing on a kitchen chair to help her grandmother cook.
“Fine. I’m fine.” She began cleaning up the mess. A glance at the clock said that she still had time if she stayed focused. Which would be much easier if she weren’t so preoccupied by memories of how Hogan had made her body feel on that third time around the Ferris wheel. He’d scooped her into his lap and—
“Mama?”
Angelo stood close beside her. A worried look on his face. She patted his cheek and insisted she was fine. He eyed her carefully before slowly rejoining Manuel on the cook line. They were experimenting on a dish for the new restaurant.
Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth, which actually leaned more toward Ligurian fare, was primarily seafood. Liguria lay north of Tuscany, a thin slice of the coast, but it was lesser known. So, Angelo and Russell had named it for the more popular Tuscany. The new restaurant, Angelo’s Piedmont Hearth, was a concession to the American clientele rather than the Italian “Piemonte.” It would have a whole new menu, based on the stronger-bodied wines of the mountains and the meatier fare of the region.
Maria began scouring the pots quickly. By the time she’d turned back to the cook line, Graziella was there laying out fresh ginger, sugar, and chocolate.
“I know that look, Ms. Parrano.”
“What look?” Maria did her best to sound innocent and knew she failed miserably.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 58
