Isn't It Bro-Mantic?

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  It feels funny talking to him about Helen, now that I’ve realized what’s going on, so I change the subject.

  “How about you?” I say. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Oh, me, well.” He starts to cut my hair. “Soon’s we’re done here I’m going to close up shop for a few hours to go bang the mistress.”

  Well, I think, at least Stavros hasn’t forgotten everything.

  After the haircut, I head over to Big John’s for a cooking lesson with Aunt Alfresca. I want tonight to be special—our first couple over for dinner—but have no idea what to make, so I called her and she said to just come on over.

  I come into the kitchen through the back door and find Aunt Alfresca standing at the counter with a rolling pin.

  “Where’s Dad?” I say.

  She jerks her head toward the living room. “Asleep on the couch in front of the TV with his hand in the waistband of his pants. Where else would your father be?”

  That question doesn’t appear to be expecting a legitimate answer so I just shrug.

  “Let’s get down to business,” she says, “before someone wakes up and starts demanding his lunch.”

  I try to picture Big John demanding anything from Aunt Alfresca but it doesn’t fly. More likely, she demands he eat lunch at a certain time whether he’s hungry or not.

  “Since it’s friends and not family you’re cooking for,” she says, “you’d do better to build a meal around what you know they like rather than just serving whatever the hell you feel like giving them. So? What do they like?”

  “Well, Billy’s like me. He likes pizza. He likes steak. When it comes to food, we’re basically into your basics.”

  “And what about his wife, Alice? What does she like to eat?”

  Hmm…now that one’s more difficult…

  What does Alice like to eat?

  I think back, trying to remember. Given that I’ve known Alice for over a quarter of a century, I had a crush on her for most of it and now she’s married to my best male friend, you’d think I’d have a ready answer, but I got nothing. Except for weddings and cafeteria food back when we were in school, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Alice eat anything. It’s amazing she’s not anorexic. Then I remember something, the one clue I have to the kind of food Alice likes.

  “Amusing boots!” I say with a triumphant snap of the fingers.

  Aunt Alfresca scrunches her face into a disgruntled configuration. “What the hell are you talking about, Johnny?” The rolling pin is raised threateningly.

  I raise my hands in defensive posture. “Don’t hit me!”

  “Sorry. Involuntary reflex.” She lowers the pin. “But really. Amusing boots?”

  In my excitement over having remembered what Alice likes, I forget the threat of being hit. “You know,” I say enthusiastically, “amusing boots.” I hold my hand out with the tips of my thumb and forefinger touching to demonstrate. “Those little hors d’oeuvres thingies. You know—those classy things you make just a couple of each and they’re supposed to whet the appetite for something not so little? ”

  “Ah, I get you.” The dawn of recognition lights Aunt Alfresca’s eyes. “Those boots.”

  “Exactly!” I say. “I knew you’d know what I was talking about. This one time I was invited to Billy and Alice’s house for dinner, she served them. The thing was, I didn’t know what they were at the time—”

  “And now you do?”

  “Well yeah. But at the time. I thought there’d be a lot of them, like regular hors d’oeuvres. So, like, I ate them all before anyone else got a chance to have any.”

  “Marone,” she says, “I raised a gavone.”

  It’s never a good thing when Aunt Alfresca talks Italian at me, particularly if it rhymes.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” she says with a sigh. “We’re going to come up with a menu that’ll be pleasing to both of your guests and that will also manage to atone for your previous…boots sins. Now, then, to make your crust…” More sighing. “Scratch that, Boots. No point in trying to bite off more than you can chew at your first dinner party. OK, in the freezer case of Super Stop & Shop…”

  In the freezer case at Super Stop & Shop, I find the brand of dough Aunt Alfresca recommended and then I proceed to shop for everything else on the list she’s given me.

  Oh, and what has Helen been doing while I’ve been getting my hair cut, absorbing cooking advice, and doing the hunting and gathering? Painting. She said a friend was coming over to help her with our bedroom. It’s kind of tough to picture Carla with a paintbrush in her hand, but anything that keeps me from having to paint my own bedroom pink and black with my own hands, I’m all for it.

  Thump. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  What’s that sound?

  I drop the groceries on the kitchen counter and head for the staircase. As I climb, the thumps get louder. When I reach the second floor, I see Fluffy hurling himself against the closed door to the master bedroom. Oh, I get it now. Helen and Carla must have closed the door to keep the cat from running through the metal trays of paint and then tracking little pink and black paw prints all over the floor. It’s a smart move on their part but the poor guy’s freaking out. Fluffy has always had issues with closed doors and Helen’s recent policy of closing our bedroom door when we go to bed at night has not helped. Whenever I go to the bathroom and Helen’s not around, it’s easier to simply leave the door open. Otherwise, he’ll hurl his little body repeatedly against the door as if to say, “Let me in! I know you’re doing exciting things in there!”

  I put my hand on the doorknob but then stop shy of turning it.

  “Sorry, Fluffy,” I say, scooping him up and bringing him to the bathroom. The thing is, if I don’t put him there, he’ll just run into the bedroom as soon as I open that door and then he’ll do that running-through-the-paint-trays thing that Helen and Carla have wisely been avoiding.

  “Look,” I tell the cat, pointing at the toilet bowl, “fresh water if you get thirsty. This’ll only be for a short while.”

  As I close the bathroom door behind me, careful not to catch it on Fluffy’s reaching paw, I hear a slow ticking sound. What is that? Has the shower got a leak?

  Back in the hall once again, this time I do turn the knob on the bedroom door all the way, pushing the door open, only to be greeted with…

  “Johnny! Paint any good houses lately?”

  As the speaker reaches out for a handshake and I numbly pump back, I wonder:

  Daniel Rathbone? What the hell is Dan Rathbone doing in my bedroom?

  He’s got an e-cigarette propped above his ear and he pulls it out now, drawing on it hard and blowing e-smoke in my direction. I notice some specks of hot-pink paint freckle his cheeks.

  “Isn’t Daniel great?” Helen says. “When he heard me say in the office that I was going to be doing some painting myself this weekend, he offered to help.”

  Great is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Daniel.

  “Hey,” that great guy says to me now with a self-deprecating shrug that strikes me as all self and very little deprecating, “I couldn’t let her do it all herself. And I was kind of surprised you weren’t going to be helping her, considering what you do for a living and all. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? You not painting your own house—it’s like the cobbler’s children going barefoot.”

  Oh, it’s so funny, it’s a real scream.

  The only good thing about finding Daniel Rathbone in my bedroom? At least I don’t notice the paint on the walls.

  But I don’t have time to think about any of that because soon Daniel’s gone, the cat’s out of the bathroom, and it’s time for me to think about getting started on dinner preparations.

  Ding-dong!

  Helen and I go to answer the door together and find Billy and Alice on our porch, as expected. What isn’t expected is the physical distance between them. They’re standing so far apart, their bodies are like #6 and #10 bowling
pins left standing, just waiting for someone to come and knock them down with a hard spare. Seriously, I had no idea our porch was so wide.

  “Come in, come in,” we say.

  As Billy walks past us, ahead of Alice, he hands me the six-pack he’s been holding.

  I look at it: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. “Nice,” I say with an appreciative nod.

  Alice rolls her eyes and turns to Helen to inform her, “They always do this. They always bring the same exact beer to each other’s homes and they always make appreciative noises like it’s something special.”

  “Well, it’s a good beer,” I point out.

  More eye-rolling on Alice’s part. But what does she expect me to say? ‘Oh, this crap again?’ Why would I ever say that? It is a good beer!

  Alice hands Helen the bottle she’s holding.

  “Ooh, nice wine,” Helen says.

  “Thanks,” Alice says with a big smile.

  Seriously? Like what Helen said was any better than what I said?

  We show our guests into the living room.

  “Nice tunes,” Billy says.

  Queen’s “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions” is playing. I took charge of the sound system before our guests got here, telling Helen I’d take care of that in addition to the food so she wouldn’t have to worry about anything, given the hard day she put in painting. But really, I was just worried about what she’d play.

  “That song.” More eye-rolling from Alice. Sometimes, I worry she’s going to roll those eyes right out of her head, which wouldn’t be as funny as it sounds. “It reminds me of being in the gym at basketball games during high school, watching the guys play.”

  What’s wrong with things that remind you of high school?

  “I imagine Johnny was good at sports in high school,” Helen says.

  “Oh yeah,” Alice concedes. “There was nothing he couldn’t play well.”

  “Here,” Helen says, taking the six-pack from me, “let me get us some drinks.”

  “Let me help,” Alice says, following after her to the kitchen.

  Soon, Billy and I hear the sound of our wives bonding.

  “What did you do today?” Helen asks.

  “I went to the gynecologist. He is such a Chatty Cathy. Does that ever happen to you?”

  “Oh my god, yes,” Helen says with enthusiasm, as if she’s been waiting forever to talk about this very subject to another woman. “The last few years, he just goes on and on and on. I keep wondering: Is he lonely?”

  “I know, right? I keep wanting to say, ‘At least let me put my clothes on first!’”

  Helen laughs. “I know, right?”

  Apparently, neither Helen nor Alice received the memo from Sam about how we all need to find something new to say in place of ‘I know, right?’

  Billy and I do our version of bonding.

  “Work going good lately?” I ask.

  “The same. You?”

  “Couldn’t be better.” I regard Fluffy. Since the initial flurry of excitement inherent in having people in his new space, he’s sacked out on the ottoman. “Doesn’t he look like a proud lion to you?”

  “Absolutely,” Billy agrees as the ladies return with drinks for everybody.

  Just then the oven timer dings.

  Helen starts to head back to the kitchen but I wave her to a seat.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” I say. “I’ve got this.”

  Alice raises her eyebrows in an I’m-impressed look. “He’s got this,” she says. “Impressive.” Then to Billy: “How come you’ve never got anything?”

  Gee, I’d love to stay and watch them argue, but I don’t want my mini quiches to burn.

  On the platter I extend toward our guests, in addition to the four mini quiches—Lorraine because Aunt Alfresca encouraged me not to overcomplicate things—there’s a small glass bowl with a cloudy yellow liquid in it and there are four avocado and goat cheese crostini with balsamic tomatoes, four bacon-wrapped king prawns on rosemary skewers and four of your basic stuffed mushrooms; the mushrooms I tacked on at the last minute for symmetry’s sake, figuring that if there were four of us there should be four each of four items.

  And now I’ve said the word four so many times I’m going to call a moratorium on that word for the rest of the night.

  Screw four.

  Since Billy and Alice are our guests and Alice is the female portion of their marriage, I offer the plate to her first.

  “What’s all this?” she says.

  “I wanted to make something you’d like,” I say, “and I know how much you like amusing boots.”

  “Amu…what?”

  “Amusing boots. You know, those things you made that time I came for dinner but then I ate them all because I didn’t realize that was all there was.”

  Oh, crap. Now I’m worried she’ll be offended. After all, she only served one set of four amusing boots when I was at her house while I’m serving them four sets of four. She’ll probably think I’m trying to “outdo” her in the hostessing department.

  And double crap, I’m back to saying four again. This is worse than ‘I know, right?’

  Funny, though, Alice doesn’t get pissed at me like I expect her to. Instead, she smiles, takes a bacon-wrapped king prawn on a rosemary skewer and says, “Actually, I think the term you’re looking for is amuse bouche.”

  And this is the worst kind of crap of all. Amuse bouche? Not ‘amusing boots’? Did Aunt Alfresca know this? Of course she did. These days, Aunt Alfresca watches the Food Network like it’s the Mets, the Jets and the Knicks combined. Yet she didn’t correct me. Instead, she called me Boots at one point which perplexed me at the time. And now I realize my nickname from her will probably be Boots for the rest of my life.

  Alice goes to put the prawn in her mouth but I stop her.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” I say. “You dip it in that.” Then I give a chin nod toward the glass bowl with the cloudy yellow liquid. “Lemon olive-oil dip,” I explain.

  She dips, tastes, and her face goes all orgasmic. “Oh my God, that is pure heaven.”

  “Thank you,” I say, moving on to offer the plate to Billy, who takes a mushroom; and Helen, who goes for the crostini. Me, I grab a mini quiche not because it’s the most tempting, but because no one else has grabbed one yet and they just look so unloved sitting there like that.

  “I can’t believe you did this for me,” Alice says, taking another bacon-wrapped prawn; I could point out to her that what she is doing is not proper amuse bouche behavior, that there is one each of everything for each of us. But I can’t really blame her. The prawns are the most impressive. They’re what I’d be going for myself if I weren’t stuck eating these quiches.

  “Billy never does anything like this for me,” Alice says, her mood visibly turning. “If he cooks at all, it’s a steak.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say in a light tone of voice. Just then I’m saved by the oven timer going off again, which is a good thing because in terms of breaking Alice’s sudden bad mood, I got nothing.

  “I hope people are still hungry,” I say, popping another mini quiche in my mouth.

  I’ll tell you one thing. Mini quiches got nothing on the best party hors d’oeuvre of all time:

  Chips In A Bowl.

  In the kitchen, the ridiculously yellow kitchen, my wife gives me a slap on the bottom as I’m bending over the open oven door. Not wanting to get knocked into the oven like Hansel—or is it Gretel? Nah, it’s the witch—I straighten up.

  Helen whispers in my ear from behind, presumably so our guests can’t hear her, “Did you really make all that for Alice?”

  “Not just for her,” I say. Hey, those bouches were for all of us.

  “Were you trying to impress her?”

  Impress…

  Of course I wasn’t!

  Was I?

  “No,” I say. “But in case you haven’t noticed, she can be a little prickly. I just wanted to start the night out by serving something I knew sh
e’d like.” A thought occurs to me. If Helen’s asking all these questions, does that mean she’s…jealous?

  “I swear,” I reassure what I think needs reassuring, “I was just trying to be a good host. You didn’t mind, did you?”

  “Are you kidding?” she says. “I think it’s incredibly sweet.” Then she snakes a hand around the front of me and caresses a part of my anatomy you should not touch when a man is trying to get dinner on the table. “And sexy, very sexy.”

  I serve dinner in the dining room. For the main course, I went with a simple pizza—buffalo mozzarella, crushed tomatoes and garlic, tiny strips of fresh basil. The crust is only store-bought but what can you do? Aunt Alfresca said making your own homemade can be a little dicey for a first-timer. There’s also a big salad and I make sure everyone’s got enough beer and wine before I sit down at the head of the table, across from my wife.

  My wife.

  Never gets old.

  Billy helps himself to a slice of pizza and his eyes widen with pleasure as he takes the first bite.

  If the amuse bouches were for Alice, the pizza is for Billy.

  There’s a thump and Fluffy lands on the table.

  Alice looks a little startled, probably from that big thump, but then goes back to serving herself some salad. I’m about to gently remove Fluffy when Billy reaches across the table to give Fluffy a rub under the chin.

  I start settling back in my chair, thinking maybe this is OK. After all, Alice and Billy have a cat, so they get this. They know that so long as Fluffy’s not making a full-frontal attack on our food—and he’s not; he knows if he waits patiently, he’ll get something when we’re done—it’s no big deal. This is simply Fluffy trying to socialize, trying to be part of the group. But then:

  “Do you think you could put him in the basement until we’re done eating?” Helen suggests.

  She’s smiling when she says it, so I’m tempted to point out—again—that I’ve read that having a cat on the table while eating is not unsanitary in any way. But then I think, hey, this is her preference, it’s a dinner party with friends, the idea is for everyone to have a good time—well, obviously it’s not Helen’s idea for the cat to have a good time, but still—so I figure what’s the big deal.