He frowned. “It’s not what you think.”
This took me by such surprise that I was left blinking in disbelief. “Not what I think?”
“She doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
I couldn’t believe this. He didn’t even look sorry. “Oh, no. You’ve done this before. You’ve cheated on me before.”
He averted his eyes. “Stop it, Nicky. You don’t have to make a federal case out of it,” he slurred.
Federal case? I hadn’t even lost my temper…yet. I abandoned my calm and slipped quickly into fury. “How exactly do you want me to take it?” I demanded in my snarky voice. “Oh, gee, Rob, no problem. As long as you come home to me, I don’t mind one bit.”
“Look, it doesn’t have to mean the end of us. It’s not like I’m in love with her or anything. If it means that much to you, I’ll stop.”
I envisioned smashing the bottle of wine he’d just finished over his head. “Who the hell do you think you are? The boss of the beginning and the end of us? Well, I have news for you. You have no say. None!”
“Aw, come on, Nicky. Don’t be like that. It didn’t mean anything.” His voice became repulsively sweet and he moved closer. The jerk was going to kiss me. “Come on, Nicole. You know you’re the only woman for me.”
“Apparently not.” I shuddered. “Get out.”
“What?” he asked, his eyes wide with shock.
“Get out. Go back to my place right now, pack your stuff and get the fuck out of my life.”
“Aw, but babe, you know I don’t have a car. How am I supposed to move my stuff?”
How had I never noticed how whiny he sounded? “Call your skinny bitch, for all I care. Just get yourself and your stuff out of my house before I get home.”
Rob stood there, hesitating. “Listen, how about you sleep on it? I’ll go to my place tonight. By morning…”
“Sleep on it? If your stuff’s not gone when I get home, you can collect the ashes in the morning.” I couldn’t believe his gall. “I’ll tell you what. I’m staying here to clean the kitchen. I won’t be home for at least two hours. That’s plenty of time to pack up your stuff.”
Rob searched my eyes, and whatever he saw in them must have convinced him that I was dead serious. He grabbed his jacket and stormed out, but not before giving me an offended look. Ha. As if he was the injured party.
A minute went by and silence descended. Rob was gone. The man I’d loved for the past two years was history. Now that it was over, I felt hollow. On the one hand, I hadn’t let the bastard walk all over me. Toni would have been proud. I’d stood up for myself. I wasn’t one of those women who let men abuse them. I was strong. I—I… Oh, heck, the truth was that I would probably cry myself to sleep tonight and every night for a long time.
I peered out the window. All the businesses had closed hours ago. Under the glow of the lamplights, the dark storefronts, the empty parked cars and even the street signs looked ghostly.
I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye—a shadowy figure walking away. It was Rob. This might be the last time I’d ever see him. I felt a sharp pang. I was still focused on him when I noticed another form. A man? A woman? I couldn’t tell, but whoever it was caught up to Rob. They walked on together until they faded into the darkness.
Rob was gone. If this was what I wanted, why did it hurt this much? I turned the latch, closed the blinds and escaped to the kitchen.
Ugh, I hated cleaning up. Now I wished I hadn’t sent everyone away. If I’d known how quickly I was going to expel Rob from my life, I’d have asked them to wait in the kitchen. No matter. There was nothing like a good old-fashioned cleaning frenzy to prevent a soul from falling apart.
I peeled out of my stupid body suit—a lot of good it had done me—and changed back into my comfortable pants and sweater, trying not to glimpse my disgusting folds of fat. No wonder Rob had preferred her. If only I hadn’t let myself go. If only I— Oh, what was the point? He was gone and wasn’t coming back.
I went straight to the walk-in refrigerator. I swung open the massive door and stared at the neatly stacked shelves of food—vegetables in crisper bins on bottom shelves, meat for the next day on middle shelves and the evening’s leftovers on the top shelf. Dozens of seafood cakes were stored in single-portion containers. A few inches away was an untouched pan of tiramisu. And just like that, I was out of control.
I grabbed the pan, closed the door and rifled through the cutlery tray for a spoon. I dove in and shoveled the soothing sweetness down my gullet at an alarming speed. I could hardly taste a thing. As always, it was the fullness in my stomach that I found comforting.
When I came up for air, the pan was nearly empty. Shit, how could I have eaten so much? That must have been what, the equivalent of eight portions? I was a pig. Seriously. I was disgusting.
I grabbed the tiramisu pan and threw it against the wall. Nice going, girl. Now, after washing all the dishes, I’d have the wall to clean, too.
Knock, knock.
The rapping came from the dining room area. Rob! My heart did a double flip as I hurried nervously to the entrance. With the lights on inside and the dark outside, I couldn’t see out until I was inches from the door.
“Toni.” For a moment, I hardly recognized her. My friend the fashionista had changed into jeans, and her hair was hidden under a baseball cap. She stepped in.
A wave of sadness washed over me. It wasn’t Rob. He hadn’t returned for me. Logically, I knew I should never want to see his cheating face again, but logic never won over heartbreak.
“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you use your key?”
“I was so worried about you, I couldn’t sleep.” She pulled off her cap and shook out her hair. “But I didn’t want to walk in on you and the creep while you were socking it to him. He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Oh, Toni. It was terrible.”
“I was afraid of that.” She wrapped her arms around me and patted my back. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see. Someday you’ll look back on this and wonder what the hell you ever saw in the jerk.”
I half chuckled, half sobbed. “I already do. Thank goodness I found out when I did. Believe me, I’m perfectly fine.” Yeah, right. It would be a cold day in hell before I ever trusted a man again.
She took my hand and led me to the kitchen. “I brought you some medicine. It’s heartbreak antidote.”
She pulled two martini shakers from under her arm. Always prepared, Toni was.
“Where are the martini glasses?” she asked, which infuriated me.
“You’ve been here as long as I have, Toni. How come you still don’t know where everything is?”
“Okay. I’ll find them myself.” She looked around, bemused.
I sighed and pointed. “In the cupboard to the left of the stove.”
“Right. I knew that.”
A few seconds later she handed me a glass filled with a dark liquid. “What is this?”
“An espresso martini.”
I took it and sniffed. “Smells sweet.”
She poured one for herself. “Trust me. It packs a punch.”
“If it’s anything like your scorpion, I believe you.” I looked around for a comfortable spot. “Where do you want to sit?”
“How about right here,” she answered, settling herself on the floor with her back against the refrigerator door. “Whenever I am totally miserable, the floor is the only place that really seems appropriate.” Toni gestured to the tiramisu-streaked wall. “I sure hope he was wearing as much of it as the wall is.”
I didn’t bother explaining. I joined her on the floor and took a sip of the martini. “Mmm. This is good.” I took another and another, until the glass was empty. “Any more where that came from?”
Toni pulled herself up, took my glass and refilled it. “I told you I was bringing good medicine. Drink up.”
“I’m already feeling it,” I said, having another sip. “I�
�m a cheap drunk. Two glasses of wine and I’m smashed. Rob always said…” I stopped myself. “Rob is gone. Who the hell cares what the jerk always said?”
Toni lifted her glass. “Amen to that.”
I was studying my almost empty glass. “You know what scares me?”
“What?”
“If I’m not good enough to keep a man now, at twenty-nine, then what’s the point? I’ll never look any better. I’ll only get older.”
“Don’t be silly. Life is not a matter of counting the years. It’s about making the years count.”
I let that pass. Sometimes Toni’s continuous flow of clichés irritated the hell out of me.
“You’re right. The floor is the perfect place.” I took another sip. “You know what’s the worst part of all this? Before I met Rob, I was okay with spending the rest of my life alone. Not just okay. I was content. Why do I have to keep learning the same lessons?”
“What in the world are you talking about? What lesson? You didn’t do anything wrong. Rob did.”
“From now on, I’m swearing off men.”
“Why should you do that? You’re young. You’re beautiful.”
I scowled. “Beautiful, right.”
“Of course you are. What you have to do is get right back on the horse. Go online and start meeting men.”
A while back, Toni had written my profile for Match.com in an effort to start me dating. It described my hair as strawberry blond, my eyes as the color of sage peppered with little black flecks, and my complexion as peaches and cream. “Everything is marketing, sweetheart. Trust me,” she’d said. “With this kind of a description, no man will be able to resist you.”
Maybe she was right, but I’d never used it. As far as I was concerned. only a weirdo answered an ad that made a girl sound like a meal. What if I came home with bite marks and drool? Besides, the last thing I needed was a man more turned on by food than I was.
“Toni, you’re beautiful. Men are attracted to you. Me? No man ever stays in love with me. They all end up leaving me.”
“Nicky, Nicky, Nicky.” She took a sip of her drink and put it down.
Uh-oh. What I wanted was a pity party, not a speech. Yep. She was turning to face me.
“After Steven and I divorced, I was in my mid-thirties.” She pointed a warning finger at me. “Don’t ever tell anyone how old I am.”
“Promise.”
“I hadn’t dated for ten years, not since I’d started going out with him two years before we got married. I was convinced that no man would ever ask me out. For a long time, no man did. You know what changed?”
“Toni, I’m too miserable for a lecture.”
She ignored me. “Me. I changed. Until I believed that I was a good catch, I couldn’t have found a man if I tripped over him.” She tapped her forehead. “It’s all about what you believe, because what you believe, the universe will send you.”
“Oh, give me a break. I don’t buy into that crap,” I exclaimed, and continued in my snarky tone. “Don’t like your life? Blame yourself. You didn’t think positive.” By now, I’d finished my second espresso martini and was settling comfortably into the buzz.
I held out my glass. “I want more of that good medicine.” As Toni headed for the table where she’d left the shakers, I noticed the corner of the room doing strange little tilts. “I think I’m getting a bit sloshed here.”
Toni answered over her shoulder. “Good. You deserve a good binge right about now.”
I said nothing about my tiramisu binge, but a sneak peek at the wall confirmed that it would take a lot of elbow grease to get rid of the now-congealed mess.
Toni was peering inside the first shaker. “Sorry, we’re all out of this one, but I have something else you’ll like.” She brandished the second shaker. “Chocolate martinis.” She came cha-cha-chaing back with the pitcher and two clean glasses. “I didn’t know which to bring, espresso or chocolate, and you know what I always say: ‘When in doubt, take both.’”
a good knife is the
essential chef’s tool
I must have dozed off around my fourth martini because, when I woke up, I was on the floor—the now very uncomfortable floor. I was lying on my side and someone—Toni—had bunched one of my chef’s jackets under my head and draped another over me like a blanket. I looked around. No sign of her. I pulled myself up and stretched the stiffness out of my joints. The floor might be the right place to sit when in the throes of emotional hell, but it was no good for a nap.
I glanced at my watch. Four fifty-five. Crap! Last thing I remembered it had been near two-thirty in the morning. I still had the whole place to clean.
I looked up—and blinked in surprise. Everything was clean. The pots and pans were gleaming from the ceiling rack. The piles of clean dishes and dozens of sparkling glasses were lined up perfectly in the shelves. The floors and counters had been wiped. Even the dregs of tiramisu were gone. Toni. I was so touched my eyes watered. I knew my partner well enough to fully appreciate her gesture. Washing dishes was not in her repertoire. She’d sooner throw out every dirty dish than take a cloth to a water glass.
I remembered the time when, in a moment of frustration, I’d accused her of being a princess. “You’re no princess,” I told the empty kitchen. “You’re an angel, an absolute angel.”
It was five o’clock in the morning when, at last, I locked up the restaurant and walked home with an anvil in the pit of my stomach and a gong in my head.
Except for the occasional car driving by, the streets were empty. Yet I felt safe. Even with over two-and-a-half million people in Toronto, a person could walk along the street in the middle of the night. Well, perhaps not in every neighborhood, but in Queen West village, for sure. Certainly more safely than in Saint-Henri, the rough Montreal neighborhood where I’d grown up. Until recently, Queen West hadn’t been considered desirable, but with the escalating prices of real estate in the city, people had begun snatching up the old Victorian houses around Trinity Bellwoods Park. Almost overnight, Queen West became hot, hot, hot. Thank goodness I’d bought before the big real estate bubble.
I’d lived here five years now and I’d decorated my little house along the same principles as the restaurant—high on imagination and low on cost. Toni, of course, liked to tease me that my decorating taste was for the birds—cheap, cheap, cheap. But as far as I was concerned, my home was perfect. It was charming and inviting, but most of all, it was my refuge from the world.
After making the down payment, paying the closing costs and the land transfer taxes—welcome taxes, as I liked to call them—I’d spent considerably more than I’d anticipated, so I’d made do with what I had. I’d kept a few pieces of my mother’s after she passed away—her old bedroom set, her battered dining room table and chairs, and a few other odds and ends. I painted the wood pieces the color of whipped cream, sanded the edges, and voilà, shabby chic. I loved it. It was pretty without being fussy, and best of all, it was easy to replicate inexpensively.
I’d also kept my mother’s old sofa, which I slipcovered in white denim. The walls I painted butter-yellow, and the windows I dressed in simple curtains made from yards and yards of lovely red-and-white toile.
There was one item on which I had splurged—a 1927 gas range I found on eBay and had shipped all the way from Winnipeg. The shipping cost had turned out to be twice the price I’d paid for the stove, but I didn’t care. Most women would have preferred a modern stainless-steel appliance, but to me, that yellow cast-iron monstrosity made me feel warm and cozy. It reminded me of my grandmother. Every time I looked at it, I was a kid again, back in her house, learning to cook while my grandmother encouraged me on.
Before having the gas company connect it, I’d spent the better part of a week disassembling the top to clean and scrub each piece individually—not nearly as complicated a job as it might sound. In the old days, they built those babies to last a lifetime, with very few, very heavy and very easy-to-identify parts. Even I had
had no difficulty putting it back together again. Now that stove sparkled like new, and I loved it.
With Rob gone, my home would be my own again. I’d barricade myself against the world and forget about him.
As I turned onto Shaw Street, I noticed a car pulling away about a block up the street. Was that Rob leaving? I couldn’t tell from where I was, but it seemed to be taking off from right in front of my house. If it was him, that must have been a cab. He didn’t own a car.
I trudged on. Or maybe he’d called that bitch and she helped him move out. I hadn’t really meant it when I told him to call her. The last thing I wanted was that slut in my home. I felt nauseated.
I put the key in the lock, and another thought struck me. What if Rob was still here? Just as soon as it crossed my mind, I dismissed it. I glanced at my watch under the porch light. It had been six hours since I’d thrown him out. He’d had plenty of time to pack and get out. Of course he’d be gone. Did this make me feel better or worse? Not sure.
With my heart thudding, I pushed the door open and flipped on the light.
Ruf, ruf ruf.
Jackie was bouncing down the hall, barking happily. At least somebody was home to greet me. I scooped her into my arms kissing and hugging her desperately, as if wrapping my arms around her could heal my pain.
“Thank goodness I have you, Jackie Chan. It doesn’t matter to you how much I weigh. You always love me, don’t you? As long as I feed you,” I added with a weak laugh.
I was putting her back down when I noticed, not three feet from where I was standing, right smack next to the entrance…Rob’s suitcase. I couldn’t believe it. Was this an excuse for him to come back later? My blood boiled. Why, oh why couldn’t he just…?
The lights were on in the kitchen, and my racing thoughts came to a screeching halt. He couldn’t be…or could he? With Jackie on my heels, I marched down the hall, already rehearsing a few choice words.
Getting Skinny (A Chef Landry Mystery) Page 5
