“So, Katy,” Adam says. “Tell me what your deal is.”
“My deal?”
“Your deal.”
“I heard you’re trying to buy this place,” I blurt out. I sit back, rubbing a hand over my face. “I’m sorry; it’s none of my business. But Marco seemed kind of upset this morning. And also, I think you lied to me?”
Adam laughs. “I think omitted is probably a better verb.”
“Lie by omission, then.”
Adam holds his hands palms faced upward in surrender. “Fair enough. It’s just that people get understandably prickly when they think you’re trying to mess with a local and storied establishment. Also, we just met.”
“So why are you?”
Adam takes a sip of wine. “I work for a hotel company. That part was true, obviously. I told you they want a piece of property in Positano, also true. I just neglected to mention that this is the piece of property they would like.”
“But Marco doesn’t want to sell.”
Adam shrugs. “They were hit hard recently. I’m not sure they have the money to stay open the way they want to right now. They’re struggling. Their margins are close. Remember, Positano only sees tourism four, five months a year, tops.”
“This hotel has been in their family for a hundred years.” I don’t know if that’s true, actually, but it feels true.
“More like forty, but yes.” Adam leans his elbows onto the table. His body hovers closer to me. “Do we really have to talk about this?”
I feel my entire body flush. Right down to my toes.
This is the moment. This is the moment when I say, Hey, just for the record, I’m married. I mean I don’t know HOW married I am, currently, whether this is a break or the beginning of a full-blown divorce or what, exactly, is going on with me and Eric, but there are rings upstairs that up until twenty-four hours ago sat on my finger for five years.
But I don’t. Instead, I say, simply, “No.”
Adam sits back. “Good.”
The fish comes and it’s whole—head, tail, everything—and entirely encapsulated in a giant salt crust. Carlo proudly displays it on a clean white serving dish.
“Gorgeous,” Adam says. “Bravo.”
Carlo sets up a deboning station a few paces over and starts knocking away the salt crust. It comes off in big, satisfying chunks.
I think about what Eric would do if he were here. Eric is the pickiest eater on the planet. He likes chicken and pasta and broccoli. My mother used to say he never evolved his palate, that he ate like a six-year-old child. She was right, and I think, now, that the reason this experience is so extraordinary is that California Pizza Kitchen was on regular rotation in our household. The only time we ate well was when my mother cooked.
Carlo brings the plates over; the filleted whitefish sits beside sautéed vegetables and roasted baby fingerling potatoes. My stomach rumbles in anticipation.
“This looks incredible,” I say.
“Enjoy,” Carlo says.
He leaves, and I pick up my fork, lifting off a flaky bite.
“I swear,” I say, “I think this hotel has my favorite restaurant in the world?”
Adam looks at me. “It’s up there,” he says. “But this just tells me you have not been nearly enough places.”
I think about Eric and our yearly trip to Palm Springs, about our five-year anniversary in Miami.
“You’re not wrong,” I say.
“Have you been to Europe before?”
“Yes,” I say. It’s true, technically. London counts, right?
We sink into the meal. The fish is perfectly buttery; the vegetables are drenched in olive oil; the pasta is al dente. I finally cave and end up ordering a glass of wine.
Adam was raised in Florida but now lives in Chicago. He loves Italy, but not as much as he loves France—France actually has better tomatoes and cheese, he tells me. Provence has the best produce in the world. His mother was born in Paris and spent her childhood there. He speaks fluent French.
He likes hiking, dogs, and air travel. He doesn’t love being in the same place too long.
He’s single.
He offers the information up in the form of an ex-girlfriend he went to Tokyo with a few months back. It’s subtle, but effective.
“It was a terrible trip, but I guess I can’t blame the city for our breakup; it was a long time coming.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I’m not,” he says. “Who knows where I’d be now. One thing different, everything different.”