“What the ever-loving God, Iris!”
I groan and bury my face in my hands, shrinking into the corner of the sofa. This morning was pure spontaneity and joy, but seeing it recorded wasn’t ever part of the deal.
“Where did you get that?”
“I’m sorry? How about where did you get that voice?” he says, slamming my door and landing on the sofa beside me. “You’re more Chrissie Hynde than Chrissie Hynde is.”
I pull myself up to sitting and sigh deeply. “She was my mother’s favorite.”
“And you’re her doppelg?nger,” he says, shaking his head. “How have I missed this?”
“It was just something that happened this morning, it wasn’t planned,” I say, reaching out and turning the video off. “Who recorded it?”
He shrugs. “The guy from the coffee cart put it on the Buskers of New York page, tagged the park or something, I guess. It’s popping up on local feeds, Robin saw it. This could go viral.” He clutches my arm. “You’ll be on Oprah by morning.”
I roll my eyes and sigh.
“People want to know who this crazy talented gal is, Iris, and where they can see more of her.”
I shake my head. “They can’t.”
“I mean, obviously the place they can see more of her is the Very Tasty Noodle House, NYC’s newest music venue,” he says, pointing downstairs with a look of “Yes, girl” on his face that I need to dispel asap.
“Absolutely not, Bob. Not here nor out there again.” I gesture toward the window and the park beyond. “It was strictly a one-off.”
He flops back against the sofa. “How did I know you were going to say that?”
“Because you know me better than anyone else in this city, and probably the entire world?”
“Maybe,” he says, sighing. “Or at least I thought I did, until Robin sent me this and I was like, okay, hold my drink, I need to go home right now because Mariah’s living in my building. I mean, I missed dessert for this.”
I reach out and pat his hand. “And I don’t even have gelato to give you.”
“It’s genuinely like you hate me right now,” he says.
“You know I love you,” I say.
“Will you sing to me?”
I can’t give him my recipe, but I guess I can sing. “What do you want to hear?”
He leans against me, his head on my shoulder. “Surprise me.”
I squeeze his hand and, after a moment’s deliberation, I quietly sing “Golden Slumbers,” because it was my mother’s lullaby of choice when I was a small child in her arms. I feel Bobby’s head grow heavy, and when I’m done I pull the blanket over us and close my eyes too.
11.
Dear Iris,
I’m sorry I was an idiot, please come back. We miss you, I miss you.
G x
THE TEXT COMES IN AS I brush my teeth before bed. I read it at least twenty times. “Dear Iris”—it’s like an email opener, isn’t it? It’s so like Gio to be formal. Most of my texts are from Bobby or Robin, and they just launch straight in. “Dear Iris” suggests someone who doesn’t text often. As for everything else he said, I’m moved by the simplicity, by the apology without any attempt at mitigation. And “We miss you, I miss you.” I read it aloud, knowing what he means because I feel the same. I miss them in general, the place, Sophia, the gelato hunt…spending a few hours there each morning fast became the highlight of my day. And then there’s Gio himself, an immovable rock steeped in tradition and family, entrenched in that place as securely as those industrial machines in the back kitchen. It sometimes feels as if he’s lost touch with who he is among all that tradition, but then when it’s been just the two of us, I’ve glimpsed sparks of the man beneath. I’ve been so wrapped up in being guarded about the recipe that these small unacknowledged moments have accumulated into a neglected pile.
Objectively, of course, I’ve acknowledged he’s hot—he just is—but not in a boy-band way. He’s coming on forty and exudes this air of, I don’t know, being a man who knows stuff. He looks as if he could build me a bookshelf and mend his own car with those good hands of his, and is the sort of person you need around in a crisis. That doesn’t really touch the sides of what I mean. It’s the small things. The green-glass shards in his amber-brown eyes I’ve noticed sometimes when he looks directly at me, the edge of an unseen tattoo visible when his white shirtsleeves are folded back in the kitchens. It’s the strength of character and grit that runs through him like a river, a seam of solid gold alongside the steel. There’s vulnerability when he speaks of the people he loves, the woman he lost, the daughter he worries for. He’s a complicated man embedded in a complicated life, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t missed all of those things about him in recent days. I’ve kept my life purposefully small here in New York, but that seemingly throwaway act of going to the festival with Bobby has opened the doors to new possibilities. My world is opening up. I’m singing Joan Jett songs to strangers, for God’s sake, and I kind of love the new me. It’s a fragile balance—I want to go back to Belotti’s because I miss them, I miss him, but I don’t want to feel as if the secrets I need to keep make me a bad person. I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, toothbrush in hand, and I decide to text him back. It’s a risk worth taking, and I promise the girl in the mirror that I’ll watch her back.
* * *
—
GIO IS ALONE IN Belotti’s when I push the door open. He turns at the sound of the bell and I pause, half in and half out, as nervous as the first day I came here. He lays his cloth down on the counter and is still too, and we take each other in for a moment before a slow smile lifts one corner of his mouth.
“You came back,” he says, reminiscent again of that morning a few weeks ago.
“I couldn’t leave my machine here,” I say, but soften it with a smile of my own so he knows I’m joking.
He half laughs and looks down. “I thought as much. Coffee?”
It’s really cold out this morning, the tip of my nose and my hands chilled from the short walk. “Yes, please,” I say, taking off my coat and scarf. “A bucket.”
He turns away and busies himself at the machine, and when he turns back he places a mug down in front of me.
“Not quite a bucket,” he says.
Customers here all get the same small white cup and saucer, and I have too, up to now. This morning I have a forest-green mug, and when I reach for it I see it has my name on it in gold lettering.
“Oh,” I say, unexpectedly touched. Gio and Sophia have the same ones—I’ve seen a rack of family mugs at the back of the kitchen. “I love it.”
He looks pleased, and then puts his cloth over his shoulder with a small shrug. “I was ordering new ones, so.”
And now I’m the one looking at the floor and feeling like a kid at the school disco. Our small but significant text exchange seems to have upset the balance between us. I think it’s down to me to try to right it.
“I’m sorry,” he says, rushed. “I was out of line last week.”