We follow the sandwiches with sweet, ricotta-stuffed cannoli and I lean on Bobby, laughing as I swoon.
“This was your best idea yet,” I say.
“I have lots of others,” he says. “Just say the word.”
I appreciate his unpushy nature a great deal, he’s such easy company to be in. I know he worries I don’t get out enough. He’s probably right. In truth, the dentist is probably the social highlight in my calendar. It’s not that I’m the reclusive type, per se, just that I was at rock bottom when I arrived in New York and it’s taken some time to rebuild myself. Maybe that does look reclusive from the outside, especially against the bells-and-whistles backdrop of New York, but it’s been restorative for me up to now. I’ve got Bobby and Robin, and there’s Bobby’s niece Shen too. She’s the kind of nineteen-year-old who could run the world in her lunchtime if she so chose, but prefers to serve noodles to Bobby’s customers between taking classes and dancing her way across the city every night. She’s a pretty decent chef too, always happy to take over at the stove if I need a night off, which isn’t very often. And then there’s Smirnoff, who isn’t technically my cat or Bobby’s; he’s lived in our building longer than either of us and seems to have full jurisdiction over where he parks his furry orange behind. Some nights he chooses my sagging green armchair, while other nights he’s full stretch on Bobby’s windowsill, watching the street shift down below. And then there are nights when he doesn’t come in at all. I like to imagine him scaling the zigzag metal fire escape to prowl the perimeters of the building or visiting a glamorous Persian for a late-night booty call. In reality he’s probably on someone else’s sofa eating someone else’s food—he’s pretty shameless when it comes to taking what he wants. We should all be a bit more Smirnoff.
Music cranks up from loudspeakers just along the street, and Bobby tugs me by the hand to follow the herd, crooning an almost-impressive rendition of “That’s Amore” as we go.
“You have to see this,” he says, finding us a spot on the sidelines. “Meatball-eating competition.”
The crowd parts as he speaks, clapping as they allow a line of waiting staff bearing huge silver trays of meatballs to march through the center toward a raised stand where a line of contestants sit ready for battle.
“I wonder how someone becomes an eating-contest champion,” I marvel, gazing along the everyday faces of the men and women each about to consume enough food to feed a small village.
A sequin-clad woman gives a rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and then they’re off, stuffing as many meatballs as they can into their faces, washing them down with bottle after bottle of water. The crowd goes mad for it, shouting encouragement, and I watch as the contestants eat with varying degrees of gusto, sauce on their chins and T-shirts. It’s crazy, over-the-top and feel-good, a gluttonous celebration of this vibrant Italian corner of New York.
Afterward we buy bracing shots of limoncello and cardboard trays of hot, sugared zeppole, stepping off the sidewalk into the tiled doorway of a closed shop for shelter as the heavens open.
“I’ll admit it. This was fun.” I rest my backside on the traditional wooden window ledge. I’m warm inside my jacket, potent alcohol sliding into my bloodstream.
“I see you, Iris Raven. Food is the magic key to getting you out of your apartment.” Bobby turns his back against the door. “I’ll find more food-related adventures for us to go on.”
“If it’s anything like this, count me in.”
I won’t need to eat for at least a week, yet still I reach for another melt-in-the-mouth zeppole, brushing powdered sugar from my fingers. Bobby pulls his phone from the back pocket of his sprayed-on jeans, and as he bends to recover a pack of gum that has fallen out at the same time, I catch sight of the shop’s painted glass door behind him. I go perfectly still and stare intently at it, my head to one side, because it’s jarringly familiar. I’ve seen it somewhere before, I’m certain. I just can’t put my finger on where.
“What is this place?” I say, cupping my hands to peer through the side window. It’s in shadows inside, but I can make out the black-and-white checkerboard floor and oxblood leather stools lining the counter.
“Belotti’s gelateria,” Bobby says, not looking up from his phone. “I’m surprised they’re closed during the festival actually, there’s always a line.”
I shoot him a testy look. “Is it as good as mine?”
“How could it be?” Bobby’s sigh is pure theater. “If I meant anything to you, you’d let me put that stuff on the menu in the restaurant.”
“Never going to happen,” I laugh, my eyes still lingering on that unusual door. Bobby is the person I like most in the world these days, but we’re still not serving my mother’s gelato in the Very Tasty Noodle House. Not in Katz’s Deli either, for that matter. Nor in the super-swish dining room at the Plaza, not even if the head chef got down on his knees and begged me. My mum was a bohemian free spirit with an ever-playful glint in her eye, but she had one stone-cold serious rule when it came to her vanilla gelato recipe: it was a secret that I could never share with another living soul. It is the best vanilla on the planet and remains my desert island food. She made it for me as a small child and as a grown woman, served from her favorite vintage cotton-candy pink melamine bowls. And then when she became ill I made it for her, until it was the only food her body could stomach. Until it became more about the memories than the taste. She’d close her eyes as I held the spoon to her dry lips, the smallest amount enough to raise the ghost of a smile.
I click the camera open on my phone and snap a shot of the distinctive door, even though I almost don’t need to because it’s so memorable. Its slender old mahogany frame houses a bevel-edged sheet of plate glass, which has been hand-painted with a green-striped cup of swirled gelato topped with cherries and a neon spoon at a jaunty angle. The jewel colors pop from the glass as if freshly painted just yesterday, even though it exudes unmistakably stylish old-time ambience.
“I think I’m done,” I say, taking one long, last glance at the door. “If I eat anything else I’ll collapse.”
“Home, then?” Bobby offers me his arm, and we step out into the crowds and duck our heads against the rain.
2.
IT COMES BACK TO ME in an adrenaline-fueled rush as we make our way home, the door jumping out from my memories of a photograph I’ve looked at hundreds of times over the course of my life. As soon as we let ourselves through the peeling red side door beside the noodle house I make a garbled excuse to Bobby about grabbing a quick nap before evening service starts. I’m more wired than tired, though, as I slam the door of my apartment, my mind racing as I head straight for my bedroom, shrugging my coat off as I go. I drag my mother’s scrapbook down from the top of the wardrobe and drop back onto the bed with it in my arms. I’ve looked at this stuffed-to-the-brim book countless times over the years, both with and without my mother by my side to fill in the blanks. It’s a potted history of her youthful hopes and dreams, proof that she followed her performer’s heart, even if things didn’t work out quite the way she’d hoped in the end. Official publicity shots of her eighties band sit alongside more candid photos that pulse with gig-energy, cuttings from trade magazines, reviews from papers, the occasional ticket stub, the front of a cigarette box signed by all of the members of the band. I can’t read their illegible scrawl and I don’t recall their names, except for the confident red signature at the bottom belonging to Charlie Raven, the band’s drummer. My father. He was my mother’s on–off lover for several years, a physical relationship she always knew was destined to go nowhere. It ended the day she declined his offer to give her enough money to terminate her pregnancy. I have no memory of him at all; he died in a helicopter accident when I was six. My mother said she wasn’t all that surprised when news reached her of his death, because he was the kind of full-throttle person who rarely lives to see old age. She didn’t speak badly of him, exactly, just painted a picture of someone wild who blazed bright and burned out. She probably felt it was reassuring for me to hear I shared little in common with him except my surname, which she chose for me over her own anonymous Smith. My father’s death has always just been a footnote in my story, someone who bears very little impact on who I am today. Charlie Raven, forever thirty-two.