Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [149]
With the slam of the oven door, the reverie is broken. I suddenly wish I’d kept my last appointment with Dr. D-P. How foolish not to have told her I was going, not to have left a lifeline, a trail of psychic breadcrumbs back to the land of rationality. I’ve left myself with little choice; I’m on my own.
“So,” I say, while Jake busies himself with preparing topping for the pizza. “Interesting meeting yesterday.”
“I thought you’d think so,” he says. “I assume you’re in?”
“Probably. I want my lawyer to look things over first, and assuming everything checks out, we’ll send over an addendum to the proposal.”
Jake looks up, his hand poised over some fresh arugula. “What kind of addendum?” he asks.
I shrug. “Hopefully, it won’t rock the boat, but if I’m going to take creative control over Grappa, I need to know that I’ll have the freedom to make the kind of decisions I need to.”
Jake takes the warm pizza from the oven, spreads it with a wedge of softened, oozing Taleggio, scatters a few slices of fresh apricot, some prosciutto, and a handful of the arugula over the top. He anoints it with olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon. The combination is one of my recipes, and it’s been a seasonal favorite at the restaurant for years. I wonder if Jake even remembers it’s mine. He picks up his wine and the pizza, and we take our seats at the table.
“Bravo! This looks beautiful,” I tell him as he places the pizza onto my plate.
“They won’t be into redecorating. I can tell you that right now,” Jake says, frowning.
“That’s okay. The dining room is fine the way it is. I’m talking about staffing, purchasing, choosing suppliers.”
“I know you’re talking about Brussani Imports, but there are some things you should know—” Jake begins.
“Look, it’s not just Renata, and I haven’t made up my mind about anything yet. AEL has promised me creative control of Grappa, and I need to know I’ll have the power to make decisions that I think are in Grappa’s best interests. That’s all.”
Jake pauses and then nods slowly. “Good idea,” he finally says. We eat in silence for a minute or two.
“I was cleaning out the storage unit at Perry Street, and I found a couple of boxes of your things. Do you want to come and get them?” I ask.
Jake looks up at me, surprised. “What? Oh, sure. Thanks for saving them,” he says.
“No problem.”
Jake leans his forearms on the table as if he’s about to say something.
“So?” I ask.
“So what?” Jake says.
“What else do you want to talk about?” I ask. “You said yesterday you had some things you wanted to discuss.”
Jake picks up his wineglass and pushes his wooden bar stool back a couple of inches. “Remember when we took that trip to Puglia?”
He knows that I do. We’d gone for our anniversary a few years ago. We had stayed on the top floor of a small hotel impossibly cantilevered over an expanse of rocky shore. We’d eaten burrata, a Pugliese specialty, every morning for breakfast, with a slab of bread—arguably the best in Italy, still warm from baking overnight in the dying embers of the ancient stone oven. The cheese would arrive each morning on a tray outside our room, still warm, and wrapped in the customary thick blade of grass, swollen like a ripe piece of fruit. I can remember the sun-dappled roof tiles outside our private terrace, where we’d made love in broad daylight overlooking the Adriatic Sea, licking the thick cream from each other’s lips.
My mouth is suddenly dry. I reach for my wine, nodding, I hope not too vigorously.
“Do you remember Silvano’s?” he asks.
“Of course, I do,” I