Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [60]
And then I posed the question to myself in one fleeting thought of how would things have played out if I had met John Risley while Addison was alive? Would I have ignored any and all thoughts, twitches, and pangs and would I have walked away with my conscience intact? That was an impossible decision to make, because I had never felt anything like this before.
“Just give me a call,” John said to the mechanic and we got back in the car.
John decided we should have dinner at the Red Drum in Mount Pleasant. I was fine with his choice. It was pretty amazing to learn that Charleston had a chef who had trained at the Culinary Institute of America living and cooking right under our nose, only to find out we had a few of them.
“Yeah, the chef at McCrady’s too. There are probably a half dozen CIA chefs in town and another dozen or more from Johnson and Wales.”
“Wow,” I said, sounding really stupid and uninformed.
He laughed and said, “No! Charleston has become quite the foodie destination for chefs and patrons as well. There’s the whole Food and Wine Festival that happens every year and then remember Johnson and Wales was here for maybe twenty years or longer.”
“What happened to them?”
“Moved to Charlotte but I have no idea why. I heard that North Carolina offered them some sweet deal, like ten million, to make the move and then they reneged. Same story with Bank of America. I don’t know all the details.”
“Aunt Daisy says you should never trust anyone north of Columbia.”
“Aunt Daisy is right! Anyway, I just know some of the faculty stayed behind and cut a deal with Trident so now there’s still a cooking school here. It’s kind of amazing, you know? This town really has come into its own. Everywhere you turn there’s an interesting restaurant with a hot young chef cooking up something floating in a froth or finished with a coulis or some fancy, high-toned thing.”
“Well, I say bravo to all of that!” I hoped I sounded enthusiastic but that wasn’t what was running through my mind. Yeah, big hairy bravo, I thought, so tell me about your wife, Mr. Risley. Tell me about her.
We arrived at the restaurant, turned the car over to valet parking, and went inside. The lively and stylish southwestern-flavored bar area was teeming with people of all ages and I thought, well, at last there’s a fun place where I could come for a night out, maybe with Patti when she came for a visit, and we wouldn’t look like a couple of pathetic cougars on the prowl. The pretty and congenial youngish hostess led us to a nice table. As I followed her across the dining room, John’s right hand was lightly touching the small of my lower back in an unmistakable proprietary way, a gesture that meant nothing more than we were together and he would be the guy to catch me if I should trip. I liked the whole idea of it, ceremonial or not, and thought, wow, Addison Cooper had not held my elbow or the small of my back in eons. In fact, I felt a twinge of sadness as I realized how long it had been since there had been any token of affection coming my way except from my sister, my children, my housekeeper, or my caterer.
My sex life was buried in a wasteland of mothballs and if I left it there it was by choice, not by necessity. I knew that but I was still grappling with the cold facts of the day