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Simon smiled again as if I’d passed a sort of test. “I’m not. My great-great-grandfather was Russian. He was a chef in Tsar Nicholas’ palace.” Again, the self-deprecating smile. “Don’t be impressed. There were a lot of chefs and a lot of palaces. It’s possible he never even cooked for the Romanovs at all. But he did see that handwriting on the wall and got himself out of Russia before the Revolution. He escaped to China, met my great-great-grandmother, who was the daughter of an American diplomat, married her and moved to the US. They ran a restaurant in this area which did quite well because of the number of Russian immigrants who settled here. I’ve got some of his recipes, but I’d like to know more about him, what he saw, what it was like to live in pre-Communist China and Russia.”
I saw the romantic Simon was at heart come to life in that moment and was enamored that cooking was a way for him to connect with his family history, the same way my memory of my grandmother’s pear trees had connected me to her. And, I marveled, he had married the two in the morsel he’d whipped up out of nowhere while I’d talked about the taste of those pears.
Before I could say anything, my phone rang.
With a feeling of dread, I slid off the bar stool on which I’d been perched and stalked my phone down where I’d left it in the other room.
“Richard.” I hadn’t even looked at the caller ID.
“Becks, I’m really sorry…”
As I started to tune out the excuses I’d heard before, something stopped me. A voice in the background, a quickly hushed laugh, the sound of…
“Richard, where are you?”
“I told you, I’m still at work.”
I took the phone from my ear and opened up the tracking app we’d installed on our phones as a joke on our first anniversary. We’d had a lot to drink that night, and it seemed like a way to keep the connection between us on nights we couldn’t be together. Now, I wondered how often Richard had used it to keep tabs on me because what I saw was that I was where I was supposed to be — my Cal Bears icon pinned on a house along the Russian River — but Richard’s photo of his black Tesla was not pointing to a high rise on Sansome Street in the financial district in SF. No, it was on the exact opposite side of the city in the Sea Cliff neighborhood.
“How long, Richard?” I asked as I brought the phone back to my ear.
“How long what, Becks?”
“You’re really going to play the fool here? How much longer were you going to string me on? Or was I the sure thing and this other man simply a fling?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. You lied to me, Richard.”
Though he hemmed and hawed and tried to use lawyerly logic on me, ultimately Richard confessed that he’d been seeing someone else for the past six months. The shock of it was nearly obliterated by the sudden wave of relief I felt thinking how close I’d come to making the biggest mistake of my life, and I laughed even as Richard ramped up his newest round of I never meant to hurt you…it just happened…I don’t know what came over me… My laughter stopped him mid-sentence.
“Becks, are you okay?”
The question should have come from Richard, the man who was supposed to know me better than anyone else, the man who was supposed to care about me more than anyone else. But it didn’t. It came from Simon who stood in the doorway to the kitchen showing more concern than when I’d fallen while ice skating with Richard and cracked my head so hard I’d given myself a concussion. Richard had been impatient and frustrated that my trip to the ER meant we missed our dinner reservations.
“And who is that, Becks?” Richard’s voice had switched into litigation mode, and I could tell he was going to use this to absolve himself of the guilt he so far seemed incapable of displaying.
“That is Simon.” My voice was steady as I knew I was about to deliver the coup de grace in this argument. “He’s the private chef I hired to create the perfect dinner for us tonight so I could propose. To you.” I heard the ice in my tones, the vindication as I revealed my trump card.
Once again, I’d miscalculated as it was Richard’s turn to laugh. “You really are a romantic fool, aren’t you?”
I hung up on him.
“Becks?” Simon asked again. “Should I pack everything up?”
For a moment, I almost said yes. I’d still pay Simon for his time and the food, but something wouldn’t let me say the words.
I clutched my phone so tightly I thought I would break either it or the bones in my fingers and fought against hurling the device through the glass doors. Taking a deep breath, the aromas of Simon’s cooking filled my chest. Something bubbled on the stove, and the scent of roasting vegetables along with the rich smell of meat seemed to warm me. I hadn’t been aware that I’d grown cold during the conversation with Richard, but I had; my extremities turned to ice, and my heart as frigid as the Marianas Trench.
“I can leave the food for you if you’d like me to leave. I always bring storage containers so my clients can keep the leftovers.”
“No,” I finally managed to say. “Don’t.” I turned to face Simon. “Stay and eat with me. Talk to me. Keep me from doing something stupid.”
The distressed look on Simon’s face made me shake my head. “I mean stupid as in getting drunk and calling Richard. Or texting him.” I held out my phone. “Maybe you should take it. Hide it from me. Just in case.”
“I think you’re stronger than that,” Simon said.
I followed him back into the kitchen and took my seat at the island. Simon poured me more of that excellent Italian white, then poured a glass for himself.
“So,” he said. “Do you want me to keep with the menu as planned or improvise a bit?”
“By all means, improvise. If you happen to have some pasta in your bag of tricks, I’d be more than willing to have that as well.”
