Aperitif Pernod infused with sugar water and absinthe —JAMES LACHANCE, Meal of a Lifetime,THE MENU: BEFORE THE MEAL BEGINS
Chapter 19
Immersed up to her neck in James’s claw-foot iron tub, it was hard for Amy to remember why she had ever been upset with him. She sank under the scalding water. The imported Belgian soaps were heaven. The French candles, divine. And the Bordeaux the yummiest she’d ever had. The bottle didn’t even have a proper label. Just a white sticker with a scribbled note: “For James. Happy Holidays, Jules.” She wondered who Jules was as she emerged from under the water and reached for her wine. Julie, his ex-lover? Julian, a salesman pimping vino for Les Fleurs? Who cared? She was in his apartment now and Jules wasn’t, and that was nine-tenths of the cosmic law. She pulled herself out of his tub and wrapped herself in his enormous terry robe. It smelled like rosemary and lavender. She padded around the apartment while drying her hair with a white, impossibly plush towel that smelled like the robe. Like James. She took in the expansive room. The place wasn’t what she had expected. In the cab on the way over (“The Bourse,” she had said to the driver, and he screeched away from the curb without a moment’s hesitation), she had imagined a bachelor pad in a sleek glass building, with black leather and chrome and squeaky-clean, thanks to a twice-weekly woman named Lucille. Then, as she rode up in his semiprivate elevator, she reconsidered. The Bourse had turned out to be an elaborate building—a nineteenth-century, brick-and-terra-cotta palace across from the Liberty Bell with its first six floors converted into an upscale shopping mall, its upper floors businesses and private residences. So she reimagined his place as a sublime architectural shell with gorgeous moldings, soaring ceilings, and nothing inside but a mattress on the floor and a fifty-thousand-dollar stove in the kitchen. But when she threw open the heavy, carved, wooden double doors, her heart fell. How could a man this cultured be her soul mate? His place was gorgeous. Classy. Respectable. The apartment was a single huge room, with soaring ceilings and top-to-floor windows set over enormous gilded nap-worthy ledges strewn with pillows. The floors were gleaming hardwood. The ceilings were painted with naked angels, their little wieners jutting out like third eyes. The furniture was a mix of antiques and modern pieces covered with tasseled pillows of every shape and size. Nothing matched, and yet everything fit perfectly. It was the kind of place you’d see photographed in a glossy magazine, with James himself, a perfect mix of sexy and competent, pirate and stockbroker, standing at the stove, surrounded by beautiful smiling people.
Maybe Roni isn’t lying. Maybe James is destined for Gladys Roman, who is an architect, no, a professor—no, an art critic from Italy . . . A cloud of doubt descended on Amy as she opened, then closed, a cookbook written in Italian. Gladys could definitely read Italian, but she wouldn’t need to because she could cook up a storm as taught by her illustrious grandmother, most likely an heiress. . . . Amy wrapped the robe more tightly around herself. What am I doing here? When she was with James at the restaurant, it was like a stage set. He put on his chef costume and she put on her server costume, and they played French Restaurant with a show-must-go-on vibe that she relished. His real self, the cocky, bold, bad-boy self, was under that costume, she had thought. But this was his home, and it was beautiful and classy. It was no act. No stage set. It was for real. He was a cultured, rich, successful man.
Definitely not her soul mate . He was more stockbroker than pirate, she saw now. With all these books. All these antiques. All this taste. What had she expected? Rigging and sails and scurrying rats? Amy sighed. She would have liked that. Well, maybe not the rats.
I know nothing about who James is . She looked around her. The cookbooks alone were intimidating. French. Italian. Chinese. They overflowed the bookshelves, held up tabletops and lamps, and stacked themselves into corners like houseguests. Instead of candlesticks, antique cheese graters lined the mantel.
I’m a muse. I can be his muse even if he’s rich and owns lots of books in other languages and has impeccable taste and I’m not his soul mate. There is more to life than love; helping someone I admire and enjoy is worthwhile. And fun.
She moved through the expansive apartment to the king-size bed, which sat rakishly askew behind a Japanese screen. The bed was covered in masculine sheets, whites and browns, just like Les Fleurs. The similarity was vaguely disturbing, as if Stu might show up with a basket of bread. She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the sheets.
“Nice,” Oprah said. She sat in the wingback leather chair next to the foot of the bed, sipping James’s wine.
“I hate it here. I feel like a bum. He’s so cultured. The French posters and the private-stock wine and the pillows with tassels. I thought he was faking the fancy shmancy-French-snob bit, that the real James was bubbling just below the surface. The pirate. The one who’d run away with me. The one who’d—” She stopped and took a deep breath.
Oprah finished her sentence. “The one who’d consider hanging with a Gypsy psychic loner wanderer?”
Amy flinched, then relaxed into the relief of having her feelings voiced so plainly. “I think it’s the pillows. What kind of man owns pillows with tassels and then shacks up with me?”
“You’ve done this sort of thing before.”
“It was different before.”
“Why? Casual sex isn’t exactly a reach for you.”
“Yeah, but this feels different. It doesn’t feel casual. It feels deeper. Oprah, I think I’m falling for someone else’s soul mate.”
“He’s the first guy you’ve ever been with who isn’t a guitarist in a failing heavy-metal band. The first man you’ve been with longer than a week, Amy. Sure it’s scary.”
“It’s been six days.”
“The first man you’ve been with for almost a week,” Oprah corrected herself.
“I’m not having a relationship with James.” Amy shook away the thought. “He’s using me, and I’m using him, and he’s not my soul mate.”
“Roni is lying. You know so. You have to trust your heart.”
“I thought she was. Until I saw this place. Now I’m not so sure.”
“What’s in his eyes? In his kiss?”
Amy fell back on the bed and closed her eyes. How nice would it be to have Maddie and also to live here, in James’s robe and bathtub? To make sweet, long love with a beautiful man who cooked like a dream? “I can’t love him unless it’s even. I don’t want him to have all the cards.”
“He doesn’t,” Oprah said. “You’re his muse. That means you have something to give him that he doesn’t have. Something that he needs.”
“Sex?”
“No, dummy. More.”
“More? Like what?” Amy opened her eyes, hoping to find the answer in Oprah’s shining eyes.