Kat — Remember when you said if I ever needed your translation services that I’d know where to find you? I do need help. Is there any way you can come to dinner tonight? The woman in charge of the padlocks has a My Favorite Mistakes necklace. She loves your designs, and would love to meet you. I think it could seal the deal. I hope you’ll say yes to dinner at 8. I can send a car for you.
—Bryan
There was a phone number for his hotel. I stared at the note, as if it would reveal my answer. Should I go? I still felt raw inside now that I knew the truth. I’d been tricked, and even if he felt he had to set me free during college, I’d rather he’d have told me he loved me before he left. Instead, he said nothing, and I was played a fool.
I was left empty-handed, a broken-hearted idiot.
But if my presence would help Made Here launch a new line of cufflinks fashioned from the leftover promises from the lover’s bridge, well, that seemed fitting, as well as the sort of thing a protege should do. It was business, after all. Only business.
I handed the paper to the clerk, and asked him to call The W and confirm a car for pickup.
*****
Orange flames glowed in the nearby fireplace, warming the restaurant. The waiter cleared away our dinner plates as Gabrielle Roussillon informed him that the meal was marvelous. She’d had rabbit and asparagus. I’d had chicken and roasted potatoes, and while I couldn’t vouch for the bunny, my French yardbird was indeed fantastic. The white tablecloth was now marked with a splotch of red wine from where Gabrielle had spilled some of her drink while talking with her hands.
Gabrielle was a chatty woman and had commanded the conversation. The pleasant byproduct of her loquaciousness was I could focus on her rather than Bryan as she told bawdy tales of the time she’d lived in Rome, and all her affairs with Italian men. I’d laughed, not simply to humor her, but because she was one of those in-your-face type of people, who could tell a saucy tale with a special sort of panache. She was curvy and broad-shouldered, with sheets of jet black hair. She wore a ring on her left index finger and mentioned a husband once or twice. I wondered if it was an open marriage. If he had a mistress, and she has misters, like her Italian lovers. It hadn’t seemed that long ago since she’d been in Italy.
She leaned back in her chair, and tapped a charm on her necklace. It was one of mine, and the charm was a pizza pie. “I don’t know if you remember this, but I ordered this one online from you a year ago.”
I flipped through my mental file of necklace orders. I certainly didn’t remember all of them, but a pizza pie charm stood out. “It’s not often I get a request for a pizza pie. I think I found it at a toy shop. I can’t believe that’s yours.”
“Small world. It’s for all my Italian men.”
“But, of course,” Bryan said. I didn’t look at him. I’d barely looked at him most of the night. My heart was still sore.
“And yours?” Gabrielle pointed at my throat. “What’s on yours?”
I walked her through some of my charms, telling her the same stories I’d told Bryan that afternoon in Washington Square Park of the English major I never became, and the building that I almost moved into.
“And that one?” Gabrielle touched my movie charm. “Were you almost a movie director?”
I laughed and shook my head. “No.”
“Then what is this for? Is it to remind you to stop watching movies?”
“Sort of.” I looked at the fireplace to avoid eye contact. I’d never told Bryan about the movie camera. I’d never told anyone but Jill what it stood for.
“Kat, Kat, Kat. A woman like me knows when a woman is lying. What is the movie camera for?”
I returned my focus to the French civil servant Bryan needed to charm. “It’s for a boy.”
“And who is this boy?”
“My first love. He was my first favorite mistake.”
“Ah. See! I knew it wasn’t just about the cinema. Tell me about him.” Gabrielle placed her elbow on the table and tucked her chin in her hand to wait for a story. I glanced briefly at Bryan. He was watching the two of us.
“I met him when I was seventeen.”
“Young love. The best kind.”
“And he was wonderful. And kind. And funny. He made me laugh. And he kissed like a dream.”
“So he definitely wasn’t a Frenchman, because they kiss like bores!”
“We used to go to the movies together all the time, and we made out in the theater.”
“That is why I say young love is the best kind. You can’t keep your hands off each other.”
I nodded, as waiters circled the small restaurant, clearing tables, and serving other diners. Low music played overhead, tunes like those sung by the torch singer who lived across from me when I called this city home. Songs of love gone away, or love gone awry.
“But he broke my heart.”
“And so you vowed to guard your heart from that kind of boy?”
“Yes.”
“And you still pine for this boy?”
“Yes,” I said, a hitch in my throat.
“You are beautiful and you are still so young. We cannot have a young, beautiful, smart woman in love with a boy who doesn’t care for her.”
“He does care for her.” The words came from Bryan. I turned to him, to look into his pine green eyes with their hints of gold. Those eyes practically infiltrated me with the way they knew me. “He always cared for her. He always loved her. He’s madly in love with her. She’s his Love, Actually. She’s his Casablanca. She’s the one he’d stop the bus for, the one he’d run through traffic for, the one he’d drive like a crazy man to the airport for and run through the terminal to stop the plane. Her name’s above the title for him. She’s the opening credit and the closing credit. She’s the love of his life.”