15. That’s Amore
That’s Amore
AIDAN
La Volpe Affamata was the nicest restaurant I’d ever been to.
Granted, I’d only ever been to two restaurants total, but it made Patsy’s look like a muddy viper pit with booths thrown in.
The white linen tablecloths, tuxedoed servers, and differently sized forks and spoons set out beside the tiered dishes at our two-top table surpassed any definition of luxury I’d come to know.
The pale orange walls were decorated with paintings of fruit bowls and wine bottles and piazzas. Every table was occupied by smartly dressed diners.
Henry—the best dressed of them all in my eyes—had his suit jacket unbuttoned and his dark brown hair slicked back.
The rusty color of his shirt brought out the earthy undertones of his eyes.
The wine steward wordlessly poured a rich red into our spotless glasses as Henry and I smiled at one another over the open flame between us.
In the corner, a group of musicians played “Buon Natale” at a respectable volume so the guests could still hear each other talk. Henry and I didn’t speak, though. All we did was continue to grin at one another like fools, food menus cleared and dishes ordered.
I couldn’t tell if we were both so hungry as to be speechless, or we were too jazzed by how well the window had gone over that we didn’t know where to start the conversation.
I splayed my pewter-colored napkin across my lap, took a sip of the decadent wine that brought heat to my throat, cheeks, and stomach, and then started to speak only to halt at the sight of a woman leaning into her dining companion and giving him a big kiss.
Everywhere my eyes sliced I saw couples, kisses, hands being held, and gifts being exchanged. This was undeniably a date spot.
The server set down our fried artichoke as I asked, “Is this a date?”
Henry’s eyes bounced up to the server’s face, which sported a wide-eyed smirk. He told us to enjoy before shuffling off. Henry bit his wine-kissed lower lip, then said, “It is.”
“A practice date?” I asked.
He shook his head without breaking eye contact.
I could’ve flipped the table with the thrill streaming through me. I said between frantic breaths, “In that case, you look beautiful tonight.”
He blushed. “Thank you. As do you.”
We split the artichoke evenly. “I didn’t know vegetables could taste this good.”
“I used to hate artichokes as a kid. Any time my dad made them, I’d turn my nose up at them.
Then, I came here with…” His sentence withered.
“It doesn’t matter. I tried them here and, well, cheese, garlic, and lemon aioli can make a world of difference.
Sometimes you just need to give things that are good for you the chance to grow on you. ”
“Are you talking about me?” I asked. “Am I like this artichoke?”
He popped a piece into his mouth and savored it. “You are. You are also like a freakin’ movie star. People went nuts over you in the window today. They love you as the widowed town mayor–slash–Christmas tree farmer already.”
While I relished playing the starring role in “The House on Holly Lane,” I couldn’t help but begrudge the fact that I had to hear about all the success secondhand.
Deciding not to dwell on that, I pulled out my phone. “I was doing some research on love recently.”
“I think you might be more of an expert on the human psyche than most with all the reading and watching you do. You’re like a sponge for experience,” he said. The artichoke plates got cleared and our wineglasses refilled.
“I came upon this article from the New York Times . It’s this major publication—”
“I know what the New York Times is. Have you been reading the ‘Modern Love’ columns?” he asked.
“I haven’t. Should I?” I asked.
“If you’d like a good cry on a Tuesday at noon, I highly recommend it,” he said with a shrug.
“The article of theirs that caught my attention is called ‘The Thirty-six Questions That Lead to Love,’ developed by Dr. Arthur Aron.” The magic hourglass of borrowed time had moved from a steady trickle to a full-throttled slide.
With less than two weeks left, I needed to prove to Henry that I was not just a collaborator and a roommate.
I could be a partner, a lover. For the long haul.
If he’d have me. I needed him to have me .
Henry choked on his swallow. “Okay?”
“It’s an intimacy test. We ask the questions one at a time. We each answer. Then we stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes straight,” I explained, toying with the napkin in my lap.
The server returned with Henry’s roasted half duck ( Which half was it?
I wondered. And who in the restaurant had the other half?
) and my Faroe Island salmon. Tension rose as we both took our first bites.
The food was delicious, yet my stomach did that annoying, upset gurgle waiting for Henry’s real response.
“So?” I prompted.
“I’m both horrified and intrigued. Shall we try it?” Henry asked after a cleansing sip of water.
I set my phone down beside my plate, delighted by his willingness. If a doctor recommended these questions, I had high hopes for positive results. “Question one, if you could invite anyone in the world to dinner, who would it be?”
“I don’t even know how to pick one person!
” Henry tapped the prongs of his fork to his lips for a moment.
“I love assemblage artists. There are so many whose brains I’d want to pick.
Do I go classic with Rauschenberg or Duchamp?
No, not Duchamp. I’m not sure he’d be very pleasant to dine with.
He’s famously arrogant. Oh! Okay, final answers.
Is it okay if I have more than one? There’s an artist I admire named Thornton Dial.
He was a Black man from Alabama and a self-taught artist. I got to see one of his pieces at a Smithsonian museum in Washington, DC, on a trip and I was blown away how someone could put together a baby doll, wire, a turtle shell, cover it all in yellow spray paint, and still make me…
cry? But if I had to pick someone still living, give me Isa Genzken.
She’s a German artist and has this amazing installation from 2013 called Actors where she took a bunch of mannequins and… ”
He stopped speaking, so I stopped eating. “What?” I asked.
“Sore topic?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I reassured him before he continued talking about taping and draping and references to the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.
As he waxed on, the topic did grow sore, though.
Not because I was uninterested. Quite the opposite.
His passion radiated through the restaurant, so much so that he was hardly touching his meal because he was talking so much.
But sore all the same because… what would happen to me on January first?
Would Henry continue to dress mannequin-me up in the window? If Isla’s Attic went out of business, would my dismembered limbs be turned into various pieces of contemporary art?
As a mannequin, I was parts. As a human, I was whole.
I didn’t want to be less than I was ever again.
“Sorry, am I boring you?” Henry asked.
“Not at all. You’re perfect,” I said. He seemed to perk up at this.
“How about you? Who would you like to invite to dinner?” he asked.
This stumped me. “Would it be cheating if I said you?” Because who else did I know other than Henry?
“It wouldn’t be cheating. It would be sweet. But”—he gestured to our table and our half-eaten meals—“we’re already dining together.”
“Huh. Okay. Maybe… maybe the person who made me?” I said.
The server chose the exact wrong moment to check on us.
“He, uh, never got to meet his parents,” Henry covered. “Everything is delicious. Thanks.” The waiter rushed off, sporting a grimace. “Is it my turn to ask the question? Okay. Would you like to be famous? In what way?”
I immediately said, “Of course. The people on TV are so glamorous. I’d like to be on TV.”
“What would you do on TV?” he asked.
“Is that one of the questions?”
“No. It’s one of my own questions.”
“Well, maybe we should stick to the list, if that’s okay,” I said, afraid any conversational detours would skew the probability of us falling in love as fast as possible.
Even though I was sort of dying to talk to him about how I liked coming up with the story for “The House on Holly Lane,” and how I could see myself doing more writing like that.
If I was as classically handsome and as good at taking direction as Henry told me I was, I saw no reason I couldn’t break into show business.
Henry cleared his throat. “Of course. Uh, no, I don’t think I’d like to be famous.”
“Not even for your art?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We’re sticking to the questions on the list, remember?”
Throughout dessert, we continued passing the phone back and forth. While I assumed this would be a fruitful exercise, I must not have looked very closely. Questions about childhood and memories and family, I simply couldn’t answer.
By the time we reached question thirty-five, at the end of our expensive bottle of Merlot and the last bites of a shared square of tiramisu, I worried this wouldn’t work because I was nothing but the present breath in my lungs, the current thought in my head.
But I pushed on. “Of all the people in your family, whose death would be the most disturbing? Why?”
Henry’s expression darkened. I couldn’t tell if the redness around his irises was from tiredness, the wine, or the question itself. He looked away from our table at the nearly cleared-out restaurant and said, “My Great Aunt Isla. The one the store is named after.”
“You’ve mentioned her before. Why her?” I asked. Their connection was palpable even when she was not around.
He gulped loudly. “Because, while I love my parents, they weren’t there all that much for me.
For two people who dedicated their lives to the welfare and growth of children, they worked all day.
My dad’s a teacher and my mom’s a school nurse.
After school, my dad ran choir practices and after choir practices he taught solo voice lessons.
My mom often had to stay after hours because of sports practices, and during the summers she was a day-camp nurse.
Great Aunt Isla raised me, and she’s the only single member of my family left, and I look up to her, and I…
I think I’d be directionless without her.
” He sniffled and caught a falling tear with his napkin.
“I’d like to meet her,” I said.
“She’d like to meet you, too,” he said.
This warmed me. Maybe all this preparation—the practice dates and the movies and the window display—could give me not only a life beyond December thirty-first, but also a family.
A group of people to surround myself with.
My how-to list said humans needed community, but it was hard to cultivate one when you were only animated from five p.m. to nine a.m., and your sole focus was wooing a guy who was afraid to fall in love again.
“I’ll obviously pass on this one,” I said, handing him my phone.
The last part wasn’t so much a question as a prompt: share a problem you’re facing and ask how he might handle it.
There was frankly only one thing I could think to share, and I did so nervously.
“Let’s say you were a store mannequin that was wished to life one day, and at first you thought, No way.
I didn’t ask for this . But then you met the man who wished for you, and he showed you the beautiful complexities of being human in a rapidly changing world.
And despite his warnings, you want to continue being human, but the only way to do that is to get him to fall in love with you. What would you do?”
“First, I think I’d agree to help him put together another showstopping window display to save his beloved store,” he said, a tentative smile growing on his lips.
“Check,” I said under my breath, but he definitely heard me because his smile became a full-fledged beam.
“Next, I’d go out on dates with him so I could prepare myself for the interactions of a large, loud family of happy couples who adore Christmas,” he said.
“Check.”
“Lastly, I’d—”
“Your check,” the server said, dropping a book on the table. Around us, the rest of the diners had disappeared. Busboys carried full plastic tubs into the back. The music stopped, and the band packed up their instruments. Some of the servers set tabletops for tomorrow’s service.
“Sorry,” Henry said, producing his wallet and handing over his credit card.
Minutes later the server returned. “Sir, this card’s been declined.”
“Really?” Henry asked. It was the same card I’d had no trouble purchasing Henry’s Christmas gifts with, but I couldn’t very well say that to him and ruin the surprise.
“Oh, um, I’m terribly sorry. Here, try this.
” He handed over a different-colored card.
“I did put the display supplies on there, and some Christmas gifts. I must’ve mistaken my limit,” he said to me.
Once the bill was settled and signed, we stepped out onto the wraparound porch of the restaurant, which was strung up with twinkly white lights.
The door locked definitively behind us. Before Henry got too far ahead on his way to the car, I tugged him back by the hand.
The wooden boards creaked beneath his feet.
“You never finished telling me what you would do if you were me. You said, ‘Lastly, I’d…’ You’d what? ”
He gazed longingly into my eyes. “I’d kiss him.”
Shamelessly, I pulled Henry’s body flush to mine, cupped a gentle hand around his stubbly cheek, and kissed his pillowy lips as the lights danced around us. “Check,” I whispered sweetly into his ear before kissing him again for good measure, because once was never going to be enough for me.
And this time, on top of the mascarpone on his breath and the Merlot on his lips, I tasted the first notes of love, too.