Chapter 18 In the Pope’s Room of Buca di Beppo
In the Pope’s Room of Buca di Beppo
When her car finally met its maker, it was with a whimper, not a bang.
After a new floor and a very generous read of a “rustic cabin experience,” Lainey and Elliot had one serviceable cabin in addition to Forest’s Bridge, but the percent she was taking from the Forest’s Bridge bookings was barely enough to make a dent in her grandmother’s Home Shopping Network addiction, let alone Lainey’s medical debt.
For that, she needed a car. A car that was currently smoking in the parking lot of the candy and cheese store.
Engines were a DIY blind spot for Lainey, and despite jumping Isaac’s clunker more times than she could count, she was at a loss when her own car had conked out that June morning.
“It was completely out of the blue,” Lainey explained defensively. Her car’s integrity was on the line.
“Was it really out of the blue? It feels like there might’ve been a ramp-up,” Isaac offered unhelpfully from under her hood after she’d repeated to him the identical spiel she’d relayed to Elliot.
“Why is he here?” Lainey faced Elliot, who was leaning against the busted passenger door in his running attire, knuckle deep in a bag of squeaky-fresh cheese curds.
He shrugged. “His dad owns a VW dealership.”
“But he works at a beanbag outlet, and this is a Mercedes that was designed before the fall of the Berlin Wall.” She snatched the bag from his hands.
She had a catastrophic problem, and cheese was an immediate solution to her stress.
“No offense, Isaac. I’m sure working retail has its own challenges,” she shouted over her shoulder to the man rooting around under the hood of her car.
“Absolutely no offense taken,” Isaac said cheerily. “But it doesn’t take an expert to know that you need a new radiator and probably a new engine.”
In seconds, she was beside him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s a crack in the radiator, which is what’s causing the coolant leak, which is overheating your engine, which I’m guessing—”
“Okay,” she cut him off, suddenly overwhelmed that her most reliable form of income was smoking in a parking lot during peak season. “That sounds…expensive.”
“It won’t be cheap,” Isaac agreed, wiping his hand on his shirt and taking a cheese curd from the bag. “And this is, like, a crazy old car—”
“Vintage,” she corrected.
“Technically, it is, and that’s sort of your problem. Your car’s old but also kind of ‘fancy,’ so the parts are going to be more expensive and difficult to come by.”
This was what happened when you were raised by a woman who had champagne tastes but sold plasma for cash. You inherited a car that was too shitty to run and too expensive to fix. Defeated, she lifted the support rod and gently lowered the hood with a feeble thud.
“We just need to hunt around some scrapyards. Make some calls. We’ll do it during one of our ‘gentleman’s lunches.’ ” Isaac said gentleman’s lunches like a WWE announcer. Like it was a “thing.” Like it had a meaning to him and at least one other person in the conversation.
“ ‘Gentleman’s lunches’?” Lainey’s head swiveled to Elliot, whose neck was turning pink.
“It’s not—it’s just lunch.”
“Uh-huh.” She turned the focus of her questions back to Isaac. “When do you get this ‘gentleman’s lunch’?” she asked, bright and innocent.
“Every Friday,” he answered without hesitation.
“Now that it’s the high season, you’re always picking up rides,” Elliot explained, oddly sweaty for someone who’d stopped running forty minutes ago. “And I have summer Fridays. And Isaac’s shift at the outlet doesn’t start until three, so we get…lunch.”
“I think you mean, you get a gentleman’s lunch. At the outlet mall.” She set her bag on top of the car. She wanted her hands free for wherever this conversation was headed. “What restaurants are at the outlet mall besides Benihana?”
“Buca di Beppo,” Elliot answered quietly. “We like the Pope’s Room.”
She stroked her chin, really parsing this out. “You boys go to lunch every week—just the two of you—in the Pope’s Room of Buca di Beppo, and this is the first I’m hearing of it?”
“He didn’t tell you about gentlemen’s lunches?
” Isaac’s eyes darted between Lainey and Elliot, seeming to misread the situation entirely.
“Now, I don’t want to get in the middle of your marriage, but Lainey, I need you to know, my relationship with Elliot is completely platonic.
” Isaac placed a supportive hand on her shoulder.
“And after lunch, we might play Xbox in the back room, but that’s it.
I won’t say there’s no chemistry, but we’ve never taken it farther than that. ”
She gave his hand a pat. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Isaac.”
Her insides shook. After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, Isaac nodded solemnly and lowered his hand.
“I’m going to go and let you work this out, because I’m rooting for you two. The way our guy talks about you, I think you have something very special.” He walked backward, pointing at the two of them with fully outstretched arms, then disappeared into the depths of the cheese store.
They were quiet for a beat. Then Lainey exploded into a fit of laughter.
Elliot stared ahead at the mostly empty parking lot, dumbfounded. “I don’t know what chemistry he’s talking about.”
“Oh good. I was so worried.” Lainey had one hand pressed against her stomach and the other tightly gripping her chest, like her arms were the only thing keeping her body from coming apart.
Elliot seemed to relax when her laughter turned into a high-pitched wheeze that shook her internal organs, his body stretching to lean against the side of her smoky car.
“I’m glad we could clear that up.”
“You know, I needed that.” She moved her hands to her hips as she regained control over her breathing. “Right at that moment, I really needed to picture you on day dates with Isaac.”
“We have weed gummies before lunch starts,” Elliot explained.
“Oh, that part was clear to me.”
“I’m not eating family-style portions of pasta in the middle of the day with the bust of the pope stone-cold sober.”
She retrieved her snack from the roof of the car, giggles prodding her ribs. “I keep picturing him rolling a meatball toward you with his nose.”
He arched an eyebrow. “He did do that once.”
“Oh my god!” The laughing started up again, slowing only when Elliot pulled her into his chest and placed his chin on top of her head.
“Okay. Breathe. It’s not that funny.”
“But the thing is, it is that funny.” Her voice was muffled against his chest.
He trailed his hands up and down the sides of her arms. Her weight collapsed into his weight.
Her breathing slowed to match his breathing.
She was safely caged within the protective confines of his arms, the world pulsing around them like a beating heart.
She curled in closer, not ready to let the hug end.
She wiped her under eyes with her finger, finally letting go. “I’m so happy. I was so sad about this car, and now—I’m still sad about this car—but then I think of you and Isaac with Pope Leo…”
She craned her neck back, wondering if he could feel her heart pitching toward his. “I think of you, and I’m happy.”
He pressed his lips to her smile. “Good.” His eyes were almost glassy when he pulled back. He blinked it away. “This is going to be okay,” he promised, smoothing her hair. “We’ll call someone to tow this back to our place. We’ll figure out this whole radiator thing.”
She sighed. “I had things to do today. I was going to accept some rides. I have to go to the pharmacy for my refill. The toilet at Muddy’s Wings and Things is acting up, and if it’s the flapper again, that’s the easiest hundred bucks ever.”
“I’ll go to the pharmacy for you, you can walk to Muddy’s from here, and we’ll figure something out with the rideshare. Maybe you can borrow my truck for a while.”
Right then, even as she felt the urge to push him away, she decided to try it. To not wall herself off and to really trust him. Just a little.
“It would actually be a big help if you went to the pharmacy. And it would probably improve my star rating to have an operable passenger door,” she admitted. Reluctantly.
His eyes looked down at her, bright and eager. “See? Look at us being optimistic. It’s so unlike us.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re right. We’ll figure it out,” she agreed. And standing in his arms, holding a bag of cheese, she wanted to believe it could be true.
That weekend, they were hosting a younger couple and their towheaded spawn.
Lainey liked the three children immediately, which should’ve been the first sign of threat.
The second was that each had a first name that was better suited for a last name of a singer in an alt-rock group.
The third was that the kids were too interested in her sculptures.
At some point during the weekend, the parents had taken a nap and in the most productive twenty minutes in human history, the kids had gotten to work.
It started with little Rockwell breaking his way into the shed to steal a saw and a chisel.
Daughtry, older and wiser, took the saw and cut down the stag Lainey had been sculpting for weeks.
Sterling removed two floor tiles before turning the chisel to the original stone hearth that served as the focal point of the living room.
Meanwhile, Rockwell got busy carving into the walls and yanking out copper wiring like a meth-addicted squirrel.
The clatter of hard stone hitting the newly exposed subfloor was what had finally woken up the parents.
“We were playing treasure hunters,” Rockwell mumbled to Lainey and Elliot on the front lawn at checkout, his body wrapped protectively in his mother’s arms and his eyes cast down to the ground.
“We’re going to have to keep the security deposit,” Elliot explained.
The parents of the exceedingly productive demons said they understood before piling back into their Tesla SUV and driving away, tires kicking up gravel and coating Lainey’s feet in a fine layer of dust.