Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
“So,” Vin says, clearing his throat as we walk toward the train. “You don’t like the beard?”
I turn toward him sharply. His hands are in his pockets and he’s not looking at me.
“Oh. I—”
“Roz,” a man’s voice calls.
Both Vin and I turn to see St. Michel sitting at an outdoor restaurant on 100th, just off the bustle of Lex. He’s got a glass of frosty orange wine in front of him because of course he does.
“Hi! You remember Vin? You’ve met a time or two. So, back from Montreaux?” We walk over and he stands to kiss my cheek and, to my deep delight, Vin’s.
“Always, always, back from Montreaux,” he says on a sigh. “Join me for a drink?”
I’m about to explain that there is a bean lasagna getting cold on my counter back home, but Vin is already pulling out a chair for me, and then for himself.
The server sprints over to us, eyes bouncing back and forth between Vin in his T-shirt and ball cap and St. Michel in his jean button-down with a silk scarf tucked in at the collar. Daddy and French Daddy. This is clearly the server’s lucky night.
“What can I get you to drink?” they ask Vin, plainly wishing they could sop him up with bread.
Vin just points at me. In all the times we’ve ever dined out together, he’s never once ordered before I have.
So it’s probably silly that it makes my stomach flip just a little.
But also, this is a fancy wine bar and I’m not in any way, shape, or form prepared for this order.
I’m a “house red” girly. I flip the menu from one side to the other.
“Taste this,” St. Michel says, sliding his goblet of juicy wine toward me.
I follow instructions. It’s light and cool and tastes like just a whiff of summer on the wind. “Well, it barely tastes orange,” I say to him, and he laughs.
“A glass for her,” St. Michel says. “From my bottle. Vincent?”
The glass gets slid his way as well and to my surprise Vin takes a sip too.
“Sure,” Vin says to the server. “Thank you,” Vin says to St. Michel.
The sky’s started on its journey from orange to purple and I’m glad I wore a sweatshirt.
The server promptly delivers our matching drinks and Vin glances at me, nostrils flaring. I turn away from him so I don’t laugh in St. Michel’s face.
Vin squints his eyes into the yonder while he takes a sip of the wine, sets down the glass, and—God, help me—swirls it.
That’s all it takes. I burst into laughter.
“What’s the joke?” St. Michel asks.
“Sorry. Nothing.” I’m pinching the bridge of my nose, trying to stop giggling, reaching hard for dignity. “We’re just…we’re really trying to fake our way through the fact that we are not fancy wine people.”
Vin is chuckling too. He lifts his glass to St. Michel. “This would go great with pork rinds.”
St. Michel has just completed the cheers but immediately looks as if he’d like to take it back after that statement. He can’t tell if Vin’s joking.
And then all three of us are laughing, together, but most likely at different things.
St. Michel’s eyes flick between us. “You two really should stay together.”
This sentiment, said from a lightly accented tongue, on a warmish Tuesday night in June, with this wine and this lighting, weirdly doesn’t stab me through the heart. When St. Michel says it, he makes it sound like a concept, like a choice, like Don’t go to Florence, go to Venice instead.
Vin hasn’t stiffened either, though he’s looking back and forth between St. Michel and me, probably trying to figure out when the hell I dumped my marital issues on the custom framing guy.
If anything, I’m just a little surprised. This is a different take than he had before. And besides, his nose is rarely even in his own business, let alone ours. “I thought you said breaking up was fine.”
He purses his lips and signals to the server. “It is. But so is marriage. The artichoke tartines, please.” The server salutes and disappears.
“Ringing endorsement of holy matrimony,” I say on a laugh. Vin is now watching him with a lowered brow.
St. Michel shrugs. “It’s all fine. Everything changes anyhow. Everyone thinks that their relationship should reach stasis. And most of them want it to reach stasis right after they start dating. So they can have that new-love feeling for the rest of their life. How boring.”
“You don’t enjoy falling in love?” I ask him, slightly teasing him now, because he can’t be this over everything.
“Of course I do, but it takes so much energy. If you felt new love the entire time you were married to someone, what a waste of a life. Obsession takes up all the time. When would you ever write your novel? Or paint your masterpiece or…” He looks over at Vin with pursed lips. “What do you do again?”
“He’s an electrician,” I answer for him, because he’s got his quiet face on.
St. Michel rolls his eyes without actually moving them. “Yeah, I can’t make anything from that.”
Vin and I both laugh and St. Michel tumbles on.
“I just mean that life is work, work is life. We are nothing when we’re not working.
Bored and depressed and asking existential questions that don’t need to be asked, because who cares?
Stay busy. Eat when you’re hungry, fuck each other, work hard, and rest when you die.
This is the key. You’ll get happy again someday. Just stay busy.”
Vin’s eyebrows are up. Either he’s completely skeptical or he’s kinda buying it. I seriously do hate his beard.
“Besides,” St. Michel says. “There is no hell for you to burn in. If your marriage isn’t working, restructure it. What you do in your marriage is between the two of you and whoever else you invite in. It’s fine if it’s not conventional. This is how we make these things work.”
“St. Michel,” Vin says, leaning forward on his elbows, eyebrows down, finally breaking his long silence. “Are you trying to find a way to fuck my wife?”
“Vin!” I screech, mortified beyond—
“If she comes knocking at my door, I won’t turn her away,” St. Michel says coolly.
Well, shit!
“There will be no knocking! What the hell?”
St. Michel holds his Euro-bored expression for about two more seconds and then it unfolds into a smile. “Life is long. I enjoy an interesting woman.”
The aforementioned mortification is still incinerating me.
Vin, however, is smiling, eyes on me. I get the distinct feeling I’m being teased. By both of them.
St. Michel reaches over and pings a fingernail against Vin’s wineglass. “You never came back to pick up your frame.”
“Well, you called her instead.” Vin is glowering at him and it’s suddenly clear to me that they know each other, maybe even well.
“What did you have framed?” Another thing I apparently know nothing about.
Vin waves a hand. “Nothing. Not important.”
“Not important?” St. Michel’s all eyebrows. “At this rate she really might come knocking at my door.”
“Not important right now.” Vin cuts his eyes to me. “Important later.”
“Are you two having an affair?” I demand right as the server is returning with two plates of tartines. One tartine ends up in my lap. I’ve just spoken into existence the porn of a lifetime.
St. Michel is smiling at me like a cat. “Fate has not been so kind to me. But—” He’s ticking his finger back and forth at me. “If he comes knocking at my door…”
Vin and I laugh. “Yeah, yeah,” I grumble. “I get it. Use it or lose it.”
We finish the bottle of wine and the tartines, which I dissect with a fork and a (metaphorical) magnifying glass in an attempt to reverse-engineer the recipe. Tartines are hard because you need—
Vin’s hand touches the back of my neck. “She’s going into her work world,” he explains to St. Michel.
“It’s not attractive,” St. Michel says affectionately, motioning toward the pile of tartine I’ve deconstructed. I scoop it up with a spoon and clean my plate.
St. Michel is leaning back in his chair, turning his face toward the breeze that curls across our table and makes the napkins dance. “Children,” he says to us, eyes closed. “Return home.”
I try to get him to return to his home as well (he lives in an impossibly stylish and tiny studio apartment above his framing shop) but he insists he’s got more wine to drink and jazz to go see.
I look at the time. “You’re going to a show later?” I ask, mildly scandalized. On a normal night I would have been in bed an hour ago.
This gets him to finally crack his eyes at me. “You are aware you live in New York City, yes?”
Vin slides his well-worn wallet out of its well-worn home in his back pocket and places well-worn cash between the salt and pepper shakers.
Two men start yelling at one another down the street and St. Michel takes the distraction to slide Vin’s cash into my front pocket. I start to protest but he kisses the back of my hand and firmly shakes his head.
The two men are yelling at one another still, but walking backwards and the yells are fading and Vin turns back to the table, standing and tugging me to my feet.
“Bedtime,” he says, and makes my stomach flip.
St. Michel would probably roll his eyeballs right out of his head if he knew that Vin meant separate bedtime.
We cheek-kiss and then he’s waving us down the street. I’m loose with wine and happy. Unless it’s with Raff, Vin and I almost never socialize together. Like ever. And tonight he charmed the pants off Esther and tried to buy St. Michel a bottle of wine.
“Hey.” I nudge him lightly with my elbow. “St. Michel was flirting with you.”
“Sure.”
“Well, what the hell?”
Vin laughs. “He helped me out with a project. We spent a few hours talking. Became friends. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Seriously, what is this project you got framed?”
He’s obviously irritated that St. Michel even brought it up in the first place. “Baby, it’s really not important right now. I’ll show you later.”
That baby runs me through. It’s been so, so long. And it immediately transports me back to clean-shaven Vin, eight years younger and rolling over in my bed the morning after we slept together the first time.