Griff
“So now you know everything,” I say.
Scotty exhales long and hard; the lie I’ve carried now sits in his hands.
“Please don’t out me, Scotty.” The words feel too close to the bone—like every other time I’ve begged the world to let me
keep one piece of myself safe. “I finally feel like I belong somewhere again. I know what I’ve done is awful, but the food—it’s
brought me back to life. It’s the only way I know how to give something back, to people who really need it. A kind of penance.”
He shifts, his arms crossed tight over his chest. He looks down then back at me. “I dunno, mate. This is . . . a lot. You’re
lying to everyone.” He pauses. “But then I think about what you’ve done here. The joy you’ve brought to people . . . to me.
And I don’t know if I’m more freaked out or impressed.”
A beat.
“What if you get caught?” he asks.
“Then I’ll take the fall, not you. You’ve seen the difference it’s making. With your help, we can do even more. At least give
me one more shift.”
He hesitates, his jaw tight, eyes flicking to the door. “I need to think,” he mutters. He turns to leave but stops with his
hand on the knob. “This doesn’t mean I’m okay with it,” he says without looking back. “But I’ll do it—one more shift.”
The pancetta sizzles the moment it hits the pan, its fat sighing into heat like breath against skin. I don’t rush it. Let it render. Let it speak. I tilt the handle just so, watching the golden oil pool and shimmer.
I drag my knife through the fresh fettuccine, handmade not an hour ago for this special lunch, dusted with a fine snow of
semolina. The pot boils over with impatience. I salt the water and feed the ribbons in, coiling them around my fingers before
I drop them. They sink, then rise. I stir once. Only once.
Scotty appears at my elbow, tentative, eager. “Got the cream!” he says, beaming.
“The what?”
“Cream, for the carbonara sauce.”
I turn slowly, take the tub from his hands and bat it down the far end of the countertop with a wooden spoon. “Absolutely
not. If you want custard, go find a bakery. If you want carbonara, watch and learn.”
“That’s a bit dramatic.”
“So is prison. Which is where you’d end up if you served that travesty to an Italian.”
I let him separate the eggs into a bowl. Three yolks, no whites. I whisk in grated pecorino, sharp and salty, and a good grind
of black pepper—coarse, fresh, with a rude little bite that wakes the tongue.
“Cream,” I mutter. “Bloody sacrilege.”
Scotty grins sheepishly.
The pasta’s ready. I lift it straight from the pot into the pan, still dripping, hissing as it hits the pancetta oil. I add
a splash of the cooking water, just enough to loosen the fat and starch into silk. That’s the trick most people miss. The
secret. The glue.
With the pan off the flame, it’s time to add the yolk mixture. The residual warmth kisses it to life. I move fast but gently,
coaxing the sauce to gloss and glide, never scramble. It clings, a perfect slip of velvet over every strand.
Scotty stares. Mouth open. “That’s . . . that’s obscene,” he breathes.
“That,” I say, plating it with care, “is how you respect a dish. Just timing, heat, and the restraint to know when to stop.”
We plate up with a generous sprinkle of grated pecorino and head to Silvia’s room.
“Please, please, I want to go home. Via Giovanni Devoti, Roma.” Her Italian accent trembles with desperation as we approach.
She clutches Scotty’s hand, her deeply lined fingers stark against his young skin.
A carer walks past. “Good luck with that. Silvia barely eats now. We’ve been giving her Sustagen most days.”
Scotty sets the plate down, and the air fills with the warmth of melting cheese.
She doesn’t look at it right away. Her gaze is fixed on some point beyond, as if she’s watching something the rest of us can’t
see, past the room, the hallway, the years.
Silvia blinks, slow and unfocused, then sniffs, her fingers twitching. Her right hand reaches for the fork. The moment the
food hits her tongue, her spine straightens, her eyes becoming clearer now.
Then she chuckles with a dry, rusty joy, like a hinge easing open after years of stillness. “Bellissimo.” Her smile wobbles,
but it holds. “I’m a good cook, aren’t I! That’s why my husband married me, you know.” She laughs, and the sound is contagious.
“Grazie.” She clasps Scotty’s hand again—not in panic now but with the taste pulling her back to a past long gone. “Thank
you for bringing me here.”
He tilts his head. “To your room?”
“No. For bringing me home.”
He glances at me and gives the smallest nod. He’s in.
The scent of pancetta clings to my hands as I strip off my uniform and leave the kitchen. I can still see the way the old
woman’s eyes lit up, as if we’d handed her back a piece of herself.
Beau would’ve liked that. Liked the care, the thought. Liked that I’d done it without expecting anything in return. The thought
snags in my chest, and I wonder if he’d be proud of me now despite my charade.
I’m halfway down the corridor when I hear it: a warm, honeyed thread of music curling through the air.
My skin prickles. It’s an obscure Italian piece Beau picked up on our travels there, something we only ever heard played once, in a tiny piazza cafe in Siena, the night the rain drove us in.
He loved it so much he learned it by ear and transcribed it on the flight home, and it became part of his repertoire.
Before my brain knows what I’m doing, I follow it to the lounge. It’s not Beau; it can’t be.
Frank sits in a pool of afternoon light, fingers moving over the guitar frets with easy precision. The song is the same, right
down to the pause before the chorus, and it hits me like a clean shot to the ribs.
Frank looks up at me and beams.
I stay weak-kneed in the doorway, a lump gathering in my throat, wondering where he learned it, and whether this is Beau’s
answer to my question.