17
Soigne: Pronounced swan-yay, it is French for “elegant.”
It is/was used to describe an exceptionally sexy, well-presented dish, but quickly devolved from trendy to dated and pretentious.
2015
“Don’t call me Queenie.”
Marco bowed his head.
“Good.
I never liked that name.”
“You’re the one who gave it to me, you idiot.”
“It seemed clever at the time.”
Marco opened his arms, just like he had all those years ago when Queenie B landed in New Haven to die.
Regina didn’t melt into him this time.
She was made of sterner stuff than chaotic, flighty Queenie had ever been.
“I’m not a hugger these days.”
Marco’s arms fell.
“Even with me?”
“Even with you.
Listen, go inside, will you? Let me take Her Highness home.
I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“I’ll go with—”
“Just stay here.”
She took the Burger Queen’s arm.
“And don’t touch anything.”
Regina drove the old woman home, brought her box of produce into her apartment, turned on her television, and left with a muttered, “Stay put.
I’ll see you tomorrow.”
On her way past, she rapped a little too fiercely on Troy’s door.
No answer.
There was a notice taped to the peeling wood panel.
She took out her cell phone, read by its light—a fifteen-day notice to quit.
“Shit.”
Resisting the urge to rip the notice from the door, she left.
She had her own issues, dammit, and the most pressing was waiting for her back in her kitchen.
But when she got back, Marco was still in the garden, in among the tomatoes she grew for her own use and to give away to those who wanted them.
Regina flicked on her flashlight, shining it in his direction.
“Why are you here?”
“Good to see you too.”
“You had to know I wouldn’t be happy.”
“It occurred to me.”
Marco turned in a circle, arms spreading wide.
“Is this where you’ve been since that night?”
“Pretty much.
It took over a year to get it restored and running.”
“A soup kitchen?”
Regina nodded.
“How has no one recognized you?”
“Would you, if you didn’t know me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a liar.
I’m old, fat, and I dress like a longshoreman.”
Her lip twitched; she suppressed the urge to smile.
“Did you know me, that day in the market?”
“Can we take this inside? The bugs . . .”
Regina clicked off her flashlight, which had been attracting every moth in the vicinity.
Marco devolved into shadow, highlighted by moonlight.
“No chance you’ll just go home and forget you saw me, huh?”
Half joking, but only half.
When he said nothing, Regina’s shoulders sagged.
“Fine.
Come on in.”
She walked ahead of him, more to gather whatever fortitude she needed than anger, but a little of that too.
Seven years! Seven years in New Haven without being known by anyone but her well-paid accountant, who feared the lawyers she kept on retainer to fear betrayal.
Marco wouldn’t give her away.
She was pretty sure. Still, the safe anonymity had been breached, and already her nerves were fraying.
Regina flicked on the light, gestured to the little table she often sat at with Gale or Lucy.
Once, a million years ago it seemed, all by herself.
“Sit.
You want tea? Coffee?”
“I’m good.”
Marco whistled softly.
“Nice kitchen. Big.”
“Thanks.”
“No one ever wondered how a soup kitchen cook came to have state-of-the-art kitchen equipment?”
“My clientele wouldn’t know the difference between a Wolf and GE.”
“GE’s got some good stuff.”
“Please, spare me.”
They sat opposite each other.
Marco slipped his coat off, hung it on the back of his chair.
“Gale never noticed?”
“He noticed. Did he—?”
“Don’t worry.
I don’t think he has any idea who you are,”
Marco said.
“He mentioned your name once.
Just Regina.
You’re the only woman by that name I’ve ever known, but then I saw you in the market that day.”
“So you did know it was me.”
“I doubted my own eyes, but not because I didn’t recognize you.
I thought you were dead.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“That’s what I thought then, too.”
“Wrong. Twice.”
She groaned.
“Why are you here? Why couldn’t you just leave me be?”
Marco slumped back in his chair.
“You were my best friend, Reg.
For a little while, I thought you’d be my wife.”
“Well, you already have one of those, and it’s been a long time since we were pals.”
“I had a wife,”
he corrected.
“Teenie died.
About five years ago.”
Regina had been right there, in New Haven.
All the years she kept tabs on her only friend, she hadn’t even once in all the time since coming back.
“Shit.
I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, eyes downcast.
The part of her that wanted to embrace him fought the part that couldn’t.
Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t.
“I could say I don’t know what made me come here,”
he said.
“Pretend I was curious as everyone else.
Why you’d let it all go, the fame and the money—”
“I have plenty of money, and I don’t want the fame.”
“Bullshit,”
he barked.
“You don’t want the fucking mess you were back then is all.”
Regina’s eyes narrowed in a way that should have warned him to shut the hell up.
She’d used it effectively throughout her life, and only that moment realized it had never worked on him.
“Okay, if not out of curiosity, why?”
“Because.”
“Because? Wow, Marco.”
“I don’t need a reason,”
he said.
“I saw an old friend’s ghost buying produce, and I was happy.
I wanted to see you.
Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same, if the roles were reversed.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“Still such a liar.”
He chuckled, then, “You do realize it’s just a matter of time, don’t you?”
“What is?”
Yes, she was a liar; she knew exactly what he meant.
“I doubt I’m the first,”
he called her on it, “only the first to take it a step further.
One of these days, it won’t be an old friend glad to see you’re still alive.
Then what?”
Inside, the frenzy built.
Regina inhaled through her nose, out through her mouth.
The truth Marco spoke had shadowed her through the years.
Someday, someone, the wrong someone, would recognize her, and it would all be over. She pushed away from the table, filled the kettle for tea neither of them wanted. “I won’t be Queenie B again.”
He leaned back in his chair, on two legs.
Like Oz used to do.
Or was it always Marco? He said, “You are her and she is you.
You telling yourself they’re two people doesn’t do shit but give you reason to hide.”
“It’s how I cope.
How I stay clean.”
“It was how you coped, how you got clean.
Now? It’s just a good hiding spot that’s going to bite you in the ass one of these days.”
Regina dropped back onto her chair.
She pulled the elastic from her braid, shook it out.
White streaked the black, enhancing rather than aging.
Looking in the mirror, sometimes, she’d smile and Queenie would smile back. Hopeful. Promising. Let me out. We’ll be good. Regina did not trust her. No one ever should.
“What makes you think you can waltz in here and lecture me, anyway?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
He grinned, cocky and lopsided and not fooling her in the slightest.
“I thought I was checking in on an old friend I thought was dead.”
The teakettle whistled.
Regina turned off the burner, wishing for a cup of tea she could hurl, even if it was in the Bernardaud.
Or a shot she could belt back.
“You checked. I’m fine. How about you beat it?”
Marco chuckled.
So much like old times.
Hauntingly so.
He pushed out of his chair. “I’ve always been good at pissing you off.”
“Some things don’t change.”
“Isn’t that what you liked best about me, back in the old days? Isn’t it why you ditched me? Because you didn’t want anyone smacking you in the head with the truth?”
“Fuck you.
I had Oz for that.”
“Oz never told you anything you didn’t want to hear,”
Marco said.
“He helped you create the monster that was Queenie B, then discovered he couldn’t handle it.”
“You could have?”
“I’ve asked myself the same thing a million times over the years.”
Marco pushed fingers through his hair, thinner than it had been but still curly.
His face was lined by kitchen heat and sunshine without sunblock.
“Never did come up with an answer.
Look, I just wanted to see you. I’ll go now.”
Ire rose, crackled in the roots of her hair.
In her mind’s eye, she hurled and she belted.
Teacups.
Booze. The frenzy that had been mostly quiet for the past seven years buzzed through her veins. From the bottom of that barrel she scraped daily for fortitude, Queenie B hailed, You know he’s right. That’s why you’re so mad.
“Marco, wait.”
He obeyed, of course.
“You .
.
.
this is a lot. You took me by surprise. I . . .”
Regina managed to smile and, for the split moment she held it, Marco’s entire face lit up.
Something inside her warmed.
“I really am glad to see you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Ask me if I wish you’d never shown up, and I’ll say yes,”
she told him.
“But you did, and .
.
. really. I am glad.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
There it was, that crooked smile she recognized in the market trying so hard not to happen.
“It’s about as good as you can expect at the moment. Listen.”
She moved closer.
Just enough.
“Don’t say anything.
To anyone. Especially not Gale. Will you do that for me?”
“You don’t even have to ask,”
he said.
“I’m kind of hurt you think you do.”
“I don’t know you anymore, Marco.
You don’t know me either.”
She stood upon a precipice, one she’d been standing upon for all the years since Bova, one she’d only just looked down and seen for what it was.
Regina had felt the wind of it whip up at her now and then—most recently, when Marco spotted her in the market—but had never once cast a glance downward to acknowledge what it was.
Her eyes stung so bad, she feared—hoped—he noticed them welling up, if not spilling over.
Marco was, after all these years, still her friend. That was something.
“Come by next Wednesday,”
she said.
“I’ll cook.
We can talk when my brain doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode out my ears.
I owe you a dinner anyway.”
His eyebrow arched.
“For the rigatoni Bolognese.”
Marco’s face relaxed into a smile, sad but genuine.
“Can we make it Thursday? I’d rather leave Frances alone for service than Gale.
He’s good, but he’s still new at this.
He can’t cook and expedite at the same time.”
“She can?”
“Frances is fierce.
She can do anything.
Reminds me of someone I used to know.”
“Don’t wish that on anyone.”
She waved him off before he could counter.
“Thursday, then.
After service here.
Around eight thirty.”
“I’ll bring the wi—the diet soda.”
“And whatever dessert you have on the menu.”
Regina patted her plumpness.
“You got it.”
They stood in the quiet kitchen made quieter for their unease.
Two old friends who, in another life, wouldn’t have an uncomfortable moment between them, brought down by a past they’d each only seen from afar.
He didn’t open his arms.
Regina wished he would; she was grateful he didn’t.
It spared her pressing her body to his, asking him to stay.
Not just for another moment but for the night. It had been so long. Since anyone. Longer still since him. Safe, familiar Marco who loved her despite it all. There was no denying the pull toward him was no less real for that.
Her throat tightened around the words wishing.
Her body tensed against the compulsion to latch onto their past, pull into the present.
Giving herself over to compulsion had been the key to her success, and her downfall.
Queenie B was all wild impulse, creative passion. Regina had been, too, once upon a time. When this man knew her. Loved her. So she remained silent while Queenie hailed from the bottom of that barrel of fortitude, promising promises she couldn’t be trusted to keep.