Chapter 24
WHEN PAUL RETURNED to the hotel that evening, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bathroom, chopping garlic on a cutting board that I’d propped in my lap. A colander of cooked fettuccini sat in the sink.
“Wow,” said Paul as he bent to kiss me on the top of the head. “This is quite the setup you’ve got going.”
“You like it?” I asked, knowing full well how ridiculous the whole thing looked.
He perched on the side of the tub, and I told him about the lending closet and the grocery store, then how I’d had to raid the cash he’d stashed in the back of the wardrobe so I could buy a bag of ice for the cooler. “Oh, and I needed a grater.”
He looked at me funny. “What are we having?”
“That dish from last night,” I said, with a lot more confidence than I felt. “The one with the artichoke.”
He whistled. “Move over, Julia Child.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I said, a little wistfully.
It had taken forever for the pasta water to come to a boil, and I had no idea how I was going to deal with the artichoke.
Was I meant to boil it and somehow peel the leaves apart, or would it make more sense to cut it into pieces and throw them in the pan with the chunks of lamb?
While Paul changed, I turned my attention to the frying pan, which I’d placed on the hot plate.
I had poured some olive oil in the pan, but when I dumped the garlic in, it didn’t really sizzle, at least not the way I expected it to.
“Do you think this thing’s broken?” I asked Paul, but he had a shirt over his head and probably wouldn’t have been much use anyway.
“The light’s on, so that means it’s working, right? ”
I pushed the garlic around the pan for a little while and added the lamb.
While I fussed over the meat, I recounted the ins and outs of my day and immediately noticed that I was editing the story as I went, choosing the most entertaining details to tell Paul and skipping over the times when I had felt anxious or lonely.
Already, I had these ideas about what a navy wife was supposed to be: adventurous, inventive, unflappable.
I was none of those things, but I didn’t want Paul thinking he’d married a girl who wasn’t up for the job.
The meat was definitely not browning. “Can we eat rare lamb? Will it kill us?”
Paul lowered a long string of fettuccini into his mouth. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think we can eat it?”
“I don’t think it’ll kill us.”
While I cut the artichokes, I asked him about his day, which felt extremely wifey, for lack of a better word.
“Tom gave me the tour,” said Paul. “Introduced me to everyone. I met the CO and even the commodore.”
“The CO’s who you report to?”
“No, I report to Joe Stearns, who heads up the Repair Department. Then he reports to the XO, who reports to the CO, who reports to the commodore.”
“What does XO stand for again?”
“Executive officer.”
“And he’s the one in charge of the whole boat, right?”
“That’s the CO.” Paul seemed the tiniest bit perturbed that I hadn’t done a better job hanging on to all this information. “CO stands for commanding officer.”
“Got it,” I said, but there wasn’t much about the navy’s reporting structure that I got.
“The XO manages day-to-day operations. He’s like the CO’s right-hand man.”
I added the artichoke to the pan.
“Anyway, the CO’s great,” said Paul. “Really unassuming guy. Not at all what I expected.”
I tried to remember the CO’s name, which had been in the Welcome Aboard packet. “Johnson?”
“Jenkins.”
“Right.”
“He says I’m coming in at the right time. That with all the unrest on the island, the environmental monitoring RADCON is doing is more important than ever.”
“That’s where you test for radioactive stuff? Like in the water?”
“Yeah, they’re just quarterly tests. Usually, the reports are of no interest to anyone, but ours apparently wind up on John Volpe’s desk.”
“Who’s John Volpe?”
“The American ambassador to Italy.”
“No kidding.”
“Jenkins says Volpe’s keeping a real close eye on La Maddalena. That he sends Kissinger regular updates.”
“Kissinger’s interested in La Maddalena?”
“Because of all the protests.”
“Do you think this is done?” I asked, holding the pan out for him to inspect.
He tossed a piece of lamb into his mouth and chewed. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Just fine?”
“It’s great,” said Paul, then kept talking. “I guess there’s a judge in Rome who’s a real environmentalist. He wrote an op-ed in some big Italian newspaper last month, saying how our safety protocols are crap, and it’s stirred everyone up.”
“You can fix the protocols, though, right?”
“If they even need fixing,” said Paul. “It sounds like these guys are just being difficult.”
I got out two plates, served the fettuccini, then spooned some of the lamb and artichoke mixture on top. Finally, I grated the Parmesan cheese and handed one of the plates to Paul with a dramatic “Voilà!”
“What are you doing speaking French in Italy?” he teased.
“I don’t know the Italian version,” I said as we climbed into bed with our plates.
“It’s ecco qua.”
“Ecco qua,” I repeated, but he didn’t love my pronunciation.
“Ecco qua,” he said a second time, and I rolled my eyes at him, then tried again.
We sat across from each other on the bed, our legs crossed.
“Smells good,” said Paul appreciatively as I took my first bite.
The lamb was definitely undercooked, and the artichoke was so tough and pulpy that when I swallowed, it scratched my throat on the way down.
I looked at Paul, who was chewing very, very slowly.
“I think I did something wrong,” I said, when he hadn’t said anything for several long seconds.
“It’s…”
“Not very good,” I offered.
He leaned forward, took my plate from me, and placed it on the bedside table beside his own. “I was going to say inedible, but sure—not very good is fine, too.”
I covered my eyes with my hands, trying not to think of the time I’d spent shopping, chopping, and sautéing. “What was I thinking?” I uttered aloud.
Paul removed my hands from my face, then lowered me onto the mattress. “You were thinking you wanted to do something nice for me.”
“I was,” I agreed as I stared up at him.
“So,” he said, kissing me once and then twice, “it’s only fair that I do something nice for you.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, intrigued.
But he had already rolled away and was swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Right after we go get some food.”