Page 31 of We Could Be So Good
Mrs.Martelli is, for all intents and purposes, identical to Nick’s aunts who Andy met last week. She has gray hair, wears all black, and could be anywhere between sixty and a hundred years old. “Nick from upstairs says he’ll bring you some lasagna for dinner.” He speaks slowly, not sure if she understands English.
“Okay. Tell him thank you,” she says, equally slowly, in completely unaccented English, then laughs and shuts the door in hisface. Andy worries that it’s his lot in life to be mocked by elderly Italian women.
He takes his time walking to Cornelia Street, which is only a few blocks away. It’s still March, but either today or tomorrow is the first official day of spring, and for once the city seems to know it. The sky is clear, the air smells less like car exhaust than usual, and there are honest-to-God flowers in the window boxes of one of the buildings he passes. It feels like the city is poised for something beautiful to happen, even though you can count on the weather to be intermittently repulsive until May.
At the bakery, he buys two loaves of bread and then, when it occurs to him that Nick is essentially having a dinner party, he also chooses a dozen Italian pastries. At the wine store, he stares at the shelves for a quarter of an hour until the man behind the counter begins to clear his throat pointedly. Then he haphazardly chooses three bottles of Burgundy for three dollars each, which seems expensive enough to guarantee a decent wine but not so expensive as to be embarrassing if Nick ever finds out what they cost. On the way back, he passes a corner store that has bunches of daffodils out front, so he grabs a few of them, too. Candles? Surely Nick has candles, but he goes into the store and gets some anyway.
It’s only as he’s climbing the stairs that he realizes that he might have gone overboard. He can barely see over the flowers that stick out from the top of the bag as he attempts to unlock the door using his new key. He expects one of Nick’s more exasperated looks at all the excess, but instead Nick glances over his shoulder and—well, he stares.
“Uh. Sorry,” Andy says. “You probably don’t want all this. But I did get bread and wine! You don’t need to use the candles, but you may as well hang on to them in case there’s ever a blackout, and I can throw the flowers away. It doesn’t matter.”
He’s halfway to the trash can when Nick grabs his arm.
“No. Keep them.”
“Okay,” Andy says. He stares at the place where Nick touches him, his hand dark against the white cotton of Andy’s sweater. Nick doesn’t let go, and when Andy takes a breath, all he can smell are the daffodils’ sweetness mixed with the aroma of whatever Nick’s cooking. He has the same feeling that he did outside, of something lovely being about to happen. He tells himself the unexpectedly nice weather has gone to his head.
Then Nick lets go and turns back to the sink, where he scrubs a pot. A few minutes later, as Andy is attempting to arrange the daffodils in a couple of juice glasses—because of course Nick doesn’t have any vases, what was Andy thinking—Nick comes over to the table. “Thanks. I mean—thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
The moment stretches too long, with Andy ineptly fiddling with daffodil stems and Nick watching him and something hanging in the air just out of sight, and if Andy keeps his eyes averted, maybe he won’t have to see it.
***
They’re well into the first bottle of wine when Linda knocks on the door.
“I brought Sylvia and her brother, Charlie,” she says, indicating the model, who is now dressed, even if it’s only in what appears to be a silk robe over a pair of jeans, and a young man who wears a black turtleneck sweater and round horn-rimmed glasses. They both have light brown skin with dark brown freckles; they’re also both intensely gorgeous in a way that makes Andy hope he isn’t staring.
“Catch up,” says Nick, handing the bottle of wine to Linda.
Andy fetches two more juice glasses and an empty jam jar from the kitchen, because of course Nick doesn’t have wineglasses, either.
“What happened to your face?” Linda asks Nick.
“Kids,” Nick answers, kicking off a conversation about which of them’s been mugged and in what neighborhoods and how much money they lost.
Andy hangs back at first, overwhelmed with a sort of social paralysis that hasn’t afflicted him since he was in school. He isn’t a born charmer, but he makes do. He knows how to make people like him. He might not have his father’s charisma or his mother’s force of personality, but he’s good at turning the tables and making people talk about themselves, which is all they usually want.
But everyone else is charming and talkative and there isn’t much for Andy to do but listen and be amused. The conversation darts from Linda’s account of an art show she went to, to Sylvia’s stories about modeling, and Charlie’s relentless flirtation with Nick. Which is fine! And definitely doesn’t make Andy feel strange at all.
“And then, just when I thought the plaster of paris was dry—”
“It turns out nobody’s paid rent on that gallery on Tenth Street for months—”
“She said she was doing a series of landscapes, but there I am, naked as a baby—”
“Were you at Ed Wortman’s party—he’s the poet with all the screaming, you know—because I’m sure I recognize you from somewhere, darling—”
Andy pours himself another glass of wine, and when the bottle is empty, he gets the corkscrew and opens another. Not wanting to return to the living room just yet, he lights the candles and turns out the flickering overhead light. The timer dings, sohe pulls the lasagna—which weighs about as much as a small child—out of the oven, then puts together a plate for Mrs. Martelli. He’s about to take it down to her when he realizes that Nick is standing in the doorway.
“I’m going to bring this downstairs,” Andy says when Nick makes no move to step aside. “I’ll be right back.”
“I can do that.”
Andy shakes his head. “Go have fun.”
Nick frowns. “All right.”
