Georgia’s Kitchen

by Jenny Nelson

  “You will be if you help Georgia open her restaurant.”

  Bernard didn’t say anything, but his ears flamed pink. Georgia had discovered that when he was upset or embarrassed, the tips of his ears turned hot pink. Her face turned red, his ears went flamingo. Hopefully both partners would remain pale as paper during the meeting. If Luca smelled any weakness, he’d pounce.

  “It’s not my restaurant,” Georgia corrected Lo. “It’s ours. Mine and Bernard’s. Or it will be if we nail this pitch.”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” Lo held out a pair of chopsticks for Bernard.

  “No worries,” he said, popping a piece of toro. “Sushi Seki?”

  Lo nodded.

  “We should get started,” Bernard said. “We need at least a few hours of sleep before the meeting.”

  “See?” Georgia swung her arm around his shoulder. “That’s why I love my business partner. He’s all-business.”

  Two hours later, Georgia and Bernard left Lo’s apartment, their bellies fat with fish, their brains bursting with numbers and key phrases. Clem followed them out, and they rode down the elevator together. Lo and Clem agreed the two had, after a half-dozen attempts, finally nailed it. If they could remember to speak clearly (Georgia), kill the ums and you knows (Georgia again), and the in other words (Bernard), they could present a killer pitch in fifteen minutes, which, according to their bible, Business Plan for Dummies, was about all the time they’d have. Just a quarter hour to knock the cashmere socks right off Luca Santini’s feet.

  Clem flagged the first cab she saw and headed down to the Perry Street Towers where she was dog-sitting. “Knock ’em dead, guys!” she shouted from the cab’s open window. “You’re gonna be great!” She pumped her gloved fist into the bitter air as the cab lurched away.

  “You think we will be?” Georgia asked. She pulled her hat low on her head and yanked up her hood. Since the snowstorm, the temperature had hovered in the teens, making it impossible for any snow to melt. Mini-mountains of gray mush piled at street corners, and the curbs were covered with snow cleared from sidewalks.

  “Be what?” Bernard asked. His red scarf was wrapped around his face, and a matching red hat covered his ears. Smoke wisped from his mouth.

  “Great. Do you think we’ll be great?”

  The doorman waved from inside the lobby, and Georgia motioned for him to turn on the taxi light.

  “I think you’ll be great,” Bernard said. “I think I’ll be fair to middling.”

  “Funny,” Georgia said as a cab pulled up. “Want me to drop you at the train?”

  “Nah, the cold air will do me good.”

  “Whatever you say, partner. I’ll see you at the Oven tomorrow. Twelve thirty sharp. Do not be late.”

  “You’re kidding, right? When have you ever known me to be late?”

  “Never. Good night, Bernard.”

  She climbed into the toasty cab and settled in for the short ride home. The streets were desolate. Nights like these were made for soup dumplings, General Tso’s chicken, and a good bad movie on demand. For snuggling under the covers in a ratty T-shirt and sweats with a husband, a fiancé, a boyfriend, or, in Georgia’s case, a big yellow mutt with bad breath. Much as she adored Sals, it was these kinds of nights that made her miss Glenn. Two months in the city without any type of male companionship could make a girl lonely. But those girls, she reminded herself, didn’t have dogs like Sally, or friends like Clem and Lo, or business partners like Bernard. They didn’t have a restaurant in the works, a dream about to take off.

  Georgia paced in the Oven’s tiny basement locker room, her sliver-heeled boots clicking across the scuffed vinyl tiles. She glanced at her wristwatch and frowned. In the two years she’d known him, Bernard had never been late. Their meeting with Luca was scheduled to begin in fifteen minutes, and not only was there no sign of her partner, but calls to his cell went straight to voice mail. Since Bernard equated punctuality with godliness and was at least seven minutes early for everything, this was deeply disturbing.

  Upstairs in the dining room, Luca was probably polishing off his third espresso, perfectly timed to coincide with the end of his first meeting, a number-crunching session with his accountant. Georgia and Bernard were up third, right behind the waste management contractor, a disagreeable man from New Jersey with stale breath you could smell across the table. That one, Luca’s assistant assured her, would be brief.

  “He went to the john. You just bought yourself ten minutes,” the assistant, an unfriendly guy who wore a permanent sneer, called into the locker room, his voice tinny over the intercom. “But you better hope your friend gets here soon.” He’d reluctantly agreed to give Georgia updates on Luca’s progress.

  “I know,” Georgia said into the intercom. “Believe me, I know.”

  The thought of pitching Luca without Bernard to cut in, interject, and flat-out take over when talk moved from concept (her deal) to money (his) made her head and, strangely, her feet hurt. Or maybe that was just the four-inch-high Louboutins pinching the bunion on her left foot. A Barneys warehouse score, the boots were so uncomfortable they’d only seen sidewalk on two other occasions: an impromptu expense-account lunch at Le Bernardin with Glenn because his VIP client stood him up (clearly the client had never tasted Eric Ripert’s food), and her interview at Marco, with Marco. Not the most auspicious history, but Lo insisted killer heels were a must when asking someone to part with large sums of money. Then she wrapped a Pucci scarf around Georgia’s neck, declaring it added just the right amount of Italian flash. “He’s from Bari,” Lo said over Georgia’s protests. “He’ll love it.” Though Georgia thought the scarf was more Midwestern flight attendant than Sophia Loren, she’d dutifully tied it that morning precisely the way Lo had shown her.

  For the eleventh time, Georgia punched redial on her cell, and Bernard’s voice, maddeningly polite, exceedingly casual, instructed her to leave a message. The scarf felt like a noose around her neck, tightening with each message she left. “Where are you, where are you, where are you?” she said quietly, lest anyone be lurking outside the locker room. No need to advertise that her partner had ditched her.

  She closed the phone and picked up the top business plan from the pile she’d stacked on the metal folding chair, the lone piece of furniture in the room. This was her personal plan, the one that contained her notes, critical phrases, ideas, things she couldn’t forget to say. “Okay,” she whispered, flipping through the plan. “You can do this, Georgia. You can do this.” The cheat sheet stuck under the front cover fluttered to the floor, and before she had a chance to pick it up, the assistant’s voice rattled across the intercom.

  “Georgia, you’re up.”

  “But the meeting isn’t even supposed to start for”—she looked at her watch again—“two minutes. And you promised me ten on top of that. Can’t you stall?”

  “No can do. Sorry. He sent the last guy packing early.”

  “But my partner isn’t here.” Her feet and temples throbbed in unison.

  “Yeah, well, Luca’s schedule is tight. There are five people after you, and the car is taking him to Teterboro at four. You want me to cancel?”

  “No, don’t cancel. I’m coming up.”

  She grabbed the business plans from the chair and ran as fast as her four-inch heels would allow, then realized her cheat sheet was floundering on the locker room floor. Hesitating for just a second—could she do it without Bernard and without the cheat sheet? Answer: no way—she ran back to the locker room, snatched up the flimsy piece of paper, and flew up the stairs two at a time.

  Pablo placed a plate of buffalo mozzarella, oven-roasted tomatoes, and basil pesto before Georgia, dipping his bald head slightly.

  “Thanks, Pablo,” she said.

  He flashed a quick wink, then disappeared. Before becoming a waiter, he was a majordomo for some zillionaire who docked his pay anytime their eyes met. Out of financial necessity he learned to make himself invisible and could no
w clear an entire four-top without anyone’s noticing he’d been there.

  “You like insalata caprese,” Luca said.

  Georgia couldn’t tell by his inflection if it was a question or a statement, so she nodded. “Who doesn’t.” It was true. Even the snootiest of chefs, the foodiest of foodies, liked a good caprese. A bad caprese was another story.

  “I happen to love insalata caprese. But these tomatoes, I’m not so crazy about. Your change, yes?” He poked a tomato distastefully and puffed out his lip.

  “Um, yes, it is my change. Winter’s tough on tomatoes. Cherries taste like newspaper pulp, the beefsteaks are the size of walnuts, and the Israeli hydroponics, while lovely to look at, have zero flavor. Roasting the plums makes them rich and earthy, attractive, and the customers really seem to—”

  “You have something you want to talk to me about?” He stabbed his fork into the tomato, watching the juice drip onto the mozzarella.

  “I do, Luca. It’s about my and my partner’s idea—”

  He held up his hand without looking at her, seeming to collect his thoughts for a second. “Partner? I don’t see a partner at this table. I don’t see anyone at this table but you and me.” He made a show of staring at the two empty chairs kitty-corner to him.

  “Unfortunately, he was held up and couldn’t make it, but I’m sure I can explain everything—”

  “Held up? You mean with a gun?” This time he looked at her.

  “No, not with a gun. I mean, he was held up—”

  “Because that would have been a good excuse. There’s not much you can do when someone’s sticking a gun up your nose, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I think so, but, no, no guns, just a family emergency. Some family, um, issue.”

  “Mmm. That’s too bad.”

  “But as I said, I’m sure—”

  “Because where I come from, if you have a partner, the partner is supposed to show up. Maybe it’s different here, but that’s the way I do business. I’m not all that comfortable with the partner who doesn’t show up.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  Georgia swallowed; Luca was a bigger son of a bitch than she’d realized. She folded her hands on the table, took a breath, and leaned forward. “Luca, I understand that this might look a bit odd, but I assure you my partner is one hundred percent dedicated to this project. Once you hear about it, I think you’ll be as excited as we are.”

  Luca crossed his knife and fork and dropped the utensils onto his picked-over plate, branding the caprese with a gigantic X. Eat at your own peril! the dish seemed to scream. He rested his chin on manicured hands and narrowed his eyes. Twin rings, thick as washers and dusted with diamonds, encased girlish pinkies, strangely hairless considering the fluff around his neck. Georgia hadn’t noticed the matching rings earlier, just the one that had dented her pinkie.

  “Go on,” he said.

  She took a sip of water and cleared her throat. “Our idea is to open an eighty-seat restaurant on the Upper East Side. As head chef, I’ll run the kitchen. My partner will run the front of the house. Between us, we have over twenty years of experience in New York City restaurants, as well as experience in Italy and France.”

  “Upper East Side? Why not the West Village? I thought all the hot restaurants were downtown.”

  “The West Village is oversaturated. It doesn’t need another food-driven, quietly stylish restaurant where you’re guaranteed a good meal and a good time. But aside from the three- and four-star culinary havens, the Upper East Side has nothing but frat-boy joints, red-sauce Italians, and overpriced bring-the-parents-as-long-as-they’re-paying places with mediocre food. There’s a void.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her. “And a need.”

  Her confidence, absent all morning, started to rebound. Maybe it was her hair, which she’d glimpsed in the rococo mirror behind Luca’s head, registering an unheard-of frizz factor of one. (Pro blowout, plus newly purchased silk pillowcase, plus frigid temps equaled insanely smooth hair.) Maybe it was her feet, which had finally stopped hurting. Or maybe it was because she suddenly knew that—with or without Bernard—she could ace the pitch.

  Pablo arrived at the table with a pair of Luca’s Yeoward glasses and a bottle of Col d’Orcia Brunello, which he held out for Luca’s inspection. She wondered if this was the usual drill or if the wine signaled she’d passed some sort of test. Pablo eased the cork out of the bottle and handed it to Luca, who pocketed it, then nodded his head, apparently deciding tasting was superfluous.

  “Enjoy,” Pablo said after he finished pouring glasses for both of them.

  “Go on, Georgia,” Luca said, swirling the wine in his glass.

  So she did. She started with the food, describing a light summer dinner of parchment-baked orata in a pistou of baby vegetables, Israeli couscous, basil and heirloom-tomato salad, and lemon-rosemary gelato; and a hearty winter dinner of butternut squash and apple risotto, braised lamb shanks, smashed fingerling potatoes and wilted collard greens, and warm banana-and-chocolate bread pudding, so he’d see she wasn’t a one-season chef. She talked menu strategy, so he’d see she knew her way around food costs. She talked about the wine list, naming off-the-beaten-path producers to appeal to the oenophile in him, and the short but steep list of house drinks, designed to fatten both the cocks-and-apps crew and the bottom line. She talked about giving uptown a chance to dine in the hood and downtown a reason to risk nosebleeds uptown. The furrowed brow slowly relaxed, the throbbing vein slashed across his forehead quieted, the jangly foot rested. He liked what he was hearing.

  Emboldened, she walked him through the restaurant, beginning with the cast-bronze door handle under the portal window, the arrangement of pear blossoms by the hostess stand, the random-width pine flooring reclaimed from an old barn in Columbia County, the hand-rubbed-maple bar. Luca squinted his eyes, staring at some faraway place, so Georgia continued, moving on to the gauzy drapes and crisp linen napkins on farmhouse tables.

  Nerves and nonstop talking had made her mouth dry as a mohair sweater, and she took a tiny sip of wine. The silence sliced through Luca’s reverie like a mandoline, and he flicked his hand in the air angrily, either swatting a nonexistent fly or signaling her to continue. She quickly jumped back in with her favorite part of cooking, the smells that would infuse the restaurant from open to close. Nutty olive oil, zesty herbs, briny oysters, lusty chocolate, pungent cheese, crisp greens, fresh citrus, bracing vinegar. Luca’s nose slowly stretched skyward as his eyelids drooped.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she slipped into finances, telling him how much they’d need and the breakdown between hard and soft costs, why the HVAC system was such a huge and necessary expense, justifying the need for a Pacojet. She continued with how much to allot for rent, key money, monthly payroll expenses, and time frames for the planning and design and construction phases, including change orders. Then she hit the piece that made Luca’s eyes go wide: how much money he could expect to make in one, three, and five years. All this with less than ten ums.

  “I guess you’re telling me your place won’t be a tax write-off, huh?” Luca said, smiling at last.

  “Definitely not. We intend to make money, and we know we can.” Out of the corner of her eye, Georgia noticed Luca’s assistant waving frantically.

  Luca kept smiling, but his brow wrinkled. “That’s some talk from someone who’s never run her own business.” He rapped his fingers on the table. “There are no guarantees, in business or in life. That’s a lesson we all discover at some point. Only the truly lucky won’t.”

  “I think I’ve already learned this on both fronts, Luca.”

  “Because you got fired once or twice? Had your heart broken a couple times? I hope you’re right, Georgia, and God bless you if you are.” He stood up. “Looks like my assistant is going to have a heart attack if I don’t end this meeting right now. I’ve already kept the councilman waiting for”—he glanced at his Piaget—“eighteen minutes, just three shy of rude.
”

  She thanked him for his time and handed him two business plans. He cocked his head almost imperceptibly, and his assistant strode over and removed the documents, glaring at Georgia just slightly.

  “Too bad your partner didn’t show.” Luca pursed his lips and stared at her.

  “Well, I’m sure he—”

  “Let me ask you something. How wedded are you to this partner who can’t even bother showing up for a meeting?”

  She swallowed hard. “Really, seriously wedded. Till-death-do-us-part wedded.”

  Luca continued staring at her without speaking. “That’s too bad. Hard to invest in a place when you don’t know the whole management team.”

  “I’m sure we can arrange something.”

  But the councilman was already on his way over with outstretched hands and open wallet, and Luca’s attention had moved elsewhere. As she walked out of the dining room, she couldn’t help but wonder if she should kill Bernard, or if someone else had taken care of it for her.

  The cell phone jittered across the table like a june bug, the polished marble top sending it skittering to the floor. Georgia picked it up and glared at the number showing.

  “Don’t think so,” she said under her breath. But then again, she had to know. She flipped it open, holding it a few inches from her lips. “Where the hell are you? Let me rephrase that: Where the hell were you?”

  Two tables down, a pair of blue-haired lady lunchers raised their penciled-in eyebrows at each other. “Such anger,” one of them said while the other shook her head disapprovingly.

  Georgia covered the phone with her hand. “Excuse me, ladies. Boy problems.”

  The women smiled sympathetically, their rouged cheeks flushing. Who hadn’t been there.

  “I am finally getting off the fucking F train,” said Bernard. “I have been underground, in a tunnel. For four. Fucking. Hours.”

  Georgia twirled a curl around her index finger. “I know I’m supposed to be sympathetic and all, but may I ask why you didn’t take a cab?”