“How much did you spend?”
“Publicity, a couple of ads in the right places, I picked up the hotel for the guy from Gourmet Week, all the appetizers. The wines alone cost a grand. Wholesale.”
“Shit!” Russell eased out the sails a bit so that he could pay less attention to the boat and more to his friend.
“How close are you to failing?”
Angelo shrugged and he didn’t look up.
“Look. You need money, it’s not an issue. You know that.”
Angelo nodded. He’d never taken money from the Morgans, except for the college expenses Russell’s dad had insisted on giving him. Not even pocket change from the Morgan millions.
“What’s your hook?”
Angelo squinted up at him. “My hook?”
“Sure, every ad has a hook. Every business has one too. My hook as an ad photographer was, ‘Highest quality, spare no expenses.’ And I didn’t. If I needed an elephant in the distant background, I hired the elephant, handlers, and whoever else I needed. My clients paid, man did they pay. And they got the best damn quality that could be achieved in return. What do you have?”
Angelo looked puzzled for a moment, shifted on the cockpit seat.
“Authentic Italian cooking.”
“Tony’s fast pizza claims that in every mall store.”
Angelo’s glare was intense enough that Russell decided to back off rather than push harder. He really didn’t want to go for a swim in February. They’d reached the north tip of Vashon Island and he decided to take the western side. The wind was just right to take the narrower Colvos Passage south and then they’d have room to tack back and forth coming up the wider East Passage into the wind. It would be his longest sail yet, and it might give them some time to work something out.
“Other than your mother, you’re the best damn cook. Right?”
“Damn straight.” Angelo was still pissed about the mall store crack.
“And still you aren’t a big success.”
The pissed look eased back toward sad, such an unusual expression on his face that it took Russell several moments to identify it.
“So we need to come up with a hook. Something to get you noticed. Something other than a thousand dollars of wine.”
“Damn good Italian food should be enough.”
“That’s better.”
“What is?”
“Damn Good Italian Food. It’s a good pitch.”
“My mother would slap us both and wash out our mouths with soap.” But there was a shadow of a smile. Better.
“Your mother gonna slap you even worse if you give up.”
Angelo nodded and for the first time on the trip, took some interest in the sailboat. He pulled a winch handle out of the pocket mounted inside the cockpit and cranked a couple of turns on the jib sheet. A little too far, but Russell decided that the better part of valor was to keep his mouth shut. Sailing with the wind was warmer and quieter, but also less demanding. If Angelo was still sulking when they rounded the south end of Vashon, his mother wasn’t the only one who’d be slapping him.
“What part of Italy do you know better than any other?”
Angelo shrugged, “You know that. Liguria, Tuscany only better. Mama’s from Liguria. Pop was from Tuscany. Mama and I went back every year. You came with me for the whole summer after senior year in high school. Why you ask such a stupido question?”
“I knew it. Wanted to make sure you did, dummy.”
Angelo’s glare finally had a bit of energy behind it.
“How much of your menu is Ligurian, even North Italian?”
Angelo gazed off the side of the boat at the big ferry boat passing off the stern.
“Maybe half. Maybe less. Sicilian is a big draw. So is the far north, up in the Piedmont.”
“So you’ve got to stock ingredients for everywhere from Sicily to Venice to Milanese. And all those fancy wines you served to the Madonna wine lady?” About the right image with her perfect coif and perfect poise.
He blinked this time. “Why… uh… none. Only two were even Italian.”
“Mi amico. I, the great Russell Morgan, have found your problem and your answer. The best damn Ligurian food in the Western Hemisphere. Okay, the title sucks. No one knows nothing from Liguria anyway. Best Damn Tuscan Food in the West. Still sucks. We’ll work on that. First thing, you sell off or drink any wine not from northern Italy.”
He pinched Angelo’s cheek and pulled on it like a matron auntie.
“Then I make-a you an ad spread,” he blew a kiss in the air off his fingertips, “that will-a make you mama proud.”
“You? I thought you were done with that, man.”
Russell had thought he was as well, but Angelo needed help. His kind of help.
“That’s okay, I’m gonna make you pay, brother. Through the nose.”
Angelo lost some of his happiness. “You know I don’t have that kind of money.”
“No. But you make the best damn pasta sauce on the planet.”
Angelo perked up. “I do, don’t I.”
His punch thudded into Russell’s shoulder hard enough to hurt. He’d let his friend get away with that… for now.
# # #
“You left New York for this?” Melanie stood on the pitching dock barely wide enough to walk on and clutched tightly onto Russell’s arm for stability.
“Yep! Isn’t she beautiful?” Melanie was used to being called beautiful, had made a career of it. But if it meant that she was similar to this boat, a shudder rippled up her spine, she’d give it up.
The boat, which was moving with a life of its own that had nothing to do with the dock, lay spread out before her. In the late afternoon light she could see the blue paint on the side was peeling. The white masts were doing the same. A great expanse of red material wrapped about the horizontal piece, the boom, Russell called it as he described everything. It looked like a virulent growth that one should spray immediately with Lysol. A lot of it. Before burning it in the bathtub. The floor was all torn up, great strips of gray and black canvas had been peeled up to reveal rough wood that looked even worse.
“Want to come aboard?”
“No!” But Russell was already stepping up onto the boat and her tight grip on his arm dragged her along. The boat was so small that it rolled back and forth just from their weight. The only boat she’d ever been on was the New York Circle Line, a massive ferry filled with thousands of tourists. And that had been for a fashion shoot, so she hadn’t paid much attention to anything but the photographer. That had been her second spread and first cover for Elle. Even for that she might not have climbed aboard this boat.
“See, over here I’ve been replacing the deck.”
Deck, not floor. She repeated the word a couple of times to remind herself.
He had ducked under the virulent boom thing and was pointing at a place she couldn’t see along the cabin. She took a breath and leaned over to see. If felt as if she was going to be flung headfist into the inky depths between Russell’s boat and the ragged old powerboat parked next door.
The deck looked better on this side. More like the parquet of her kitchen floor though not nearly as pretty.
“It’s so,” narrow, she wanted to shout. The water was right there. “Nice.” She checked Russell’s face and he beamed like a newborn’s father. The right answer. Perhaps it was okay to relax a little.
“Down below is still a mess.” She hadn’t really thought about the inside of the boat. The cabin was barely as tall as her knees. There was a tiny door that might do for the white rabbit, but she was no Alice in Wonderland to go crawling on her hands and knees, especially not in her cashmere coat.
He opened the door and then slid a part of the roof back. A little ladder went much farther down than she thought. Down far enough to stand in. Down until, she glanced over the side and then back down the ladder, until she’d be standing underwater to her knees.
“Make sure to hold on as you come down.”
Russell clambered down into the cabin like he was born to it, facing forward as he dropped down the ladder holding onto nothing at all. She knew from experience that men lived in a world of their own. Russell had always been a cut above. More civilized, more polite, and usually more thoughtful.
At the moment, she could kill him.
But if she wanted him, she was going to have to do this stupid male test. One of thousands they threw at women, at least with Russell it didn’t have a backing of cruelty behind it, just his own version of naiveté. And she did want him. Why else had she cancelled two shoots on short notice when he’d called with a Valentine’s Day invitation to come to Seattle? Even at her level, that would have ripples across her career for months to come.
“Get a grip, girl.” She took hold of either side of the doorway, thankful for her leather gloves. Though they didn’t stop the cold, at least she didn’t have to risk a splinter. There was no way to descend the ladder as Russell had. She turned and went down it backwards. Even one at a time, the steps were steep and difficult. The boat kept shifting, little jerks in unexpected directions. This is how clumsy people must feel. She hated it. Hated it so much she wanted to cry. She clamped down on it hard, careful not to bite her lip.
The floor was a surprise when she ran out of steps. Then she turned. There was just enough room to stand upright. She wanted to hunch down like a troll. The ceiling was high in the middle, but sloped down to either side. The floor was a narrow strip running all the way to the front. The walls sloped outward from the floor. Seating was perched part way up the wall, making more use of the wider space. God, it was even smaller than her father’s trailer, may the old bastard rot in hell.
“I’m going to put the galley here,” he pointed to a couple cardboard boxes of groceries, an ice chest and a small camping stove.
“Pilot’s berth there.” A bed no bigger than a coffin, across the narrow walkway from the galley. How could you even climb into the thing? The deck was just two or three feet above the narrow bench.
“A settee that can be a dining table or collapse into a comfortable double bed right here across from this little woodstove.” He continued forward oblivious of the fact that all this meant nothing to her. Whatever he was calling a settee was now a card table and two folding chairs. And how that became a bed for two was beyond her and a place she’d certainly never be found.
A section of the flooring was pulled up and she half expected to see the ocean beneath it. Instead, about six inches down, was concrete and, she swallowed hard, a wash of blackish water running back and forth with each motion of the boat.
A loud buzz below her right foot made her jump. There were splashing noises and slowly the skin of water disappeared. The buzzing stopped with a sigh and a gurgle.
“That’s just the bilge pump.”
The smell of fresh cut wood and paint added to the queasiness in her stomach. The bilge pump, she did her best to catalog all of the strange words he kept using. Booms and tillers and hulls. Even something called a fang or a vang that he wanted to replace for reasons she’d never understand.
Again she focused on the curve of the hull. It had looked wider from outside. She peeked out one of the round windows and could just see the water. The floor was deeper than she’d thought, she was in the ocean up to her waist.
The “head” was next on the tour.
She blinked twice but it didn’t go away. A porcelain toilet. With handles and levers that would make a dentist chair look safe. Sitting right there in the open on the floor. It was a good thing that he’d promised her a hotel room or she’d be on the red-eye back to New York.
He waved at a blank section of hull, “Books, maybe a bench seat that could double as a bunk. Don’t really know yet.”
The last of the tour was the forward stateroom. A fancy name for a double bed jammed into the pointy end of the boat. He was dreaming if he thought they were going to make love there. The place wasn’t as cold as a meat locker, by maybe five degrees but not by ten. She hadn’t roughed it since she and her mother had escaped the trailer park and she wasn’t about to start again now.
Tools were piled everywhere. Cans of paint and who knew what. They smelled. It all smelled nasty.
He was waiting for her to join him at the far end.
Deep breath. Deep breath.
He was so damn handsome. And he’d never looked better. Standing with his legs spread like a sea pirate standing on his treasure. The work on the boat had flattened his stomach even more and his arms had a power that was stronger, safer than she’d imagined possible when they’d hugged at the airport.
Keeping her attention on his eyes, and where the hole in the floor was, she headed in his direction. When the boat shifted, she reached up and a small rail was in just the right place to grab. She could do this.
She was halfway there when something shot between her legs. She gasped and hung on to the too thin rail with both hands.
Russell casually reached down with one hand and scooped up… a kitten. A calico kitten with shaggy hair and outrageously long whiskers.
“This is Nutcase. She has absolutely no fear. She sticks her little nose in the strangest of places. One day she fiberglassed her tail and it took me an hour to trim it off because she wouldn’t hold still.” It climbed up his chest to perch on his shoulder.
“You can see where it hasn’t grown back yet.” He pulled the long tail from around his throat and one side was indeed shaved.
A cat.
When she was just starting out, her career was almost aborted by a cat. Right before a shoot when she was ten, she’d tried to pet the photographer’s cat. It had swiped her with its claws and left a long red scratch down the side of her finger. They had to get another hand model.
Her mother had been furious.
Melanie didn’t sleep for four days as she watched it to make sure it healed. Skipped school and rubbed in salves and moisturizers to make sure there was no unsightly puckering. Finally wept herself to sleep with relief when she could no longer find exactly where it had been. She turned down every shoot with a cat since then.
There was no way she was going to pet Russell’s cat.
“She’s really quite sweet. She likes being scritched under the chin like this.” He demonstrated and Nutcase purred loudly.
How badly did she want this? How badly did she want him? She’d never told him the cat story. Never told anyone that she could still feel the outline of her mother’s slap on her face that had shone for days, as livid a red as the cat’s mark, that still burned though her mother was long dead.
“She won’t hurt you.”
How many tests did she have to pass? Clearly there would always be another. But she hadn’t reached her limit yet. She’d manage this one.
Melanie extended her finger until the cat had to lean forward to sniff the black leather. After a careful inspection, it’s pink and black nose wiggling like a tiny bumblebee, another of her fears, the cat leaned even farther out and rubbed its chin along her finger. Russell was right. She was gentle.
But there was no way she was taking off her gloves.
# # #
“No, it cannot be.” Jo Thompson insisted in her best lawyer voice.
Before Cassidy could add her own protest, Perrin continued on, excitement rippling off her in high-energy waves.
“Uh-huh! Way! Could I make something like this up? Well, I could, I guess, if I wanted to but I’m not.” Perrin spoke loudly enough that half-a-dozen heads turned in their direction despite the noise level in Cutter’s.
The lounge was hopping and it was barely six o’clock. Another hour and it would really be rolling. The décor was simple and modern in a plush-chairs-around-knee-high-glass-tables motif. The air smelled of exquisite seafood being served in the restaurant beyond the tinted glass wall. The wrap-around windows revealed the tail end of an awesome winter sunset over Puget Sound.
Cassidy had learned from long practice that it wasn’t worth the effort to quie
t her friend. Perrin didn’t mind being shushed, but ten seconds later she’d be bound to forget and her volume would climb once again.
Everything about Perrin Williams was loud. She’d dyed her hair half chrome-blue and half the black of India ink. And not side-to-side or front-to-back, but in diagonal stripes three-inches wide spiraling down from the high part. The stripes followed the line of the sloping haircut that started well down her bare left shoulder and rose shorter and shorter to the line of her jaw on the right. The clothes following the line of the hair from bare shoulder to a high collar on the other side. It was quite striking once you got past the strangeness of it.
Cassidy hoped that maybe it was wig, but it was always hard to tell with Perrin because she did her fashion statements so perfectly.
Her clothes matched the shocking blue and her accessories the black. Fashion was her life, her shop was as much gallery as boutique, but there was a streak in her that had never left sixteen behind. She giggled merrily at the effect of her news.
“Pamela and Janice? But I thought they each had long-term boyfriends.”
Perrin nodded and took a gulp of her Cosmo.
“I kinda set them up, though I didn’t know at the time I was setting them up, I just kinda did it. Separately I sold them those cute blouses. The ones that were mirror images of each other You know the ones, by Georgie. Who would think such a good designer would be living over his parent’s garage in Duvall, Washington? Anyway, I showed them to you the last time you were in the shop. The green velour with blue silk sleeves and the other blue velour with the green silk sleeves. Isn’t there a song about that somewhere?”
Jo nodded and Cassidy followed suit even though she didn’t remember the blouses or the song. They’d both learned long ago to never stop Perrin in the middle of a story or she’d sidetrack and you’d never get the ending.
“Well, two best friends dating two guys who were also best friends. I thought it would be cute. You know, the mirror twins on a double date. Sure to make the guys eyes pop. That’s what I thought. How was I supposed to know they’d decide they were a set and they’d take a trip down the other side of the street? They came in a couple days later to buy the matching pantsuits.”
Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth) Page 6