Anyone But You (13 page)

“The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air, President Roosevelt has just announced,” a somber voice relayed in a tone filled with portent. Then silence.

“What was that?” Benny said, sitting up from under the sink. “
Pearl Harbor?
”

“Just a second.” I ran over and twisted the knob to another station. A few more seconds of distorted crackling, then: “ … It’s no joke; it’s a real war.”

The bell on the front door of the shop jingled, and high-heeled shoes clicked across the tiled floor toward the kitchen.

“Nick?” Stella’s voice rang out, her voice cheerful. “Am I too early?” I was suddenly despondent.

“No, Stella,” I said, walking over to her and taking her hands in mine. “You’re too late.”

W
HEN
I
AWOKE THE MORNING AFTER
my sweet sixteen party, the hot summer sun had already laid brazen claim to my tiny bedroom under the eaves of our house. The day was going to be a scorcher. I drowsily rolled over and glanced at the time on my phone: twenty minutes to eleven. Roman and I had texted each other well into the night, and even when we’d finally agreed to turn in, the mere thought of him kept me awake for what seemed like hours beyond that. Though I’d clocked only five hours of sleep, at best, it didn’t take much to return to the land of the living—remembering him brought me to in an instant.

He and I had agreed to meet at Arrigo Park at noon, which left me only about an hour to get ready. After shimmying into my favorite cotton sundress and primping for considerably longer than I normally would have, I made my way downstairs and poured a cup of the stale coffee my parents had brewed hours ago. Nuking it in the microwave for twenty seconds to reheat, I grabbed three small
pignoli
cookies from the white cardboard bakery box on the counter and popped the first one into my mouth. I thought about my agenda for later in the day and wondered if Chef’s suggestion from last night would be the first step toward brokering a peace between my family and Roman’s. My head said “unlikely,” but my heart thought “maybe.” Retrieving the mug of reheated coffee, I joined Mom and Dad at the dining room table where they sat in front of a pile of accounting books and paperwork. Neither one of them glanced up or relaxed their furrowed brows when I took a seat.

“Morning,” I ventured, my voice still gravelly.

“Barely,” said my father while eyeing a spreadsheet. For a brief moment, I thought he was on my case again for sleeping late. As it happened, he was on another train of thought altogether. “We’ve
barely
got enough to pay our suppliers next month as it is—that’s assuming business returns to what it was before we were shuttered. I was depending on that reserve from Rich’s loan to give us a cushion for the next few months until we’re back in the swing of things.”

“We’ve already spent most of the loan on the cleanup and renovation,” my mom pointed out. “How can he just demand we repay it all immediately? I thought you and he signed some sort of contract.”

“Yeah. One
he
drew up.” Dad tossed a packet of legal-sized paper across the table to land in front of my mother, then reached over and pointed to one line in particular, one I could only suspect made Perry’s dad God and gave my own dad zero recourse to do anything about it. “Damn it all to hell!” Dad yelled, beginning to reveal his normally latent Sicilian temper. “Pops drilled it into my head over and over for as long as I can remember: ‘Don’t do business with friends.’ Now I know why, only it’s too late to do a damn thing about it!”

“Mom?” I interrupted, searchingly. My mother held up her hand to silence me, still addressing my dad.

“What
exactly
did Rich say when he called here this morning? I just don’t understand why he’s suddenly reversing course on this. Last night was hardly a ‘fiasco,’ as he put it.”

“I wish I knew, Nora. The bigger question now is, how are we going to pay him back his money and pull ourselves out of this mess?”

“Perry’s dad wants the loan repaid? Already?” I asked. I put my hand to my stomach as it churned in protest. Black coffee and cookies hadn’t been a good idea. My question floated in the ether, unanswered.

“If it’s a matter of payroll, Ben, you know everyone at Cap’s would understand if we needed to institute a temporary pay cut.”

“
What’s
going
on
?” I repeated, wondering why they always seemed to have selective hearing where I was concerned. How (and why) Rich Beresdorfer had reneged on his loan to my father remained unclear to me, but my parents’ obvious distress said everything I really needed to know. The situation was far more serious than I had realized.

“If only it were as simple as pay cuts,” continued my father. “It’s going to take a lot more money to close the gap. I’ve been poring through these books all morning and can’t seem to come up with any sort of solution other than—” My dad glanced at me, then at my mother, who placed her palm to her forehead as if soothing a migraine.

“She really ought to be told, Ben,” she said with a note of defeat. “We’ll have to tell her soon enough.”

“Tell me what?” I gripped the sides of the upholstered dining room chair I was sitting on, as if the whole thing was about to lurch forward.

“Dad’s cousin Jimmy in Peoria has a vacant property down there. The rent is almost half of what we’re paying on Taylor Street,” explained Mom.

“So?” Now was hardly the time for them to consider letting some random relative start up a franchise, but watching my parents exchange hesitant glances, it suddenly dawned on me: That’s not what they were getting at—at all.

“You’d move Cap’s? Out of Chicago?” I felt the blood drain from my face. More than three generations of Caputos had run the family business in its Taylor Street location. It was iconic. An institution. Uprooting the restaurant would be akin to pulling the plug on over half a century’s worth of family history—and damn near a century’s worth of of
Chicago
history. And
Peoria
? It was almost three hours away. If the restaurant moved there, it’d mean we’d be moving, too. I’d rather die, first. A million protestations were formulating in my brain, but before I could give them utterance, my dad reached across the table and gripped my shoulder.

“Nothing’s settled, Gigi,” he attempted to reassure me. “I’m going to go down and talk to the bank tomorrow, so this may all right itself yet.”

“And we’re not going to mention this to anyone—for now,” added my mom. Without a word, I rose and walked out of the room, my eyes burning with the promise of impending tears. Less than a minute later, I passed back through the dining room wearing sunglasses and my purse slung over one shoulder.

“Where are you off to, Gigi?” Mom asked. Given my parents’ current preoccupation, I honestly hadn’t predicted this question. My brain scavenged for a plausible piece of fiction.

“To meet Bethany,” I answered, as casually as I could muster in my now worked-up state. “She wants to go thrift shopping in Bucktown.” Given the offhand lie, black coffee on an empty stomach, the anticipation of seeing Roman again, and now, my family’s grimly uncertain future—is it any wonder my hand visibly trembled on the metal handle of the front screen door as I latched it closed?

• • •

I was a snotty, red-faced, puffy-eyed mess by the time I arrived at the park to meet Roman. He was already waiting at our agreed-upon rendezvous spot near the statue of Christopher Columbus, leaning insouciantly against the fence that surrounded the looming bronze figure and its accompanying fountain. His charming grin gave way to concern as I approached.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. I said nothing, but practically collapsed against his chest, the tight pain in my lungs finally dissolving into sobs. He held me tight, occasionally stroking my hair, but not saying another word until I finally pulled back to face him.

“I’m
so
sor-sor-sorry,” I stammered. “I feel so stupid.”

“Tell me. I’m listening,” he said. I started to explain, in short bursts between hiccups and tears, about the financial trouble besieging my parents.

“My dad says we … we might have to
move
,” I sobbed. “Uproot the restaurant, our family—everything.” The park was crowded, and people walking by couldn’t help but stare at me, the personified train wreck. I felt like a complete freak show.

“What did
you
say?” Roman asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “What could I say? It’s not up to me.”

A little boy tossing pennies in the fountain began offering a play-by-play commentary on my own waterworks display.

“Mommy, Daddy—that girl is
crying,
” he proclaimed, pointing a stubby finger in my direction.

“Come with me,” said Roman as I tried to avoid the overt stares of all the other lookie lous. “I know somewhere we can be alone.”

It goes without saying that I had never before seen the inside of Monte’s. So when we arrived on enemy turf, curiosity helped suppress some of my earlier anguish. That, plus the fact that I was willing every nerve in my body not to fall apart again in front of Roman.

“Nobody comes in until around two-thirty to start prepping for dinner,” he assured me, unlocking a side entrance. I crept lightly across the red tile floor, feeling almost as if I was trespassing—a cat burglar mid-heist or a school kid sneaking into a church sacristy to steal the communion wine. The dining room was deserted and quiet. Wooden chairs were overturned on the tables, and even with very little light filtering through the stained glass windows, I could still see the trademark touches of a traditional Italian eatery. Decor-wise, the place didn’t look all
that
different from Cap’s, notwithstanding the faux Tuscan wall mural which was framed by painted grape leaves and cherubs who looked like they’d eaten one too many servings of baked ziti.

“Are you hungry?” Roman asked, leading me into the kitchen. “They say there’s nothing so terrible a full stomach can’t start to fix. I can make you something, if eating here doesn’t amount to treason for you.”

“I’m pretty sure it does,” I said. “But I’m famished. I didn’t get to eat anything at the party, and all I had this morning were a few cookies.”

“You need some protein,” he said, before opening the industrial-sized fridge and removing a carton of eggs. “How about a frittata?”

“You cook?”

“I’m
Italian
. What kind of question is that?” He drizzled olive oil in a pan on the stove while I leaned against the counter opposite to watch. “Of course, you’ll be the judge of whether I can compete with you. Mushrooms?”

“Sure,” I said. He removed a white towel that was covering a plastic bin of earthy brown morels and began chopping them on a cutting board. “I wouldn’t worry,” I added, “about competing with me, I mean.”

“Oh, so you’re
that
good in the kitchen?”

“Hardly.”

“You can’t cook?” He dropped a handful of the mushrooms into the hot skillet. The hiss of the oil sounded like it was scolding me for my lack of culinary acumen.

“Oh, I can go through the motions, help around the kitchen and all that,” I explained, hoping my honesty wasn’t going to earn me a check in his “‘cons’” column. “But if the secret ingredient of all food is love, well, I’m sort of missing that part. It’s just not my passion.”

“Fair enough,” he shrugged, beginning to crack eggs into a stainless steel bowl. “So what is your passion? You don’t seem like the type to be gunning for a spot as the next American pop diva.” He reached for a whisk from a canister of cooking implements.

“Heck, no. I sing worse than I cook,” I assured him. “I’m not exactly sure what I want to do. I’m supposed to run Cap’s someday, I guess.”

“I’m blown away by your enthusiasm,” he said, tossing a large wooden pepper mill from one hand to the other before grinding it over his bowl. “I mean, running this restaurant would be my dream job.”

“Not me.” I shook my head. “Of course, it might not even matter, now. God,” I said, staring down forlornly at my dingy white sneakers. “I’ve always dreaded the idea of having to take over the business some day, but now I feel so guilty—like I willed this to happen, or something.”

A moment of awkward silence passed before I finally worked up the nerve to raise the question I really wanted answered. Cap’s wasn’t in a downward spiral for no good reason. My family had been led down this road to ruin by an outside, hostile force. I needed to know before this …
whatever
it was with him went any further. “Do you know anything about our fire alarm getting set off a few months ago?” I asked. He placed the knuckles of his fist against the bridge of his aquiline nose as if hesitant to respond.

“After the fact, yes. And I’m sorry. A cousin of mine went rogue. Said he was getting back at some of your guys for—well, to be honest, I don’t even know what the reason was that time. For as long as I can remember, there’s always been something going on.”

“I guess I’m not being straightforward enough,” I said. “I just need to know, were you ever involved in any of the sabotage against us?”

“Never.” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “Though, to be honest, it was nothing noble on my part—I just think there are more important things to do in life than pick fights with the neighbors.” He walked back over to me and brought his face level with mine.

“Like what?” I asked. The intensity of his gaze caused my voice to catch in my throat.

“Like teaching you an important life skill,” he said, teasingly. I followed him, almost hypnotized, as he led me over to the counter next to the stove. Standing behind me, he guided my right hand to the bowl of whisked eggs. “No one is born a great cook. You learn by doing it,” he whispered into my ear.

“Is that your pick-up line with all the girls?” I asked nervously, not certain I actually wanted him to answer. Our arms moved in tandem as he guided me to empty the contents of the bowl into the cast-iron skillet. I felt giddy and breathless.

“No, actually,” he replied. “Come to think of it, I’ve never cooked for a girl before. This might sound funny, but it’s kind of a personal thing for me. So I guess that’d make you … my first.” His breath felt like a gentle breeze on the back of my neck. I was glad he was still standing behind me and couldn’t see how flustered I was by his nearness, his touch.