Through the Grinder (11 page)

A slow smile spread across his face. “Is that an invitation for tomorrow morning?”

Oh, god. What did he think I was implying?

Bruce took in my expression and laughed. “I’m kidding.”

“Right.”

I hastily refocused my attention on browning the T-bones in the cast-iron skillet, trying like hell to forget about the incredibly charming man leaning casually against the sink a few feet away—and watching my every move.

“Smell that?” I asked. The aroma of roasted coffee and sizzling beef filled the apartment.

“Mmmmm. I see what you mean. Nice combination…”

After both sides of the thick steaks were properly seared, I placed them on a rack in the broiler and deglazed the pan with a splash of beef consomme.

“There’s actually another way of getting the coffee flavor into the meat. I wrote a piece on it last year. Restaurants in Seattle, San Francisco, and Colorado rub the steak with coarsely ground coffee. But I’m not a fan of the crunch, you know? So I prefer to get the flavor through the marinating process—it’s more intense this way anyway.”

“Intense? Mmmmm. I’m up for intense.”

“You mash the potatoes while I make the gravy,” I commanded, handing him a potato masher.

“Do you have enough butter in there?” Bruce asked, peeking into my copper-bottomed sauce pan.

“I seem to recall you were friendly toward the subject of cholesterol.”

After the butter melted, I whisked in the flour, then added the deglazed drippings from my steak skillet, more beef consommé, and coffee.

“More coffee? You’re kidding,” Bruce said, still mashing up the garlic potatoes.

“I never kid about coffee, or gravy.”

The dining room table was already set, the candles lit, the homemade butter biscuits in the lacquered basket, Madame’s Spode Imperialware at the ready, the tomato and avocado salad in the crisper. My marinated steaks were sizzling on the rack—quite rare now, but darkening more with each passing minute.

“How do you like your steak?” I asked, turning—right into Bruce Bowman’s arms. How did
that
happen?

“Hot,” Bruce replied softly.

And then he was leaning in, closing his arms around the small of my back, pulling me close. Ladle in hand, I closed my eyes and let his mouth cover mine. All feeble attempts at keeping my head were now completely and utterly lost.

He was rough and sweet at the same time, like that peculiar taste we’d achieved downstairs, between the espressos of North Beach and Milan. Warm and rich and tender…

“Nice,” he said softly against my lips.

“Very.” My eyelids felt heavy, my limbs heavier. “But we hardly know each other.”

“I know. I just had to see how you tasted.”

Oh, god.

He smiled. “You know, I have yet to see those alleged Hopper sketches you claim are in this place.”

I laughed. “It was all a lie to lure you into my apartment.”

“I’ve got news for you, Clare. I would have come anyway.”

“They’re upstairs, in the master bedroom.”

“I thought so.”

He lifted one hand from around my waist, reaching up to massage the back of my neck. “Maybe after dinner? You can show them to me?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said, fairly breathless. “Like I said, we hardly know each other.”

He laughed. “You need to know me better to show me your…Hoppers? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

I felt his hand move even farther north, tangling in my hair and prompting a tiny voice in my head to argue,
It’s been too long, Clare…just let him touch you a little…there’s no harm…just a little…
Cradling the back of my head, he kissed me again.

Warm and rich and tender…oh, yes…and, lord help me, I wanted more. Unfortunately, a booming voice wasn’t about to let me get it.

“Nothing says welcome home like coffee steak and gravy!”

Oh, God, no.

It was Matteo. My oh so unwelcome ex-husband, back from his East African expedition (without fair warning!). He’d used his key to barge right into the duplex—and back into my life.

N
EEDLESS
to say, the evening pretty much deteriorated from there. There was an awkward moment or two or three, of course. Accusatory looks exchanged, uncomfortable silences, and understandable tension made all the more intense by the presence of sharp steak knives and the fact that pretty much everything at this meal—including dessert—was laced with caffeine.

With trepidation I recalled the ominous words of an unnamed Hindu philosopher who warned against the pernicious influence of “that black bean from Africa” and compared peace-loving Asian tea drinkers with the warlike European coffee-consuming nations.

But then I remembered
Mon Journal,
by French social critic and historian Jules Michelet, which essentially attributed Western Civilization’s Age of Reason to the transformation of Europe into a coffee-drinking society.

So, against all reason, I remained civil when Bruce actually invited Matteo to sit down and have dinner with us. It wasn’t all that insane, really, given Matteo’s exhausting hours of travel. It was the decent thing to do, actually, and I didn’t object, figuring that if coffee could enlighten Europeans it could pretty much accomplish miracles—and boy did I need a miracle now.

After hastily cooking another T-bone, adding a place setting, and pouring the magnificent two hundred dollar bottle of Burgundy Bruce had brought, I sat down to dinner between my ex-husband and my date for the evening. As Madame would say, we were all acting so civilized we were almost French!

“I’m surprised you didn’t leave a message,
to let me know you needed the apartment,
” I said to Matteo, not really surprised in the least.

“I called from the Rome airport,” my ex replied. “Maybe you should check your machine once in a while.”

“That’s quite a tan you’ve got, Matt. Especially for autumn in New York,” said Bruce, attempting to interrupt our thinly veiled bickering.

Matteo grinned. His teeth shone white against his now darker than dark skin. His sleeves were pointedly rolled up six inches higher than Bruce’s, displaying his biceps in addition to his muscular forearms, both browner than a hazelnut and just about as hard.

“The African sun will do that to you.” He stabbed a chunk of T-bone with his fork and chewed it with relish. The coffee-soaked meat was obviously the jolt he’d needed to melt away the jet-lagged miles. “And nice to have fresh meat again,” Matteo said around the mouthful. “You can get real tired of
doro wat
.”

“Doro…?”

“An Ethiopian dish,” said Matt. “Stringy old chicken cooked in a stew with rancid butter. Kind of like Hungarian
paprikas csirke,
but much, much hotter.”

“Sounds delicious,” I said dubiously.

“The heavy spices cover a multitude of sins,” said Matt.

“Including ptomaine poisoning?” I asked.

Matteo gave me one of those pitying looks he often used during our marriage. A look that said so many things, like: “What do you mean you won’t go bungee jumping with me?” or “Why can’t we buy twin Harleys and cycle across Mexico?” or even “Are you really too uptight to try a night with Tiffany and me?”

“So Clare tells me you’re a coffee buyer,” said Bruce. “Is that why you were in Ethiopia?”

“Who said I was in Ethiopia?” said Matteo with barely disguised hostility—so much, if fact, that I suddenly wished I’d marinated the steaks in Prozac instead of coffee.

Bruce paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Well…I…thought you just did…”

Matteo set his fork down and sat back, smirking. “Yeah, I was in Ethiopia looking for coffee. May have found some, too. Nice enough cherries this season, but they’ll be better next year. I’m looking at the C market—futures.”

“Why Ethiopia?” asked Bruce. “There are safer places to buy coffee, aren’t there?”

“Ethiopia’s the motherland. Folks were drinking coffee in Ethiopia while Europeans were waking up to beer and mead.” With that, Matt lifted his glass of Bruce’s La Romanée-Conti Echezeaux and took a long, deep draft. Most of the glass had instantly vanished, and he reached for the bottle to refill. “Damn, that’s good wine.”

I met Bruce’s eyes and tried not to burst out laughing. He smiled, then tried again to make polite conversation.

“I heard things were bad there. In Ethiopia.”

Matt shrugged and resumed attacking his coffee-marinated steak like an East African predator. “They’re getting better. The coffee market in Harrar is coming back to life and the bull market in Jimma never stopped. The new farms near the Somali border are not producing yet, but I managed to take a Jeep trip to Jiga-Jiga without getting killed.”

“Sounds dangerous,” said Bruce.

I gave Matteo a look that told him I knew he was exaggerating the hazards of his trip—even though I also knew it was entirely possible he was not.

Matt winked at me as he told Bruce, “Remember
that
the next time you gulp down your morning blend.”

“Speaking of coffee, I’ll get the French press,” I said, rising from the table.

Matteo and Bruce both jumped to their feet so fast to help me that they nearly collided.

“I can handle it,” I said, waving them back down.

“So,” I heard Matteo purr as I hurried to prepare coffee. “What is it that you do, Bruce?”

When I entered the kitchen, I smelled gas and wondered if a pilot light had gone out. I checked the stove and found nothing.

For desert I’d prepared my new recipe for Three Chocolate Mocha Pudding—a second attempt. Detective Quinn had left before having it when I’d cooked dinner for him, so I gave it another shot for Bruce’s dinner.

I pulled out my favorite French press and three of the Spode Imperialware cups and saucers. Before Bruce had arrived, I’d brought up Jamaica Blue Mountain beans from the Blend’s special reserve (thirty-five dollars a pound), and they sat sealed in a dark, airtight container on my shelf, waiting to be ground and brewed.

When I noticed some dust on the coffee cups, I went over to the kitchen’s carved granite sink to wash them off. The brass faucet refused to turn on my first try. It had been giving me trouble for a couple of weeks and I’d vowed to get it fixed. Using both hands, I tried again.

This time the faucet came off in my hand—followed by a powerful blast of cold water that doused me from head to foot.

I screamed as water gushed everywhere.

The door burst open and Bruce and Matteo rushed in.

Matt took one look at me and burst out laughing while Bruce hurried to my side.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded more worried about the water that was gushing everywhere.

“Where’s the cutoff valve?” Bruce cried over the noise of the water.

I looked at him blankly. In the months that I’d lived here, I never needed to know about the plumbing. I shrugged. Bruce turned to Matteo, who stopped laughing and came up blank, too.

“Never mind,” said Bruce, scanning the kitchen. “It’s probably behind this plate.” He pointed to the embossed tin plate under the sink.

I’d seen it before but figured it was ornamental. Bruce knew differently. He immediately sat down in the growing flood of water, drew out his keys, and opened a tiny screwdriver attached to the chain.

In a flash he unscrewed the plate. When he yanked it off, the powerful smell of natural gas flooded the kitchen.

“Open the window!” Bruce called. Matteo complied and cold autumn air dissipated the odor.

Behind the plate, I saw a hole filled with pipes. Bruce reached in and twisted a valve. The flow of water slowed, then stopped.

After the noise and chaos came a moment of eerie calm. Finally, Matteo spoke.

“So, Bruce. I take it you’re a plumber.”

C
LAD
now in dry clothes—I had hastily thrown on jeans and an oversized T-shirt—I escorted Bruce Bowman to the door. Matteo casually followed us, hovering in the foyer.

“I can’t believe what happened,” I said for about the tenth time.

“I’m just glad I was here,” Bruce replied. “Those gaslight pipes should never have been left behind the wall. They were filling with gas for half a century or more. Luckily the leak behind the faucet rusted the gas pipe enough to let out the pressure. Otherwise, there could have been an explosion.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been here alone,” I said.

“You weren’t alone,” Matt snapped from behind me. “I was here.”

“Matt, you didn’t even know where the cutoff valve was,” I reminded him.

“I’ll get the pipes taken care of first thing in the morning,” I told Bruce.

“Good-night, Matt,” said Bruce, extending his hand.

Matt hesitated but shook. “Yeah. ’Night.”

“Some privacy?” I whispered over my shoulder to my ex-husband.

Matt frowned but didn’t argue. He drifted off, back into the dining room.

“Bruce, I—”

“Don’t say ‘I’m sorry.’ Not again. It’s not your fault.”

“I should have listened to those phone messages. We could have gone to a restaurant.”

“It’s okay. Now the ice is broken, right?”

I couldn’t believe it. Our romantic first date was completely ruined, and Bruce was trying to see the bright side.

“Hey, look at it this way,” he added. “Joy gets to go home early. I’ll even offer to walk her, okay with you?”

I nodded, grateful. “Can I make it up to you?” I asked.

“Oh…let me count the ways.” He smiled and touched my cheek. Then he leaned in for a long, sweet, good-night kiss.

“I’ll call you,” he promised, then turned to descend the back service staircase, the one that would lead him out by way of the Village Blend.