Matt dropped heavily and I talked... and talked. Finally, I ran out of words.
“Sorry I blew up,” he said.
“It’s okay.”
Tucker brought over our double espressos. Matt thanked him and bolted his. I sipped mine slowly.
With an agitated hand, he rubbed the back of his short, dark Caesar. Then (at last) my ex relaxed, stretching out his wrinkled khakis until they extended well beyond the tabletop’s disc of coral-colored marble. His shoes — black high-top sneakers with white laces — were purposefully urban hip. In New York they ran over a hundred dollars. Matt had purchased his in a South American market stall for under two bucks.
Strapped to his right wrist was a glittering Breitling chronometer. Encircling his left was a multicolored tribal bracelet made from braided strips of Ecuadorian leather — and that pretty much summed up the paradox that was Matteo Allegro: one part slick international coffee buyer and one part fearless java trekker, lightly folded together in a larger-than-life concoction that I once couldn’t get enough of and now sometimes found hard to swallow.
“How’s our daughter?” I asked, still savoring my double. (Replacing the grinder had fixed all issues. Tuck’s shots were now spot on, the nutty-earthy sweetness of the crema drenching my tongue in the liquefied aroma of my freshly roasted beans.)
“Joy’s doing great,” Matt said. “I have pictures to show you once I get this piece of crap recharged.”
He threw his latest electronic device onto the cold slab of marble between us — PDA, phone, camera, calculator, microwave oven. I’m not sure what tasks it was supposed to multi.
“Why didn’t you just use a camera?” I said.
“Joy did. She’s going to e-mail you photos of my visit when she can find the time. She’s been working extremely hard, but she says she’s still loving it.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. And does she have a new boyfriend?”
“None that she mentioned. But I think she’s too busy. Which is more than fine with me.” Matt rubbed his eyes. “Frankly, if my baby throws in the towel on this chef thing and decides to join a convent in Lourdes, I’ll breathe a whole lot easier.”
“Well, I wouldn’t. Nothing against the good French sisters, but I want to be a grandmother.”
“Bite your tongue!”
“Give it up, Matt. One of these days, Joy is going to settle on a guy, get married, and have kids — and then you’ll have to hear it — ”
“Don’t say it — ”
“Grandpa.”
Matt visibly cringed.
“Or would you prefer the cheekier ‘Gramps’?”
Ribbing the man was just too easy. I’d married him at nineteen. He’d been twenty-two at the time, although in matters sexual he’d been a virtual Methuselah. We’d met one summer in Italy (I’d been staying with relatives while studying art history), and when I’d ended up pregnant, after a blindly blissful summer of love, his mother had pressed him to the altar.
Back then, she was the one who’d wanted a grandchild — a legitimate one. So we never looked back, which is why he was far from the age of your average granddaddy.
Needless to say, our wedding hadn’t been the wished-for, dreamed-for event of most young couples, planned down to the last flower petal and Jordan almond. It just happened. And for years I thought that was the reason Matt had gone through such difficulty accepting the ring and the vows and that forsaking-of-all-others-in-short-skirts thing.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Matt’s occupation was partly to blame. I was a needy bride, an uncertain new mother, infatuated with her young handsome groom whose job of sourcing coffee beans took him all over the world, all year long.
Matt had lived for it.
I died a thousand deaths.
Now that we were partners in coffee (instead of matrimony), my feelings about the man’s peripatetic gene were completely upended. So go the astonishing ironies of middle age. Live long enough and you come to love the thing you loathed, embrace the thing you dreaded.
These days, I was downright grateful to my ex for trekking the globe, chasing harvest cycles to bring back the world’s finest crops. And that’s what they were: crops. Despite a corner of the industry sealing coffee up in cans with expiration dates implying freshness through a nuclear winter, coffee was seasonal. In Matt’s view (and I didn’t disagree), it belonged in the produce aisle, right next to the fruits and vegetables.
“How was Ethiopia?”
“Great. Our Amaro Gayo is outstanding, picked at the perfect time and the sorting is good. You should see the first shipment any day.”
“I’m looking forward to roasting it.”
“And I’m looking forward to tasting your roast.” He smiled then, a genuine vote of confidence, which I appreciated.
“Does Breanne know you’re back?”
Matt stifled a yawn as he nodded. Annoyed by his own jet lag, he reran a hand over his dark head then waved at Tucker. “Another double!”
“How’s Bree been?”
I hadn’t seen her since the Blend’s holiday party last December. But then Breanne Summour, the ultratrendy, trend-setting editor of Trend magazine, traveled in much different circles than moi. The woman was a definite trade-up for my ex — in wealth and looks.
Before their marriage last spring, wagging tongues had speculated what a wayward coffee hunter and a socially ambitious fashion maven could possibly share. But I didn’t question it.
Despite their wildly different career choices, I knew Matt and Bree weren’t so very different under their toned tans. Both enjoyed living large, both craved excitement, and both jetted around the world for their respective careers. Granted, Matt’s dusty treks through Nairobi and Bogotá were more exotic than Breanne’s glittering tours of Milan and Barcelona, but to someone left behind, globetrotting is globetrotting no matter where your loved one trots. Conveniently, the Allegro-Summour union left no spouse behind while conveniently providing each nomadic partner with the comforting illusion of a rooted marital home.
“We texted each other before I got on the plane,” Matt said. “She’s on her way to Milan by now — another trade show. I missed her at JFK by ninety minutes.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Not really.” Matt shrugged, a little too casually. “Gives me a little space to relax, kick back, enjoy some time alone in the Big Kumquat...”
I frowned. After years stranded on Matteo Island, I’d become way too fluent in Matt-speak. Even his eyes were sparking with that regrettable when-the-cat’s-away look.
Before I could challenge the man’s wet noodle of a moral code, the Blend’s front bell jingled. Glancing up, I saw James Noonan’s wife coming through the door.
Valerie Noonan wasn’t much taller than I, but the dynamic charge of her fast-clicking heels across my wood-plank floor appeared to lift her to the stature of her firefighter husband.
“Clare!” she called with the burning energy of a Con Ed plant. “We need to talk!”
Sixteen
“How are you?” I asked when Val approached our table.
“Great — now that I know I’ve caught you!” Val’s low, throaty voice belied her bubbly demeanor and freckle-sprinkled nose. What it betrayed was a pack-a-day habit.
I felt for her. I’d smoked a little in high school but quickly kicked it (the kick in the pants from my grandmother had helped). Val said she hated her addiction, had stopped for a few years, but the recent stresses of her job had sent her back.
“You made quite an impression on James last night!”
“Really?” It was the last thing I expected her to say.
“Yes, and let me tell you” — she arched a slender eyebrow — “it’s not easy hearing your husband gas on about another woman’s heroism before you’ve even had your coffee!”
“Heroism? Not me. James and his friend Bigsby Brewer were the ones who ran into that burning building. They’re the real he — ”