“This is the wrong wine,” Ana said.
“Not if you like it.”
“Do you?”
“Very much, not that I’m an authority. Too much retsina forced on me at a young age.”
“Retsina,” she groaned. “My God, that stuff is poison.”
“This is where I’m supposed to say-with my chin in the air, like this-that you haven’t had the good stuff. ‘That export retsina, Theomou, scatá!’”
“That’s good, you look like somebody.”
“Marlon Brando.”
“I was going to say Mussolini.”
“Gee, thanks. The truth is, all retsina tastes like tree sap to me. Greek food, French wine.” He swirled the dark liquid in his glass. The cooking had eased some of his tension. “Everybody, do what they’re good at.”
She stuffed a forkful of omelet into her mouth, as if she hadn’t seen food in days.
“Do all Greek men know how to cook?”
“It’s an omelet, Ana. Any single guy can make one, it hardly qualifies as cooking.”
“To you. In this kitchen it’s the height of culinary achievement.”
“I’m honored.”
“Can I ask a rude question?”
“Why start looking for permission now?”
“Why are you single?”
“Well, how do I answer that? Fate? I could ask you the same question.”
“We’ll get to me.” She adjusted her wineglass on the table, minutely, precisely, as if it were an important engineering project.
“So you’re not involved?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You can make a last-minute dinner date without having to answer to anyone.”
“Maybe my girlfriend is out of town.”
“Why make me guess?”
“All right,” he conceded with a tight smile, “you’re correct. I am currently unentangled.”
“Now how can that be? A handsome, intelligent guy like yourself.”
She said it casually, as if he must be used to such compliments, but Matthew felt his face flush once more. Maybe it was just the wine.
“This city is full of handsome, intelligent, lonely people,” he answered carefully. “It’s not such a mystery. Anyway, I just split with somebody I was with for a long time.”
“Whose doing was that?”
“Her doing. My fault.”
“Why your fault?”
“It was the Mussolini imitation, drove her nuts.”
“Come on.”
“Too many questions, Ana.”
“Sorry.” Her fork went down with a clatter. Her plate was empty.
“Looks as if somebody hasn’t been eating.”
“I forget, isn’t that pathetic? I’m a grown woman, but I forget to eat. When I’m in Santa Monica I have friends I always see for meals. Here, it’s more free-form. Actually, I used to have dinner with my grandfather a lot, before he became really ill.”
“Don’t tell me I’m sitting in his chair.”
“Eat in the kitchen, my grandfather? We always sat in that gloomy dining room, even when it was just the two of us. I don’t think he knew what the kitchen looked like.”
“Who did the cooking?”
“André. A sweet old guy, who I think I need to let go.”
“Maybe you should keep him,” Matthew noted, pointing to her empty plate.
“He’s almost eighty and wants to retire. I’ve already dumped Diana, that pain in the ass.”
“She was the nurse?”
“Thought she owned the place. My grandfather was sure she was stealing. I don’t know about that, but there was no reason to keep her. Gave her a nice severance and a good recommendation.”
“And you’re left with no one to take care of you.”
“And no one to take care of. I am also, how did you say it? Unentangled?”
“Here’s to that.” They toasted with their half-empty glasses, crystal pinging against crystal. “Do you prefer it that way?” The wine was loosening his normally careful tongue.
She stared off into space, seeming to consider the matter. “Not really. No.”
“All that jetting around the world makes it hard to maintain a relationship?”
“I never thought so, but it was definitely a problem for my exhusband.”
“The plot thickens.” He refilled their glasses, working hard to keep his hand steady, making sure to give her more. Two of his fingertips were stained red from the wine. “What’s the story with that?”
“Not much of a story. Married at twenty-four, divorced at twenty-eight. No kids, thank God. He was a painter, turned commodities trader. Not a bad guy, just immature and stupid. Almost as immature and stupid as I was. Tell you what.”
“What?”
“You did such a great job with dinner, why don’t you make the coffee?”
It surprised him how comfortable he felt in her kitchen. Perhaps because it wasn’t really hers, but her grandfather’s, or not even his, but old André’s. And kitchens were familiar. His family was always in the kitchen, his father doing as much of the cooking as his mother, holding forth on some complex scientific theorem, his sister arguing. Robin and he spent a lot of time in the kitchen as well, touching as they slipped past each other going to the stove, cabinet, freezer. Though constantly together, they had separate apartments, and he was always aware of being at her place, on her turf, not his own-except for her kitchen, which felt somehow connected to his, a seamless parallel space passing from West to East Side. He recalled her stinging reply when he once admitted this strange theory to her: he loved her kitchen because that was where the front door was. It wasn’t a long way from that comment to the end of their relationship.
“My grandfather loved good coffee,” she said to his back. “He couldn’t really drink it anymore the last few years.”
“Which explains this cheapo coffeemaker. Who bought this, Diana?”
“Actually, I did.”
“Sorry.” He really shouldn’t drink socially.
“I like good coffee too, but I can’t be bothered with the effort. Turkish coffee, that’s what he liked. Middle Eastern food, Orthodox religion. I think he hated being born Swiss.”
“Did he join the Orthodox church?”
“No. He sort of drifted away from Catholicism, tried a bit of everything-I mean, of the Old Testament choices. He didn’t do Buddhism. Eastern Orthodox art seemed to speak to him, and that’s what pushed him in that direction. I don’t think he even went to church.”
“So it was more a personal spirituality.”
“I guess. To tell you the truth, I don’t really know how religious, or spiritual, he was. Sometimes he seemed intensely so. Other times, it just felt like superstition. I guess it all feels like superstition to me.” She was quiet long enough that he wondered if he was expected to respond. “One thing I can tell you, though,” she said finally, “he worshiped that icon.”
Matthew came back to the table as the coffeemaker finished burbling. “So can I ask you a rude question?”
“Fair is fair.”
“If he worshiped it, like you say, why did he leave no directions for its disposal?”
She looked perplexed. “He left all that to me.”
“In most cases, with a collection like this, there are specific instructions about what should be done. Usually these things are worked out in detail with museums and galleries, long before the person dies. You must know all that. Did the will say anything?”
“There were instructions, but they weren’t specific. A lot of latitude was built in for me to do what I wanted, add to my collection, sell to cover expenses. He had no relationship with museums. He knew very few people by the end of his life. And he never mentioned the icon.”