An elderly couple cuddled on a sofa, a walker parked close by. As I passed, the woman kissed her companion’s cheek. He captured and squeezed her hand, causing the cartoonish Seabee tattooed on his upper arm to flex its wings.
Naddie wasn’t in the lobby, and when I asked, the receptionist hadn’t seen her. I settled into an empty chair between a dozing man and a woman reading the Bible and prepared to wait. I selected an issue of People magazine from the fanned-out array on the coffee table that separated me from the two young lovers. How could I not? ‘Royal Baby Joy!’ screamed the headline, but the article inside was disappointingly slim on facts about the newly arrived successor to the British throne.
Across from me the elderly woman giggled, and I looked up from the Royal Baby Gift Guide I’d been perusing. ‘You go first,’ she said.
‘No, you go,’ the man replied.
Her elbow nudged him playfully in the ribs. ‘If you go, I’ll go.’
He took his time considering the offer. A full minute passed before he said, ‘OK.’ He stood, pulled her to her feet and together they wandered over to the piano bench and sat down.
I watched, an amused smile on my lips, as she rested her fingers lightly on the keys. ‘What do you want me to play?’ she asked her companion.
He shrugged. ‘I dunno.’
‘You choose.’
A shoulder bump. ‘No, you.’
At this rate, any concert was going to be a long time coming.
‘OK,’ the woman said at last, and began to play, singing in a slow, but slightly wobbly soprano: ‘“The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, ’Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day.”’
‘I can’t believe it,’ the woman on my left muttered, laying the Bible down on the crocheted afghan that covered her knees. ‘That word’s so offensive!’
‘Darkie, you mean?’ I said, although I knew quite well the word to which she was referring.
The singer began the second verse, singing from memory, her voice growing sweeter, stronger and more confident as she went along.
The woman holding the Bible leaned in closer and whispered, ‘It’s racist.’
‘Well, to be fair,’ I whispered back, ‘it’s been over one hundred and fifty years since Stephen Foster wrote “My Old Kentucky Home,” so we should probably cut the man a little slack.’
‘They should change it,’ she insisted.
‘They did,’ I told her. ‘In Kentucky nowadays, it’s summer and the people are gay.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘The people are gay? Doesn’t sound like much of an improvement to me.’
The gentleman on my right had apparently overheard our conversation. Just as the singer launched into the chorus, joined by practically everyone in our vicinity, some singing in harmony, he leaned across me. ‘Well, I’m gay, Edith, so stop whining.’
I suppressed a laugh, gave the old guy a mental high five and, in my passable alto, joined in with him and the others: ‘“Weep no more, my lady. Oh, weep no more today. We will sing one song for my old Kentucky home, for my old Kentucky home far away.”’
As the last notes of the hauntingly beautiful and melancholy tune died away the guy leaned over, extended his hand and introduced himself. ‘I’m Chuck,’ he said. ‘I live upstairs.’
‘Hannah,’ I replied.
‘Family?’ he asked, indicating Edith, who glowered disapprovingly like my great aunt Gerty.
I grinned. ‘No, Edith and I just met. I’m waiting for a friend.’
The pianist had a bottomless stock of Stephen Foster in her repertoire. ‘I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,’ was followed by ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ and a sensitive performance of ‘Old Black Joe,’ at which point Edith harrumphed, gathered up her Bible and stomped out of the lounge, her afghan trailing like a bridal train along the carpet behind her. Whether the singer noticed her departure or not, she seemed to sense that the mood of the audience needed lifting after singing about lost friends calling us up to heaven, so she launched into a spirited rendition of ‘Camptown Races.’
Rather than prance around the room like several of the book club women were now doing, I checked my watch. Where the heck was Naddie? Thinking I might have gotten my wires crossed and she could be waiting for me in the dining room, I excused myself and headed off to search for her.
Except for the tables and chairs, the dining room was empty.
At the far end, a pair of doors labeled IN and OUT led, I presumed, to the kitchen. The doors were substantial, but not sufficiently padded to muffle the clang of pots, the clink of utensils and the sound of raised voices coming from the kitchen behind them.
‘Idiota! Debo hacer todo yo mismo?’ Something metal clanged to the floor, followed by a string of words so vile that if I’d uttered even one of them my mother would have washed my mouth out with soap and grounded me for a week. Then:
‘Idiota! Tarado! Pelotudo!’
Idiota, I got. But I’d majored in French, so the rest was lost on me, not that they’d teach words like that in Spanish 101 anyway. I didn’t need a translator to know that whoever was on the receiving end of the string of expletive deleteds wafting out of the kitchen like the aroma of sautéed bacon and onions was probably hiding in a cupboard or cowering in a corner, protecting his head with his arms.
I decided to get out while the going was good, but I ran into Naddie coming the other way. She paused, cocked her head and listened. ‘Gosh, I wonder how he really feels?’
‘Raniero?’ I guessed.
Naddie nodded. ‘No doubt. Looks like an angel but has a devil of a temper. Save us from perfectionists with short fuses.’ She glanced at the antique Regulator hanging on the wall behind the hostess station. ‘We’re a bit early, Hannah. Would you like to see my town home before lunch?’
I was about to reply when Raniero yelled, ‘Go! Jump in the oven! Make my life easier!’ followed by the bright, sharp sound of shattering glass.
As if on cue Filomena erupted from the Tidewater Bar into the dining room, linked her arms through both of ours and urged us gently back toward the lounge, safely away from whatever disaster was noisily brewing in the kitchen. ‘The chef, he is temperamental, you know? Have you seen the show on television, Kitchen Nightmares? Raniero, he is like that Gordon Ramsay. Everything must be just so. You wait here. I’ll go see what’s the matter.’
I could think of several television chefs who would be better role models for Raniero than the foul-mouthed Gordon Ramsay – Jamie Oliver, for instance, or Bobby Flay – but decided the suggestion wouldn’t be appreciated.
There was a deafening crash of crockery. Filomena winced. ‘It’s that stupid Korean girl again. We have two kitchens at the colony,’ she explained. ‘One we must keep kosher for our Jewish residents. This girl, she doesn’t understand that the meat dishes and the dairy dishes must be washed separately. There are always mixups.’
‘Once they come out of the dishwasher, how would anybody know the difference?’ I wondered aloud.
Filomena stared, wide-eyed, as if I’d suggested she cut the grated parmesan with sawdust. ‘Raniero would!’
My eyes made a sweep of the dining room. I estimated it could seat one hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred diners. ‘How many Jewish residents do you have?’