I carry the ink to the counter, intending to then go look at pens, but my stomach growls, reminding me that all I’ve had to eat are two bananas and two apples.
I force myself to ask the girl behind the counter, “Have you worked here long?”
“A year or so.” She smiles, wrapping my ink in tissue paper.
I’m about to ask if she might remember someone, my sister, that is, with her distinctive scar, but my face goes hot as I consider it. Instead, I simply pay and carry my package out with me, cursing myself as I go.
How will I find her if I never look for her?
My feet carry me back up the hill, and I shop in a grocery store tucked into the basement of another building, picking up a bottle of wine and fresh bread, more fruit and a half dozen eggs, and a chunk of cheese, which all fit into my pack. I don’t intend to cook for myself much, since all these restaurants deserve sampling, but it’s good to have a few things on hand.
Wandering into a little alleyway, I find a row of eateries with tables and chairs set out in the gathering twilight. An Italian spot catches my eye. “One, please,” I say to the host. “May I sit outside?”
“Of course, of course. Right this way.”
He settles me between a chubby young couple and a sharply dressed businessman who gets up the minute I sit down, chattering irritably into his phone as he hurries away. The Italian host tsks, shaking his head as he clears the table and wipes it down.
“Everyone is so busy,” he says, and his voice reminds me, suddenly and acutely, of my father, whose deep voice was laced with his Italian accent until the day he died. “You want wine?” he asks. “I think you like red wine. Am I right?”
“Yes, as it happens. Bring me something you love.”
“My pleasure.”
I realize I don’t have my phone to keep me company. Weird. It’s hard to remember the last time that even happened. Years, probably. Instead, I read every word of the small menu, even though I decided on the gnocchi almost the moment I saw it. Leaning back, I think how much my father would have loved this place, the tidy white tablecloths and flowers in tiny blue vases. I finger the carnation. Real, not fake, and I lift the bottle to inhale the bright, peppery scent.
The man returns with my wine, presenting it with a flourish. He has a thick mustache and twinkling eyes. “See if you like this one.”
Dutifully, I swirl and inhale and taste. He’s served it properly, in a glass with a wide bowl, and the notes are rich on the nose. On my tongue, it’s deep and fruity but without heavy tannins. “Mm,” I say. “Yes. Thank you.”
He gives me a little bow. A lock of his hair tumbles free and falls in his eyes. “And for dinner?”
“Antipasti,” I say, realizing now that I’ve stopped moving that I’m gut-empty. “And the gnocchi.”
“Good, good.”
The wine gives me something to occupy my hands, and I lean back, watching the parade of humanity passing before me. A lot of businesspeople who have stopped for a post-work drink, the women in heels, the men in stylish suits. An open-fronted bar is crowded with young professionals eyeing each other. No one seems to smoke.
Tourists too are wandering up and down the alleyway. I can spot them by their comfortable shoes and sunburns and the exhaustion with which they peruse the menus. Again, a tumble of languages and accents and cultures.
The host seats a man next to me at the vacated table. To preserve our privacy, I keep my eyes forward, but I hear him order wine in a Spanish accent.
The waiter brings me my antipasti. It’s a generous serving of fresh mozzarella, wet and gleaming; curls of salami and prosciutto; a tumble of olives and fresh tiny tomatoes and flatbread. “Beautiful,” I breathe.
I tuck in and am transported to childhood, when one of my afternoon chores was to portion out mozzarella and poke toothpicks into the various charcuterie that was served for happy hour, along with Harvey Wallbangers and White Russians and the endless, endless Long Island Iced Teas, my mother’s favorite.
“I don’t mean to bother you,” the man next to me says. “Are you also a tourist?”
Engaged with a particularly stunning slice of prosciutto, I take a moment to savor it, then wash it down with a tiny sip of wine. I look at him. He’s a tall man with thick dark hair and the shadow of an unshaven beard on his jaw. A well-thumbed paperback sits on the table next to him, and I think, When did I stop carrying books around with me? “Yes. You too?”
He gives a nod. “Visiting a friend, but he had work to do tonight, so he abandoned me.” He lifts his glass. Next to the book is a bottle of wine. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” I lift my glass but use my body to tell him I don’t really want to engage.
Not that he listens. “I would have gone across the way there, to sample their tapas, but I saw you again and had to stop here instead.”
“Again?”
“This morning. You arrived from the airport, I think.”
His voice is sonorous, vibrant, a musical instrument. I let myself take another long look at his face. Strong features—Roman nose, almost too aggressive to be attractive, large dark eyes. “Yes,” I admit. “But I still don’t remember.”
He touches his chest, hand over his heart. “You have forgotten me already.” He tsks, then tilts his head with a smile. “At the elevator.”
The moment pops back into my head. “Oh yeah. The de nada guy.”
He laughs. The sound is robust, full of life. I sip my wine, assessing. It wouldn’t be so terrible to have a roll in the hay. It’s been a while.
“My name is Kit,” I say.
“Javier.”
I pick up the antipasti plate and offer it to him. “The salami is very good.”
He gestures toward the seat across from him. “Would you like to join me?”
“No, thank you. If we each stay where we are, we can both watch the street.”
“Ah.” He helps himself to a mozzarella and a salami and deposits them on his bread plate. “I see your point.”
“We might as well be at the same table anyway,” I say, indicating the narrow space between our chairs. He’s close enough that I can smell his cologne, something vaguely spicy.
“What brings you to New Zealand?” he asks.
A shrug. I’m going to have to come up with a way to answer this question. It’s a long way to fly for no reason at all. “It’s not like anywhere else, is it?”
“No.” He sips his wine, and in profile his face is quite powerful. Beautiful. Maybe he’s ticking a few too many of my No Way rules.
We’ll see. “How about you?”
His shrug is somehow sad, and that ticks another box. No tortured men. They always want saving, and given my childhood filled with broken people, it’s an impulse I have to constantly fight. “My old friend invited me. It seemed time for a change. Perhaps I will move here.”
“Really?” I eat some cheese, break some flatbread, offer the plate to him again. “From where?”
“Madrid.”
“That’s a big change.”
He nods, smooths his hands together, palm to palm. “I’m weary of politics.”
I snort laugh and have to cover my mouth. “Yeah. It’s been a weird few years.”
“Decades.”
“Yeah.”
We watch the people walk by. Couples in love, old marrieds, the happy-hour crowd heading home. My body is soft and quiet for the first time in ages. Maybe I’d needed to get away more than I knew. My hand reaches automatically for the ghost of the phone that isn’t there, and I open my palm on the table instead. “What are you reading?”
He holds it up to show me. One Hundred Years of Solitude. It’s in Spanish, of course. “I’ve read it many times, but I love to read it again.”
I nod. Literary too, which isn’t on my No Way list, but it speaks to a great mind, and that is.
“Have you read it?” he asks.
“No.” I surprise myself by adding, “My sister was the literary one.”
“You don’t like to read?”
“I do. I just don’t read important books. That was her thing—all the great poets and writers and playwrights.”
“I see.” A little quirk of his lips. “You could not share?”
The wine is loosening me now. “No. I’m the scientific one. She was the creative one.”
“Was?”
“She died,” I say, even if I don’t know if that’s true anymore.
“I’m sorry.”
The waiter brings my gnocchi then, delicately arranged and tossed with parsley and Parmesan. I feel my father sit down across the table and fold his arms. His wrists are hairy beneath his shirtsleeves, the cuff links he always wore. I take a small bite. “Oh, that’s very good,” I say, and my father nods.
“Good, good,” the waiter says.
“Will you bring me another glass of wine?”
“Oh, no, no,” Javier protests, his hands illustrating his words, flying into the air. “Allow me to share. I will never drink it all myself.”
“Never?” I say.
“Well, perhaps. I’d rather share.”
I nod. The waiter smiles, as if it’s his doing. “I will be right back with your dinner, sir.”
The fragrance of garlic rises from the plate, and I take another bite. “This was one of my father’s specialties,” I offer, and it’s out before I realize I’m going to say it. “Gnocchi with peas and mushrooms. I used to roll them out for him.”