words were pronounced, the direction the corners of her mouth turned as she spoke them, how many times she batted her lashes when she told a story, when she looked directly in my eye, when she could not face me. She is my favorite movie; how I long for a sequel.
For everything I have given up, I still miss nothing more than I miss Melody.
TWO
Today ends the same as any other day, can be differentiated from two days ago or four days ago or six months ago only by the clothes beneath my apron, by the specials fading on the board in front of Mulleno’s. The kitchen is still hot on this Thursday evening at just past ten-thirty, steam rising from sauces and boiling water. Though the kitchen is technically closed, I plan to spend the night experimenting with a potential new offering: braciole. I finish wrapping thin slices of boneless beef round in plastic wrap, then pick up a rubber mallet and gently pound the meat as close as possible to one-eighth-inch thickness. The art to braciole, a traditional Sicilian dish that my mother had perfected by the time she was a teenager, is getting it to roll up evenly and stay together while being browned. Braciole is like a big Hostess Ho Ho, except the chocolate is beef and the creamy filling is a mixture of Pecorino Romano and parsley and garlic. My goal is to test it out this evening, and if a success, order the ingredients next week and have it on the menu one week after that. Once I’ve finished the browning, the meat has to cook in a sauce of tomato and basil for some time—enough time for Maggie and me to go over the day’s numbers.
I cover the beef rolls with a sheath of prosciutto and tie them with kitchen twine, heat a long turn of oil in a large pot, and just before the oil begins to smoke I start browning the first set. I wipe my hands on my apron and quickly walk out to the bar to find Maggie and see if she knows where the order sheet for our produce distributor disappeared to; I need to determine if we’ll get enough artichokes for stuffing for one of tomorrow’s specials.
The bar is quiet, holds three couples in golfing attire throwing back a few after what must have been a late afternoon tee time, which became a late dinner and nightcaps. Three men sit at the bar, evenly spaced like birds on a wire, heads cocked up and to the side, staring at the highlights of a golf match on a widescreen television in the corner.
“Hey, Mag,” I say, touching her lightly on the back, “you seen Atlantic’s order sheet?”
She reaches up to a top cabinet and struggles to slide a pair of whiskey bottles beyond the edge of the frame. “Next to the printer in the office,” she says as she grunts. “I put it over where—”
“Johnny?” says a voice from the bar.
“—the other statements are from last month. We need to talk to Atlantic because there’s a discrepancy on the last—”
“Little Johnny, that you?” I flinch, struggle so desperately not to turn. I clear my throat and lick my lips, pretend the name means nothing to me, that the term Little Johnny is as inconsequential to me as it is to Maggie.
“—invoice. We were being charged the same price per pound for asparagus as we were for Vidalias.”
“Johnny, that’s gotta be you,” the man at the bar says.
Maggie doesn’t even glance toward the bar. I stay locked in her direction, my face now coated in sweat though I’m so far from the heat of the kitchen. I swallow, twice. “By the fax, you said?”
She closes the cabinet, drops back to steady feet, stares at me, and smirks. “I said the printer.”
“Sorry,” I say, wiping my brow. “Um, which one?”
She folds her arms, narrows her eyes. “We have more than one printer?”
“Right, okay.” I slowly turn in a semicircle in the opposite direction of the bar and begin walking out with all of the natural movement of a robot.
“Johnny Bovaro, I can’t believe my eyes.”
I freeze; the Bovaro is a showstopper. I turn my head toward the bar, but from the corner of my eye: Maggie’s attention goes to the man, then to me.
I look at this gentleman in his early seventies, a small-framed fellow with an unusually large bald head adorned with oversized spectacles. He lifts his beer glass