rose-colored reading glasses.
“Shall I bring separate presses?” I asked flatly. “Or just the one pot for the two of you?”
“Make it for two, dear. We’ll share,” she replied.
Of course, they’ll share, I thought, heading back to the coffee bar to prepare their order. They’re sitting so close to each other, they’re practically sharing each other’s laps!
Needless to say, I was less than thrilled to see Madame with a new man. Dr. MacTavish had been her steady beau for over a year, and I had become used to that…comfortable with that. She hadn’t broken up with the good doctor, of that I was sure. Yet here she was tonight practically giddy over Edward.
Part of me knew I was being way too harsh. At her age, Madame had a right to enjoy happiness wherever she found it, whenever she found it, with whomever she found it. But another part of me felt she was betraying her friendship back in the city.
As I told myself (or at least tried to) that it was really none of my business, I began to prepare their order at the coffee bar.
“Who’s that man with Grandmother?” Joy whispered.
It was the first time Joy had spoken to me in six hours, ever since we’d had that fight at the start of dinner service.
“He’s her date,” I replied. “His name’s Edward Myers Wilson. That’s all I know.”
“What do you mean that’s all you know?” Joy hissed. “They’re all over each other. Where did she meet him? Does he live around here? Don’t you know anything else?”
I put my hands on my hips and stared at my daughter. “No, I do not know anything else,” I told her. “In fact, I know as little about Mr. Wilson as I do about Graydon Faas.”
“That’s not fair,” Joy snapped. “You’ve been working with Graydon for over a month—”
“I could say the same about Treat.”
“Graydon’s not like Treat. And, anyway, it’s my private business whom I see.”
I folded my arms. “Just like it’s your grandmother’s private business whom she sees.”
Joy’s mouth moved but no words came out. Knowing she was trumped, she frowned, wheeled, and slammed through the leather padded doors to the kitchen.
NINE
AFTER checking my other tables, I returned to Madame’s and found the happy couple had moved off the topic of romantic coffee legends and onto a discussion about the restaurant’s decor.
“Quite a delight,” said Edward, gesturing to the mosaic clock at the top of the staircase. “I mean, just look at that surrealist piece up there. It gives the impression of an actual timepiece, yet its arms are turning, turning, turning, so quickly, as if its gears were caffeinated. Perfect!”
Okay, I thought, begrudgingly impressed, give the man points for noticing.
I transferred the contents of my silver tray onto the marble-topped cafe table: the four-cup French press, the Waterford crystal timer for the brewing process, and the slices of fig cake and almond torte on hand-painted plates.
Edward shook his head as he continued. “Touches of artistic whimsy like that timepiece…you just don’t see much out here anymore. It’s all gone vague and predictable. They’re razing our brilliant, off-beat architectural history like Motherwell’s Quonset hut, and replacing it with mock shingle-style cottages, for god’s sake.”
Despite my determination to find fault with Mr. Wilson, I couldn’t help seriously considering his observation. The Quonset hut he’d mentioned was one I remembered from my architectural history classes.
“Did you actually see it?” I asked Edward, unable to curb my curiosity. “The Quonset hut.”
Madame chuckled softly.
“Yes, my dear,” Edward answered. “I’ve seen it.”
The Quonset hut represented an important era of Hamptons’ history. If this man had taken the trouble to see it, I knew he at least cared about that history.
The avant-garde structure had been built in the 1940s as an East Hampton home and studio for the artist Robert Motherwell. Motherwell had come out to this area with the wave of artists who’d followed the world-renowned Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollack. He needed a place to live and work, so he hired the modernist architect Pierre Chareau to design it. Chareau had been an accomplished architect in France until Hitler’s forces invaded and he’d fled to America. Just like Madame, who’d fled occupied Paris with her family when she was just a young girl, Chareau had left in a hurry, carrying no possessions and hardly any money.
Motherwell didn’t have much money either, so for cheap building materials they purchased two war surplus Quonset kits. Then they scrounged, adapted, or invented features to complete the structure. I