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“Okay, then I’ll go down to the corner and get some.”
I shoot Jack my most grateful, loving look. The look I usually reserve for situations involving my family. Or sex.
“Jack!” Raphael screams joyfully. “Ohmygodthatwouldbegreat! But…are you sure it’s not a problem?”
“Not at all.” Jack is already grabbing his keys. “We’re low on beer anyway.”
“But, Jack, I’m making mojitos,” Raphael protests.
“Will you be insulted if I just stick with a Budweiser?”
“Not at all. Will you be insulted if I tell you that I don’t really like that cologne you’re wearing? It smells a little fruity. Not in a good way.”
“I’d be kind of insulted,” Jack says, pulling on his coat. “Considering that I’m not wearing any cologne.”
“Oops! Sorry. New coat?” Raphael immediately wants to know, buzzing over to Jack like a bee that just discovered a honey slick.
“No, I got it last winter.”
“JCPenney, Jack?”
Jack looks insulted. “Barneys, Raphael.”
“You’re kidding! You know what? It would look really great in a nice tomato red. Or royal blue, with epaulets,” Raphael pronounces, rubbing the placket between his thumb and forefinger.
“Right. Well, I’ll be back soon with the saffron,” Jack says, and manages to extract himself from Raphael’s grasp.
“They call it mellow ye-llow…ba da, ba da…” Raphael sings, unloading his bags as Jack beats a hasty retreat. “Mellow ye-llow.”
The minute the door closes behind Jack, he breaks off his ditty to say, “Tracey! I thought he’d never leave!”
“Raphael! Are you telling me you didn’t really forget the saffron?”
“No. Well, yes,” he admits. “I mean, I didn’t forget it. I just kind of…you know, ran out of cash.”
“What about your credit cards? Maxed out again? I thought you were going to keep the spending in control from now on.”
“I splurged on something yesterday. Something big and juicy-licious…and no, it wasn’t human so don’t even go there.”
I presume there is the male-escort service I talked Raphael out of patronizing one lonely night last spring when he was captivated by an ad for an escort who billed himself as Lengthy Louie.
“So what was your splurge?” I ask dutifully. “And how much cash did you spend?”
“Two hundred bucks.”
“On shellfish and rice?”
He nods. “The saffron would have been forty dollars an ounce.”
“Are you kidding? Where? Your dealer?”
“Tracey, you’re funny,” he says without cracking a smile. He begins unloading his groceries onto the counter. “No, I found it at the spice market.”
“Why is it forty bucks?”
“Because, Tracey…” His eyes are round and he pauses significantly before saying in a near whisper, “It’s like powdered gold.”
“Really?”
Raphael shrugs. “Who knows?” He hands me a mesh bag filled with live clams and a red-and-white paper deli carton containing shrimp.
“This stuff was two hundred bucks?”
“Almost.”
Raphael suddenly seems very interested in the line of grout between the countertop and the backsplash.
“Okay, spill it,” I order. “What else did you buy on your way over? And I’m not talking about food.”
He reaches into his pocket and guiltily produces a silk scarf. “I saw it in the window of that little boutique by my subway stop and I had to have it. It matches my eyes, Tracey, don’t you think?”
“Your eyes are not plaid.”
“Listen, I know what you’re thinking—”
“That you’ve got some major—”
“Cojones?” he asks slyly. “So I’ve been told, many, many times.”
“Um, Raphael, can we please leave your cojones out of this conversation?”
“Tracey, Jack won’t mind getting the saffron for us. He can use some fresh air.”
Before I can ask Raphael what makes him think that—or admit that it’s probably true—he goes on, “And anyway, I was hoping we’d have a chance for some girl talk.”
“About…?”
“About…you might want to sit down for this.”
We both look around the kitchen, which consists of a sink, a stove, a fridge and a few inches of free counter space.
“Never mind sitting,” Raphael says. “You can hear it standing up.”
I lean against the fridge and fold my arms. “What is it?”
“What do you think of a proposal on Sweetest Day? Too provincial?”
“Do you know something that I don’t?” I shout, grabbing hold of his shoulders and shaking him slightly.
“What do you mean?”
“Did Jack say something to you?”
“Jack?” He frowns.
“Jack. Tall guy, brown hair, basic-black leather jacket.”
“Oh, him.” Raphael gives a dismissive wave of his hand. “No, this isn’t about that Wilma bling he supposedly has hidden for you.”
“Oh.” Disappointed, I loosen my grip and reach for the rum. “Then who’s proposing on Sweetest Day?”
“Who do you think?”
I rack my brains. “Honestly, Raphael, I haven’t a clue. Who?”
“Me!” he cries.
“You? To whom?”
“Tracey! Did you forget already?”
It appears that I have.
“Refresh my memory. Do you have a new boyfriend again?”
“Hello-o! Ye-ah!”
“Petrov?”
“We broke up ages ago!”
“Adam?”
“He was before Petrov.”
“Then who?”
Raphael looks exasperated. “Donatello! Tracey, you so know him.”
I so don’t.
But this is how Raphael operates. He has this annoying habit of insisting that you are familiar—sometimes intimately so—with whoever or whatever he’s talking about, when you know damn well that you wouldn’t know him from Adam. Or Petrov.
“Donatello,” he repeats. “Don’t tell me that name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“The only Donatello that rings a bell is in my nephews’ toy box. Isn’t he a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?”
“Tracey! Donatello is a full-grown, very normal, very juicy-licious human being.”
Yes, normal and juicy-licious go hand in hand in Raphael’s world.
I think I need a drink.
I reach into the cupboard for a couple of glasses as Raphael prods, “You met him last month when I took you out to lunch at Bacio on my expense account, remember?”
I rack my brains.
All I remember from that lunch is Raphael scolding me for not spending more time with him these days…
Oh, and the divine piece of pumpkin cheesecake that we shared for dessert, which I couldn’t pass up once the waiter rolled it over on the trolley and went on and on about—
“Wait, you mean the waiter?” I ask incredulously.
“Yes! Tracey, I knew you’d remember.”
“How could I forget? The way you were flirting with him right from the start—and the way he described that cheesecake…” I shudder at the waiter’s risqué-in-retrospect description of velvety cream cheese melting on the warmth of the tongue. And here I thought he was talking to me. About dessert. “It was very…vivid.”
“Wasn’t it just?” Raphael looks dreamy.
A drink, I think. A drink, and a cigarette.
I take a fresh pack of Salems out of the cupboard and tap it against my palm.
“So what you’re telling me is that you want to get engaged to the waiter from Bacio on Sweetest Day?”
“Absolutely, Tracey. Unless you think that’s too cliché?”
“I wouldn’t call it cliché in the least.”
I pour a couple of inches of rum into a jelly glass and wonder how to make a mojito, then decide I don’t really care at this point.
“I was thinking we could schedule our commitment ceremony for Valentine’s Day,” Raphael goes on, oblivious to my imminent bender, “and I’d want you as my maid of honor, of course.”
Touched, I look up from the cigarette I’m lighting to make sure that he’s serious.
Judging by the tear glistening in the corner of his eye, he is.
“That would mean a lot to me,” I tell him sincerely. “Thank you. I would be honored.”
“And I’ll be honored to return the favor someday, Tracey,” he says, gently patting my arm as if assuring a maiden aunt that someday her prince will come.
“Jack has a diamond, Raphael.” I exhale twin trails of smoke through my nostrils and try not to think about the Chia Pet.
“Of course he does.”
“I’m serious! He has a diamond, and he’s probably just waiting for…for, you know…”
“The right moment?”
