Espresso Shot

I drank to that (hoping the groom had at least called his bride by now) and tried not to enjoy the dry tickle of costly bubbles on my palate. Then I started my rehearsed speech.

“Nunzio, listen to me, okay? Despite what this looks like-” I gesture to my robe and bare feet. “I’m not here to trade my body for your fountain.”

He laughed. “Lover’s Spring is not on the auction block, bella. I was going to lend it to Breanne for her wedding, not give it away.”

“Well, I’m not on the auction block, either. If you have legitimate concerns, I’m willing to discuss them, allay any worries about the way it will be displayed-”

“It’s not that,” he said, moving to sit on one of the overstuffed sofas. “I have never shown the piece here in America.” He shook his head, gesturing to the muted flat-panel TV, where an Italian channel was playing highlights of a soccer match. “I don’t know if Americans will be able to appreciate my art.”

“Why? Because we play baseball instead of soccer?”

“Your culture is…” He shook his head. “Loud. Violent. Scusa, but I find it… how you say? Volgare.”

“Vulgar? Americans are vulgar? Oh, really? The country that gave birth to Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Billie Holiday, Ira Gershwin, the Wright brothers, Frank Lloyd Wright, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jackson Pollock, and Jacqueline Onassis is vulgar? I see. Then I suppose you’re not expecting to distribute your new jewelry line here-one of the most lucrative markets on the planet? If we’re too vulgar to appreciate your genius sculpture, then I guess we’re too vulgar to pay for your amazing rings and necklaces, too, is that right?”

He frowned. “How do you know about my new jewelry line?”

“I was in Breanne’s office during most of your meeting. I overheard her mention it.”

Nunzio nodded, stretched his free arm across the back of the sofa. “I remember that meeting, too, bella. I remember the look on your face when I touched your hand. Come sit beside me.”

Nope, not gonna work. “I’m only here to persuade you to go through with your promise.”

“Si. That is why you are here. I agree.” He sipped his champagne and smiled. “To persuade me.”

“Good!” I crossed to where I’d dropped my tote bag. “Then try these…”

I pulled Janelle’s three bakery boxes out of the damp bag. Luckily, the thick tote had shielded the boxes from getting the least bit wet. “You heard about Hurricane Katrina’s damage to New Orleans, right?”

“Katrina?” His dark eyebrows came together in confusion. “Si. I heard of this tragedy. But why-”

“The woman who made these amazing confections came to New York after she lost her job in a restaurant that was destroyed by Katrina. For a few years, she worked as the pastry chef at Solange, a highly acclaimed New York restaurant. But the place closed last fall after the owner died, so she took a job with a specialty cake baker. She worked two shifts a day to earn the money to quit after a few months and start her own company. These pastries, for Breanne’s wedding, were baked by her new little company. Here, try an anginetti…”

“This is an anginetti?” He examined the tiny work of art.

“Amazing isn’t it?”

Typically, Italian desserts were delicious to eat but presented in unassuming forms, unlike the polished precision of French cuisine. Italian bakers favored simple presentations, using things like candied fruit and nuts, powdered sugar, or a light glaze to finish a cake or tart. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” That’s how my grandmother used to put it. (And she probably would have pointed out: “What good is Monica’s perfect body doing her in the morgue?”)

I did understand wanting to be perfect. I used to strive for perfection in everything-my coffee, my marriage, myself. But life was naturally messy, and perfection required far too much ruthlessness. Being human was better. Humans made mistakes and moved on. Like Nana tried to tell me years ago: being good was better than being perfect.

Still… looking at Janelle’s beautifully shaped and decorated anginetti, I had to admit that she’d done a near-perfect job on reinventing the rustic Italian cookie, getting it all dressed up for its Manhattan debut.

“I enjoyed these cookies at family weddings when I was a little girl. The ring shape represents the wedding bands. But Janelle recast the idea of a single rope of dough. See how she sculpted each tiny cookie to look like a coffee cake ring?”

“Si. Very clever.”

I sampled a bite for myself. The texture was tender and buttery, the glaze of icing a sophisticated kiss of lemon flavor.

“Janelle’s using Meyer lemons. They have less acidity than other varieties. And the sculpting of the anginetti into a tiny coffee cake shape goes with our primary theme for the dessert display: Saloma Sunrise.”

“Saloma?” Nunzio smiled. “My little hometown?”

“And Ovid’s, too, right?”

He nodded, clearly happy that I’d done my research.

“We worked with the metric volume of liquid that your fountain holds and determined the perfect amounts of peach nectar and cherry juice to be added to the Prosecco in order to create a Bellini that will mimic the romantic golden orange color of a Saloma dawn. The wedding is at sunset, but the coffee and dessert station is looking to our bride and groom’s future, to their first sunrise as a married couple. So the primary pastry theme is breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Nunzio frowned. “What? Eggs and bread?”

“No, no, no… it’s just a theme. Look…” I opened the second box. It was filled with samples of cookies shaped and baked with a slight egg wash to look exactly like miniature croissants. “Each cookie carries a different flavor experience. The Grand Marnier croissant cookie is accentuated with orange rind, the Frangelico with finely powdered hazelnuts, and the Kahlua with a premium coffee infusion from Panama ’s Esmeralda Especial geisha coffee trees-what we call the champagne of the coffee world.”

Nunzio sampled each one, sipping champagne between bites of the tiny, sculpted pastries. “Delizioso!”

“Now try Janelle’s version of orange a l’orange.”

Nunzio nodded, picked up one of the delicate confections that resembled a tiny half orange.

“Janelle dyes and shapes marzipan, fashioning it to resemble the shell of an orange rind. She then cooks oranges in a simple syrup, incorporates slivers of their own candied skin, and fills the marzipan shell.”

“Mmmmmm. Buonissimo.”

“Because it’s marzipan, you’ll taste a creamy hint of sweet almond to counterbalance the tangy-sweet yet slightly tart citrus filling. She’s imported blood oranges from Sicily just for the wedding. She’s doing the same thing with Key limes, which have a milder level of acidity.

“Our secondary theme is tied directly to your Lover’s Spring fountain. Since each tier in the gold-plated fountain is sculpted with reliefs that tell the stories of great lovers through time, we attached pastries to each tier.

“For Adam and Eve, we have Forbidden Fruit Cakes, which are not actually fruitcake but mini-sponge cakes soaked with the grapefruit-orange-honey flavors of the cognac-based Forbidden Fruit liqueur.

“For Antony and Cleopatra, we have stuffed caramel walnuts, a recipe translated from hieroglyphics and said to have been used by Cleopatra to fortify her lovers.”

“Ah!” Nunzio perked right up on that story. “Do you have any of those?” He began looking in all three boxes.

“Sorry, no sale.”

“Oh, too bad.” He threw me a wink.

I cleared my throat. “I’ll bet you can guess what we’re doing for Romeo and Juliet.”

Nunzio laughed. “Baci di Romeo e Baci di Giulietta!”

I smiled and nodded. Romeo’s Kisses were small almond-flavored cookies, sandwiched together in pairs with chocolate filling. Juliet’s Kisses were the same, only the cookies were chocolate.

“For Romeo’s Kisses, Janelle is replacing the almonds with pistachios, and for the filling, using her favorite recipe for chocolate ganache. For Juliet’s Kisses, she’s staying with the chocolate-flavored cookie, but for the filling she’s using vanilla pastry cream infused with raspberry-since, of course, chocolate and raspberry are a wonderful pairing. We have a latte that uses that same flavor profile at my coffeehouse.”

Nunzio tasted Janelle’s twists on the old Verona favorites. He nodded and smiled. “She is very good, Clare. An artista.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. But as good as she is, her field is highly competitive. Breaking out of the pack and getting noticed is very difficult in this town-in any profession. That’s why Breanne’s wedding is so important for Pastries by Janelle, and that’s why your fountain is so important. Without it as the centerpiece of our display, Trend magazine won’t photograph it. Janelle Babcock will have lost a great opportunity for exposure.”

“Your friend, she is quite talented. And these treats are delizioso. But I think… listening to you speak so passionately for her, it makes me want a taste of something else even more…”

He stepped closer. I stepped back.

“I’d like you to agree to lending us the fountain.”

“We both want something then? I think we can both get it, don’t you? A nice little transaction?”

“My virtue’s not on the bargaining table.”

He snorted, genuinely amused. “Keep your virtue, by all means. I only desire your company for the evening. Is that so terrible?”

I closed my eyes. It would be easy to give in, so easy…

My attraction to Nunzio wasn’t some fantasy on his part. I was in awe of his talent, and the artist himself was magnetic. But if the situation were reversed, if Mike slept with some woman in a casual one-night stand, I’d be devastated, and I’d begin to doubt him, especially after what I’d been through with my ex-husband.

Mike’s own broken marriage was still a fresh wound. The pain of his wife’s cheating had tortured him for years. I cared too much about the man to risk damaging what we had for a fleeting few hours of fantasy love; and that’s what it would be: the facsimile of something real.

Nunzio certainly had a girlfriend or even a wife back in Italy. I was a momentary trifle, an amuse-gueule during a brief business trip. What I had with Mike wasn’t an illusion. The view was closer to earth in Alphabet City, but so was the affection: real, well-rooted, and just starting to grow. I wasn’t willing to trade that for anything.

So what else did I have to trade that Nunzio wanted? Nothing. But I could trade on something. His reputation.