1London
FROM BEHIND THEfront window of London’s most pretentious bar, I watch as my late father’s restaurant, Nicky’s, starts to stir for the evening shift across the street. The head chef, Leo Ricci, spins the handle to extend the black canvas awning across the eight outside tables. The little neon door sign my mother gifted my father for Christmas twenty-five years ago blinks intermittently beside the black front door. I feel a stab of deep regret and sadness. And wonder why the hell no one got the damn sign fixed.
“Here you are, madam. The whiskey is served at a precise 65.35 degrees Fahrenheit,” says the sulky waiter as he hands me a double malt in cut crystal, elegantly withdrawing a stylish metal thermometer from my glass. He then slides a small bowl of smoked almonds with powdered Himalayan salt on the window bar in front of me. I paint on a smile before I briefly look up from under my baseball cap to thank him.
His mouth sags. “Oh. It’syou.” He’s so deliciously bitchy, I laugh.
“I’m not barred, am I?” I ask, raising an eyebrow playfully. “They haven’t got a mug shot of me hanging behind the bar?”
“Just don’t let my manager see you,” the waiter replies, shrugging with indifference. “You’re public enemy number one round here.”
I chuckle as he leaves. I’m a food journalist atThe London Times, a free but very widely read paper that circulates on the Underground. About three issues ago, I wrote a several-paragraphs-long hit piece targeting this place—Temp—in a story entitled “Is This Effing Satire?” I’d hated the self-consciously gimmicky idea that all drinks must be served at a particular temperature with a bespoke thermometer. So, you get your Chardonnay at 48.1 degrees, your rosé at 51.8, and your Chablis Grand Cru at 55.4. And everyone canreallytaste the difference, apparently.
Don’t get me wrong, it is nice to do things “properly,” but can we please be serious? This bar is frequented by bankers who only appreciate the quality of wine by its price. I also hated the way the proprietor, a software engineer turned bar owner, had talked down to my friend Ginny when she requested a cube of ice in her Sauv Blanc.“We are not a dive bar, darling.”
“Olive!” Ginny and Kate arrive in a flurry of kisses and hugs. Ginny, an excellent interior architect with bouncy black curls, wide brown eyes, and a chic tan suit, and Kate, an ice-blond relationship therapist who exudes Scandi chic in wide-leg jeans and a designer sweatshirt.
“Why on earth did you choose this place?” Kate asks. “Didn’t you call it a Tesla for oenophiles?” She drops her voice. “Thisisthe tech-bro bar, right?”
“It’s disruptive drinking for the biohack generation,” I reply, mockingly serious. “Kendall Roy would love it.”
“Sweet returns, bro,” Kate snarls playfully.
“I hope that awful owner isn’t here,” Ginny says, glancing around the restaurant.
“I’ve not seen him. Yet,” I say, tugging down my cap, just in case. Ginny eyes the cap, somewhat despairingly.
“You look... cute,” Ginny says, touching my slouchy gray hoodie and attempting to admire the ends of my fuzzy outgrown bob. Ginny is the friend who cannot lie.
“It’s grief-core,” I say, laughing at her. “I look like shit, but I’m fine with it.”
They pause, glancing at each other with concern.
“I’m fine! Sit, I’ll explain,” I say.
I wait for them to settle in their seats on either side of me, so we are three in a row, peering out the darkened window into the daylight like barn owls.
“So, I went to the estate attorney’s office today and you’re seriously not going to believe it,” I say, pointing across the road to Nicky’s, where chef Leo Ricci has taken a seat at one of the outside tables and is going through paperwork. A cute red-haired waitress with a sleeve of tattoos comes out and slides a coffee in front of him.
“Oh my goodness, Nicky’s! That’s why we’re here?” Ginny asks, mouth open.
“He left you the restaurant?” Kate asks in breathless awe.
“He left me the restaurant,” I confirm, still in shock myself.
“Do you get that hot chef with it?” Ginny asks, pointing at Leo, who at that very moment looks up in our direction. He can’t possibly see us with the evening sun so low and bright in his eyes, so I indulge myself, staring as he runs his hands up through his dark hair, biceps popping as he rests them on his head for a moment before breathing out,eyes to the sky, and then returning to his paperwork.
“All of it, yes,” I say, a strange sort of prickly feeling going up my spine before I pull my eyes from Leo.
My father died suddenly almost two months ago. I emerged from an underground bar and my phone sprang to life with seven missed calls and several text messages from both my father and a number I later learned was Leo Ricci’s. When I saw the sheer volume of calls, I just knew. But the speed at which he went downhill was dizzying. Some run-of-the-mill infection one day, sepsis and death the next.
I feel as though I’ve been stuck in a state of shock, moving like a marionette through the responsibilities of being his only living relative. Go here. Sign this. Cancel that. Send this letter. Call the energy company. Call the energy company again. Andagain. Mum offered to help, but it felt weird having her reading through his personal effects; she’d just remarried, and Dad and she were divorced so long ago. I also felt it was right to try to protect his privacy, especially since he died alone.
Dry, sardonic humor is one way to get through the sudden death of a parent. Booze is another. I lift my whiskey to my lips and tip it back like I’m taking a shot.
“Heleftyou Nicky’s?” Kate says again.
“My god, Olive, when did you last even go in there?” Ginny says as her wine arrives, and she accepts it graciously.
