I pour him a glass ofagua con gas, which I assume he still prefers over still, and then, following a moment’s deliberation, a small glass of red wine for each of us. After I reheat some of the chicken and rice on a plate in the microwave, I set it in front of him and sit in the chair opposite.
This is surreal, I think. And unsettling.
Logan raises his wineglass in salute. The skin on his fifty-nine-year-old hands is crinkly in places, I notice, probably sun damaged. He mentioned in an email a year or so ago that he was still an avid jogger.
“This looks delicious,” he says. “Did you make it?”
“No, our housekeeper did.”
He sighs contentedly, grabs his fork, and takes a bite with still-familiar gusto. For someone who owns and runs a restaurant-managementcompany, Logan was never what you’d call a total foodie, but he likes to cook and relishes eating even more.
“Wait, is this chicken stroganoff?” he asks once he’s swallowed.
“Not a favorite anymore?”
“Still a favorite. But I was thinking you’d be knee-deep here in empanadas andcorderowith chimichurri sauce.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of that, too.”
He chuckles and takes another bite. I’ve now done all the waiting I can stand.
“So,” I say, “why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here, over five thousand miles from home?”
He dabs at his mouth with a napkin, then levels his eyes on mine.
“I could ask the same of you, Bree,” he says.
“Very funny, but we’ve already beenoverthat ground.”
And we have. After I decided to move in with Sebastian, putting an end to the crazy, once-a-month-and-never-enough-time-together commute we’d been doing between Manhattan and Buenos Aires, I informed Logan immediately of my plan. In the years since our divorce, we’ve loosely stayed in touch, communicating a couple of times a year, by email or phone, about things like his sister-in-law’s cancer treatment and a few investments we still hold together. And though it might have been secretly satisfying to catch him off guard and announce months after the move, “Oh, I’m actually not on the Upper West Side anymore; I live on a small farm calledEl Bosquecilloin the Uruguayan countryside,” that seemed too heartless to do.
“Believe it or not, I had business in Buenos Aires this week,” he says. “Curt and I are looking at a steak restaurant there that we might bring to the States, to various locations. And since I was so close, I thought I’d come to see you.”
He takes another bite of the stroganoff, sets the fork down, and rests his elbows on the table, cupping one hand over the other. Maybe it’s that gesture, still so familiar, or being in a kitchen together after allthis time—or both—but I’m swept back almost instantly to the night we met, sitting at someone’s long wooden dining table in Tribeca.
I was twenty-four at the time and a guest at a dinner party given by friends of a guy I’d been seeing casually for a month or two. The hosts had a messy but charming loft-style apartment with a huge kitchen/dining area. Logan had come alone, and for the first half of the evening, he’d mostly listened, keeping his eyes focused intently on people as they spoke.
When the conversation shifted from politics to food—including food as foreplay—he suddenly seemed in the mood to engage, and announced, “Well, food can be a totalanti-aphrodisiac as well.” He proceeded to tell a story about trying to dazzle a woman by making shrimp étouffée, a type of stew, but he’d done the roux sauce all wrong so that the flour and wine hardened like plaster of paris around each piece of shrimp. It made a crunching sound when they chewed, and the woman had ended up chipping a tooth.
People laughed, in part because ofhowhe’d told the story, pausing in places for dramatic effect and chuckling at his own incompetence. At one point he’d glanced down the table and held my gaze so tightly that my date turned to look at me, obviously wondering if Logan and I were already acquainted.
So I wasn’t all that shocked when he called a few days later, having wormed my number out of my date’s friends. He reintroduced himself and then got right to the point.
“Why don’t you let me cook you dinner one night,” he said.
“Shrimp in body casts?” I asked.
I heard him laugh softly.
“Only if that’s your preference.”
“No, something less crunchy, I think. I’d like to keep all my teeth.”
Though he had a bad-boy vibe, a trait I’d vowed to steer clear of going forward, I was in the mood for a short summer fling, and he seemed like the perfect candidate. Three nights later he made me thebestspaghetti alle vongoleI’d ever tasted, and I went to bed with him hours later.
“And you decided to show up without even calling?” I ask him now.
“I was afraid if I called from BA, you’d discourage me from coming—though as soon as I was in Punta, Ididtry, but the call wouldn’t go through on my phone.”
