“Find out where Alyssa gets her hair done, ask Simone when she gets in the office. Once you've got the place, buy a certificate for a standing appointment. A year out, whatever they offer at the top, paid in advance. If they tell you they don't do that. Get past it.”
“Done.”
“Look up a restaurant in North Jersey called The Adega. It’s Portuguese and Ethiopian food. Ask to speak to the chef, Marcos, tell him I have an urgent matter to discuss. As soon as you get him on the line, patch it through. If I’m in a meeting, pull me out.”
“Got it.”
“And flowers. Delivery to her house by seven, plenty of time before she heads to work. Then more delivered to her office early afternoon.” I stopped, because here was the part I had no instinct for. “I don't know flowers. What do people send?”
“Hmm. Depends what you're saying. Roses are the standard. Peonies if you want it to look like you tried. Ranunculus, garden roses, lisianthus if you want expensive without it shouting. Orchids if?—”
“All of it.”
She looked up.
“All of those. A dozen of each. Or maybe two dozen? Too much? You choose, I trust your judgement. Oh, and the darkest tulips they can find, burgundy maybe. No red roses; everybody does red roses.” That part I'd thought about.
I sat back. This is a good plan, I thought. She's spent her life talking herself out of being made a fuss over. I wanted her surrounded by arrangements she couldn’t argue with.
Glory didn't write for a second. Then a smile broke loose, and sheducked her head and wrote it all down. “Got it all, Mr. Wade. I’m on it.” She stood, still losing the fight with her smile. In twelve years she'd never once taken down a list like this one. She didn't say so. She just said, “It’s gonna be a very Happy Valentine's, Mr. Wade,” enjoying herself far too much, then left before I had to answer.
Solé I handled myself. The alcove by the window, the whole back room ours for the night, space in the kitchen made for a chef who'd be coming in off a flight.
Which was the part I was still waiting on. Marcos called back at four, during a meeting, and I stepped out to take the call.
“Mr. Wade.” An older voice, with the accent worn soft by decades in the Tri-State. “My girl says a very serious man needs to speak with me.”
“Chef. Thank you for your time. I'll be quick. There's a woman from your neighborhood who left for North Carolina and never stopped missing your kitchen. Your bacalhau. Your pastéis. She raves about it to this day. Says it’s the one thing she misses about New Jersey. Said you knew her order before she sat down. Alyssa Carter, she’s a lawyer. Stunning, tall, brown skin —”
“Senhora Carter! Alyssa, yes, yes Tamika's sister, the lawyer.” The warmth came up in it, then the hesitation right behind it when I explained I wanted him to fly down. “Mr. Wade, I'd want to. But the fourteenth… that's my biggest night of the year. I can't close my floor and fly to Carolina, I've got a room full of reservations.”
“I know what I'm asking. Don't answer me yet.” I kept it even. “What does the Adega clear on Valentine's night, a good one? You don't have to say it out loud. Just have the number in your head.”
He paused. “I have it.”
“Whatever that is, I'll double it, and that's before your fee for the night. The flight’s mine, both ways.”
He went quiet. I've closed enough rooms to know the sound of a man doing math he didn't expect to be doing.
“My two boys run the line as good as me now,” he said, half to himself. “They could hold one night.” Then, warming: “And my wife's been after me about getting away. Maybe we make a trip of it.”
“Then let me make it worth the trip. I'll put you both up, somewhere good, five-star accommodations. First class round trip. There's wine country an hour out, golf if you play. Come the thirteenth, cook the fourteenth, stay the weekend on me.”
“For a weekend with my wife?” He laughed, full now. “You're a serious man. All right. I'll send you a list of what I’ll need. The fishespecially, I'm particular about the fish. Find me a market and somebody to drive me, I'll handle the rest.”
“I’m on it.”
“Send the plane, Mr. Wade.”
I sent the plane.
I locked the rest of it down by the end of the day and said nothing to Alyssa about Valentine’s Day. Because her not-knowing was half of it. She'd had a lifetime of bracing for the small thing, the no-thing, the day that came and went. I wanted this one to be rolling before she could put her guard up.
alyssa
I wokeup on Valentine's Day already negotiating with it. Julian hadn't said a word about the day. Not aclear your evening,ordon't make plans. So I told myself I wanted nothing, and went to sleep the night before having a perfectly reasonable conversation with myself about manufactured holidays and marked-up roses and how I know where I stand without a calendar telling me.
Then he called at five-forty-five in the morning, knowing that was the time I woke up when I wasn’t going with him on a run.
