Soup to Nuts by Judith Deborah

Author:Judith Deborah [Deborah, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Plimsoll Press

Chapter 6

Very swiftly after our initial meeting in Norman’s office, Declan Flom and I had become fast friends in the time-honored fashion of mild-mannered straight women and homosexual bons vivants. I took to spending quite a bit of time with him after Pia’s wedding, as his outsized personality was incredibly welcome in my life.

For all his determination to keep my identity the hell away from the cookbook I was writing, Declan wholeheartedly agreed with Pia and my mother that I was hiding my light under a bushel. He just wasn’t talking about quite the same light.

“You need to get out there,” he announced over a gigantic pastrami sandwich we were sharing at Katz’s. Mysteriously, longtime New Yorker though he was, he had never been there. I had taken it upon myself to repair this omission. It was a bracing day in early October, the air redolent of a storm in the offing.

“You are staring at me with a singular fixity,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to use that phrase.”

“What’s your type?” Declan said, bisecting his half of the sandwich horizontally. “Do you even have a type?”

“Oh, that’s what you mean by get out there?” I said, poking a straw into my egg cream. “I don’t have a type. At least I don’t think I have. I’ve never thought about it.”

Declan took a bite of his sandwich, looked down at it, and nodded reverently.

“Fuck yeah,” he said, momentarily distracted. “This is world class. But to eat it whole, you’d have to be able to unhook your jaw like a boa constrictor.”

“It’s last-meal-on-earth food,” I said. “You shove as much meat in there as possible in case the Cossacks are coming to Houston Street.”

“Here, have my pickle,” Declan said, putting one of his on my plate. “One’s enough for me. And yes, that’s what I mean by get out there. One thing leads to another. Take it from me, doll. Hiding from men is hiding from life.”

“I don’t date anymore, Declan. I dated in college.”

“Oh, so that’s it? You’re done now? Spinsterhood here you come?”

“I’m not saying that. I just…I like things to happen organically.”

“You’re waiting for God to deliver you the man of your dreams is what you’re saying.”

I thought that over for a moment while chewing.

“Pretty much, yeah,” I said.

“Well, aren’t we all,” Declan said. “But you’ve got to be proactive, hon. Give God a hand.” He paused to down a couple of forkfuls of coleslaw. “What about that guy from Pia’s wedding? The radio guy?”

Chip Scott had indeed called me after the wedding—I hadn’t given him my number, but he procured it from Nicolo—and had continued to do so on a roughly two-day-a-week schedule ever since. I kept swatting him off and he kept coming back. I wasn’t quite sure why I was swatting or why he was returning, but there we were.

Declan, who classified Chip as “sex on a stick,” thought I was out of my mind.

“I’m just not interested,” I said. “We keep trying to have conversations on the phone.

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