Page 52 of Lorenzo

“A taxi? What happened to the limousines? You’re moving down in the world, Em.”

“Guess so,” I laugh, watching a new part of the city blur past.

“I’m actually on a clandestine adventure right now. Gina’s excited about this trendy pizza chef. I’m checking him out tonight.”

“Is Gina with you now?”

“No. I need to check him out privately before giving her my opinion.”

I shift the phone to my other ear before filling her in on Gina’s restaurant project—the vision, the timeline, the kind of effort it would take to pull the whole thing off.

But even as I speak, my thoughts drift to Lorenzo.

The VIP room last night. The low light, the thud of bass through the walls.

And this morning, there was that cocktail napkin with a woman’s name on it. The one with that ridiculous heart over the vowel in her name

I want to hear my husband explain himself.

Ha! Here I am, even thinking about him as ‘my husband.’

Ridiculous. We’re married in name only.

He can do what he wants with ridiculous women who sign their names with little hearts.

“Okay,” Anna says. “But what’s all this pizza chef mania about? Pizza is pizza. Can’t you just mosey on down to your local Pizza Hut?”

“Gina’s plan is to elevate pizza to a fine dining experience. This chef I’m seeing tonight, Antonio Rodriguez, is supposed to be at the top of his game.”

“Is he a ‘cute chef’ at least?”

I think of Chef Antonio Rodriguez’s intense eyes peering up at me from that newspaper column I saw first in the New York Times and again in Manhattan Social.

“Cute, but in a very intense way. They call him ‘The Rod.’ He’s rumored to be an arrogant prick. But he has this new way of elevating pizza to a luxury item. Fermented yeast. Desiccated scallions …”

“Ugh, desiccated scallions! That sounds disgusting, Em.”

Anna emulates the drawn-out, death rattle of someone slowly dying a dried scallion-related death.

“Yet if anyone can sniff out whether this hotrod guy’s the real deal, it’s you.”

The cab comes to a sudden stop.

“Here we are, lady.”

I look up from my phone in surprise. What happened to glitzy Manhattan? This block is narrow and shadowed.

It’s squeezed between a check-cashing place with a busted neon sign and a bodega with a hand-lettered cardboard special taped to the glass.

This is as far from touristy NYC as one can get.

Yet I recognize the low-key restaurant from the pictures in Gina’s file, as well as the Restaurant News trade publication.

Like the best underground restaurants, it has no signage. You either know it’s here or you don’t.

“Okay, Anna, I’m here. I’ll call you later,” I say, paying the driver and stepping outside to the uneven sidewalk.

CHAPTER 22