I looked up from the stove, and smiled at Chieko and June sitting at the dining table and laughing together by the window ten feet away.My hands moved quickly now. Much more quickly than they did ten years ago. Stirring the sauce. Modulating the heat. Grating the cheese. Flipping the prawns on the grill. Checking the loaf of Ciabatta in the oven. Dicing, chopping, mincing, slicing. Our bottle of wine was uncorked and poured between the three of us, and I took a generous gulp of my favorite Cabernet Sauvignon from my favorite little winery in Napa Valley as I prepared dinner for us. Ten years ago, this would have been a major production. But now, it was an every-day dinner for us.
Except tonight, I was making Fettuccine Alfredo by request for June.
I could never make Fettuccine Alfredo without remembering the very first time I ever cooked for somebody I loved -- cooking for
Katie, in my parents shoddy apartment in the ghetto, because she told me it was her favorite dish and I wanted to make it for her.
I looked around me. So much had changed in the last ten years. I wasn't a poor kid living in the projects anymore. Instead of a decaying, roach-infested leftover kitchen from the sixties with a range to match; I was standing in my own kitchen in my own place, with granite countertops, a hardwood floor, and Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances neatly tucked into their enclosures. Instead of using my mother's shoddy, scratched up T-Fal cookware, I was using All-Clad everything. And instead of eating on a rusty secondhand metal table with a view of the building next door, we were eating on a custom-made Brazilian mahogany table by a floor-to-ceiling window with a view that was spectacular by any standard.
But Katie wasn't here. And Fettuccine Alfredo was never complete without her.
*****
Katie told me she loved it.
In hindsight, it must have tasted awful, but she told me she loved it anyway.
What did I know? I was fifteen, cooking the first thing I ever tried cooking that wasn't instant ramen or chef boyardee. We had gone to a nice Italian restaurant two weeks earlier, and shared a dinner I could barely afford but I wanted to treat her to anyway. My parents could never afford that sort of thing then, so I had never been to a place like that. She told me she loved Fettuccine Alfredo, and not having the money to take her out like this yet wanting to treat her to what she loved, I told her that I would make it for her.
And tonight, even though I knew I was making it for Chieko and June, I wished Katie was here with us to have this Fettuccine Alfredo, made the way it's supposed to be made.
I use top-grade Plugra european butter now. And fresh non-ultrapasteurized cream. Fleur de sel. And Parmigiano Reggiano. I roll out and cut my Fettuccine by hand now, because this dish needs fresh-made pasta.
Katie was so kind to me then, telling me that she loved the first Fettuccine Alfredo I ever made, with margarine, half-and-half, powdered parmesan and cream cheese. I scorched the sauce, it was clumpy, and the pasta clung together, half-cooked in places and over-cooked in others.
I still remember her face when she put the first twirled fork-full into her mouth.
No one has ever made that face since. And I know why. It's because Katie never took it for granted. It's because she knew exactly why I had made it for her.
Just because I knew she loved it.
She knew I couldn't afford much, but I did what I could. And she knew I didn't know how to cook, but I was trying my damned hardest anyway. Because I was the only person in her entire life that actually gave a damn about her in a world of dysfunctional people who said they cared but really didn't.
Now, it doesn't matter what I make. I could serve a
Croquette of Foie Gras and Kogyoku apple confit in black truffle demi glace reduction, and it would be pedestrian. Because that's just what people expect from me now. And I knew that yes, Chieko and June would appreciate the Fettuccine Alfredo that I was making for them by request -- but they would just eat it. It wouldn't matter that I'm using the best ingredients that money can buy, cooked with the best equipment that money can buy, with the best hands that money
can't buy or that I'm making it because I care for them.
The love would be there, but they would never feel as loved as Katie did that night eating my disgusting mass of loving slop.
*****
I exhaled a deep breath, letting my hands fall down on the wrought iron railing on my balcony in front of me.
I looked back in through the window, at Chieko and June doing the dishes in the kitchen. Chieko, like June's big sister. June, who reminded me of Katie before we started down into the dark places of this world together, ten years ago. Before Katie fell. Before I fell. When we were pure, innocent creatures, like June, laughing as she flung soap bubbles at Chieko. She was so untouched by the horrors of life, and I would not let these things touch her. I would not let the things that happened to Katie happen to her. Not again. Not to another woman under my care.
I sighed. My June. My Chieko. My place. I looked down at myself. The tailored, hand-stitched shirt I wore casually would have paid a month's rent for my parents back then. And my watch could have paid my father for a year back then. I would have, then, if I could have. But life is what it is, now, not then.
Everything, all of this, all started there that night, with the Fettuccine Alfredo and Katie. For better or for worse, that dinner changed the course of my life. But I knew all that I had... it was
blood money. And I hated it. If it hadn't been for Katie and the Fettuccine Alfredo, I would not be who I was now, where I was, what I was. But we paid so much for it. Katie followed me into the deep, dark places of this world, and she paid a toll more costly than mine. We paid
too much for it, Katie.
I wondered, what my life would have been like... what
our life would have been like, had we never had our Fettuccine Alfredo that night?
