Page 81 of The Cabin
“I’ll have the flank steak, medium, with truffle fries and the veggies of the day,” I hear myself say. “She’ll have the chicken parmesan, with a house salad, ranch dressing.”
Her mouth flaps, open, closed, open. “Um. Can I have a side of the truffle fries with the chicken parm?” I think she added it just to go against me ordering for her.
When the server is gone, notepad tucked into her black half-apron, Nadia leans forward. “Why did you order for me? How did you know I like chicken parm?”
“I—” I swallow. I have no clue how to answer.
“Is that coincidence too?” She scratches at the table with a fingernail, following the deep, aged grooves of the grain. “Sometimes it seems like you just know things about me, Nathan. It’s weird.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I overstepped.”
“It’s just…I love chicken parmesan.” She laughs, a light tinkle. “Like, weirdly love. You don’t even know how many times I’ve tried to make it for myself, and it’s never quite right. If I get one thing right, another is off.”
Almost verbatim from the book.
“A good guess,” I say, but my voice is weak, low, rough.
“How do you guess that someone likes chicken parm?”
“You like cheese, and it’s the cheesiest thing on the menu.” True.
She fingers the petals of the lavender daisy. “This flower, too. My favorite kind of flower. They’re always such different, beautiful colors. I’ve wanted for years to uproot the beds in front of my house and replant it with all different colors of Gerberas, but I’ve never gotten around to it.”
“I had nothing to do with the flower,” I say, trying to make it sound like a joke. “That is a coincidence.”
She sits back, sighing. “You’ve never been here before?”
I shake my head. “Nope. First time. Heard about it in town.” Also true—several people in town recommended it as a point of local pride.
“It’s lovely. Very…intimate.” She’s not sure if she meant that as a positive.
There’s a Sinatra song playing. “My Funny Valentine.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I know his voice is super amazing, and I always want to like him, but for some reason Frank Sinatra always sounds smarmy to me.”
You really knew her, didn’t you, Adrian?
“Smarmy, huh?”
“Yeah, like he’s just absolutely sure he can charm the pants off you by singing a couple lines.”
“I can see what you mean. Never thought about it that way, but now you say it, I can hear it.”
The song ends, and there’s a silence in the restaurant, the kind of unusual hush when it’s just the ambient noise of quiet conversation and silverware clinking and clattering, when the music has stopped unexpectedly. I didn’t even notice it, but there’s a big black grand piano in the front corner, opposite the entrance to the kitchen, and there’s tall silver candlesticks with white candles on the closed lid, yellow flames flickering. A middle-aged man sits down on the bench, wearing a trim gray pinstripe suit, no tie, collar unbuttoned. There’s no sheet music. He just sits there a moment, head cocked to one side, as if listening to the piano, or to music in the air only he can hear. And then a gentle tinkle rises, his right hand tickling the ivory keys. It’s a light, merry little tune, almost an accidental ditty. He’s just playing around. Teasing the music to life, within himself, within the piano. Gradually, his other hand joins, and the melody becomes more complex, an improvisational masterwork that ranges from light and joyous to deep and thoughtful.
“He’s really good,” Nadia says. “My friend from college, Kyle, is a pianist. He was offered a scholarship to some fancy East Coast conservatory, but he turned it down to study sociology at UNC, mainly so he could be with Tanner. There was an old upright in the lounge of my dorm, and we’d hang out there and do homework, and he’d always be at that out-of-tune piano, playing these wildly difficult jazz pieces, just half-assing them while talking to us, this improvisational stuff only a small handful of people in the world can play.”
“He didn’t do anything with it?” I ask.
“What, with piano?” She shrugs. “I don’t think so. He graduated with a degree in sociology and he and Tanner moved to LA. I think he just loved playing. He probably found a little jazz bar to play in, something like that.” Her eyes flick over me. “I have a question. You don’t have to answer it.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“It sounds like you had a complicated relationship with your dad. Like, you lived out in the wilderness and didn’t go to school. Basically, you didn’t have a childhood. And I can see how you might end up feeling a little bitter about that. But yet, you said you learned to play the guitar to connect with him.”
I sit back, sigh. “Yeah, you had it right—it’s complicated. I don’t know if bitter is the right word. He was a combat veteran. He rarely talked about it, but he’d have these awful nightmares. He’d wake up screaming, thrashing, yelling names. Again, I don’t know for sure, but I think he was a POW, too. It would explain why he couldn’t be indoors for more than a few hours at a time. I think I understood this about him from a very young age, that he had…demons, I guess, that he was wrestling with. Not something for a kid to have to know about his dad, but…” I shrug. “So, no, I didn’t have a normal childhood. I spent more time learning how to track a rabbit or a deer than doing algebra or chemistry, more time learning how to build a shelter with nothing but a hatchet than reading, like, Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
