Page 6 of Coach
Mike grunted but knew better than to argue. The ghost of my great-grandmother would’ve haunted his dreams if he’d tried to say anyone’s sense of cooking or culinary delight was stronger than a true-born Italian’s. It simply wasn’t possible, and everyone—including the French, who thought the culinary world revolved around their “Oui, Chef,” needed to just accept it.
We beelined for the food stalls, ignoring wide-eyed families and stroller-wielding suburbanites displaced along the way.
Mike’s first stop: the food truck with corn dogs the size of my forearm.
His second stop: funnel cakes so big they came with their own gravitational field.
He then made a third stop for the most important item of the night: an adults-only lemonade stand run by two octogenarians who poured vodka into plastic cups like seasoned gay bartenders and tried to upcharge us for “organic ice.” Mike paid the ridiculous fee, grinning like a redheaded moron the wholetime.
Loaded down with dripping paper plates and enough napkins to make a small mattress, we wandered through the festival, eating and talking with our mouths full like the classy gentlemen we were.
“Look at that guy,” Mike said around a mouthful of corn dog, nodding toward a man in a fedora and full three-piece suit despite the ninety-degree heat. “Who dresses like that to an outdoor festival?”
“Someone who wants you to know he uses words like ‘bespoke,’” I muttered.
Mike snorted lemonade through his nose. “Bespoke is a fine word, thank you very much.”
“I am Italian. I do not know this word. It means you said something terrible, yes?”
Mike stopped walking and turned, his brows knitted together like one long, really pissed off caterpillar.
I shrugged, careful to keep the grin from my lips. “He bespoke terrible things, and she knew him for the cad he was.”
“That’snotwhat that word means, and you know it.” Mike nearly dropped his powdered dough. “Besides, any man who uses the word ‘cad’ in a sentence is either caught in a time warp from the 1930s or listens to far too much NPR.”
The guy with the fedora turned just in time for usto catch the NPR pin on his lapel.
My jaw dropped.
Mike’s funnel cake hit the ground.
It took a minute for our laughter to subside enough for us to carry on.
Yes, we’d reverted to teenage boys—and it was beautiful.
We wandered past rows of painters hawking landscapes, portrait artists sketching people with wildly inaccurate noses, and booths full of pottery that looked like it had been thrown together by blindfolded toddlers during an earthquake. Mike pointed at a particularly terrifying ceramic vase shaped like . . . I didn’t even know. It might’ve been a swan. Or a deformed bagel.
“You should buy that for your living room,” he said, grinning.
“And put it right next to the cardboard box entertainment center? It would tie the room together.”
He cackled and downed half his vodka lemonade of death.
We were halfway through our second lap around the food tents, arguing about whether or not macrame counted as “real art,” when Mike elbowed me in the ribs.
“Hey,” he said, pointing toward the far row of tents, where a massive banner that read, “Antiques,”billowed in the breeze. “That way.”
I followed his finger.
Sure enough, a whole section stretched out under a massive white canopy where tables were crammed between old tools, worn dressers, and weird bronze statues. As we drew closer, I discovered the furniture smelled like a grandma’s attic.
I dragged my feet a little.
Mike noticed.
“Oh, c’mon,” he said, clapping me on the back. “Don’t get scared, city boy. I promise you won’t catch a case of ‘refined taste’ just by walking through.”
“I am Italian. I was born with refined taste, an impeccable fashion sense, and—as you Americans keep reminding me—an accent that could coax the clothing off any woman who hears it,” I said, lifting my chin to new heights. “But this . . . feels dangerous. Like next thing you know I’m spending four hundred dollars on a distressed end table that smells like my deepest regret.”
