Chapter Text
It was the two thousand and twenty-first year of our Lord, the second of the pandemic, and Harrowhark Nona was waiting for the bus in front of the abandoned Masonic lodge next to the CVS. Her shopping bags were full of chintzy décor for the restaurant, and she had missed her midday Angelus for the first time in over a month. The day could have been going better; it was also a bright, hot, sunny May afternoon, which she was very unhappy about.
Harrowhark was the head, and sole member, of the fourth generation to own and operate Nona’s Ristorante (“Since 1947!”) in a small town near Binghamton, New York. Like the region as a whole, the restaurant had seen better days; the old-timers were dying off, and the new blood in the area, most of whom had some connection to the university, had little interest in Nona’s spaghetti-and-meatballs fare. Harrow had tried once to talk to Ianthe Trent, one of the twin sisters barely older than her who ran the much more successful Dreaming of Italy, to get her to spill some of her secrets. The attempt had gone awry, and Harrow had not had much success in trying to resurrect the subject since.
Few people moved into Harrow’s town, and the smart kids all moved out. Harrow was the only exception. And, indeed, it hadn’t always been in the cards for Harrow to inherit the restaurant; Ortus, the lugubrious man of about forty who did almost all of the actual cooking, could have carried on the tradition at least as well. But for Harrow there was “before the diagnosis” and “after the diagnosis,” and after the diagnosis she had run clean out of other options. The diagnosis had come hard on the heels of Harrowhark’s parents’ deaths, before which she had been going places. She was going to get out of the Southern Tier and become an orthopedist or perhaps a religious sister in an order that did medical or teaching work; her elementary school teachers had used to joke about her curing cancer, in a way that had left her with a lingering snse of responsibility to do so. Eleven years after her parents’ deaths, ten years after the diagnosis, she was a grown woman before her time, and all she thought about was health insurance and capicola.
“I just got,” Harrow had gone around saying to anyone who would listen to her in her troublesome eleventh year, “some bad news from the doctor.”
Some very bad news, in fact. Her autism diagnosis had been hard enough for Crux, her great-aunts’ home health aide and by extension hers, to advocate for in her IEP meetings. The new diagnosis, childhood-onset schizophrenia, had proven impossible. There had been little if any hope for her to "get out," after that. Aiglamene (a karateka friend of her family who operated out of a run-down strip mall dojo, between a Stewart’s and a GameStop that was doing about as well as Nona’s Ristorante was) had comforted Harrow as best she could, as had Crux; but they were not, it had turned out, very comforting people.
~*~
Now on the bus, Harrow scrutinized the contents of her shopping bag: a stereotypical pizza chef statuette, a pasta-themed map of Italy, a cheap photograph of Joe DiMaggio. She looked forward to a long afternoon of figuring out where to put it all in the restaurant; but first she had agreed to meet Ortus at a place in the city called Thai Time. It was not a date; not only was Ortus twice her age, not only was he her first cousin and closest living relative (third-closest, if Harrow, as she knew she should, counted her great-aunts as alive), he had also known that she was a lesbian even before the Young Upstate Entrepreneurs incident. In fact, thought Harrow as the bus wheezed stertorously over the turbidly sparkling Chenango River, she wasn’t sure why Ortus wanted to meet with her, unless it was about The Facebook Page.
The Nona’s Facebook page, which was still the restaurant’s only social media, was Ortus’s baby, his passion, arguably even his dream project. It consisted entirely of bad poetry and announcements of the monthly specials. (Harrow refused to change the specials more than once a month because that might lead to demand for changes to the regular menu, which had been the same since the Ford administration.) Everybody who had ever worked at or even eaten at Nona’s knew that the Facebook page had to be overhauled at some point; indeed, a good case could be made that its existence was more of a liability to the Nona’s brand than an asset. The problem with this was that it was genuinely the best Ortus was able to do. Harrow had the social media skills of somebody at least four times her age, and they were the restaurant’s only employees.
Harrow disembarked from the bus, got to Thai Time, went inside, sat down, and ordered a plate of tofu triangles, the only kind of Thai food that she consistently knew she liked. Ortus was late, something that he usually was not; lack of punctuality was not among his many insufficiencies. Finally he arrived, and, in arriving, looked very much as though he was about to leave. He hemmed and hawed and tried to tell one of the waiters something that took him a while to get out. Then, at long last, he made his way over to the table, sat down, and started scanning the menu.
“Well?’ Harrow said to him.
“Yes, Ms. Nona?” Ortus said. He had called Harrow’s mother and, she assumed, grandmother “Ms. Nona” before her. She wondered what he had called Harrow’s mother, his aunt, before she had married Harrow’s father.
“Is there any particular reason you wanted to meet with me here today?” she asked.
“Well…yes,” he said. “There is.” He cleared his throat. “As you know, Ms. Nona,” she said, “my mother and I originally moved upstate from Scarsdale.”
“Yes.”
“Awful town, Scarsdale, full of philistines and all-too-reputable characters. I was glad to get out, as, at that time, was she; her sister had just married your father, and you know how these things go.” (Harrow did not know how these things went.) “And besides, SUNY Binghamton was as good a place for me to get my English degree as any, was it not? I thought so, anyway, and still do think so, oftener than not.”
“Don’t bore us; skip to the chorus,” Harrow muttered.
“Well, as you know ,things didn’t go any more ‘as-planned,’ as they say, for my mother and me after the unpleasantness than they went for you, and, well, here we are. But you’re a grown woman now, quite a successful one even, and…well, all of this is to say that, although I know this will present certain inconveniences for you and yours—and I am not unmindful of that, believe you me!—my mother has found me a job as a sous chef in a restaurant down in that part of the state. It’ll be a shame to leave the life I’ve built here, but the money is better and since it’s close to the City I’ll be able to scope out some of the Off-Broadway places for my verse dramas.” He smiled at her, sheepishly, sadly. Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth, and the tofu triangles weren’t helping. A cold beast was rising from slumber deep within her stomach, and no food could have helped with that.
“You would be better served seeking out actual producers for your verse dramas than you are posting them on my restaurant’s Facebook page,” Harrow conceded.
“‘Your’ restaurant, Ms. Nona?”
“Yes. To hear you tell it, it’s not exactly ours anymore, is it?”
“I suppose not, no.”
“Was it ever?” asked Harrow, then, seeing that this remark hurt Ortus, “I’m sorry; I’m not sure what else to say. You’re sure about this? You’re sure about…well, upping sticks and…” She did not finish the thought, leaving me here alone. She had never been fond enough of Ortus to say it sadly, and she was on too much risperidone to say it angrily.
“I’m as sure as can be, for any number of reasons, which I am happy to walk you through should you so desire.”
“That won’t be necessary. So you came to lunch with me today to…what?” Harrow said after a period of silence.
“I felt like treating you to it is the least I can do,” said Ortus.
“I appreciate that,” said Harrow, and to her surprise, she meant it.
“You’ll have me for another two weeks, of course,” Ortus reassured her, but Harrow heard this as only two weeks?! “After that, may I recommend to you Gideon Nav? She used to cook with me sometimes when you were children, as I recall. She had, even at that time, a fair amount of skill here and there around the kitchen.”
“I appreciate the suggestion,” said Harrow, although she didn’t really.
~*~
Having to replace Ortus at this point in her life was a travesty, and it being unexpected made it worse. When she went through her mental Rolodex of people who might replace Ortus at the restaurant, the only person who came to mind for Harrowhark as even a remotely promising possibility was, revoltingly, Gideon Nav, just as he had suggested. They had grown up together; Gideon had lived with Harrow’s family for about two years before her parents’ death, and the two girls had fought each other bloody. Harrow’s family had had limited attention and energy for two preteen girls, and their clashing tastes and personalities had worsened the situation, as had their clashing worldviews once they got older. Gideon was about a year older than Harrow and was, by her own account, unlike Harrow in every way. She liked to frame her relationship with Harrow in terms of something called virgin/chad memes. Some cursory research implied that a “chad” was something like a Don Juan—which was bold of Gideon, considering that the closest she had ever come to being kissed was having been led on by an NYU grad student a decade older than her, whereas Harrow, regrettably, had at least more experience than that.
“Griddle, it’s been a while,” Harrow said on the phone. “We should meet.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s been a while.”
“…okay. I’m going to regret this, but sure. I’m game.” Gideon sighed heavily; Harrow did not like what the heaviness of the sigh implied, but needs must. “When?”
“Uh…as soon as possible. I’ve already been letting this slide for over a week.”
“Christ, try to be more ominous, why don’t you? Well, whatever,” said Gideon. “I’ll come to your restaurant. I don’t want to show up in your house after two years of barely seeing you only to find that you’ve given a deer skeleton my old bedroom again.”
“Yes,” said Harrow, “the restaurant will be fine. Lunch tomorrow?” Tomorrow was Sunday; she didn’t like this.
“Lunch tomorrow,” Gideon agreed.
“I’m glad you were willing to go out on a limb for me like this,” said Harrow over lunch the next day.
“Well, we’ll see how willing I am,” Gideon said, sounding a little surly. “What is it exactly you want from me, Harrow?”
“Well, Ortus just moved to Westchester County…”
“Yeah, I know, he called me and left this really awkward goodbye voicemail. Good for him! The closest I ever get to going downstate is DMing Coronabeth on Instagram.”
“I didn’t ask you here to talk about Coronavirus Trent, or her sister, or, for that matter, that godawful prep maître d’ who’s always waiting on them hand and foot,” snapped Harrow. “I need someone to replace Ortus. He said you might fit the bill.”
“I don’t know,” said Gideon. “Ortus seems pretty irreplaceable to me.” Harrow genuinely could not tell whether or not she was being sarcastic.
“Are you in or are you out, Griddle? I need an answer soon; this conversation is not what I wanted to be doing after Mass on a Sunday in May, and I’m sure it’s not what you wanted to be doing on a weekend either.”
“Is this a Sunday?” Gideon asked absentmindedly.
“Yes, Nav, it is,” Harrow said. “Before this thing arose with Ortus I was planning to spend the day inside, at home, by myself, eating leftovers and listening to Arch Enemy. Now, well, I’m here, talking to you.”
“Arch Enemy-less,” Gideon said.
“Arch Enemy-less,” Harrow agreed. She wasn’t sure how true that really was.
“Harrow,” said Gideon with a douchebag smirk on her face, “are you familiar with the expression ‘goffik’?”
“Shut up, Griddle.”
“Make me.”
Lord help me, thought Harrow as she peered at Gideon across the table where they were sitting in the closed restaurant. She had a hard time feeling like God was watching over her, but at least Joe DiMaggio, in cheap photo form, was. “Look,” she said, “Griddle. I know we’re not as close as we were as children—”
“That’s one way to put it,” Gideon muttered.
“—but you’re my only real friend. Nona’s is mortgaged to the hilt; I am undone by the expense.”
“Harrow,” said Gideon, softening a little—not by much, but dramatically given how sudden it was. “You realize I’m poor.”
“I know.”
“I work at a rest stop on Interstate 88.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you ask one of your Young Upstate Entrepreneur friends to give you a small loan of a million dollars? I’m sure Ianthe Trent is more than good for it.”
“I’m sure she is,” said Harrow, po-faced. “But I don’t want Ianthe Trent. I want you.”
Gideon briefly looked like she had been hit in the face by a tough guy lying in wait with a sock full of their shared childhood. Then she raised her eyebrows and Harrow felt assessed in a way that she didn’t know what to make of. “What is it exactly that you want me for?” Gideon asked. “I can be your angel, or your devil. Or your line cook.”
“Could you be a cook and do the social media as well?” Harrow asked. “Ortus has left a void in that area too—not that I’m not willing to consider the possibility that no social media presence is better than the social media presence we had with him.”
“Back up,” Gideon said. “Are you saying that Ortus’s social media sucked or that it ruled?”
“What do you think?”
“I was never sure what the poetry he posted had to do with Italian food,” said Gideon meditatively. “I don’t like to admit it, but this place does make a hell of an eggplant parm. I didn’t get much of a sense of that from the Facebook page.” Harrow, who hated the eggplant parmesan herself, didn’t get much of a sense of that either; but it surprised her, not unpleasantly, to hear Gideon praise it so.
“I can’t promise to pay you much,” said Harrow, “especially since you don’t have twenty years on the job like Ortus did, but I can probably pay you more than the rest stop on 88 does.”
“I would certainly hope so, yeah,” conceded Gideon.
“So you’ll do it?” Harrow asked, trying not to get her hopes up since at no point in this conversation had Gideon herself actually established this. But the look on Gideon’s face—at getting a better job? At getting to rediscover cooking? At Harrow asking her to do something nicely? Harrow didn’t know— aid all that she needed to know even before Gideon nodded her assent.
“You know it, you little fucking monster,” Gideon said. “It’ll be just like old times.”
“It really won’t be that much like old times,” Harrow said. “If it were then we’d have bigger issues on our hands.” She was hoping that Gideon would avoid the temptation to say like your parents resurrecting, and indeed, Gideon said nothing of the kind. “So, just to be absolutely clear. You’re committing to taking this job.”
“Badda bing,” said Gideon, “badda boom. Eyy, Harrow! Sure, I’ll help you out at the pizza joint.”
“Keep talking like that, Nav, and I’ll make sure you die slowly,” Harrow said.
“Everybody’s dying, bitch,” said Gideon, hitting the “Sign Up with Email or Phone Number” button on the Instagram app that she had just pulled up on her battered old Samsung Galaxy. “Let’s get you some clout.”