Georgia's Kitchen Read Online Free PDF Page B

a given for him and the realization of a fantasy for her.
    “Is everything okay, George?”
    “I got you a croissant when I was out with Sally. It’s in the kitchen.”
    He walked into the galley kitchen, which Georgia had painted an unfortunate tangerine orange after taking a feng shui class at the Learning Annex. Instead of stimulating healthy appetite, as intended, it stimulated claustrophobia. She took a deep breath and followed him.
    He raised his coffee mug. “Cheers to New York’s newest three-fork chef.”
    “Thanks.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice and took a swig. “So I brought your dry cleaning in.”
    “Yeah? Great.”
    “Including the pants you wore last night.”
    “They probably needed it after the night I had.”
    “Something fell out of the pocket.” She pulled the bindle from her back pocket, holding it out in her open palm. “This fell out of the pocket.”
    “What the fuck? How’d that get there?”
    “Please don’t pretend it’s not yours.”
    He exhaled loudly, looked down, then back at her. “Okay, George. I won’t lie to you. It is mine. So I do a line of coke every once in a while. It’s not that big a deal.”
    “Oh, it’s not?” She threw the coke on the counter. “Maybe not to you. To me, doing a line of coke once in a while is a big deal, especially because I don’t believe it’s once in a while.”
    “Believe what you want. I’m telling you it’s once a month, once every few weeks, max. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d overreact like you are right now. You look like you’re about to burst.”
    “Maybe that’s because I am! Is this why you got into a fight with that bouncer?”
    “This has nothing to do with that, and I
didn’t
get into a fight with him. Besides, he was a prick and you know it.”
    “He was, Glenn, but that’s not the point. You never would have done that before.”
    “Before what?”
    “Before you started working all the time, hanging out with Diamond Tee—” She paused midsentence. “Is this why you had to meet him last night? To get coke?”
    “Of course not. It was business, George.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You know if it weren’t for Tee, you wouldn’t be wearing that rock on your finger.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I told him I wanted to propose and he hooked me up with his jeweler. He did Tee a favor and gave me a sick deal on a sick stone. You think I just took a stroll down Forty-seventh Street and bought that?” He pointed to her left ring finger.
    “He did Tee a favor? And Tee did you a favor? Well, he didn’t do me a favor.” Georgia tried to slide the ring off her finger, but it got stuck on her knuckle. “I didn’t even want this ring, Glenn. How much more explicit could I have been? Chefs don’t wear rings!”
    Glenn’s eyes, which were planted firmly on the kitchen’s terra-cotta tile floor, snapped up at this revelation. “You didn’t? They don’t? You mean, you didn’t want a ring?” He paused. “Did you want to get engaged, Georgia? Do you want to get married?”
    “Is this your way of avoiding talking about your coke problem?”
    “I don’t have a fucking coke problem!” He stared at her, hands on hips, before storming into the bedroom, where he cursed at the kilim carpet he constantly caught his toe on. Seconds later he flew through the living room before the apartment door slammed shut.
    Georgia stood frozen in her tangerine kitchen, feeling as ifthe walls would swallow her up and wishing they would. What should have been one of the happier days of her life was registering red-alert disaster. In nine weeks she’d be the wife of a cocaine-snorting attorney who bought her engagement ring—the one she never even wanted—from some gangster diamond dealer. She dialed Clem on her cell, relayed the crucial details, and left the apartment as quickly as she could to meet her.
    More sprawling French château than tony Central Park West co-op,