Southside (9781608090563) Read Online Free PDF Page A

hadn’t killed me. Fuck that dread. For the first time in years, I felt no need to worry. There was no more doom lurking. Damn, I felt good.
    I put my feet on the floor and stood up. I was wobbly, but I was standing. Life was a grand adventure. The phone rang. It was Francesca.
    People often did not believe me at when I told them Francesca Golden was my girlfriend. Just the day before getting shot, I was at little café on Virgil Avenue called Sqirl, and when I spoke proudly of this romance to a friendly foodie seated next me, she called me a liar. I wasn’t at all surprised.
    Even in Los Angeles, where bizarre bedfellows get few glances, our relationship was treated with curiosity, perhaps even suspicion.
    Francesca is the reigning goddess of the Los Angeles restaurant world, a beguiling curly haired brunette drizzled with allure. She has a nose with a slight, sexy bump in its middle that reminds me—and me alone—of the old Masta Kink at the Formula One circuit in Spa, Belgium. See what I mean? And her eyes, her eyes are hazel, the green like wet emeralds, the brown so gentle, almost caramel, making them very sensitive to light. She almost always wears sunglasses, sunshine or rainfall. She almost always wears Marni, her favorite designer.
    Francesca Golden had grown up in an especially affluent section of Encino in the San Fernando Valley. Despite the fancy address, she had a wild streak. While in the fourth grade, she stole cosmetics from Sav-On Drugs, got caught, and retired from the thieving life. In the sixth grade she hopped a freight train off San Fernando Road in Glassell Park and rode it alone to the distant land of North Compton where she took a taxi home, financed by her older sister, Gail.
    Francesca found her true passion in food and trained at themythical restaurant of Fredy Girardet in Crissier, Switzerland. She opened a bakery on Wilshire Boulevard that, on a good day, rivaled Poilane, and a restaurant, The Tower, with her husband, Bernard Fezetta, a master sommelier from Alsace. Soon Francesca became revered in Los Angeles. She expanded the bakery. She made her first million at twenty-seven.
    The couple had a daughter Zoe, but by the time the child was three, Francesca and Bernard had split. She opened a new restaurant on her own called Zola, after her child born in L.A.
    Five years ago, Francesca went to Napa Valley for a West Coast James Beard benefit dinner. It so happened a friend and frequent customer of Zola was also in Napa Valley that week. He was a convicted violent felon and, though he was white, hung out in the housing projects of Watts, in the barricaded alleys of Green Meadows, in pool halls of North Compton with guys named Mad Dog, Honcho, Snipe, and Big Evil. He was usually dressed in Target black and thought Marni was an old Sean Connery movie. His bank account never soared and he was not handsome. Somehow though, long before she had ever even kissed his mouth, he knew Francesca was made for him. That guy would be me.
    I had come to get away from the city, to drink wine and eat well, and to start work on a book I’d probably never finish. I wrote three pages that day, ran three miles, then called Francesca whom I knew was doing a food event in the Napa Valley. She told me to join her and her friends Hiro and Lissa for dinner in St. Helena at Terra Restaurant.
    We got toasted—not wasted—at the dinner. Dumol’s Eddie’s Patch Syrah 2001 did the trick. I maneuvered her away from her trusted friend and pastry chef, Dahlia, and walked her to my car where that old wild streak of hers surfaced. We made out on Railroad Street and I took her back to my room, room 17 at the nearby El Bonita Motel. It was the night of my nights.
    Even though I worried come morning, the foodie legend in bed with the longtime customer would turn awkward. So I wasn’t surprised,yet I was sad when Francesca awoke, kissed me once on the lips, and walked out. I was pleasantly