Through Thick and Thin Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought that to be true about pizza. She thinks bad pizza is bad, but she’s never thought that about lasagna. She doesn’t think a bad one has existed or will exist in the future world, ever. And if you think about it that way, what is there really that is better than lasagna?

three
    a little more about josh
    Okay. He did call, there’s that. But, just so you know, there are plenty of other things, too.
    There’d been—what was it—a year, in which Meredith had waited for him to call. (It was in fact closer to two years if a person was inclined to be honest about it.) And then, after that, there’d been a shorter period of time in which she hadn’t waited, but had occasionally thought, Now he’ll call because I don’t want him anymore, and they know not to come back until you don’t want them. She was sure she’d heard that somewhere, but then she was also sure that thinking something like that could very well cancel out the whole “I don’t want him anymore,” in the first place. And then she didn’t think it, or want it, she really didn’t, and he still didn’t call.
    And then he called.
    “I was wondering if you were free on February fourteenth? It’s a Tuesday,” he’d said the second time he called, as if the greatest relevance of that day was that it was a Tuesday. “Because I’ll be in New York,” he’d added on, and there was something in the tone of his voice that made Meredith think of the drawings in her high school French textbooks, the cartoon figures with names like Marie-Claude, Pascal, Jean Christophe, who would point and exclaim into a bubble above their heads, Quelle Coincidence!
    “I’m free,” she’d told him. And she didn’t have to hang up the phone and rearrange her busy Valentine’s Day schedule so that she could nonchalantly see him. She was actually, come to think of it, free. In fairness, Valentine’s Day wasn’t a good night to review a restaurant, what with all the tourists and the special Valentine’s Day menus. She had briefly toyed with doing a Valentine’s Day survey. (Meredith loves surveys, like the one that Frank Bruni, the critic at the New York Times , did on fast-food restaurants across the country; she still wishes she’d thought of that.) She had briefly considered dashing from restaurant to restaurant, having dinner at each one; she could probably fit in four if she started early enough, five if she planned on staying out very late. A survey always appealed, but then there was something about the thought of racing around New York on Valentine’s Day, without a Valentine’s Day date, that made the idea of putting pins in her eyes hold a certain appeal, too.
    And to be fair, she was free on Valentine’s Day because it had been quite a while since she’d come across anyone she liked. To be honest, it’s not as if she’s really come across anyone else, met anyone else, in lo these many years since Josh had been gone. (And in this case, “lo these many” is equal to three.)
    “Guess where I made reservations?” he’d asked her on the third time he called, “it starts with a B .”
    And she’d thought they’d done an okay job of getting past the awkward moment when she’d said, with quite a lot of enthusiasm, “Babbo?! How great! Babbo, hands down, is my favorite restaurant in New York!” and he’d said back, with less enthusiasm, “No, Bouley.”
    For the record, had she been given the opportunity to lie, she would have. She would have had no problem saying, “My favorite restaurant, the best restaurant in New York, is Bouley.” Bouley, Babbo, though very different, in Meredith’s opinion they both fit the criteria to be the best: beautiful atmosphere, impeccable food, outstanding service, originality, creativity.
    The phone rings and Meredith jumps. She’s not startled by the ringing itself, or even by the interruption of her thoughts; she’s just trying to get to it on the first ring. She always tries to get to the phone on