Читать книгу An Ice Cream For Henry - Emanuele Cerquiglini - Страница 17

R obert Brown had booked a table at Erminia, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side that had been in Eyewitness Travel’ s top ten for a while now.

Barbara had Italian roots and Robert knew that she would appreciate his choice of eatery, even though it was only her maternal grandmother who was Italian and Barbara herself had never been to Italy.

Robert was going to ask her to marry him in Maine, and he wanted everything to be perfect. He loved her and wanted her as his wife. He had told his dad as much in a phone call that morning before leaving the office, and his dad had responded by telling him it was the biggest load of crap he’d ever heard come out of his son’s mouth: ‘ Son, you’ ve done great so far and now you want to tie yourself down?’ Robert chuckled to himself as he recalled his father’s words, spending several minutes flossing in front of the bathroom mirror. Robert was obsessed with his teeth. He brushed them at least ten times a day and flossed even after eating a couple olives with an apéritif. He never went anywhere without his faithful white box of floss. As a teenager, he had lost three teeth when he face-planted after coming off his bike having misjudged a bend at the bottom of a crazy descent. He had also broken an arm and his nose and had deep abrasions on both knees. He survived, fortunately, but having to look at himself without those teeth for three months was unbearable. He’d lost one canine and two premolars, and for someone who was one of the three best-looking guys in college, with a smile that was irresistible to the ladies, that represented something of an existential crisis. He could have had them put back in earlier, but his dad wanted to teach him a lesson and make him see that we’re all just flesh and bones, nobody is indestructible. It was a lesson that had served him well. The boy who fell off his bike had gotten into several scrapes over the years, but that experience had straightened his head out and now he was Robert Brown, owner of one of New York’s premier renovation firms and able to rely on the best carpenter around: his brother, James. The brothers and their team could turn a run-down apartment into a luxury home in a matter of weeks.