Heads You Win

“Not if my mother has anything to do with it. She’d like me to be a professor, a lawyer, or a doctor. Anything but a businessman. But I still have no idea what I’m going to do after I leave business school. I have to admit, though, that you and Lawrence have changed my life.”

“How?”

“While I was searching for you, I dropped into several other galleries. It was like discovering a new world where I kept meeting so many beautiful women. I’m hoping that when we get back to New York, you might introduce me to even more.”

“Then we’ll have to start at MoMA, move on to the Frick, and if the love affair continues, I’ll introduce you to several reclining women at the Metropolitan. And to think I thought it was me you’d fallen for.”

“Anna, I fell for you the moment I saw you. If you’d only turned around after you got off that train and given me even the hint of a smile, I would have battered the doors down and chased after you.”

“My mother taught me never to look back.”

“Your mother sounds as bad as mine, but can she cook a calzone?”

“Not a hope. She’s a schoolteacher. Second grade.”

“And your father?”

“He’s the principal at the same school, but no one’s in any doubt who really runs the place.”

“I can’t wait to meet them,” said Alex as Anna rested her head on his shoulder.

Alex had never known a journey to pass so quickly. They swapped stories about their upbringing, and she introduced him to Fra Angelico, Bellini, and Caravaggio, while he told her about Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Lermontov.

They’d only reached the seventeenth century by the time the train pulled into Union Station just after eleven thirty. Alex didn’t speak as the taxi drove them to the National Cemetery. When he and Anna walked along the manicured lawns, passing row upon row of unadorned white gravestones, he was reminded of his conversation with Lieutenant Lowell in a dugout and the word “futility” rang in his ears. Not a day went by when he didn’t remember the Tank. Not a day went by when he didn’t thank whatever god there might be for how lucky he was to have survived.

They stopped when they reached the gravestone of Private First Class Samuel T. Burrows. Anna stood by silently as Alex wept unashamedly. Some time passed before he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, unwrapped it, knelt down, and placed the Silver Star on his friend’s grave.

Alex didn’t know how long he stood there. “Good-bye, old friend,” he said, when he finally turned to leave. “I will return.”

Anna smiled at him so tenderly that he began to weep again.

“Thank you, Anna,” he said as she took him in her arms. “The Tank would have loved you, and you would have approved of him being my best man.”

“If that was a proposal,” said Anna, who couldn’t help blushing, “my mother would point out that we’ve only known each other for two weeks.”

“Twelve days was enough for my father,” said Alex, as he fell to one knee and produced a small velvet box from his pocket. He opened it to reveal his grandmother’s engagement ring.

As he placed the ring on the third finger of Anna’s left hand, she delivered a line he would remember for the rest of his life.

“I must be the only girl who’s ever been proposed to in a cemetery.”

*   *   *

“How do you like the new menus?” asked Alex.

“Classy, like your mother,” said Lawrence. “Did she design them?”

“No, Anna did, in her spare time.”

“I can’t wait to meet this girl. Perhaps I should invite her up to Boston for the weekend to see my art collection.”

Alex laughed. “And I can tell you she’d accept, because Anna can’t wait to meet you and view the collection. So, Lawrence, as I suspect you didn’t fly down to New York just to flatter me, I can only hope you don’t want your money back, because I’ve already spent it.”

“But are you ready for me to invest even more?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because if Elena’s is going to expand, the only thing Todd was right about, you’ll need an injection of capital.”

“And you’d be willing to supply it?”

“You bet. It’s in my interest to do so, as I own fifty percent of the business.”

“Only until I pay you back.”

“Which could take you some considerable time if you agree to my proposal.”

Alex laughed. “Your godfather wouldn’t approve.”

“I can’t imagine why. One of his first investments was in McDonald’s, despite his never having eaten a hamburger in his life. But we do have a problem.”

“And what’s that?” said Alex, as Paolo returned with the day’s special.

“I think I may have found the perfect site for Elena Three in Boston, but how do we duplicate your mother?”

“It will always be her recipes on the menu,” said Alex. “And God help any chef who falls below her high standards.”

“How do you think she’d feel about spending the first month in whichever city we choose whenever we open a new Elena’s?”

“If she was convinced it was your idea,” said Alex, “she might just go along with it.”

“How are you enjoying today’s specials?” asked a familiar voice.