Meet Cute Monday #2

Emilia x Eddie - a meat cute

There are cured meats hanging from the ceiling. Strung together with cooking twine and slowly drifting side to side with the shift in air flow every time the door opens, they’re like the most foul form of garland. 

Thankfully, the smell of fresh bread wafts through the air, overpowering any unpleasant odors that may or may not be emanating from the dangling hunks of meat. 

The smell of semolina in my nostrils brings back a wave of memories. This place, in and of itself, is pure nostalgia. It’s family dinners every Sunday and Nonna’s laugh and Dad’s hands slicing basil so effortlessly-yet-perfectly, the result so beautiful you’d think he was food-prepping for a Bon Appetit cover shoot, not a standard Tuesday night at home. 

It’s a smell that makes it hard to believe I ever left. Like the last two-and-a-half years haven’t happened. Like I’m still twenty-six and eating meat. Like I haven’t missed over a hundred Sunday dinners, and Nonna is still here, and Dad can still look at me without all of the tell-tale signs of disappointment written in the lines of his face. 

I sigh, letting some of the nostalgia out with the exhale. I’m here now, so the depressing walk down memory lane is unnecessary. 

I pull up Dad’s list on my phone. 

Bresaola, Culatello, Mortadella, 

Sopressata

Tell Joe to throw in some 

fresh mozz, He owes me ………. 

Get some castelvetranos too

(those are the Olives you like

 in case you forgot …..) 

He texts like the world’s most ominous poet; random line breaks and gratuitous ellipses abound. I roll my eyes at the unsubtle dig at me that he apparently couldn’t resist throwing in at the end of his message. You raised me Catholic, Dad. Heaping on the guilt isn’t necessary, it already flows through my veins. 

I set off toward the deli counter, stepping over a half-opened box of olive oil. Just as I’ve cleared the obstacle, I hear a booming voice calls from behind me: 

“Is that my little Milli Vanilli?” 

I turn. Joe — of the very Joe’s Deli in which I currently stand — hasn’t changed a bit. Same tan and weathered face, same belly hanging ever-so-slightly over his waistband, same toothy smile that makes him look like the world’s friendliest shark. He can’t be older than sixty, but his hair has been stark white for as long as I’ve known him. 

I smile at him. “Hiya, Joe.” 

“Emilia Marino, as I live and breathe.” He opens his arms. “Get ova’ here, kiddo.” 

I step back over the olive oil box between us and into his arms, and he wraps me up in a huge bear hug. 

At this point, I can’t remember if Joe is actually family or not. He’s potentially a genetic cousin of my father’s, but it’s equally likely that he’s just a very close friend who became family at some point. I doubt anyone else remembers, either. Joe’s as much a part of the family as I am — maybe even moreso, at this point, because he never left. 

“How’s life in the big city?” He asks, pulling back to muss my hair up with an affectionate noogie. 

“It’s…” I struggle to find the right words. New York isn’t what I thought it’d be. It’s got all of the intensity of Boston but less of the charm, less of the history. It feels like a place where something new is happening every single day — which is exciting, but also exhausting. I regularly find myself craving some of the routine and normalcy I used to resent. “It’s different,” I finally land on. 

Joe gives me a look that lives somewhere between sympathetic and skeptical, like he sees right through me, but he claps a hand on my shoulder. “Well, we all miss you,” he says. “Even if you decided to go all snobby on us and stop eating meat. What’d capicola ever do to you, huh?” 

“It’s not so much about what capicola did to me,” I laugh. “And more about what I did to the capicola.” 

“Yeah, okay, JFK.” He rolls his eyes. “Hey, go see Lu while you’re here, will ya?” 

Lu is Joe’s daughter, and my best friend since childhood. She’s also now a married mother of two, living in a big house in Somerville. Our lives were so The Same for over two decades, and then somehow diverged so dramatically that I’m afraid we won’t have anything in common anymore. Seeing her and feeling a shift between us, the absence of that easy comfortability that once marked out friendship, terrifies me. It’s easy to pretend nothing’s changed when your only form of communication are texts and Instagram DMs. 

“I’ll try,” I tell Joe. I hold up my phone. “I’ve got a list from Dad. He says you owe him some mozz?” 

“Like hell I do,” he scoffs. “That bastard wants to see me go out of business, I swear to ya.” 

I laugh, mostly because Joe’s Deli could literally never go out of business. It’s an institution. There’s a steady flow of customers from the moment they open shop at seven til the minute they close their doors at six. 

Speaking of: the bells chime, announcing someone entering, and the cured meats-on-a-string dance on the resulting breeze. 

Joe pokes his head around the corner to see who’s arrived. “Eddie,” he says, the affection in his voice clear, even as he continues: “You’re late.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” I hear the stranger whose name must be Eddie respond, his voice getting closer with every word. “All these Covid-era transplants are making the traffic insufferable.” 

“Ha!,” Joe barks out a laugh and elbows me. “Kid’s got jokes.” 

Eddie rounds the corner, and when his eyes land on me, his expression turns quizzical. “Wait,” he says. “Do I know you?” 

I shake my head. I’ve never seen Eddie before. The banter between him and Joe — and the fact that, at over-six-feet tall and with dirty blonde hair and light eyes, he doesn’t look like he’s from around here — tells me he’s likely one of the “Covid-era transplants” he joked about. He’s got the kind of face that looks familiar though — not in a “I’ve seen you before,” kind of way, but in a “I have no reason to, but I trust you implicitly,” kind of way. There’s an earnestness about him; in the slight hunch of his shoulders, the slight crookedness of one of his front teeth, the way his hair flops over his eyebrow. 

Joe snaps his fingers. “I know,” he says, pointing to one of about three hundred photos that cover every square inch of the deli’s walls. “There she is.” 

Sure enough, it’s a photo of me and Dad, from about six years ago. We were helping Joe prep a large catering order, wearing hair nets and gloves. We’re laughing, and Dad is looking at me like he’s full of pride and adoration. I haven't seen that look from him in years, and it hits me like a punch in the chest. 

Eddie’s got a bag over his left shoulder, which he adjusts a bit as he answers. As he does, his shirt-sleeve pulls up a bit, and the hint of a tattoo pokes out from under it. I can’t make out what it’s of. “Ah, yep.” He sticks his hand out to me, smiling. “Eddie.” 

“Emilia,” I say, returning the handshake. 

“What ya got for me, Eddie boy?” Joe asks, rubbing his hands together, and I realize I’m not going to be crossing items off my shopping list for a while. Not that I’m surprised. Visit’s to Joe’s always end up being more social in nature than they are productive or efficient. 

Eddie puts the bag on the counter, then starts removing bottles from it. “We just finished this batch,” he says, holding up a bottle filled with dark liquid and grinning. “It’s insane. Made primarily with sunchokes and marjoram. I think you’re gonna love it.” 

“Millie, Eddie owns the new distillery up the street,” he says, grabbing three glasses from a cabinet and bringing them over. “He’s been using our produce to create a new fancy-pants amaro every month, and now he’s trying to get me to pay an arm and a leg to sell them in our shop.” 

“Wildly false,” Eddie says to me, shaking his head and laughing. “I told him I’d give them to him for free and let him keep all of the profits if he just helps me get the word out about the distillery.” He starts pouring some of the amaro into the tiny glasses Joe’s slid down the bar counter. “I need this neighborhood to know I’m friend, not foe.” 

Joe takes a sip, and his eyes instantly go wide. “Holy shit, Ed Sheeran.”

“Right?” Eddie says in a way that’s equal parts vulnerable and excited, his eyebrows nearly meeting his hairline. He takes a sip of his own. “I told you.” 

“You animal,” Joe shakes his head as he takes another sip. “This little thing packs a punch. Mil, you gotta try this.” He pushes my glass closer toward me. 

I take a sip, and as soon as the thick, amber liquid hits the back of my tongue, I’m sure my expression mirrors Joe’s from a moment ago. “Wow.” I take another sip, slower this time, letting the botanicals linger on my tastebuds. “It tastes weirdly like both Summer and Christmastime all at once?” 

Eddie’s grin deepens. He turns the bottle so that the label — which is currently just a piece of painter’s tape with words written on it in permanent marker — faces me. CHRISTMAS IN JULY (?) it reads. 

I can’t help but smile myself. I grab a marker from the cup Joe keeps on the bar — always at the ready to write down a customer’s special request or a catering order in his bold, unintelligible chicken scratch. I take the bottle from Eddie and cross out the question mark. 

“Joeeeeeeee,” someone calls from the back of the shop. “You’re gonna wanna see this.” 

Joe sighs, pushing himself off his barstool. “I shit you not, it’s always somethin’ around here.” He starts to head toward the back, then turns back toward where Eddie and I art still leaning against the bar. “Ed, put me down for two dozen bottles of that stuff.” He winks. “And prepare for a crowd: your little place is about to be mobbed.” 

Eddie smiles back at him, then shakes his head. “Do you ever notice that Joe calls everything ‘little’? My little place. This little guy. Your little this. His little that.” 

I laugh. “You’re right. That’s definitely a Joe-ism. That and niche-but-relevant nicknames.” 

“They’re seemingly always music related,” he adds. “Ranging from like, obscure jazz musicians from the 30s to current chart-toppers. I once heard him call a regular named Tammy ‘Tammy Dorsey’ and had to pull out my phone to Google.” 

“Ah, yes,” I say, taking another small sip of the amaro. “How is Tammy? Does she still carry around that tiny dog with her everywhere?” 

“Hercules,” Eddie nods, taking another sip, too. “Yep, he’s still kickin’.” 

“I swear that thing is older than me,” I say. “I don’t think I remember a time before Hercules.”

Eddie gestures with his glass to the photo of me and Dad on the wall. “I’m guessing you're Joe's family?”

“Something like that,” I smile. 

“I’m learning that there are lots of ‘something like that’s in this neighborhood,” Eddie says. “Everyone is either related or might as well be. And then there’s me.” 

I shift toward him a bit. “When did you move here?” 

“Two-and-a-half years ago. Completely unoriginal, privileged white guy story: Covid made me realize that I don’t want to waste away as a soulless financial advisor for the rest of my life, so I left my Brooklyn apartment behind and decided to start a bar with my friends.” He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “I’m such a cliche, I know.” 

“Why Boston, if you were in New York?”

“I grew up in Southie,” he shrugs. “Guess there was something poetic about coming home but making something new.” 

He can’t possibly know that his words are hitting a little too close to my own home right now, but I’m turning over the similarities in our nearly-perfectly inverse situations in my head. He moved here just as I was leaving. 

“Where was your apartment in Brooklyn?” I ask. “I actually live there now, in Park Slope.” 

“No kidding,” he says, eyebrows raising. “Same. 192 Flatbush Ave. I loved it there.” 

The gears in my head kick into overdrive. “What apartment number?” 

“9E?” he answers, but it sounds more like a question, his face and voice both communicating the fact that he thinks he knows where I’m going with this, but isn’t sure. 

“Holy shit,” I exclaim, pushing my bangs from my forehead, suddenly feeling very warm. “I think I live in your apartment.” 

“No way.” He furrows his brow, like he’s wondering if I’m messing with him. “There’s a warped bit of hardwood by the —” 

“Living room window,” we say simultaneously, and I grin. 

His jaw drops. “Holy shit, indeed,” he says. “Sorry about the weird stain on the kitchen ceiling. I promise it’s not blood. It was the victim of an unfortunate incident involving an exploding bottle of Lambrusco.” He cringes. 

I laugh. “Sureeee.” I fiddle with the permanent marker, uncapping it and recapping it in my hand. “I had my money on a deadly crime of passion; it would explain the closet door that never stays shut.” 

“Oh, one hundred percent that place is haunted,” he nods seriously. “The stain on the ceiling just happens to be unrelated.” 

His phone starts buzzing, and he glances down to see who it is. “That’s my partner,” he says, looking back up at me before clarifying: “My business partner.” His phone keeps buzzing, a frantic and persistent sound. Apparently, the world of fancy-pants-liquor stops for no one. “Unfortunately, I really need to get back there.” He scoots his stool back, standing, and I’m surprised to identify something that feels like disappointment fluttering around at the edges of my consciousness. 

“It was nice meeting you,” I say, sliding down from my stool as well. I’m here on business, too, even if I seem to have forgotten that in light of things not limited to: cute guys and coincidences, memory lane and mysterious tattoos. 

“Swing by for a drink sometime?” He asks, walking backward toward the door so he’s still facing me. “If only so I can give you some insider secrets on dealing with Shelly?” 

“Shelly?” 

“The ghost in the closet. She just wants closure.” 

Don’t we all, Shelly.

There are a million reasons why I should say no.

But instead, all I can think is: maybe there really is something poetic about coming home and making something new.