Yes, especially the way Enzo drives. Every time he merges onto 495, I’m certain he will die a fiery death. He had a very decent business back in the Bronx, but he’s making an effort to get more clients out on the island so he doesn’t have to keep making that long drive every day. The goal is to transition hisbusiness to the surrounding neighborhoods within the next few years. And there are enough wealthy families around here that there’s good potential for the business to grow and expand.
“I am excellent at landscaping,” Enzo adds. “Whatever you want me to do with your yard, I do it.”
“Anything?” Suzette asks in a voice dripping with suggestion.
“All landscape services, yes.”
She rests a hand on his biceps. “I just might take you up on that.”
And then? She justleaves her hand there. On my husband’s arm muscles. For way, way too long. I mean, there’s got to be a limit to how long you’re allowed to keep your hand on the muscles of a man who is not your husband, right?
But it’s harmless. Her own husband isright thereafter all. And Jonathan doesn’t seem the slightest bit upset over it. He probably knows that Suzette is a flirt and he’s learned to ignore it.
I tell myself I have nothing to worry about.
And I almost convince myself too.
EIGHT
I’ve never experienced quite such an elaborate dinner.
Okay, for starters, we have placecards with our names on them. Placecards! And I can’t help but notice the placecards have assigned Suzette to sit on one side of the table with Enzo, and me on the other side with Jonathan. Moreover, our kids aren’t even at the same table! There’s easily enough room for two more people at this massive mahogany wood table, but instead, another smaller table has been set up across the entire room. We practically need binoculars to see them.
“I assumed the children would want their privacy,” Suzette says.
In my experience, children never want privacy.Ever. It’s only recently that going to the bathroom has ceased to be a family experience. Not only that, but the children’s table is far too small. It looks like it would be better suited for the living room of a dollhouse. I can see from the expression on the kids’ faces that they are not pleased.
“That’s a table for babies,” Nico grumbles. “I don’t want to sit there!”
“Fai silenzio,” Enzo hisses.
Our children, of course, both speak perfect Italian because he spoke it to them all the time when they were little so they’d grow up bilingual. He says they both have terrible American accents, but they sound pretty good to me. In any case, the warning quiets them down, and they reluctantly take their seats at the comically tiny table. I sort of want to snap a picture of them at that little table with their identical miserable faces, but I suspect that will enrage them.
Enzo looks just as perplexed by the place setting in front of him. He plops down in the chair assigned to him and picks up one of the forks that have been laid out. “Why is there three forks?” he wants to know.
“Well,” Suzette explains patiently, “one is a dinner fork of course, then there’s the salad fork, and then you have a spaghetti fork.”
“How is a spaghetti fork different from a dinner fork?” I ask.
“Oh, Millie,” she laughs. And she doesn’t answer, even though I thought it was a very good question.
“So how are you liking the neighborhood so far?” Jonathan asks us as he settles into his own high-backed wooden chair and carefully lays a napkin on his lap.
I squirm in my own chair. The chairs look painfully expensive, constructed from solid wood, but they are surprisingly uncomfortable. “We love it.”
Suzette leans her chin on her fist. “Have you metJanice?”
“I have.”
“She’s a trip, isn’t she?” she cackles. “That woman is afraid of her own shadow. And she’s so nosy! Isn’t she, Jonathan?”
Jonathan takes a sip from his water glass and smiles vaguely at his wife but doesn’t say anything. I appreciate that he doesn’t immediately jump to bad-mouth his neighbor, even if it might be deserved. Suzette, on the other hand…
“She did have her son on aleash,” I recall. “It was coming off his backpack.”
Suzette giggles. “She’s hilariously overprotective. She thinks there are gremlins waiting to snatch her child at every corner.”
“She was paranoid about some boy a few towns over that she was saying was kidnapped.”
