The Anglophile by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

upon himself after he’d heard that his mother in Michigan was diagnosed with cancer. Nick, our cyclist, deserved a medal for pretending he couldn’t hear a thing Kevin was saying and for that record time he made a mile and a half to St. Luke’s Hospital in the Village.
    Not the day to break up.
    His mother died in November, and then before I knew it, it was New Year’s Eve.
    I know, I know. How could I let this continue? But he was having such a terrible year.
    We were dining at Roberto’s in the “real” Little Italy of New York City, Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Kevin had made reservations after I’d casually mentioned that I had just finished the “Best of New York City” issue of The Village Voice: Robert Sietsema, the notoriously persnickety and adventurous food critic for the Voice thought Roberto’s modern Italian was ten times better than the dime-a-dozen red-sauce joints on the strip.
    â€œI love you more every moment,” Kevin said with a teeny bit of mozzarella sticking to his tongue. I was already a bit nauseous from the texture of the tomatoey mussels in my mouth. I decided right then to drop the bomb sooner than later; it was just not right spending the New Year deceiving someone in mourning. He deserved real love back.
    I smiled uneasily. Why ruin his day during an expensive dinner? At coffee, that’s when I’d do it.
    We shifted over to one of the coffee houses whose windows brimmed with cookies and cannolis, and we dug our spoons into the icy rock-hard chocolate and strawberry spumoni he’d ordered for dessert.
    â€œSo no I love you from you?”
    â€œKevin—” I really was going to answer him this time, but after one look at my face he quickly brought up how his mother gasped for words as she neared death. He squeezed my hand as he said, “She was calling out her kids’ names, and bits of recipes, and Blade, the name of her first dog. She was staving off death, Shari—”
    And just like at the party, he’d said the exact right thing to get me to do what he wanted. I’d tell him tomorrow…honest.

CHAPTER 4
Crumpet, Anyone?
    I sit on the corner of the double bed in my hotel room, its tan-and-plum quilt still neat, I banish all thoughts of Kevin.
    Kit sits down on one of the two plum polka-dotted armchairs.
    â€œAre you still peckish? ” I ask.
    â€œI am, a bit. I could order up some room service. I’ll put it on my card, of course.”
    â€œWell, sure then.” I’m all for that. I’m an academic with an unfinished dissertation; I feel amazed but guilty as hell that NYU has sprung for a hotel as deluxe as this one. The conference is here, sure, but they could’ve easily stashed me in some faraway Econolodge. I think Dr. Cox, my Ph.D. advisor, was being kind to me when he saw I had nothing new to report at the start of year four. He made me swear that I’d do some cultural vacationing on my time off. “Go early and take in some blues,” he’d ordered, “or bundle up and walk along the beach.”
    I owe it to Dr. Cox to be careful about charging the university a double meal, as the departmental financial auditor will be going over my expenses with a magnifying glass.
    Kit grabs the hotel folder off the desk and pulls out the menu. “Beef stir-fry wrapper? Or shall it be the fresh fruit plate? Or maybe a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich?”
    â€œDo they have any chicken?”
    To-mah-to, I echo in my head. Tomato, Tomahto.
    Kit checks the room service menu. “Chicken Caesar.”
    â€œOh, I’ll have that.”
    Kit places my salad order, and his order for a vegetable omelet. I’m silently thrilled that he also asks for a pot of Earl Grey.
    The bright afternoon light floods my eyes and reveals every pore on my guest’s pinkish-pale complexion. I’m guessing he’s around my age, thirty-five, no more than forty.
    My