“There was another phone call,” Greg told the cook.
Tony hoped that Daniel hadn’t changed his mind about coming to dinner, or that his son hadn’t decided to bring Barrett with him, but the other message was from Ketchum.
The old logger had gone on and on to Greg about the miraculous invention of the fax machine. God knows for how long fax machines had been invented, the cook thought, but this was not the first he’d heard about Ketchum wanting one. Danny had been to New York and seen some rudimentary fax machine in operation in the production department of his publishing house; in Daniel’s estimation, his father recalled, it had been a bulky machine that produced oily scraps of paper with hard-to-read writing, but this didn’t deter Ketchum. The formerly illiterate woodsman wanted Danny and his dad to have fax machines; then Ketchum would get one, and they could all be instantly in contact with one another.
Dear God, the cook was thinking, there would be no end of faxes; I’ll have to buy reams of paper. And there will be no more peaceful mornings, Tony Angel thought; he loved his morning coffee and his favorite view of the Connecticut. (Like the cook, Ketchum was an early riser.)
Tony Angel had never seen where Ketchum lived in Errol, but he’d envisioned something from the wanigan days-a trailer maybe, or several trailers. Formerly mobile homes, perhaps, but no longer mobile-or a Volkswagen bus with a woodstove inside it, and without any wheels. That Ketchum (at sixty-six) had only recently learned to read but now wanted a fax machine was unimaginable. Not that long ago, Ketchum hadn’t even owned a phone!
THE COOK KNEW WHY he had cried; his “memories” had nothing to do with it. As soon as he’d thought of taking a trip with his son to see the Chengs in their Connecticut restaurant, Tony Angel had known that Daniel would never do it. The writer was a workaholic; to the cook’s thinking, a kind of logorrhea had possessed his son. That Daniel was coming to dinner at Avellino alone was fine with Tony Angel, but that his son was alone (and probably would remain so) made the cook cry. If he worried about his grandson, Joe-for all the obvious dangers any eighteen-year-old needed to be lucky to escape-the cook was sorry that his son, Daniel, struck him as a terminally lonely, melancholic soul. He’s even lonelier and more melancholic than I am! Tony Angel was thinking.
“Table of four,” Loretta was saying to Greg, the sous chef. “One wild-mushroom pizza, one pepperoni,” she told the cook.
Celeste came into the kitchen from the dining room. “Danny’s here, alone,” she said to Tony.
“One calamari with penne,” Loretta went on, reciting. When it was busy, she just left the two cooks her orders in writing, but when there was almost no one in Avellino, Loretta seemed to enjoy the drama of an out-loud presentation.
“The table of four doesn’t want any first courses?” Greg asked her.
“They all want the arugula salad with the shaved Parmesan,” Loretta said. “You’ll love this one.” She paused for the full effect. “One chicken paillard, but hold the capers.”
“Christ,” Greg said. “A sauce grenobloise is all about the capers.”
“Just give the bozo the red-wine reduction with rosemary-it’s as good on the chicken as it is on the braised beef,” Tony Angel said.
“It’ll turn the chicken purple, Tony,” his sous chef complained.
“You’re such a purist, Greg,” the cook said. “Then give the bozo the paillard with a little olive oil and lemon.”
“Danny says to surprise him,” Celeste told Tony. She was watching the cook closely. She’d heard him cry in his sleep, too.
“Well, that will be fun,” the cook said. (Finally, there’s a smile-albeit a small one-Celeste was thinking.)
MAY WAS A TALKATIVE PASSENGER. While Dot drove-her head nodding, but usually not in rhythm to whatever junk was playing on the radio-May read most of the road signs out loud, the way children who’ve only recently learned to read sometimes do.
“ Bellows Falls,” May had announced, as they’d passed that exit on I-91-maybe fifteen or more minutes ago. “Who would want to live in Bellows Falls?”
“You been there?” Dot asked her old friend.
“Nope. It just sounds awful,” May said.
“It’s beginnin’ to look like suppertime, isn’t it?” Dot asked.
“I could eat a little somethin’,” May admitted.
“Like what?” Dot asked.
“Oh, just half a bear or a whole cow, I guess,” May said, cackling. Dot cackled with her.
“Even half a cow would hit the spot,” Dot more seriously proposed.
“Putney,” May read out loud, as they passed the exit sign.
“What kinda name is that, do you suppose? Not Injun, from the sound of it,” Dot said.
“Nope. Not Injun,” May agreed. The three Brattleboro exits were coming up.
“How ’bout a pizza?” Dot said.
“BRAT-el-burrow,” May enunciated with near perfection.
“Definitely not an Injun name!” Dot said, and the two old ladies cackled some more.
“There’s gotta be a pizza place in Brattleboro, don’tcha think?” May asked her friend.
“Let’s have a look,” Dot said. She took the second Brattleboro exit, which brought her onto Main Street.
“The Book Cellar,” May read out loud, as they drove slowly past the bookstore on their right.
When they got to the next traffic light, and the steep part of the hill, they could see the marquee for the Latchis Theatre. A couple of the previous year’s movies were playing-a Sylvester Stallone double feature, Rocky III and First Blood.
“I saw those movies,” Dot said proudly.
“You saw them with me,” May reminded her.
The two ladies were easily distracted by the movie marquee at the Latchis, and Dot was driving; Dot couldn’t drive and look at both sides of the street at the same time. If it hadn’t been for May, her hungry passenger and compulsive sign-reader, they might have missed seeing Avellino altogether. The Avellino word was a tough one for May; she stumbled over it but managed to say, “Italian cooking.”
“Where?” Dot asked; they had already driven past it.
“Back there. Park somewhere,” May told her friend. “It said ‘Italian’-I know it did.”
They ended up in the supermarket parking lot before Dot could gather her driving wits about her. “Now we’ll just have to hoof it,” she said to May.
Dot didn’t like to hoof it; she had a bunion that was killing her and caused her to limp, which made May recall Cookie’s limp, so that Cookie had been on the bad old broads’ minds lately. (Also, the Injun conversation in the car might have made them remember their long-ago time in Twisted River.)
“I would walk a mile for a pizza, or two,” May told her old friend.
“One of Cookie’s pizzas, anyway,” Dot said, and that did it.
“Oh, weren’t they good!” May exclaimed. They had waddled their way to the Latchis, on the wrong side of the street, and were nearly killed crossing Main Street in a haphazard fashion. (Maybe Milan was more forgiving to pedestrians than Brattleboro.) Both Dot and May gave the finger to the driver who’d almost hit them.
“What was it Cookie wanted to put in his pizza dough?” Dot asked May.
“Honey!” May said, and they both cackled. “But he changed his mind about it,” May remembered.
“I wonder what his secret ingredient was,” Dot said.
“Didn’t have one, maybe,” May replied, with a shrug. They had stopped in front of the big picture window at Avellino, where May struggled out loud to say the restaurant’s name.
“It sure sounds like real Italian,” Dot decided. The two women read the menu that was posted in the window. “Two different pizzas,” Dot observed.
“I’m stickin’ to the pepperoni,” May told her friend. “You can die eatin’ wild mushrooms.”