Dinner at Fiorello’s (14 page)

At her words, a sudden, unbidden image popped into Vito’s head: Henry, piling dishes up to load into the dishwasher. Strands of his blond hair were glued to his ruddy forehead with sweat. He had stripped off the short-sleeve shirt he had worn in and had on only a ribbed tank that clung to him. He had caught Vito looking and given him a smile. It was a simple moment, but that connection stayed with Vito. It touched his heart. The moment was frozen because it was like they were the only two people in the busy kitchen, for just that fraction of a second.

“You’re right, Ma. You’re always right.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, that’s me. So, speaking of which, you’re off on Sunday. I’m making sewer pipes, sausage, and gravy, and you’re coming over. You can bring somebody.”

“Like Connie and Gabby?”

“Well, I was thinking maybe a nice boy. That would make me really happy.” She was quiet for a moment. “Besides, those two monsters are gonna eat my Brenda for a snack one of these days, I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts.”

“Ma, they’re afraid of Brenda.”

They both laughed. Somehow the little five-pound dog always managed to ride herd on her much bigger “cousins.”

“But I’m serious, Vito. You got anyone you can bring? Seeing anybody? A handsome man like you shouldn’t be by himself.”

And again, Vito thought of Henry. Oh, he’d been “seeing” him, all right. Almost every night for the past two weeks. And then again, in his dreams sometimes. Once he even woke from one of those dreams with come in his shorts, an experience he hadn’t had since he was a boy. He had a feeling he dreamed of Henry because he pushed him away so consciously at the restaurant and even out of his waking thoughts. But his mind refused to let him go.

“No, Ma. I’m not ready to date anyone again.”

“I didn’t even necessarily mean date. But you got friends, don’t you?”

Vito thought sadly, or maybe gratefully, that the answer was no, beyond friends of the four-legged variety. The friends he used to have, in that other life that now seemed to belong to someone else, had all turned away. Not because they hated him or didn’t want to be around him, he knew that much for sure, but because they didn’t want to face his pain, didn’t know what to do with the longing and loss in his eyes, the hurt he wore like an apron. What could they do? What would they say? His life only brought theirs down. So one by one, they stopped seeing him.

He didn’t blame them.

“It’ll just be me and the girls. Is that enough?”

“Oh, let’s not have a pity party here. Remember when you told me you were a
fanook
?”

“Ma, we don’t use that word. We say gay.”

“Whatever. The point is, do you remember?”

“Yeah. I was twenty. I wrote you a letter.”

“And I cried. And I went to church and lit a candle for you, praying that this
gay
thing would be ripped out of you.”

“Nice.”

“You know it took some adjusting. You weren’t who I thought
you were. But so much happened over the next few years. There was—
”

And Cora went quiet, her voice stilled for several moments, and Vito knew she was trying to catch her breath, to hold back tears. He knew because his own were springing to the corners of his eyes and running down his face.

In a choked voice, she went on, “I learned that I was wrong. That if Jesus granted my wish and
did
rip this thing out of you, you wouldn’t be you anymore. And I wouldn’t have had—well, you know.”

“I know. I know.” Vito held a hand to his eyes to stem the flow. “I’ll be there on Sunday, and I’ll bring a nice antipasti. I got some of that good sharp provolone like you like.”

“Okay, son. I gotta go. Brenda’s tap dancing at the back door.”

“Bye.”

“And Vito?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Vito’s heart gave a little leap. He never, ever doubted his mother loved him, but she seldom said so. It wasn’t her way. She showed it more through hugs and pinches, sometimes too hard, on the cheek, but most of all through her food. Before he had a chance to return the sentiment, though, she had hung up.

T
HE
KITCHEN
was hot, blistering hot, at least ten degrees hotter than it was outside, where the temperature that night hovered around ninety-six degrees, with humidity to match.

Henry was glad he’d been “promoted” after only a month on the job and was now no longer washing dishes, at least on a regular basis. He was—wait for it, his dad would be
so proud
—busing tables, filling water glasses, and if they were really slammed, delivering plates of food to the table. For this position, he got to wear black Dockers and a white button-down with a skinny black tie. He knew his parents would have been horrified to see him in the uniform, but he took pride in it, making sure the clothes were ironed before his shift and his black leather Converses were scuff-free.

The move up and away from the dishwashing station was progress, Henry supposed, but not what he really wanted. What he really dreamed of was, of course, being a chef, but that was a long way off. He tempered his expectations by wishing and hoping for something attainable: helping Vito out as his sous-chef. Currently that job was held by Sammy, a young Italian guy who was Rosalie’s great-nephew.

Sammy was good, with great knife skills. He could keep up with Vito’s pace pretty effortlessly. Henry knew because he watched them all the time, and keeping up, especially on a busy weekend night like this one, wasn’t easy. And Vito was not the kind of guy to mollycoddle his assistant. You had to kind of sense what he wanted and do it, with no hesitation.

Henry was grateful to be in the air-conditioned front of the house, especially on a hot night like this one, but what he longed for was to work alongside Vito, even though the man hadn’t said more than two words to him since the night Henry had foolishly followed him home. That night, Henry conceded, was not one of his finest moments. He had apologized to Vito, but the apology was accepted with only a grunt, barely an acknowledgment, let alone forgiveness.

Henry cleared off one of the booths near the back, dumping plates and cutlery into his big plastic bin, thinking about Vito. He had tried to learn more about the man, but even the talkative Carmela was pretty mum about his history.

All he knew was that something bad must have happened to him, but Henry had no idea what.

But there was one area Carmela wasn’t mum about, and she had finally revealed something about Vito that gave Henry hope.

She had let the cat out of the bag a couple of weeks ago, when the two of them were outside, taking their break together. They would often walk over to Greenview and sit in the grass beneath a big maple tree, where it was cooler. Henry was still smarting from what had happened when he had followed Vito home, so he took the shared break as an opportunity to ask Carmela a question. “Can you tell me something?”

“Is this about Vito?” Carmela asked.

“How did you know?”

“Because you’re obsessed with him.”

Henry opened his mouth to deny it but thought there was no point. Carmela spoke the truth. “Did he just break up with his girlfriend or something? Going through a divorce? He just seems so, so
tortured
. Don’t answer if you think it’s none of my business.”

“A girlfriend?”

“Yes, or a wife.”

Carmela covered her giggles with her hand. She stopped. “You didn’t know? I thought that was part of the reason you’re always staring—because you wanted to get in his pants.”

“I do,” Henry blurted out and then laughed, feeling familiar heat rise to his face. “But I didn’t think it was possible. I thought he was straight.”

Carmela shook her head. “You really are clueless, Henry.”

“What?”

“I guess it’s not that obvious in Vito’s case, but yeah, he’s one of youse guys. What do you call it? A friend of Dorothy? More’s the pity for girls like me.”

“You mean he’s gay?”

“I don’t know that he’s much of anything these days, but yeah.”

Henry looked off into the darkness. And smiled.

I
T
WAS
near nine o’clock when Sammy got sick. Or, Henry thought, sicker, because he knew the guy came into work not feeling good. He’d seen him. His usually dark Mediterranean complexion had paled, and there was something dead in his eyes. Later, when Henry had seen him working at his station, he noticed how his ashen skin was coated with a shiny patina of sweat. Henry had assumed it was just from the heat.

But when Carmela sidled up behind him just after he’d finished serving a very handsome gay couple on what Henry hoped was a date, he knew the sweat was from something else. Carmela yanked him away from the grouping of tables and pulled him toward the hostess desk.

“Sammy’s got the flu.”

“What? And he’s been prepping food all night?” Henry was horrified when he thought of all the people the guy could have made sick.

Carmela rolled her eyes. “Okay. Let’s just
say
Sammy’s got the flu.”

“What are you talking about?”

She grabbed his face and squeezed his cheeks together. Henry slapped her hand away.

“That hurts.”

She shook her head. “You really are young, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I have a table to bus.” He started to walk away from her. Sometimes she could be his best friend in the restaurant, and other times she was simply annoying. This was one of those other times.

Carmela grabbed his arm. Henry stopped and glared at her.

“I wasn’t finished.”

“Okay.”

“Sammy went home. And look around, bright boy. We’re slammed tonight.”

She didn’t have to tell him. He didn’t need to look around. Friday nights were always busy, but tonight was a cut above busy, verging on chaos. This time talking to Carmela was putting him even further behind. The place was jammed, the waiting area was standing room only, and additional people waited outside. Henry supposed the heat brought them out. Who wanted to turn on a stove on a night like this?

“I get it. I’m in the middle of it.” It still hadn’t dawned on Henry what Carmela wanted, why she was telling him about Sammy. And then it did and he grinned. This could be his break.

“You need to get your ass back in the kitchen and up close to Vito. He can’t keep up with the orders. You think you can do that? You just need to chop stuff, pretty much.”

“Who’s gonna take care of the front of the house?”

Carmela rolled her eyes. “You’re lookin’ at her.”

“What about Sammy?”

“He’s gone! And let’s just say, Mr. Busybody, Sammy enjoys a good time a little too much now and then.”

“I see.”

Carmela gave him a little push. “Go!
Andiamo!
We don’t have time.”

Henry was already heading back to the kitchen, already being assailed by nerves, already, like Sammy, feeling more than a little sick.

This was his chance to demonstrate not only his willingness but also his passion for making food.

He stood next to Vito, waiting to be told what to do. Vito glanced over his shoulder at him.

“What are you waiting for?” He gestured with a wooden spoon at a cutting board to the right of the stove. There was a huge pile of yellow onions and a big wooden bowl of heads of garlic. “I need the onions diced and the garlic minced. You know the difference?”

“I do.” Henry stepped up to the mise en place station and took up the chef’s knife. He looked at it in his hand for a moment, reveling.

“Get busy! You can do herbs and olives after that. Then I need help plating. We don’t have time to daydream, kid.”

Henry got busy, bristling at Vito calling him a kid. What was Vito, anyway? Twenty-six? Twenty-eight? Whatever. He was hardly old enough to be referring to Henry as a kid.

But there was lots of work to be done, and he didn’t have time to ruminate. He took the first of the onions, peeled it, and then began slicing, being careful of his hand.

Vito looked over at him, made a “tsk” sound, lowered the flame under his pan of chicken, and snatched the knife from Henry’s hand. “Not like that. Like this.” Vito grabbed another of the onions and sliced it in half lengthwise. “This way you leave the root at one end, which you can cut right up to. Like this.” Vito turned the halved onion on its side, cut off one end, and then cut planks into the surface, then thin lines opposite to the planks. “This way, when you cut through—” Vito demonstrated. “—you get a perfect dice.”

And his dice was flawless. “Got it,” Henry said, taking the knife back from Vito. And because he wanted to please him so much, he cut the remainder of that onion into identical cubes. He did the same with all the rest. Then he moved on to the garlic, using the same technique on a much, much smaller scale, after smashing each clove with the back of his knife so the skin would come off easily.

Henry’s hands got into a rhythm, and although he worried he would cut himself with the supersharp knife, he never did.

It seemed the time evaporated in the steam from Vito’s pans. Henry had never toiled so ceaselessly and was amazed when the work—the chopping, the scattering of herbs on plate edges, the spoon slides to artful effect—was done, that the evening was almost over. He glanced up at the clock, and his jaw dropped. It was almost midnight. It felt like only minutes had passed.

“Wipe down the counters with bleach and water and take out the garbage.” Vito took off his black apron and hung it on the usual hook.

“Hey. I know the drill.” Henry dipped a rag into a bucket of bleach solution and began wiping down all the surfaces. Vito had said maybe three sentences to him throughout the hours they had worked side by side, and each of those was to command him to do something faster or to inform him he was doing something wrong.

What did he see in this guy, anyway? He was a jerk. And Henry, worn out and not feeling as elated as he might have expected after working his first night “on the line,” had had it. He probably should have censored himself, and he knew it as the words tumbled right out of his mouth to land at Vito’s feet. But regret was a luxury for the older.