Mafia Chic (13 page)

She looked at me as if I were the stupidest person on earth. “Listening to George Michael, of course. Stupid nit-twit. I do this almost every morning. If you work a double, I don’t want to wake you up with my stereo.”

“And is it not, perhaps—and I’m just floating an idea here…like a trial balloon—is it
not
possible to get dressed for work
without
George Michael? Or, alternatively, with him on low volume?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Teddi. That would be like having sex without an orgasm. Like…eating bread without butter…like wearing a designer dress with Payless shoes…like—”

“I get it.”

“You look a fright. A positive fright.”

“Yeah, well, if I tell you something, you can’t tell Tony.”

“Oh, please, as if you have to ask me. I’ve taken the…you know…that vow of silence thingie.”

“All right. Last night, at quarter to one, Special Agent Mark Petrocelli called me.”

“James Bond called you? At home? At that hour?” Suddenly, without any warning, she began shrieking like a cheerleading wannabe who has suddenly learned she’s made the team. She jumped up and down and hugged me. Then just as suddenly she seemed to think of something serious. “Oh, my word…he didn’t call to arrest you, did he?”

“No. He called because…well, it was weird. It was about some Mafia stuff. He said he saw my light on.” I decided Lady Di could not handle thinking Tony might be in danger. Better to let her get used to family business slowly.

“Well, that doesn’t sound like a pleasant phone call.”

“It was actually kind of sweet.”

“Wonderful, darling! I am so happy for you. What else did you talk about?”

“Well, then he started saying wasn’t it a shame we were from…you know…two different worlds. He said something like, ‘Imagine if I sold women’s shoes.’ Some ordinary job like that.”

“Hmm. Maybe he’s a foot fetishist. I dated one of those.”

“No, he’s not. But we did just have this weird conversation where we sort of pretended to be people we’re not. I mean, I was me, but I said my parents were teachers. And we just had this great late-night conversation.”

“Teachers?”

“I knew this would be more trouble than it was worth. Di, forget all that. Focus on the important stuff. He called me. To talk sexy. Suffice it to say we spoke into the wee hours.”

“Phone sex?”

“No. But sexy. Very sexy. When we said good night, we were positively whispering sweet nothings.”

“How exciting!”

“But you forget that 1) I am already dating Robert, and 2) Mark’s an FBI agent, Di. If you thought Robert was the equivalent of me bringing Freddie Krueger home to meet the parents, imagine me bringing home a man with a badge.”

“First of all, you’re not dating Robert exclusively. Neither one of you has said anything about that. You can have both. You’re a chef. Life is a smorgasbord. Why make do with a red plate special?”

“Blue plate.”

“Fine. Blue. Red. Have it your way.”

“Because it’s not my style.”

“Well…there is a chemistry between you and James Bond.”

“I don’t want to admit you’re right. But you are, and I can’t figure out why. Is it forbidden fruit?”

“What? Like he’s a giant kiwi or something?”

“You know. That Romeo and Juliet thing?”

“No, Teddi. I have known you eight years now, and you are never like this. Plus, you’ve met cops before. Remember that blind date?”

“A disaster. But the whole thing is it can never, never work. So I just have to hope he never calls me again. There’re just too many obstacles. Besides, from his side of things, what he’s doing is probably illegal.”

“Perfect!”

“Perfect?”

“Don’t you get it? It means he bends the rules. Your family bends the rules. You’re not so terribly different, after all.”

“Di, I think Wham! has massaged your brain for the last time. When my family bends the rules, it means twenty phones in the basement.”

“Well, why should anyone care how many telephone lines a person has? This is a free country. Or at least it’s supposed to be. In England they don’t care how many telephones you have. I bet Queen Elizabeth has a hundred phone lines in Buckingham Palace. Maybe two hundred.”

“Diana, the queen isn’t taking
book!
Telephone lines—that many—are a sure sign of being a bookie. So, Exhibit A: the Marcellos. Bookies. Loansharks. Break a few legs. Bury a few bodies. Have intimate knowledge of Jimmy Hoffa’s demise. Exhibit B: Special Agent Mark Petrocelli. Fed haircut. Goes on surveillance. Gets his jones on for a girl and calls her late at night. These are not equal rule-breakings. One side is very, very extreme. And one is very, very mild.”

“Exactly what I said. Perfect match.”

“I give up. You don’t listen to a thing anyone says, do you.”

“No. Of course not. I am very happy for you, darling.”

I shook my head and went back to my room to crash. If my father thought Robert Wharton was “wormy,” I could just imagine what sort of twelve-word expletive-filled diatribe would fly from his mouth if he ever heard his daughter had become infatuated with an FBI agent.

“B
oss, you look like somethin’ my brother once saw hiding in the subway.”

“Thanks so much, Leon.”

“I mean it. Somebody saw you in my neighborhood they’d take you back out in the alley and shoot you.”

“Again, thank you. You know how to make a girl feel special. And I must say, your own bald head is needing a bit of a shave tonight.”

He ran his hand over his head. He was done cooking for the day. “Nah, boss lady, I’m growin’ out my hair.”

“Growing it out, are we?”

“Yup. Me and Chef Jeff. We decided to grow dreads together.”

“Together? Leon…Jeff has stringy blond hair.”

“You wash it with salt water. It’ll get good and dread.”

“Wonderful. What a pair you two will be. And you think
I
look like something hiding in the subway?”

“Yeah. And you look sad, too. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Leon.”

“Hey, Luis. Don’t she look b-a-a-a-d today?” He said
bad
in the way my mother does, with multiple syllables.

Luis looked at me with his remaining good eye and nodded. “Very bad. Very, very bad, man.”

I lifted a small cleaver I used to cut pieces of meat. “Leon, get out of my kitchen or I’ll shave your head with this.”

He held up his hands. “All right, boss lady. All right. And by the way…Cammie quit today.”

“What?”

“Quinn’s called in Angela, some girl he knows, to cover. But I better tell you—not like you won’t figure it out when you lay eyes on this bitch. Angela works at a titty bar.”

“A what?”

“A titty bar. You know, naked ladies.”

“I know what a titty bar is. I’m just in shock! This is great. Fucking great.”

Leon left the kitchen, and I put down my meat cleaver. If I had it in my hand, I was sure to hurl it at Quinn. I inhaled deeply and went to the front of the restaurant.

Quinn was behind the bar and already had his hands up as I came storming at him. “I know what you’re going to say already, Teddi, but save it. We have a lot to do to get ready for tonight. I’m not going to fight with you now.”

“Quinn…I mean it. You do this again and I’m through. I can’t keep watching you do this.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a woman putting down silverware.

“Tell me…” I seethed. “Tell me that is not Angela. Tell me. Fucking tell me to my face that is not our waitress.”

“Yes, yes. Now shut up and stay in the kitchen.”

“Give me a shot of whiskey. I’m going to need it tonight.”

He poured me the shot, I downed it in a flash and stormed back to the kitchen, passing Angela with her size 48DD breasts prancing from table to table.

There is a saying in the restaurant business. When you’re busy, you’re “in the weeds.” Well, we were weeded. Beyond weeded. Ju-Ju-B and I put out dinner after dinner, never so much as stopping to wipe the sweat off our brows or take a glass of water or soda. I couldn’t see past the weeds. I was like Jimmy Hoffa in the Meadowlands. Overgrown.

Ju-Ju-B didn’t like the hip-hop station that Leon liked. Chef Jeff was partial to heavy metal, but Ju-Ju-B liked reggae. And so, we cooked Italian to Bob Marley and tried to get out of the weeds.

Occasionally Quinn came back to see how stacked up we were, but he never said anything to me. He just looked repentant. Kept giving me these sad eyes I knew would be dancing the minute he was off work and in the sack with Angela or whoever.

Finally, around ten o’clock, I got my first chance to catch my breath. And that’s when Quinn came in and said, “There’s some guy here to see you.”

I went over to one of the pots and looked at my distorted reflection in a lid. Poor Robert was going to be in for a shock. My face was flushed from the heat of the stove, my hair had curled to epic proportions and strained at its bobby pins. And I had circles under my eyes from my late-night discussion with Mark Petrocelli, after which I could not fall asleep.

“Here goes nothing,” I said to Ju-Ju-B. “If he likes me after tonight, he’s definitely a keeper.”

I stepped out into the restaurant, tables down to three four-tops and two two-tops finishing up over coffee. And there at the bar sat Mark Petrocelli. I thought I would throw up from nerves at the sight of him.

I walked across the floor, feeling self-conscious in my stained chef coat, and smiled. “Hi,” I said, and extended my hand.

“Hi.”

I noticed he was nursing a club soda.

“Can I get you a real drink or are you on duty? Here to harass me or just for a visit?”

“No. Came off my shift selling shoes. I’ll take a Glenfiddich if you have it. On the rocks.”

Tatiana must have gone to the ladies’ room, so I went behind the bar and poured him his Scotch.

“Here you go. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to try the food. A little bird told me this place has great food. What do you recommend?”

“We have a nice Florentine chicken.”

“Sounds good. You look great, by the way.”

I stared at him. Was he on drugs? No, they screened FBI agents for that. He wore a dark blue suit. “So do you.” Only he really did.

I went back to the kitchen, praying my knees wouldn’t fail me. “Ju-Ju-B, clean your station and then you can go home. This is probably the last dinner of the night.”

“Okay, Teddi. Hey…you think that Angela would go out with me?”

“Anything’s possible, Ju-Ju. Anything’s possible. But I gotta tell ya, if you fuck her, please don’t let me know about it.”

“Deal.”

Ju-Ju-B cleaned his work area and went to the front of the house. I peeked out the kitchen door and sure enough, Angela seemed to be leaving with him, God help us all.

I cooked Mark’s chicken, feeling shaky and unsure of myself. Quinn came back into the kitchen.

“Who is this guy now?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I’m asking.”

“Why?”

“First of all, I like him better than the TV repairman. At least he has good taste in alcohol. And second, I don’t think I have ever seen you so unnerved by anyone in your life, and I think that’s good for a person once in a while. I sent Tatiana home and the busboys are breaking down the tables. Why don’t you eat dinner with your friend? He looks like a cop…but I don’t even care. You like him. I can tell.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, it is the end of a totally weeded shift, and I
arrived
looking like hell and can assure you I know my appearance didn’t
improve
over the course of the night. And as it is, I’m not talking to you.”

Quinn moved closer to me. “You just did. We’re made up. I’m sorry. I fucked up. But you’re my best friend and my best cousin. Don’t stay mad. Eat with your friend.”

“And let you tease me? I don’t think so.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“Why? So I’ll let you off the hook?”

“No. Because even if I do all my thinking with my dick, I can spot the real deal between two people when it comes along. Go. I mean it. And you don’t look that bad. Though I’d lose the smear of tomato sauce on your chin.”

“Great.” I rubbed at my chin.

“And the piece of garlic in your hair.”

Quinn reached out and pulled out the garlic. Then he tilted my chin until I looked at him.

“Gimme another chance, Teddi.” He kissed the end of my nose.

I sighed in answer.

“Love you.” He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

I ended up cooking two portions of dinner and brought them out after unloosing my hair from its losing battle with a bobby-pinned bun.

“Dinner is served, sir.” I set the plates down on a two-top in the corner by the bar.

“I don’t know when I have seen a woman in a more stylish outfit. The women who came into the shoe store today should take a cue from you.”

I laughed. I was wearing steel-toed black boots in case I ever dropped a heavy can on my foot. I once broke two toes when I wore sneakers, and learned my lesson and copied Leon and Ju-Ju-B. In shoes, at least, we looked like refugees from a neo-Nazi gang. My coat was a mess. A testament to “the weeds.” I went behind the bar and poured myself a glass of white wine and then joined Mark.

“And I smell like garlic, not some expensive perfume. Maybe they’ll take a cue from that, too.”

“I like a woman who smells like garlic. My last name is Petrocelli, after all.”

“That’s right. I’d almost forgotten.”

“How could you forget me? I sure as hell can’t forget you. In fact, the most annoying thing is all day long down at that shoe store, every time my mind wanders, it’s wandering to you.”

“Sure. I bet. I hear shoe salesmen are dedicated to their jobs 24/7.”

“Well, you can pledge your mind to the shoe business, but not your heart.” He plucked the purple flower in the bud vase on the table and said, “Allow me?”

I nodded, and he leaned over and tucked the flower into my hair.

“Perfect.”

“Goes with the sauce on my coat, don’t you think?”

“No. It goes with your hair. You have the kind of hair a man could get lost in.”

“Yeah, but it’s exceedingly difficult to get a comb through it.”

“I like it just the way it is.”

“Mark. You realize this is truly insane, don’t you? Couldn’t you be fired for consorting with the enemy or something?”

He nodded. “The home office of the shoe store—they’re based in Peoria—they frown on this sort of thing.”

“So why risk it?”

“I have a story to tell you.”

“I’m listening.” I sipped my wine, allowing myself to relax a little bit. It was only a meal, I told myself.

“My grandfather was once walking down the street…now, my Pops—that’s what I call him—he is a guy who tells tall tales. You never know whether to believe him or not. You know, so much braggadocio.”

“I think I know the type.”

“He was dressed for mass on a Sunday when he was fifteen, and as he was walking to church, he sees this girl walking with
her
family to church. She’s got like ten brothers, she’s the only girl. Just her. No mother—he found out later her mother died. And her father, a nice man. Ran the local candy store. And Pops looks across the street and at that pre
cise moment, she looked across the street and their eyes met. And he was a goner. Struck by the thunderbolt.”

“Aah…so that’s why you asked. You know, the thunderbolt isn’t always a good thing.”

“Not so. Not so. Pops worked hard for two years—three jobs—saved every penny he had, and he and his older brother bought an appliance store. He also went to the track, won a few races and soon he had a respectable bit of money to ask the girl’s father if he could have her hand in marriage.”

“And?”

“She was sworn to another. But the girl was miserable. She stopped eating. She locked herself in her room. Unbeknownst to the family, Pops had figured out a way to write to his beloved by leaving her notes in the schoolyard under a rock by a tree, and she left him notes in return…. She was the apple of her father’s eye, and in the end, her father worked it out, and my grandmother and grandfather married—and are still together to this day. They live with my aunt, and have a room…and two rockers side by side on the front porch. And he’s still a character…puts a flower in her hair every morning.”

“Has anyone ever told you that for a shoe salesman you’re a hopeless romantic?”

“No. Because I don’t tell my thunderbolt story to just anyone.”

I touched the flower in my hair and took another sip of wine.

“Is this the same grandfather who gambled away the family fortunes and caused your father to become a cop?”

Mark nodded. “But I was always torn between the romance of the gambler and the guy who bent the rules, and the father who walked the straight and narrow.”

“I suppose I’ve always been torn between loving my family and being loyal to them, and moving to New Zealand, because I would have to live on the other side of the earth to get away from them.”

“What’s your favorite ice cream?”

“What?”

“Just trying to get to know everything about you. As a shoe salesman, I don’t get to practice my interviewing skills much, but I can try.”

“Peppermint stick.”

“Mine’s chocolate. Okay, favorite football team?”

“Are you a native New Yorker?”

He nodded.

“Then it seems to me, Mark, you don’t have to ask.”

“Giants.”

“Of course.”

“Care to make a wager on Sunday’s game?”

“I thought shoe salesmen didn’t gamble?”

“I consider this a friendly bet. If the Giants cover the point spread, you have to cook dinner for me. If they don’t, I have to cook dinner for you.”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Come on. You can’t really lose either way because I make a mean shrimp scampi—and if you have to cook, I promise to do the dishes.”

“All right, then.”

He smiled and then said, “We better eat or this meal’s going to get cold.”

Somehow, we made it through the entire rest of the meal without ever mentioning the Marcellos, the Gallos, the FBI, illegal bookmaking, or even good and evil. We simply ate, and laughed. A lot.

By the time we were through with our meal, the place was empty. Quinn came over to the table with two sambucas.

“Compliments of the house.” He set them on the table. He stuck his hand out. “Quinn Gallo.”

“Mark Petrocelli…nice to meet you.”

“Teddi…back door’s locked. Alarm on. Lock up front when you leave. I’m off to meet Tatiana.”

I looked up at him.

“No, no. Don’t act all pissy. What you said the other day made sense. I just hadn’t seen it.”

“Quinn, not Tatiana—”

He put his hands up. “Enjoy your sambuca.”

He left and turned the volume up slightly on the Andrea Bocelli CD playing in the background.

“You ever think about leaving New York?” Mark asked me. “Opening a place somewhere else?”

I shook my head. “New York’s in my blood. Kind of like cooking. Kind of like Quinn. He’s hopeless, but I think I’m stuck with him. What about you?”

“Nah. I’m a New Yorker, too. Hooked on my bagel and schmear.”

“You may be a New Yorker, but you have this Gary Cooper sensibility. This Midwestern white-hat cowboy thing going on.”