Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (23 page)

“
Allora
, then who is in charge? Who is able to put my show on television in the United States?”

Sonya would kill me if I said her name, so I improvised. “No one who is traveling with us can do that, but there is a man in New York who does it all the time. George Davis. Yeah, he’s the one. I’ll get you his number.”

This seemed to satisfy Gino, and he led me into the restaurant kitchen and dropped me off. Gino was not a restaurant chef, and this was not his restaurant. We were borrowing it for the shoot. The meat sauce we’d be featuring,
ragù alla bolognese
, was his recipe, and he’d be the one on television, but beyond that he didn’t seem to want any involvement. Fine with me. The restaurant chefs were much more fun.

None of them spoke much English, but I understood enough of their Italian to learn that I was the first female ever to work in their kitchen. They thought it was a riot. They also seemed to think that I was too delicate to lift anything, get close to the stove, or play with knives, so they outdid themselves in helping me. I liked that and was seriously thinking of taking them home with me. We finished prepping and making lunch well
ahead of time, then made
cappuccini
and went outside to the patio so we could continue to bond.

When the crew arrived, they found us still on the patio, drinking
cappuccini
and telling Italian jokes.

“Are we ready, Casey?” Sonya asked, stretching out the words so they insinuated that I had gone bonkers and abandoned my job to hang out with Italian macho men who didn’t have a good intention among them.

“Absolutely. We also have lunch prepared. Do you want to eat first?”

“We certainly do,” said Sally.

“Where’s Gino?” Sonya asked.

Jeez. I’d forgotten all about him. “I’m not exactly sure.” I turned my head just in time to see him running across the street toward us, waving for the traffic to stop and let him pass. He rushed right up to Sally.

“Signora Woods,” he gushed, kissing her hand, “it is so very good to meet finally my American colleague. We have so much in common, do we not?”

Not.

“What would that be?” asked Sally.

“We are the best!
Numero uno
.” He made a fist with his index finger extended and lifted it up in the air above his head as he said it.

“Let’s eat,” said Sally.

After lunch, it was time to face the inevitable: Gino in front of a camera. John had to ask him three times to stop trying to watch himself in the monitor. They finally moved the monitor, and we were ready to roll.

Sally started. “I am here with Gino Baffoni, who is going to show us how to make an authentic Bolognese sauce. Where do we begin, Gino?”

Gino gave the camera a toothy grin and began. “Here we have some chop-ped meat.” He made the word two syllables. “Some chop-ped carrots, some chop-ped celery, some chop-ped . . .”

John turned to me and whispered in my ear, “What’s he saying?”

“Chopped,” I whispered back.

“Cut, please,” said John aloud. Sally had to tell Gino to shush because he was going on to the chop-ped garlic.

“Uh, Gino. Could you say ‘chopped’ instead?” John asked.

“Chop-ped,” said Gino.

“No,
chopped
,” John said.

“Chopped-ed” said Gino.

“Uh. Chopped. One word.”

“Chop,” said Gino, and Sally screamed, “CHOPPED!” right in Gino’s face. He took a moment to regain his composure, but he got it right on the next take and finally began to make the Bolognese sauce. The pan on the stove had butter that we had already partially melted, and he poured in some olive oil. Then he stirred in the previously identified chopped vegetables, and after several minutes (which would later be edited out), the vegetables were translucent. When he added the finely chopped beef, Sally told the viewers, “You could also use a very good grade of hamburger.” He poured in some milk, let it evaporate, and then added crushed tomatoes, red wine, and broth. “Now you must cook the sauce two, three hours until it is done,” he said. The cameras stopped and we swapped the pan for an identical one with a finished sauce. We also poured boiling water and cooked spaghetti into the pot that had been sitting empty on the stove. When the cameras started to roll again, Gino scooped the spaghetti out of the pot and into a pasta bowl, and Sally spooned sauce on top. He sprinkled grated Parmesan over the spaghetti and Sally ate, raved over it, thanked
Gino, and said
arrivederci
to the camera and, more emphatically, to Gino. John called it a wrap and Sally turned to leave, but Gino took her arm.

“Signora Woods. This night I give a special cooking demonstration at Il Teatro. I expect there will be no seats left, but if you would do me the honor to come, I can get you in.”

Yeah. But, who’d get her out?

S
ONYA
, S
ALLY
,
AND
I met the crew in the hotel lobby at seven that night to go to dinner. While out shooting B-roll, Rocket had discovered a simple, family-style restaurant that he thought we should try.

The restaurant resembled the Costello dining room on a Sunday, times twenty. That’s how many long community tables were set in rows the length of the room. Most of them were already occupied with parents and their children, groups of college-age kids, singles reading newspapers, and couples giving each other “the look.” The room was alive with happy sounds, delicious smells, and a mandolin player in the corner. It was perfect.

As soon as we sat down, a waitress wished us
Buona sera
and put two carafes of red wine down on the table. That freed up her hands to remove the two loaves of bread from under her arm, and she put those on the table as well. She left and returned a minute later with plates that held cubed mortadella and thin slices of Parma ham. In Italian, she told us there were no menus but we had a choice of pasta:
tagliatelle alla bolognese
or
tortelloni di biete al burro e formaggio
. Everyone looked at me to translate.

“There are only two pasta choices. You can have
tagliatelle—
those are the noodles that Anna Maria made—with a Bolognese sauce. You all know what that is. Chop-ped meat and chop-ped vegetables.”

“I’m going to jump over this table and chop-ped your head off,” John said.

“Okay. Okay. Or you can have
tortelloni
—think ravioli—filled with Swiss chard and ricotta cheese and served with butter and Parmesan cheese. Okay,
tagliatelles
raise your hands.”

I got a count for the waitress and asked in Italian if there were choices for the main course.

“
No, signora,”
she said. “
Il secondo
è
maiale al latte.”

“
Molto bene!”
I said with enthusiasm, and she seemed pleased that I was happy with the lone entrée.

“What are we eating?” Rocket asked.

I was familiar with the dish, not from home but from culinary school. “It’s a Bolognese specialty, pork loin braised in milk.”

“Oh, that does not appeal.” John had his nose all scrunched up.

“It sounds like English food. Meat all boiled to death,” Rocket said.

“Just wait until you taste it. The meat gets incredibly tender and juicy and the milk reduces down to this delicious, nutty sauce. It is so good.” I tried to make the dish sound as delicious as it really was, but they didn’t look convinced. Hey, they had no choice.

John turned his attention away from the pork and to today’s shoot. “So, Sonya, how’d you find that Gino character?”

“I didn’t. We had a local cooking-school teacher lined up, but her mother died last week and she couldn’t do it. The research people at the studio came up with his name right before I was leaving, and we had no tapes to watch. What a major piece of work he was!”

“Well, don’t get your knickers in a knot over him,” Rocket said. “We took mostly close-ups of his hands.”

“Hard to believe that such a delicious sauce could be made by such an irritating man,” said Sally.

“We ran into a pompous bloke like that at the airport a few months ago,” Rocket said. “We were in line for one of the nineseater planes that fly to Dublin. They were all backed up on account of weather, and when they began to fly again, they took us in order. There was this Bond Street–type guy who insisted that he had to get on the first flight because he had to be in Dublin before noon. Well, we
all
had to be in Dublin before noon. He was mouthing off to the counter clerk, who was losing patience with him. So, when he said to her, ‘Do you know who I am? Have you any idea who I am?’ she picked up the loudspeaker and said, ‘Could I get some help here at the counter? We have a man who doesn’t know who he is and would like help in identifying himself.’”

Rocket’s story started the crew on a round of telling battle stories and eventually led to jokes that would have made my father blush. It was like having a front-row seat at an uncensored comedy club. Many of the jokes involved the wearing of napkins formed into nun’s wimples, little-old-lady babushkas, and nappies, which I figured out were diapers when Rocket ran the napkin through his crotch. The guys in the crew were very naughty and outrageously amusing and they had us in stitches.

Rocket had just finished telling a joke about an old man and his nubile young bride when Sally said, “I have one. The chicken and the egg are in bed. The egg looks grumpy and the chicken is smoking, so the egg says, ‘I guess that answers the question of who came first.’” The joke was all the funnier for Sally telling it, and the crew wolf-whistled and clapped for her.

Rocket put his arm around her and said, “So how about it, Sal. You and me have a little slap and tickle later.” Sally and my
father are the only two people I know who laugh so hard that tears really do roll out of their eyes. Sally’s were pouring.

We were still laughing when we got back to the hotel. “I haven’t laughed that hard in years,” Sally said. “Aren’t we lucky to have them with us?”

“They’re the best. I just love it. Ouch. Do you have a nail file, Sally? I broke a nail this morning and I keep scratching myself with it.” We were just outside her room.

“Sure do. Come on in. We can have a little nightcap.”

When Sally opened the door, there was an envelope on the floor. “You’ve got mail,” I said mimicking the AOL mail-call sound.

“See what it is. I’ll get the nail file.”

I opened the envelope, which had the hotel’s logo on it, and scanned the note.

“I am here in the hotel, room 321. Call. George.”

Mannaggia
.

What’s he doing in my world?
—
Eddy Arnold

I
woke up Monday morning with a strange sense of dread. At first I thought I might have had a bad dream, and I tried to remember what it was. Then I remembered that it was worse than a bad dream: it was a nightmare. Last night, when I had handed the note to Sally, it was as if I’d thrown a bucket of cold water at her. She’d read it and said, “I’ll have to call him. I’ll see you tomorrow, honey.” And that was it. No nightcap. No more laughing. No more Sally. Talk about rotten timing. Today was my birthday, and I wondered if George was someone’s sick idea of a present.

I rolled over and looked at the clock. Seven. This was a travel day; we were scheduled to leave for Florence at nine. I knew Sonya was an early riser, so I showered, dressed, packed, and knocked on her door at seven-thirty. As I guessed, she’d already been up for hours.

“Happy Birthday, kiddo,” she said, giving me a big hug.

“Thanks,” I said. “But it’s not going to be so happy. Guess who’s here.”

“Who . . . oh, damn it, no?”

“Yep.” I told her about the note.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. I wonder if he expects to ride with us to Florence.” Sonya looked as though she was trying to figure something out—probably where the train station was in case George decided to ride with us. “Have you spoken to Sally this morning?” she asked.

“Not yet. I wanted to tell you about George so you wouldn’t be surprised. I’m going to her room when I leave here.”

“I just don’t get it. It’s not as though he’s such a great agent. I mean, have you ever heard Sally say anything like, ‘Wow, did you see that commercial I did? Wasn’t it brilliant?’ I haven’t. Not once.” She sat down on the corner of her bed and kind of sank into it. She looked so defeated, and I couldn’t make it better by telling her he was only a temporary problem. She took a deep breath and clapped her hands on her thighs. “Well, as Sally says, let’s keep our eye on the target. We have a lot of shows to do and we have to keep things moving along in spite of what’s going on behind the scenes.” She had no idea how much that was. I left Sonya’s room before I could break down and tell her that Sally was dealing with a hell of a lot more than lousy commercials.

“Come in. Door’s open,” Sally called out when I knocked on her door. I wished she wouldn’t always leave her door unlocked like that, but she got so many visitors she hated to keep getting up to open it. She was sitting at a room-service table eating breakfast, and she opened up her arms to hug me.

“Happy Birthday. How do you say that in Italian?”

“
Buon compleanno
.”

“
Buon compleanno, mia amica
. You don’t look a day older.”

Funny. I felt years older than yesterday. “
Mille grazie, mia buon’ amica.”

“Sit down. Do you want to share my breakfast?”

I poured some coffee into a water glass and nibbled on a less-than-satisfying Italian version of a croissant.

“Casey, will you tell Sonya that I won’t be traveling to Florence with you today? I’ll meet you there tonight. I need to spend the day with George.”

“Doing what?”

“I told you he has something I want. He’s taking me to get it.”

I bowed my head down and ran my hands through my hair. “I want this to all go away, Sally.”

“It will, Casey, and I’ll be in Florence tonight in time for your party.” Sonya and the crew had arranged to take me out for my birthday. They had reserved a small private room at one of Florence’s better restaurants, and they all kept telling me it was going to be more than just dinner—“just you wait.” Now I thought about George being at the party as well and felt anything but in a party mood.