T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

“Momento, momento,” Albert said, flashing past her with a pan of béarnaise in one hand, a mayonnaise jar of vivid orange sea-urchin roe in the other. He liked to use his rudimentary Italian when he was cooking. It made him feel impregnable.

Meanwhile, Torrey shuffled halfheartedly across the floor and positioned herself behind the porthole in the “out” door, where, for lack of anything better to do, she could watch the customers eat, drink, smoke, and finger their pastry. The béarnaise was puddling up beautifully on a plate of grilled baby summer squash, the roe dolloped on a fillet of monkfish nestled snug in its cruet, and Albert was thinking of offering Torrey battle pay if she’d stay and wash dishes, when she let out a low whistle. This was no cab or encore whistle, but the sort of whistle that expresses surprise or shock — a “Holy cow!” sort of whistle. It stopped Albert cold. Something bad was about to happen, he knew it, just as surely as he knew that the tiny hairs rimming his bald spot had suddenly stiffened up like hackles.

“What?” he demanded. “What is it?”

Torrey turned to him, slow as an executioner. “I see you got Willa Frank out there tonight — everything going okay?”

The monkfish burst into flame, the béarnaise turned to water, Marie dropped two cups of coffee and a plate of homemade millefoglie.

No matter. In an instant, all three of them were pressed up against the little round window, as intent as torpedoers peering through a periscope. “Which one?” Albert hissed, his heart doing paradiddles.

“Over there?” Torrey said, making it a question. “With Jock — Jock Mc-Namee? The one with the blond wig?”

Albert looked, but he couldn’t see. “Where? Where?” he cried.

“There? In the corner?”

In the corner, in the corner. Albert was looking at a young woman, a girl, a blonde in a black cocktail dress and no brassiere, seated across from a hulking giant with a peroxide-streaked flattop. “Where?” he repeated.

Torrey pointed.

“The blonde?” He could feel Marie go slack beside him. “But that can’t be—” Words failed him. This was Willa Frank, doyenne of taste, grande dame of haute cuisine, ferreter out of the incorrect, the underachieved, arid the unfortunate? And this clod beside her, with the great smooth-working jaw and forearms like pillars, this was the possessor of the fussiest, pickiest, most sophisticated and fastidious palate in town? No, it was impossible.

“Like I know him, you know?” Torrey was saying. “Jock? Like from the Anti-Club and all that scene?”

But Albert wasn’t listening. He was watching her — Willa Frank — as transfixed as the tailorbird that dares look into the cobra’s eye. She was slim, pretty, eyes dark as a houri’s, a lot of jewelry — not at all what he’d expected. He’d pictured a veiny elegant woman in her fifties, starchy, patrician, from Boston or Newport or some such place. But wait, wait: Eduardo was just setting the plates down — she was the Florentine tripe, of course — a good dish, a dish he’d stand by any day, even a bad one like … but the Palate, what was he having? Albert strained forward, and he could feel Marie’s lost and limp hand feebly pressing his own. There: the veal piccata, yes, a very good dish, an outstanding dish. Yes. Yes.

Eduardo bowed gracefully away. The big man in the punk hairdo bent to his plate and sniffed. Willa Frank — blond, delicious, lethal — cut into the tripe, and raised the fork to her lips.

“She hated it. I know it. I know it.” Albert rocked back and forth in his chair, his face buried in his hands, the toque clinging to his brow like a carrion bird. It was past midnight, the restaurant was closed. He sat amidst the wreckage of the kitchen, the waste, the slop, the smell of congealed grease and dead spices, and his breath came in ragged sobbing gasps.

Marie got up to rub the back of his neck. Sweet, honey-complected Marie with her firm heavy arms and graceful wrists, the spill and generosity of her flesh — his consolation in a world of Willa Franks. “It’s okay,” she kept saying, over and over, her voice a soothing murmur, “it’s okay, it was good, it was.”

He’d failed and he knew it. Of all nights, why this one? Why couldn’t she have come when the structure was there, when he was on, when the dishwasher was sober, the cream fresh, and the mesquite knots piled high against the wall, when he could concentrate, for Christ’s sake? “She didn’t finish her tripe,” he said, disconsolate. “Or the grilled vegetables. I saw the plate.”

“She’ll be back,” Marie said. “Three visits minimum, right?”

Albert fished out a handkerchief and sorrowfully blew his nose. “Yeah,” he said, “three strikes and you’re out.” He twisted his neck to look up at her. “The Palate, Jock, whatever the jerk’s name is, he didn’t touch the veal. One bite maybe. Same with the pasta. Eduardo said the only thing he ate was the bread. And a bottle of beer.”

“What does he know,” Marie said. “Or her either.”

Albert shrugged. He pushed himself up wearily, impaled on the stake of his defeat, and helped himself to a glass of Orvieto and a plate of leftover sweetbreads. “Everything,” he said miserably, the meat like butter in his mouth, fragrant, nutty, inexpressibly right. He shrugged again. “Or nothing. What does it matter? Either way we get screwed.”

“And ‘Frank’? What kind of name is that, anyhow? German? Is that it?” Marie was on the attack now, pacing the linoleum like a field marshal probing for a weakness in the enemy lines, looking for a way in. “The Franks — weren’t they those barbarians in high school that sacked Rome? Or was it Paris?”

Willa Frank. The name was bitter on his tongue. Willa, Willa, Willa. It was a bony name, scant and lean, stripped of sensuality, the antithesis of the round, full-bodied Leonora. It spoke of a knotty Puritan toughness, a denying of the flesh, no compromise in the face of temptation. Willa. How could he ever hope to seduce a Willa? And Frank. That was even worse. A man’s name. Cold, forbidding, German, French. It was the name of a woman who wouldn’t complicate her task with notions of charity or the sparing of feelings. No, it was the name of a woman who would wield her adjectives like a club.

Stewing in these sour reflections, eating and no longer tasting, Albert was suddenly startled by a noise outside the alley door. He picked up a saucepan and stalked across the room — What next? Were they planning to rob him now too, was that it? — and flung open the door.

In the dim light of the alleyway stood two small dark men, the smaller of whom looked so much like Roque he might have been a clone. “Hello,” said the larger man, swiping a greasy Dodgers cap from his head. “I am called Raul, and this”—indicating his companion—“is called Fulgencio, cousin of Roque.” At the mention of his name, Fulgencio smiled. “Roque is gone to Albuquerque,” Raul continued, “and he is sorry. But he sends you his cousin, Fulgencio, to wash for you.”

Albert stood back from the door, and Fulgencio, grinning and nodding, mimed the motion of washing a plate as he stepped into the kitchen. Still grinning, still miming, he sambaed across the floor, lifted the supersprayer from its receptacle as he might have drawn a rapier from its scabbard, and started in on the dishes with a vigor that would have prostrated his mercurial cousin.

For a long moment Albert merely stood there watching, barely conscious of Marie at his back and Raul’s parting gesture as he gently shut the door. All of a sudden he felt redeemed, reborn, capable of anything. There was Fulgencio, a total stranger not two minutes ago, washing dishes as if he were born to it. And there was Marie, who’d stand by him if he had to cook cactus and lizard for the saints in the desert. And here he was himself, in all the vigor of his manhood, accomplished, knowledgeable, inspired, potentially one of the great culinary artists of his time. What was the matter with him? What was he crying about?