Sol Stein - Other people

"My father said you're very good in the courtroom. He didn't tell me about your technique of setting your opponents against each other."

Thomassy laughed.

Jane came back in. "That's done. What time is our reservation for?"

"We won't lose it."

"You wouldn't care to have your client join us so dinner'll be deductible?"

"Okay," I said, getting up, "I can wait for the cab outside. I can take care of myself."

"Good for you, dear. I prefer to be taken care of. Three-finger Italian isn't as good as old George here."

I caught the sting of embarrassment on his face.

I said goodbye from the door and went out. I could hear raised voices, hers then his, from inside. I walked down the path to the sidewalk, noticing the crocuses pushing through the thawed ground. I looked left and then right, trying to decide which way the cab would come from, when I heard his footsteps. I turned. Jane was at the door. "You'll be sorry," she said and slammed the door.

Thomassy opened the door of his Mercedes. "Get in." It sounded like an order.

He got in on the driver's side.

"What about the cab?" I said.

"It'll serve him right for taking so damn long."

We drove for a while before he said, "No use wasting that reservation. Dinner?"

"Mixed singles. How many sets?"

"You're a tennis player?"

"No. I play the same game you do."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Words."

When we walked into the restaurant, Michael waved from behind the bar and came around to show us to my place, a corner table away from the chatter up front.

Michael Diachropoulis moved like a younger Sydney Greenstreet without the menace. His corpulence, achieved through an insatiable affair with his own cooking, slowed him down, but his dark eyes had the frantic rhythm of a proprietor intent on fulfilling the wishes of his customers.

As he good-evening'd us, Michael's eyes inspected Francine. He would be noticing that she was a lot younger than the women I usually brought. "Welcome!" he said to her as if he had been waiting all evening for her appearance. He held her chair in readiness for her to sit, and when she did, he slipped it under her as if the chair were his hands.

"This is Miss Widmer, Michael, a client of mine."

"I am glad she is now a client of mine as well."

At that moment the attention of Michael's darting eyes was caught by a party of three couples coming in the door, and he was off, promising to return as soon as he attended to "his customers." We, of course, were guests.

I told Francine that Michael had named his place the Acropolis, he said, because he thought that even if Americans could never remember his name, they would remember the name of his restaurant. As it turned out, to Michael's dismay, most of his steadies called it the Annapolis.

I have always had curiosity about what draws people to certain occupations. Some restaurateurs, in private, will claim only an economic motivation; it is a depression-safe business, people have to eat. There is a fallacy there, of course, in that people do not have to eat in restaurants, and, in fact, when there is a downturn in the economy, restaurant business can fall off precipitously except for the fast-food chains that sell spicy garbage cheap. The real restaurateurs, the ones who develop a clientele, are like their cooks, comforted by the atmosphere of food, preparing it, serving it well, seeing that people enjoy it. These Greeks and Italians are the Jewish mothers of the food world: eat, eat , they remonstrate, I made it especially for you. Think what the Middle West would be if the immigrants had not descended upon it, a wasteland of slab steak, baked potato, and a crisp, sugared salad served as an appetizer!

When my attention returned from its ruminations, I observed Francine listening intently to the bouzouki music in the background. I studied her head, the grace of the way she held it.

After our waitress brought drinks, Michael's formidable roundness reappeared, his benign face beaming with a secret to be shared.

"All right, Michael," I asked, "what is today?"

"Today," said Michael, "is ambrosia of the sea."

"You sure it's not left over from last Friday?"

Mock-shocked, Michael said, "Would I ever offer the greatest lawyer in America five days leftover fish? Am I looking to go to jail, to lose my reputation?"

"Michael, has anyone ever sued you?"

"Never!"

"Has anyone ever complained that your food was not good?"

"They only complain that it is never enough!"

"Michael, tell us about your ambrosia."

"Yes, your honor."

"That is for a judge, Michael, not a lawyer."

"A great lawyer must become a great judge, right?"

"Wrong," I said, turning to Francine.

She looked past me and said, "Michael, isn't it better to be a baseball player than an umpire?"

"Aha!" said Michael.

"A judge," Francine continued, "never wins a game."

Our host, Michael Diachropoulis, sensed that there was more going on than even his dancing eyes could take in. He put his hands together as if in prayer. "I explain ambrosia of the sea. It is my own recipe pompano. The sauce is," he smacked his fingertips, "with little baby shrimp, abandoned by the sea, and given by Michael a proper home, next to king pompano."

Michael looked to Francine for her reaction. She nodded her assent to the ambrosia.

"One cannot refuse," Michael said. He scorned customers who ordered from the menu. "Tourists," he called them, even if he had served them a dozen times.

"Make that two," I said. "I hope your free chablis is good and cold."

"My chablis is six dollars fifty cents the full bottle, special tonight for all who have the good senses to order ambrosia. Would I spend hours preparing my special and not have some bottles of chablis on ice? What do you think I am, McDonald's?"

That remark was not without an edge of bitterness. Michael used to have a crowd of young people drop in early in the evening for cold draft beer and his blue cheese sirloinburgers ("You don't need me for hamburgers," he would say). He knew how to rap with the kids, and left them alone when they wanted to be. Then McDonald's opened down the block, and while it could not supply conversation like Michael's or food as good, the prices were unbeatable; two and three at a time, his regulars among the young people stopped coming except for special occasions. They ate less well in a poorer ambience for a lot less money, but there was a recession on. To Michael the defection of the young was a further notch in the unending decline of civilization since the first Acropolis.

"Anything to start?" Michael asked.

"First we'll talk a little over our drinks."

"Signal when ready."

Michael went home behind the bar.

Looking at Francine the Unexpected, I thought of Jane. This evening had been designed with a different plan for a different woman. I had been prepared for Jane's conversation about what was wrong with the world, her world consisting of cars and clothes, and all of it prologue to bedding the animals, hers and mine. That woman could have gotten a Ph.D. in lovemaking. Most women, I have found, know only half of what there is to know about what to do with a man once they've turned him on, which is probably a higher percentage than most men know about women. Jane had a hooker's skills without the liabilities. She didn't put on an act, she wasn't a man hater. She didn't even dislike her husband. It's just that he had to be on the road a lot, and Jane was greedy, a consumer of sex who didn't want to do without. I served a purpose for her and she served a purpose for me, like two immigrant checker players who knew only a few words of English in common but who met in the park on a regular schedule.