The Food of Love (9 page)

‘This isn’t a pizza, it’s a pancake,’ a student called Rick muttered, poking his food with a finger. ‘Do the words “deep” and

“pan” mean nothing to these people?’ The boys had all ordered

side salads. Laura almost told them that in Italy you had the salad afterwards, but thought better of it.

‘Who’s got the ketchup?’ another student called. Rick produced

from his backpack a bottle of Heinz Tomato Sauce, which

was ceremoniously passed around the table.

A mobile phone rang. It took Laura a few moments to work

out that it was hers, since for some reason it was now playing the Cream classic ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. Then she realised

Tommaso must have changed it while she’d been in the shower. ‘Pronto^ she said cautiously.

It was Tommaso. ‘Laura! Do you like your new ringtone?’

‘Thank you. I love it.’

“I don’t know why I called you. I just can’t stop thinking about last night,’ he said dreamily.

She lowered her voice. “Me too.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a night quite like that before.’

“Me neither.’ She remembered the taste of that zabaione. ‘It

was fantastic’ She blushed a little.

‘When can I see you again?’

‘Well, I guess I’m free on Saturday.’

He sighed. ‘Unfortunately Saturday is our busiest night. But I

can get Sunday off

‘OK. Would you like to go to a movie?’

‘No, I’d like to cook for you,’ Tommaso said. ‘Something really

special.’

Just the sound of his voice was enough to make her blush

again. ‘OK. I’ll look forward to it. Ciao, Tommaso.’

‘Ciao for now, Laura.’

‘Seafood,’ Tommaso hissed.

‘What?’ Bruno said. He was busy making a series of tiny

meringues stuffed with soft chestnut paste and hard nuggets of

chopped fresh pistachio.

‘Next time, we’ll give Laura frutti di mare? Tommaso, who

was in the middle of service, pushed a pile of dirty bowls into the sink and dashed back to the pass, where a neat line of plated dishes waited to be carried into the restaurant. ‘First, it will make her horny, and second, once she’s had a few oysters in her mouth

she’s hardly likely to object to playing trombone with my belino for dessert,’ he called gleefully as he spun out of the kitchen doors into the restaurant, a tray held over his head in one hand like the swirl of a matador’s cape.

Bruno opened his mouth. He wanted to point out that the art

of culinary seduction required a little more subtlety than that, but his friend had already gone.

Although the centre of Rome is only twelve miles from the sea,

the excitements of the city have always tended to distract its inhabbitants from the pleasures of the coast. Eels from the Tiber are a

traditional Roman delicacy - pan-cooked with soft onions, garlic, chilli, tomatoes and white wine - but a much more common dish

is baccala, preserved salt-cured cod, which is fried in thin strips, then simmered in a tomato sauce flavoured with anchovies, pine

nuts and raisins. For really good, fresh fish you are better off heading either up or down the coast, towards Civitavecchia to the

north or Gaeta to the south.

‘I don’t understand,’ Tommaso said when Bruno explained all

this to him the next day. ‘Am I meant to go all the way to

Civitavecchia just to bring back some fish?’

“I thought perhaps, instead of bringing the seafood to Laura,

you could take Laura to the seafood,’ Bruno suggested.

Tommaso’s brow furrowed. ‘No, I still don’t get it. How will

that work?’

‘You could borrow Gennaro’s van and drive her to the sea.

You could even do some surfing, if you go far enough. Then you

just build a charcoal grill on the beach.’

Tommaso looked a little shifty. ‘But that will mean I have to

cook.’

‘Yes, but grilled fish?’

‘My grilled fish,’ Tommaso said sadly, ‘won’t be as good as your grilled fish. You have to come too.’ He brightened. “I know. I’ll pretend to be giving you instructions, so it’ll look as though

you’re preparing the fish under my guidance.’ Tommaso nodded

enthusiastically. He rather liked the idea of talking to Bruno like a chef. After all, he’d watched enough of them over the years, giving their underlings hell. ‘And, ah, afterwards … well, you’ll just have to go for a walk or something.’

‘I’m not sure—’ Bruno began.

“I like it,’ Tommaso said. ‘We’ll have a romantic day at the seaside, just the three of us. Well, two of us. Well, three. You know

what I mean.’

Bruno opened his mouth to protest. The thought of playing

gooseberry for a whole day when he could be back in his kitchen, working on new recipes, didn’t appeal at all.

‘Oh, come on,’ Tomasso said impatiently. ‘What else are you

doing this weekend? Nothing. Besides, Laura’s got a roommate,

another American. Apparently she’s as hot as hell. I’ll get her to come along too. It’ll be a double date. You just have to remember to pretend that I’m the one who can cook. How big a deal is

that?’

There were two very good reasons why Bruno agreed to go to the

sea with Tommaso, and neither had anything to do with the

chance of a double date.

Years ago, when he had first come to Rome, he had been forced

to take the only restaurant job open to someone without any

qualifications: a waiter. He had been terrible at it. Distracted by the food that was coming out of the kitchen, he had forgotten

which table was which and even mixed up the bills. Only the

quick-thinking of another young waiter, who saw what was going

on and intervened to sort the problems out before anyone

noticed, prevented him from being fired on his first day. That

waiter was Tommaso. Taking Bruno under his wing, Tommaso

taught him the rudiments of the job and covered for him when

Bruno drifted off into one of his frequent culinary-inspired daydreams.

He showed Bruno how to steal tips instead of sharing

them with the maitre d’; how to magic half-full bottles of wine

and spirits away at the end of the shift; and how to pocket enough food from the kitchen to keep from being hungry on their rare

days off. In return, Bruno had cooked the stolen food for them

both. Tommaso only needed to take one mouthful to realise his

new friend had talent. It was Tommaso who pushed Bruno into

attending catering school to get the all-important qualifications, Tommaso who made sure he kept getting a share of the tips while

he was studying, Tommaso who let him stay in his apartment and

cook instead of paying rent. By the time Bruno had graduated he

easily came top of his year - Tommaso was still a junior waiter, happily wasting his time flirting with pretty foreign guests. But Tommaso was as loyal to his friends as he was fickle to his women.

He knew through his network of contacts where the best job

openings were, and he always made sure that Bruno was working

in the best place. Bruno owed Tommaso a great deal, and he

found it very hard to refuse him anything.

The second reason was even simpler. He rarely got a chance to

cook really good fish.

On the other side of the city, Umberto Erfolini, the Italian who had been forcibly ejected from Templi, paid a visit to an impressive house in a quiet suburb. He walked into the entrance hall and

stopped so that the two large men who waited there could pat him down before they nodded him forward towards the study.

In the study, the man in the chair put down his cigar and stood

up. Umberto, who was himself only five foot eight, towered over

him. ‘Umberto. My old friend,’ the other man said, reaching up

to kiss Umberto on both cheeks, ‘how are you? And how is my

beautiful goddaughter?’

‘Federica’s well, Teo. Well, but a little upset.’

‘Upset?’ Teodoro asked, an expression of concern flitting across his face. ‘Why?’

“I took her to a restaurant to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, a fancy foreign place. I know,’ he shrugged, ‘what was I thinking of? But I thought it would be an interesting experience for us. It was a restaurant called Templi, up in Montespaccato.’

‘And?’ Teodoro prompted gently.

‘Well, it was an experience. But a humiliating one.’

As Umberto explained, the expression on the other man’s face

darkened. ‘Truly, Umberto, this does require our attention, and I want to thank you for bringing it to my notice. But be patient. Si pigliano piu mosche in una gocciola di miele che in un barile

d’aceto.’

“You’ll catch more flies in a drop of honey than in a barrel of vinegar.’

They had agreed to meet at Gennaro’s before setting off. This was partly because it was necessary to fortify themselves for the trip with several coffees and a croissant or two, but also because

Gennaro had removed the fuel pump from the old van’s engine to

see if it would improve the performance of his Gaggia, and they

had to wait while it was returned to the vehicle.

It was the football season, and all of Rome seemed to be wearing eitlier the yellow and purple colours of Roma or the blue and white of Lazio. The fans, or tifosi - the name means, literally, those afflicted by typhus - had festooned their team’s colours from every car window and balcony. In Gennaro’s bar there was much hilarity because Sisto had lost a bet with Vincent and, as a penalty, had been forced to wear the colours of the hated Romanisti for a day.

‘What he doesn’t know is that I’ve got the Lazio strip on

underneath,’ Sisto confided to Bruno. ‘As soon as we get near the ground I’m going to take these damn things off and burn them,

bet or no bet.’

Bruno wasn’t listening. He had just seen two girls walking

down the street towards them. They were carrying backpacks and

rolled-up towels, and each of them was holding a bottle of water.

They were dressed, in fact, for a day at the beach. One of them

was a typical Tommaso girl - pretty, curvaceous and tanned, with a mass of dyed blonde hair and a small tattoo. And the other - he simply couldn’t believe it - was the girl, the girl with the freckled shoulders he had seen so many times around Trastevere. His

whole body quivered like a plucked string.

‘Ah,’ said Tommaso. ‘Excellent. Here are the girls.’

The two girls were pointing at the van, and then they were

coming into the bar. Bruno wanted to kiss his friend. For once

everything had worked out perfectly. He would be spending the

whole day with her at the beach! That was even better than talking to her at the market.

His exultation was quickly followed by a spasm of terror. What

if she didn’t like him or, worse still, what if he was so tongue-tied that he never got the chance to impress her? But then he relaxed.

He would be cooking, and that meant he wouldn’t get nervous he

was never nervous when he cooked.

The two girls had come into the bar by now, in a flurry of buongiorno’s. Vincent and Sisto were staring open-mouthed at Tommaso’s girl. Bruno, his heart pounding, waited to be introduced to her roommate.

Sisto quickly pulled off his Roma shirt, revealing the blue and

white of Lazio underneath. ‘There are limits,’ he whispered to

Bruno. ‘My God but you’re a lucky bastard.’

“I know,’ Bruno said. He still couldn’t believe it himself.

“I mean, Tommaso’s girl is all right, but she’s nothing compared to what you’ve landed yourself.’

‘Bruno, this is Laura,’ Tommaso said as he did the introductions.

‘Laura, Bruno; Judith, Bruno.’

‘Hello, Laura,’ Bruno said. Then he turned towards his girl,

holding out his hand with an awkward smile on his face. He wondered if she would remember him from the market. ‘Hello,

Judith,’ he said softly.

The girl laughed. ‘No. I’m Laura. She’s Judith.’ She pointed at

the girl with the tattoo.

‘Hey, Bruno,’ the other girl said. ‘Nice to meet you.’

Bruno was still staring at the first girl. ‘You can’t be.’

“I can’t?’

“I mean—’ He desperately tried to salvage the situation. ‘Right.

So you’re Laura. And she’s Judith.’

‘That’s the general idea,’ Judith agreed.

‘Nice going, Romeo,’ Sisto muttered under his breath. He

stepped forward and shook Judith’s hand himself. ‘Hi. I’m Sisto.’

‘And you’re going out with Tommaso,’ Bruno blundered on.

‘Well, of course you are. You’re Laura. For a second there, I was confused. You see, I’ve seen you before. In the market. Do you

remember?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Laura said, looking puzzled.

Bruno stopped, his face burning red. She didn’t remember

him. He was looking more of an idiot with every word that he

said.

‘What is wrong with you?’ Tommaso hissed as they loaded up the

van with borrowed surfboards and wetsuits.

Bruno shrugged. Now that the embarrassment had worn off,

there was the awful realisation that he was actually helping

Tommaso in his seduction of Laura. As they drove out towards the coast, Bruno found himself staring miserably at the floor of the van.

‘Sorry,’ Laura muttered in Judith’s ear. ‘He’s not a bundle of

laughs, I’m afraid, your Bruno.’

‘Don’t worry. Perhaps he’ll perk up later.’ The van swayed

from side to side as Tommaso swerved exuberantly around a motorino. The girls yelled. Bruno, lost in thought, seemed not to notice.

Judith was telling the story of their wedding rings.

‘There was a girl in the class who said that if we wanted to avoid getting hassled we should buy ourselves some wedding rings,’ she explained. ‘So Laura and I found this little jewellery shop, just over the river, and tried to explain what we wanted. Only our