Page 36 of Two Chances With You

Gin walks into the restaurant. I follow her. We sit at a table reasonably far from the oven, which is putting out too much heat. I take off my jacket.

A waiter hurries over to take our orders.

“All right, guys, what can I bring you?”

“Well, the young lady will just have a plate of bruschetta. But I’ll have a nice first course of tagliatelle with artichokes, and then a massive steak, make it a bistecca alla fiorentina, and a salad on the side.” I look at her with a smile. “Or has the signorina thought things over and decided otherwise?”

Gin looks up at the waiter. “I’ll have what he’s having. Thanks. And could you also bring me a nice big beer?”

“A beer for me too.”

The waiter jots it all down in a hurry and then walks away.

“If you want to go dutch, you’re going to have to tell me where you live, and tomorrow I’ll bring you the money, okay? That’s just to make it clear that there’s no dessert.”

“Oh, there isn’t? But if you look carefully, you’ll see how wrong you are. They offer tartufo gelato, which I love, especially with an espresso poured over it. Affogati al caffè.”

“Step, where are you? I couldn’t see you for a second there. You’d just turned into a bourgeois bore like all the others.”

Vittorio, the Colonel himself, comes over. “Hey, you’ve lost weight, you know that?”

“I was living in New York for two years.”

“Oh, really? So that’s why we haven’t seen you around here. Is the food so bad there?” He laughs heartily at his own witticism.

“Ha ha, Vitto. You’re always a funny guy! Have them bring us a bruschetta right away, could you?”

I set the keys to Gin’s car on the table while Vittorio heads away. Older but still cheerful. He has the face of an overgrown child with apple-red cheeks, little tufts of silvery white hair over the ears, and a balding dome, invariably pink from the roasting heat of pork chops and massive Florentine steaks.

I look around. The place isn’t packed, and the people are quiet, not fancy, not dressed up. They are probably recovering from a hard day’s work, happy to have a nice plate of food set in front of them. A couple at a nearby table are eating without talking. He’s gnawing away at a bone from a pork chop. She’s just popped a fried potato into her mouth, and now she’s licking her fingers. She meets my gaze and smiles. I smile back.

Gin goes on the offensive. “Let’s get this one thing clear. Dinner’s on who?”

“I’m paying for dinner.”

“Oh, in that case, I’ll stay for the meal.”

Vittorio sets the bruschetta down on the table. “All right then, would the signorina care for one too?”

Gin rapidly grabs the bruschetta off my plate and takes a tremendous bite out of it, gobbling down the fresh tomatoes that Vittorio slices lovingly, not like those tomatoes chopped fine in the afternoon and left in a metal bowl in the refrigerator to chill.

“Bring me another one, Vit,” I say.

“Yum, delicious.” Gin puts a piece of tomato in her mouth and licks her fingers. “Good job, Step! I’d say the food is pretty good here.”

Suddenly, I hear a couple of voices. “Over here, it’s Step! I knew it. I told you that was him.”

I can’t believe it. They’re all here, right behind me. Slipstream, Balestri, Bardato, Zurli, Blasco, Lucone, Bunny…Except for one, the best of them all: Pollo. I feel a stab of pain in my heart. I don’t want to think about it, not now. I feel a shivery chill, and for a moment, I shut my eyes. No, not now, please.

Luckily, Schello throws his arms around my neck. “You turncoat, what are you doing, being a Bulgarian separatist?”

“American separatist, if anything.”

“Oh, right, because he’s been in the States. So why didn’t you show up at the meet point? We were all there. Now he’s having dinner with his woman.”

“Okay, for starts, I’m not his woman.”

“Second, look out boys. She’s a third dan.”

---