One evening Michele asked me why I was looking so glum. He should be used to it by now, since it wasn’t unusual for me to wallow in moody silence, but today he insisted, and that wasn’t like him either. So I told him about the time I had been arrested with Vincenzo, a watered-down version, without too many details, only how this screwed-up genius of a chef had landed me in hot water. Michele didn’t bat an eyelid, he never did. He told me that his uncle was a lawyer. “Everyone hates him,” he said, “but they also say he’s a mean son of a bitch in court. He has a second job as a scuba-diving instructor.”
Scuba diving was one of those things I had always wanted to learn, like hang gliding and chess.
His uncle was right: When you dive at depth with a respirator, you can experience a strange kind of euphoria that is sometimes called a rapture of the deep, because of the oxygen levels.
We were only in a swimming pool and there was no real danger, but in the open sea you have to take care, because being euphoric speeds up your heartbeat and can make you hyperventilate, which makes you consume more oxygen, and it doesn’t take much to find yourself underwater blissfully giddy one minute and unable to breathe the next. You could tell his uncle thought he was a cool dude by the way he spoke. His explanations covered every minute detail and were excruciatingly verbose. Then again, none of us in the diving course had ever put on a respirator in our entire life.
“So what kind of attorney are you? Criminal or civil?” I asked as I stripped off my wet suit.
“Mainly criminal, but sometimes for friends I’ve taken on civil suits. You’re in trouble, are you? Sent some diners off to the hospital with the runs, did you?” he said, laughing to himself.
“No, I’m in serious trouble. What I need is a criminal lawyer. Listen, are you as badass as they say you are?”
“A few months ago my law firm won a case before the Roman Rota.”
“What, you won a case against the Vatican? Oh, then will you please take on my case? Please!”
“It depends what you’ve been up to, Chef. And no, I didn’t win a case ‘against’ the Vatican but in their court. C’mon, we can talk about it later. How about you buy me a beer?”
Twenty minutes later we were sitting in the bar opposite the swimming pool. I told him the main points.
“When do you and Michele finish working at the Verve?”
“According to our agreement, the season ends on the thirty-first of August, but they’re talking about keeping open through to the middle of September. Why do you ask?”
“Because my advice is to not think about it too much for the time being. Finish the season and in the meantime take a minute to fax your lawyer telling him you are relieving him of his duties, then pass by my office whenever it suits you and sign the papers. If your friend can’t make it, tell him to give you power of attorney. Then take a little break. You sure need it, you look absolutely shattered.”
I didn’t take any more diving lessons. Instead of winding down, the workload escalated. Giusy went home to Policoro to look after her sick grandmother, and being one waitress short made it harder; there never seemed to be enough time. A new girl arrived to serve in the dining room. She was tall and her figure wasn’t great, but she was not unattractive. Wide hips and strong hands, a dreamy look about her, and a serious commitment to her work. In no time at all we found ourselves in the same setup as with Vanessa. Michele, her, and myself at night, in the inflatable pool on the big terrace of the apartment in Balduina. Naked, in the water. The tall girl kept us at bay for a while. The evening took an unexpected turn when she wrapped herself in a towel and said, clearly but playfully, “Not with both of you together, but since we’re here, at least one of you will sleep with me tonight, won’t you? So I’m going into the bedroom and I’ll be leaving the door open. Good night.”
What the fuck! I like being chosen, and not as an afterthought. Half an hour later, I was on the terrace with a beer and a joint, thinking about the next day’s menu and the court case while Michele and the tall girl were screwing each other loudly and enthusiastically inside. I wondered whether people have any influence on how emotional attachments are formed. Or is it circumstances, basic human needs (drinking, eating, defecating, fucking, talking) that lay down the law?
And so, the final days at the Verve slipped away. Patrizio closed the bar and disappeared. I heard that he was working in London. The jazz concerts were replaced by an open-air art house cinema that was not very popular. Our menus turned into a sort of predinner buffet for the few diners who continued to come. Emiliano left as soon as he sensed that he wasn’t needed any longer, no questions asked. Paolo helped us turn out dishes from a secondhand cookbook he had bought for €10, and they seemed to be working, for the little cooking we had to do. I was having fun concocting sushi-type dishes and experimenting with savory finger food, also in view of the new job I’d be moving to in Trastevere.
A few days after the Verve closed, I had finished up and didn’t know what to do with all the free time I now had. When Emiliano asked if I wanted to go to Scotland with him to visit a pastry chef friend of his in Edinburgh, I bought the airplane ticket in a flash. This was the little break the lawyer had recommended. During the trip, all I could think about was him and the court case; not working gave paranoia free rein to ruin everything. As soon as I got back, the first thing I did was contact him.
“Hello, hi there, is this a bad time? It’s Leonardo and I just got back from Scotland.”
“Hi, Leo, I was waiting for you to call.”
“So, anything new? Should I drop by your office?”
“Well, the preliminary hearing judge was an old friend of mine. So, getting straight to the point, the whole thing cost me one phone call to a guy I hadn’t seen in a while and a dinner invitation. Your case has been placed on file.”
“Oh, good, placed on file.”
Silence.
“Um, what exactly does placed on file mean? I don’t think I know.”
“It means that you had better come by my office as soon as you can, we can’t talk about these things over the phone, you never know who might be listening.”
The second after I hung up, I was on my motorbike.
The lawyer looked at me the same way he had every other time, with the expression of someone who’s way too big for his britches. Needless to say, I was all ears.
“So, you were saying that the case has been placed on file, which means …”
“That you both are off the hook, you won’t be pursued by the law. But watch out, for the next five years you had better not fuck up. And if you can, try not to brag or even talk about it. I don’t know, say you and a friend fall out, or some girl decides to get even with you, they might ask for the case to be reopened, and the case would be reopened. Do you get it? So you and your friend, whom I have never laid eyes on, just relax. Keep on cooking, study, smoke a few joints, but do not go around with stuff on you. Oh, and as far as my fee is concerned, the secretary’s got everything ready. It’ll cost you seven hundred euros each, for a couple of letters I had to write, and for dinner. I couldn’t very well take the judge to some dive in Pigneto; we went to a three-star restaurant, La Pergola, so you guys are paying for that too.”
The kitchen giveth and the kitchen taketh away, I mused on my way back home to Via Zurla. One chef got me into this mess, which I’d had no idea how to get out of, and another chef, albeit through a completely different turn of events, had got me off scot-free. When I thanked the lawyer, saying that he was really good, he answered that to be a good lawyer you didn’t just have to know the law, you had to know the judges. The world’s not a fair place. And thank heavens for that.