4

Paul clipped his pen into his pocket, and shrugged into the gray tweed jacket he knew made him look anonymous. Waiters like bland customers, and tend to make the sort of cheerful mistakes they avoid in the face of memorable diners. Drinks arrive that had not been ordered, the steak shows up done too well, or bleeding raw, if the waiter forgot you as soon as he saw your face.

His pants fit him well. He had not gained weight on this job, to his mild surprise. He had not developed an ulcer, either, which was more surprising. He ran a comb through his hair, and answered the phone absentmindedly, thinking it was the paper reminding him that they needed nine inches by tomorrow afternoon, one of those secretaries Ham hired and fired regularly, for mysterious reasons.

“Is this Paul Wright?”

He leaned against the wall. Someone about to beg to be reviewed, or, worse, to curse him for having said the worst possible things. He put professional distance into his voice. “Speaking.”

“This is Mary. Your aunt.”

He had mistaken the nervous, fluttery quality of the voice. He was delighted to hear from her. It had been so long since—and then he was quiet for a moment, remembering that it had been seven years since Uncle Phil’s funeral. Time, he said brightly, had simply flapped its wings.

He was about to inquire how his cousin Len was doing, but her urgent voice interrupted him. “I need your help,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “Anything I can do.”

“I can’t really tell you over the telephone,” she said.

“I understand,” said Paul, although he didn’t. Anything could be said to anyone over the telephone. If the CIA wanted to be bored to death, that was its problem, Paul thought wryly.

She invited him to visit her the next afternoon, an invitation Paul accepted with pleasure. He had always liked Aunt Mary, but he had remembered her as less mysterious, a straightforward woman who never minced words. She was plainly disturbed about something, but controlled her voice carefully. She was not on the edge of tears. She was on the edge of something worse. Paul could not guess what. Not hysteria. Not worry. Something worse than worry.

She was afraid of something.

Lise swore as she dragged herself into the Volkswagen. “I got Parker Super Quink on my new wool skirt.”

“It’ll wash out,” Paul said, knowing it was exactly the wrong thing to say.

She wanted commiseration, not advice. She folded her arms, and Paul fastened her seat belt for her, knowing the act would seem conciliatory. “I guess it will,” she said at last.

“Tough day?”

“Little things kept going wrong. Broken pencils. Dropped cups. Two cups, not—thank God—my favorite red one, but that nice gray one, the one you used this morning. Smashed to powder when I ran hot water on it.”

“Must have been a secret flaw.”

“Yes. It made a pinging noise, like a string plucked. And it was all over the sink. I was so rattled I snapped another cup off at the handle.” She laughed. “I had the handle in my fingers, but the cup itself waddled across the floor, slopping coffee all over.”

The waiter sized them up immediately, and met the glance of the maitre d’, who smiled them into a prime table, near a window, through which Paul watched geraniums shiver in the rain.

Standard East Bay Linen white table cloth, with a small, tufted hole near the tine of his salad fork. A fresh pink carnation in imitation Waterford. Wine list at only a forty-percent markup, the sign of a new restaurant begging business.

“They’ve made us,” Paul said, flipping open the menu.

“How do you know?”

“Did you see the maitre d’ touch the busboy on the shoulder when he spoke to him just now? When was the last time you saw a maitre d’ touch a busboy? Panic has gripped the kitchen. It’s like a submarine spurting water in there. The chef is putting on a show of courage. The assistant manager is phoning the manager who is due in in half an hour anyway. He’ll call the owner. A command center is established by now. We’ll get our ice water in seconds.”

The busboy, in his white baggy sleeves, spilled a drop of water no bigger than a nickel. The young man held his breath, and, Paul imagined, calculated bus fare to Tijuana. The maitre d’ strutted to greet two other customers, wearing a rictus of courtesy.

“The waiter usually identifies himself by name. ‘Hi, I’m Al, your waitperson.’ But he won’t now, because he knows it makes me vomit. Or, so I’ve said. At this point, I’ve given up.”

The waiter was smoother than the maitre d’. Crinkled his eyes and told them that the Soave was better than the Frascati. “It almost always is,” Paul said when he had vanished. “You know what’s grim for me is that it’s like eating on a stage in front of dozens of unkind eyes. If I drop Gorgonzola on my tie, they’ll put their heads together in the darkness and smirk. My father used to stuff the napkin in his T-shirt. Manners in my family was not sucking the goop out of the inside of our cream puff. This is a modest place. Middlebrow. In the loftier places I feel like a chimpanzee.”

“You always act so suave.”

“I wanted to interview Pete Rose. I dreamed of going to spring training and watching my boyhood heroes hit fungoes. A lot of kids hit imaginary home runs against the garage door. I used to keep score of imaginary baseball games. I like things to be commonsense and on paper. No guesswork. No opinions. Just events, recorded with an unbiased eye toward the truth. Christ, the waiter is consoling the maitre d’. They figure they’ve lost already. Maybe the chef has had a stroke. This is horrible. We should get up and leave.”

The worst possible thing happened. The maitre d’ approached them stiffly and showed his teeth, beginning the Speech of Greeting which always destroyed the last of Paul’s appetite, through all its variations in all the various accents he had heard attempt it. The maitre d’ extended the good wishes of the owner, and hoped that if anything were needed Mr. Wright would not hesitate to ask: It was the sole desire of the owner that they both enjoy this evening’s meal.

Paul was relieved that no bribe of food or cash had been even hinted at. He responded that he was sure they would both enjoy their dinners, emphasizing the word both, so the staff might believe that an act of seduction was underway, not simply another column in the daily.

Paul ordered the mista of chicken livers and hearts, knowing that any restaurant with such an odd dish must be proud of it. He encouraged Lise to sample the veal, promising that if she didn’t like it he would drop by Colonel Sanders’ on the way home.

The dinner was excellent. Lise’s veal was in a caper sauce, with a delightful flavor more intense than the usual lemon sauce that was so common. The capers were surprisingly attractive, friendly pealike shapes, but not as wrinkled as peas, and smaller. Paul’s dish was delicious. It was hard to disguise the anatomy-lesson air of such a dish; he counted twelve hearts, and knew that they represented twelve separate lives. He acknowledged the presence of the livers, but it was the sauce that delighted him. It was a red wine sauce, and a demiglaze of beef had been added just before serving. He recognized the method as he tasted the first spoonful, and his admiration for the chef grew until he wanted to dash into the kitchen and shake his hand.

“Ordinarily,” he said, “I visit a place two or three times before I review it, but I think I’ll write this one up tonight.”

“Maybe they knew you were coming.”

“No one knew. Not even you. I am very careful not to mention any of my plans.”

“Like a spy.”

“Actually, this job is very much like being a spy. A detective, at least. I remember—or try to remember—to be fair, always. To weigh everything carefully. Not to trust other people’s opinions. To ignore reputation and hearsay. To have no opinion until I have seen and tasted. What do you think of the wine?”

“It’s having trouble standing up to all these flavors.”

Paul was pleased that they shared the same opinion. “Exactly what I think. Although I sometimes think that the Italian philosophy about wine with food is that it doesn’t harmonize with the food so much as fit in with it. A chardonnay wants to bracket a food, wrap it in flavor, highs and lows, like a quartet. An Italian white, although thinnish by comparison, simply serves the food, on a plate, so to speak.”

He nibbled at a pine nut tart, and tasted Lise’s kiwi fruit tart, bypassing the mousse which he knew was made by a shop in Oakland that serviced six restaurants with excellent but indigestible chocolate desserts. The espresso was brought to the table in a stovetop espresso maker, a homey touch that didn’t fit the pretensions of the restaurant, but Paul was expansive and forgiving and when the owner arrived, smoothing back his hair, gripping Paul’s hand like an arm wrestler, Paul could tell him truthfully that his restaurant was a success.

The man nearly wept. “Was the veal to your satisfaction?”

“Quite.”

“The mista? The salads?”

He had been given an order-by-order breakdown of the meal, no doubt wincing at little uncertainties. Paul reassured him. “Everything was excellent.”