“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.
21.
Déjà-vu should have opened at the end of October, leaving me just enough time to draft a plan of attack for setting up and organizing the new kitchen. I met with the architect, learned all about the laws governing exhaust ventilation, spaces, and licenses. We decided where to put the small convection oven (the only cooker I would have), the fridges, and everything else. I exchanged views with the interior designer and the two owners on the furnishings and supplies. I sweated over the notion of an entire menu, invented from scratch, made up only of finger food. This is what Déjà-vu was going to be: a place you could have a quick dinner or lunch, enjoy a drink prepared by a team of bartenders, and munch on finger food the likes of which had never before been seen in Rome (when the owners told me about it, I thought of the name they had chosen, and burst out laughing) — well prepared, well presented, and perfectly served directly by the chef. Me.
It was nearly Christmas, and Déjà-vu was still on the drawing board. From week to week and month to month the opening of the restaurant kept getting put off.
And what was I supposed to do in the meantime?
A whole lot of nothing. I drifted around in a constant state of anxiety over the imminent opening that kept failing to materialize. I mean, if you’re starting up a whole new place in two weeks, does it make any sense to take up capoeira again? If in a week’s time your head and hands will be completely tied up with running a kitchen, does it make any sense whatsoever to sign up for a Photoshop course? If in ten days’ time, your only free time will be when you’re asleep, is it worth studying for exams?
Nothing remained of the security that those months at the Verve had provided. Sometimes twilight creeps up on you just when you think the day will never end. I was bored, I’d stacked on the pounds, and pimples had broken out on my ass. Af
ter the first few days of living it up, inviting heaps of friends over for lunch and dinner, I didn’t even feel like scrambling a couple of eggs. Most days I picked up a pizza or a Big Mac or invited myself over to my aunt’s to eat. I felt like Bayern Munich the night of the UEFA Champions League final in 1999 at Camp Nou in Barcelona, when they were trumped by Sir Alex Ferguson and his Red Devils at the ninety-third minute of the match. The winning goal came thirty fucking seconds from the end of the game. In the last three minutes, Sheringham and Solskjær stopped the Germans in their tracks, with the Bayern ribbons already tied to the handles of the cup. That last fatal minute, the one nobody could possibly have foreseen, a misjudged play that brought with it an unexpected and sudden loss from which there was no return. Nothing was falling into place, or maybe I was the place that nothing was falling into.
How the fuck was it possible that only two months earlier I’d been the sous-chef-practically-chef of one of Rome’s hippest joints, with all the attendant accolades and respect and power and money and sex and drugs and rock and roll, and now here I was struggling to stay afloat, grasping at an uncertain and completely random future? I’d hit rock bottom only to discover it was a trapdoor to an abyss. Even Mambo was doing better than me. He’d found work as an assistant chef at some Greek place in the Torbella neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome, owned by Bangladeshi friends of his. He was working less and earning more. When I asked him why they had set up a Greek restaurant, he told me, “Bangladeshi restaurant no good, too much like Indian, people sick of Indian, Greek better. Easy cooking, like kebab, but no call kebab, and people come and eat and happy.”
Terrible decisions followed me around like a bad smell. The fairy tale had turned into a jinx. So there I was sitting on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, in the dark, when Matteo came home.
“Oh. Hi, Leo.”
“Right.”
“What the fuck are you doing in the dark? Can’t we turn the light on?”
“No.”
“Shit, the fridge’s empty, how about doing some shopping?”
“No.”
“Okay, why don’t we go out, then?”
“No.”
“How about dumping Déjà-vu and finding another restaurant?”
“No.”
“How about dumping the job and becoming a photographer?”
“No.”
“How about dumping Rome and moving to Bangkok?”
“No.”
“How about ending it all and slitting your wrists?”
“No.”
“Fine, then we haven’t hit rock bottom yet.”
22.
As it happens, another place like Déjà-vu was actually up and running and far better than anything I could ever have dreamed of. Matteo took me there. It was sleek and spotless, with an oval buffet table in the center. Waitstaff replenished the platters long before they were empty and might give the impression of the buffet being mean and stingy. It ran the gamut from classic Roman dishes like braised baby squid to rice balls, Scottona beef tartare with raw yolks placed on spoons as tradition demands, oysters both raw and au gratin, spaghetti with mullet roe bottarga, onions oven-baked in foil, veal liver with raspberry vinegar mayonnaise, braised beef tongue with Jerusalem artichokes, sea snails, clams from Goro, and deep-sea shrimp. Every tray sporting a label with the ingredients, vegan and gluten-free options, and the historical background of the traditions that inspired them. Specialties ranging from Italy’s alpine Alto Adige region to Hanoi. I was dumbfounded. And I’d missed the boat, damn it.
Matteo and his friends fell over themselves with compliments, and so did I, masking my sorrow and gloom. Did they have a fucking army in the kitchen? Who could possibly lay on a spread like that and pull it all together into a coherent whole? I spied a smoking hot tray labeled “Roast goose, gluten free — a traditional dish from Assisi.” I speared a piece with a fork and put it directly into my mouth, under the stern gaze of a waiter. Biting into the crunchy and slightly caramelized skin, the underlying fat dribbled from my lips. An explosion of sweetness and juiciness overwhelmed my palate and tongue, while the perfume of the thyme and rosemary fused together with the slight gaminess of the meat, which was moist and tender and perfectly cooked. This goose was my downfall well before the game had even begun. I’d never be able to make anything like that.
Matteo stopped to chat with one of the waitresses, and I had a hunch he wouldn’t be coming home tonight. I’d be on my own. And so I was. A bit of TV. William curled up on the sofa, me on the floor. A thought crossed my mind, and action followed at the speed of light. I went to my room, retrieved the ball of brown I’d left in my desk drawer from the last night I’d spent with Emiliano, and went into the bathroom. I’m allergic to bee and wasp stings so there’s never a shortage of cortisone and syringes.
I go about it methodically, with only the slightest sense of urgency and quite a bit of pride. I know exactly what to do, my movements are precise and confident: Break a bit off, place it in the bowl of the spoon, add saline solution, heat, pull back on the plunger, tap the side lightly, push the plunger just so, tie a rubber band around my biceps, open and close my fist, find a vein. A bubble of blood appears in the syringe — I’ve hit the right spot. I push the plunger down at least a third of an inch. I must have broken a blood vessel, because a faint blue bruise appears. Slowly I press all the way down. A smooth, sprawling sensation erupts in my temples, one that I instantly recognize but that never fails to surprise. Calmly I remove the needle, detach it from the syringe, throw everything in the trash, wash the spoon that just won’t come clean on the underside, and return to the sofa. Then I get up again, remove the spoon from the cutlery drainer and hide it in the drawer full of kitchen utensils nobody uses. I have no idea why I don’t throw it away, I really don’t know. Something’s not right, and the smack makes me realize it. Getting high gives you an incomprehensible emotional clearheadedness.
It wasn’t just about the job being on hold. I’m a big man, with a bit of a belly despite the capoeira, and I was in a foul mood. Just like when I wake up suddenly and can’t remember my name. I dropped to the floor again before it dissolved under my bare feet.
There I was, slouched on the marble floor, flabbier than I ought to be at twenty-six years of age, and brimming with melancholy and anger, my hands completely numb. My name’s Leonardo, I’d told everyone that I was a chef and they’d all fallen for it. I’d fallen for it too because I’d said it so often, and now that I didn’t have a kitchen to work in, I was nothing. I tried to get up and take a few steps. Bad decision. I slunk back to the floor, concentrating on my next move and focusing on every single muscle, on the exact impulse my brain had to emit to move one limb before the other. A movement. The same thing that can take a boulder or an earthquake thousands of years. William snoozed nearby. I was tired of being a boulder, so I got up again, successfully this time, and gave him a pat.
I opened the French windows. William purred and I wrapped both of us in the old lime green blanket. I stayed like that for a while, as if sleeping.
Valeria had been a fellow student at the university. We’d been together for a while, then I lost touch with her. She’d moved to Brazil and since returning had become my best friend. One day at capoeira class she waved me over to do the next set with her. I took my sweatshirt off and threw it to one side.
“What have you done to your arm? You’re all black and blue.”
I looked at my forearms: there were two big green bruises, as big as a fist, on my left one. The words gushed out of their own accord, without pausing to collect my thoughts. There were none to collect anyway, I was on autopilot.
“Shit. Yesterday I was playing volleyball with some of my cousin’s friends but all they had was a basketball, and look what I did to myself!”
No raised eyebrow, I’d fooled her. If Valeria had doubted me for an instant, she wouldn’t beat around the bush, at the very least she would slap my face, and not playfully. I loved this fier
ce and fragile woman. I’d always struggled to look her in the eye when I wanted to keep something from her, and I’d never been able to lie to her. As for the bruises, my answer had been ready long before I needed it. Fraud. The theft of a privilege of hers and a fragment of my life.
It wasn’t the lie itself, it was the easy way it had come out. Valeria had always managed to catch me out, but not this time. That was the last time I ever injected stuff into my veins; her majesty Queen Heroin departed without a trace, without exacting a toll. Lying effortlessly to Valeria without so much as averting my gaze terrified me. A few months later, I told her the whole story and she burst into tears. That’s all I have to say on the matter. It turned out okay.
I started feeling an urge to get moving again instead of hanging around waiting. As a kid I believed that airplanes dangled from a fragile, invisible thread. I preferred trains because they rolled on sturdy tracks. I was not an airplane, I was more of a train, and I wanted to run like a train. When an airplane veers off course, it doesn’t take much to make corrections and bring it back to the right flight plan, but when a train derails, all you can do is pick up the wreckage. I always knew I could not afford to get derailed — nobody would pick up my wreckage. I’ve come across a lot of heroin addicts in restaurant kitchens, people you would never suspect. I can recognize them in a flash, and that’s a huge advantage. I can tell whether or not they are going to be a liability. I was lucky, I didn’t derail.
23.
When they told me there was a place looking for a cook, behind Vicolo del Fico, near Piazza Navona, I was tempted to say no, for the usual reasons. Déjà-vu should be opening soon, maybe in a week, two at the most. Instead, I wrote down the number, called Arturo — the owner — and the very next day I was standing in front of his restaurant. I hesitated for a moment before entering the dusky glass doors and decided there was no point putting on my interview face today. Then I stepped inside.
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