Angelina's Bachelors

by Brian O'Reilly

  “I know.”

  “What kind of a place are you thinking?” asked Guy.

  Angelina brightened a little just talking about the prospect. “A little family place, about forty seats, give or take. I already have it picked out, Scolari’s on Tenth. It’s been closed for six months. I went to see it, and all of the fixtures are still there in the kitchen. It just needs some tables and chairs and a coat of paint. We could get it going in two, three months, tops.”

  “Have you ever run a business before, Angelina?” Don Eddie asked skeptically.

  “I’ve done all of the arithmetic. I know what the food costs, the rent, what to charge, how many seats you have to fill every week. And, look, this here, this is a business. Feeding you men, it’s like a business. And truth is, if my father and mother were still alive, I’d be having this talk with them. Instead, I’m having it with you. So, what do you think?”

  She was surprised that she seemed to have run out of things to say so soon. The pause that followed was too long for anybody to feel good about.

  Basil cleared his throat faintly. “Nobody should really consider doing anything until we’ve seen the place.”

  “You’d have to see what kind of shape the place is in before you did anything,” Jerry concurred.

  Angelina felt as though they had shifted into holding a private conference with one another, from which she had somehow been excluded.

  Don Eddie shook his head. “I don’t know. The restaurant business can be pretty tough… .”

  Angelina couldn’t tell which way it was going. She couldn’t seem to look directly at any of them right now, so she cast her eyes down. Maybe they had to talk about it among themselves, she thought, with her out of the room.

  She started to push Frank’s chair back away from the table.

  “I’m in.”

  That was an unfamiliar sound.

  “What?” said Angelina, looking up.

  It was Phil.

  Big Phil set his napkin down neatly on the table beside his plate. He pushed back his chair, stood up to his full considerable height, and waited until he had the attention of every person in the room, including the baby.

  “I said, ‘I’m in.’ I have nine grand stashed away for a rainy day, and I’m throwing it all in.” He looked at Angelina. “Mrs. D’Angelo, I’ve eaten in every diner and every restaurant this side of City Hall driving for my uncle, and I have never tasted food as good as you make. Ever. And never had it served by such a lady. It’s been an honor for me to eat at your table, and I thank you for the opportunity. I’m in.”

  Phil sat and Angelina smiled in wonder. Then she glanced at his uncle hopefully. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “Hey, I never said I wasn’t throwin’ in,” Eddie said as though he’d been deeply wounded by the very idea. “I ate at Scolari’s, he couldn’t touch your food on his best day.”

  “Truth be told, Angelina,” said Basil, “I’ve been looking for good investment opportunities since I retired.”

  Jerry laughed out loud. “Hey, everybody’s got to eat.”

  Mr. Pettibone raised his cup. “This town has never seen the kind of sophisticated fare they’ll have at Angelina’s place.”

  Johnny turned to Angelina. He looked worried. “I need to talk to Tina. I want to help, it’s just that I’m saving up for the wedding and—”

  “Johnny,” Angelina cut him off, “I just want your reception to be the first big party at the restaurant. I’ll cook up a wedding day feast like you won’t believe, with the full family discount.”

  Johnny grinned. “Consider it booked.”

  “Then it’s settled.” Don Eddie got up and patted Phil on the shoulder with pride. “Come on, Philly. We got to go see a guy about the liquor license.”

  Everyone was on their feet then.

  “We should go and see the place,” said Basil. “Who can go now?”

  “I’ll come,” said Jerry.

  Pettibone checked his watch. “I can stop by after work.”

  Angelina bounced up out of Frank’s chair, and making her way around the table, she kissed them all. She ended up in front of Phil, leaned her head back, reached up, and placed her hands on both sides of his face.

  “Boy, for a guy who doesn’t say much …”

  He bent down and she planted a kiss on his forehead, which he shyly accepted before he dutifully helped Don Eddie into his coat.

  Angelina gathered up Francis and his things and they set off with Basil and Jerry to check out the location and tour the new space. When she got home, Guy was sitting on the front steps.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Angelina sat down beside him with Francis asleep in her arms. “Hey, I’m so glad you’re here. I was actually going to stop by to see you as soon as the little guy woke up.”

  “How’d it go?” Guy asked. It was easy to see that he had a lot on his mind, though that never seemed to be an unusual condition for him.

  “Really great. They both loved the place, and Jerry has some ideas for sprucing it up, you know, giving it some character. Mr. Cupertino’s going to start looking over the papers for me, starting tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad. Listen, I’m sorry I was so quiet this morning.”

  “That’s okay. I didn’t expect that you’d be able to put up any of the money. I know you’re not working right now. But I wanted you to be there.”

  Guy leaned back on his elbows on the step. “I have a little nest egg I’ve been living off of since I left the seminary. I’ve really been trying to do some writing.”

  “That’s good. What are you writing?”

  “A novel.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not as well as I would like. I think I have some good characters, but they don’t seem to be doing anything. They talk a lot, though.”

  Angelina thought about that, and the answer seemed obvious to her. “You should put somebody in peril,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Well, maybe if they’re just sitting around talking, it’s because nobody’s sticking their neck out far enough to get into trouble. That’s when things usually get interesting.”

  He sat thinking and she imagined that he might be mentally filing through his protagonists one by one, hanging on to the edge of a cliff by their fingernails, or being trapped in an icy ravine when a big avalanche hit.

  “You could be right,” he said smiling.

  She felt a fleeting sense of triumph in having coaxed that smile out of him, then decided to brave it and give voice to a question that had been drifting around on the fringes of their conversation of late.

  “Mind if I ask you something?” said Angelina.

  “Go ahead,” said Guy.

  “The day Francis was born, when I thought he wasn’t breathing, why wouldn’t you baptize him for me? You must know how to do it.”

  Guy nodded. “I do. But I wasn’t going to accept the idea that he wasn’t going to make it. I guess I had faith that, between the two of us, we’d think of something.”

  “The two of us?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know,” said Angelina. “You were really there for us, me and Francis. What I really mean to say is, you were there for me.”

  “That was probably the best day I’ve ever had. The best thing I’ve ever done. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  Angelina could see the wheels turning. He looked to be having trouble saying what he really wanted to say, so she laughed and said, “Yeah, but let’s not, I mean, not anytime soon, right?”

  Guy smiled ruefully.

  She waited, but it looked as though he was going to let the moment pass. “Guy, I can never pay you back for that day, but I want you to know that, whatever you need, I’ll always be here for you.”

  He met her eyes, and this time he didn’t look away. “That’s the most important thing in the world to me,” he said.

  She kissed him on the cheek, and he could feel her warmth and her breath
close to his ear before she slowly pulled away. She hugged him with one arm and held the peacefully slumbering baby in the other.

  Angelina went into the house.

  Guy got up and crossed the street, with peril and things left unsaid on his mind as he made for safer shores.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The First Love

  ANGELINA REMEMBERED HEARING once that the lead-up to the opening of a restaurant was like the lead-up to the opening night of a Broadway play. You have to get investors, ideally the kind who put up the money cheerfully and don’t kibitz too much. You need a space that’s the right size and sets the right mood. You need a lot of seats. You need the best people that you can find and afford or your run will be short and not so sweet. You have to time it right—open too soon and put out a bad meal or a bum performance, and word of mouth can take you out before the critics get a word in edgewise. But you can’t wait too long: every night your lights are off is a night you’re not making money. You have to play to your audience: serve caviar and goose-liver pâté to a crowd that’s hungry for pizza and beer, and you’ll get panned. You have to play to your strengths: if you can sing and dance, put on a musical. If you’re going to cook, cook the food you love. And you have to bring your “A” game every time because you’ll only ever be as good as your last scene or your last dish.

  With Basil’s help, Angelina negotiated the lease in short order. He helped to clinch a fire-sale price on the kitchen fixtures, including a serviceable grill top and an otherwise terrific stove that was missing one burner. Of her three ovens, one wouldn’t get hotter than one seventy-five, but the walk-in kept things cold and the drains all drained, so, all things considered, she was in business. Don Eddie worked out a sweetheart deal on the liquor license, as promised, and also gave her a list of a few choice suppliers and purveyors of his acquaintance who would be sure to afford her preferred pricing, fast delivery, and excellent credit terms.

  Gia and Tina jumped at the chance to babysit Francis, working out a full-time schedule between the two of them in no time flat that freed up Angelina to tend to the million details involved in opening a new restaurant.

  Once all the financial details were worked out and the papers spelling out the bachelors’ partnership shares in the business were signed, each commensurate with their means and capital contributions, Angelina took possession of the keys to her new establishment. Guy walked the six blocks with her from the small real estate office where the last t’s had been crossed and the i’s had been dotted on the lease.

  Her heels clicked faster and faster on the sidewalk and she was practically skipping by the time they reached the door. She fished the key marked FRONT out of the crinkled white envelope and held it up solemnly at Guy’s eye level.

  “Maybe you should say something in Latin,” she said. “A blessing or something.”

  He paused thoughtfully. “At a moment like this, there’s only one thing to say. Bovina sancta.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “ ‘Holy cow.’ “

  Angelina laughed, took in a deep breath, turned the key, and in they went. Dusty streaks of sunlight filtered through the ancient remnants of curtains that hung crookedly in the windows. She’d been in the place before, of course, but now, for the first time, she considered the space with the unambiguously critical eyes, ears, and nose of a proprietor. Guy noticed the sea change immediately.

  She walked deeper into the main room with a measured step, as if testing the level, uniformity, and integrity of each board in the hardwood floor. A musty smell was in the air. Angelina bent down and drew her finger across a grimy baseboard. A thin scraping of silt came off, and she rubbed it between thumb and forefinger dubiously, like a seasoned prospector looking for telltale signs of hidden gold. She stood up, brushed her palms together, and put her hands on her hips as she surveyed the space from this secondary vantage.

  “Well?” said Guy.

  “This place needs a good scrubbing.”

  “I’m your man,” he said gamely.

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean you,” she replied quickly.

  “Believe me, you do. You have no idea.” Guy chuckled as he strode to the middle of the room like a clutch-hitter stepping up to the plate. “This is going to be fun.”

  Sure enough, and to Angelina’s unvarnished surprise and pleasure, Guy proved to be nothing less than a marvel at scrubbing, scraping, burnishing, polishing, and sanitizing every square inch of the place. He threw himself into each task with the double discipline and rigor he’d learned in both the Marines and the seminary, as if whipping the restaurant into shape were part military operation and part holy crusade. He found dirt and grease in places she wouldn’t have suspected could be reached by the hand of man. He buffed the floor of the dining room to a blinding high-gloss shine.

  He washed the ceilings. After four days of hard work, every conceivable surface blazed with a spit-polish shine. Nothing brought Angelina more satisfaction than a sparkling kitchen, and once Guy had finished his shock-and-awe cleaning campaign, you could have served the pope off of the floor and he wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

  The restaurant also brought out a whole other side of Jerry that she’d never before seen. He took infinite care in every detail of construction with unwavering concentration and surprising creativity. Angelina discovered that he was a craftsman. Jerry put some beautiful latticework on the windows that faced out onto the street, had a friend in the cement business round out the squared stone steps to look like ascending semicircular platforms, and expanded the lintel to accommodate double wooden doors with brass handles to give the entrance a more august, but welcoming feel. He also recovered a faux electric “gas streetlamp” from a small brownstone he’d renovated up on Delancey Place and installed it near the bottom of the steps, where it shone like a beacon that you could spot from three blocks away.

  She caught herself standing captivated and watching him work more than once and chided herself for being as distracted as he was focused.

  Angelina frequented the restaurant-supply and overstock places on Arch Street and handpicked every plate, glass, piece of silverware, every bowl, whisk, platter, pot, and copper pan. She found a bargain on an old stand mixer and picked up a pair of classic Waring blenders, two for the price of one. Her chairs and tables came secondhand from a chain store in the Northeast that had recently gone under. She had decided to mix and match styles, which gave the dining room a fun, eclectic feel that was homey and whimsical at the same time.

  Douglas Pettibone went antiquing in Lambertville one weekend and brought her back a selection of oil paintings by local artists that he had picked up for pennies on the dollar. He showed her a snapshot of a large, gilt-framed mirror for behind the tiny bar that could be had for a fraction of its original price from an estate sale in Yardley. She authorized him to pick it up the following weekend, and when it was installed by Jerry, it lent the old four-seater bar in the corner an air of old-time Hollywood glamour.

  Now that the interior was nearing completion, Angelina turned her attention to the pressing matter of getting food on the plates day in and day out. She’d asked around and found a sous chef named Pepino Della’notte, who had actually worked at Scolari’s when it first opened, before the son took it over from the old man. A reliable source had told her that Pepino had been the most talented cook the place had ever seen and had quit, heartbroken, when old Mr. Scolari’s son started running the place into the ground, buying commercial soups and sauces, frozen steaks and hamburgers, and putting potato skins with Velveeta and Bac*Os on the appetizer menu.

  According to the story, the last straw for Pepino was the day he walked into the kitchen and found them installing a bank of microwave ovens. He’d packed up his knives, turned in his apron, and walked out the door.

  Angelina tracked him down through a friend of a friend and invited him to stop by the restaurant around noon the following day. As promised, Pepino walked through the swinging service door to the k
itchen at precisely twelve o’clock. He was compact, even small, she thought, but she couldn’t help noticing that he navigated the room with a sure familiarity, a kind of grace. His step had a lightness that boded well for smooth movement on the line in front of a stove. He removed his cap and they shook hands. His were calloused and scrupulously clean. She spotted some healed-over but professional-looking scars and burns that spoke eloquently of long, active service with sharp knives in hot places. He had olive skin, gentle, onyx-black eyes that met hers evenly, and dark hair with streaks of gray.

  “You must be Pepino,” Angelina said warmly.

  He nodded.

  “Would you like to sit and have a cup of coffee?”

  He shrugged.

  She poured two steaming mugs, they sat, and after a few cordial pleasantries, Angelina began to describe to him the kind of food she wanted to cook. She had a storehouse of great recipes in her notebooks and binders and explained her ideas for keeping the menu fresh and exciting by changing it up week to week. To begin with, she would focus on tried-and-true dishes that she loved to make and which she knew would turn a profit. She had a petite filet mignon planned, which she would rotate with different sauces, but she would keep lobster and lump crabmeat confined to supporting roles with fresh pasta, in ravioli and in sauces, rather than serving up whole Maine lobsters at “market price.” Her Chicken Cacciatore de Provence was an upscale twist on a farmhouse classic that paired her love of exotic mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and fresh herbs with eminently affordable cuts of chicken. She wanted to serve a Spiral Stuffed Pork Loin in a savory reduction with yam patties and fresh garden peas, in season, which lent itself to a marvelous visual presentation and tasted like Thanksgiving dinner all on one plate.

  Angelina had an encyclopedia’s worth of soups and bisques that were sure to become specialties of the house, starters of unexpected flavor and surprising complexity that she would use to set the stage for the rest of the meal. For desserts, she’d keep it simple to begin with, serving the kinds of cakes and pies that her bachelors had always loved, maybe with some nice homemade ice creams and gelati and an artisanal-cheese plate on offer.