Martin was known as the bum-economist because every evening he picked a copy of the Wall Street Journal out of the garbage on Fifth Avenue. He was perfectly up to date twelve hours later. Martin belonged—or so he claimed—to the mythical underground society of the Mole People. The legend of a subterranean city, he told me, had started with the Freedom Tunnel—an almost three-mile stretch of underground rail line that was built in the heart of Harlem in the 1930s by a man named Robert Moses. The rail line was used as a route for freight trains until 1980, when it was discontinued due to the increased use of trucking for transportation. It was then that something happened in the dark, abandoned tunnel…a society was born, a new tent city, complete with pirated electricity and TV, organized under its own rules—no stealing, no yelling, respect for each other; governed by its own president, the Lord of the Tunnel; and populated by its own people, the Mole People. The underground city, even more efficient and dollar-intelligent, was rising beneath the actual city. Although the Freedom Tunnel was eventually abandoned in the late 1990s, the spirit of the tunnel continued, New York’s gratings became connected, and the Mole People built their own communication system and economy. For every empty can Martin collected, they paid him a nickel at Lincoln Center; for a dollar, Freddy, the bum on Thirty-second, would fix his stove; George the Mole Guy, who lived under the grating next to a Food Emporium, would ship to Martin abandoned surplus mozzarella; and the pushers of Alphabet City gave him cheap hash in exchange for his views on the euro—dollar fluctuations.
I had met Martin on my first day at Gino’s. I was throwing out the trash. Between sharing the dregs of Chianti Ruffino and leftover pasta in clam sauce, we had become friends.
“Do you like the competition analysis against Domino’s and Pizza Hut?” I asked, excitedly.
“You have to get one thing straight in your nonsensical brain. Your competitors are not Domino’s or Pizza Hut,” said Martin, “but the hot dog stands on the corner. If you do better than those guys, you’ll eat Domino’s for breakfast.”
A passerby tossed a cigarette stub through the bars, and Martin picked it up and lit it, smoothing his blond, smelly beard.
“You think it can work?” I asked again.
“I think it can,” he said smiling.
At eleven o’clock I crossed the street to Central Park for my next meeting. Would they show up? I had sent a letter three weeks earlier to my good friends in Italy, telling them when and where to meet me, but I was afraid they wouldn’t come. Why would they? Because I promised them 10 percent of a start-up which was worth zero? True, 10 percent of zero was still zero. But there they were.
Don Otto and Sachin were waiting for me on a bench by the entrance of the Children’s Zoo, just as I had specified. The baker, as large as a cliff, was holding his flower friend on his lap and was sitting next to the miniature Indian with his voluminous hair. I walked over in the snow and shook their hands quickly without knowing what to say at first. I felt something new inside. It had been so long since someone took me seriously that I had forgotten how it felt.
“So what’s the big idea?” asked Sachin eagerly, treading up and down on a patch of snow to keep warm. He looked up as if the Trump Tower was about to crash on his head. “What’s the company about? And who is this Lucien Verger? Some prominent financier, a lobbyist, a benefactor, a famous French chef?”
I looked at Don Otto. He had transplanted his old flower friend that had hung above his oven in Italy into a larger pot, wrapped with foil to protect it from the cold.
“See, Primrose did want to come to America,” I said, smiling.
Don Otto smiled too.
“Yeah, Don, with this fucking flower you’re driving all the chicks away,” complained the miniature Indian. “They think we’re perverts!”
“And with your tic they think you’re on acid,” said Don Otto.
“What a dream team, two perverts on acid!” yelled Sachin, then he calmed down. “So, Rosso—what is it?”
We started discussing the plan as we walked through the park toward the Reservoir. We walked and interrupted each other, excitedly raising a thousand possibilities, and at times we would stop to watch a girl jog by. When we reached the Reservoir, the water was frozen, and the skyscrapers looked uncertain in the midday light, like thirty-year-olds searching for a future.
Since it was their first time in the city, Don Otto and Sachin wanted to see the sights. We continued our talk on the deck of the Staten Island ferry, among brokers, a group of ukulele players, and mothers alone with many children. Battery Park gently slipped away. Manhattan’s toothless smile seemed hungrier now. It was snowing again, but it was no longer windy and the snow fell nicely into the ocean.
It was early evening when we got to Astoria, Queens. There was a Christmas Eve atmosphere in the happiest of boroughs. The roasted chickens were revolving in Uncle George’s shop window and dripping onto the potatoes underneath, and couples walked arm in arm in the cold air. Lights dotted the windows and the balcony railings, as in Rapallo during the July feast. We shopped at the Trade Fair Supermarket and, like three kooks in the snow, we dragged everything to 6 Astoria Boulevard: the heavy bags of flour, the cans of oil, the brewer’s yeast (to make the dough soft but not mushy), the malt (so that the dough made love to the palate).
The place smelled as clean and fresh as I had left it that morning. Without even unpacking we got down to business at once. Don Otto mixed the dough, I washed the oven, and Sachin checked that the fans blew the air into the courtyard. Around midnight, the baker took the first pan out of the oven, the pilot pan. The white lunar craters of the cheese focaccia were crackling, waiting for us.
“It’s like in Rapallo,” said the little Indian, breaking the silence that had fallen over the table. “You don’t think it’s like in Rapallo?”
“It’s like in Rapallo,” I nodded, trying to convince myself. I had given up on inhaling Drakkar Noir and kept a bottle just for comfort. That night I was too tense and I took a couple of hits. Now I couldn’t distinguish any flavor.
After slowly untying his apron, Don Otto shook his head and rinsed his neck. Then he put on a new shirt. “Told you, guys, it’s not moist enough for the oil to get inside.”
That night I slept fitfully, half awake and constantly aware of the edges of my body. Sachin instead was sleeping soundly. He was lying on a chair next to me, and every so often he moved in his sleep to change position. Don Otto wasn’t there. He’d been right, of course; a tennis shoe sole would’ve tasted better. That night I prayed to the Christ of the Abyss, not to relax but to ask for something. I’ll give you fifty cents for every dollar I make, I promised. At some point, outside, a restaurant waiter shook out a tablecloth in the snow.
“Isn’t he back yet?” asked Sachin, stretching in his chair at around eight o’clock in the morning. “Maybe he’s gone out to look for a woman. In my view he’s not making good focaccia because he’s still a virgin. It’s no longer affecting only his balls.”
“Damn, he could deal with his balls some other time! Verger is due here in three hours.”
By the time the emerald-green limousine pulled up outside, several baking pans were cooling by the open window. After spending all night at Café Omonia, drinking coffee and listening to a Greek ballerina singing love songs, Don Otto had come back just in time to mix a little focaccia. The table was set with paper plates and a bottle of Vermentino wine.
Lucien Verger came in noisily. “It’s not a takeout joint, it’s not a restaurant, and it’s not a pizzeria. Can someone tell me what the fuck it is?”
He removed a beaver-fur coat lined with bright velvet. When he was thinking of investing, he was always on edge and asked a lot of questions without listening to the answers.
“I want to help you out, I want you to hook up with the girl again…,” said the Greek. “But who the fuck’s telling me what a focaccia house is? Okay, a bakery. And what’s
focaccia?”
“Cheese focaccia is a slice of moon,” said Sachin, raising a finger. “Plain focaccia is the thousand navels of the most beautiful women.”
“Ah, you’re the writer,” said Lucien Verger, lowering his voice. For a second the harshness vanished from his small eyes, and the Greek grew calm. Was his secret dream to be a publisher? He frowned. “Rosso told me about you. You were short-listed for a big prize. Are you writing now?”
“I scribble,” said Sachin with an empty smile. After the prize he no longer felt like a street vendor on a special mission, but like someone who had nothing else to say.
Out from behind Verger’s round, scented figure stepped the slender one of Marie Alice. Since they didn’t shoot on Sundays she had agreed to accompany him as a taste tester. She folded her bright raincoat over her knees and with her hand she shook some snow out of her red hair.
“You think it can work?” asked Verger.
“I don’t know, the water and the air are a bit different here,” said Don Otto, shrugging his shoulders.
“And why are they different?”
“The water and the air are different in Rapallo.”
“But who gives a fuck about Rapallo?” said the Greek, staring intensely at the velvet collar of his beaver fur draped over his arm. “And you, are you an anticapitalist baker?”
“Me? Yes.”
The cheese focaccia was served together with the plain focaccia. While Marie Alice was amused by the small mist that rose from the crust, Lucien Verger bit in cautiously, and then again, studying the flavor. I was handed a slice, but didn’t dare to taste it.
“Not bad…,” said Verger.
“But it’s so good!” shouted Marie Alice, leaving the neat imprint of her teeth in the slice.
“Not bad,” repeated Verger, rescuing a lump of cheese that had fallen onto his chin. “Try it, Rosso!”
Before leaving, Verger wanted to know everything. He examined the business plan, growing even more agitated with each new question: what were the ingredients, how many pounds on a daily average could the bakery produce, and could home delivery justify the quality/price ratio?
“You eat focaccia in the bakery,” said Don Otto calmly. “You don’t deliver it.”
“So you really are an anticapitalist baker.”
“And you are one sweet-smelling primrose!” said Marie Alice, leaning over the flowering plant above the oven. Then she put on her raincoat and turned her head and smiled.
As the emerald limousine disappeared down Astoria Boulevard, leaving clear furrows in the snow, we lingered in the road. A bit of sun was shining over the low, white houses.
“This batch was like Rapallo,” said Sachin.
“Right,” I smiled, taking another bite.
“Right, last night I was rushing to go out, I forgot the malt,” said Don Otto, staring after the tire marks the limousine had left in its wake. “But who the hell did you pray to last night?” he asked me. “The Christ of the Abyss?”
CHLOÉ VERDI
May 4, 2009, New York City
he public attorney again raised his eyes at the flag of the State of New York, at the glorious sunrise depicted therein, and sighed. “From zero to hero in the blink of an eye…” Then he began to review the company’s bank statements. “Tell me, why did Rosso Fiorentino withdraw $125,000 from the checking account on April 3, 2008…in cash?”
ROSSO FIORENTINO
February 3–May 11, 2008, New York City
ou know those cold rainy days when unexpectedly, at dusk, a beautiful sun comes out? Well, the opening of Focaccia House was a bit like that.
For the first two weeks our shop on Astoria Boulevard, Queens, was completely empty. Passersby seemed not to notice it, as if they were shielded by imaginary blinders. Holding cups of black coffee and pretzels they had bought at the hot dog stands, they walked by heading straight for the subway. Martin, the bum-economist, was right: hot dog vendors were killing us.
One Wednesday afternoon a pretty girl who had been waiting for the bus walked in. She too held a pretzel wrapped up in a paper napkin. “You don’t have pizza?” she asked displeased. “I work out to eat pizza.”
Then, halfway into the second week, Sachin the engineer reassembled the oven exhaust so that the hot air spewed into the street and no longer into the courtyard. A sweet, warm smell permeated the sidewalk and, to use his words, the passersby started to veer toward the bakery like jellyfish swept by a current. In other words, enough people started coming in for the shop to survive that first month.
I worked from dawn into the evening. The only break I took was to go and see the sunset. I liked watching the last sun punch the masses of steel and concrete of Lower Manhattan, and to witness the moment when the office lights blinked on. The skyscrapers lit up in patches made me think of her, of the scars on her arms, of when she laughed, of how fast she moved her tongue when she kissed. Ex-junkie, big time! Verger’s words came to mind.
Around seven in the evening, I would return to Queens and stand in front of the orange bakery sign Federico, the painter, had designed and sent from Italy. Although I had asked him to join us, he had sided with my father’s view, that art’s greatest patrons are grappa and national health care. You don’t need me to come, he had written in his letter. You’re the luckiest guy in town now! I would look at the sign for some time. Its amber light flashed on and off in the shop’s front window.
Although during that winter the economy kept slowing down, with the GDP losing another half-point, by the end of March the bakery was finishing in the black. We each leased a Suzuki Bandit 1200, which could rev up to 170 miles an hour on the FDR Drive, and we kept a table at the Palladium on Sundays. I had moved out of Uncle Spiro’s to rent a studio on Jackson Avenue. Here I no longer heard old Greeks snoring, just a slight rattle of the N train as it went by. I had also bought Martin a 150-kilowatt generator and a 16-inch flat-screen TV with a subscription to Bloomberg, so he could be up-to-date on finance in real time.
Verger, who’d been paid back with 7 percent interest, better than the returns on his AT&T bonds, decided to invest in a second bakery.
As always, the hardest thing was to find a good baker. We looked everywhere among the brave and the hungry: from firefighters, who are famous for their food as they cooked their own meals seven days a week, to dirt-poor Bedford-Stuyvesant New Yorkers, to a list of retired boxers. But nobody could keep it up, said Don Otto.
Then one evening, outside the Palladium, we met Adam, who was fed up with being a bouncer. Adam was a proud Somalian American, with a neck as thick as a washing machine. Like Don Otto, he would knead with his left hand when his rig ht cramped.
A manager, on the other hand, was easy to find. We posted an ad on LinkedIn and we were flooded with résumés. Out of the stack of applications that came in every week, we chose a blond Irish kid named David Jeffrey. He had studied at Dartmouth and Yale, had been fired by UBS, and was neither too stupid nor too smart to create problems.
One morning in April, Franz showed up at our bakery in Queens, where we were conducting interviews for our second opening. He had seen our ad. He was wearing a white shirt with a dash of pink that worked well with his crow-black hair. He had a gym bag slung over his shoulder with his name and title as vice-president monogrammed on it. After his master’s at the University of Chicago, he was first hired by SL&B and then was poached by HWBC. He was unstoppable.
“A slice of cheese focaccia?” said Sachin, smiling.
I cut a corner slice, the best one, where the two edges of the crust seal in the cheese. In the strong light of that spring morning, it was blatantly obvious why Chloé had chosen him and not me.
“The truth is she dumped me,” Franz said, grimacing, as if he had read my mind. “For Andy, an architect.”
“She’ll dump him as well,” I said.
“An onion
slice too?” asked Sachin.
Franz took a few sure steps around the bakery and looked outside at the desolate street in Queens. His brown leather shoes, John Lobb Philip II, that I had seen him wear once at a party, had just been polished to a brilliant shine.
“Hey, right now you guys are the only ones making money in America! I’ve been checking you out,” said Franz, rubbing his hands energetically. “I was wondering if you needed a co-manager, David Jeffrey must be swamped. And I could bring you a ton of customers! Your new store in Midtown is going to be right opposite my friends’ offices at UBS.”
Sachin lifted his eyes from Franz’s résumé. He looked at him fearfully, like someone seeing a wounded hawk crash to the ground. “You’ve been fired too?”
he day our second bakery opened its doors, winter had returned. The weather forecast, and in particular the air pressure, always had a profound effect on me. Our new bakery was a shoebox on Sixth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, between Duane Reade and White & Case’s forty-two floors. As in Rapallo, we had a bell that rang when you opened the door.
“Why are you so pale, Primrose?” said Marie Alice, walking in, midafternoon.
She held the door half open a moment, so the doorbell that kept on ringing would get Don Otto to lift his head. She was braving the icy cold, in a pair of tight orange shorts that let her belly button triumph over her white freckled legs. Since Don Otto didn’t raise his head, she stuck her hand in the dough he was stretching and scattered it around.
“Ooh, what a bore you are, always kneading!” said Marie Alice. “Are you a workaholic?”
“Long live the bakers!” said Don Otto.
“Sachin says you’re always working because you’re a virgin,” laughed Marie Alice. “Are you a virgin?”
“Sachin’s a gossip, like all writers,” said Don Otto.
“He says that you’re a virgin because the first time you did it, you didn’t get hard and the girl started to laugh,” said Marie Alice, stifling a laugh herself.
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