Dinner that evening was more of a disaster than the previous night's earthquake. And I don't mean that metaphorically.
To begin with, I should have known from its location what Il Roccaforte would be like. San Bruno Avenue is not exactly one of the city's ritzier neighborhoods, adjoining as it does the Southern Freeway interchange and the Hunters Point ghetto. I know a guy who lives in that area and he says it's not bad-blue-collar residential, mostly. But it's one of the last places you'd go looking for haute cuisine and an elegant, atmospheric dining experience.
The owners of Il Roccaforte had never heard of either haute cuisine or elegance. But the place was definitely atmospheric-in the same way a condemned waterfront pier is atmospheric. And without a doubt eating there was one hell of an experience.
It was in a building all its own, so old and creaky-looking it might have been a survivor of the 1906 earthquake, sandwiched between a laundromat and a country-and-western bar called the Bull's Buns. Kerry said, “My God!” in a horrified voice as we drove up, and I couldn't tell if she meant Il Roccaforte or the Bull's Buns or both. She didn't have anything else to say. She had been conspicuously silent since I'd picked her up, which was always a storm warning with her: it was plain she'd had a very bad day in the advertising business, running ideas up flagpoles and seeing if they saluted, or whatever the current Madison Avenue slang expression was, and that she was in no mood for what awaited us inside Il Roccaforte.
Please, Lord, I thought, let it be an uneventful evening. Not a good one, not even a companionable one-just uneventful.
But He wasn't listening.
We got out of the car and went inside. The motif, if you could call it that, was early Depression: some dusty Chianti bottles on shelves here and there, the corpses of three house-plants of dubious origin, a cracked and discolored painting of a peasant woman stomping grapes, tables with linen cloths on them that had not been white since the Truman Administration, and the smells of grease, garlic, and sour wine. Some people might have called the place funky, but none of that type had discovered it yet. The people like myself who called it a relic and a probable health hazard were the ones who, having taken one good look at it, no doubt stayed away in droves. The only customers at the moment, aside from a waiter who looked as if he might have been stuffed and left there for decoration, were Eberhardt and Wanda, tucked up together at a table in one corner.
“Hi, people,” Wanda said when we got over there. She beamed at us from under a pair of false eyelashes as big as daddy longlegs and fluffed her gaudy yellow hair and stuck out her chest the way she does, as if anybody but a blind person could miss seeing it. “Say, that's a real cute dress, Kerry. You didn't get that dress at Macy's, did you?”
“No, I didn't.”
“Gee, it looks just like one we had on sale last week in the bargain basement.”
Kerry smiled with her teeth, like a wolf smiling at a piece of meat, and sat down. There was a carafe of red wine on the table; she picked it up immediately and poured herself a full glass, which she proceeded to sip in a determined way.
I said something to Eberhardt by way of greeting, but he didn't answer. As usual, all his attention was focused on Wanda's chest. Tonight the chest was encased in a white silk blouse with the top three buttons undone, so that most of it, very white and bulging, was visible to the naked eye. Eberhardt's naked eye was full of gleams and glints; I felt like leaning over and telling him to wipe the drool off his chin.
As soon as we were settled, Wanda set the tone for the evening by telling a pair of jokes. Wanda liked to tell jokes, most of which were dumb and a few of which were in bad taste. Sort of like a female Bob Hope.
Wanda: “What's the definition of foreplay in a Jewish marriage?”
Eberhardt: “I dunno, what?”
Wanda: “Thirty minutes of begging.”
Eberhardt broke up. I managed a polite chuckle. Kerry just sat there sipping her wine.
Wanda (giggling): “So what's foreplay in an Italian marriage?”
Eberhardt: “I dunno, what?”
Wanda: “Guy nudges his wife and says, ‘Hey, you ready?’”
Eberhardt broke up again. I managed a polite smile this time, without the chuckle. Kerry just sat there sipping her wine.
“I hear lots of jokes like that down at Macy's,” Wanda said. “I could tell jokes like that all night long.”
Kerry rolled her eyes and gnashed her teeth a little. Neither Wanda nor Eberhardt noticed. Wanda was still giggling and he was watching her chest and grinning fatuously.
The waiter finally showed up with some menus. He was an older Italian guy dressed up in a shiny, rumpled tuxedo that looked as if it belonged on a corpse. He had a long, sad, creased face, ears that had big tufts of hair growing out of them, and a toupee so false and loose-fitting that it invited my attention the way Wanda's chest invited Eberhardt's. Every time the waiter leaned over the table, the hairpiece moved a little like something alive that was clinging evilly to the top of his head. If he had heard Wanda's dumb Jewish and Italian jokes, he gave no indication of it. Nor did he bother to adjust his hair. Either he didn't notice it was so loose or he had a lot more faith in its ability to stay put than I did.
He went away and Wanda told us about her day at Macy's. Then she told us another dumb joke. Then she lit up a Tareyton and blew smoke that made Kerry cough and glare and pour more wine. Eberhardt stared at Wanda's chest, still looking both fatuous and horny. I didn't say much. Kerry didn't say anything at all.
The waiter brought us a loaf of bread. I would have eaten some of it, because I was hungry, but if I'd tried I would have broken every tooth in my mouth. It was so old and so hard you couldn't have cut it with a hatchet, much less a knife. It had gone beyond bread and become a whole new and powerful substance. It ought to have been donated to the Giants for use as a fungo bat.
Wanda told us about one of her ex-husbands, the one who had driven a garbage truck; she had two or three, I'm not sure which. One of the things she told us was a long and involved anecdote about his underwear that had no point and wasn't funny but that she concluded with a shriek of laughter so shrill I thought it might shatter the water glasses.
Nobody else came into the place-fortunately for them.
The waiter again, this time to take our orders. I decided his hairpiece looked even more like a spider than Wanda's false eyelashes-a deformed and wicked spider. I almost said, “I'll have the spider, please.” Instead I said, “I'll have the scallopini, please.” Eberhardt and Wanda both ordered the veal piccata because Wanda said, “They really know how to do it here, Ebbie, you never tasted veal like this before, believe me.”
I believed her.
Kerry said, “I'm not very hungry. I guess I'll just have a small salad.”
“What's the matter, honey?” Wanda asked her. “Don't you like Italian food?”
“Yes,” Kerry said, “but we ate Italian last night. And I'm just not very hungry.”
“You sick or something? Getting your period? Sometimes I don't feel like eating much when I'm getting mine.”
Kerry buried her nose in her wineglass and sat there looking at the Chianti bottle on the shelf above Wanda's head, as if she wished there would suddenly be another earthquake.
The waiter brought a tureen of soup. When he leaned over to set it on the table I thought for sure his hair was going to fall into the tureen. It didn't, which was something of a disappointment. I wanted that damned thing to fall off. We all have our perverse moments, and under the circumstances I felt I was justified in having one of mine.
Wanda told us about the time she went to Tijuana and saw a bullfight. She told us about the highest game she'd ever bowled, “a two-ten, I had five strikes in a row, my God I thought I was going to wet my pants.” She told us about the time she got drunk at a party and threw up into the heating register. “The place stank for weeks after that,” she said. “I mean, you just can't get all that stuff out of there.”
I tried to eat my soup. Minestrone, the waiter had said, lying through his teeth. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but what it tasted like was what Wanda had once upchucked into the heating register.
Still no other damn fools came into the place.
Wanda told us about the time she'd had a varicose vein removed from her leg and how painful it was. Then she told us about the time she'd broken her arm roller-skating and how painful that was. Then she told us about the
