FEBRUARY 1-2
1056 Words
Angelo lay back on one of the cockpit benches of the sailboat, his back against the cabin wall. His hood was raised against the wind. He clutched a silver travel mug in his gloved hands.
Russell imagined that someday he’d be able to feel his cheeks again, but not anytime soon—damn but it was cold.
“Hey Angelo.” His friend had been quiet for the whole trip.
“What?” A one-word answer. His friend was Italian and never gave one-word answers.
“It’s Saturday. How can you afford to be out here with me? Thought you did a Saturday lunch. Not that I don’t appreciate it and all.” He pointed the boat up a few points tighter to the wind. Even with the reef in the main and the small jib up forward, she still skidded over the wave tops at better than seven knots.
“We do a lunch.” Angelo’s voice was so quiet Russell could barely make out his answer over the wind.
“Well?”
“Well, what?” It wasn’t like him to be obtuse. Angelo took a long pull of his coffee, so long he seemed to be avoiding the answer.
“Well?”
“No traffic, my man. Saturday lunch is so slow, the sous chef can handle it. With one arm behind his back.” More coffee. “And his head in a sack.”
“But you’re the best cook there is, Angelo.”
“Don’t let my mother hear you say that.”
He still had his sense of humor, that at least was a good sign. Russell kept them headed down the Sound, maybe they’d circle Vashon Island.
“What about your wonderful wine reviewer? Didn’t she make it all better?”
Angelo shook his head. “A nice article about the tasting, business picked up a little, but people don’t come to restaurants to drink hundred-dollar bottles of wine. They come for food. I still haven’t really paid off the tasting and that was three weeks ago.”
“How much did you spend?”
“Publicity, a couple of ads in the right places, I picked up the hotel for the guy from Gourmet Week, all the appetizers. The wines alone cost a grand. Wholesale.”
“s**t!” Russell eased out the sails a bit so that he could pay less attention to the boat and more to his friend.
“How close are you to failing?”
Angelo shrugged and he didn’t look up.
“Look. You need money, it’s not an issue. You know that.”
Angelo nodded. He’d never taken money from the Morgans, except for the college expenses Russell’s dad had insisted on giving him. Not even pocket change from the Morgan millions.
“What’s your hook?”
Angelo squinted up at him. “My hook?”
“Sure, every ad has a hook. Every business has one too. My hook as an ad photographer was, ‘Highest quality, spare no expenses.’ And I didn’t. If I needed an elephant in the distant background, I hired the elephant, handlers, and whatever. My clients paid, man did they pay. And they got the best damn quality that could be achieved in return. What do you have?”
Angelo looked puzzled for a moment, shifted on the cockpit seat.
“Authentic Italian cooking.”
“Tony’s fast pizza claims that in every mall store.”
Angelo’s glare was intense enough that Russell decided to back off rather than push harder. He really didn’t want to go for a swim in February. They’d reached the north tip of Vashon Island and he decided to take the western side. The wind was just right to take the narrower Colvos Passage south and then they’d have room to tack back and forth coming up the wider East Passage into the wind. It would be his longest sail yet, and it might give them some time to work something out.
“Other than your mother, you’re the best damn cook. Right?”
“Damn straight.” Angelo was still pissed about the mall store c***k.
“And still you aren’t a big success.”
The pissed look eased back toward sad, such an unusual expression on his friend’s face that it took Russell several moments to identify it.
“So we need to come up with a hook. Something to get you noticed—other than a thousand dollars of wine.”
“Damn good Italian food should be enough.”
“That’s better.”
“What is?”
“Damn Good Italian Food. It’s a good pitch.”
“My mother would slap us both and wash out our mouths with soap.” But there was a shadow of a smile. Better.
“Your mother gonna slap you even worse if you give up.”
Angelo nodded and for the first time on the trip, took some interest in the sailboat. He pulled a winch handle out of the pocket mounted inside the cockpit and cranked a couple of turns on the jib sheet. A little too far, but Russell decided that the better part of valor was to keep his mouth shut. Sailing with the wind was warmer and quieter, but also less demanding. If Angelo was still sulking when they rounded the south end of Vashon, his mother wasn’t the only one who’d be slapping him.
“What part of Italy do you know better than any other?”
Angelo shrugged, “You know that. Liguria. Mama’s from Liguria; Pop was from Tuscany. Mama and I went back every year. You came with me for the whole summer after senior year in high school. Why you ask such a stupido question?”
“I knew the answer. Wanted to make sure you did, dummy.”
Angelo’s glare finally had a bit of energy behind it.
“How much of your menu is Ligurian, even northern Italian?”
Angelo gazed off the side of the boat at the big ferry passing off the stern.
“Maybe half. Maybe less. Sicilian is a big draw. So is the far north, up in the Piedmont.”
“So you’ve got to stock ingredients for everywhere from Sicily to Venice to Milan. And all those fancy wines you served to the Madonna wine lady?” About the right image with her perfect coif and perfect poise.
He blinked this time. “Why…uh…none. Only two were even Italian.”
“Mi amico. I, the great Russell Morgan, have found your problem and your answer. The best damn Ligurian food in the Western Hemisphere. Okay, the title sucks. No one knows nothing from Liguria anyway. Best Damn Tuscan Food in the West. Still sucks. We’ll work on that. First thing, you sell off or drink any wine not from northern Italy. Eat the out of region ingredients on your days off.”
He pinched Angelo’s cheek and pulled on it like a matron auntie.
“Then I make-a you an ad spread,” he blew a kiss in the air off his fingertips, “that will-a make you mama proud.”
“You? I thought you were done with that, man.”
Russell had thought he was as well, but Angelo needed help. His kind of help.
“That’s okay, I’m gonna make you pay, brother. Through the nose.”
Angelo lost some of his happiness. “You know I don’t have that kind of money.”
“No. But you make the best damn pasta sauce on the planet.”
Angelo perked up. “I do, don’t I.”
His punch thudded into Russell’s shoulder hard enough to hurt. He’d let his friend get away with that…for now.
- Writer
