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“I don’t care if I can’t sleep anymore,” Da
Now Carmella, after sighing, appeared to be holding her breath before begi
“Really?” Da
“Of course I have!” Carmella cried. For someone who’s so happy, what is she angry with me for? Da
It was Da
“It’s just that your stories, and sometimes the characters themselves, are so-what is the word I’m looking for?-unsavory,” Carmella started in, but she must have seen something in Da
“I see,” he said. Da
“Tell me what you’re writing now, Secondo,” Carmella suddenly blurted out, smiling warmly at him. “You’ve been rather a long time between books again-haven’t you? Tell me what you’re up to. I’m just dying to know what’s next!”
NOT MUCH LATER, after Carmella went to bed, some men were watching Monday Night Football at the bar, but Da
“Well, Pop, I know you said you wanted this, but I hope you haven’t changed your mind,” Da
Da
But Da
Dominic Baciagalupo, his writer son thought, might have gotten a kick out of that.
Da
DANNY ANGEL ONCE WENT ELEVEN YEARS between novels-between East of Bangor and Baby in the Road. Again, a death in the family would delay him, though Carmella had been wrong to suggest that the writer was once more taking “rather a long time between books.” It had been only six years since his most recent novel was published.
As had happened with Joe, after the cook was murdered, the novel Da
“The publicity was awful,” Carmella bluntly said, at di
Naturally, there were those in the American media who would say that the cook and his son should have gone to the police in the first place. (Did they miss the fact that Carl was the police?) Of course the Canadian press was indignant that “American violence” had followed the famous author and his father across the border. In retrospect, this was really a reference to the guns themselves-both the cowboy’s absurd Colt.45 and Ketchum’s Christmas present to Da
“That shotgun saved your life!” Ketchum had bellowed to Da
“Let it go, Ketchum,” Da
“You have fans-and whatever their opposites are called-don’t you?” the old logger pointed out. “Some critters among them, I’ll bet.”
As for the question Da
He’d learned to be icy in answering the oft-repeated question. “Not immediately,” Da
“But are you going to write about it?” Carmella had asked him again, over di
He talked about the book he was writing instead. It was going well. In fact, he was writing like the wind-the words wouldn’t stop. This one would be another long novel, but Da
To the writer’s thinking, Carmella’s reaction was as predictable as her conversation. “It’s about Gamba?” she asked.
No, he tried to explain; the story was about a man who’s lived in the shadow of his famous father, a masterful cook who has recently died and left his only son (already in his sixties) a lost and furtive soul. In the rest of the world’s judgment, the son seems somewhat retarded. He’s lived his whole life with his father; he has worked as a sous chef to his dad in the restaurant the well-respected cook made famous. Now alone, the son has never paid his own bills before; he’s not once bought his own clothes. While the restaurant continues to employ him, perhaps out of a lingering mourning for the deceased cook, the son is virtually worthless as a sous chef without his father’s guidance. Soon the restaurant will be forced to fire him, or else demote him to being a dishwasher.