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They were given a table near the window, under the old black-and-white photograph of the long-ago logjam in Brattleboro. “They used to drive logs down the Co
“This must have been a mill town, in its day,” May remarked. “Sawmills, paper, maybe-textiles, too, I suppose.”
“There’s an insane asylum in this town, I hear,” Dot told her friend. When the waitress came to pour them water, Dot asked Celeste about it. “Is the loony bin still operatin’ here?”
“It’s called the retreat,” Celeste explained.
“That’s a sneaky fuck of a name for it!” May said. She and Dot were cackling again when Celeste went to get them menus. (She’d forgotten to bring the old biddies menus when she brought them their water. Celeste was still distracted by the cook’s crying.)
A young couple came in, and Dot and May observed a younger waitress-Celeste’s daughter, Loretta-showing them to their table. When Celeste came back with the menus, Dot said, “We’ll both have the pepperoni pizza.” (She and May had already had a look at the menu in the window.)
“One each or one to share?” Celeste asked them. (Just looking at these two, Celeste knew the answer.)
“One each,” May told her.
“Would you like a salad, or a first course?” Celeste asked the old ladies.
“Nope. I’m saving room for the apple pie,” May answered.
Dot said: “I imagine I’ll be havin’ the blueberry cobbler.”
They both ordered Cokes-“real ones,” May emphasized to Celeste. For the drive ahead, not to mention the slew of children and grandchildren, Dot and May wanted all the caffeine and sugar they could get.
“I swear,” May said to Dot, “if my kids and grandkids keep havin’ more kids, you can check me into that so-called retreat.”
“I’ll come visit you,” her friend Dot told her. “If the pizza’s any good,” she added.
In the kitchen at Avellino, maybe the cook had heard the old ladies cackling. “Two pepperoni pizzas,” Celeste told him. “Two probable pie and cobbler customers.”
“Who are they?” the cook asked her; he wasn’t usually so curious. “A couple of locals?”
“A couple of bad old broads, if you ask me-locals or otherwise,” Celeste said.
It was almost time for the Red Sox game on the radio. Boston was playing at home, in Fenway Park, but Greg was listening to some sentimental crap called The Oldie-But-Goldie Hour on another station. The cook hadn’t really been paying attention, but the featured recording, from 1967, was Surrealistic Pillow-the old Jefferson Airplane album.
When Tony Angel recognized Grace Slick’s voice singing “Somebody to Love,” he spoke with uncharacteristic sharpness to his sous chef.
“Time for the game, Greg,” the cook said.
“Just lemme hear-” the sous chef started to say, but Tony abruptly switched stations. (Everyone had heard the impatience in his voice and seen the angry way he’d reached for the radio.)
All the cook could say for himself was: “I don’t like that song.”
With a shrug, Celeste said to them all: “Memories, I guess.”
Just one thin wall and two swinging doors away were two more old memories. Unfortunately, the cook would not get rid of Dot and May as easily as he’d cut off that song on the radio.
CHAPTER 9. THE FRAGILE, UNPREDICTABLE NATURE OF THINGS
OUT ON THE CORALVILLE STRIP, WITHIN SIGHT OF MAO’S, there’d been a pizza place called The Greek’s; kalamata olives and feta cheese was the favorite topping. (As Da
Those taverns had not been far enough out of the North End to have escaped the cook’s attention. One day he’d followed Daniel and his cousins to the Bell in Hand. When the cook saw his young son drinking a beer, he’d pulled the boy out of the tavern by his ear.
As the writer Da
Had Da
“I am truly sorry your dog is dead,” Da
It was just a plain piece of typing paper. The writer didn’t include his name. If Armando was right-if the asshole was a writer carpenter, and/or one of Da
Now, as he sat writing in Avellino, Da
As a boy, and as a young man, Da
But Ketchum was estranged from his children; he’d already lost them. It wasn’t necessarily true that Ketchum was braver, or more bold, than the cook. Ketchum wasn’t a father, not anymore; he didn’t have as much to lose. Da
He’d felt close to his father in Iowa City, too, the writer was remembering. (Their Asian interlude, as Da