Dinner at Fiorello’s (18 page)

He wrote Vito a note.

Dear Vito,

Don’t be mad, but I looked at the pictures again. I guess you know that, since they’re all upright now.

I don’t know what your story is, and I hope that one day you’ll trust me enough to share it, but the pictures I saw touched me. And they made me hurt, deep inside. Hurt for you—if these photos, as I suspect, remind you of a loss. And for me, because these photos, these happy family shots, remind me of something that maybe I never had.

And they made me realize something.

I came here to talk to you about a family trauma, a shock I had last night that shook me to my core. And it’s bad, but not as bad as what I fear may have happened to you. So I realized that whatever our hurts are, someone else might have it even worse. I was thinking like a kid. I admit it. A kid thinks the entire world revolves around him. And I’m no different. So you weren’t so far off calling me kid.

But I grew up just a little here this morning. Black coffee and realizations do that to a person.

I’m going now. I apologize if my looking at your family photos upset you. I hope you and I can talk someday. I still need to tell you what happened to me.

And I think it would do you some good, if I can be that out there, to tell me what happened to you.

I’m listening.

Your friend,

Henry

Henry set the note back down on the coffee table and crossed to the front door to let himself out. He stopped and then went back to the note, scratched out “Your friend,” and wrote, in its place, “Love.”

T
HE
QUALITY
of the light filtering in through his bedroom miniblinds told Vito it was late afternoon. He sat up wearily in bed, the sheets slithering off his bare chest, and rubbed his eyes. He felt as though he had been drugged, the deep sleep he had fallen into earlier that morning clinging to him like some kind of leaded cloak.

He frowned. It still happened. Even though the car accident that took Sal and Kevin away from him was over a year ago, he continued to wake sometimes from a very deep slumber with the feeling they were still there. His hand, almost as if it had a mind of its own, would reach out to touch Kevin’s shoulder or pat his head and come away empty. Or he would listen, alert, as any parent would, to see if his child was awake and stirring.

He slumped back in bed as he realized, for the thousandth time, that he was alone. The only things he heard were the sounds the dogs made—not all of them pleasant, the traffic rushing by outside, the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Sometimes his neighbor upstairs played his music too loud, and the hip-hop rhythms, annoying at best, would filter down to Vito. But now it was quiet.

As much as the music—and the lack of consideration—irritated him, he didn’t mind the music so much because it made him feel less alone.

He rose from the bed and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. It was already after three, and he needed to be in to work by five. Thank God Rosalie had another chef, Elizabeth, to do lunches pretty much all the time now. Vito liked the late nights and sleeping during the day. He could cocoon himself away from the world more easily.

The girls, alerted by their master’s movements, also rose. They began silently pacing about the room, casting hopeful glances his way.

“Come on.” Vito patted his hip, and the dogs followed him to the entryway, where he leashed them up.

Outside, the day was oppressively hot. Summer in Chicago could be that way, blistering yet moist, almost unbearable. Today was one of those days, and Vito wondered how high the temperature reading on the savings and loan sign across the street would get. One hundred? More? He’d seen it get that high other summers.

He had a flash of memory—Sal outside, dancing in a pair of Underoos in the stream from a fire hydrant some of the neighborhood kids had opened up.

Vito quickly forced himself to think of something else.

Like Henry.

He felt a little guilt. Henry had obviously been upset over something. Vito could tell he’d been crying. And yet all Vito had done for him was give him a cup of coffee and send him on his way. He had asked him what the matter was, sure, but he knew the question was offhand, what anyone would say. It didn’t show Vito cared about what it was that had made him cry and what had most likely kept him up all night.

I should be ashamed of myself.

And yet a part of Vito felt he had done the right thing. This part of Vito wanted him to be alone, shut down, knowing this was the best way of dealing with the hurt and the loss. When that drunk driver on the Eisenhower Expressway had hit the Jeep carrying Vito’s son and the man he thought of as his husband, causing it to flip and killing them both instantly, he might as well have taken Vito’s life too. In a sense, he had. Because what Vito had today, in this emptiness, was not really a life at all.

So he worked… and worked… and worked. He slept a lot, sometimes rivaling his champion sleeper canine kids. He dulled the hours off with mindless TV or endless games of solitaire on his laptop. He didn’t even cook much for himself anymore. He remembered the days, when they were all together, he would spend hours in the kitchen, working on elaborate meals just to see Kevin smile or to hear Sal’s contented “Yum.” He would dream of the treats he would feed them.

But now there was just an endless rotation of monotony that got him through the days but provided little else.

All of this was an escape, a balm on his hurt that really did make it better. By feeling nothing at all, Vito could at least cope with the pain.

Henry threatened that. It didn’t help that he had the same fair looks as Kevin, reminding Vito of his man every time he glanced at the kid. But it wasn’t just the resemblance to his dead lover that awakened something uncomfortable in Vito.

Vito was attracted to him. He thought he had buried sex along with Kevin at Rosehill Cemetery. If he felt anything at all, a hand lubed up with spit usually took care of it. It was no different than taking a shit or grabbing something to eat when he was hungry, ugly as the thought was. But at least masturbation was utilitarian. At least he didn’t have to think about Kevin, about his touch, the taste of his lips and tongue, how the contrast of Kevin’s smooth skin with Vito’s coarse fur-covered body felt a little like heaven, electric.

And yet Vito found himself, at spare moments in the restaurant, looking at Henry in ways he wished he could stop. That old undressing-with-the-eyes thing that Vito thought he was no longer even capable of, he did when he knew Henry wasn’t looking back. Vito sometimes found himself peering too closely at the boy’s ass or the outline of his cock through the jeans he used to wear when he was washing dishes.

Vito stopped in front of his own apartment building, amazed he had taken the girls all the way to the lakefront and back. He couldn’t remember having seen anything on their journey—whether the lake was placid and smooth today or the surf was up.

Digging in his pocket for his keys, he thought he didn’t like how Henry had awakened his emotions, his need, because along with the admittedly good feelings, Vito’s other emotions would waken too. And with those, there was horrible pain and grief.

Vito took the girls inside and fed them. The clock on the microwave told him he would not have to fix himself anything to eat because he had exactly a half hour to shower and get his ass to work.

Where Henry would be….

As he was hurrying into the bathroom, Vito noticed the piece of paper in the detritus of all the other crap littering his coffee table. He wouldn’t have even noticed it if it weren’t for the handwriting on the paper, which was the back of a takeout menu. Vito knew immediately that Henry had left him a note, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to read it. What could it possibly say that would make him feel better? What could further communication do besides invade Vito’s carefully constructed cocoon of numbness he worked so hard to maintain?

Yet the pull of the note was irresistible. Vito plopped down on the couch with resignation and, even though he didn’t have time, picked it up and began reading. The first thing he saw in the note was that Henry had tampered with his family photos. He tore his gaze away to look at the bookcase opposite and saw that Henry had, indeed, set all the photos back up again and maybe even dusted the glass fronting each photo.

He had no right.

Vito continued to read, and when he finished, he closed his eyes and sat back on the couch, letting his head loll.
I can’t let this happen. I can’t let the guy in. He’s only going to remind me of what I lost. And besides, who am I kidding? Say I did let him in. Say I did allow myself to get involved. What would happen? Henry’s from the North Shore. He’s a rich kid. Do I really believe he’s going to stick around? Sure, we have a summer fling and I get my heart—and other things—throbbing again. What then? He’ll probably just go away at the start of fall to some Ivy League school. He’s too good to be kitchen help the rest of his life. Or hell, even a chef, if that’s where his inclinations lay.

And then I’d just find myself back at square one. Alone. Hurting again over another loss. Not as bad, but still not something I want.
Vito shook his head.
No. I can’t let him in. Losing him, as I surely would, wouldn’t be nearly as bad as losing my Kevin and my Sal, but it would still hurt. And that hurt would compound the other hurts, making me worse off than I was before.

Vito tore up the note and took it into the kitchen, where he dropped it where it belonged, in the garbage.

W
HEN
V
ITO
got to work, fifteen minutes late, Henry was already there. He smiled shyly at Vito when Vito entered through the back door of the restaurant. Prep work was just beginning for dinner, and Henry was at the station next to Vito once again, a chef’s knife in his hand, mounds of onions and garlic cloves, already peeled, before him.

Where was Sammy? His sous chef had been very flaky lately, and Vito knew he was doing cocaine. He knew because Sammy had often tried to get him to have a little “toot,” as he called it, while they were working.

“C’mon, man, it makes you feel good. Gives you energy.”

Vito always turned him down. He’d seen what that white powder had done to other people in the business. It was ironic, Vito always thought, that cocaine was so popular among restaurant workers when one of its main features was that it deadened the appetite.

Vito was reaching for his apron on its hook when Rosalie came into the kitchen, followed by Antonio and Carmela.

“Could everyone stop what they’re doing for a minute?”

Vito could see that Rosalie looked nervous… and sad. She was always serious, but there was something wounded behind the thick lenses of her glasses that was all too apparent to Vito.

“I know we don’t have a lot of time because people—the early birds—will start comin’ in in just a few minutes, so I’ll keep it short.” She wrung her hands. “You may have noticed Sammy’s missing again. The truth is I had to let him go.” She put a hand, which Vito noticed was trembling ever so slightly, to her forehead. “I hated to do it. You know you’re all family to me, and it hurts. I won’t go into why because it’s none of your business. Let’s just say I need people here I can rely on.”

And with that, she hurried away into the little warren she called her office, closing the door behind her.

Carmela spoke first. “Well, we all know why. He was a cokehead.”

Nobody said anything.

Rosalie opened her door and glared at all of them. “I said I need people I can rely on. Get to work!” She closed the door again, and everyone scattered.

Vito glanced over at Henry, who was busy chopping onions into perfect dice. “What? You taking Sammy’s place?” Vito hoped that wasn’t the case. If it was, Henry would be working next to him every night. Close. Shoulder to shoulder, almost. Vito didn’t know if he could bear the proximity. They would have to talk; they would have to get to know each other better. It was natural. And Vito was steadfast in not wanting to open that door.

It was different when Sammy worked next to him. Vito didn’t harbor secret desires for him. In fact, the guy was kind of repulsive. He always smelled bad—sweat and cigarettes.

Henry shoved aside a mound of chopped onions and got to work on the garlic. They went through a ton of the stuff every night. It was important to have it ready to go. “Yeah, Rosalie said I did okay last night and we’d see how it goes.”

Henry smiled at him, and Vito could see the hunger in his eyes. Vito didn’t smile back.

“Make sure that garlic is minced, not just cut up.” Vito turned away to begin removing proteins from the refrigerator—chicken, veal, red snapper, and tenderloin. “And don’t forget the lemons. I need some for cooking, but we need paper-thin slices for garnish.” Vito set down what he’d taken out of the refrigerator and consulted a notebook he kept beneath the racks of pots and pans to see what he’d planned for specials tonight.

Henry nodded and went back to his work, but Vito couldn’t help but notice how he kept casting glances at Vito out of the corner of his eye.

And that made Vito want to smile. Henry’s glances were sweet, seeking approval and maybe more. But Vito kept stern and, beyond barking out orders, didn’t say a word to Henry the rest of the night.

H
ENRY
COULDN
’
T
stay away from home for another night. His eyes burned. His joints ached. His back felt like what he would imagine the back of an eighty-year-old man must feel like. On his worst day. It almost hurt to simply stand and put weight on his feet. The weariness hung heavy, dragging him down so low it was difficult to even form a coherent thought.