The Food of Love (16 page)

yolk, sugar, a little milk and plenty of the finest Criollo chocolate, with a buried kick of chilli, Bruno’s tartufo was as richly sensual and overpowering as the funghi from which it took its name ~ and even more aphrodisiac.

The arrival of the tartufo at the table finally persuaded the

diners to return their attentions to the food. For a few minutes there was a stunned silence as they spooned the rich ice cream into their mouths, each of them lost in a private reverie of sensation.

It was Costanza Ferrara who finally broke the silence. ‘That was remarkable,’ she said at last. Around the table, heads nodded vigorously, or as vigorously as they were able to. Tommaso himself

smiled modestly. ‘After such a meal,’ she continued, ‘we must

certainly all have a siesta.’ She rose majestically from her seat.

‘Come, Aldo.’

Startled, Dr Ferrara disentangled himself from Laura’s chair

and hauled himself upright. His eyes had suddenly acquired the

thousand-yard stare of a soldier walking out of the safety of his trench into No Man’s Land.

“I’m rather tired too,’ Andrea announced when they had gone,

with a meaningful glance at Carlotta. ‘Tommaso, a fantastic meal.

I feel as if my trousers are suddenly much too tight.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Carlotta murmured. ‘Laura, there’s a spare

room through there if you and Tommaso want to take a nap as

well.’

Fifteen minutes later the apartment echoed to muffled grunts and gasps as the three couples succumbed in different ways to the passions engendered by their lunch. Dr Ferrara, who had not made

love with his wife for many months, was gasping for breath as she bounced on top of him like an over-enthusiastic space hopper,

making the legs of the bed splay alarmingly every time she did so.

Carlotta and Andrea were enjoying a more relaxed coupling. And

Tommaso and Laura were in the spare bedroom, their clothes

strewn across the floor, when Laura broke away from Tommaso

and whispered, ‘I’ve got an idea.’

‘So have I,’ Tommaso said. ‘My idea is that we screw like rabbits.

What’s your idea?’

Tee cream.’

‘Hmm. Tell you what, let’s do my idea first and then we’ll do

your idea.’

But Laura was already tiptoeing away from the bed. ‘Wait here.’

Pulling on a T-shirt in case she met anybody, she crept to the

kitchen where the remains of the chocolate tartufo sat in the ice box of the refrigerator, and took it back with her to the bedroom.

‘Now close your eyes,’ she told Tommaso as she climbed back

on to the bed. ‘And lie very, very still.’

Obediently he closed his eyes. She took a spoonful of the cold

ice cream and carefully placed it over his left nipple.

‘Ow,’ Tommaso said. ‘It’s cold.’

‘It’ll soon warm up.’ She spooned a second mound on the

other nipple. He gasped again.

‘Good?’

‘Urn,’ he said, shivering a little.

‘And one here,” she said, putting a third on his belly, just below the navel. ‘Now, which one shall I eat first?’ She looked at him, trying to choose. Thegelato was already starting to melt. Rivulets of dark ice cream were running down his sculptured chest. She

bent to the little mound of tartufo in his navel and slipped it into her mouth. She sighed ecstatically. Oh …

Bending back to his supine body, she followed one of the

streams of melted chocolate up his chest with her tongue. Oh …

She felt dizzy, unable to tell where her taste buds ended and her nerve endings began. Switching the other way, she began to

nibble down towards the crumbs of half-melted chocolate around

his hips. He squirmed with relief as she licked the last morsels of icy chocolate off him with her warm tongue, like licking a cone.

Then she could wait no longer. Straddling him, she pushed down

on to him in one molten movement, arching her back as she felt

him sliding up inside her, so hard and urgent it seemed almost as if he must be touching her spine from the inside.

Oh…

She hunkered down to get him even further in, and leaned

forward to kiss him with a mouth that was itself cold and sweet

from the ice cream.

Oh…

Tommaso gasped too. After the gelato, the warmth of her was

almost burning him.

Oh…

Laura suddenly realised something was missing. Her mouth felt empty. The gelato. Grabbing the dish, she spooned some into her mouth. “Yes… She closed her eyes in rapture. Another spoonful, and then another … faster and faster went the spoon, from

dish to mouth.

The two sets of movements were becoming synchronised.

Every time Tommaso pushed into her, a spoonful of gelato slid

into her mouth. Every time he pulled back, the spoon left her

mouth too and dipped into the dish for another scoop. She balanced the dish on Tommaso’s chest, so that she could get at it

more easily. Tommaso winced from the coldness of it but Laura

was past caring. Dropping the spoon, she scooped a handful of ice cream out of the bowl with her fingers and crammed it into her

mouth.

Bruno, meanwhile, was back at the apartment, desperately baking

bread to try to take his mind off Laura. Every time he stopped,

erotic images - painful images - seared into his brain. He seemed to glimpse Laura out of the corner of his eye, naked, smiling at him, only for the apparition to vanish as soon as he turned his

fevered gaze directly towards it.

He regretted the tartufo now. It had been too much. He had

eaten some himself, just a few minutes ago, and had been shocked by just how potent it was. That chilli, in particular. It was an idea he had borrowed from Mexican cuisine. Initially disguised by

the coldness of the ice cream and the sweetness of the chocolate, it lingered as a tingle on the tongue and a gentle sting on the lips that seemed to grow in intensity the longer you left it.

Bruno stuffed pieces of dough into his mouth to try to calm

himself. But it was no use. Far from cooling him, the ice cream

had simply made things worse.

While Andrea snored gently beside her, Carlotta lay awake.

An idea had occurred to her, one so irresistible that she simply couldn’t get it out of her mind.

Carlotta was thinking that, even now, as her boyfriend slept,

there was a dish in the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen containing the remains of that delectable tartufo. Earlier, the six of

them had gorged themselves on it, but the jjelato had been so rich, so dense, so explosively chocolatey that they had been unable to finish it all. Carlotta remembered quite clearly that there had been, at the end, a single portion left - a portion which was now calling to her. The call was all the louder because Andrea had, as usual, fallen asleep as soon as he was satisfied, leaving her tantalisingly unfulfilled. In some strange way, her lack of sexual fulfilment was translating itself into a powerful yearning for just one more spoonful of that wonderful dessert of Tommaso’s.

Throwing back the covers, Carlotta pulled on a robe and tiptoed

to the door. The apartment was silent. She crept into the

kitchen - and stopped.

Her mother, also wearing a robe, was just walking through the

other door.

Mother and daughter looked at each other, both immediately

guessing why the other was there. The fridge was exactly halfway between them. Casually, as if she were just going to the sink to get a glass of water, Carlotta sidled towards it.

On the other side of the room, her mother also moved nonchalantly in the direction of the fridge.

Carlotta moved a little faster. Across the room, her mother

picked up momentum too. Throwing dignity to the wind,

Carlotta broke into a run. But her mother could move surprisingly fast for such a small, stout person. As Carlotta reached the fridge and yanked on the handle of the ice box, she found her mother’s

thick arm blocking the way. They stopped, glaring at each other.

Then, as if by unspoken agreement, they both pulled on the

handle together.

The ice box was quite empty.

At that moment Laura walked into the kitchen bearing the

empty tartufo dish, which she carefully carried over to the sink before greeting them with a smile.

While the three women did the dishes in silence, the cause of

their discord was discovering a common bond with Carlotta’s

father, who had put on one of his old CDs.

‘Ah, “Return to Fantasy”,’ Tommaso said, listening. ‘One of

the greatest album tracks ever.’

‘I’m amazed you recognise it. I was still a young man when this

came out.’

‘Oh, I’m a big Uriah Heep fan.’

‘See if you recognise this, then.’

He put a different CD on the player. Within moments

Tommaso nodded. ‘Hawkwind. “Warrior at the Edge of Time.” A

classic’

‘Shit, you’re good. What about this?’ Dr Ferrara changed the

CD again.

‘“Bad Company.”’

‘Fantastic,’ Dr Ferrara breathed. He started to dance, a little

creakily. ‘You know,’ he said over the music, ‘you’re a pretty good cook too.’

Tommaso shrugged modestly.

‘Today I fucked my wife three times, and I still have a hard-on

like a concrete cucumber.’

lPreŁro. You’re welcome, really.’

‘The thing is, I have some money to invest,’ Dr Ferrara said.

‘Costanza’s mother died and left us a pile, the tight old skinflint.

And I don’t want to put it in the stockmarket; the government

just takes whatever you make. I want to put it into a cash business, something small and local where I can take the profits straight out of the till when times are good and shout at the staff when they’re not. Like a restaurant, for example. And it seems to me that people would pay good money to eat like I did today, particularly if they knew that it was going to make their date hotter than a ewe in

September.’ He tapped his head craftily. ‘What’s more, I have the perfect place. Old Cristophe has a little osteria right in the centre of Rome and I know for a fact he wants to sell up. What do you

say?’

‘Oh, I’m very happy where I am,’ Tommaso assured him.

“I’d make you a partner, naturally. Well, not an equal partner,

but you’d have a share of the profits.’

For a moment Tommaso was almost tempted. ‘No, really,’ he

said. “I love to cook, but I don’t think I’m ready for my own

restaurant.’

‘He’s amazing,’ Carlotta said to Laura later. ‘Your Tommaso is

simply amazing. What an artist.’

‘Isn’t he?’ Laura agreed.

‘You know my father wants to back him in a restaurant of his

own?’

‘No, he didn’t tell me that.’ It occurred to Laura for the first time that Tommaso didn’t actually tell her very much. In fact,

when she thought about it, she could barely remember one proper

conversation they had had. There was the food, of course, which

was fantastic, and the sex, and the jokes, and there were the sweet Italian endearments he murmured when they were either about to

eat or about to have sex, but she very rarely knew what was really going on in Tommaso’s head.

But then, as Carlotta said, he was an artist; and food, not

words, was the medium through which he expressed himself.

‘Dr Ferrara wants me to open a restaurant with him,’ Tommaso

said. He laughed. ‘Can you imagine? He even offered me a share

of the profits. He was most insistent. If I hadn’t known what your reaction would be, my friend, I might almost have said yes.’

They were in Gennaro’s. Bruno drank his caffe with a thoughtful

expression on his face, but said nothing.

‘Of course,’ Tommaso continued, “I told him it was impossible.

We have enough complications without trying to set up a restaurant as well.’

Bruno still didn’t say anything. Erotic images of Laura kept

erupting into his head. He was imagining what the different parts of her body might taste like. The sensation was so real that his mouth watered.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said as they left the bar. ‘Next time, I’d like to cook Laura something a bit different. Some old country

recipes, perhaps.’

‘But why?’ Tommaso said, puzzled.

‘Well - I think she’d enjoy it.’

‘No - I meant why does there need to be a next time?’

‘Well,’ Bruno struggled, ‘for Laura, of course.’

‘But your cooking has done all that I asked of it, and more. I can take over from here.’

‘You can?’ Bruno said doubtfully.

‘Of course. I’m getting bored with all this rich food, in any

case.’

‘But what will you cook her?’

‘Simple stuff. Simple, but wholesome.’ Tommaso waved his

hand dismissively. ‘Pasta, for example. Salads. Risotto.’

‘Risotto is harder than it looks.’

‘Nonsense. My mother used to make it when I was a child.

There’s nothing to it. A little rice, a little wine, a little parmesan …’

‘She’s used to the best,’ Bruno warned. He felt sick. Not even

to be allowed to cook for her! It was as if his tongue had been

ripped from his throat and he was to be left mute, unable to

express his feelings. But Tommaso was adamant.

‘She’ll soon get used to it. When all’s said and done, it’s only food. You’ll see.’

Bruno could only stand by and watch as Tommaso took over the

kitchen and set about preparing his first solo dinner for Laura.

Despite Bruno’s warning, he had decided to cook a risotto.

‘You have to make sure that you use superfino rice,’ Bruno

said, trying to be helpful. ‘Carnaroli, for example, is the best, although Vialone Nano will soak up more liquid—’

‘Enough!’ Tommaso thundered, pushing him out of the