As for Vicino di Napoli, the dining room was not big, and the tables were small; there were red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, and two young women and a kid (about Angel’s age) were arranging the place settings. There was a stainless-steel serving counter, beyond which Dominic could see a brick-lined pizza oven and an open kitchen, where two cooks were at work. Dominic was relieved that neither of the cooks was old enough to be his father.
“We’re not quite ready to serve, but you can sit down-have-a something to drink, maybe,” the old man said, smiling at Danny.
Dominic reached into an inside pocket of his jacket, where he felt Angelù Del Popolo’s wallet-it was still damp. But he had barely taken the wallet out when the maître d’ backed away from him. “Are you a cop?” the old man asked. The cop word got the attention of the two cooks Dominic had spotted in the kitchen; they came cautiously out from behind the serving counter. The kid and the two women setting the tables stopped working and stared at Dominic, too.
“Cops don’t usually work with their children,” one of the cooks said to the old man. This cook was covered with flour-not just his apron but his hands and bare forearms were a dusty white. (The pizza chef, probably, Dominic thought.)
“I’m not a cop, I’m a cook,” Dominic told them. The two younger men and the old one laughed with relief; the two women and the kid went back to work. “But I have something to show you,” Dominic said. The cook was fishing around in Angel’s wallet. He couldn’t make up his mind what to show them first-the Boston transit pass with Angelù Del Popolo’s name and date of birth, or the photograph of the pretty but plump woman. He chose the streetcar and subway pass with the dead boy’s actual name, but before Dominic could decide which of the men to show the pass to, the old man saw the photo in the open wallet and grabbed the wallet out of Dominic’s hands.
“Carmella!” the maître d’ cried.
“There was a boy,” Dominic began, as the two cooks hovered over the picture under plastic in the wallet. “Maybe she’s his mother.”
Dominic got no further. The pizza chef hid his face in his hands, completely whitening both cheeks. “An-geh-LOO!” he wailed.
“No! No! No!” the old man sang, grabbing Dominic by both shoulders and shaking him.
The other cook (clearly the principal or first chef) held his heart, as if he’d been stabbed.
The pizza chef, as white-faced as a clown, lightly touched young Dan’s hand with his flour-covered fingers. “What has happened to Angelù?” he asked the boy in such a gentle way that Dominic knew the man must have a child Daniel’s age, or that he’d had one. Both cooks were about ten years older than Dominic.
“Angel drowned,” Danny told them all.
“It was an accident,” his father spoke up.
“Angelù was-a no fisherman!” the maître d’ lamented.
“It was a logging accident,” Dominic explained. “There was a river drive, and the boy slipped under the logs.”
The young women and the kid about Angel’s age had bolted-Danny hadn’t seen them leave. (It would turn out that they had fled no farther than the kitchen.)
“Angelù used to work here, after school,” the old man was saying, to Danny. “His mama, Carmella-she works here now.”
The other cook had stepped closer, holding out his hand to Dominic. “Antonio Molinari,” the principal chef said, somberly shaking Dominic’s hand.
“Dominic Baciagalupo,” the cook replied. “I was the cook in the logging camp. This is my son, Daniel.”
“Giusé Polcari,” the old man said to young Dan with downcast eyes. “Nobody calls me Giuseppe. I also like just plain Joe.” Pointing to the pizza chef, old Polcari said: “This is my son Paul.”
“You can call me Dan or Danny,” the boy told them. “Only my dad calls me Daniel.”
Tony Molinari had gone to the door of the restaurant; he was watching the passersby on Hanover Street. “Here she comes!” he said. “I see Carmella!” The two cooks fled into their kitchen, leaving the bewildered Baciagalupos with old Polcari.
“You gotta tell her-I no can-a do it,” Giusé (or just plain Joe) was saying. “I introduce you,” the maître d’ said, pushing Dominic closer to the restaurant’s door; Danny was holding his dad’s hand. “Her husband drowned, too-they were a true-love story!” old Polcari was telling them. “But he was a fisherman-they drown a lot.”
“Does Carmella have other children?” Dominic asked. Now the three of them could see her-a full-figured woman with a beautiful face and jet-black hair. She was not yet forty; maybe she was Ketchum’s age or a little older. Big breasts, big hips, big smile-only the smile was bigger than Injun Jane’s, young Dan would notice.
“Angelù was her one and only,” Giusé answered Dominic. Danny let go of his dad’s hand, because old Polcari was trying to give him something. It was Angel’s wallet, which felt wet and cold-the transit pass stuck out of it crookedly. Danny opened the wallet and put the pass back in place, just as Carmella Del Popolo walked in the door.
“Hey, Joe-am I late?” she asked the old man cheerfully.
“Not you, Carmella-you-a always on time!”
Maybe this was one of those moments that made Daniel Baciagalupo become a writer-his first and inevitably awkward attempt at foreshadowing. The boy suddenly saw into his father’s future, if not so clearly into his own. Yes, Carmella was a little older and certainly plumper than the woman in the photo Angel had carried in his wallet, but in no one’s estimation had she lost her looks. At twelve, Danny may have been too young to notice girls-or the girls themselves were too young to get his attention-but the boy already had an interest in women. (In Injun Jane, surely-in Six-Pack Pam, definitely.)
Carmella Del Popolo forcefully reminded young Dan of Jane. Her olive-brown skin was not unlike Jane’s reddish-brown coloring; her slightly flattened nose and broad cheekbones were the same, as were her dark-brown eyes-like Jane’s, Carmella’s eyes were almost as black as her hair. And wouldn’t Carmella soon have a sadness like Jane’s inside her? Jane had lost a son, too, and Carmella-like Dominic Baciagalupo-had already lost an adored spouse.
It was not that Danny could see, at that moment, the slightest indication that his dad was attracted to Carmella, or she to him; it was rather that the boy knew one thing for certain. Angel’s mother was the next woman his father would be attached to-for as long as the North End kept them safe from Constable Carl.
“You gotta sit down, Carmella,” old Polcari was saying, as he retreated toward the kitchen, where the others were hiding. “This is that cook and his son, from up-a north-you know, Angelù’s buddies.”
The woman, who was already radiant, brightened even more. “You are Dominic?” she cried, pressing the cook’s temples with her palms. By the time she turned to Danny, which she did quickly, Giusé Polcari had disappeared with the other cowards. “And you must be Danny!” Carmella said with delight. She hugged him, hard-not as hard as Jane had hugged him, at times, but hard enough to make young Dan think of Jane again.
Dominic only now realized why there’d been so little money in Angel’s wallet, and why they’d found next to nothing among the dead boy’s few things. Angel had been sending his earnings to his mother. The boy had begged rides to the post office with Injun Jane; he’d told Jane that the postage to Canada was complicated, but he’d been buying money orders for his mom. He’d clearly been faithful about writing her, too, for she knew how the cook and his son had befriended her boy. All at once, she asked about Ketchum.
“Is Mr. Ketchum with you?” Carmella said to Danny, the boy’s face held warmly in her hands. (Maybe this moment of speechlessness helped to make Daniel Baciagalupo become a writer. All those moments when you know you should speak, but you can’t think of what to say-as a writer, you can never give enough attention to those moments.) But it was then that Carmella seemed to notice there was no one else in the dining room, and no one visible in the kitchen; the poor woman took this to mean that they intended to surprise her. Maybe her Angelù had made an unannounced visit to see her? Were the others hiding her dearest one in the kitchen, all of them managing to keep deathly quiet? “An-geh-LOO!” Carmella called. “Are you and Mr. Ketchum here, too? An-geh-LOO?”