Or maybe both of them …
Given that bygones should be bygones …
Justice had been served …
An eye for an eye and all that …
Givenall that …
Should Angelareally be considering marriage to the man?
But even worse thanher defection …
How could hismother have forgotten so soon?
THE SECOND INTERLOPER at the table today was a man named Luigi Fontero from Milan, Italy. Henry Lowell was sitting on Angela’s right, and Luigi Fontero was sitting on Louise Carella’s right—Carella’smother’s right, right! Nor was this the “Luigi” of ancient television fame, a fruit peddler or whatever the hell he’d been, a man who spoke broken English the way the immigrants at the turn of the century had, although the show took place in the Fifties, Carella guessed, he’d only seen a single rerun on theNick at Nite channel or one of the other hundred and ninety-nine channels proliferating like fleas on a dog.
ThisLuigi was a furniture manufacturer.This Luigi made furniture fashioned by some of Europe’s most important designers.This Luigi spoke fluent English with merely the faintest trace of an accent.ThisLuigi wore suits hand-tailored in Rome, and shoes hand- cobbled in Florence.This Luigi was holding his mother’s hand. If this were Greek tragedy, Carella would have cut offthis Luigi’s hand at the wrist.
“How was the weather when you left Milan?” Lowell asked pleasantly.
“Milan is always the same this time of year,” Fontero replied pleasantly. “Drizzly and cold. Very much like Paris.”
Two old buddies chatting about the weather.
Carella wanted to kill them both.
“Couldwego to Paris sometime?” April asked her mother, simultaneously signing.
Teddy signed back,Yes, next weekend, darling.
“Really?” April said, her eyes opening wide.
Image of her mother, black hair and brown eyes. Talked up a storm, a constant chatterer—well, exactly like her mother in that respect as well, except that Teddy could only talk with her hands and her eyes. Born deaf, she had never heard a human voice, never heard any sound at all. Almost everyone at this table knew how to sign, some perfectly, some to a lesser degree. Except the interlopers, of course. They looked at Teddy’s hands as if she were scribbling Sanskrit on the air.
April was wearing lipstick. Not yet thirteen, and wearing lipstick. Teddy assured Carella it was all right. Carella didn’t want to think his daughter was growing up. He didn’t want to think his sister would be marrying the man who’d let their father’s killer go free. He didn’t want to think his mother was starting up with some Italian gigolo so soon after his father’s death. On Christmas Day a year ago, she’d burst into tears whenever his father’s name was mentioned. Now she was openly holding hands with a man who looked too fucking much like a young Marcello Mastroianni.
Maybe I’ve had too much wine, Carella thought.
“I love Italian furniture,” Angela said.
Right, Sis, Carella thought. Aiding and abetting.
“Yes, it is quite beautiful,” Fontero said.
In all modesty, Carella thought.
“Lamps, too,” Angela said.
Compounding the felony, Carella thought.
“What’s the name of your company?” Lowell asked.
“Mobili Fontero.”
“Could I have more lasagna, please?” Mark asked.
The conversation ebbed and flowed, washing the table in familiar sound, except for the voices of the inept district attorney and the sartorially resplendent furniture man from Milan. Carella’s mother had been on a diet for the past two months. Now he knew why. She was styling her hair differently. Now he knew why. He wondered how long they’d known each other. Wondered how they’d met. Wondered …
“How’d you two guys meet, anyway?” Lowell asked.
You two guys. As if they were teenagers. His mother was sixty-three years old. Fontero was sixty-seven if he was a day. You two guys.
“You tell him, Luigi,” his mother said, and patted his hand.
Looking like a schoolgirl. The funeral meats not yet cold upon the table. He suddenly remembered his brief stay in college, remembered playing a bearded Claudius to Sarah Gelb’s Gertrude, a girl he’d later taken to bed—if you could call it that—in the back seat of his father’s car.
He missed his father so very much.
Luigi was telling them about Louise’s best friend—
That was Carella’s mother he was talking about. Louise. Louise Carella. Luigi and Louise. And, of course, Luigi was Louis in Italian, Carella’s middle name, Louis and Louise, oh howcute!
—Louise’s best friend Kate, who lived next door, and who was related somehow to Luigi’s brother in Florence (Firenze, Luigi said) who had suggested that Luigi stop by to say hello while he was on his business trip to America, which he had done, taking a taxi the first time …
“That was a mistake,” Louise Carella said, his mother said, rolling her eyes. “Luigi didn’t know how much it would cost, all the way up here to Riverhead.”
“You should have asked for a flat rate,” Angela suggested.
“Well, at home they warn us all the time about the taxi drivers in this city, but I must tell you I have never once been cheated on any of my visits here.”
“How often do you come here?” Lowell asked.
“Three, four times a year. To sell my line to American dealers. But also because I love this city.” He smiled. Beautiful white teeth. Marcello Mastroianni teeth. “Now I have reason to come more often,” he said, and squeezed Louise’s hand, squeezed Carella’s mother’s hand.
“To make a long story short,” his mother said, Louise said, “I was there having coffee with Katie when this taxi pulled up and Luigi stepped out …”
“This was in October,” Luigi said.
“He was wearing a gray coat with a black fur collar …”
Like a Russian diplomat, Carella thought.
“No hat,” Louise said.
Carella noticed that he had thick black hair, Luigi did.
“He came up the walk, and rang the doorbell,” Louise said. “Katie was expecting him, of course, but not until much later. He introduced himself …”
“I soon forgot I was there to say hello to my brother’s friend,” Luigi said, and squeezed her hand again, Carella’s mother’s hand, Louise’s.
“We went out to dinner, the three of us,” Louise said.
“I asked Katie to join us for the sake of courtesy,” Luigi said.
A beard, Carella thought.
“And that’s how we met,” Louise said.
“I came back the very next month.”
“Before Thanksgiving.”
“We talk every day on the phone.”
“We’ve known each other since October fifteenth,” Louise said.