Besides, if he went directly out to the vineyard this morning to catch Sevriano, the chances were extremely high that Germano and Adriano would force him into filling in the Frenchman’s hole. Or worse, if the Frenchman had expired from his august labor, they might make him party to the burial, which might get tedious later in a legal sense if the Michelin company proved attached to their scribe and sent authorities. It would look suspicious, the Buffala brothers and a respected taxi driver burying a fat man in a hole he himself had dug. And his disinterment would rattle the Buffala brothers to no end, for fear that mummies, vipers, aphrodisiacs, or nuclear fuel waste might be discovered. Any of that and their vineyard was probably at an end. On top of all this, Mario did not want to develop trouble with his needle valve on the drive out there.
He got quietly up and repaired to the kitchen and decided to surprise his wife by fixing breakfast for them. She was sleeping late. She deserved it — it could not be more obvious that she was under considerable strain and needed all the rest she could get.
Mario was a little rusty in the kitchen, but he was confident he could remember his good mother’s recipe for pizza bianca, and he wanted to cook the bread in the old wood stove his wife never used. He liked the smell of bread most when it was cooked over wood. It made bread taste like some kind of airy game.
He set about rolling the ingredients for the pizza together on his wife’s floured board and soon had a large round of dough that was kneadable in the extreme. He vaguely remembered that the pizza did not want a lot of kneading, because it became tough, but the mound beneath his working hands began to feel good to him. A little more, he decided. As he worked the dough, a sensation of excitement came into his size, and another sensation crept up the back of his neck, as if he were being watched. He wanted to turn to see who was watching him, but the mound of dough held him. He had to work it a little more. It was absurd, but the heavy slag of leavening bread reminded him not a little of Cicciolina’s ample tette, or one of them, anyway. He caressed her, forming her up to him, then mashing her gently, pressing her entire tetta to her chest with both his hands. He would have bent to kiss her but for the absolute need to see who was watching him. You do not kiss the tetta of l’onorevole Cicciolina on a board in the kitchen if someone is watching you. For a second — very brief, but disturbing — the flattened dough then resembled not Cicciolina but a piece of the hide of the white, advanced Frenchman.
Before he turned, he decided the party watching him could not be his wife — she was still soundly asleep. It was probably the prowler, the burglar. This gave him a thrill. Maybe he should continue to caress Cicciolina until the man was closer to him, and then suddenly whirl and strike the bastard a mortal blow with an iron fist that had but a second before been an incredibly tender, loving hand. This had much appeal.
He waited but could not hear the blackguard crossing the kitchen. It was more than a little unsettling to try to hear someone creep up on you as you worked up pizza bianca on a floury board in your kitchen. Finally it occurred to Mario that he might be in some marginal danger, and it was certain that he was not — distracted as he was — acquitting himself well with Cicciolina. He took a deep breath and whirled. No one was there. What he saw where he had expected the man — it was crazy, but he now realized he had expected the Frenchman — was a Michelin guide to Italy open to the psalm of the modern Italian. He looked at the book. He stared it down. It was on its back, and across the room, yet somehow was watching him. If he thought a book on its back could watch him, maybe he should see Sevriano Buffala after all.
He kindled up a small fire in the old stove and found a pan for Cicciolina’s dear bread. She felt, she smelled, so good it was incredible. Mario was salivating. He thought to surprise his wife with an even larger surprise than breakfast prepared by a respectable taxi driver. He put Cicciolina in the oven and, before going to the bedroom, tossed the Michelin guide to Italy in the firebox. Cicciolina could use the heat. When Mario served the tough bread to his wife she seemed not to notice. She seemed warmed by his gesture and ate the pizza smiling at him girlishly, as if, it seemed to him, he had been away for a long time and they were consequently a little new and exciting to each other, as they had been years before. His wife sat in bed eating the bread and deftly picking up crumbs from her bosom with a moist finger and looking at him when she put the crumbs in her mouth, and Mario sat looking seriously back at her, thinking, It is like I have been away somewhere.
Dr. Ordinary
DR. ORDINARY FOUND SOLACE in nothing. He found his shoes untied during surgery. He found his mother once, when she was in her sixties, naked in the bathtub calling for a fresh martini. He found bluebirds too far south. He found pies too sweet to eat. He found God with no difficulty, but locating his belief another matter.
He found it curious that he should have gone to medical school in the first place. He found a human head in the car trunk of his anatomy-class partner. He found, after his certain initial horror, that it was not the head of the cadaver he shared with his ghoulish roommate.
He found Tuesday the most trying day of the week, by far. He found a stray dog. He found a wallet full of cash. He found a lost child on the edge of a huge mall parking lot. He found it difficult to turn her in without coming under the suspicion of authority. He found telling them he was a doctor to be of no help.
He found beautiful — as beautiful as crystals and snowflakes and precious gems — the cysts and stones and lumps he took from human bodies. He found dry cleaning to be tantamount to not cleaning. He found he had no objection to staples in clothes, but he could not abide them in paper.
He found whiners offensive. He found a rare buffalo nickel in his pant cuff. He found blues-singers-in-Angola shows on TV totally absorbing. He found the behavior of mature people unpredictable. He found the doctrine of Christian charity at once commendable and absurd.
He found women close to tears at all times. He found old-fashioned foundation ads such as those in the Sears catalogue more titillating than modern-day pictures of nudes. He found relief in tension and none in release. He found certain sentimental poems, of the sort found on greeting cards, salacious. He found that if, as he gave a woman a physical examination of any intimate region, she spoke to him loudly, he was attracted to her strongly. He found impossible the notion of taking sexual advantage of a patient.
He found color-gradient charts at paint stores the most engaging art he had ever seen, and he had the world’s largest, if not only, collection of them. He found mules and other sterile hybrids, excepting sterile hybrid plants, most sympathetic. He found vegetarians everywhere.