Basil Instinct (2 page)

Paulette and Mrs. Crawford—a mysterious pianist who I suspect was named Mrs. Crawford at birth—could tell something was afoot from Landon’s hair and the fact that my black toque had fallen over my eyebrow. The two of them shot us questioning looks. Jabbing my finger at the violet invitation in Nonna’s hand, I mouthed,
Get the card
at them.

Paulette improvised. “Is that a cockroach?” she exclaimed loudly, stalking over to a dark corner behind the bar, where our octogenarian bartender, Giancarlo Crespi, was slicing lemons with manic ferocity.

“Where?” gasped Maria Pia. She quickly glanced around to see what effect this discovery was having on business—zero—so she headed toward the
corner still clutching the violet invitation from the good crackpots at Belfiere. There was a chance she was planning on using it to address the problem, but I looked pleadingly at Mrs. Crawford. Which was when, without a ripple of change in her expression—courtesy of a theatrical supply house—our pianist performed the arpeggio that routinely opened my grandmother’s favorite song, “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

All interest in an alleged cockroach evaporated.

Maria Pia fanned herself demurely with the invitation, acting as though her nightly mad interpretive dance to the fountain song had been vigorously requested by the crowd. There was no crowd. There was a red-nosed businessman hoping another split of champagne would cure the eye-rolling boredom of the young redhead with him. There was a table of five flashy women who kept trying to top each other’s bad-boyfriend stories but had dressed with enough dazzle that they were probably secretly hoping those boyfriends would walk in. There was a very pregnant gal thumbing through a baby name book and disagreeing with everything her husband actually liked.

No one was clamoring for my nonna’s expressive whirling that made me have to increase our insurance coverage. But, with a theatrical flourish, Maria Pia set the invitation down on an empty
table and launched into the song. She got as far as “Three—” and was sucking in a big breath when our singer, Dana Cahill, came motoring up to her, shouting, “No, no, no!” At that moment, Landon oozed by the table, snagged the violet card, and disappeared into the kitchen. I knew he was heading to the office at the back, where he’d make us a copy of this piece of mail from Belfiere that was already smelling like five-day-old mackerel.

Dana smiled indulgently at Maria Pia and drew her aside, out of earshot of the late-night regulars, who appeared to be moping. “Don’t you remember what week this is, M.P.?”

To which my bemused grandmother said, “Heh?”

Dana smoothed her bobbed and dyed black hair (as if it ever got wayward) and licked her vampirish red lips. At that point I noticed she was wearing a sleeveless black sheath I think I saw at Saks in the Donna Karan collection—and a black armband. Who died? Knowing Dana, it could have been the death date of some obscure Russian poet—anything to throw out there if someone asked her about the cloth around her upper arm. She chooses her dramatic effects and then digs up a plausible reason for them.

“It’s Grief Week,” she said in a way that reminded me of a nun in fourth grade when some poor boy couldn’t name the ninth Station of the Cross.

My grandmother looked puzzled.

Dana spoke up, enunciating each syllable as though my nonna’s singing her signature song was second only to the problem of her ear wax. “
Setti-man-a do-lo-ro-sa
, M.P. Grief Week.” For someone wearing a black armband, she was also sporting about two pounds of gold jewelry.

I could tell Maria Pia Angelotta was close to strong-arming the slight Dana Cahill out of her way with a rebuke for keeping my nonna from her following. “I must give them”— she slapped a hand on her breast—“what they want.” (In that case, Nonna, grappas all around.)

But Dana hung on to her, and went on to remind my thwarted grandmother that the third week in June honors the losses suffered—in a bizarre coincidence—by the regulars during that week. Different years, same week. It all came back to me. It was the third week in June when the clarinet’s wife left him, the mandolinist’s son died in a road accident, the drummer’s mother succumbed to a bee sting, Giancarlo Crespi’s father died on Okinawa during World War II, and Dana Cahill’s basset hound, Booger, died (probably just to stop answering to that name).

So, in a show of solidarity, which annually drives away customers, the Miracolo late-night regulars take the opportunity during the third week in June
to play maddeningly mournful music. If the song features justice gone awry or star-crossed love, they were all over it. And if it wasn’t already down-tempo, they’d work their antimagic on it until it was.

Maria Pia glowered at the hangdog regulars who were no doubt thinking that “Three Coins in a Fountain,” while full of longing, was still not appropriate for Grief Week. “Oh, all right,” she spat, graciously. At which Mrs. Crawford lifted her fishnet-gloved hands from the keys and we watched the regulars launch into their first number. I had just identified it as a dirge probably played for wailing crowds at state funerals in Kazakhstan, when Dana leaned in to me. “I love what they do with ‘Teen Angel,’ ” she whispered, scratching underneath her black armband.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Landon slipping the invitation from Belfiere back to the spot our Nonna had left it, just as she—with no coins to toss in a fountain, due to Grief Week—seemed to remember she had set it down, and turned to retrieve it. Landon patted his pants pocket, which I took to mean that he had stashed a copy there, and I looked at him quizzically. Blinking, he mouthed a big exaggerated “Wow!” at me. So he had read it.

I wasn’t reassured. “Not sticking around for ‘Ode to Billie Joe’?”

He pushed behind our grandmother and did a
tense head shake at me as he headed toward the kitchen. “Wait till you see it,” he whispered.

“That bad?”

Staring, Landon kept walking. “No good can come of it,” he intoned.

*   *   *

Between us, Landon and I managed to clear Miracolo out by 11:52 p.m., well before its usual closing time. Grief Week was just going to have to be a tad less grief-filled this year. Landon and I had crazy cooking societies to discuss before collapsing into our beds. Dana was sitting hunched on a bar stool clasping a cordless microphone and singing the final strains of her spin on “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” (her third splatter platter in a row), sung as what I can only call a breathless lullaby. When one of the drummer’s sticks slid off his plaid Bermuda shorts, I saw he was fast asleep.

Leo, the electric mandolin player—and the only musician regular I knew by name—was gathering up the pictures of the subjects of Grief Week from the end of the bar, which had become a shrine. Pictures of a swaybacked basset hound apparently wondering what the hell was wrong with the human who would name him Booger. A young marathoner. An out-of-focus shot of a crew-cut GI caught mugging for the camera on a beach in the
South Pacific. A stiff wedding shot of the clarinetist and his bride, who had eyes for the best man. A long-haired girl in a purple miniskirt holding her young son in one arm and pointing out a zoo giraffe with the other.

Maria Pia was carried along with the rest of the staff, who warbled their good nights, and I finally gave Dana a little shove, which she interpreted as some kind of Girlfriend Gesture and responded affectionately with “Oh, you!” But at least she went out the door. Landon killed the lights, I locked up, and together we headed across Market Square to Jolly’s Pub, which stays open until 2 a.m.

The downtown commercial district in Quaker Hills, Pennsylvania, consists of shops and businesses lined up on all four sides of the three-acre green space called Providence Park. Right across the street from us is Jolly’s Pub, owned by a second-generation Brit named Reginald Jolly, who, if you happen to come during the slow period, between lunch and happy hour, you might catch trimming his pencil moustache. I think of him as the anti–Maria Pia—he’s as inscrutable and self-controlled as she is generally Out There. They approach each other warily, which is wise, and not often.

Landon flicked open the top two buttons of his shirt as we loped across Market Square and headed straight across the park. My little hemp tote
slapped against my right hip as I dodged benches and playground equipment. “Hi, Akahana,” I called to our wandering Japanese philosopher, who was stretched out on the kiddie slide, reading by the halogen light of a headlamp. I could tell by her grunt that she was pondering the origins of consciousness, her favorite late-night activity.

The entire front wall of Jolly’s Pub had been buzzed up and out of sight, like a garage door, and the drinking crowd had spilled out to scattered tables fronting Market Square. Inside was a long bar that gleamed like a grand piano and café tables holding battery-op candles that even flickered like the real thing. No Grief Week on this side of the square. Glasses clinked. Voices topped each other. Late-night laughter sounded like surf. The scent of Scotch perfumed the summer air. Floating close to the tin ceiling was the sound of Bob Dylan singing “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Maybe I could just hang out at Jolly’s for the rest of Grief Week.

Landon and I grabbed a table, signaled two short ones to Jeanette, the bartender, and we sat. Listing over to one hip, he teased the copy of the Belfiere invitation from his pants pocket. Landon is probably my best friend and the closest thing I’ll ever have to a brother in this lifetime. After my mom died when I was nine and my father—Maria Pia’s oldest
son, Jock—took off for parts unknown when I was fifteen, Landon’s dad gave me a home, partly to keep me out of his mother’s clutches. It almost worked.

He slid the paper across the table to me.

My fingers walked over to it and slowly drew it back toward me.

After about three seconds, Landon erupted into fits of exhaled air and pulled his chair around so he was shoulder to shoulder with me. I smiled at him. Bullets leave guns slower than my beloved cousin reaches the limits of his patience. “Oh, here,” he cried, as if I’d bungled the unfolding. In what looked like one motion, he unfolded the copy of the Belfiere invitation, smoothed out the creases, and spun it to face me.

Centered across the top was what looked like a coat of arms. To me, the shield was shaped like a funnel, which I suppose made more sense than something you’d carry into battle. Even on the worst days, the kitchen at Miracolo didn’t get
that
bad. In the upper-right quadrant were three silver knives with identical ebony handles laid side by side. A carmine-colored slash ran diagonally from there down to the lower-left quadrant, where a black mortar and pestle was pictured. Running below the funnel-shield was a scroll with the words
Numquam Nimis Multi Cultri
. Possibly Latin for Crazy Cooking Club?

And then I read:

The Society of Belfiere

~ honoring the gustatory delights of life and death ~

welcomes you as a member

You will first undertake to receive the traditional 3cm
B
tattoo in Bastarda font on the wrist of your stirring hand

You will prepare an exclusive evening meal for 50 guests on Friday, June 20, at 9 p.m.

You will provide yourself with the traditional Belfiere gown in midnight-blue satin for your induction

on Sunday, June 22, at 10 p.m.

at 7199 Gallows Hill Drive

Pendragon, Pennsylvania

You must arrive and depart alone

You must perform all instructions faithfully

and

In all things pertaining to Belfiere you must observe
omertà

We are 200 years old and our traditions are known only to ourselves

In matters of our history we are Clotho

In matters of ourselves we are Lachesis

In matters of food we are Atropos

We are Belfiere

I shuddered.

“I know!” whispered Landon, his green eyes wide. Then he waved the paper under my nose.

Our Scotch arrived—Laphroaig for me, Oban
for Landon. We were staring at the amber liquid while Dylan sounded so close he might have been at the very next table, and for sure he was the only one at Jolly’s making any kind of sense.
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows
. Whatever this whole Belfiere thing was, Maria Pia Angelotta had unquestioningly bought into it, so the prosciutto was about to hit the fan.

“Our fortress has been breached,” I told Landon moodily, picking up my drink.

“The barbarians are at the gates,” said Landon, lifting his drink, adding, “and they are
so
wearing last year’s fashions.”

“Dwelling on the line about the midnight blue?”

“Well”—he lifted his elegant shoulders—“coupled with the satin . . .” and he punctuated his scorn with a little sound that went something like
“Puh!”

I took one sip I let slosh from side to side, then knocked back the rest. As I winced and writhed, I got out, “I mean, what’s their brand? On the one hand, bastard tattoo fonts—”

“On the other,” said Landon, sipping, “an elegant dinner for fifty. I agree. And girlfriend”—he slipped an arm around me—“let’s not even touch the”—here his voice dropped—“
omertà
line.”

Omert
à
is the code of silence. Usually reserved for certain Italian neighborhoods. Usually under
stood as the cost of doing business with certain Italian businessmen. Or getting the business from certain Italian businessmen. Violating
omertà
is usually punishable by listening to Dana Cahill sing Motown. But the fact that Belfiere members were bound by this code of silence gave me the kind of creeps that had nothing to do with Sandor the toothless floor mat delivery guy offering to try out the mat together. “And then,” he always finishes with a leer, “let’s see what happens.”

I signaled for a second shot. “There’s a lot of death talk in this invitation,” I pointed out to my cousin. “
Omertà
, the Three Fates—”

Landon snatched the paper. “ ‘The gustatory delights of . . . death.’ ” He shivered. “What are they talking about? What are those?”