Devil's Food (9 page)

“... dinner with an important client,” he was saying as he blew a kiss to Philippa. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it,
Ardith.” There was a short pause. “Eh—I don’t think you
should join us, sweetheart. It would be a little awkward. No, that’s the whole problem. Ross can’t handle it. He’s out of
town. It’s not my choice, believe me.” He smiled again at Philippa. “I’ll try to be home by eleven. Love you too.” He hung
up.

“You bastard,” Philippa snapped.

Dana strode across the room and kissed her soundly. “She said she loved me. What am I supposed to say back, something like
’No kidding’? It doesn’t mean anything anyway. It’s like Please and Thank You. One phrase triggers the other. In polite society,
that is.” To illustrate his point, he said, “I love you.”

Philippa scowled. “No kidding.” She twisted out of his arms and went to a bronze bust on a pedestal in the corner. “Is this
supposed to be the great you?”

“Who else? How do you like it?”

She ran a finger along its nose. “Beats a hat rack, I suppose.” After perching her frilly bonnet on it, Philippa walked to
the window. Pouting, she watched the sailboats in Boston Harbor. For a few hours, she had actually been happy among them.
“Where’s Ross?”

“Who knows? Fishing with the Micmacs. All this preaching about needing me in the office on Monday, then he doesn’t even come
in. The secretary says he’s in Canada on some hush-hush project she can’t divulge. It’s her way of punishing me for not writing
my whereabouts in the appointment book like a good boy.” Catching up with Philippa at the window, Dana began nibbling the
back of her neck. “I haven’t made love with you in almost four hours.” He slid a hand beneath her fluttery tunic. “Would you
like to make up for lost time?”

“Here? You’re an animal.” But she didn’t back away; the idea of misbehaving on the windowsill, in view of hundreds of strangers
in the adjacent skyscraper, intrigued her.

Their oral cavities were steeply countersunk when, after two short knocks, Marjorie walked into Dana’s office. “Excuse me!”
she gasped, seeing them. “I thought you were alone.”

“Thank you, Marjorie,” said Dana, smartly disengaging himself. “I’ll be right with you.” The distraught woman left.

Philippa immediately pushed him away. “Damn you, I knew
that was a bad idea. Did you see the way she looked at me? This fucking wig! She thinks I’m Emily.”

A slow smile spread across Dana’s face. He straightened his tie. “Let’s have some fun,” he said. “Please, Phil. I’ll never
get another chance to razz Marjorie like this.”

“No way. Emily would kill me.”

“Are you kidding? She’d love it. Marjorie has been sending Ross anonymous Valentines for ten years.”

Philippa still hesitated. “She’ll be able to tell I’m not Emily.” Too many wrinkles.

“I’ll bet you dinner tonight she can’t. Come on.” He patted her clothes back in place and, taking her hand, tiptoed to the
door of his office.

“What am I supposed to do?” Philippa whispered. “Really, Dana, this is so stupid!”

“Shhh!” He ushered her to the front desk, where Marjorie was furiously pounding her electric typewriter. Across the foyer,
waiting for her appointment, sat a dowager wearing a black hat. She probably hunched over due to the tonnage of her pearl
necklaces. With considerable pleasure, Dana noticed that the woman recognized Philippa instantly: The magazine she was reading
dropped to her lap as she stared at the famous actress. Quickly realizing that an autograph request could ruin his little
joke, however, Dana became very businesslike. “Marjie,” he asked smoothly, “has Ross called in yet?”

“No,” she snapped, glaring briefly at Philippa.

“It would be helpful to know when he’s coming back. Where’s my appointment book?” The irate secretary shoved it toward Dana’s
side of the desk. “Thank you. Nine-thirty tonight at Diavolina, darling?” he asked Philippa, writing the name of the restaurant
in large block letters on the proper line. Dana was about to tell Marjorie that he’d be disappearing for a few hours when
she slipped a small yellow note in front of him.
Dagmar Pola
, it said. An arrow pointed toward the woman in the black hat.
Lunch at Locke Ober.

Dana Forbes had not risen to the apex of his profession by lunching with girlfriends instead of moneyed clients; also, with
the wisdom of middle age, he had finally come to realize that bedding a femme fatale would ultimately generate less bliss
than would building a new museum. So he took Philippa’s arm and paraded her to the door. In the hallway, he laughed apologetically.
“I completely forgot about that appointment.”

Philippa stared at him a moment. “You’re not standing me up, are you?”

“What can I say, tiger? Business before pleasure. Age before beauty.” He kissed her forehead. “Go to the hotel. I’ll be there
naked in two hours.”

“I won’t.” Philippa donned her sunglasses. Silks aquiver, she stalked toward the elevator and boarded without looking back,
not because she wanted to cut Dana, but because she was afraid he might not still be standing forlornly in the hallway, watching
her leave.

And in fact, he wasn’t. “Madame Pola,” Dana cried effusively, reentering his office. “This is a rare pleasure.” He took her
thin, cold hands, wondering why old ladies’diamond rings were always too large for their fingers, so that they clicked and
slid like false teeth in a glass. “I’m afraid Ross was called to Washington this morning. State Department consultations.
I’m delighted to have you all to myself. Come in, come in!” With a grandiose gesture, he swept her into his office. “Would
you care for a drink before lunch?”

“No thank you.” Dagmar peered at the bust in the corner. Its chin was barely visible beneath Philippa’s fluent millinery.
“Works of art should not be used as hat racks, Mr. Forbes.”

“I’ll scold the offending party. But I’m flattered that you would consider my likeness a work of art.” Dana went to the bar.
As he was mixing himself a highball, Dagmar surveyed the array of pill bottles on his desktop.

“Are you an architect or a pharmacist?” she asked.

“Ha-ha! You know the answer to that, I hope!” Where the hell was Ross, damn it? Dana hated trying to charm women who didn’t
excite him sexually. It was a thankless endeavor, like pitting prunes. “Have you been to Locke Ober recently, Madame Pola?”
he said, sitting beside her on his sofa.

Dagmar wryly studied his face; after a lifetime with Joe Pola and his nonstop mistresses, she had no difficulty recognizing
a male of the same ilk, “Perhaps we could lunch another day,” she answered, “I am suddenly feeling under the weather.”

Dana could not believe his good fortune. However, he forced his brow to crinkle in concern. “What a shame! This heat is just
abominable. Let me call a cab.”

“Thank you, my driver is waiting downstairs.” Dagmar walked slowly to Marjorie’s desk. “Please tell Mr. Major that I was here.”
Walking at a coronation pace, she left.

“She doesn’t like me,” Dana murmured after a moment. “I wonder why not.”

Marjorie returned to her typewriter. “Because you’re a schmuck.”

“Ha-ha! Aren’t we cute today!” Dana strode into the hallway. “At least let me show you to your car, Madame Pola.” When the
hell would this old bag tell him to call her Dagmar? They waited eons for an elevator. Finally, desperate to break the silence,
he said, “I suppose you recognized that woman with me in the office just now.”

“She looked somewhat familiar,” Dagmar answered dryly.

“That was Philippa Banks, the actress. She wants me to build her a château on the Riviera.”

“Is that so.”

The elevator arrived and Dagmar inched aboard while Dana kept the Door Open button depressed. Slightly unnerved that his charm
had failed on a veritable tortoise, Dana began to whistle nervously as the elevator plodded to the lobby. He regretted the
little joke he had played on Marjorie; she might sue him for a deviant version of sexual harassment. He worried about Ross’s
prolonged disappearance from the office. Nothing like that had happened in the forty years he had known him. Dana helped Dagmar
into her car and looked helplessly up and down the teeming sidewalks. His chest hurt: Rejection, even by a harridan, disrupted
his biosystem. Then he thought he glimpsed Philippa’s gossamer outfit wafting in the far-off breeze, and ran like a schoolboy
after her.

* * *

It had been a bad Monday at Diavolina. Around dinnertime, when Mustapha’s oven died, the slow burn in Emily’s stomach began
flaring into her abdomen. The chaos had begun this morning, when she had told Byron that Philippa would be coming to dinner.
He had been useless as a yo-yo, and the kitchen off balance, ever since. Lunch had not gone well, thanks to a surge of diners
and a dearth of serving staff. Still recovering from the unexpected depletion of their reserves, the cooks were frantically
preparing for a second assault that evening. Later in the day, catching Emily completely off guard, Guy had called. Ross had
not. Then Marjorie had hung up on her: disaster. Instinctively, Emily knew that her husband had returned, and she was afraid.

Just before six o’clock, two replacement waiters arrived. Following a Mach-3 rundown of the menu, they were sent into the
dining room, whence they often returned, looking confused. By seven, Diavolina was full, the bar besieged. There was an unbelievable
run on oysters and smoked salmon, forcing Klepp into overdrive; he and Chess began scrimmaging over a bowl of lemons, which
she insisted on saving for her salad dressings. Mustapha’s rising batch of yeast rolls verged on collapse when the stove repairman
finally arrived. Placing his toolbox in the busiest corridor in the kitchen, the man began a thorough search of the lines,
finally announcing that he would have to shut off all the gas before proceeding further. As Emily was protesting, Slavomir
tripped over the toolbox. His face, and fifty clean dishes, hit the floor.

For a second, out in the dining room, all conversation ceased. Then everyone laughed in appreciation of someone else’s ineptitude.
At the bar, Ward shook her head and continued pouring beer. She turned the music and the air-conditioning up a notch. There
were many new faces tonight, all ages, all types: Maybe Diavolina had been mentioned in some trendy magazine. A weird business,
food. She called Zoltan to the bar. “It’s all yours,” she said. “I’ve got a date with my shrink.”

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Slavomir was bleeding. Porcelain
shards lay everywhere, like shells on a beach. Mustapha, standing the closest, helped the dishwasher to his feet. “You’ve
been drinking again, man,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I thought we talked about this.”

Emily rushed over. “Are you hurt?” Slavomir burbled in Russian as the repairman gingerly exhumed his toolbox from the rubble.
“What’s he saying, Klepp?” she called.

“He’s reciting poetry. Sounds like Tolstoy.” Klepp glanced at a chit from one of the new waiters. “You stupid shit! One more
oyster and I’ll put your gonads on the plate instead!”

Byron had been standing near the kitchen doors, peering into the dining room. “Phil’s not here yet,” he worried. “Maybe the
crowd scared her away.”

“Would you do something useful?” Emily barked, binding Slavomir’s lacerated wrist with a napkin. “Klepp, ask Slavomir if he
wants to go home.”

“Then who the hell’s going to wash dishes?” he shouted back. “Look at him, Major. He’s perfectly all right.” Nevertheless,
Klepp conferred with the injured party. “He’ll stay if you let him lie down in your office for a few minutes.”

“Fine! Go!”

Ward came into the kitchen just as Klepp and Slavomir were leaving. “What happened?” she demanded, seeing bandages and blood.

“He kissed the floor again, ma’am,” Klepp replied. “No problem.”

The dishwasher peeped through the little window in the kitchen door. Suddenly, with a shriek, he reeled into the dining room.
Klepp managed to catch him after a few steps and drag him back into the kitchen.

“Will you get that madman out of here?” Byron cried. “What is he carrying on about, Klepp?”

“He says there’s a devil out there. Now he’s putting a curse on the whole kitchen.” Klepp wrapped an arm around Slavomir’s
frail shoulders. “Let’s go lie down, Rasputin.”

Ward looked at Emily. “I’ll be back in two hours. Try not to burn the place down.” She left.

Lola, the waitress with the body of Jessica Rabbit, torpedoed in with two plates of pasta. “Rejects,” she said, shoving them
toward Chess. “They say it’s undercooked.”

Chess ate a strand. “This is perfectly done. Take it back out and explain what al dente is all about.”

“Don’t give me any lip, Muffin,” Lola retorted. “They’re my best tippers.”

“She’s here!” Byron suddenly screeched from the doorway. “Oh my God! She’s gorgeous!” He rushed to the stove and flamed a
wide copper pan. “Everyone stay calm. Where did I put those mushrooms? Port. Where’s the port?” He finally located the bottle
on a shelf near the dishwashing utensils. “Christ, it’s empty! That swine drank a half bottle of seventy-year-old port!” Byron
stumbled into Mustapha, who was pulling a rack of very dark brown rolls from the oven. “Will you get out of my way? This is
my workstation now! You had all day to bake!”

Mustapha carefully removed the rolls to a cooling rack. “What is with you, man?” he asked. “You got Queen Elizabeth out there
or something?”

“I’ve got Philippa Banks,” Byron retorted. “If you don’t know who that is, you’ve joined the wrong religion.”

“Philippa Banks,” Klepp murmured, returning to his station. “That’s the broad who always gets laid on beaches.” He joined
Byron at the door. “Now that’s what I call cleavage. Who’s the gigolo with her?”

“Get back to your oysters, Klepp!” Emily shouted. Her throat felt like the funnel of a blow torch. “Byron, sweep up these
dishes at once. Before you start the mushrooms.”

The sous-chef was fussily picking through Mustapha’s rolls, choosing the four most perfect specimens to send to Philippa’s
table with a selection of cheeses. “Lola! Are you on Section C tonight?” he called.