The Sourdough Wars (13 page)

“A living hell.”

“Tell Auntie.”

“Boyfriends. Parents. Secretaries. Cops. I’m going to see my shrink. Maybe you should see one, too. One minute you hate Robert Tosi and next thing, he’s your valentine.”

“Valentine. That’s where the roses came from.” Alan had stuffed them all into a vase that would have looked nice with three of them in it.

“You’ve made up with Pigball, then.”

“No. And quit trying to change the subject.”

“I wasn’t. Robert Tosi is certainly not my valentine. He’s a loathsome sort from the nineteenth century. He asked me out for a drink, and I thought it might be educational. That’s all.”

“And was it?”

“Quite. He told me all about his marriage to Diddly-bop.”

“Sally.”

Chris nodded. “It seems the poor fool thought she was happy staying at home and knitting. Then she started working in his bakery and he thought she was happy doing that. It came as a complete surprise that she was cheating on him.”

“With Peter?”

“Yes. Naturally, I asked how they’d been getting along and whether she’d ever mentioned any changes she wanted in the marriage—maybe she thought he was working too hard and they didn’t have enough time together, any little things like that. He said, ‘Sure, but I didn’t think it meant anything.’ ”

“Being liberated women who wouldn’t judge a person on race, sex, or previous condition of servitude, we will not say, ‘Just like a man,’ will we?”

“Certainly we will. Anyhow, he found out she was cheating on him with Peter, and Bob suddenly remembered how she used to flirt with him at parties—he’d thought she was just being nice because Peter was his friend. Can you beat that?”

“He sounds a little on the out-to-lunch side. Why did he tell us Peter wasn’t the type to get involved in a triangle?”

“He doesn’t seem to count that one. He says Sally forced herself on Peter. Also, he still claims Peter dumped her. He just can’t let her have anything. She left him for another man, but he won’t even admit the guy found her attractive—she has to be a whore who stalked Peter and got her just desserts. And that’s not all. He said lots of other awful things about her.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, that she’s a liar and you can’t believe a word she says. Nothing specific—just lots of vitriol and machismo.”

“I’m glad you had such a great time.”

She made a face.

“What time did you go out, anyway?”

“Late. About ten. Why?”

“The burglary was around nine. When did he call you?”

“About nine-thirty.”

“That’s about the time Rob and I would have finished giving the burglar the scenic tour.”

“So he could have been Bob.” She thought a moment and then pounded the desk with her fist. “He was, dammit! He was! He was using me for an alibi.”

“Maybe not. He probably just thinks you’re cute.”

She bronx-cheered, but the unseemly noise was drowned by the worse one of a ringing telephone. I answered before I thought.

“Peace?” said Rob.

“I need to be left alone for a while.”

“No, you don’t. You’ve been through a lot and you need plenty of garlic and basil to steady your nerves.”

That caught me off guard. It sounded so exactly right I had to keep quiet for fear of saying something friendly.

“Also white wine and sourdough. Which reminds me. You know the second starter? The one we thought was stolen last night, only it turned out it really wasn’t stolen?”

“Rob, get to the point.”

“It’s been stolen.”

We met at the Little City in North Beach, where you can get whole roasted bulbs of garlic, which you spread like anchovy paste on your sourdough, and where the pesto is not confined to the pasta. You can get it all over your salad and your antipasto and probably your hands and face if you want it there.

It was the right place for nerve-steadying herbs, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted to break bread—even garlic-spread bread—with Rob. I was the first one there, and I sat at the bar instead of a table, so as not to commit myself. He came in and kissed me on the cheek. I didn’t turn the other. “So,” I said, “the second starter’s been stolen.”

Rob nodded. “By a sinister scoundrel who snuck away scot-free.”

“Don’t be cute. I’m not in the mood.”

“Or perhaps a sly slut speeding scurrilously sinward.”

I slipped off my bar stool. “I’m going home.”

He took hold of an elbow. “You can’t. You’re my valentine.”

“Your ex-valentine.”

“Okay then. You have to give back the present I gave you last year.”

He had given me a little heart-shaped ceramic box that now sat on my glass-topped coffee table in lieu of the thing that used to sit there—a heavy sculpture I’d given to Rob. It had been used as a murder weapon, and I couldn’t stand to have it around anymore.

Somehow, thinking about the little heart-shaped box reminded me again of how I’d met Rob and how nice he’d been to me when I was involved in a murder case—I mean, another murder case—and how much in love with him I used to be. I guessed I still was. I sat back down.

“A carafe of the house white,” Rob said to the bartender. I said, “So how did he or she do it?”

“Who?”

“The scoundrel or the slut.”

“Oh. Nobody knows. It’s like the last time—nobody’d even know the starter was missing if it hadn’t been for the foiled attempt at the other warehouse, which prompted a check.”

“Do you think our burglar did it—the one we stopped?”

Rob shrugged. “Who knows? Shall we move to a table?”

“No. Let’s talk about last night.”

“I said I’m sorry.” He turned his blue eyes on me and rubbed a knuckle across my cheek. “Pussycat. You could have been hurt.”

I looked around to see if anyone had heard the pet name. At least, he hadn’t said Rosa Sharon, which he sometimes called me—I wasn’t sure if he thought I was the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley, or if I reminded him of the Okie girl in the
Grapes of Wrath
. Nobody’d heard “pussycat,” so I felt free to answer to it: “I could have been hurt! You nearly got shot.”

“And my brave girlfriend saved me. I owe my life to you, baby, and don’t think I’ll be forgetting it. I thought, for openers, maybe I could buy you lunch.”

The wine had come and I’d drunk half a glass, but I was no less tense than I’d been all morning. “Rob, be serious.”

“I don’t know what to say, Rebecca.” He looked forlorn. “I’ve apologized about ten times. What else can I possibly do?”

“Like my mom used to say when I was a kid, you’re not sorry enough.”

He was silent. “Look,” I continued. “Was a crummy newspaper story really so important you had to risk your life and mine and get me beat up and thrown in jail for it? That’s what’s bugging me.”

He shrugged, seemingly at a loss. “It’s my job.”

“You wouldn’t have gotten fired if you’d missed the home edition. Nobody would even have noticed.”

“The
Ex
would have had it first.”

“And they’d have been up a creek, wouldn’t they? Because you wouldn’t have talked to them, and I wouldn’t have talked to them, and they’d have had about a quarter of the story, and you’d have creamed them tomorrow.”

“But it would have been
tomorrow
.”

“You’re out of control, Rob.” I turned toward the bar and took a big gulp of wine. Then I stared down at my glass, not wanting to look at him.

“Rebecca, I’ve had about enough from you, you goddam—you, you…
princess
!”

“Princess?”

“Yes, princess. JAP. I mean, that’s what you
are
, but you act more like some prissy WASP than anything else.”

“Oh, great. Slurs on two ethnic groups in the same sentence. Just because you’ve got a foot in both camps and can’t really call yourself
anything
—”

He started laughing. “You calling me a half-breed?”

“You calling me a JAP?” I was laughing, too.

“We’re ridiculous.” Rob was laughing so hard he had to put his head down on the bar.

“What if anyone heard us?” I wasn’t laughing as hard as he was. I had a reputation as a liberal lawyer to uphold. But it would have served me right if anyone had overheard me—I’d have been paid back for calling my own mother a bigot. Rob couldn’t pull himself together. “I can’t stand it—”

“Rob, you know what? I don’t care what kind of breed you are. But you know what I can’t stand about you? It’s all the different colors you are. You yellow journalist! You black-and-white-and-red-all-over newshawk! You purple-prosesmith!”

He stopped laughing. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes. And I feel a lot better now.”

“You don’t respect my work.”

“It’s not that. I do respect your work. You just get too carried away, that’s all.”

“I refer you, Miss Schwartz, to Tocqueville.”

“Huh?”

“‘In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates.’ ”

“
Necessary
?”

Rob nodded solemnly. “Absolutely necessary.”

I made up my mind. I guess I already had. “Oh well, if it’s
necessary
.”

“That’s the spirit. Just think of me as an inevitable evil.”

“How about those inestimable benefits?”

“Let’s bag lunch and go to the Grand Central Baths. It’ll be a great opportunity.”

“For what?”

“To see me turn red all over.”

And so it was. The Grand Central Baths is one of those pure-scrubbed, Japanese-style, hygienically perfect California establishments where you can not only sweat in a sauna but also soak in a hot tub, rinse in a shower, and recover on a bed in your own little hospital-clean chamber for an hour. If you wish, you can also cause loud music to play in your chamber to cover the noise of whatever else you want to do in there. We did it all, Rob and me. He’s beautiful when he’s red.

We were in the last stage of the adventure—recovery—when Rob said, “You take it back.”

“Take what back?”

“My prose is not purple.”

“You take it back about me being a JAP.”

“I will not. You’re demonstrably Jewish American, and you’re the princess of my heart.”

How was I supposed to stay mad? I thought of a way: “Okay, then. Say I’m not prissy.”

“What color’s my prose?”

“A leathery brown, I think. Sinewy. Tough. Lean and taut, like you.”

“That’s more like it. All right. You only get prissy when I act like a yellow journalist. And I’m sure I deserve it.”

I sat up so fast I got dizzy. “Is that an apology?”

He touched my right breast, ever so lightly. “Rebecca, listen. I was on adrenaline last night. When I woke up this morning and realized you really could have been hurt, I reformed. I’m a changed man, honest.”

“You didn’t seem to be an hour ago.”

Now he touched my bruised cheek. “Well, it wasn’t exactly the
minute
I woke up. It was while we were in the sauna. Your make-up dribbled off.”

“You actually sound sincere.”

“I am, believe me. You know that other time you got hurt? Last year, when that creep hit you—I wanted to kill him. When you got hit, it was like me getting hit. And then this time—when I saw your bruise, it was like I’d hit you myself. And you know how that made me feel?”

I shook my head.

“Kind of yellow and purple. I’m hungry.”

That was about as sweet as he ever got, but it was good enough for me—I didn’t want to get diabetes or tooth decay. Civic Center Plaza was just a few blocks away, so we decided to have a picnic there, wet hair and all.

It was a gorgeous day for February. Probably there’d be more rain before winter was officially over, so we had to enjoy the good weather while we had it. That was my reasoning.

We were happily sipping white wine and munching on sourdough and salami when we got to talking about Sally. I told Rob all about how Chris thought she was a poor, downtrodden little wife-child and how Bob Tosi said she was a conniving liar and how I wasn’t sure at all. I just felt sorry for her. “But she can sure bake,” I said. “Have you ever had her bread?”

He shook his head.

I indicated the loaf we’d nearly demolished. “It’s lots better than this.”

“You know what would solve the whole problem? If Conglomerate would just buy Sally’s starter, they’d have the best loaf going and they could make her rich and famous. So she wouldn’t need the Martinelli starter, and neither would they. Tony Tosi wouldn’t be any worse off, because Bob wouldn’t have the starter, and Bob wouldn’t be, because Tony wouldn’t have it either.”

“What about Anita?”

“I guess she’s lost out.”

“Sally says Conglomerate wouldn’t be interested in her because she doesn’t have the Martinelli name. She thinks all they’re after is prestige.”

“But they already have prestige. If they had Sally’s starter, then
it
would be the starter of choice.”

“She doesn’t see it that way. She’s a complicated person—she’s got the best product of the bunch of them, and she doesn’t trust it, because—” I stopped, unsure why. “I think,” I said finally, “she doesn’t really see reality. She sees only the image of a thing, rather than the thing itself.”

“If you ask me, that doesn’t make her any different from anyone else in this caper. You know something? None of this would have happened if we hadn’t started it.”

“Don’t say that. It was Peter’s idea.”

“It was Kruzick’s idea. The point is, I wrote the stories. A major newspaper said that stupid doughball was important, so that made it important.”

“You’re doing a lot of soul-searching today.”

“Look, I know I didn’t make any of this happen, but I can’t help feeling responsible.”

“That way lies madness. Have some more wine.”

He did, and some sourdough as well. “Sally’s is really better than this?”

“Lots.”

“Let’s go get some.”

“Are you crazy? I’ve got work to do.”

“You actually have clients coming in today?”

“No, but I’ve got to catch up on things.”

“Now, don’t be prissy, dear. It’s two-thirty and we’re both half-sloshed. You won’t be any good to your clients and I can’t do a thing for the
Chronicle
.”