Yeah, it won’t be long. I’ll speak Spanish in a couple of months. If I’m still alive in a couple of months.
Next came a small plate of vermicelli with a tomato-and-pepper sauce. Washed down with a couple of glasses of vino tinto, it wasn’t at all bad; but Tony was disappointed. He could have eaten two, three times as much.
The small portion was explained with the delivery of some kind of chicken.
“What’s this?”
“Suprema à la Maryland.”
“Maryland?”
The man shrugged. “It is something my mother taught me. The sauce is from bananas and corn. Perhaps it is Argentinean, not Italian.”
You bet your ass it’s not Italian. Grandma told me the first banana she ever saw was in Chicago, and that she tried to eat the peel, it looked so good.
Washed down with the rest of the bottle of vino tinto, the Suprema à la Maryland wasn’t half as bad as he thought it would be.
Tony declined another bott
le of wine—the last thing I can afford to do is get shitfaced—and dessert. He was full up.
“Magnifico,” he declared, and asked for the bill. It was a hell of a lot cheaper than the last meal he’d had downtown.
“Do you know someplace I can buy some telephone wire?”
“Right around the corner,” the man told him.
Tony consulted his pocket-sized Spanish-English/English-Spanish dictionary before entering the hardware store.
“Cable para el teléfono, por favor?”
What looked like a hundred-foot roll of multistrand 16-gauge steel wire was produced. He would have preferred copper, but this would do.
And, hey, look at me, I’m speaking Spanish!
“How much?”
“How many meters will Señor require?”
“All of it.”
“This is all I have.”
So what?
“I will require all of it. Where I wish to place the telephone is a long way from the wall.”
The man shrugged, announced a price, and Tony paid him. The wire was neatly wrapped in an old newspaper and tied with string.
Tony returned to the street and headed back toward the waterfront. As he neared Ristorante Napoli, he saw a fine-looking female coming the other way. She looked out of place here—too well-dressed, like one of the Miñas in the hotel. He wondered what she was doing in this neighborhood.
They met near the door to Ristorante Napoli. Tony smiled at her. She didn’t respond, although he was sure she saw him smiling at her.
She looked right through me. Well, what the hell, the way I’m dressed, she probably decided I don’t have any money. Or maybe she’s not a Miña after all. She looks like a nice girl. Nice girls, nice Italian girls, always play hard to get.
And then she pushed open the door to the Ristorante Napoli and went in.
I’ll be damned. That gives me two reasons to come back here.