When the bad old broads were gone, Danny spoke to the restaurant's uneasy, unattended patrons. "Someone will be right with you," he told them, not knowing if this was even remotely true; he knew it wouldn't be true if both Loretta and Celeste were still in tears.
Back in the kitchen, it was worse than Danny had expected. Even the kid doing dishes and the busboy were crying. Celeste had slumped to the floor, where Loretta was kneeling beside her. "Stop shouting at me!" the cook yelled into the telephone. "I should never have called you--then I wouldn't have to listen to you!" (His father must have called Ketchum, Danny realized.)
"Tell me what to say, Greg, and I'll say it," Danny said to the sous chef. "You've got a table of eight and a table of six out there. What do I tell them?"
Greg was weeping into the rosemary and red-wine reduction. "Your dad said Avellino is finished," Greg told him. "He said this is his last night. He's putting the place up for sale, but we can run the restaurant ourselves until it sells--if we can manage, somehow."
"Greg, just how the fuck do we manage?" Celeste cried out.
"I didn't say we could," Greg blubbered.
"Get rid of the Red Sox, for starters," Danny said, changing the radio station. "If you're going to be hysterical, you ought to play some music back here--everyone in the restaurant can hear you."
"Yes, I know you were always of the opinion that Vermont was too fucking close to New Hampshire, Ketchum!" the cook was shouting into the phone. "Why don't you tell me something useful?"
"Tell me what to say to the customers, Greg," Danny said to the blubbering sous chef.
"Tell them they better keep their orders simple," Greg told him.
"Tell them to go home, for Christ's sake!" Loretta said.
"No, goddamn it--tell them to stay!" the sous chef said angrily. "We can manage."
"Don't be an asshole, Greg," Celeste told him; she was still sobbing.
Danny went back into the dining room, where the party of eight was already arguing with one another--about whether to stay or leave, no doubt. The three couples at the table for six seemed more resigned to their fate, or at least more willing to wait. "Listen," Danny said to them all, "there's a crisis in the kitchen--I'm not kidding. I would advise you either to leave now or to order something basic. The pizzas, maybe, or a pasta dish. By the way, the beef satay is excellent. So is the calamari."
He went to the wine rack and picked out a couple of good reds; Danny Angel may have stopped drinking sixteen years ago, when he was still Daniel Baciagalupo, but the writer knew the names of the better bottles. "The wine is on me," he told them, bringing them glasses, too. He had to go back to the kitchen to get a corkscrew from either Loretta or Celeste, and one of the party of eight asked him timidly for a beer. "Sure," Danny said. "A beer's no problem. You should try a Moretti."
At least Celeste was standing, though Loretta looked in better shape. "One Moretti for the party of eight. I gave wine to everyone else--on me," Danny said to Loretta. "Can you pull the corks?"
"Yeah, I guess I'm okay," Loretta told him.
"I can work," Celeste said unconvincingly.
"You better get your dad off the phone before he has a heart attack," Greg said to Danny.
"I'm not changing my name again!" the cook was screaming into the phone. "I'm not leaving my country, Ketchum! Why do I have to leave the entire country?"
"Let me speak to him, Pop," Danny said; he kissed his father on the forehead, taking the telephone from him. "It's me, Ketchum," the writer began.
"Dot and May!" Ketchum hollered. "For Christ's sake, Danny--those two would talk their heads off to a pinch of coon shit! The first time those bitches run into Carl, the cowboy's going to know where to find you!"
"How long do we have, Ketchum?" Danny asked. "Just give me an educated guess."
"You should have left yesterday," Ketchum told him. "You have to leave the country as soon as possible!"
"The country?" Danny asked.
"You're a famous writer! What do you have to live in this asshole country for?" Ketchum asked him. "You can write anywhere, can't you? And how long before Cookie retires? For that matter, he can cook anywhere--can't he? Just don't let it be an Italian place! That's what the cowboy will be looking for. And Cookie needs a new name."
"Dot and May never heard the Angel name," Danny told the old logger.
"Carl could hear it--when he comes looking for you two, Danny. No matter how long after you're gone, someone could say the Angel name to the cowboy."
"So I'm supposed to change my name, too? For God's sake, Ketchum--I'm a writer!"
"Keep it, then," Ketchum said morosely. "The cowboy's no reader, I'll grant you that. But Cookie can't keep the Tony Angel--he'd be better off being Dominic Baciagalupo again! Danny, don't you dare let him cook in any restaurant with an Italian name--not even if it's out of the country."