Page 46 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

The waiter appears like he came with the room.

He is young enough to run stairs and old enough to understand who pays the light bill.

He places envelopes in the drawer built into the sideboard with the key already dangling.

He calls me consigliere very quietly and asks if the kitchen should start. I nod once.

“La Vigilia,” I tell Elisa, resting my hand on the chair to invite her to sit. “Seven courses. Seven stories. It's a map if you know how to read it.”

“Teach me,” she says, eyes on mine as she lowers herself, coat slipping from her shoulders like she is letting the night get closer. “And don’t make me sorry I asked.”

“They try not to, in this room,” I say. “Sit by me. The table is too wide for secrets.”

She slides to my side of the corner booth and turns so one knee faces me.

The distance shrinks to something that would be a problem if I were younger or less disciplined.

I'm neither, and still, I feel it.

The first plate comes small and cold.

Anchovies pounded with olive oil and lemon until they relax into a bright paste, spread thin on toasted bread, a shave of fennel for bite, a curl of orange zest because men who built empires out of prohibition loved a garnish.

Elisa takes a bite and makes a sound in her throat that the saints would like.

“Poor man’s food,” I say, tipping my head at the plate. “After Prohibition ended and the city forgot our names for a decade, my people sat in the bakery and made alliances over this. Anchovy means cheap, yes, but it also means sure. It was available when nothing else was. We left those nights with full mouths and no one knew what was promised.”

“So anchovy is a pact,” she says, watching me watch her. “And fennel is…?”

“Memory,” I answer. “The old seeds grow even if you neglect them.”

Course two warms the table without shouting.

Baccalàwhipped with milk and garlic until it's a cloud, smeared on grilled bread with a gloss of oil that catches the candlelight.

She drags the back of her knife through it and tastes with her eyes closed as if she trusts me not to move.

I don't.

“Salt cod is discipline,” I say. “You eat it when winter is long. You share it when you are proving you can carry lean years together. The year the docks froze and the trucks sat, the Don served this and told the captains to stop acting like princes. We got through it because no one thought they were above this plate.”

“You make hunger sound like a leadership seminar,” she says, heat in her voice and humor over it like a blanket. She nudges my knee with hers. “Does every bite have a moral?”

“In this room, yes,” I say. “We hide homilies where no priest will find them.”

Course three arrives hot enough to fog the glass, a basket offritto mistothat smells like my childhood pretending to be respectable.

Calamari and smelt, paper-thin slices of lemon fried until the rind turns sweet, a sprig of parsley that means nothing and everything.

“Fried food is joy,” I tell her. “Which we ration even more carefully than grief.”

“Dangerous,” she says, picking out a ring and holding it up to the candle. “Circular logic.”

“Circles are the point,” I say. “One ring means nothing. A bowl of them means a family who can still sit at a table and not draw knives. When that stops, we stop this course.”

She chews and tilts her head at me, hair falling forward. “Is that a joke?”

“It's insurance,” I answer. “Also a joke.”