Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [128]
Verdi aria and Gina could sing it for you word perfect while she washed your hair. It had already spread, the testicle cancer, and they opened up Mr. Mario’s stomach and sewed it up again, nothing to be done. He left behind Gina and two children. The daughter now works at the Lanvin perfume counter in Holt Renfrew, which is why I never go there any more, she’s too familiar. I don’t care for that. I don’t need her squealing out my first name, as if we were best friends, you can hear it from one end of the floor to the other. But the youngest, Miguel, is the chef and I think part-owner of Michelangelo’s on Monkland. You know, just down the street from The Monk-land. I saw Forever Amber there when I was just a kid, my father would have died had he known. With Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde, and George Sanders, remember him, I used to think he was terrific. We ought to try Michelangelo’s one of these days. The Silvermans were there last week and they said it was both inexpensive and delicious with a decent space between the tables. Not like one of your St. Denis Street bistros, because they remind you of Paris, you go there and it’s like you invited the Frenchies on either side of you to join you for dinner, and you start talking loud in English, looking for trouble as usual. Oh, I know how much you enjoy it. Pretending, just because they’re eavesdropping, that you have a big fat bank account in Switzerland, and can’t understand the menu as it’s written in French. What in the hell is pâté you bellowed that time, pronouncing it like it rhymed with wait. You were lucky not to be punched out that night. The guy at the next table was fuming. Herb had the pasta y fagioli and then the lasagne Sorrento style. He doesn’t worry about his weight that one, you’d think he would, he climbs one flight of stairs and it’s like he had run the Boston Marathon. He suffers from boils. Some of them in the genital area. It’s a turn-off, Marsha told me, especially if one pops. Marsha had the antipasto and the veal cutlets Milanese, never mind with those gaps between her teeth, she would never put up with braces when we were in Young Judaea together, little bits get lodged there and I don’t know where to look. I was thoughtful enough to whisper to her about it once, we were on a double date, dinner at Miss Montreal, I was with Sonny Applebaum, he wanted to marry me and today, you know what, I could be looking after a guy with Parkinson’s. I whispered to her about it and, boy, if looks could kill, so I never mentioned it to her again. But she shouldn’t talk with her mouth open. Oh, excuse me. I do beg your pardon. In your eyes she can do no wrong. You danced with her again and again at the Rothstein wedding, I couldn’t have slipped a hair between your bodies. Don’t think everybody didn’t notice the two of you were nowhere to be seen for an hour. I know. Don’t tell me again. She was feeling a little dizzy and you took her for a stroll down to the water. Yeah, yeah. But look here, Sir Galahad, Norma Fleischer — it’s not the eating that makes her so fat, it’s glandular — could faint on the dance floor and you wouldn’t lift a finger. Down for a stroll. You took Marsha to the boat house. It wouldn’t be the first time for her, anybody wearing pants for that one, so don’t count yourself so special. She ought to give you guys postcards, like they do for the ducks in that restaurant you took me to in Paris, the Tour d’Argent.”
— 5 to 2, but it could turn out to be a costly —
“Am I boring you?”
“No.”
“Then put your paper down, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s down.”
— to be a costly win, because Phil Goyette was cross-checked by Stan Mikita —
“You’re reading again.”
“You started to tell me about your dream.”
“I know exactly what I started to tell you about, and I’ll get to the point in my own good time. I didn’t know we were in such a hurry here. Boy, did you ever make a racket when you finally got in last night. That hockey game must have gone on for eighteen periods instead of the usual three, judging by the time you got in, and how did you tear your shirt