VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [86]
“How’d you get a pizza delivered here?” asked Murphy.
The man turned as if insulted and said, “Delivered? No! I make it myself. From scratch.”
He went over to a piece of lab equipment that in actuality was a very precise, high-tech oven. To one side was a wooden cutting board dusted with flour where the pizza had been rolled out. Over his office clothes, the man was wearing a lab coat, and Murphy noticed red smears – tomato sauce – where he had wiped his fingers.
“Un minuto,” said the man, pointing to a timer on the oven that was counting down. “One minute more.”
He noticed on the digital display of the oven that the temperature was 481 degrees Celsius.
“Wow, that is … what? Nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit?”
“For great pizza, you want the oven be hot, hot, hot.”
“No one objects to you making pizza in a lab oven?”
“Oh, it’s a new product,” said the man, “We’re coming out with it next year. Hi-T Pizza.”
Murphy bent in laughter and almost slapped a knee.
“But … you’re sure this is safe? I mean, to eat?”
“I am going to eat it! You don’t have to. But yes, I make sure there is no residual toxicity, everything is neutralized, sanitary. Not to worry, I know what I am doing. My title? I am senior chemical analyst and carbon fiber specialist. Let me tell you, I know every carbon molecule in this pizza.”
The mention of the job title rang a bell. Murphy peered at the other’s F&D security badge.
“So you are … Guisep?”
“Giuseppe,” said the other, extending his hand. “Giuseppe Tassoni. But they call me Joe. Joe Tassoni.”
“I’ve heard of you. Pleased to meet you. They call me Murphy. Murphy Maguire. If you don’t mind my asking, you are … Eye-talian?”
“I was born in Italy, in Siena, so yes, that makes me Italian – but United States citizen for fifteen years now,” said Joe. “And you are … Southern?”
“Why, yes, I am,” said Murphy. “North Carolina to be precise.”
“Oh, yes. I have heard of you as well,” said Joe. “You are the new manufacturing guru.”
“Well, I would hardly call myself that, but, yes, I do have manufacturing experience in abundance. The title they gave me is ‘liaison,’ which is pretentious enough for an old cracker like me.”
Joe chuckled as he put on heavy mitts. Just as the timer clicked down to zero, he opened the oven door – whereupon a blast of heat rolled out, and with it a wonderful scent of fresh-baked crust, melted cheese, onions and garlic, and a mingling of other aromas.
“Come,” said Joe, “we dine in my office. And the time we take to get there, it lets the pizza cool, and the cheeses, they set up perfect.”
Joe Tassoni’s office was itself an experience – the walls filled with photographs of Florence, and little towns in the Italian countryside, and the Mediterranean coast, all taken by Joe himself. There were along the windows potted flowers and herbs – rosemary, basil, parsley, thyme, and who knows what others – all lush and green, and the scent of these was heady. Braided garlic hung from the ceiling.
But, if anything, just as remarkable was the fact that the office had no horizontal surface that went unoccupied by profuse clutter. There were stacks and stacks of binders and reports and envelopes and magazines and everything else. Big diagrams of molecules. Huge engineering drawings unfurled hither and yon. Stacks of hand-labeled discs. And somewhere amidst all of this chaos, a desk and a computer and a whiteboard with chemical formulas scrawled top to bottom – and all the other things one might expect in an office.
In one corner was a round table, and the stacks and clutter had been pushed back just enough to allow for a single place setting with a plate, an elegant coffee cup, real silverware, and a cloth napkin – and the cutting board bearing the pizza. Joe set the pizza down, moved a few piles from the table and set them on the floor, then went to the large safe next to his desk. He opened the safe and produced a second place setting and cup for Murphy. Then he cut the pizza.
“In Italy,” he said as he sliced, “pizza is