LITMIR.BIZ

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She lives knee-deep in laundry, and her dresser is just a jumble of cosmetics, most of them half-used and drying out with the tops off.

      She pulled out a long black blazer and put it on. “What does this say to you?”

      “I don’t know that it says anything.”

      “No, it must. It must say I am ready for Mission Impossible. Charlie’s Angels. Scotland Yard. All that.”

      “Okay. It says that.”

      “But you don’t really think so.”

      “Di.” I sighed. “Can we concentrate here? Every time we pull this stunt, it’s a fashion crisis.”

      “It helps me get into character, darling.”

      “Fine…let’s run through the plan.”

      “Check. I call you on my cell phone…earpiece, little thingy here attached to my lapel.”

      “Check.”

      “At 0800 hours, I take these little pastries down to your cousin Tony—”

      “What? Di…no military time. And that would be 2000 hours, anyway. You always screw it up.”

      “All right then…at eight o’clock.”

      “Right.”

      “When you hear on your cell phone that he is sufficiently distracted, you slip out and head ’round the block to catch a cab.”

      “Perfect.”

      “Then you go off on your date with Mr. Tall, Blond and Handsome, fall madly in lust, make passionate love and live happily ever after.”

      “I’ll settle for a second date. Without a contingent of Italians following me.”

      We went to the living room where a large white box of fresh cannoli perched on the coffee table, tied up with twine from the bakery.

      “I don’t understand—” Lady Di eyed the box “—why these little pastries are such an obsession with your family. It’s a little perverse, if you ask me.”

      “They’re an obsession because finding them fresh and really well made with ricotta cheese and chocolate chips isn’t easy. Make them wrong, and they’re soggy. You can’t just get these anywhere. That box there is a thirty-five minute cab ride each way. Even the pastry chef at Teddi’s doesn’t do them this good. Now, Byron, he’s a good pastry chef—”

      “I live for his tiramisu.”

      “Yes. But he’s not really Italian. His family is from San Francisco…and he says they adopted him from an unwed mother who listed Hungarian as her background. And as good as he is at tiramisu, somehow, some way, his cannoli end up…well, not up to the Marcello-Gallo family standards.”

      “But it seems to me that pastry and ricotta cheese shouldn’t have anything to do with each other. It’s downright unnatural, Teddi. Pastry and custard, maybe…pastry and chocolate, pastry and a nice caramel or perhaps some ice cream, but these I do not understand. Ricotta is slimy.”

      “It’s as Italian as sheep’s head. Trust me. You don’t have to understand. All that’s important is that, with the exception of a woman in a micromini with very big hair, my cousin Tony loves cannoli more than anything in the world.”

      “Should I change into a micromini?”

      “No. The cat suit is sexy, but trust me, he sees you with a box of pastry from my third cousin Tessa’s bakery in Brooklyn and he’ll be in love.”

      Lady Di adjusted her cell phone earpiece.

      “All this because you’re the only granddaughter of Angelo Marcello.”

      “’Fraid so.” My Poppy Marcello had five daughters and one son. One of his daughters, my aunt Connie, wasn’t able to have children. She and my uncle Carmine owned a pizza place and treated me like a daughter. My aunt Gina had five sons, always figuring this “one last time” she would have the little girl she dreamed of. After the last son, my cousin Frankie, she packed the crib up to the attic for good and decided to hold out hope for a granddaughter one day. My aunt Marie had four sons. Though Uncle Vito held out hope for an even five—for a basketball team—she’d had enough. My uncle Lou and his wife had three sons—including the hunky Tony, though their oldest son, Sal, died. My grandfather watched pregnancy after pregnancy result in male heirs—and what he wanted was a little girl, he told my mother when she married, to spoil rotten, and to buy fancy dresses and Madame Alexander dolls for. He wanted to build a dollhouse. First my mother had my brother. No pink dresses there. Then she had three miscarriages before I came along. My baptism was celebrated with a party—including an eight-piece band—for three hundred. Three hundred people!

      I did get the fanciest party dresses and doll strollers that were more expensive than actual baby strollers. Poppy built me a three-story dollhouse—a turn-of-the-century town house he even rigged with electrical wiring to light up the miniature chandeliers. I had expensive dolls with wardrobes that rivaled the real Princess Di’s. But eventually, when I outgrew dollhouses and dolls and crinoline dresses, I was left with one very protective grandfather who was determined to see me married off in the grand style that befitted the last virgin in Manhattan—which, of course, he believed I was. And my cousin Tony was, in turn, my keeper. This was because he did not have a real job, and in the words of the family, he was a little lost. I knew it was because, though he could hustle a pool table with the best of them, and liked to go to the track with all my cousins and uncles, he wavered on whether he wanted “the life”—the “family,” and all that went with it…including, possibly, ending up in prison like John Gotti’s son. So rather than give him a job with too much responsibility, he was assigned to watching me, and in general acting as a driver for his father, whose glaucoma made driving impossible. The old guys of the family…well, they were getting old.

      “Okay,” Lady Di said, “I’m ready as I’ll ever be.” Lady Di lifted the box of pastries. “Off I go.” She dialed my cell phone as she stepped out the door of our apartment. I had a walking commentary as she went downstairs.

      “Entering the elevator…won’t be able to chat until the lobby.”

      As I listened to dead air, I threw on my black velvet swing coat and grabbed my evening bag.

      “Teddi?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Entering lobby. The cute doorman is on duty tonight. Winking at him—”

      “Stay focused on the mission at hand!”

      “Sorry. Oh, this is so Cold War, so On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Staying focused. Mr. 12B just gave me a very sexy look. I’m walking. Can you hear my heels clicking? God, I love these boots. Walking…walking. Mrs. Melman from the third floor just gave me the evil eye. Like I’d want to hit on that flabby, balding husband of hers.”

      “Focus, Di!”

      “Okay then…at the revolving doors. Time for you to come down to the lobby.”

      I dashed out the door, locked it, then made my way down to the lobby. I listened to my phone.

      “Walking across the street. See your cousin Tony. Waving and smiling to him.”

      Now I could hear traffic sounds, cabbies beeping their horns, then muffled conversation and her replies to Tony.

      “You must be simply starving out here.”

      Mumble, mumble from my cousin.

      “Well…I know how you find these positively delicious. Just wanted to say hello and bring you a dozen… No, it was nothing. Nothing at all for one of my favorite, most favorite chaps.”

      Mumble, mumble.

      “Oh…you like this outfit? Just threw it on…. You know, Tony, one of these days we have to go out for dinner and get to know each

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