Bones(32)

Kerry buried her nose in her wineglass and sat there looking at the Chianti bottle on the shelf above Wanda's head, as if she wished there would suddenly be another earthquake.

The waiter brought a tureen of soup. When he leaned over to set it on the table I thought for sure his hair was going to fall into the tureen. It didn't, which was something of a disappointment. I wanted that damned thing to fall off. We all have our perverse moments, and under the circumstances I felt I was justified in having one of mine.

Wanda told us about the time she went to Tijuana and saw a bullfight. She told us about the highest game she'd ever bowled, “a two-ten, I had five strikes in a row, my God I thought I was going to wet my pants.” She told us about the time she got drunk at a party and threw up into the heating register. “The place stank for weeks after that,” she said. “I mean, you just can't get all that stuff out of there.”

I tried to eat my soup. Minestrone, the waiter had said, lying through his teeth. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but what it tasted like was what Wanda had once upchucked into the heating register.

Still no other damn fools came into the place.

Wanda told us about the time she'd had a varicose vein removed from her leg and how painful it was. Then she told us about the time she'd broken her arm roller-skating and how painful that was. Then she told us about the first time she'd had sex and how painful that was. “I didn't start to enjoy it until my fifth or sixth time. How about you, honey?” she asked Kerry. “You like it the first time you got poked?”

Kerry said something that sounded like “Nrrr.” After which she said between her teeth, “I don't remember.”

“Oh, sure you do. Everybody remembers their first time. How old were you?”

Silence.

“I was fourteen,” Wanda said. “The guy lived across the street, he was fifteen, we did it under the laundry sink in his basement—I mean, it had to be down there because his parents were home, you know? Boy, was I scared. Fourteen's pretty young, I guess, but I was a curious kid. How about you, Ebbie? How old were you?”

“Eighteen,” Eberhardt said, staring at her chest.

She looked at me, but I got spared having to answer by the reappearance of the waiter and his wicked hair. The thing had slid down over his left ear and seemed to be hanging onto the edge of it. Fall, you furry bastard, I thought. Fall! But it didn't.

What the waiter brought this time was a bowl of spaghetti in marinara sauce. Or what he said was spaghetti in marinara sauce. The minestrone, which had been made out of three carrots, half a potato, some stringy celery, and a gallon of peppered water, had had more consistency and more flavor. But Wanda ate the spaghetti with gusto and half a pound of parmesan cheese. So did Eberhardt. I ate one strand and a tiny bit of the marinara sauce, or whatever the hell the red stuff was, and decided that was enough of a risk for a man my age. Kerry finished what was left in the wine carafe and ordered a refill.

Wanda talked about her youth in Watsonville, where her father had been a grower of artichokes. “We never had much money,” she said, “but we had all the artichokes we could eat. I ate artichokes until they were coming out my ears. I can't eat them anymore. Just the smell of one cooking makes me puke.”

The main course arrived just then—perfect timing, I thought, considering Wanda's last comment—and the bowl of spaghetti in marinara sauce got transferred to a sideboard. I was not sorry to see it go. My scallopini had not been made with veal; it had not been made with any sort of animal that had been either young or alive in years. It was so tough you could have used it to make a baseball glove, also for donation to the Giants, a team that needs all the help it can get.

Wanda thought her veal dish was “scrumptious.” Eberhardt thought her chest was scrumptious. Kerry took one look at her salad, pushed it away, and poured another glass of wine from the refilled carafe.

Between bites, Wanda talked about another of her ex-husbands, this one a dock worker who used to knock her around when he got drunk. Eberhardt said gallantly that he'd kill any son of a bitch who ever touched her. She rubbed her chest against his arm and batted her eyelashes at him and said, “Oh, Ebbie, you're such a man!” If he'd been on the floor at the time he would have rolled over on his back with his tongue lolling out so she could scratch his belly.

The waiter and his pet spider showed up again to ask if we wanted any dessert. Wanda asked him what they had, and he said, “Apple cobbler and zabaglione. But I wouldn't recommend the zabaglione.”

“No? Why not?”

“I just wouldn't recommend it,” he said ominously.