more enormous crystal glasses and a half dozen bottles of wine awaited them.
There was also a wooden table, near the oven, covered with a tablecloth, at which two young Argentine maids, under the stern supervision of the middle-aged Russian-speaking maid, were kneading pizza dough and chopping tomatoes and other pizza toppings.
Castillo felt a tug at his sleeve and looked down to see that Sergei was smilingly offering him a plate of empanadas, a deep-fried meat-filled dumpling.
“Muchas gracias,” Castillo said, taking one.
“De nada,” Sergei said.
“It would appear Sergei is taken with you,” Pevsner said. Castillo hadn’t seen him come into the quincho.
“At least one member of your family is a good judge of character.”
“Unfair, Charley,” Pevsner said. “I’m an excellent judge of character, and Anna is even better.”
Castillo smiled but didn’t reply.
Pevsner handed him a glass of wine.
“Come with me and watch as I personally prepare your pizza,” Pevsner said.
“I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”
“The secret is the oven temperature,” Pevsner said as he walked up to the domed oven. “And this is the way you test that.”
He walked to the table, behind which the three maids and the young man were lined up, and picked from it a page from a newspaper. He crumpled it in his hands and walked back to the oven.
The young man trotted over and raised its iron door with a wrought-iron rod. Pevsner tossed the balled-up paper into the oven and signaled to the young man that he should lower the door.
“One, two, three, four, five, six,” Pevsner counted aloud, then gestured for the door to be raised.
The newspaper was blazing merrily.
“If it doesn’t ignite in six seconds, it’s not hot enough,” Pevsner announced very seriously, gesturing for the door to be closed again.
“Fascinating,” Castillo said.
Pevsner gestured for him to go with him to the table.
The Russian-speaking maid came around with a two-foot-wide pizza dough on a large wooden paddle. She held it between Pevsner and the maids, who stood waiting behind the table with large serving spoons. With his index finger, Pevsner directed one maid to spoon tomato sauce onto the dough, and kept pointing the finger until he decided there was a sufficiency.
He repeated the process with red and green peppers, then with several kinds of salami and pieces of bacon and chicken, finally concluding the process by supervising the spread of what looked like Parmesan cheese over the whole thing.
Then he marched back to the oven with the maid holding the pizza on a paddle trailing him, gestured to the young man to raise the door, and then gestured for the maid to slide the pizza into the oven, and finally for the young man to close the door.
Charley had a hard time keeping a smile off his face.
So far, he hasn’t touched the pizza he’s personally preparing for me with so much as his pinkie!
“I will now prepare another,” Pevsner announced and marched back to the table, where he repeated the process twice more. This time, however, the prepared but unbaked pizzas on paddles were laid on the table.
“I can usually trust them,” Pevsner said, “once I’ve made sure the temperature is right, to put them into the oven and take them out, but I like to prepare them myself.”
“If you want something done right, do it yourself,” Charley heard himself saying solemnly.
“Exactly,” Pevsner said.
It’s not fair of me to make fun of him. What’s the matter with me? He’s being nice, this whole thing is nice, the little kid, Sergei, handing me an empanada is nice. The whole family thing is nice. It reminds me of Grandpa dodging Abuela to slip Fernando and me a couple of slugs of wine at the ranch in Midland while he was roasting a pig over an open fire for the family. Except, of course, that Grandpa did everything but butcher the pig and crank the spit.
This is family. This is nice.
I think Betty Schneider would like this. Not the guy with the shotgun in his golf cart, but Anna and the three kids, and proud Papa preparing a pizza for everybody with his own unsullied hands.
I wonder what the Masterson kids are going to have for supper tonight?
I wonder what that poor bastard has told them, is telling them?
Is he pretending everything is going to be all right?
Preparing them for the worst?
Jesus, when you hear somebody’s been snatched, you never think of the kids! What a rotten fucking way to make an easy buck, grabbing a kid’s mother!