The Food of Love by Anthony Capella Read Free Book Online Page B

this girl if she’s in the bedroom and you’re out on the balcony?’
    Bruno had decided to serve the asparagus with a warm zabaione sauce; not the complex version he prepared in the restaurant but a simple, sensual froth of egg yolk and white wine. What
    he hadn’t yet told Tommaso was that finishing the zabaglione
    would have to be done at the last moment, just before it was
    served. Learning to use a knife was the easy part. Before the end of the day, his friend was going to have to learn how to use a
    double boiler as well.
     
    At the Residencia Magdalena, the apartment block where the
    American students were housed, Laura was starting to have
    second thoughts about the basque. It was undeniably beautiful,
    but there was something almost fetishistic, not to mention impractical, about the dozens of tiny hooks and ties with which it
    fastened.
    ‘What do you think?’ she asked her roommate, Judith. ‘Too
    much? Too complicated?’
    Judith surveyed her through narrowed eyes. ‘Put it this way:
    you’d better hope he’s good with his hands.’
    “I have been led to believe that he’s quite dextrous,’ Laura
    said. She blushed.
    ‘Well, if he can get that thing off you, he must be. I’d say
    you’re in for a great night.’
     
    Tommaso was struggling with the concept of a double boiler.
    Time after time he started to whip up the egg yolks, only for the froth to collapse into a sticky mess.
    ‘You’re being too brutal,’ Bruno told him. ‘Here. Move the
    elbow as well as the wrist. Like this.’
    Tommaso tried again. This time he was too energetic and the
    mixture flew off the end of his whisk.
    ‘Be patient,’ Bruno said. ‘Now, one more time.’
    ‘It’s hopeless,’ Tommaso said, wearily putting down the whisk.
    ‘I can’t do this.’
    ‘It’s necessary. Now, one more time—’
    ‘Ah, but it isn’t necessary, is it? Not really,’ Tommaso said
    craftily. ‘After all, we’ll be sitting at the table, so what’s to stop me from pretending to come in here and whip the zabaglione, while
    really you do it?’
    Bruno thought about it. ‘But where would I be?’
    ‘In here, of course. Laura needn’t know. Then, when it’s all
    plated, you could just creep out.’
    ‘Well, OK then,’ Bruno said reluctantly. It certainly had to be
    easier than teaching Tommaso how to cook.
     
    At eight o’clock Laura found the address Tommaso had given
    her, a dingy door beside a scooter shop. She rang the bell.
    Tommaso’s face appeared high above her head. ‘Come up,’ he
    shouted. ‘It’s open.’
    She stepped into a dark courtyard and trudged up endless
    flights of stairs until she got to the top. Here, too, the door was open, and she stepped inside. The apartment was tiny and by no
    means smart, a nest of four little rooms festooned with old film posters and pictures of seventies rock stars. But the view took her breath away.
    Red-tiled rooftop after red-tiled rooftop stretched away below
    her, a chaotic jumble of houses, apartments and churches all
    crammed together, tumbling down towards the Tiber. On her
    left, along the long ridge of the Janiculum Hill, lights twinkled in the distance. In front of her, beyond the river, the palaces and churches of old Rome were floodlit islands among the darkness of the surrounding buildings.
    ‘Wow,’ she said reverently.
    The window gave on to a sloped roof, which had been
    adapted into a makeshift and rather lethal-looking balcony by the addition of two battered old armchairs and a few pots of herbs,
    scattered among a thicket of television aerials. Tommaso was
    getting out of one of the chairs to greet her, impossibly beautiful, his sculptured face crowned by an explosion of curly ringlets
    as thick as the twists in a telephone cord. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How are you, Laura?’
    ‘I’m great.’ Even better than the view, however, was the smell
    emanating from the kitchen, which almost knocked her off her
    feet. ‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘What is