Gasping in pain, he lurched to his feet, overturning the row of stools like so many dominoes, and ripped open his shirt. Beneath the violated fabric of his belly, mighty worms stirred. The flesh glowed incandescently red and yellow, casting into black outline the scalpel scar curved like a question mark about his navel. Then the overstrained sutures finally unclasped, releasing a scalding discharge of foul-smelling pus and blood that drenched the other diners, all of whom carried on eating and chatting as if nothing at all had happened, which in fact it hadn’t.
‘ Caffe, liquore? ’ enquired the waiter.
Zen shook his head peremptorily. There was a sudden burst of laughter and one of the people perched at the counter near by pointed to the huge flat-screen television displaying images of a bearded man dressed as a chef running wildly about in a kitchen on fire. The dangling TV was all of a piece with the high concept behind the eatery, in effect a very pricey snack bar with deliberately uncomfortable furniture, a selection of wines by the glass at by-the-bottle prices, and patrons who apparently relished colluding with the staff in creating a spuriously sophisticated atmosphere of mutual disdain. All this tucked away on a narrow cobbled street that went nowhere in particular, with a frontage that was diffident in the extreme. Not for the first time, Zen reflected that while prostitution might be the oldest trade in the world, the catering business ran it a close second, and that there were other similarities.
But none of this was of any importance compared with the fact that he was still alone. Well over an hour now, and no sign of Gemma. He had tried repeatedly calling her mobile, but either the battery had run out or it was switched off. After waiting thirty minutes, he had ordered the dish of the day-he couldn’t even remember now what it had been-and eaten it with a morose appetite. He checked her text message again. There it was, the name and address of this ghastly place, even the phone number. Impossible there could be any mistake. Anyway, she had the number of his mobile, which he had left turned on all this time. The only possible conclusion, therefore, was that she had deliberately stood him up. He hadn’t expected anything quite so crude from Gemma, even at her worst, but there it was.
He had already asked for his bill when the door opened and in she walked, wearing a stylish but rather stern outfit. Her face, by contrast, was flushed and open, and her manner bubbling with barely suppressed hilarity.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she cried, collapsing at the table and lighting a cigarette. ‘You’ll never guess what happened! Or did you see it?’
She burst into laughter, which turned to a long series of coughs, during which the supercilious waiter appeared.
‘Nothing, thanks,’ she said, waving him away.
‘You don’t want to eat?’ asked Zen.
‘I grabbed a panino at a bar near the exhibition grounds while I was waiting. There wasn’t a taxi to be had for ages, of course.’
She erupted with laughter again.
‘Did you see what happened?’
Zen stared at her, still half-suspecting a trap, but her defences were clearly down. The only problem was that he still had no idea what she was talking about.
‘See? Where?’
‘On TV.’
Gemma pointed to the screen, now showing the President of the Republic inspecting a guard of honour in the quaintly ornate capital of some eastern European state which had recently come in from the cold war.
‘Caffe, liquore?’ enquired the waiter, surfacing again with such animus that they both relented to the extent of ordering coffees.
‘You have no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’ said Gemma, laughing again. ‘You must be the only person in the country who doesn’t!’
She reached over and touched Zen’s wrist on the tabletop, only for a moment, but enough to set off another of the intestinal twinges which reminded him again of that scene from a science fiction film they had once rented on video, where one of the crew of a spaceship discovers in the most unpleasant way that an alien parasite is nesting in his innards.
‘You know that TV show you hate?’ she went on blithely. ‘ Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta? Well, I’d heard that the star was going to be performing live today at the food fair that’s on here, so I naturally took advantage, seeing that I was coming up anyway.’
Zen nodded.
‘To see me,’ he murmured.
Gemma’s expression blurred for a moment.
‘Well, actually Stefano asked me to come up over the weekend. Some domestic business he wants to discuss. You know about him and Lidia, right? They’re living here in Bologna and apparently something has happened. I’m pretty sure I can guess what it is, but of course they want to make a big fuss about it, and rightly so. Anyway, it meant I could see you, and also drop in on this mano a mano between Rinaldi and Ugo. Of course no one thought that it would be any contest. I mean, the biggest celebrity chef in the country up against a total amateur!’
She laughed, throwing back her head and revealing her beautiful throat.
‘Well, guess what? It was indeed no contest, because the contest never took place!’
Their coffees were gracelessly delivered. Zen slurped his, lit a cigarette, and tried his best to enter into the spirit of whatever this was.
‘Did one of them cancel at the last minute?’ he asked.
‘Much better than that. Or worse. Ugo just pottered around his kitchen, getting on with the job and not making a fuss about it. In fact I sort of liked him. He looked all sweet and cuddly and a bit incompetent, not at all what I’d imagined from trying to read that impossible novel that everyone bought and then pretended they’d read. In fact I wouldn’t mind running into him while I’m here in Bologna.’
‘I don’t imagine there’s much chance of that.’
‘Of course not, but a girl can dream. Anyway, over on the other side of the stage, Lo Chef was doing his usual act, all very dramatic and “look at me”, chatting up the audience the whole time and then breaking into some fake operatic aria. Unfortunately he gets so carried away that he forgets he has left a pan full of oil on the stove, and right in the middle of one of his big numbers it goes up in flames! The set itself was obviously cobbled together at the last minute from flimsy wooden panels and they’re ablaze before anyone can do anything about it. Next thing, the auditorium is filled with smoke, fire alarms are going off everywhere and the whole place has to be evacuated. And I mean the whole fiera site, the entire Enogastexpo show! Thousands of people milling around in the car parks, the fire engines pouring in, police helicopters overhead, utter chaos!’
Zen let a few moments elapse before saying, ‘So tonight you’re seeing your son and his…’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s that about?’
Gemma looked at him with a slightly coy smile.
‘Well, Stefano didn’t want to say on the phone, but I have a feeling that I may be going to become a grandmother.’
Zen grazed on this thought for some time.
‘Which would make me…’ he finally began.
‘Nothing.’
They confronted each other for a moment over this.
‘Nothing at all,’ said Gemma in a harder voice. ‘We’re not married, and for that matter neither are they. So it’s of no consequence at all, really. To you, at least.’
Zen tried to think of something suitable to say.
‘Are you staying the night?’ he managed at last.
Gemma shook her head.
‘They can’t put me up. It’s just a one-bedroom apartment that her parents are letting them use.’
Zen gave her the look he often used on a suspect who had just revealed more than he knew.
‘So she wears the trousers,’ he said.
Another moment of confrontation.
‘They’re a couple,’ Gemma said very distinctly, as though speaking to a foreigner with a limited understanding of the language.
‘But she’s in charge,’ Zen insisted.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘She owns the house, cara. Just like you.’
Their eyes met, and he instantly realised that he’d gone too far. A moment later he felt another pang in his gut and saw a chance to lighten the mood.
‘Get out!’ he ordered the imaginary resident alien with an exaggerated gruffness that was intended to be comic. ‘Get out, get out!’
But Gemma had forgotten the movie involved in this reference and couldn’t have been expected to understand the connection anyway. Assuming that Zen was addressing her, she sprang to her feet and ran to the door.