<< Chapter 2 >>

In Which We Continue To Meet Our Protagonists, And Experience An Intimation Of Mystery.

The only known problem with the Kitman Cocktail is that it tends to make Kitman say things like "Hist."

"Hist!" said Kitman.

He was looking up at the sky — what there was of it through all the oak leaves — the way you do when trying to convey an attitude of abstract attention.

"Hist?" I said.

"Hist!" he said, continuing to look up at the sky (the way you do when trying to convey an attitude of abstract attention) and raised a hand in the air.

"But what do you mean by hist?" I said.

He sagged out of his attitude of abstract attention. "It's a sibilant expression used to enjoin silence, although technically it could also mean 'tissue'."

"But I wasn't saying anyth—"

"Hist!" interrupted Kitman, looking up at the sky, etc. "It also means 'listen'. Do you hear that?"

I looked up at the sky (what I could see of it through all the oak leaves) and listened. I heard the wind in the pines (which, incidentally, hissed). I heard the noon whistle in Abelton. I heard a ringing in my ears...and I heard Beethoven's piano sonata number 29, the "Hammerklavier".

"Beethoven?" I said. "At this hour?"

"Follow me," said Kitman, and led the way down the ladder and north across the back yard, between the detached garage and the house and into the front yard, where we turned around because the music was streaming through Kitman's open living room window.

For a moment I thought the stereo was on, but then remembered that the Kitman stereo was a) in the sitting room on the other side of the house and b) good, but c) not that good. No, I was hearing the real piano that sat in the Kitman living room and occasionally withstood the assault of the simpler parts of the Anna Magdalena Notebook. (Doctor and Doctor Mrs. Kitman had once decided everyone in the family should learn to play a musical instrument, and both Kitman and his sister Kathleen had been selected for the piano because of their fingers, though as far I could see they had no more than the usual number.)

Kitman applied forefinger to lips and directed me to the solid oaken steps leading up to the verandah, while he kicked off his shoes and silently stole under the railing and took a position under the living room window. He waved me toward the front door — and the speed and facility with which the unknown performer could shift, at the merest squeak of shoe on step, from whipping through the Beethoven to plunking doggedly through "Chopsticks" without making overmany mistakes was striking.

"Too late — you forgot about the open window," announced Kitman, and vaulted through it. I followed him over the sill and the bookcase and found that the mystery pianist was d) Kathleen and e) annoyed.

"Very funny, Dennis," she said, and pulled the keyboard lid closed. (Kitman is Dennis Anton Kitman, which is why Kitman is Kitman.)

"Glad you enjoyed it!" said Kitman. He pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket and examining his sister's now motionless hands with curiosity. "When did you get good, by the way?"

"At the Big Tree workshop," she said. (Big Tree is an early-entrance college in Maine, somewhere between Greenville and Brownville. In summer it hosts various workshops to entice high school students; Kathleen had attended the music extravaganza in June.)

"What, three weeks at Big Tree did all that?" said Kitman. "That was the best six hundred dollars Mom and Dad ever spent."

"It seemed longer," she said. "But that's why I've kept a lid on it."

I flinched.

"Don't infer puns," she said, giving me the hairy eyeball. "It's not polite. — In any case I don't want to go back, so keep your lips zipped."

"I shall be more mouse than man," said Kitman, raising three fingers in scout's-honor salute.

"Good. And where have you been all day, when you should have been helping me sort the auxiliary library?" (She meant by size. Alphabetizing the Kitman family library is futile; the churn rate is too high.)

"Um," said Kitman.

"Well, too late now, I finished without you."

"For which you are entitled to a token of affection and esteem," said Kitman, and meant it.

"Absolutely. Fifteen bucks should do nicely." Kathleen's fingers rattled across the piano lid. Had it not been there she would have owed royalties to Pink Floyd.

Kitman, wounded, lowered his head and applied fingers to forehead. "Alas, to see my sibling obsessed with the long green. I had something better in mind, such as taking you to lunch."

"Lunch?" said Kathleen warily. "What kind of lunch could possibly be worth more than fifteen bucks?"

"The kind that, if it came in a box, would come in a glossy black flat one with rice-paper lining, bearing a scarlet, or debatably lavender, V on the top."

Kathleen gave her brother the eyebrow raised and fixed. "You could never afford it," she said with certainty.

"I've got an angle," said Kitman. "I offer you the opportunity. It will, if nothing else, be interesting. Shall we go?"

We went.

 

•

 

According to the Abelton Park Realty map — available free at their main office on Secombe Boulevard, if you can find Secombe Boulevard without a map — the round-trip distance from Kitman's house in Abelton Park to Vincenzo's Pizzeria in Abelton is about ten miles as the crow flies. This is because Abelton Park Realty doesn't know what a contour line is — or, more likely, does know but doesn't want anyone else to find out, because after all they do have houses they need to sell. The landscaper who laid out Abelton Park, you see, did know what a contour line is — and a drainage pattern — and apparently knew a few things about fractal geometry as well. Possibly he had gone to college and not been able to stop.

Regardless, thanks to our overwound streets the trip actually takes fourteen miles all told. Kitman and I have not the slightest objection. If the price of retaining our topsoil is a twenty-eight mile round trip to Abelton, then that price we gladly pay. On weekdays, when the jitney runs, it's only a dollar. On weekends, when it doesn't, we ride our bicycles and like it. When Kitman finishes building his ornithopter — but I digress.

This being a Saturday, we rode our bicycles into Abelton and liked it. If nothing else the trip builds an appetite, and, today, anticipation that would require two, possibly two and a half Carly Simons to express.

You see, not only does the Venus Vincenzo Pizzeria not deliver, it frequently doesn't even open. Each morning Venus Vincenzo goes into his greenhouse to feed the parrots and inspect the tomatoes, and if they're not up to snuff — the tomatoes and the parrots — the CLOSED sign will remain a stark and bitter denial in the restaurant window. In some months he sells only one pie, and that usually ends up on eBay. (It is because of standards this high that it has been empirically verified that that the Venus Vincenzo tomato pie is, unique in the annals of science and pizza, the only pizza known that tastes just as good the next day.)

Today (as Kitman knew) they were open, and we parked our bikes by the rear entrance.

"Not that way," said Kitman when Kathleen started towards the front. "Angle, remember?"

"This had better not involve washing dishes," said Kathleen as we followed her brother to the back door.

"Absolutely not," said Kitman, and pressed the buzzer on the squawk box mounted next to the door.

We waited while clouds of garlic-scented steam wafted out of the vents on the roof and enveloped us in bliss. (Some people would use words other than bliss, sad to say. My father would use spit.)

"What?" said a staticky voice from the speaker.

Kitman thumbed the talk button. "Would someone please tell Mr. Vincenzo that, ah, Blue Boy is here with two friends?"

The door immediately opened.

"Come in, my son," said Venus Vincenzo, removing his white hat.

 

•

 

In the event that you ever make it into Vincenzo's, you will have only one major decision to make: all or nothing at all.

Some people favor the Large with Everything.

The Large with Everything does not, I should mention at this point, include cheese. To Venus Vincenzo, "cheese" means "spackle" — it is what muddle-minded workmen use to cover their mistakes. Venus Vincenzo is a pizza artiste and has no truck with such shim-shams. Nor does it include any other animal products, as Vincenzo asserts they result in confused flavors. It does include onions and peppers sent in by commuter jet from Vincenzo's brother's greenhouse in south Rhode Island (no relation), which is why it's so expensive.

On the other hand, the Large with Nothing is renowned among the cognoscenti, and this afternoon one table in the restaurant seating area was surrounded by shaven-headed men wearing saffron robes and increasingly beatific expressions, just quietly sitting and looking at the round red disc.

"Actually," said Kitman (having noticed my reaction), "they're practitioners of breatharianism. They believe life can be sustained solely through prana — elan vital."

"James Randi would call it codswallop," said Kathleen. After a deep breath she added, "Prana with onions, though, might be worth investigating."

Kitman pulled out a chair for his sister. "Energizing the tissues directly through a standing-wave bioenergy field," he said. "I should look into it. It might get me a scholarship to CalTech.

"Then again," he said, plunking himself down next to her, "if it were possible, Tesla would probably have invented it."

A waiter brought us glasses of electric purple soda. (That's the minor decision you have to make at Vincenzo's: electric purple — I cannot say grape — or electric orange.)

"So," said Kathleen, telescoping the wrapper of her straw, "why has Venus Vincenzo adopted you?" She placed a drop of soda on the condensed bit of paper and watched it wiggle.

"You'll know in another couple of — never mind, here it comes," said Kitman, just as the aforementioned Venus Vincenzo approached the table with a pizza pan held high.

"Your timing is excellent, my boy," said Mr. Vincenzo. "Your tomatoes ripened only this morning."

And he laid down before us a Large with Nothing.

Kitman looked upon the tomato pie and smiled.

I looked upon the tomato pie and smiled.

Venus Vincenzo looked upon us looking upon the tomato pie and smiled.

Kathleen looked upon the tomato pie and stared.

"I know I'm going to regret asking this," she said, "but why is this tomato pie sky-blue?"