serial fiction

Delroy and the Cheese — Part Fourteen

Meeting with Mario

This is the fourteenth chapter of an 18 chapter series about life in a Canadian tree-planting camp. If you’re new, you may want to start at the beginning or go to the complete list of Delroy and the Cheese chapters.

The next morning we all went to the pizza place to meet Mario. We got some takeaway coffee from the motel restaurant and Andrea picked up some vegan treats from her new favorite store.

We were at the pizza place eating our vegan treats and drinking our coffee by 9:30. Mario showed up about 15 minutes later. He drove up in a battered Alfa Romeo that was at least 30 years old. Thirty years is a lot in car years. Mario, himself, looked to be close to 80, which is probably the equivalent in human years. He stepped out of the car and gave us a little wave.

“Buongiorno!” he said and gave us a little wave. He walked around to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and picked up a box of groceries. His movements were slow and deliberate and slightly shaky. He still looked strong, but you could tell he was missing a bit of fine motor control. He walked toward the pizza place with a slight figure-eight sway to his steps that made it difficult to tell what direction he was actually headed.

The three of us all jumped up to help him. He shook his head at us at first, then smiled and shrugged. Andrea took the box he was carrying from him; I grabbed a big bag of onions out of the trunk, and Susan grabbed a bag of flour.

He went to the door of the pizza place, unlocked it, and waved us in. We put the groceries on the counter.

“Gracie Mille,” he said. “Thank you for that. We are not open yet. Were you hoping for pizza for breakfast?”

“No, thanks,” Susan said. “We just want some cheese.”

“But not any old cheese,” said Andrea. “Italian cheese.”

“Pecorino,” I added.

“Oh, pecorino,” he said. “Bellissimo! A very fine Italian cheese.”

“We were hoping maybe you had some that you put on your pizzas. I saw you had a quattro formagio. That’s four cheeses, right?”

“Si! Quattro formagio — four cheeses — Mozarella, Parmegiano, Gorgonzola, and Robiola. No pecorino.”

“Oh,” I said. Some part of me knew that none of the cheeses on the pizza I had last night were Delroy’s but I’d been hoping I was wrong.

“You don’t know where we could buy some, do you?” asked Andrea.

Mario shrugged and tilted his head to the side. “Not here in town. I know some good places in Italy,” he said with a smile.

“We were hoping for somewhere a bit closer,” I said. “We need to get it within the next couple of days.”

“Why do you want this cheese so much, anyway?” Asked Mario.

We told him the story of Delroy and his cheese and how we had stolen it and how Susan had eaten it. She assured him it was delicious. And we told him how we had to get it back or we all would lose our jobs. While we told our story, Mario made coffee with a little stove-top espresso pot.

“I see,” he said. He poured us each an espresso and one for himself. “Drink! Enjoy! It’s hard to find good coffee in this country. It’s one of the things I miss most about Italy. The coffee here is brutto.”

“Brutal?” I asked.

“Si! Brutto!” He said. “I always make sure to bring some back with me whenever I visit the old country. He gestured at the coffee again. “Try it!”

We sipped the coffee. It tasted completely different from the takeaway stuff we got at the motel. It was like drinking iron filings dipped in acid and chocolate. That might make it sound like a bad thing, but it wasn’t. It was delicious.

“One thing I don’t understand,” he said. “Why would you take your friend’s cheese in the first place?”

We squirmed a bit in our seats. It was a question that I, for one, didn’t really have an answer to. “Well, I guess it was just driving me crazy,” I said. “I mean, who carries around a piece of cheese? I don’t. Well, I mean unless I’m planning to eat it. And the thing about Delroy is that he is just so different. I wanted him to be the same.”

“The same as what?” asked Mario.

“I don’t know. The same as people who aren’t different, I guess. He’s just so goddamn serene for one thing! Nobody should be that serene. He’s like a skinny Buddha who farts a lot. I thought if I gave him a bit of a jolt, he might come out of his shell and be a bit more samey. I figured if he didn’t have that cheese he’d pay a bit more attention to the world.”

“And maybe pay a bit more attention to you?” asked Mario.

“I don’t know about that,” I said.

“And don’t forget about the bears,” said Andrea.

“The bears?” asked Mario. “What about the bears?”

“Bears love cheese,” said Susan. “Carrying cheese around in the woods just isn’t safe.”

“Exactly!” I said. “There are bears out there. Delroy and I saw one the other day. I was worried that a bear might smell the cheese and, you know, kill him for it or whatever.” I looked at Mario. He didn’t look like he was buying this argument. “But, I guess, mainly, I just wanted to shake him up a little. I always figured we’d give him back the cheese at some point.”

“Except I kind of ate it,” said Susan.

Mario waved his hand. “What’s done is done. The cheese cannot be uneaten. Did it work? Is your friend how you want him to be now?”

This conversation with Mario was starting to make me feel kind of shitty. How did I want Delroy to be? He wasn’t that bad, really. A little odd, but who wasn’t. Maybe Janet Lane Pearson wanted me to be someone else. Maybe that’s why she hooked up with Robert Sinjin Bartholomew. Thinking back on it, I’m almost sure she did. Maybe she was trying to give me a jolt. Maybe her sleeping with Robert Sinjin Bartholomew was her way of stealing my cheese. Damnit! How did she end up in my head again?

“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s angrier, I guess. He certainly wasn’t serene about us stealing his cheese.”

“It is a bad thing to lose one’s cheese,” said Mario. “Especially an Italian cheese. Canada is not a good country for cheese.” He sat down and took a sip of his espresso. “Or for coffee, for that matter. Or olives. I always bring back a little of each when I visit the old country. Some olives. Some coffee. Some cheese — some asiago, some taleggio, some really good parmigiana. Not just for the pizzas, but for me.”

He sighed. “There is so much I miss about Italy. I miss the food. I miss the weather. I miss the people. I miss the way they walk. I miss the way they speak. I miss seeing old friends and young lovers. But you know what I miss most of all — the passeggiata.”

“The passegee-what-a?” asked Susan.

“Is that a type of cheese?” asked Andrea.

“No, principessa. La Passeggiata is not a cheese. It is a ritual. It is a ceremony. It is beauty. It is friendship. It is life! It is a tradition in every town in Italy. In the evening, sometimes before dinner, sometimes after, everyone puts on their best clothes and goes for a walk in the town. Usually, a family will go out together. Sometimes young people run off to meet their friends. Young boys try to catch the eyes of young girls. Young girls try to catch the eyes of young boys. Old friends stop and chat for a few minutes. It is a beautiful thing.”

“It sounds lovely,” said Andrea.

“It is,” he said. “It is the one thing I miss most about Italy. No one walks here. They drive everywhere. They drive all the time. Driving is no good. Driving makes people angry. People should walk more. Walking brings you joy. I want this town to be a joyful town,” he said. “It is too angry, this town. There are too many fights. Here, all the young people go to the bar. Every night, they are in the bar. All the older people just sit at home and watch television. I don’t want to sit at home and watch tv. I want to sit in front of my restaurant and watch people stroll by arm in arm. I want friends to nod to each other as they pass. I want everyone to be wearing their best clothes and behave as their best selves. I want there to be flirting and gossip and life.”

“Me too!” said Susan. “I want flirting and gossip and life! That sounds ace!”

Susan and Andrea looked at each other. “We should do a pass-a-gee-thingy!” said Andrea.

Susan nodded vigorously.

Mario laughed. “What? The three of you? I’m sorry, but three people is not a passeggiata.”

“Well it’s at least part of a passeggiata,” said Andrea.

“Possibly,” admitted Mario. “But did I mention the clothes? Everyone looking their best. Everyone clean and shaved and tidy.” He looked us up and down.

Andrea was wearing black leggings that had been patched several times and a plaid lumberjack shirt that was at least two sizes too big for her. Susan wore a pair of mud-spattered blue jeans and a Pearl Jam tee shirt under a flowery green cardigan. I wore stained and torn blue jeans and an orange sweatshirt underneath a truly filthy jean jacket.

I could see how what we were wearing might not be up to the Sunday-best standard that Mario was thinking of. He might not be expecting us to look like fashion models, but he was probably hoping for something above the level of a Homeless Person Emerging From a Swamp.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “It is very kind of you but I don’t think it would be the same. And now I must get to work.”

We thanked him for the coffee and headed back to the motel. We were pretty dejected. We’d pretty much turned the whole town upside-down and hadn’t come up with a suitable cheese for Delroy. Mario had seemed to be our best chance at success but that hadn’t panned out.

“Well, I still think we should do a passeggiata,” said Andrea. “We just need some new clothes and to convince a few more people. I could certainly do with a bit of retail therapy. If Griff really does kick us out of camp, I might as well head back home in style.

“I’m in,’” said Susan. “Who knows, maybe we’ll find a nice little boutique that sells both gowns and Italian cheese.”

Next Chapter…

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