“See, peopleused this thing,” he told Donna when she asked why he didn’t just buy a new one, which he could easily afford. “You get close, you can even smell where they used to chop the garlic.”

“Italian men and their mothers,” Donna said.

“My mother was a good cook,” Frank replied, “but it was my old man who couldreally cook. He taught me.”

And taught him good, Donna thought at the time. Whatever else you want to think about Frank Machianno-such as he can be a genuine pain in the ass-the man can cook. The man also knows how to treat a woman. And maybe the two attributes aren’t unrelated. Actually, it was Frank who introduced this idea to her.

“Making love is like making a good sauce,” he said to her one night in bed during the “afterglow.”

“Frank, quit while you’re ahead,” she told him.

He didn’t. “You have to take your time, usejust the right amount of the right spices, savor each one, thenslowly turn the heat up until it bubbles.”

The unique charm of Frank Machianno, she thought, lying there next to him, is that he just compared your body to aBolognese and you don’t kick his ass out of bed. Maybe it’s that he really does care so much. She has sat in the car while he’s driven back and forth across town, going to five different stores for five different ingredients for a single dish. (“Thesalsiccie isbetter at Cristafaro’s, Donna.”) He brings the same attention to detail into the bedroom, and the man can make, shall we say, the sauce bubble.

This morning, like every morning, he takes raw Kona coffee beans from a vacuum-sealed jar and spoons them into the little roaster he bought from one of those chef’s catalogs he’s always getting in the mail.