“I want them tostay happy,” Frank says. “I don’t want them looking around for the better deal. We’llgive them the better deal, keep their eyes from wandering.” He also tells Sciorelli to buy as much of the Mexican shrimp as he can get-the storm is going to keep the shrimp boats in for a week or so and thecamarones will be getting prime price.
Things change and they don’t, he thinks as he gets in the van and heads back toward OB Pier. My daughter is going to be a doctor, but we’re still selling tuna. And there are other things that don’t change, he thinks as he drives to Little Italy, right up the hill from the airport-I’m still fixing things in the old house.
6
The old house is just that-an old house, something that’s getting more and more rare in downtown San Diego, even over here in Little Italy, which used to be a neighborhood of old, well-kept single-family homes but is now giving way to condo buildings, office buildings, trendy little hotels, and parking structures to service the airport.
Frank’s old house is a beautiful two-story Victorian, white with yellow trim. He parks in the narrow driveway, hops out of the van, and finds the right key on his big chain. He has the key in the lock when Patty opens it from the inside, as if she heard the van pulling up, which maybe she did.
“Took you long enough,” she says as she lets him in.
She can still get to me, Frank thinks as he feels a pang of annoyance. And something else, too. Patty is still an attractive woman. She’s gotten a little matronly, maybe, around the hips, but she’s kept herself in good shape, and those brown almond-shaped eyes still have a way of, well, getting to him.
“I’m here now,” he says, kissing her on the cheek. He walks past her into the kitchen, where one half of the deep double sink looks like high tide in a Third World harbor someplace.