Mafia Chic

All right, taken out of context, she sounded catty, but she just likes to “dish.” I bet she could make even the guards at Buckingham Palace laugh, if given the chance.

Suddenly a WASPish blonde approached our table. “Robert Wharton.” He smiled. “And you two appear to be the only interesting women in this place. Can I join you?” We were seated on a bloodred velvet couch, and Di immediately scrunched closer to me.

“Okay…we’ve moved on over. But you can only join us if you are terribly amusing and promise to make us laugh,” Di said, and smiled.

“Promise.”

Turned out Robert Wharton, who looked vaguely familiar, was an on-air reporter for a major cable news network. He had the bland yet handsome looks of a news anchor, a side part in his perfect hair, and an angular build encased in an expensive suit jacket. His chin was dimpled, and his nose was straight without a trace of ethnicity. Everyone in my family looked like they had been on the wrong end of a strong right hook. His hazel eyes peered out from behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“I scored the first post-trial interview with Connie Benson,” he said when Di pressed him to tell us just where we’d seen him before.

“Oh, my God! The Hamptons Harlot!”

Connie Benson was a 40DD porno actress who married the king of Long Island real estate, who promptly died under questionable circumstances. And despite a murder trial that lasted for six months and riveted the media, she’d been acquitted, though the prosecutors had thought it was a no-brainer.

“So dish. Do you think she did it?” Di asked.

He nodded.

“Well…” I chimed in, “she’s laughing all the way to the bank. He froze out his kids in the will.”

Robert nodded. “And she has the spending habits of a Rockefeller. She went through a cool half million just adding mirrored ceilings in all the bedrooms, and her own state-of-the-art screening room. She likes to watch her old porn movies with popcorn and her new lover. The old man was forty years older than she. This new guy is only nineteen.”

“Truth is always stranger than fiction,” I said.

“I’m so glad you sat down,” Di added. “I was hooked on that case. Watched the recaps every night on Court TV. Cheers!” She lifted her glass and elbowed me to lift mine, and the three of us toasted.

“You look familiar, too.” Robert studied me.

I wriggled uncomfortably in my seat. Of course, he could have eaten in my restaurant and have recognized me out of context. But A&E also profiled my family a year ago, complete with family trees and fuzzy photos. Because I was the only granddaughter of Angelo Marcello in a sea of seventeen male cousins, I had been filmed from a distance crossing the street and labeled “The Mafia Princess.”

“Do you work out at Parallel Spa?”

He shook his head. We were all growing hoarse talking over the music.

“Ever eat at a tiny little place called Teddi’s?”

“No. Where is it?”

“East Side. Mid-Sixties.”

He shook his head. “You work there?”

Lady Di wrapped an arm around me. “She owns it. And it has absolutely the most delicious food in New York City. I would starve without Teddi. Would curl up on the floor and die. Her spaghetti carbonara is rapturous.”

I rolled my eyes. “Spoken like a true PR agent.”

Robert laughed. “Well, sounds like I should visit Teddi’s, but…I still feel like I know you from somewhere.”

“No, I don’t think we’ve met before,” I said firmly.

“But now we have. Can I invite you to dinner? I promise I’m not a serial killer. Just an honest boy from Philadelphia.”

Di dug her heel into my instep, urging me to say yes. I glared at her, then nodded at Robert.

We spent the rest of the night making small talk. Turned out the “honest boy” from Philadelphia was from Main Line Philly and old money. I cringed. Talk about worlds colliding. We ordered more champagne and discovered that Robert liked horses, specifically polo, and had attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. And yes, there was some relation to the original Wharton way back in his lineage.

“Is Teddi your real name?” he shouted over the music.

I shook my head. “Theresa. But my grandfather called me Teddi Bear, ridiculous as that sounds, and it stuck.” Of course, I didn’t point out that Angelo Marcello, one of the most celebrated of the old-time mobsters, was my Poppy. I was his teddy bear, his angel, and if anyone thought about touching a hair on my head, there wouldn’t be a federal safe house safe enough for the man, whoever he was.

“That’s really cute.”

I shrugged. “I like it better than Theresa, that’s for sure.”

Lady Di stood and waved to a client. “Back in a jiff, Teddi.”

Robert focused on me again. “I wish I could place you. I just have this feeling we’ve met before.”

“I promise you, we haven’t.”

“I know this is the oldest line in the book, Teddi, but if we haven’t met before, then I have a serious case of déjà vu. I must have known you in another life.”

He was near enough to me that when he bent his head to better hear me, I could smell his cologne. Maybe it was the loud music, but he leaned in so close to me that he gave the impression that he wanted to hear every word I said.

“Maybe…” Anxious to change the subject, to steer him away from the Marcello and Gallo family names, I asked him how he got into journalism.

“Please. Every kid who ever saw All the President’s Men wanted to be the next Woodward or Bernstein and packed off to college…and I was no exception. I changed my major from business. I found I had the stomach for journalism. I wasn’t squeamish at crime scenes. I didn’t mind working my way up from the bottom. I was always comfortable at public speaking, so speaking in front of a camera wasn’t a big deal.”

“I’d rather do just about anything than speak in front of a group of people.”

“Number-one fear for most people.”

Should I tell him that in my neighborhood, the number-one fear is having my uncle Lou show up to collect a bad debt? I opted to shut up.

Around two o’clock in the morning, I realized my alarm was going to ring mighty early for opening the restaurant. By this time, Di had rejoined us, and we’d ordered another bottle of champagne. As we poured the last of it into our glasses, I nudged Di and said we had better go.

“What time is it?” Robert pushed up the cuff of his shirt and read his Rolex. “Jesus! The night flew by.”

We all stood. Robert kissed my cheek, took a card from the restaurant and promised to call to arrange dinner. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that line, I could have bailed out my uncle Jackie the last time he was arraigned.)

Lady Di and I said goodbye and made our way through the packed main club, its dance floor so crowded you couldn’t fit a slip of paper between the dancers, and went outside. The doorman hailed us a cab. Nestled into the back, Di was both drunk and ecstatic for me.

“Robert Wharton…old money, handsome and a high-profile job on top of it. I think this is your lucky night, Teddi, you Chinese mouse, you! Or is it a rat?”

“Lady Di,” I slurred, the champagne long since gone to my head. I could only imagine the hell of standing over a hot stove the next day. “Given the unfortunate incarceration of half my family, and the fact that there are one hundred hijacked Betsey Johnson dresses in the basement of my parents’ house, do you really think a high-profile relationship is such a good idea?”

“Fuck it all,” she said. “Then a toss in the hay and you’re done with him. But really, Teddi, do they expect you to marry a mobster?”