Paladin, Chapter 16

INT. GENERAL STORE - LATER IN THE DAY

CHARLES walks in.  GRACE is busy with a customer.  CHARLES retreats to his office.  Shortly, GRACE enters his office.

GRACE: Where were you?

CHARLES: I went for a walk.  To clear my head.  That's all right, isn't it?

GRACE: Were you alone?

CHARLES: What's that supposed to mean?

GRACE: Were you alone?

CHARLES: What if I was, what if I wasn't?

GRACE: Were you with POLLYANNA?

CHARLES: Why are you so obsessed with her?

GRACE: Why don't you answer my questions?

CHARLES: Why should I?  My business is my business.  Forget about POLLYANNA.

GRACE: I can't.  I'm jealous of her.  She's stealing my husband.

CHARLES: You're being ridiculous.

GRACE: Do you love me, CHARLES?

CHARLES: What a silly question.

GRACE: Well, do you?

CHARLES: Of course.

GRACE: Of course what?

CHARLES: (without emotion) Of course, I love you.

GRACE: Do you wish you were married to POLLYANNA?

CHARLES: (laughs) Don't be ridiculous.  

They hear customers enter the store.

CHARLES: Why don't you take care of the customers, GRACE.

GRACE: This discussion isn't over.

GRACE leaves office to deal with customers.

GRACE: (talking to customers) How can I help you?

Carnaval

It is Carnaval season in Brazil.

Carnaval in Brazil is an annual festival held the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter.  Carnaval is the most popular holiday in Brazil and has become an event of huge proportions. 

The country unifies completely for almost a week and festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities.  

Rio de Janeiro's carnaval alone drew 6 million people in 2018, with 1.5 million being travelers from inside and outside Brazil.  Rio's world according to Guinness World carnival is the largest single carnaval parade in the Records.  

Meanwhile, the carnaval of São Paulo is the largest street carnaval celebration by number of participants.

In the southeastern cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Vitória, huge organized parades are led by samba schools. Those official parades are meant to be watched by the public, while minor parades (blocos) allowing public participation can be found in those as well as other cities, like Belo Horizonte, also in the southeastern region.

These parades are contests between the samba schools and are taken as seriously as any football (soccer) game in Brazil.

We are in Guaruja and not Sao Paulo where crowds (blocos) are marching through our neighborhood of Pinheiros. 

Barbetta

 On Saturday, November 14, 1964, Joan Freedman, a college friend, invited me to join her and her parents for dinner at the Barbetta restaurant at 321 West 46th Street in Manhattan.  

Many years later I returned to Barbetta with my ex-wife Bonita.

More recently I again, this time with my wife Cristina, had dinner at Barbetta before attending a Broadway show.

During all three of my trips to this restaurant, I was impressed by the image a woman who acted as a forceful manager.  It turned out to be Laura Maioglio, the owner of a restaurant that was opened by her father in 1906.

Laura, the second-generation New York City restaurateur whose Barbetta became a theater district mainstay and, with its European-style grand décor and rich Piedmont-region cuisine, one of the city’s first upscale Italian restaurants, died on January 17th at her home in Manhattan. She was 93 years old.

The restaurant is expected to remain open to the public only through February 27th.  Laura had no children to continue her family's legacy.

After the death of her father in 1962, Laura took over Barbetta and directed its chiefly male staff.  Few female restaurateurs have remained so intimately involved for as long as she did.

“She was as strong as a nail, the toughest woman I ever met in my life,” Leopold Frokic, a former sommelier at Barbetta, said of Ms. Maioglio. “Imagine a woman managing 50 men, immigrants from countries where the woman doesn’t tell them what to do. None of those men could take her for a ride.”

Laura was born and raised in New York. She attended the Brearley School and graduated from Bryn Mawr College magna cum laude with a degree in Art History.

Throughout her life, Laura continued to frequent her family home in Piemonte, spending extended periods in Europe and Italy, including a year studying at the University of Florence. Her long sojourns in Italy, particularly in Piemonte, have provided her with first-hand knowledge of Italian food and wine, especially that of her native region, Piemonte.

He Ran All the Way

He Ran All the Way is a 1951 American crime drama and film noir starring John Garfield and Shelley Winters.  It was Garfield's final film before his death in 1952 at the age of 39.

Petty thief Nick Robey (Garfield) botches a robbery, shooting and killing a policeman. He escapes with over $10,000 and, deliberately loses himself in a crowd.

Arriving at a local swimming pool, Nick meets bakery worker Peg Dobbs (Winters) and accompanies her to her family's apartment. Peg's mother, father and young brother leave to see a movie. When they return, Robey takes the family hostage until he can escape from the police search for him.  Peg's initial attraction to him is replaced by fear.

As a manhunt for Nick intensifies outside, he becomes increasingly paranoid. 

To save her family Peg agrees to go away with Nick.  He gives her $1,500 to buy a new car.

Influenced by Peg's father that Peg will not buy the car, Nick refuses to believe Peg.  However she insists that the car will be delivered to the front door after the dealer has the headlights repaired.  

The following day, Nick violently takes Peg down the stairs toward the exit, terrifying her.  When Nick's gun drops beyond his reach and he orders Peg to hand it to him, she shoots him instead. Nick, mortally wounded, crawls outside to the curb in time to see his new car arrive as Peg said it would.

As life imitates art, John Garfield died in May of the next year.  The cause of death was a heart attack.  He Ran All the Way was his last film.