Scratching behind his ear, I rested my back against the backdrop of the stall, relaxing until it was time to leave. Plenty of people passed down the street, but one look in the wooden boxes and they left.
That was right! We were out.I had been too caught up in my daydreams to remember or care.
I stood too fast, stirring Pisolino, who jumped from his perch and started drinking out of the bowl I’d given him for fresh water. I shut the stall down, put the sign out, and as I was getting my things in the back of the Vespa, Iliana and Pirtinaci strolled down the street.
Pirtinaci checked to make sure his stall was secured, and Iliana set a hand over her eyes, staring in the empty boxes.
“We are running out too fast,” she mumbled.
That was good, right?
“This is good,” Pirtinaci said, probably reading the look on my face, or maybe I had read his mind—eerie, I know, but what could I do? “But we will not have enough to last for the season. Our farm is still small.”
Maybe not bring as many? I was going to suggest, but Giulia, the woman who assigned me this stall, sped up on her Vespa. After she greeted us, she looked into the boxes and gave me a different assignment on a different area of the island. I’d be selling chili pepper in all its forms.
“Okay,” I said, looking forward to a change of scenery. I’d miss the citrus stall, and Iliana and Pirtinaci were nice enough, but peppers seemed fun to sell too.
The three of them looked at me, as if searching my face for something, and after I cleared my throat at the sudden awkwardness, I told them I was going to have dinner in town. I could have gone to the apartment and cooked while I immortalized some words into the pages, but I found if I couldn’t sit and write straight through, it was harder on me. Go and stop, stop and go was a torturous pace for me. It drained me.
Giulia thanked me, as did Iliana and Pirtinaci, and then I started the Vespa. Pisolino jumped on the back of the wicker basket, and we headed into what I called the downtown area of the island. It even had its own piazza.
On the way, I remembered about Pisolino’s wounds, so I pulled to the side of the road and checked the map. The medical clinic wasn’t far. I smiled as I took off again. Two older women loitered outside of their apartments, wearing robes and house slippers, and were complaining about their husbands, who were trying to figure out how to move a car that must have been having trouble starting. The old men were waving at the women and the women were waving back, but in that Italian way that meant—What you gonna say about it, ah? You have-a ah, better idea?It wasn’t the arguing but the complaining that was so entertaining to watch.
It didn’t take me long to arrive at the medical building. I guess because the island didn’t seem to have any troubles, I was expecting to find something more…island-ish, but it looked like a real hospital, orl'ospedale.I ran inside, the cold smell of antiseptics bringing me back to Nonna and a time I refused to think about, and spoke to a nurse. She told me there was a veterinarian just a few doors down, so I headed that way. Two women in scrubs met me at the counter after I arrived, and I pointed out the window as I explained to them what had happened. Pisolino was still perched on the basket, tail swaying.
“Let me get Dr. Accolti,” the woman said. “We are not busy.”
Dr. Accolti was good looking, but I knew he wasn’t a Fausti. He didn’t have that “Fausti look” about him, and no tattoomarked him. All the men seemed to have the same one, a lion with a sacred heart in its mane, a rosary around its neck, but on different parts of the body.
The vet seemed nice enough, and he seemed to love all animals. I was almost positive I heard a goat bleating in the back of his practice. He smiled at me after I repeated the tale of Pisolino and his valiant pissing match with the orange tabby to keep him outside of our home.
“Men are known to do this!” He laughed even harder. “Especially when it is over such a beautiful woman.” He winked at me, his warm amber eyes kind. “Let us see if Pisolino will allow me to look at him.”
That was a big fat no. Pisolino wasn’t having it. I felt so bad when they got him inside of a carrier and took him inside. He stared at me with eyes that hissed,traitor!I set the pendant in my palm, barely covering it with a fist, and tapped my foot until Dr. Accolti came back out.
“We will keep him until morning,” he said. “He has a few deep gashes. You say there is another cat around your place that is wounded as well?”
I nodded, caressing the gold. “A big fat tabby. I think Pisolino might have blinded him in one eye.”
“Where do you live?”
I told him.
“Ah.” He nodded. “You are working here for the summer?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’d love to take Pisolino home with me.”
“Home…?”
I told him where I was from in America, and we had a conversation about how he had moved to New York and stayed with family while he finished his degree in veterinary medicine. After, he moved back home to be closer to his mamma and papà. Before I could ask where his parents lived, he told me they had decided to retire on the island.
“It has a lot of animals,” I said. “You can do good here.”
He reached over the counter and grabbed a pen and piece ofpaper. He scribbled down his name and phone number. It didn’t say Dr. Accolti but Dante.
“Call me anytime,” he said, the amber in his eyes sparkling against the setting of the sun and his light brown hair.
He didn’t add anything to that, like,call me anytime an animal is hurt, and you notice it.He wasn’t being pushy with his flirting, but subtle with it.
