She shakes her head at the innuendo but graces me with a slow smile. I breathe out my relief that she’s back with me—out of her head, where her worries seem to suck the joy right out of the air. And pull my own fears and worries right to the surface.
The moment Uvaldi sees her, he is out from the inside of the truck, lifting her in his huge arms against the apron that smells of sausage. She laughs when her sandal slips off during the greeting, but it’s obvious she loves every second of the embrace.
“Gi, you sent this to me?” Uvaldi yells, arm around Ava’s shoulders. She’s a quarter of his size.
“I did,” I tell him.
“Va bene. I owe you, no?” His smile is infectious.
I want to say I feel the same way about whoever sent her to me. But I just nod and watch while he tells her about tonight’s antipasti that he’s bringing to dinner, tugging her into the inside of the truck and ignoring the line that has formed outside.
“Signore, can I have my date back?” I yell toward the interior.
Her golden head pops up over the counter of meats.
“Date?”
I wave her question away and Uvaldi’s laughter shakes the truck.
“I’d just like her to try la crescia, per favore,” I tell him, doing my best to send him Nina’s malocchio.
He winks at me over Ava’s head and lifts his chin.
“Va bene, bella. Vai. Let’s not upset Gi. We will see each other at dinner, no?” He pushes Ava back out the side door and she just smiles up at me.
“Date?” she asks again. “Don’t you think you should have consulted me before taking me on a date?”
Uvaldi hands me the melted cheese and prosciutto on the flaky flatbread and I immediately hold it to her mouth to shut her up.
She takes a bite and her eyes roll into the back of her head with a moan.
She’s forgotten all about my verbal slip.
She takes the crescia from my hand, licks her lips. Takes another bite. Another soft moan.
And I’ve forgotten my own name.
VENTISEI
Ava
The dinner table has doubled in size since last weekend. Nina and Leo have set up a white tent along the side of the villa to accommodate us, just near enough to the pool so that we can hear the murmur of the water falling over its edge beneath the chatter of the guests and the hum of the music from Verdi’sLa Traviataspilling from the open windows. The trays of antipasti that Uvaldi has talked me through—in far more detail than I might have liked as I now know each animal body location from whence the meat came—lay in ruins between us, waiting for the primo piatto to take its place alongside the candles James and I lit when we set the table.
James’s hand rests on the white linen tablecloth between our wine glasses so that when I reach for the stem of my own glass, my fingertips just barely brush against his knuckles. The effects of the Sangiovese wine Franco has supplied for our first course has nothing on the warmth that spreads through my body as I lift the glassto my lips and feel his eyes on the side of my face. Who knew sitting at a table beside him would be this—challenging?
“Are you alright?” he whispers just low enough for me to hear.
I don’t meet his gaze. I know I’ll spontaneously combust or fall headlong into his irises.
“Mmmhmm. Just taking it all in,” I tell him, swirling the wine in my glass to make a ruby cyclone that sends the unlikely duo of cherry and tomato out of its vortex and into my sinuses.
I see James’s dark head nod in my periphery as I glance at Nina. She’s smiling at me from the head of the table. The smile of a knowing mother. Or a devious sorceress.
“Just making sure you aren’t all wrapped up in that head of yours,” James says as he rises from his seat and grabs one of the empty trays.
I lower my wine glass to the table and stand to help, reaching for the other almost empty meat tray while Uvaldi dives to save the final pieces of prosciutto (pig’s hind legs) by tugging them off onto his plate with a smile. He’s informed me that his father taught him never to waste any part of the animal. And I do mean any.
I follow James into the house just as Pavarotti finishes a power duo with his soprano on the record player, and I step around Verga who is standing in front of the oven like it might burst open at any given moment and spray food at or into his mouth. I can’t say I blame him. The savory smell of roasting beef is enough to make my stomach do a back handspring.
