"Careful," she says. "I might take you up on that."
She gets up. Walks to the kitchen naked from the waist down, my t-shirt barely covering what it should cover. I watch her go. The view from behind is extraordinary. She knows I'm watching. She doesn't adjust the shirt.
I follow. She's already at the moka pot, filling the base, packing the grounds. She's learned the ritual from watching me yesterday. Same movements. Same care. She's adopted my mother's pot the way she adopted my shirt. Without asking. Without ceremony.
I stand behind her. My hands on her hips. My chin on her shoulder. She leans back into me while the coffee heats. The gesture his wife made while stirring the ragù, I realize. The same instinctive lean. Two people in a kitchen finding the position where their bodies fit.
"I want to show you something today," she says.
"What."
"My market. In the Sanità. The vendors I buy from. The tomatoes you can't get anywhere else."
"You want to take me grocery shopping."
"I want to take you to my Naples. You showed me yours." She gestures at the penthouse, the bay, the marble. "Today I show you mine."
We drink the coffee. We shower. Together again, because the shower is big enough for four and she pointed this out yesterday with the practical tone of a woman optimizing resources. We don't have sex in the shower this time. We wash each other. Her hands on my back, working the soap across the tattoos. My hands in her hair, tilting her head under the spray. The intimacy of maintenance. The domesticity of two naked bodies performing a routine they've never shared with anyone else.
She dresses in her own clothes for the first time all weekend. Jeans. A pullover. Her glasses. Her hair pulled back. She looks like herself again. The waitress. The girl from the church pew. Not the woman who came apart on my dining table eight hours ago.
Both versions are real. I'm learning that.
We take my car to the Sanità. She directs. I drive. The neighborhood is different from the waterfront. Narrower. Louder. Older. The streets fold into each other like a conversation that never reaches a conclusion.
The San Gaetano market is ten minutes' walk from where I park. She knows every vendor. The cheese man who offers a piece of something aged before she buys. The woman named Concetta who sells vegetables from her own garden in Bacoli and whose tomatoes exist at no other stall.
Concetta is in her seventies, built like someone who has spent a lifetime outdoors. She looks at me with the specific assessment of a woman who has strong opinions about whoever accompanies her regular customer.
She doesn't address me. She asks Valentina about her uncle, whether she's sleeping enough. The questions of a self-appointed guardian. Valentina answers briefly, redirects to tomatoes.
Concetta gives her the good ones. Nods at me once when we leave.
Provisional acceptance.
The cheese man is younger, proud of his product. He wants to explain the aging process. She lets him explain, though she already knows. When he finishes she asks about the milk source that lights him up entirely. He gives her a larger piece than she asked for.
"You know a great deal about cheese," I say at the bread stall.
"My uncle's parish covers a farming family in Vomero. They kept goats when I was young." She tucks the cheese into the bag. "I spent enough time at their farm that the cheesemaking became inevitable."
"What else became inevitable."
She considers this. "I can shear a sheep. I'm poor at it, but I can do it."
We buy eggs, tomatoes, bread. She buys basil from a woman selling it from the wrong end of her allotted space. Thewoman says something in Neapolitan too fast for me to follow. Valentina responds equally fast. They both laugh.
"What did she say," I ask.
"She said you look serious."
"What did you say."
"I said you look less serious than usual."
She's right. I feel less serious than I have in two years. Walking through a market carrying a bag of tomatoes while a woman in glasses argues with vendors in Neapolitan dialect, I feel like a version of myself I thought had been filed away permanently. Not the Don. Not the inheritor. The man who wanted to paint at sixteen and couldn't get the shadows right.
Back at the penthouse she takes over my kitchen.
