“I guess so.”
“How long have you been taking lessons?” he asked.
“Not long,” I said. “Maybe a month?”
Already, Colleen seemed bored. “I need a refill,” she said, then disappeared inside, which was fine. Maybe even preferable. Teo pulled up an extra chair, next to his, and gestured for me to sit.
“Questa è Eileen,” he said to the group. “È americana e il suo italiano è pessimo, quindi vacci piano con lei.”
I had followed the first part of the introduction but not the second. “Did you just say my Italian is very bad?”
He grinned. “Yes, and that they should go easy on you.”
Teo rattled off the names of the people around the table. Ernesto and Afonso and Aldo and a girl named Gianna. With the exception of Ernesto, none of them spoke English.
“Piacere,” I said, then returned my attention to Teo. “They all live here?” I asked him.
“Everyone except Aldo. He’s in Santa Teresa.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“Francesca said you live in Sassari?”
He lit a hand-rolled cigarette that he’d been storing in his breast pocket, then exhaled at the sky. “What else did she tell you about me?”
“That you work for a newspaper there.”
He nodded.
“That your family lives in Rome.”
This elicited another nod.
“And that you’re very charming.”
He looked at me then. Like, really looked at me. What I’d said had come off as flirtatious, and I think he was trying to figure out if I’d meant it that way.HadI meant it that way? It’s honestly still hard for me to say, all these years later. I’m inclined to tell you that my comment didn’t mean anything. That I was drunk and said the first thing that came to mind. Francescahadtold me he was charming. And, like a lot of people, I lose my filter when I’ve been drinking.
“I think it is you who are very charming,” he said. “And if I had realized my aunt knew you, I would have been sure to tell her.”
This lit me up, and I asked him what he was doing on the island.
“It’s this man’s birthday,” he said, nodding in the direction of Ernesto.
Ernesto gave me a small wave.
“Happy birthday.”
Teo explained how he knew everyone. They were all people he’d grown up with during the summers he’d spent on the island. Except for Gianna, whom he’d met through Aldo. Ernesto and he had randomly wound up in the same residence hall at university.
“Where did you go to school?” I asked Teo.
“University of Bologna.”
“Your English is very good. Did you study it in college?”
“I did. But I also had a fellowship later.”
