“No, by your military police. As soon as their sub showed up.”
“What for?”
“That’s what Teo’s trying to figure out.”
“Is he in town?”
“For a few days. In fact, he’s coming to lunch.” Her face brightened. “Why don’t you stay?”
I knew Paul would expect me to decline the invitation, but I had nothing to do for the rest of the day. So I told Francesca I’d love to join them, and at eleven, when our lesson was over, I packed away my notebooks and helped her set the table.
She was making culurgiones, which are kind of like ravioli but filled with potato, pecorino cheese, and mint. She put me in charge of peeling the potatoes—something she insisted I do after and not before they were boiled—then mashing them by hand. It was a tedious job, but I was grateful for the distraction.
After we’d made the filling and set it aside, Francesca removed a ball of pasta dough from the fridge and showed me how to run chunks of it through her pasta machine. When I cranked the handle, the machine spat out these paper-thin slabs of dough that we laid on a piece of butcher block. Francesca gave me a cookie cutter and had me cut out a couple dozen circles the size of my palm, then told me to place a spoonful of the potato filling in the middle of each one. I was delighted with the whole enterprise, especially when she showed me how to pinch the edges closed, using my fingernail to create a pretty crease.
“These things are works of art,” I told her when I’d assembled several that I deemed presentable.
“Wait until you taste them.”
Bernardo was the first to arrive at the apartment, and he and I stumbled over my bad Italian while Francesca made a tomato sauce that the culurgiones would sit in, like sailboats. “Bianca verrà?” he asked her as she chopped basil, but she told him in Italian that Bianca had to work.
“I understood everything you just said,” I told her, feeling very pleased with myself.
“Brava!” said Francesca, then she handed me a plate of cheese and told me to take it to the table.
71.
TEO ARRIVED AT A QUARTERto one, apologizing profusely for being late.
“It’s fine,” said Francesca as they kissed hello. “We weren’t ready to eat yet anyway.”
When he saw me leaning against the sink, he stopped short. “Eileen.”
I stepped forward, and we did the kissing thing, too. I still wasn’t used to it and couldn’t shake the feeling that I was doing it wrong.
“I have to apologize for the other night,” he said.
“Oh, God. Please, no.”
“It’s Afonso who should be apologizing,” said Francesca, who was putting a large sea bass with olives and fennel in the oven. When she’d closed the oven door, she turned to me. “Teo told me what the idiot said.”
“It was really fine,” I said. “And honestly, I think I was part of the problem.”
Teo looked confused.
“I’d had too much to drink.”
He shook his head. “You were okay.”
I didn’t want to tell him that Paul disagreed, so I just said, “That’s good,” and let it drop.
We stood talking in the tiny kitchen while Francesca bustled around, sautéing some spinach and plating the fish once it was out of the oven. I asked Teo if his parents’ apartment had the same layout as this one, and he said it was identical. “But it’s two floors up,” said Francesca, “so the view is even better.”
Bernardo poured us wine, and Teo asked him about the regional election, which the PCI was either going to win by a landslide or lose handily, depending on whom you asked.
The Italian flying back and forth between them was way too fast for me to hang on to, but occasionally, Teo would translate a sentence or two.“There are all these big politicians flying into Cagliari from Rome. They’re trying to influence the election, but Bernardo says it won’t work.”
“Do you think the PCI will win?” I asked Teo.
