Chapter 6
James
We are well into our secondi piatti when the American graces us with her presence.
She’s freshly showered, her skin still flushed from the heat of the high-pressure triple showerhead I installed in the guest house last year. I love that thing. I imagine our guest loving it as well and shift in my seat, trying to refocus on the plate in front of me but failing miserably.
Her hair is blown out around her shoulders, no more messy travel bun, and the navy dress she’s sporting is tailored perfectly to every curve on her body like a second skin—so well fitted that I can perfectly make out the outline of her phone in her hip pocket. Could she not just leave that thing in the guest house? She’s probably waiting for it to ring at any second with a groveling idiot on the other end begging her for forgiveness.
My uncle clears his throat and taps my arm, and I notice he and Massimo are standing to welcome her. I push up from my seat expecting to see her eyebrows lifted at me with haughty disdain, but she’s not even looking my way. Her hand is outstretched to my uncle.
“Dean Russo,” she says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for hosting me.”
Zio pulls her inward and plants a kiss on each of her cheeks.
“Any student of Pastore’s is welcome here. Especially one with the acclamations that he has given you. It is our pleasure.”
She turns to Nina with the same genuine smile—one that has yet to be sent my way—and says, “This all smells so delicious, Nina. My stomach woke me up and saved me from sleeping straight through the night.”
“Sit here,” Massimo tells her with a devilish smile, pulling out the seat beside him. Nina gives him the look and pulls out the seat next to me instead as she stands.
“Sit, carina. Mangia. I will get the melanzana,” she says, putting her hand lightly on Ava’s shoulder and then making her way into the kitchen to fetch more eggplant.
Everything about the woman taking the seat beside me screams impeccable manners. Where were those manners with me? Apparently, I was deemed unworthy.
“You are finding the guest house comfortable, no?” my uncle asks.
Ava nods and the flame from the lantern at the center of the table catches the gold in her hair as her head moves. There’s a shadow dancing in the tiny indent below her clavicle. My fingers itch again. But my camera is in the kitchen.
“The guest house is beautiful. Obviously, you and Nina have impeccable taste,” she says gesturing to the space around us. Everything in the dining room is handcrafted—some things, like the olive wood buffet and the bench surrounding the stone fireplace, were made by my uncle and me. Others come from my Zio’s and Zia’s travels through Italia.
My uncle presses his lips together and looks my way, lifting a brow, silently asking if he should redirect the American’s compliment my way. I shake my head subtly. The woman doesn’t need to know that I designed and built the guest house. We need to keep her arsenal limited or she’ll be requesting updates and remodels when we move her along to the apartment.
She finally glances my way, following my uncle’s gaze. Her eyes narrow, possibly wondering why the family butler is sitting at the right hand of the dean.
“I thought you’d be working tonight,” she says softly enough for only me to hear.
I dip a piece of bread into the wild boar ragù left on my plate and take a bite, chewing slowly while she waits for me to answer. Being stuck at a table with me is nearly breaking the pleasant manners she’s perfecting—seemingly for my aunt’s and uncle’s benefit only. I dab my mouth with my napkin and she lets out a sigh.
“I decided there are more important things than money,” I say at full volume. “Like having dinner with my family.”
I pat Zio Leo’s arm and he rolls his eyes.
There’s a fleeting moment where Ava’s soft green pupils dilate and her lids lift as understanding hits her, but she grits her teeth into a smile and nods.
“That makes sense. It wasn’t adding up why such a kind and generous family would keep someone like you around,” she says, her voice low. She takes a sip of the red wine Massimo has filled to the brim, not spilling a drop and keeping her eyes on mine as she drinks. Impressive. “But now—knowing you are their blood—they have little choice in the matter.”
My uncle makes a sound in his chest that I know is a suppressed chuckle, and Max kicks me beneath the table. I turn to meet my cousin’s stare and he waggles his eyebrows at me. Twelve going on twenty, that one. I throw a piece of bread at him and he picks it off his lap and eats it with a grin.
“Well, it seems you and my nephew are acquainted, no?” Uncle Leo says, gesturing between Ava and me. He meets Nina’s eyes over our heads as she enters from the kitchen.
“Certo. Very acquainted,” Nina confirms. “That is why Ava needed to learn all of those Italian profanities today.” She throws me a wink and slips back into her seat at the head of the table, motioning with her hand for Ava to take more.
“You will find, Ms. Graham, that James comes and goes as he pleases, but will never miss a meal,” Zio Leo tells her. “Though in the summer he’s a more constant fixture.” That about sums it up. I nod once.
“How charming,” Ava mumbles as she forks a huge piece of eggplant onto her already full plate. She’s never going to eat all of that. The woman weighs less than my dog when she’s soaking wet. “So he’s like your own version of Uncle Eddie from Christmas Vacation.”
I groan. Of course she’d pick my uncle’s all-time favorite American movie. He has a thing for Chevy Chase and forces us to watch his movies at least once a month. He’s nodding vigorously, smiling wider than I’ve seen in some time.
“Essatamente, Ms. Graham. Well said!”
“I think Nina might need help in the kitchen,” I grumble, standing up to get the hell out of the line of fire, though I’m used to this gently barbed banter. Ball-busting is a tradition at this table, but I really just want an excuse to find my camera. The moonlight is doing incredible things with the shadows tonight.
“How can I need help nella cucina if I’m right here, James?” Nina asks, making a hmmm noise after.
“I’ll do the dishes.” I go to grab Max’s plate across from me and he snarls. Zio smacks the back of his head and hands me his.
Like clockwork, Verga appears beside me, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, ready for its job.
“What kind of horse is that?” Ava asks, fork halfway to her mouth.
Nina chuckles.
“A Clydesdale,” my uncle answers.
“Verga is a Neapolitan mastiff,” I correct, patting his head with my free hand. He was a gift from my Zio and Zia.
“You named him Verga. How dark. Why’s his face all messed up like that?” she asks, then shoves an impossibly large bite of pasta into her mouth. She chews slowly and her lids fall closed, the first bite of Nina’s pasta temporarily flooding her senses. Her expression sends me spiraling back to my first bites here, Nina beside me in the kitchen directing me what to taste and how.
Ava lets out a soft sound and I have to look away, choosing Verga as the safest landing spot. Handsome, loyal boy.
I lift a brow at Ava.
“His face is perfect. Mastiffs have wrinkles. You know who Giovanni Verga is?”
She stops chewing and meets my eyes. Swallows hard. I follow the line of her neck back up to her mouth.
“You assume because I can’t speak the language, I can’t read the country’s authors?” she asks.
I shake my head, but hold her stare and say, “Of course not. Only an ignorant ass makes assumptions about language abilities.”
She narrows her eyes at me, clenches her jaw until a tiny divot appears at the corner. She looks like she wants to kick me in the balls. I hurry out of the dining space before she can get up to do so and nearly trip on Verga, who is waiting for me to put the plates down so he can lick them clean. Conversation continues at the table and I make sure to make a lot of noise so it doesn’t seem like I’m eavesdropping.
“I’m so excited to meet the lawyers and professors I’ll be working with,” Ava says.
Brown-noser.
I imagine my Zio smiling kindly at her as I try to grab the licked plate off of the floor and Verga shifts his hind quarters to block me. At least he didn’t snarl like Massimo.
“Actually, Ms. Graham,” Zio begins, “we have some sad news about this year’s seminar. It seems that most of the lawyers were at a conference in Nuremberg this past week and have fallen ill with some sort of contagion.”
Everything is quiet for a moment. No forks on plates. No polite chatter or pass the pecorino. I realize I’m bent over, stopped in mid-motion, both hands on Verga’s flank ready to push with my eyes so wide they might fall right out of my head.
Ava’s voice finally breaks the silence, shaky and soft. “Surely the seminar is just postponed for a week?”
Silence.
“Right?” She’s barely audible.
My Zio lets out a long sigh. “Sfortunamente, no. We just got notice that the seminar is canceled completely.”
I flinch a little, waiting to hear the sound of Ava’s head explode. She’s had a day. Asshat boyfriend giving her a hall pass. Apartment rental a no go. Now her program of study canceled. Shit—and me. I played a part in her hellish day. I don’t have a second to sit quietly in my guilt before Zio Leo’s booming voice reaches me again.
“Not to worry, cara. Pastore has given me explicit instructions to take care of you, and I have worked out a course of action, which I’m sure he would approve of, but he is a bit off the grid at the moment. You will assist in un’altra classe and receive all the credits that were promised for matriculation. No problem at all. Any professor here would welcome a student like you.”
I can feel Ava’s reluctant relief through the stone wall and I find my own shoulders loosening with my uncle’s words. This woman does not seem to flex and shift easily. I wonder how many pages of that absurd planner she’ll need to rip out with these changes.
I wrestle the plates from Verga, who, in all honesty, has given up the fight, and stand to wash them. I turn the water on and refocus on the task at hand, washing hard like I can scrub away the nagging guilt for adding to this poor woman’s shitty Italian welcome. Surely, Zio will take care of her at our university. There are many political science classes to choose from—Professore Giugno teaches one on Italian government. The American will be fine.
I turn off the water and leave the dishes to dry, turning to find my camera on the butcherblock counter. That camera was once the only thing on the planet that could make me miss dessert. I tell myself it still is. I have not been chased away by a sharp-tongued hellion.
I lift the strap over my head, roll the lens twice between my fingers, then turn it in my hand to look at the picture Zio took earlier on the display screen, for the thousandth time today. The picture of the scene in the driveway comes to life when I turn the dial.
Ava is partially concealed by my shoulders, her eyes tiny slits of fury, her skin flushed, her finger pointed at my chest. There’s the hint of my dimple beneath the dark stubble on my cheek and part of the profile of my nose—the bump on the bridge from being kicked in the face during a calcio match—apparent from my Zio’s angle. He captured the exact moment that she called me a gorilla. I chuckle at the image and bring the viewfinder to my left eye as I walk outside.
Time to scratch that itch.