Chapter 9 #2
As someone whose concept of making pasta meant opening up a box of noodles and dumping it into a pot of boiling water, Lora was blown away watching Vivi in the kitchen.
She could not believe the hard work and precision required to make the filled pasta pillows, which she had learned were called pansotti because they looked like they had a little panza, or belly.
From mixing the dough to sending it through the special roller until it became a thin sheet, from cooking down the borragine, which was a wild herb found all over the local hills, to folding it in with ricotta and grana, the process had so many steps it seemed endless.
When Vivi had pulled out a ruler and told her to cut the dough in squares with sides of exactly seven centimeters with a special tool that cut the pasta with a scalloped edge, Lora would have thought she was kidding were it not for her dead-serious chef demeanor.
Lora gushed on about how wild it was that there was a whole tool whose sole purpose was to make pasta pretty until Vivi gave her a sharp look and reminded her that the dough would dry out if she didn’t step to it.
Before she knew it, almost the whole afternoon had passed.
But while she might have forgotten the time, she didn’t forget that she would see Andrea later, the anticipation bubbling in her like the water they boiled to sample the pasta.
As Lora finally rounded the corner to his office, she could hear that the tone in Andrea’s voice was unfamiliar.
Something about his tight “Sì, sì, sì” made her wait in the open doorway before marching straight in.
He was sitting hunched over his desk, massaging his forehead with one hand and holding his glasses in the other.
She did not understand what he was saying, and he certainly wasn’t yelling, but his frustration was unmistakable.
She retreated back a bit into the hallway and almost crashed into Franca.
Her apology was met with an arched eyebrow.
“La richiesta deve essere presentata di nuovo.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand that.”
“DE-VI RI-FA-RE LA RI-CHIES-TA,” Franca tried, louder and slower.
Lora pointed to Andrea and shook her head, hopeful that she would understand that she needed an interpreter, but Franca rattled on without seeming to recognize the futility of it.
“Franca, dimmi,” Andrea finally called from inside the office.
She marched in and proceeded to tell Andrea whatever important news she had.
When Lora had peeked in the room before, he seemed to have aged five years since she’d seen him outside earlier.
Now whatever Franca was letting loose about was making him look even older.
When she finally finished, Franca let out another sigh—a quirk that Lora was beginning to understand usually meant What a freaking mess—and walked out of the office.
“OK,” said Andrea, sliding his glasses on. He ran his hand through his hair and turned to look out the window to his right. In profile, his face looked like something to be immortalized on a coin. “First, don’t worry, because we can fix everything.”
“Andrea.”
“Yes.”
“What you just said is a great way to ensure that I am going to worry irrespective of whatever you say next.”
“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “Too many things at once,” he said, placing his hands on the top of his desk as though he was attempting to steady some tremor there.
“Apparently there was an email sent to me to confirm that I authorize you to submit the request for citizenship and I missed it. That means that your request bounced back as not valid and will have to be resubmitted.”
“What? Why do they send you an email to confirm when your signature and stamp are already on the document? Doesn’t that mean you confirm?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It’s a new policy. It basically means that someone, somewhere, probably forged a document from another sindaco and now they have to cover their asses.”
She sat in the chair in front of his desk and put her head down, unsure of what to say.
How could he have missed such an important email?
How could a new policy be implemented randomly on something so important?
She looked down at the date on her watch.
It had been three days since she submitted the request. Three days lost. She didn’t want to be upset with him, but she was upset.
Andrea fiddled with a heavy-looking pen on his desk, the muscles in his forearms twitching as he opened and closed the cap.
“Did you not see it or…” She trailed off, hating herself so much for asking that she sabotaged the end of the sentence. She looked down again.
“I don’t know,” he repeated.
“You said to be prepared for anything. I guess this is anything.”
“I said I was sorry, Lora.”
“I am not blaming you. I am frustrated,” she said, squeezing the arm of the chair. “What do I do now?”
“They have sent the request packet back to us, and you will resubmit it as soon as it gets here.”
“When will that be?”
“Again, I don’t know. A couple of days?”
“A couple of days!” She couldn’t keep her voice from rising up. His eyes flicked up to hers. “I just—” She paused, catching herself. “I really don’t want to lose a week on this. Am I going to lose a week on this?”
“You must know that I cannot answer that question.” He dropped the pen and leaned back in his chair. “I cannot answer every question.”
“Was that a bad phone call, earlier?” she asked after a pause.
“I got the same kind of news you got. I am trying to do something and getting shut down at every turn. You want to ask questions? How do you hold back funding for a four-hundred-year-old bridge that’s been out since 2021 because it now qualifies as new construction?
What do I have to do, pull a permit from Hadrian?
I know, I’ll get people to row to the other side of town.
Or we install a zipline and I can hook up the ninety-year-old Tramonti twins when they want to go to the beach! ”
“That sounds—” She paused as he picked up the pen and started going at it with the cap again.
She chose her words carefully. Her mind raced, trying to think of an excuse to leave him so he could deal with this.
It seemed like he was always dealing with things on his own—maybe just like her.
In a parallel universe, she’d walk around the other side of the desk, sit in his lap, and kiss the frustration out of him.
But in this universe, there was no way she would be helpful to him when all she wanted to do was reset her own head, and it wasn’t going to happen in this office.
“It sounds like something you’re going to want to take care of as soon as possible,” she said, standing and sliding her bag up onto her shoulder.
“Wasn’t there something else you came here to tell me?”
“It’s really unimportant,” she said, turning her body toward the door.
“I’d really like to hear it, though.”
She edged back toward the desk. “I thought that maybe it might be a good idea to capitalize on the fact that I’ve sort of organized a good portion of the documents. I wanted to help and was thinking I can start scanning them so you can get them into your digital archive.”
“You know, that would be an incredibly intelligent thing to do if we had a scanner.”
“How did you do the other documents? There must be one somewhere.”
“There was. But, Tangiers,” he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the sea.
“Right, well, listen, I think you probably need to deal with your stuff, and I need to go chill out somewhere,” she said, turning toward the door again.
“Can you swim?”
“Yes. Why?” she asked, pausing.
“What if I asked you to meet me at the front of the building in an hour with a bathing suit?” He looked at her arms. “And a lot of sunscreen.”
“I would say it depends. I don’t really like boats, just so you know.”
“Perfect. I don’t like boats either. See you in an hour.”