Chapter 12 #2
The irate card player first approached the register and dropped some small change on a plate, which was promptly swept up by the starched member of staff.
A receipt was passed across and an order for tre caffè was shouted across the bar.
Alessio guessed that the man’s loss meant picking up the next round.
The barista, between spurts and whistles from the coffee machine, called back the order in confirmation.
It was well rehearsed and almost theatrical.
And so Alessio followed suit, ordering a coffee, then stood by the bar to enjoy it.
It wasn’t the setting. It wasn’t the sun breaking through the windows.
It wasn’t the continued verbal abuse pouring from that card table outside.
None of that made the coffee so restorative.
But that little espresso, that small moment at the bar, ignited a spark of interest in Alessio to know more about Impastino.
Thus far, the town was hard to dislike; charmingly clichéd, yet also so genuinely heart-on-your-sleeve authentic.
As the last caffeine-rich drop hit his tongue, he was thirsty for more. And not just the coffee.
Alessio wished the bar staff ‘Buona giornata!’ as he had seen another patron do, and stepped back out onto the piazza. On went his sunnies again.
Alessio’s attention was drawn back to the disagreement and banter at the card table, which remained lively even after the arrival of the coffee order. Alessio caught himself wanting to be part of it, to partake in the cheekiness.
Go on. Say something funny. Get an ‘in’ with the people . . .
Watching the power dynamics at play, he knew he had to pick a side. And in this case, the majority ruled. He quickly Googled, ‘I saw it all. I agree with them,’ and casually approached the table.
‘Buongiorno,’ he said, wrapping his most plausible-sounding Italian accent around his vowels. The men returned his greeting, looking him up and down as they continued to bicker and throw cards across the table.
This is it. Drop and run . . .
‘Ho visto tutto,’ he said to the coffee buyer. ‘Sono d’accordo con loro.’
The other men at the table erupted into cheering and laughter, piling a new load of playful criticisms upon their friend. ‘Sei grande! Bravo!’ The choruses spilled out into the piazza, even causing a few school-aged boys to turn, distracted from their casual kick-to-kick game.
‘Come ti chiami?’ asked one of the men.
‘Alessio.’
‘Alessio, sei un genio!’
While he wasn’t too sure he counted as a genius, he appreciated the sentiment. The banter continued for a few moments before Alessio bid the men farewell and turned, delighted with the outcome. He’d made a connection; gone out of his linguistic comfort zone.
Baby steps . . .
Alessio made to head down the main street, leading to the shops Francesca had taken him to the day before.
That’s when he noticed it – the street library box.
It was fixed to the wall where the U Ssale restaurant met the tabaccheria.
Alessio peered through the Perspex pane at the many coloured spines and, noting a couple of titles that grabbed his attention, he opened the box and took them, tucking them under his arm.
He set off again, taking out his phone and opening Google Translate. Punching in his desired phrase, he mouthed the words silently to himself until he rounded the bend.
The whip of some linen drying on the lines crisscrossing the street drew his attention skywards. An elderly woman stood on her balcony, leaning over the railing, apron tied around her waist, watching the people pass by on foot.
Something about Alessio had clearly caught her attention, as she leaned over a little more, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinised him. A black cat padded its way to her legs, its tail wrapping defensively around its mistress.
On a whim, Alessio dipped his fingers into the rear pocket of his shorts and withdrew a plastic shopping bag. He casually tucked it under his arm with the books and coolly continued on his way, throwing a cheeky grin up at the woman on the balcony.
Seeing this, the woman seemed to retreat. He must surely be a local, right? Alessio took this as a win.
Ha! Alessio: 1. Impastino’s nonna-monitored surveillance system: 0.
He rounded the sharper bend just ahead and soon approached the pasticceria. There behind the counter, in all her sugar-dusted, vanilla-laced glory, was Ornella.
‘Buongiorno, Ornella,’ he said as confidently as possible.
‘Sei tornato, eh?’ She gave a victorious, all-knowing nod; clearly she expected all who tried her wares to return. ‘E allora?’
The questioning inflection to her phrase prompted his rehearsed line, ‘Vorrei . . . un pasticciotto . . . da . . . port-are. Portare . . . via. Grazie.’
‘Ma certo, tesoro.’ She dipped momentarily from view to reach into the display case and withdraw the pastry, then wrapped it in the usual paper napkin.
She passed it to him, and he pushed the money across the counter towards her.
‘No. Stamattina no. Un amore così grande vale un pasticciotto gratis.’ She shook her head and pressed again, ‘No, tesoro.’
‘But . . .?’
There was no way he was going to win this fight, however, as Ornella had walked around the counter and was busy pressing his coins deep into the cotton recess of his shorts pocket.
‘No, basta! Non mi far arrabbiare!’ Her kind eyes would have none of his protestations, so Alessio smiled and left, thanking her profusely.
He waited until he was back on the piazza to take that first bite. Leaning his weight against the central fountain, he appreciated the slight breeze that brushed his bare legs, bringing relief from the heat.
And in went his teeth, pushing through the pastry to find the dreamily cool crema pasticcera.
It just never gets old . . . never.
Rather than demolish the pasticciotto with gusto, as he had with his first, this one he decided to savour. It felt different somehow. Perhaps special. As if this innocent little pasticciotto marked the start of his time in Impastino.
Was it because the fog and malaise of jet lag had finally let go? Was it because he’d touched base with his parents, and they’d approved of his plans and current situation? Was it because he’d embraced whatever was to come on this quest to find traces of Nonna Immacolata?
Whatever it was, the pastry was delicious. As he brushed the last crumbs from his lips, he saw that he had earned himself the attention of a waiter who was standing by the door of the Da Martino restaurant a few metres away.
‘Buono . . .?’ the man asked, indicating the pastry with a sinewy tattooed arm.
‘Sì. Molto buono.’
There was something menacing about the waiter’s gaze.
Even at the short distance between them, Alessio could make out the dark circles around his eyes, the coffee- and nicotine-stained teeth, that one gold canine tooth that caught the sun.
The man’s bald head and thin lips did him few favours.
Alessio was not one to judge a person by their appearance, but there was just something off about this man.
Could the waiter sense Alessio’s sudden unease? Because right on cue he gave a short sharp whistle and two other waiters arrived by his side. They exuded the same sense of threat, and Alessio quickly understood that he was being sent a message, although he wasn’t entirely sure what it was, or why.
Alessio’s once precision-trained nerve of steel had waned since he’d lost his business, and while he didn’t feel intimidated, he certainly felt uncomfortable.
The arrival of a fourth man dressed in chef whites rolled to his forearms was the final straw. This man was perhaps thirty, with piercingly blue eyes, short sandy-blond hair and a strong brow line. He stopped mid-way across the space between them.
‘Qui non sei il benvenuto.’ His voice was low and gruff.
Fuck. Of all the moments to have no fucking clue what he said.
Alessio did all he could to imprint the words on his brain for a future Google, but understood from the tone and those steely eyes that he had crossed some kind of line.
In English, he replied, ‘I was just going.’
He could feel all four sets of eyes on him as he crossed the piazza back to Trattoria dei Fiori. They practically singed holes in his turned back.
Once inside, he Googled the phrase he’d heard, and quickly realised that his gut instinct had been right.
‘“You’re not welcome here.”’
Not welcome? Me? You don’t even know who I am!
Alessio wasn’t about to engage in a duel of words or cocky -testosterone-soaked threats.
He didn’t know enough about the situation or these guys.
What he did know was that he was sick of other people calling the shots around him.
Having the upper hand. The past few years had robbed him of so much autonomy.
It wouldn’t restart now. No, he wouldn’t have it.
So, Alessio took a step. A huge move. A leap of faith into the unknown. And when he arrived back in his apartment he did something that the Alessio of just a few days ago would have berated him for.
He unpacked.
Alessio slipped out onto the balcony for a moment to leave his thongs to dry in the night air after what had turned out to be a lazy afternoon spent reading on the beach; one of his street library box finds had proved unputdownable.
Just as he set the thongs to rest against the latticed metalwork of the balcony ledge, Francesca appeared up the ladder, looking worse for wear.
‘Oh, Alessio,’ she said, walking over to him and pressing polite double kisses to his cheeks. ‘How was your day?’ A few loose curls drooped from her high bun, and her low voice conveyed her fatigue.
‘Day was great. Spoke with my family. They are across everything now.’
She grimaced. ‘Everything?’
‘Yes. And they didn’t tell me off for agreeing to your Festa della Pasta – actually, they think anything that gets me back in the kitchen might just be a positive.’
‘Sul serio?’ She blinked and gave her head a short, sharp shake.
‘Yes.’ Alessio’s mind suddenly flicked back to the morning’s stand-off with the staff from Da Martino. ‘Can I pick your brain about something?’
‘Pick my brain?’ She pressed a hand to her lips to muffle her laughter. ‘I’ve never heard that expression.’
‘Add it to the vocab bank. I just want to ask you a question.’
‘Of course. Please.’ She smiled and leaned back against the railing, tucking the stray curls back up into the bun. ‘This is as far as I go picking my own brain!’
Alessio laughed. ‘Look, what’s the deal with the moody Italian Ken doll waiters at Da Martino?’
The spirit drained from her expression. ‘Did something happen?’
Alessio recounted his moment spent with the pasticciotto by the fountain and the attention it had somehow garnered from the men. How it had started with the bald guy, but quickly escalated.
‘Ughhh!’ Francesca threw her hands in the air in frustration. ‘I thought this might happen! Cazzo!’ She dropped her hands to her hips and started to pace the length of the balcony. ‘Ok, so the last man, the biondino with the blue eyes—’
‘Ken doll 2.0. Yeah?’
‘That is Elio Martino. Head chef of the restaurant for five or six years now. He’s a terrible, awful person.’
‘I didn’t get possible best friend vibes, that’s for sure.’
‘Elio is the best chef in the town. Perhaps, this entire area. There’s no denying it.’
‘Francesc—’
‘No, no. Don’t even try. It’s true. He has had all kinds of formal training. In Milano. Roma. And in Parigi. His work is very bold and confident—’
Alessio gave a disgruntled snort. ‘Like him!’
‘People come from all over Puglia to eat at Da Martino because of Elio.’
‘What’s the food like?’
‘Try it? Me?’ She practically doubled over. ‘Alessio, I wouldn’t trust him not to poison me! And it doesn’t matter, anyhow. We can’t set foot over there. Never have. Never will. It’s been like this for decades. Since his father was in charge too. His father could never beat my papà. Not once!’
‘And I bet he was just as much a ray of sunshine as his son.’
Francesca scowled. ‘And while I am so proud of Papà for his track record, it has caused a toxic rivalry. Without Papà, Elio is finally free to conquer the town. Unmatched. Unanswered. Which he is doing well so far . . .’
The competitive notch in Alessio’s brain clicked a revolution, surprising even himself.
Unmatched. Perhaps, until now?
‘Elio is a brilliant chef, but an extremely bad loser,’ Francesca continued. ‘And lose is all they did, every year that my father competed in the Festa della Pasta, until . . .’
‘Until you lost him. I’m so sorry. But I can’t help but think all this behaviour is masking a deeper insecurity. A war of egos. Their own self-inflicted pressure. Fear of failure. Trust me, I’ve been there.’
‘They might look like rough and tough men, but really they are childish little boys.’ She sighed. ‘And now they have clearly understood your link to us here and the festa and have put a . . . a . . .’ She mimed a dart flying through the air. ‘Bersaglio?’
‘A target?’
‘Sì. A target on you. Because of me.’
‘Those guys are the least of my worries. I would have defended myself this morning, but I chose to walk away until I had spoken with you.’
‘And I thank you for that.’ Her head slung low, Francesca said, ‘Elio will be your main competition. He will play hard and throw everything at his dishes for the festa. He won’t risk losing the title. The other two competitors . . .’
‘Just as fierce?’
‘I think given your expertise, they will be easy stepping stones for you.’
Alessio’s lips pursed. ‘Let’s hope I don’t trip.’
Francesca pulled her phone from the pocket of her A-line skirt and checked the time, yawning.
‘I don’t want to focus on the negative energy Elio brings to the town.
Because he only says he has its best interests at heart.
’ She kicked off her sandals, leaving them beside Alessio’s thongs.
‘Come spend the morning with me tomorrow before lunch prep. I’ll take you on a little tour of the lowlands.
You may just find some links to your nonna.
’ She gestured out over the darkened folds of Impastino’s extended fields, now blanketed by the night. ‘An hour or two. Just us?’
Time alone with Francesca certainly piqued his interest. ‘That would be great. Grazie.’
‘Prego. I’ll message you when I’m ready in the morning. For now, all I can think about is bed.’
Was it the fatigue after the day’s double shift that made Francesca reach for her own apartment door rather than the one she temporarily shared with Maria?
Alessio just assumed it was. But nothing could have prepared him for the rush of blood to the head as their hands clasped around the doorknob together.
Francesca offered her apology over another deeper yawn before disappearing into Maria’s apartment.