Chapter 27
By the end of August, the entire town has reached a fever pitch about the Palio.
The signage has gotten more extreme, the shouting in the street is even louder, and the late-night strategy sessions extend to almost everyone nearby.
Emilia, Nico, and Emilia’s husband Antonio have made me join in on daily training practices where we all roll barrels for a while until I start complaining.
But it’s hard for me to become singularly Palio-focused like everyone else, because I’m in my own fever pitch. I’m channeling my anxious energy about summer ending, the restaurant, and what happens with Nico into late-night activities that distract and comfort.
Being with Nico is like an addiction. And it’s not just the sex, although I wouldn’t complain about that.
But it’s all the physicality that exists between us.
It’s the way he makes me feel adorable when he pats me gently on the head.
It’s the way he enfolds me in his arms when he reaches fully around me for a kiss and always manages to graze my bottom lip with his hand.
The way he mutters Italian curse words under his breath when he tastes food that I’ve made.
But despite my distractions, the weekend of the Palio—my last weekend here—sneaks up on me, and suddenly I find myself being forced to leave work early on a Friday in order to make the (apparently necessary) presentation of the teams.
I hadn’t realized quite how involved I would be, once I was berated into being on Cassero’s team.
I even had to get a “medical certificate of fitness to practice noncompetitive sports.” This was a real thing and not the joke I assumed it was when our neighborhood leader—Flavia, the woman whose missing husband’s scooter I’m using—told me I needed to get one and then promptly escorted me to a doctor who would do it.
And I had to get Anita’s cousin to write me a letter confirming I was paying rent on the apartment, therefore making me a true Cassero resident.
The Friday event is partially a beautiful presentation of the artisans who paint each barrel and partially a chance for each district to try and disqualify each other’s strongest barrel rollers.
I spend most of the night trying not to stare at Nico’s forearms and running the now-frequent images I have of them rolling a 100-kg barrel (which, when I was initially told this, I googled and learned is a 220-pound barrel.
The less exciting part I was instantly made aware of is that I also have to roll a 220-pound barrel, since a few years ago the women demanded equality.
I was a rower, so I get wanting to go toe to toe, but on the other hand . . . yeesh).
Emilia is more pumped up and enthusiastic than I’ve ever seen her about anything.
She’s usually so dry that I never would’ve assumed she had this in her, but for the Palio she’s all in, blue/maroon headscarf and all.
When Cassero’s women’s team is announced, she grabs me so we can come to the front together and then insists that I cheer with her at the decibel levels she’s deemed necessary.
Our women’s team is a little ragtag. You get six people to a team, with two alternates in case someone gets injured. Since you compete in pairs and then change as you go along, the only person who really matters for me is Emilia, since she’s going to be my teammate.
Besides us, it’s a disparate crew, led by our captain, Martina.
Our team pretty much only has height in common and is otherwise spanning a range of generations (we’re spread out from age eighteen to fifty-four).
I’m a little confused when we’re introduced and it seems that three of the six rioni (Cassero, Borgo, and Imposto) all have female captains named Martina, but I guess this quirk has become a rivalry in itself.
And rounding it all out, our Cassero team is fully hyped up by Flavia, who shouts at us in Italian in a manner that I’m guessing is supposed to be encouraging.
The men’s team is a little more fully formed.
Aside from Nico, I know Antonio, Beppe (back from Rome again), and one of the guys who works at the butcher.
Emilia explains the rest to me—only one actually lives in Cassero, and I’ve seen him around, but the rest are former residents or sons of residents, all people who’ve come in (like Beppe) to be ringers.
Their age range is narrower than the women’s team (the men I don’t know all seem to be in their late twenties and thirties). But then again, this town doesn’t pretend like the men’s and women’s events are on equal footing.
I see that in full force the next day, when I learn that the women’s event is preceded by a kids’ Palio—so women and kids are on one day, and men are on the next.
But rather than being able to stay quiet before my own race, I’m dragged out of the restaurant in the early afternoon by Gia, who insists the kids need our support.
“I have to finish helping you prep for tonight,” I argue.
“Nonsense, this weekend isn’t normal in the restaurant. I don’t need your help. Besides, you have to save your energy for your race this afternoon.”
“All the more reason I shouldn’t be out here watching . . . are those tires?”
We’ve gotten to one of the town’s main squares, and I can see that, while a lot of people are cheering as though this is a major event, I’m really just looking at a bunch of kids wearing the colors of their different rioni, pushing a tire to a finish line.
We go stand with the maroon and navy blue Cassero crowd and join in the chanting for our similarly clad kid participants.
They’re rolling tires like their lives depend on it, and every adult is jumping up and down, and then within five minutes it’s all over. Imposto won, so all the Cassero people are grumbling about how it’s all rigged—as though something hinges on a bunch of kids rolling some rubber.
I stand and listen as Martina (the Cassero Martina, and not the now-smug Imposto Martina) starts waxing on about the time Cassero won the kids’, women’s, and men’s Palio in 2018.
I wander away and back to the restaurant.
Gia might think we’re ready for tonight’s celebrations, but I’d rather take some time to myself before I have to roll a giant barrel down the street.
I get to the restaurant and wash my hands, working on mentally accepting that I am, apparently, going to be making a fool of myself in about half an hour.
As I reach for a towel, I see Nico walk in.
“I just wanted to say good luck,” he says, coming over and kissing my forehead.
Nico’s never touched me in the restaurant before, and the way I look around for Gia is automatic.
But I can see from the furrow of his brow that my reaction has confused him.
“Sorry, I . . .” I pause, not knowing quite what to say. “I didn’t want Gia to walk in and see this and you’d have to explain it and . . .”
He grabs the towel I’d been looking for on the counter and wraps my hands in it, drying them for me. “I don’t care,” he says quietly. “I’m sure Gia knows anyway.”
I understand that logically he’s probably right, but the sentiment still makes me squirm. “I just hate the idea of making things harder for you when I leave.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he says, as if dismissing him from my mind isn’t an impossibility.
And then, as though he wants to change the subject, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something he’s clearly crocheted, a small piece of dark blue and maroon against his hands. “I made you something.”
I can feel my pulse getting more rapid as I delicately take it from his hands. “It’s a bandana in Cassero’s colors. I already had the pattern for the one I made for Emilia, and I thought you guys could use them.”
I’m left momentarily speechless. It’s not a big gesture, but it’s surfaced so many emotions in one go: affection for the thoughtfulness; edginess over how much it makes my heart swoop; fear at knowing I’ll have a physical object to torture me when I’m gone.
But before I can spiral, he pulls me to him, kissing my head the way only he has ever been able to, a bubble of sturdiness.
His proximity makes me momentarily forget my agita, and I nuzzle my nose into his throat.
He smells so damn good, always. His arms wrap around me, and we stand there like that for a few moments, the pressure of his embrace calming everything roiling inside me.
Until I realize something. “You’re doing the cow thing to me again, aren’t you?”
I can feel the vibration of his laugh in his neck, joyful, happy, mischievous. It’s impossible not to want to push him against the wall in retaliation, but maybe also to kiss his gorgeous face off.
“I thought maybe you’d be nervous before the race!” he exclaims as I try and squirm my way out of his grip.
“I’m not nervous!” I say, even as I succumb into letting him hold me, the temptation too great, even when I want to be defiant.
“You’ve never rolled a barrel around a town before.”
“Who has?”
“Me and everyone else on your team.”
“I meant normal people,” I retort, and I love getting the sensation of another chuckle while I’m burrowed into him.
“You’re part of Cassero now,” he says in my ear.
I wish the sentiment didn’t make my stomach inexplicably drop ever so slightly.
I pull back to give him a quick kiss on the lips, shaking off whatever his words and nearness are doing to me.
“I appreciate the pep talk.” I grab the towel out of his hand and playfully swat him with it. “But I’m late and need to go meet up with my team right about now.”
“You’ll do great!” he says sincerely.
I roll my eyes at him with a smile and walk out the door.