Chapter 6
As he bounced down the rocky, unpaved road back to town, it occurred to him that Lora was likely still sitting in his office, and an unmistakable flare shot up in his stomach.
He felt ridiculous. Was this … a crush? His eyebrows knit together as he wrestled the unyielding steering wheel to make a three-point turn out of the narrow street.
He’d gone from slow dancing with her in front of the whole town to trying very hard to stay out of her way.
Right now, she seemed to regard him as something between a mosquito and a case of the flu.
He needed to think of a way to make things right with her—just for the sake of being cordial.
He was only trying to be honest about what she was up against. He sighed, pulling into his parking spot.
Honesty was often useless when the other person was convinced they were right.
On days that city hall was not open to the public, Franca usually left by three in the afternoon.
So he had been surprised to see her still sitting at her desk when he got back.
She’d puffed out a great breath as he entered, and the ruffled collar of her white blouse seemed to stand up on its own around her neck.
No matter how many times he told her to dress casually, she always showed up to work in what Giada called “Serious Ladywear.”
“What?”
“Ufff.” The sound had many meanings, none of which were ever good.
“What happened?”
“I have the American woman’s files, and I made some calls,” she’d said, gesturing toward the landline phone that had withstood her favor since around 1991.
“And?”
“And I doubt that she will be pleased.”
She explained the substance of what she had learned, and like her, he predicted that none of the information was going to be met with joy.
Still, he had to tell Lora what she was up against, and the sooner, the better.
He rounded the corner to his office and found her sitting at the back table by herself with her legs tucked under her on the chair.
“Hi,” he said, and her head popped up in a startle. “Sorry, I didn’t want to scare you.” Yet he knew that he was about to scare the hell out of her anyway.
“No, no, it’s OK. I was just focused here.” She waved an arm over the mass of papers.
“How are things going?” he asked, still standing across the room.
“I’m not sure?” she asked, as though it was a question he could answer.
“Did Vilmari give up?”
“I made her take the afternoon off.” She smiled. “There’s no reason for her to suffer through jet lag for me and my quest. Plus, we’re not used to eating bowls of pasta for lunch. No wonder everything shuts down in the middle of the day. You’re all in a coma.”
He laughed, and much to his relief, the corner of her mouth was turned up too.
“I’m glad it was good, though,” he said. “Giada is the best.”
“That’s what she said about you too. I guess you’ve known each other a long time.”
“We have,” he said, dropping his phone on his desk. “We grew up together. She’s also one of the only people who stayed here as an adult, so it’s nice to have a friend from my generation. She knows me better than anyone.”
“That’s good to know,” she said, untucking her long legs. She crossed the room and leaned on the arm of one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Thank you for asking Franca to help me. It’s very kind of you.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, guilt seeping in. He shook his head perhaps a bit too vigorously.
“No, but I do. I’ve been a little bit thorny, and while I could blame it on exhaustion and stress, that’s not a great excuse.”
“It’s understandable. This is a very stressful situation,” he said, feeling the familiar bloom of acid in his stomach.
He found the pink-and-yellow box of Biochetasi tablets on his desk, popped it open, and threw a tablet into his mouth.
“For my stomach,” he said, noticing Lora watching him.
He picked up a half-drunk bottle of water, unscrewed the cap, and took a long gulp.
“I don’t want to be upset. We’re going to be around each other a lot, it seems, and I would like us to be friends.
” Lora leaned forward slightly, enough so he could smell whatever whipped cloud of frangipane she’d rolled around in before leaving her hotel this morning.
And all of this should have made him feel fantastic, but why, why, why did she have to be lovely right at the moment that he was going to drop a bomb again?
“Me too,” he said. “I would very much like to be friends.”
“Great.” She nodded.
“You know what I think is great about friendships?”
“Tell me.”
“They are built in the best of times and the worst of times,” he said, more for his sake than hers.
“In the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness?”
“Maybe?”
“Are we quoting literary greats aside from Dickens? I love this game. ‘Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for.’ Who is that?” She paused. “No, wait, I won’t make you guess. It’s Maya Angelou.”
“Interesting choice of words,” he said. “No, what I mean is—” He paused, looked up, and let himself take in every bit of her face.
And he made a decision. No matter what happened from here on out, there was no way he was ever going to lie to this woman.
“I mean that Franca made some phone calls, and it turns out that since you are here in Italy and you will be processing your documents here as opposed to having them sent back to the US—” He paused.
She was stock-still, listening. “You will have to declare residency in Italy.”
“That’s OK,” she said with a shrug. She did not seem to understand the gravity of what he’d said—at all. “I have a lot of time and no place to go, so I can do whatever I need to do for the next couple of months.”
“No, I mean, to declare residency, you need to be living at an address that is considered permanent. That means it can’t be a vacation property or short-term rental. It certainly can’t be Beatrice’s bed-and-breakfast. It has to be a real residence with a real lease with your real name on it.”
“A lease? That’s ridiculous. Plenty of people are residents in places where their name is not on a lease.”
“Not here. Not if they are trying to gain citizenship.”
“Can’t I say I am staying with someone to use their address?”
“Only if they were a family member and you were their legal dependent.” He hated that he had the answers to all of these questions.
“How will they even know? Are they going to come by and personally check?
“Yes,” he sighed. He could tell that the answer caught her off guard. Most people expected loopholes where there were solid walls here. “There is a physical residency check that police perform once someone declares. And it’s not only foreigners, by the way. They do it to us too.”
“This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. You’re saying I have to rent a place to live.”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Here.” She pointed down to the floor.
“Yes.”
“And really live in it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Because someone is going to check.” She squinted.
“Yes,” he said, hanging his head.
“I’m speechless.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lora slid down into the chair, staring at the air between them.
“Are we still friends?” he asked, ducking down to catch her eye.
She looked up at him, silent. “Because if you were one of my friends, I would ask you a very serious question about whether or not you really want to do this. You haven’t filed anything.
You haven’t even found Ivo’s birth certificate yet. It’s not too late to back out.”
“What?” Her voice cracked like she hadn’t spoken in a week.
“I’m only asking,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.
“That’s not a question you should be asking me,” she said, sitting up straighter in the chair.
“I have to be in Zurich by September 10 to present the central thesis for my research project in front of an academic approval board. I am not the kind of person to back down when something gets in my way. Do you think I would have gotten this far if I did? And I’ve never met a challenge I couldn’t find a way around.
So, the question shouldn’t be ‘Do you really want to do this?’ but ‘Would you like my list of real estate agents?’ Because whether I have to rent a house, find one document in a cabinet of thousands, or tattoo the goddamned Italian national anthem somewhere on my body, I am going to do this. ”
“Understood,” he said, trying not to think of where a tattoo of the national anthem would look best on her body.
“I only hope that this postdoc is important enough to keep you going when it seems like it’s never going to happen.
” He froze. Why did he say that? Of course it was important to her.
She’d traveled across the globe to do this.
It wasn’t so different from what he’d done, except their motivation was different.
“My work matters to me deeply. I need to make this happen,” she said, the set returning to her jaw.
“Can I ask what your research is about?” he asked, redirecting.
“I study some aspects of social psychology that discuss Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how a reinterpretation of that model for modern times is important to personal and therefore societal success.” She paused. He tried to hide how confused he was. He failed mightily. She went on.
“Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says that people have to have certain things in a certain order to reach overall life success.
So, first you have to have basic things like food and shelter taken care of before you deal with your personal safety and security, then you have to have loving friends and family before you can think about the things you want to accomplish in life.
Once you have all of that taken care of, then you can consider the big stuff: life purpose, self-fulfillment, creativity, legacy. ”
“But you don’t agree with that?”
“I disagree with the order. I think that it’s too constricting and unrealistic.
In today’s world, any model needs to be more flexible because some of those basic needs have become luxuries.
Not everyone has a home, but they can still achieve things.
Not everyone has safety and security, but they still have to find their place in the world.
We need a model that deemphasizes things like family environment and community and prioritizes personal volition and skill. ”
“I can see how that makes sense,” he said, trying to be cautious. Something about “deemphasizing family” hit him in the chest, but he let it go. “So, you are modernizing.”
“Yes. The thing is that many people sabotage their own success because they don’t truly believe that they are capable of ever meeting their own expectations.
Some think they’ll be judged for their achievements or considered arrogant, or worse—they think it’s safer to stay wanting.
So, hopefully this will be used to help further support the individualism that people shy away from as we move into a new world where we’re more likely to be disconnected.
Why make that an impediment? I choose to see it as a strength. ”
“Right. Because all you need is you, right?”
“In general, yes. Or a better way to say it is, just because all I’ve ever had is me doesn’t mean I can’t achieve success. And before you say it, yes, I know that this is personal. But research is ME-search.”
“That’s really something,” he said, wholly unable to commit to an adjective.
“It’s realistic.” She shrugged. And maybe it was, but it also made him feel unsettled.
He didn’t feel bad for her—there was nothing about this woman that required pity—but the reality of having no parents was unfathomable for him, and he suddenly wondered if she felt alone.
Or maybe she didn’t notice. He imagined what it would be like to get good news or deal with something terrible and not pick up the phone to share it with family.
A ping from his own phone brought him back.
It was Davide, a mayor from a neighboring town whom he had asked to meet with ages ago to pick his brain.
He was asking if Andrea was available to meet for an aperitivo in less than an hour, and though the idea of leaving her was dreadful, he absolutely couldn’t say no.
He looked down at his dusty pants and shoes still sticky from fallen apricots and knew he needed to get home to change first.
“I hate to meeting,” he blurted out. Clearly his brain had got stuck somewhere between I hate to leave you and I have to go to a meeting and split the difference.
“Sorry, I mean I have to get to a meeting. I also do not love meetings. But that’s another story.
Do you want to stay here, or are you done for the day? ”
Lora looked back at the table and shook her head. “I think I’m done,” she said, suddenly looking very tired.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he said, refocusing. “We will finish this, yes? And there isn’t enough real estate here to have a list of real estate agents, but I’ll get you connected with Maria. She’s the one who knows what we have available.”
“Thanks,” she said, picking up her bag. “I’d do it myself but—”
“Yeah, it’s that only-speaking-English thing. It’s OK, we will figure out a translator. But if you’re going to become a citizen, you may as well try to learn, right? It’s definitely going to make this process easier.”
“I’ll get on it,” she said, walking toward the door. “In my spare time.”