Chapter 19 #2
“Oh, no.”
“Stop,” she said, nudging his arm. “You don’t even know what I am going to say yet.”
“OK, sorry, sorry, you’re right. No judgment. I’m just going to listen.”
“Well…” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I hate cooking.”
“That’s it.” He turned around abruptly, grinning. “I’m going home.”
“You said you wouldn’t judge,” she said, grabbing his arm and tugging him back.
“Well, that was before you told me this disgraceful fact. How do you live with yourself?” he said, feigning shock with his hand on his chest.
“I know, it’s embarrassing, right? I’m in the middle of all of this great cuisine and delicious ingredients, and you know what I miss?”
“Oh god, if you say Pop-Tarts—”
“Cans of soup!”
“Soup?”
“Yes. Believe me, I know how it sounds. But when I was a kid we didn’t have a lot of money for random ingredients to make a recipe.
We usually ate something out of a box or a can because there was no way to mess it up and waste food.
Even now, when I get stressed out, I feel better eating something that can be assembled in under two minutes with one utensil. ”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It wasn’t actually. I got through college on chicken noodle and minestrone. It’s comfort food for me.”
“Min-eh-stron-EH. You know we have that here, right? And I will tell you a secret. Nobody makes it from scratch anymore,” he whispered. “We buy it frozen in any grocery store. Just add water and boil.”
“No way! Here too? It seems impossible. Gosh, I say it like an American, don’t I?”
“You do, but it’s OK. If you’d like, we can talk about how many years it took me to figure out how to pronounce ‘cough’ and ‘through.’ Don’t tell anyone about the frozen thing, OK? I still need the tourists to believe what they see in the movies.”
“Speaking of movies,” she said, stopping as the road opened out to the wide expanse of sea view. “Wow. This is—wow. It looks like we’re on a film set right now.”
Though Baia Santa didn’t have a long seaside promenade for walking, it did have a rocky cliff that descended down to a pebbled beach accessible by a long stairway.
Some of the stairs were carved directly into the rock, and others were built over the impassable sections, but halfway down, there was a wooden platform built on an outcropping of the cliff.
The beach bar, L’Orizzonte, perched there, overlooking the sea with a kiosk that served food and drinks.
Small wooden tables circled the platform, and music played all day and all night as a steady stream of beachgoers and tourists climbed up and down the infinite stairs.
At this hour, the whole stairway was illuminated, and fairy lights hung from every corner of the beach bar.
As they stood at the top of the stairs looking down, the entire effect was of a lightning bolt driving directly down into the sea, while the bar looked like it was a floating planet in the dark.
“You haven’t been down here at night, have you?” he asked.
“No. It never really occurred to me. A nighttime walk on the beach seems like an odd thing to do alone.”
“It’s not dangerous, I promise. The only crime we have here is when the cats pull the clean socks off the line before they have time to dry.”
“I wasn’t worried that it would be too dangerous.
Too romantic maybe,” she said, watching the steady stream of people appearing at the top of the landing after their long march up from the beach.
A few waved or called out a greeting to Andrea as they approached the stairs. He was polite, but kept moving.
“Ice cream is that way.” He pointed down to the beach bar. “I’ll be right behind you.” He nodded and said a few hellos as they continued down the stairs, grateful that no one was trying to corner him for in-depth conversation. Still, Too romantic maybe played over and over in his head.
Down and down they stepped, passing families tired after a day down on the beach, teenagers trying to look cool despite being out of breath, and couples trying to still hold hands even when one was clearly moving at a different pace from the other.
Finally they stepped onto the platform and got in line behind a man and a woman who seemed to be tourists translating the menu to each other.
“What do I want?” Lora asked as they stood waiting.
“It looks like your options are fior di latte, cioccolato fondente, which is dark chocolate, stracciatella is chocolate chip, or limone.”
“Umm, I think I need some help with ‘fior di latte.’ I understood ‘flower milk,’ but that can’t be right.”
“No, that’s correct, ‘fior di latte’ means ‘flower of the milk,’ which is too literal, I think. It just means cream.” Andrea slid his hand behind her back as the line shifted forward.
“Cream-flavored ice cream makes my brain hurt. Do they use milk-flavored milk to make it?”
“Why don’t you try it?”
“What if I hate it?” she asked, turning to face him.
“I’ll get your second choice, and if you hate it, we can switch,” he said, shrugging. It was an easy fix since he liked all the options.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“Yes, why?”
“That might be the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me in my life,” she said, her eyes bright as the twinkle lights.
“Ciao, Sindaco, cosa posso servirvi?” Marzia, the owner of the beach bar, asked.
“Ciao, Marzia, vogliamo una coppetta di fior di latte e una di—” Andrea turned to Lora. “What’s option two?”
“Chocolate chip, of course.” She smiled.
“OK, how about you sit at that table there and I will handle dinner.”
“Perfect.” She smiled and headed toward the empty table.
He paid, promising Marzia that he would approve her petition to post a sign in the piazza to draw people down the hill and to the beach. As he walked toward Lora, he swore the sky turned a deeper navy blue when she turned her gaze from the sea and smiled at him.
“I hope I like it,” she said, taking the small cup of pure white ice cream that was already going soft around its folds. She leaned across the table squinting at his cup of stracciatella. “I may need a bite of that too.”
“Of course,” he said. “Try it, though.”
She dipped her spoon into the ice cream and licked the side of it, then took a bite, her eyebrows going up as she ate.
“That’s so good!”
“Told you.” He nodded, spooning into his own cup.
“And it’s beautiful here,” she said, looking around.
“It’s beautiful even when it’s not summer.”
“I’m sure,” she said, taking another bite and gazing out where the moon spilled light over the dark sea. “Do you think you will stay here even after you complete the two terms?”
“That’s hard to answer. It would be weird to have worked on building this place up for ten years, at that point, and then go live somewhere else because in the end I decided there weren’t opportunities for me personally.”
“I guess that would feel hypocritical. But maybe you’ll create an opportunity—find a way to be self-employed?
You said you own some buildings, right? Maybe you’ll get more into real estate.
Become a consultant or do something else fancy and financial?
” Lora asked. She hovered her spoon over his cup. “Can I?”
“Here,” he said, offering his own spoon, already packed with a mouthful of chocolate chip. She leaned in and licked the whole bite clean off.
“Ohh, that’s good too,” she said.
“Want to switch?”
“No, no. Keep going,” she said.