Very Valentine

11. Lago Argento

I WAKE TO THE SOUND of a soft rain tapping against the tile roof. The clock says it’s five o’clock in the morning. I don’t want to move from underneath these warm blankets, but I left all the windows open and I can see where the floor is damp from the rain. I get up and close the windows that look out over the pond, then go to close the ones that look out over the town square.

There’s a low, thick mist hovering over the village, like tufts of pink cotton candy. Through the fog, I see a woman walking toward the inn. I’m curious to see who might be out and about this early in the morning.

The woman moves slowly, but as she comes closer, I see her tie the ends of her scarf underneath her chin. It’s Gram. What is she doing out at this hour? Her trench coat is unbuttoned below the belt, and underneath the coat I can see the moss green skirt she wore yesterday. Dear God. She didn’t sleep in her room last night.

I begged off from a late supper at the Vechiarellis’ last night knowing I needed to take care of a few e-mails and check my list for the fabric shopping today. But I could also tell that I was a third wheel and that Gram wanted to be alone with Dominic.

I hear the door to her room close softly. When I hear her running water in the bathroom, I seize my moment and tiptoe back to my bed. I pull the covers up around me and close my eyes.

I wake up again at seven. I bolt out of bed, take a bath, do my hair, and get dressed. Then I rap on her side of the bathroom door. She doesn’t answer. I pull the door open and peer into her room. Her bed is made. Of course it is! She didn’t sleep in it. I grab my tote bag, notebooks, and phone and go downstairs.

Gram is sitting in the dining room reading the paper. She wears a navy blue skirt and a matching cashmere sweater. Her hair is brushed out softly, and she’s applied her pink lipstick.

“Sorry, I slept late.”

“It’s only seven.” She looks up from her paper.

“But we have so much to do today. That drive to Prato is two hours, right?”

“Yes. I wanted to talk to you about that.” She puts the newspaper down and looks at me. “Could you go without me?”

“Well, sure, Gram, if you’re sure you trust me to pick the fabrics-”

“I do. You did a marvelous job, great, with the leather yesterday. Gianluca will drive you to Prato.”

“What are you doing today?”

“Dominic is taking me on a picnic.”

Signora Guarasci places the hot coffee, steamed milk, and sugar on the table. She brings a basket of rolls, with a tin of sweet butter and blackberry jam. “Did you sleep well?” the signora asks.

“Yes,” Gram and I answer together.

“I don’t know how you can say you had a good night’s sleep, Gram. The thunder was so loud.”

“Oh, it was,” she agrees.

“I am surprised you could sleep at all.”

“It wasn’t easy,” she says, not taking her eyes off the newspaper.

“All that crashing, and banging and thunder and lightning…”

She continues to read. “It was something.”

“Gram, you’re busted.”

“Valentine. What are you getting at?” Gram puts down the paper and looks around. Lucky for her, we’re still the only patrons at the Spolti Inn.

“When I woke up this morning around five, it was raining and I went to close the windows and I saw you out walking.”

“Oh,” she says. She picks up her paper again and pretends to scan it. “I was jet-lagged and I went out for an early stroll.”

“In yesterday’s skirt?”

She puts down the paper. “Now…” She blushes. “That’s enough.”

“I think it’s wonderful.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s just a little odd…,” she begins.

“For me to learn about this side of you?”

“Well, yes.” She clears her throat. “And it’s not a side of me, it is me.”

“I approve. In fact, I more than approve. I’m happy for you. I think it’s difficult to find love at all in this world, and for you to have a…” I can’t find the strength to say the word lover, so I say, “…friend is a gift. So why pretend it isn’t happening? There’s no need for you to come traipsing down the mountain in the morning acting like you stayed here. Pack up your stuff and go over there and stay with him. What happens in Arezzo stays in Arezzo.”

Gram laughs. “Thank you.” She sips her coffee. “And that goes for you, too.”

“Hey, I’m taken.” I look out the window and it feels like New York and all our problems are a million miles away. For a moment, I forget the Bergdorf’s contest, our mounting debt, and the agony of dealing with Alfred. I even decide to put Roman on the shelf until we get to Capri, because I’m weary of analyzing us. All I see for now is spring unfolding in Italy, with the tiniest buds of green breaking through the gray branches. “But before you go, I need to know one thing.” I pull out my notebook.

“Yes?”

“How much double-sided duchess satin do you think we need in the shop?”

I wait for Gianluca to pick me up on the sidewalk in front of the Spolti Inn. The morning fog has lifted, leaving the cobblestones clean and wet, and the air brisk.

Arezzo is famous for its windy mountaintop climate, and it does not disappoint. I’m wearing a sleeveless pink wool shift with a matching bolero my mother found for 75 percent off at Loehmann’s. Giving credit where credit is due, my mother insists you can find great stuff at Loehmann’s if you search. The bolero was one of her greatest triumphs as it’s a gorgeous, tightly woven cashmere the color of sand.

Gianluca pulls up and gets out of his car. He comes around and opens the door for me.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Good morning.” I get a whoosh of the scent of his skin as I climb in; it’s crisp and lemony. He closes the car door behind me, bracing the outside handle like it’s a lock on a bank vault. I’m sure Dominic warned him that if I accidentally fell out of the car while in his care, he’d have to kill him on behalf of my grandmother.

Gianluca goes around the front of the car and gets into the driver’s seat. This is an old-model Mercedes, but the interior still has the scent of new leather, while the navy blue exterior is polished to a glassy finish.

Gianluca hits the gas pedal like he’s bolting from the first position at the starting gate at NASCAR in the Poconos.

“Whoa,” I say. “Keep it under ninety miles an hour, will you?”

I scroll through my e-mails. I answer Wendy’s about the hotel, Gabriel’s about the leather, and Mom’s about Gram. Roman writes:

I dream of you and Capri. R.

I text back:

In that order? V.

“You like that thing?” Gianluca points to my phone.

“I couldn’t live without it. I’m in constant touch with everyone I know. How could that be a bad thing?”

He laughs. “When do you think?”

“Funny you should ask. I actually turned this off and soaked in the tub last night, and then I did some reading.”

“Va bene, Valentina.”

That’s funny, only my father ever called me Valentina.

He continues, “I don’t like those things. They interrupt life. You can’t go anywhere without beeps going off and silly songs playing.”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Gianluca. But I think these things”-I hold up my phone-“are here to stay.”

“Agh.” He dismisses the entire contemporary-communication matrix with a wave of his hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being rude e-mailing instead of talking to you.” I put the phone on pulse and put it in my purse.

I catch the corner of his mouth turning up in a smile. Okay, Gianluca, I’m thinking, you’re Italian. You’re a man. This is all about you. “I’m all yours,” I tell him.

To reward me for my undivided attention, Gianluca frequently slows down to show me the exterior of a rococo church, or a roadside shrine to the Madonna placed by a devout farmer, or an indigenous tree that grows only in this part of the world. On the outskirts of Prato, he takes a turn off the autostrada and onto a back road. I grip the handle above the door as we jostle over the gravel roadway.

As Gianluca slows down, I see a lake through the trees. It shimmers like pale blue silk taffeta. The edges of the water are blurred by wild fronds of deep green stalks that bend and twist over the shoreline. I commit the color scheme to memory. How luscious it would be to create an icy blue shoe with a deep green feather trim. I roll down the window to get a closer look. The sun hits the water like a slew of silver arrows.

“This is one of my favorite places. Lago Argento. This is where I come to think.”

The lovely silence is broken by the beep of my cell phone. I’m mortified that I’m spoiling Gianluca’s sacred space.

“Go ahead and answer it. I cannot fight progress.”

I look at Gianluca, who laughs, and then I laugh. I reach into my purse and check my phone.

Roman texts:

You first. Forever and ever. R.

I smile.

“Good news?” Gianluca asks.

“Oh, yeah.” I put the phone back in my purse.

The Prato silk-factory building is a modern, rambling complex painted a dull beige, and has a tall steel-ornamental fence enclosing it. Low landscaping around the border gives it a manicured look.

Many great designers come here to shop for fabric. The old-guard, visionary Europeans like Karl Lagerfeld and Alberta Ferretti, to new talents like Phillip Lim and Proenza Schouler, make the trip to Prato. Some designers even take the scraps from the floor and weave them into original fabric designs; evidently, even the chuff of this factory is valuable.

Gianluca shows his ID as we pull up to the guard’s gate. They ask me for my passport. Gianluca opens it to the page with my picture and hands it to the guard.

Once we park, I wait for Gianluca to come around and open my door. He was polite about my beeping phone, so I’m not about to undercut his proper Italian manners. When he opens my door, he takes my hand to help me out. When our hands touch, a slight shiver runs down my spine. It must be the spring air, which blows cool under the hot sun.

We go through the entrance where there’s a small reception area with a window. Gianluca goes up to the window and asks to see Sabrina Fioravanti. In a few moments, a woman around my mother’s age, with reading glasses on a chain around her neck, greets us.

“Gianluca!” she says.

He kisses both her cheeks. “This is Signora Fioravanti.”

She takes my hands, pleased to meet me. “How is Teodora?” she wants to know.

“She’s doing fine.”

“Vecchio?” Signora says. “Like me.”

“Only in numbers, not in spirit.” I start thinking about what my eighty-year-old Gram is up to this very minute.

I follow Sabrina into the mill, to the finishing department, where the ornate silks are being pressed and mounted onto bolts, which spin the fabric onto giant wheels that fill to the size of tree trunks. I can’t resist touching the fabrics, buttery cotton sateen embroidered with fine gold thread, and cut velvet with squares of raw silk.

“Double-sided fabrics you need?” Sabrina asks.

“Yes.” I reach inside my purse for my list. “And taffeta with a velvet backing, and, if you have it, a silk striate.” I take a deep breath.

“Is there a problem?” Gianluca asks me. He points to the deep lines forming a number eleven between my eyebrows. “You look concerned.”

“No, I’m just thinking,” I lie. “And when I think, I get a uni-brow.”

“What?”

“You know, worry lines. Ignore them.”

Sabrina returns with a young man carrying a pile of fabric swatches. It will take me the better part of the day to look through them. Now I know why I have the worry lines. This is a big job and Gram isn’t here to guide me. She’s too busy pitching woo with Dominic under the Tuscan sun to schlep to this factory and sort through hundreds of fabric samples to find what we need. I’m feeling abandoned, that’s all. But it’s too late, we’re here now, and I have to go it alone.

Sabrina goes. I pull up a stool and put my purse on the table behind me. Gianluca pulls up a stool and sits across from me at the worktable. I place my written list on the table and begin to sort through the fabrics.

“Okay.” I look at Gianluca. “First, I need a durable satin jacquard. Beige.”

Gianluca sorts through a pile and pulls one. He holds it up.

“Not too much pink in the beige,” I tell him. “More gold.”

I put aside the fabrics that would be too flimsy even if we backed them ourselves. Gianluca follows my lead. Then he begins to make a stack of the heartier varieties. I find a heavy double-sided satin embroidered with filigreed gold vines. I wonder if we can cut on the embroidery and reluctantly put it aside.

“You don’t like that one?” he says.

“I love it. But I don’t think I can cut around the pattern.”

Gianluca picks up the sample. “But you can. You just buy extra, and repeat the pattern across.” He drapes the fabric on the table, then tucks it under. “See? It’s the same with the leather.”

“You’re right.”

I place the silk with vines on the top of my buy pile. There are so many to choose from, but the selection is enthralling. I begin to imagine shoes in every sample I pick up: canton crepe, peau-de-soie, matelasse, velveteen, faille, and a silk broadcloth with a tone-on-tone stripe. I throw myself into the fun of it, and the process picks up speed as we sort for a good while.

“You like making shoes?” Gianluca asks.

“Can you tell?” I check another item off my list. “Do you like working as a tanner?”

“Not so much.” Now Gianluca gets the number eleven between his eyes. “Papa and I fight. We have for many years. But it’s worse since my mother died.”

“How long has your father been a widower?”

“Eleven years in November.” He picks up a stack of crisp linen samples from the end of the table. “Are both your parents living?”

I nod that they are.

“How old are they?” he asks.

“My father is sixty-eight. If you ever meet my mom, you mustn’t let on, but she is sixty-one. We have an age thing in my family.”

“What is an age thing?”

“We don’t like getting old.”

“Who does?” He smiles.

“How old are you?”

“I am fifty-two,” he says. “That’s too old.”

“For what?” I ask him. “To change careers? You could do that in a second.”

Gianluca shrugs. “Working with my father is my obligation.” He seems resigned, but not actually unhappy about his situation.

“In America, when something isn’t working for us, we change. We go back to school and develop a new skill, or we switch jobs, or employers. There’s no need to toil away at something you don’t love.”

“In Italy, we don’t change. My desires are not the most important thing. I have responsibilities and I accept them. My father needs me. I let him think he’s the boss, but his siesta has become longer the older he gets.”

“So do Gram’s.”

“You work in your family business.” He sounds defensive.

“Yes, but I chose it. I wanted to be a shoemaker.”

“Here, we don’t choose. The dreams of the family become our dreams.”

I think about my family, and how that used to be true for us. It was family first, but now, it seems, my generation has let go of all of that. I could never work with my mother, but it’s different with my grandmother. The generation that separates Gram and me seems to bind us to a common goal. We understand each other in a way that works professionally and at home. Maybe it’s because she needs the help, and I was here at the right moment to give it to her. I don’t know. But my dreams and the dreams of my grandmother somehow met, and blended, creating something new for each of us. Even now, it seems, she is handing the reins over to me; never mind that the horse has a lame leg and can’t see, to her the Angelini Shoe Company is worth something, and to me, even with mounting debt and the production of custom shoes in jeopardy, it’s a priceless legacy. I only hope that I can hang on to it so I might pass it along to the next generation.

Gianluca and I enter a tall atrium in the center of the complex where the factory workers take their breaks. Some of the younger ones are on their BlackBerries, others chat on cell phones, while the middle-aged employees have an espresso and a piece of fruit. There are workers here close to Gram’s age, which is a huge difference compared with back home. Here, the older artisans-the masters-are revered and an integral part of the process of making fabrics. My brother, Alfred, should see this so he might understand why Gram keeps working. The satisfaction a craftsman seeks, after years of work, is perfection itself. A master may not reach it, but after years of study, training, and experience, she may come close. This, in itself, is a goal worth aiming for.

Gianluca brings me a caffè latte, while he carries a bottle of water for himself. “My wife drank caffè latte, never espresso.”

“My kind of girl.”

Gianluca sits down next to me.

“I feel bad that you got stuck with me. I’m sure you have all kinds of important things to do.”

“I do?” He smiles.

“Sure. You have a daughter and a family in Arezzo. You probably have a hobby or a girlfriend.”

He laughs.

“What’s funny about that?”

“There is no subtlety with you.”

“Well, forgive me. I’m just trying to make conversation.”

He swigs his water, and leaves my question lying on the table like the rejected pile of flimsy silk linen. But I am curious about this man, I don’t know why. I have nothing to lose, so I get personal with him. “Why did you get a divorce?”

“Why aren’t you married?” He answers with a question.

“You first.”

“My wife wanted to move to the city. But she knew I couldn’t leave my father. So we agreed that she would live in Florence while I stayed on in Arezzo, and I would visit, or she would come home on weekends. Orsola was going to university, and it seemed like the arrangement could work. We were doing what we needed to do, what we wanted to do. But that doesn’t make a marriage.”

“Sounds ideal to me. Very romantic to have two lives that come together once in a while and sparks fly.”

“It’s no good. You take each other for granted.”

“I know all about that.” The reasons behind Gianluca’s divorce sound an awful lot like the excuses I use when Roman disappoints me. Sometimes I feel that we put our relationship on hold in order to do our work. Somehow, though, I think love fixes all of this. Isn’t love the most practical of all emotions? Isn’t it a constant? “Do you still love her?”

“I don’t believe you can love someone who doesn’t love you.”

“Sometimes you can’t help it.”

“I can,” he says simply. “Now tell me about you.”

My phone pulses. I fish it out of my purse. “Saved by technology.” I check the phone. “It’s Gabriel,” I say aloud. I’ll text him later.

“Your boyfriend?” he asks.

“No, no. Just a friend.” I snap my phone shut and put it back in my purse. “We should get back to work,” I say.

I follow Gianluca back through the atrium to the hallway that leads to the workroom. There’s a set of glass doors that separate the hallway from the atrium. Gianluca dials the security code. I look at the reflection of the two of us in the glass.

“Nice couple, eh?” he says, meeting my eyes in the glass.

I nod politely. I remember something Gabriel told me back in college. He said a man never spends time with a woman unless he wants something. Gianluca is spending an awful lot of time with me. I wonder what he’s after. More business? Maybe. But we make only so many pairs of shoes a year. It’s not likely I’d double my leather order. It’s almost as if he wants an excuse to be away from the tannery. I heard the yelling. It isn’t all fun and games at Vechiarelli & Son. Maybe I’m his excuse to take some time away from the shop.

We return to the workroom and take our seats at the table. Sabrina left a new pile of swatches on the table.

“It is still your turn,” says Gianluca. “I want to know about you. Tell me about your boyfriend.”

“Well, his name is Roman. He is a chef in his own restaurant. He makes rustic Italian cuisine.”

Gianluca laughs. “All Italian food is rustic. We’ve been eating the same food for the past two thousand years. Will you marry this Roman?”

“Maybe.”

“Has he asked?”

“Not yet.” The look on Gianluca’s face annoys me. “Hey, for the record, I was asked once before.”

“Of course, you had many suitors.”

I just look at him. Is he joking or does he actually believe I’m a femme fatale? Let him think whatever he wants. My romantic past, my pre-Roman era, seems historic to me now. A woman can reinvent or erase her history entirely when she travels. This is one of the great benefits of leaving home.

“Do you want children?” he asks.

“You know, for the longest time I didn’t know. But now, I think I might.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirty-four at the end of this month.”

He whistles low. “You’d better hurry.”

“Who are you? The fertility police?”

“No, it’s that I’m older and I have experience. You need energy to raise children. You should do it soon. It’s the best thing I ever did.”

“Orsola is beautiful and has a big heart. You should be very proud of her.”

“She is the best thing to come out of my marriage.”

“Do you think you’ll marry again?”

“No,” he answers quickly.

“You’ve made your mind up about that.”

“I have my daughter. What would be the purpose of getting married again?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Love, maybe?”

“Love is not what makes a marriage,” he says. “Love starts one, perhaps, but something else finishes it.”

“Really.” I put down my swatches and lean forward. “Please. Explain.”

“Marriage in Italy used to be about two families coming together,” he begins.

“Yes, and merging their assets,” I say, nodding. “A business of a sort.”

“Correct. And their beliefs, too, about how to live and how to build a life together. But sometimes, families don’t mesh. My wife, I believe, loved me, but she thought I would achieve great things. And when I didn’t, she left.”

“What was she expecting?”

He waves his hand in the air. “A city life.”

“You know, Gianluca, a city life is not so bad.”

“I don’t want it.”

“How could you not? It’s the best. Gram and I live in Greenwich Village in New York City. And we have a roof garden where we grow tomatoes, and sometimes, at night, it’s so quiet you’d think you were by the lake you showed me this morning. Really.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe it’s because there are so many buildings, and we live so closely together, but we appreciate nature more. Every tree is fascinating. Flowers are treasured. City people love flowers so much they’re sold in bunches on street corners year-round.”

“I prefer a field of flowers.”

“Well, you can have that, too, if you take a train ride up to the botanical gardens in the Bronx. You notice the sky more, too. Of course, I don’t think you can beat the colors of the Italian sky, but what we have is also very beautiful. The pollution makes for some gorgeous purple sunsets over New Jersey.”

He laughs. “Just don’t breathe it.”

“Best of all, our building looks out over the Hudson River. The river is wide and deep and flows out past Staten Island to the Atlantic Ocean in a grand sweep. When winter comes, the river freezes and creates a great expanse of silver ice. It never freezes all the way across, like a lake-where you could skate on it-instead it breaks into big gray puzzle pieces of ice that bob in the water until the sun melts them. But for days, when it’s freezing, you can see these gray blocks of ice bumping up against each other where they used to fit together. And at night, if you walk by the river’s edge, the only sound you’ll hear is the soft tapping of the pieces of ice as they float on the surface as water rushes underneath.”

“That quiet?”

“Almost silent. During the winter, the parks and the walkway are empty. I take walks over there, and it’s all mine. I wonder, how can this view be free? But it is.”

“It belongs to you.”

“I pretend it does. I was walking alone on a pier one morning last winter. The river was frozen, but something new caught my eye. It was a flash of ruby red bobbing on a slab of ice. So I walked out to the end of the pier. Three seagulls had caught a fish, a big one. They had gored it and were eating. The red I saw at a distance was the blood of the fish. I turned away at first. But then I had to look back. There was something so compelling about the palette of the black river, the silver ice, and the maroon blood of the fish. It was horrible, and yet beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”

Gianluca listens intently to every word I say.

I continue, “I learned something about myself that morning.”

“What did you learn?” Gianluca leans toward me, waiting for my answer.

“I can find art in the worst moments. I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain.”

As Gianluca drives us back to Arezzo, I flip through the swatches of the fabrics we selected at the silk mill. My favorite is a double-sided silk with a repeating pattern of hand-painted calla lilies. I imagine using the fabric to make an elegant slip-on mule with black velvet piping. There are just a few of our old standard choices among the swatches. I hope Gram approves. I took a big step and went ahead and placed the orders. I had a moment of complete exhilaration as I signed my name for the first time on the line on the order form marked DESIGNER.

The sun doesn’t so much set here as plunge behind the hills. Twilight seems to last for a few moments, and then the moon appears in the purple sky like a rosette of whipped cream. It’s a romantic moon, and it’s no wonder my grandmother is under its spell. “You know, your father and my grandmother-”

Gianluca takes his eyes off the road and looks at me.

I make the international hand signal for sex.

He laughs. “For many years. Since your grandfather died.”

“That long?” How do you like that? I thought I knew all the family secrets.

“They were good friends. Now, there’s something more.”

“A lot more.”

“My father was good friends with your grandfather also. Very intelligent. Big personality. Like you,” Gianluca says as he takes a turn off the autostrada onto a small side road.

“Another lake?” I ask.

“No. Dinner.” He smiles.

Gianluca takes another quick turn onto another side road. In the clearing ahead, there’s a charming stone farmhouse lit with torches at the entrance. A few cars are parked outside.

“This is Montemurlo,” he says. “We’re halfway home.”

After we park, he places his hand on the small of my back to guide me into the restaurant. I find myself quickening my step, but he just takes longer strides to keep up with me. Once we reach the door, Gianluca motions for me to go through the empty dining room and outside to the back.

A dozen tables are set up on the veranda, hemmed in by a low wall of stacked fieldstone. Votive candles light the crisp white linens on the tables. A line of blazing torches beyond the wall throw streams of light onto a field. I hear the sound of rushing water.

In the middle distance, there’s a magnificent waterfall pouring down the mountainside and into a small lake. The moonlight on the water looks like ruffles of white lace on black taffeta. “If the food is anything like the view, we’ve got a winner,” I tell him.

Gianluca pulls my chair from the table. He seats me facing the waterfall. Then he turns his chair toward me, sits, and crosses his long legs. The last time I saw a man sit in this fashion, it was Roman, at Gram’s counter after he made me dinner.

The waiter comes over and they converse in rapid Italian and in a Tuscan dialect that is beginning to sound familiar to me. The waiter opens a bottle of wine and places it on the table. He is balding, wears glasses, and looks me up and down, like he’s buying stew meat, before he returns to the kitchen.

I close the menu. “You know what? Order for me.”

“What do you like?” he asks.

“Everything.”

He laughs. “Everything?”

“Sad but true. I’m in that lonely category of woman called Actual Eater. I have no aversions, allergies, or dislikes.”

“You’re the only woman in the world like this.”

“Oh, I’m one of a kind, Gianluca.”

The waiter brings a plate of crisp Italian toast topped with thin slices of Italian prosciutto drizzled with blackberry honey. I taste it.

“You like it?”

“Love it. Told you. I love all food. Get me a jar of that honey.”

As the meal is prepared, we talk about our day at the mill, and the fine art of embossing leather. Eventually, the waiter brings a large serving bowl of pasta, drizzled in olive oil. Then from his vest pocket, the waiter takes a small jar. He opens the lid and removes a truffle (which looks like a lumpy beige turnip) from a small, white cotton cloth. Then, with a sleek silver knife, he makes long, smooth strokes on the truffle, which falls onto the pasta in filmy slices, until the hot pasta is covered.

“Do you like truffles?”

“Yes,” I say through a mouth full of buttery pasta and woodsy, sweet truffle. I feel odd having the truffles, like I’m cheating on Roman.

“You love to eat. Women always say they love to eat, but then they pick at their meal like birds.”

“Not me,” I tell him. “Eating is in my top three.”

“What are the other two?”

“A four-speed bicycle on a hot summer day and a John Galliano ball gown on a cold winter night.” I sip my wine. “What are your top three?”

Gianluca takes a moment to think. “Sex, wine, and a good night’s sleep.”

The good-night’s-sleep category highlights our eighteen-year age difference. My parents spend lots of time talking about sleep. However, I won’t point this out to Gianluca nor will I mention that the only older men I have ever spent time with were my grandfather and my dad. May-December romances have never been for me. When it comes to love, I like my four seasons, individually savored and spread out. I certainly don’t want to skip summer through fall and go right to winter, but spending time with Gianluca has helped me see the value of a friendship with an older man. They have a lot to offer, especially when romance is safely out of the equation. I learned a lot from him today-his advice on sewing repeat patterns alone was worth the trip. He also listens, as though whatever I have to say matters. Young men often pretend to listen, their minds on where the evening is going, and not where it actually is.

The waiter offers to bring us espresso. Gianluca tells him to wait.

“I want to show you something. Come with me.”

There is a series of stone steps off the portico that leads down to the vast field in front of the waterfall. He skips down the stairs, making it clear he’s been here many times before. I follow him.

The grass is already wet with night dew, so I slip off my sandals to walk barefoot. Gianluca reaches out and takes my sandals from me, holding them in one hand while taking my hand with the other. I find this more than slightly intimate, but I can’t figure out how to let go without being rude. Plus, there’s the wine factor. I had two glasses. I hardly ate today, so I’m floating on that wonderful cloud called double-cocktail buzz while we cross the field.

We arrive at a deep pool of water, the color of blue ink, at the base of the waterfall. He turns to me. The rush of the water is so loud, we can’t talk. I slip my hand from his and put it in my pocket. He might be older, but he’s still a man, and if I’m going to be holding on to anything, it’s going to be to Roman Falconi back home.

I hold my hand out for my shoes. He gives them to me. I skip ahead and back to our table where the waiter has left a caffè latte for me, an espresso for him, and a bowl of ripe peaches.

I climb into bed and open my cell phone. I dial Gabriel.

“How’s Italy?”

“It’s dangerous,” I tell him.

“What happened?”

“Gram has a lover.”

“Oh, that kind of danger. Let me get this straight. Gram has a lover and I’m single? Go figure.”

“Hey, I don’t like how that sounds.”

“You know what I mean. She’s eighty! Evidently a spry eighty,” Gabriel admits.

“It gets worse. Her boyfriend’s son put the moves on me.”

“Go for it.”

“I will not! I would never cheat on Roman.”

“Then why are you telling me this? Hey, no ring no thing.” Gabriel’s philosophy: there is no such thing as cheating unless there’s an engagement ring. “How old is Marmaduke?”

“Gianluca. He’s fifty-two.”

“Good fifty-two or bad fifty-two?”

“Good fifty-two.” At least I’m honest. “He’s gray though.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Forget I said a word. I’m in love with Roman.”

“I’m glad, because that’s the only way I can get a table at Ca’ d’Oro. And I want a table at Ca’ d’Oro as often as I can get it. Your boyfriend is the bomb.”

“He treated you well?”

“Roman pulled out all the stops. You would have thought I was the food critic for the New York Times when I barely know a pork shoulder from a lamb shank.”

“Good for you. Hey, did you check out Roman’s sous-chef?”

“Yes, I did. Her name is Caitlin Granzella. I met her on my tour of the kitchen.”

“And?”

“You’re far from home. You don’t need a mental image.”

“Gabriel!”

“All right, all right. I have to be honest. Think Nigella Lawson. Face and body. Trim but curvy. She’s built like a bottle of Prell.”

I don’t say a word. I can’t. My boyfriend has a gorgeous sous-chef and I’ve been gone for weeks.

“Valentine? Breathe. And don’t worry. I think Mr. Falconi has permanent plans for you.”

“You think so?”

“All he could talk about was Capri, and how he was going to show you everything, and how for the first time in his life he was going to take a real vacation because there was only one girl in the world he wanted to be stranded on an Italian island with-and that’s you. So don’t worry about Miss Slice and Dice in the Ca’ d’Oro kitchen. He doesn’t dream about her. He’s crazy about you.”

As we say good night, I lean back on the pillows and dream of Roman Falconi. I imagine him, the blue sea, the pink clouds, and the hot sun over Capri. As I sink into a deep and satisfying sleep, I imagine my lover’s arms around me in warm sand.