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“Sara is also a chef,” Fina said.
“Was,” I murmured, not yet meeting the man’s eyes.
“Would you like to do the honors?” He offered me the blade and then thought better of it. “No, this is no good for the next bit. Hold on. I will find something smaller.” He turned his back and rustled around in a drawer.
“How do all of you speak such perfect English?” I knew why Giusy’s English was so good, all of her studying to be a translator, but Fina and Luca were equally fluent.
“We were raised on American music and television. Ross and Rachel and Chandler and Monica and Carrie Bradshaw,” Fina said. “Also, Britney Spears.”
Luca handed me a long, narrow fillet knife, the handle inlaid with a creamy white bone. “Wild boar skull,” he explained as I examined it. It was perfectly heavy and the weight in my hands felt like sunshine running through my veins.
“Do you know what we call tuna here?” he asked me.
When I made the mistake of looking directly into Luca’s eyes all of my insides turned to liquid.
“Tonno?” I answered.
“That. And also il maiale del mare. Pig of the sea. Because each cut of fish is valuable and used for something. The whole animal. This place used to be where they processed all the catches. A tuna fishing estate. A hundred years ago.”
“And now you serve it. I appreciate the continuity,” I said, as I crossed in front of Luca, placing myself between his body and the fish. He stepped slightly aside so he could watch and the idea of impressing him spurred me on. I let the blade slide in deep enough that I felt a slight resistance from the ribs and the spine before slicing along the bones.
Warm blood spilled over my fingers and I knew this fish came straight from the sea to this table. I bowed my head in a silent prayer and thanks to the animal for sharing its body with us. I’m not a religious person, but you can’t help considering an animal’s soul when you hold its bones and muscles in your hands and tear apart its flesh in order to nourish yourself.
“Did you catch this yourself?” I asked Luca without taking my eyes away from my work.
“No. I am a terrible fisherman. I’ve nearly drowned in that sea too many times. You need to be stronger and less afraid of perishing than I am to pull these from the water. The men who fish tuna here have been doing it their entire lives. They row out at dawn in those boats.” He pointed to the wooden wrecks lining the shore down the coast, the ones that hardly looked big enough to hold two human bodies, much less a fish the size of a small cow.
“How is it possible to catch tuna in those little things?”
“Cooperation. They herd them together with nets into a camera della morte, a death chamber, and then they use the spears, piercing them straight through the heart for a quick slaughter. They return as the sun creeps over the horizon. I bought this one on the beach this morning.”
I continued my cuts until I crafted thin slices of belly steak that pleased me. Luca smiled his agreement.
“Would you like to prepare it with me?” he asked.
I wanted nothing more, but I also wanted Fina to tell me everything else she knew about Serafina. The two women had disappeared from the kitchen while I worked on the tuna. I’d been so engrossed I hadn’t even noticed. Luca placed the tuna in some kind of marinade and added a variety of spices.
“I should get back to the others, but I can’t wait to taste whatever you make for us.”
I wasn’t ready to hand the knife back to him just yet, so I examined the handle closer. “It was my mother’s,” he told me. “She taught me everything I know. I never wanted to leave the kitchen. I used to be teased for it. People said I was doing women’s work.”
“Everyone always said I was doing man’s work, preparing meat.” The words spilled out of my mouth in a jumble. It was true. Less than twenty percent of butchers in the world were women, even less than that if you took out the ones working for their husbands. Meat production was a physical job due to the sheer size of the animals and the need to be able to move their carcasses, but the carving of meat was a craft, an art, and brute strength could often be your enemy. For that reason, I always believed that women were better with a knife.
I didn’t say this to Luca. Instead, I murmured, “But who gets to decide who does what?”
“Who indeed?” When Luca reached for his knife our fingers brushed against one another’s. An electric current passed between our skin.
I uncurled my fingers from the handle. I had to get out of his kitchen.
“Take this with you.” He handed me a platter of thick black pasta. I raised an eyebrow to ask what it was.
“Squid ink linguine with sea urchins.” Luca moved quickly. He was already putting the tuna in the pan.
“Of course,” I said, and carried the pasta into the dining room.
Giusy and Fina were still the only ones in the restaurant, sitting at the long table, sipping generous glasses of a dark orange cocktail from wide crystal tumblers. I put the pasta down and walked over to admire the view for a few minutes. When I returned, a sweaty glass waited for me along with a plate piled high with selections from the table.
“All of this is just for us?”
