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“Luca is a good old friend from the village. We were raised next door to one another, like siblings,” Giusy said. “He likes to try out new recipes before he opens for the season so we come and we eat and we tell him how terrible his food is so he will keep experimenting and inviting us down and sometimes we get too drunk to drive back up the mountain so we sleep at his apartment and make him feed us again in the morning.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Thank you for bringing me.”
I slid a date stuffed with pistachios and a creamy white cheese between my lips and groaned in pleasure at the salty sweetness melting on my tongue.
“It is better than an orgasm,” Giusy said. She wasn’t wrong.
I took a sip of the drink. “What is this?”
“Amaro and Zibibbo sparkling wine.”
“Zibibbo?”
“A sweet little thing of a grape that came here from Alexandria thousands of years ago. A bastard of Arab vines and Sicilian soil.”
The two of them clinked glasses. “Astarte!” Giusy yelled, staring deep into Fina’s eyes. They didn’t invite me to toast with them. I’d never heard that word before. Before I could ask any more questions, Luca arrived with the lightly seared tuna and more bread fresh from the oven.
“Are you eating with us, Lulu?” Fina asked him, running her finger along the slick surface of the tuna steak and then licking the capers and garlic sauce from the tips of her elegant fingers.
“No, no. There is too much to do in the kitchen. I must do dessert.”
“C-can’t wait,” I stuttered, and looked at the ladies to see if they noticed my nerves. Neither of them did a thing to hide their sly smiles.
Luca, thankfully, was oblivious. “Let me tell you what I’ve done with the tuna. On the top are the tomatoes, capers, olives, garlic, onions, pine nuts, and sardines as usual and I added some wild fennel tops.”
There was nothing usual about that for me. I’d never had tuna smothered in finely chopped sardines.
“But I’ve also sweetened the fish with a brown sugar glaze. You will tell me if it works.”
“I’m sure it will be delicious.” I was so eager I hated myself and Giusy stifled a laugh.
“And wine. You can’t have the Amaro with the fish. Hold on. Let me get you a different bottle.”
“You can put your tongue back in your mouth,” Giusy said to me once he was gone.
“Hmmmmm,” I said, trying to fix my expression.
“I saw how you were looking at him.”
Fina pinched Giusy on her biceps. “You cannot pimp Luca out to an American.”
Her comment brought me back to the topics at hand, the land and Serafina. “Is that another problem with me claiming the land owned by Serafina?” I tried to bring the conversation back around. “I’m a foreigner?”
“They might use that.” Fina nodded. “But that is not the main problem. There are many. It is why I showed you the book. To help you understand. According to the official records Serafina is not dead.”
“But the police report said she was murdered.”
“And the Church did not consecrate her death. If the Church does not believe she is dead how can she pass on the land? The Church and the state are very, how do you say, in bed with one another, entwined,” Fina said. “The other problem is that many people in our village think that land never should have been given to Serafina in the first place. They think she got it because she tricked a man into giving it to her with her witchy magic.”
“With her magic vagina,” Giusy said, laughing, and Fina joined her.
I wanted to throw up my hands at all this nonsense. “A magic vagina? A witch? Seriously?”
“I heard she could catch a wild turkey with her bare hands, flip it upside down, and murder it with her gaze,” Fina said.
“She used the cries of pigs to diagnose the health of the villagers,” Giusy chimed in. “She made amulets for protection out of menstrual blood.”
“She was a wild woman,” Fina finished. There was something special about how the two women interacted, their easy intimacy, how they finished one another’s sentences. It made me miss Rosie.
