“Ugh, the rubber cheese in America!No, no, no, no, no, grazie. It’s against nature,” Vivi said, clutching her chest.
“Yes, but here in Italy we make this dish,vitello tonnato, which is also against nature, I think. Is veal with a tuna sauce. They are two animals that don’t go together.” Giada made a face. She turned to Vivi. “Why do you do this?”
“Because it is delicious—a fact you will never know because you refuse to try it,” said Vivi, looking offended.
“I’d rather have the rubber cheese,” said Giada, and shuddered.
Andrea laughed. He shifted the tree in his arms. “Sorry to cause a debate, but I have many meetings with many people who want their dirt roads to be paved, so I will see you all later.”
“Do you have time for me to visit you this afternoon? I want to talk to you about something,” Lora said. Since she’d found the birth certificate, she kept thinking about the stacks of other documents that were sitting there collecting dust. She thought maybe it could be a good time to do something about them and wanted to ask Andrea how she could help.
“Sure, great! Well, this is for you anyway,” he said, nodding to the tree. “I mean, it’s for the house. For you, for the house—you know what I mean. Erme and Patrizia gave it to me earlier.”
“That’s so sweet! Of them, I mean. Thank you,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Buon appetito.” He grinned and turned back to city hall.
“Hai visto?” Giada asked Vivi.
“Yes, I saw it,” Vivi said, laughing.
“Saw what?” asked Lora.
“I told you I’ve known Andrea a long time, yes?” Giada tossed her head toward city hall. “He doesn’t act like that. Ever. He’s letting you move into his house, right? The one that’s been sitting empty since he bought it? He told me and I thought he was kidding.”
“And I thoughtshewas kidding when she told me. I don’t know Andrea so long, but—” Vivi broke off and shook her head.
“It’s bad,” said Giada.
“What’s bad?” asked Lora, not ready to acknowledge that she did, in fact, know exactly what they were talking about, because that very same thing was swirling the cappuccino in her belly as she spoke.
“Is it possible you are still sleeping? Maybe she needs another coffee,” Vivi said, turning to Giada.
“No, no,” said Lora, holding up a hand.
Giada tapped Lora’s shoulder and smiled down at her. “I know you don’t speak Italian yet, but now I see you don’t speak Italian men either.” She sighed. “You’re going to need to learn—both.”
“I’m going to go make thepansottibecause I cannot help with this,” Vivi said, pointing toward the kitchen. A group of people with day packs and sun hats walked toward the café. Their heads swiveled to take in the architecture as they chattered on in a clipped speech. A gray-haired woman wearing a blue tech T-shirt pointed at the menu board as they advanced toward the tables.
“Lora, what are you doing now?” Giada asked, eyeing the group.
“Just this, I think,” she said, pointing at her breakfast. There were no more documents to be hunted, and it was too soon to pack her things up from the hotel. She’d written enough notes for her research to support three postdocs, and she was too distracted to start any of the new books that were clogging up her Kindle. She had thought maybe she would walk the long curvy road down to the sea, but aside from that, she was, perhaps for the first time in a decade, 100 percent unoccupied.
“You know, another great way to learn Italian is to learn how to do something in Italian.” Giada grinned. “I was going to help Vivi with thepansotti, but—” Her eyes flicked toward the trekking-pole-wielding tourists, who were settling across three tables.
“Oh, no. I don’t have any idea how to cook. I could burn a fruit salad. Seriously,” Lora said, wincing.
“Don’t worry,” said Vivi. “I only need an assistant, and I give good directions. You’ll learn.”
“Well, I’ll try my best,” said Lora. Maybe it would take her mind off the restless feeling she couldn’t seem to shake since finding Ivo’s birth certificate.
“Ah, grazie! Sei la migliore!You’re the best!”
“Vieni, bring your breakfast,” said Vivi, directing Lora toward the kitchen. “We start with two lessons, OK?Mani freddi, mani veloci.Cold hands, fast hands. Remember those two things and you will do great.”
As someone whose concept of making pasta meant opening up a box of noodles and dumping it into a pot of boiling water, Lora was blown away watching Vivi in the kitchen. She could not believe the hard work and precision required to make the filled pasta pillows, which she had learned were calledpansottibecause they looked like they had a littlepanza, or belly. From mixing the dough to sending it through the special roller until it became a thin sheet, from cooking down theborragine, which was a wild herb found all over the local hills, to folding it in with ricotta andgrana, the process had so many steps it seemed endless. When Vivi had pulled out a ruler and told her to cut the dough in squares with sides of exactly seven centimeters with a special tool that cut the pasta with a scalloped edge, Lora would have thought she was kidding were it not for her dead-serious chef demeanor. Lora gushed on about how wild it was that there was a whole tool whose sole purpose was to make pasta pretty until Vivi gave her a sharp look and reminded her that the dough would dry out if she didn’t step to it. Before she knew it, almost the whole afternoon had passed. But while she might have forgotten the time, she didn’t forget that she would see Andrea later, the anticipation bubbling in her like the water they boiled to sample the pasta.
As Lora finally rounded the corner to his office, she could hear that the tone in Andrea’s voice was unfamiliar. Something about his tight “Sì, sì, sì” made her wait in the open doorway before marching straight in. He was sitting hunched over his desk, massaging his forehead with one hand and holding his glasses in the other. She did not understand what he was saying, and he certainly wasn’t yelling, but hisfrustration was unmistakable. She retreated back a bit into the hallway and almost crashed into Franca. Her apology was met with an arched eyebrow.
