From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(4)

I did as I was told and we set off, summer city wind blowing through the open windows of the car. She drove us through a labyrinth of timeless passageways and narrow cobblestoned streets lit by amber streetlights. I stuck my hand out the window, and Florence moved through my fingers.

When we finally arrived at Massimo’s house, a Tuscan villa somewhere near Niccolò Machiavelli’s childhood home, I was fighting carsickness and nerves.

“Does anyone here speak English?”

“A bit, but I’ll translate. Come on.”

With that she turned the knob of the unlocked front door and immediately charged through the house like a tornado that had just touched the ground, following the sound of jazz and chatter that seemed to originate from some far corner of the first floor.

I trailed behind, timid and awestruck by the sights around me. I was convinced that I was walking through what was surely a Merchant Ivory film set. Stone floors, exquisite tapestries, mahogany bookcases. Sloane looked back to grab my hand just before we entered the outdoor terrace, where I could see at least ten to twelve Italians gathered in a smattering of duos and trios. Every conversation seemed intimate and theatrical, all happening behind a scrim of cigarette smoke.

Sloane squeezed my hand and leaned in for a whisper. “I’ll make Massimo show you his art collection before we leave.”

I anxiously tugged at the back of my T-shirt, pulling it over the backside of my jeans. Self-conscious, I was unable to conjure up a response.

“He has a Picasso in his bedroom.” With that she thrust me onto the center of the terrace.

“Eccola, Tembi! Un’amica americana.” Then she gave me a dramatic kiss on the cheek, pivoted, and left me. Were people doing tiny lines of coke off a farmhouse coffee table?

I turned to join the impossibly cosmopolitan and bohemian group clustered in conversation. I knew enough to decline the coke. I never did ask to see the Picasso. Frankly, I didn’t know how, and I wasn’t ready to ask a man I had just met to take me to his bedroom. Still, even through my jet-lagged haze, a self I had never known was beginning to come into focus. The energetic pulse of the evening took over me, and I vowed then and there to welcome the unexpected. This new me would embrace every part of the adventure. I was open, for better or for worse, to whatever might come. Like an egg with it yolk exposed, I was vulnerable but jolly. Sloane would point the way, and I would follow—within reason. I already liked the feel of this new country on my skin, its language taking root in my mouth. And over the course of the night, as I fumbled through my kindergarten Italian, I stopped blushing, growing more and more confident with each conversation. In one day, Italy was already making me easy with myself. My expectations were few. After all, I told myself, I would be here for only a few months. When I looked around the terrace, I couldn’t imagine that any of the people would ever be lifelong friends. Italy was just a quick adventure, a time apart from time. A perfect interlude.

By morning I was back in my three-person room at the pensione, staring at the ceiling and seriously considering pinching myself. The smell of coffee from the breakfast room below rose up through the stone floors. The clatter of cups hitting saucers, spoons clinking against porcelain, plates being stacked, the aroma of coffee and fresh pastries, seduced me. Full of delight, I couldn’t wait to take on another day.



* * *



Two months later, Sloane found me scrubbing the toilet in her bar, No Entry. It was in the heart of Florence’s historic center, near Piazza Santa Croce and a stone’s throw from the Arno. As was typical, she had dropped by in the afternoon and found me, scrub brush in hand, Billie Holiday mix tape on the boom box. My friend had by then become my boss, so I was cleaning the place. Despite my early promises of discipline, in six weeks I had blown through a semester’s worth of spending cash. It had disappeared in the form of belts, purses, dinners, and weekend trips to Rome and Stromboli. I was broke but refused to ask my parents for more. As a result, I cleaned toilets at No Entry off the books, before or after my classes.

“We need vodka!” Sloane pronounced, dumping out a bowl of day-old maraschino cherries. Her bar was almost out. In a flash, she decided we should drop everything and head to another bar, MI6, immediately. She was friends with the owner, and they borrowed stock from each other when liquor was running low. It was just a few blocks away and presumably fully stocked with vodka, plus her sure-thing joint connection would be there. The promise of an afternoon hit made her already fast pace that much more brisk. I trailed behind, struggling to keep up with her long-legged stride and drug-induced urgency. I had never liked drugs, but in Florence I was trying to be open to the light stuff. A puff here and there can’t hurt, Tembi. Come on, don’t be such a dork. I imagined Sloane had tried everything, which was exactly what I was thinking about when we rounded the corner of Via dell’Acqua and I collided with a man. “Mi scusi,” I mumbled.

As fate would have it, Sloane knew him. Of course. She knew everyone. She introduced him: Saro.

“Ciao, mi chiamo Tembi. Sì, Tem-BEE,” I said in my best classroom Italian. I sounded stilted, as if I weren’t sure that the words were coming out right. My saving grace was an accent that wasn’t totally embarrassing and the fact that I could say my own name with relative ease.

“Sono Saro. Tu sei americana?” he asked, smiling. He wore a black leather bomber jacket and white pants. In October. His jacket was open, and underneath I could see a white T-shirt with the word DESTINY written in big orange bubble letters across the center of his chest. Its design was a mélange of graffiti complete with random illustrations including a rocket, a slice of pizza, an amoeba, a guitar, a constellation, and the number 8 floating randomly and all topsy-turvy in hues of blue and yellow. It struck me as a cartoon of someone’s unconscious. I hoped not his. And why do Italians wear shirts with random English words emblazoned across them? I turned away, but not before I saw his shoes. They were ankle-high black boots. Instantly I thought of elves.