From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(9)

I brought my fork up to my mouth and dived into what can only be described as epicurean heaven on a plate. Nothing in my repertoire of rice had prepared me for this. Each grain was soft yet firm at its core, melting delicately like textured velvet in my mouth.

“Okay, this is way good,” Lindsey spoke first through a mouthful. “How do you know this guy again?”

“He’s my bicycle thief, remember?” It was the nickname I had given Saro as homage to my favorite film of Italian Neorealism. It was also a reference to Florence’s black-market bike trade. I had come to learn that my shiny red bike with a basket and a bell—the gift that had turned the page in my friendship with Saro—was, in fact, probably stolen goods. Saro had bought it on the cheap the way everyone bought bikes in Florence. He had warned me to be sure to lock it. He also told me if it turned up missing he would search the city to find it. Then he would buy it back again.

“I think you should really consider spending time with this man, even if he did steal a bike,” Caroline said, staring into the platter before scooping up the last remaining grains of risotto.

“He didn’t steal a bike! He bought the bike.”

“How do you know?” Lindsey asked with a wink. She was forever suggesting that Italian men had a predilection for danger. The idea of it thrilled her.

“Because he told me so.” My irritation was thinly veiled because now I was focused on Caroline eating the last creamy cluster of risotto. When she finished, she licked her lips in a way that was self-satisfying and, dare I say, sexual. Her blue eyes closed slightly, and she uttered a full-bodied Uummm. She looked like a sinner at a tent revival who had just been saved by the laying on of hands. It was clear that Saro’s risotto was her culinary come-to-Jesus moment. After eating it, she had the glow of a new convert. I half expected a hallelujah to follow.

“Is it wrong to ask for more?” she asked sheepishly.

“Maybe you could ask Lucia to make you your very own plate?” For me, last bites are cardinal. Sharing Saro’s risotto with her was suddenly making me possessive. She was devouring that last morsel of my possibly soon-to-be chef boyfriend’s exquisite creation without the slightest act of contrition.

Lucia returned again and again, with heaping plates of strozzapreti with braised red radicchio in a mascarpone sauce; fusilli in a fire-roasted bell pepper sauce; gnocchi with gorgonzola in a white martini reduction with shaved aged parmigiano. I began to see that Saro was speaking directly to me, each dish an edible love letter: succulent, bold. By the third and fourth courses, I accepted that this chef who wore elf boots was making love to me, and we hadn’t even so much as kissed.

By the end of the dinner, I was in rapture, satiated, giddy, light-headed with the possibility that Saro was boyfriend material. I briefly considered a cigarette, though I had never smoked in my life.

Caroline and Lindsey got up to leave sometime around 11:00 p.m. Lucia called them a cab because Caroline was in no position to walk all the way back home and Lindsey, well, Lindsey was ripped from three shots of dessert wine. As she left Acqua al 2, she made it a point to say good-bye to everyone in the restaurant, waving enthusiastically. “Adiós, muchachas. I love tiramisù,” she added as she nearly tripped at the base of the stairs. “I’ll be back, amigos.” With that she and Caroline fled into the night, leaving me alone in the cantina.

Within moments, Lucia plopped herself next to me with another bottle of vin santo and that feline smile. I knew something was up. “Sei americana, no?” Florentines always suspected I might be Brazilian or Ethiopian. It sometimes seemed a little bit of a letdown when I said I was just a suburban black girl from Texas. Not this time.

“Texas! Cowboys! Dallas!” Lucia said. Quickly I realized she didn’t mean the city, she meant the 1980s TV show, with JR. It was still in syndication in Italy. “I love JR and Beautiful.” Beautiful, I had learned, was the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. I had never seen it, but apparently most Italians had and often asked who was dating whom on the show. So for a moment I thought I had been cornered for a primer on American pop culture. But then Lucia inched ever so close to me and asked, “You like Saro, no?” It was more a statement than a question.

“Sì, mi piace Saro,” I said in my best formal Italian. She wasn’t buying it.

She leaned in closer. I could see the liner on her lips and smell a pack of Marlboros. “Sul serio, no?” Serio means “serious.” Even after a bottle of Chianti and sips of vin santo I knew that. She wanted answers. But before I could utter a word, she charged at me.

“è bello, no? Beautiful. Saro is beautiful.” She cupped my face and made her final plea. “è un amico del cuore. Trattalo bene. è unico.—He’s my close friend. Treat him well. He’s one of a kind.” Then she was gone, the sashaying back pockets of her Levi’s the lasting image.

I stood up, tingling with a kind of excitement I hadn’t ever felt, and began to make my way upstairs to the main dining room. The crowd had thinned some. It was now mostly Florentine locals dining in duos, but it was still lively. The grainy but wispy jazz vocals of Paolo Conte came through the speakers, the dessert case was nearly empty save a single portion of tiramisù. I blushed when I passed the kitchen to say good night.

Saro smiled. “Did you enjoy it? I wanted to make you something that pleased.”