One Italian Summer(21)

“I’ll be right down,” I tell her. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

“I’ll let Mr. Westbrooke know,” she says with a smile, then closes the door behind her.

I get in the shower.

It takes me twelve and a half minutes to rinse off, put on a floral summer dress, run a brush through my hair, and put on the most minimum makeup within reach. Blush, lip gloss, a fast swipe of mascara.

When I get downstairs, Adam is seated at the same table he was at breakfast.

“She lives,” he says, standing. He’s dressed in tan linen pants and a white linen shirt. He has a mala bracelet on, made out of wooden beads. The kind you see at yoga studios all over LA. His blond hair flops down over his forehead. He looks… good.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I had too much wine at lunch and fell asleep. I never day drink.”

He grins at me. His teeth, I notice, are very white. “Italy,” he says. “What are you going to do?”

Adam gestures to the chair across from him, and I sit.

“You skipped cocktail hour,” he says. “But I thought we could have dinner.”

Seated now, I feel the familiar sensation in my stomach, like an engine starting. Lunch was ages ago.

“Yes, please,” I say. “I’m starving.”

Adam opens his menu. “What do you like?” he asks me.

It’s such a simple question. Unordinary. But I find myself unable to answer it. I am so used to the pleasure of habit. Do I even like the chopped salad at La Scala? The hazelnut creamer, the color white? Is familiarity a taste? Or just an accustomed tolerance?

“The tomato salad and ravioli are delicious,” I say.

Adam smiles. “Oh, I know. But in my opinion, nothing beats their primavera. And there is a salt fish here that is—” He brings his pinched fingers to his lips in a chef’s kiss.

“I’ll leave it to you, then.”

“Why don’t we get both,” he says. “I’ll share if you will.”

The way he says it, like he’s daring me, makes something inside me turn over.

“Wine?” he says.

I close one eye.

“Oh. Right. Lunch. We’ll take it easy.”

He orders a glass of Barolo for himself, and I get an iced tea. It takes a little while to explain to our waiter—the same gentleman who served us at breakfast, I learn his name is Carlo—what is involved in an iced tea. What ends up coming out is a pot of black tea and a cup of ice. Fair enough.

“So, Katy,” Adam says. “Tell me what your deal is.”

“My deal?”

“Your deal.”

“I heard you’re trying to buy this place,” I blurt out. I sit back, rubbing a hand over my face. “I’m sorry; it’s none of my business. But Marco seemed kind of upset this morning. And also, I think you lied to me?”

Adam laughs. “I think omitted is probably a better verb.”

“Lie by omission, then.”

Adam holds his hands palms faced upward in surrender. “Fair enough. It’s just that people get understandably prickly when they think you’re trying to mess with a local and storied establishment. Also, we just met.”

“So why are you?”

Adam takes a sip of wine. “I work for a hotel company. That part was true, obviously. I told you they want a piece of property in Positano, also true. I just neglected to mention that this is the piece of property they would like.”

“But Marco doesn’t want to sell.”

Adam shrugs. “They were hit hard recently. I’m not sure they have the money to stay open the way they want to right now. They’re struggling. Their margins are close. Remember, Positano only sees tourism four, five months a year, tops.”

“This hotel has been in their family for a hundred years.” I don’t know if that’s true, actually, but it feels true.

“More like forty, but yes.” Adam leans his elbows onto the table. His body hovers closer to me. “Do we really have to talk about this?”

I feel my entire body flush. Right down to my toes.

This is the moment. This is the moment when I say, Hey, just for the record, I’m married. I mean I don’t know HOW married I am, currently, whether this is a break or the beginning of a full-blown divorce or what, exactly, is going on with me and Eric, but there are rings upstairs that up until twenty-four hours ago sat on my finger for five years.

But I don’t. Instead, I say, simply, “No.”

Adam sits back. “Good.”

The fish comes and it’s whole—head, tail, everything—and entirely encapsulated in a giant salt crust. Carlo proudly displays it on a clean white serving dish.

“Gorgeous,” Adam says. “Bravo.”

Carlo sets up a deboning station a few paces over and starts knocking away the salt crust. It comes off in big, satisfying chunks.

I think about what Eric would do if he were here. Eric is the pickiest eater on the planet. He likes chicken and pasta and broccoli. My mother used to say he never evolved his palate, that he ate like a six-year-old child. She was right, and I think, now, that the reason this experience is so extraordinary is that California Pizza Kitchen was on regular rotation in our household. The only time we ate well was when my mother cooked.