Italian for Beginners

by Kristin Harmel

  She leaned over me and grabbed the mouse. She clicked a few times and scrolled up on the page. As Michael’s head shot came back into view, she stopped scrolling. “Ah,” she said simply.

  I waited for her to elaborate, but she was silent. So I tentatively asked, “What?”

  “Could it have anything to do with the cute restaurant guy?” Kris asked.

  I looked up guiltily.

  She grinned. “Ah, so your weekend was even more interesting than you let on!” she said.

  “Nothing happened,” I said quickly. Too quickly, perhaps.

  Kris laughed. “I’m not implying you had your way with the guy over a barrel of olive oil or something,” she exclaimed.

  The color drained from my face.

  “But I’m assuming you met him?” she persisted.

  I nodded.

  “And?”

  “And… nothing.” I shrugged. “He just seemed nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Nice is good. Nice is… nice.”

  Kris made a face at me. “Yes, thanks for the definition. Now are you going to tell me about what happened or not?”

  I paused and then shrugged. Kris listened intently as I filled her in on the conversation I’d overheard in the bathroom, my snap decision to sneak into the kitchen, and Michael’s discovery of me among the olive oil barrels.

  “So there was definite chemistry,” she filled in when I finished.

  I blushed. “He asked me out,” I mumbled.

  Kris was suddenly grinning. “Like, on a date?”

  “I don’t know. I thought so. But he hasn’t called.”

  Kris had her mouth open to respond when my cell phone, which was lying on my desk, began to vibrate. We exchanged glances and looked down at the screen. The call was coming from an unfamiliar 212 number.

  “Did you give him your cell number?” Kris asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That has to be him, calling from the restaurant!” she said. “Answer it!”

  I paused. It vibrated again.

  “Answer it!” Kris repeated more urgently. When I still didn’t move, she reached down, pushed the SEND key, and handed me the phone. Now I had no choice.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Cat?” I recognized Michael’s voice immediately. “It’s Michael. From Saturday night? I’m so sorry I didn’t call yesterday. It just turned into a crazy day, and by the time I was done, it was eleven, and I thought that might be too late to try you.”

  “No problem,” I said as breezily as possible. I mouthed to Kris that it was him, and she did a little happy dance. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh.

  “So, um, are you still interested in grabbing a bite to eat tonight?” he asked. “I know it’s kind of last-minute, but there’s a great little fondue place a few blocks from my restaurant that I’ve been meaning to check out, if you’re up for it.”

  I grinned. “That sounds great,” I said as casually as possible.

  “Good.” He sounded relieved. “I’m so out of practice with this.”

  I wanted to ask what he meant. Had he just gotten out of a relationship? Did he not have time to date? But I didn’t want to have that conversation on the phone. So instead, I told him I could meet him at eight at his restaurant, and that fondue sounded great.

  We hung up, and I looked sheepishly at Kris, who was still standing at the entrance to my cubicle, grinning down at me.

  “Fondue, eh?” she asked. “Sounds romantic.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, it does.” I took a deep breath. “I know this sounds dumb, but I have a really good feeling about this guy.”

  Kris winked at me. “I know. I can tell. I haven’t seen your face this shade of red since you collided with that waiter at the company party and spilled a whole tray full of wine on Mr. Hamlin.”

  I laughed. “You know, I think I actually have butterflies in my stomach. Is that crazy?”

  “No,” Kris said. “That’s a good thing. That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I smiled and looked at Michael’s face, smiling back at me from my computer monitor. “It is, isn’t it?”

  I took a cab across the park from my one-bedroom walk-up on East Seventy-Sixth and arrived at Adriano’s five minutes before eight. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was; I was normally cool, calm, and collected before a date, but then again, my dates were usually setups from well-intentioned friends, or guys I’d met through work and had to talk myself into being excited about.

  I walked into the restaurant and asked the hostess for Michael. She looked me up and down, pursed her lips, and sauntered off to find him. He appeared a moment later, smiling widely.

  “So this is what you look like when you’re not crouching in my kitchen,” he said, looking me up and down in amusement.

  I could feel myself blushing. “And?” I asked, looking self-consciously down at my khaki skirt and pale pink tissue-weight tee.

  “I think you’re the most beautiful woman to have ever graced an olive oil barrel,” he said.

  I laughed. “Okay. I’ll take that.”

  “And I want you to know, I don’t go around saying that to all the women I meet in my kitchen,” he added seriously.

  “Well, good,” I deadpanned. “I was worried for a minute.”

  He stood there rubbing his hands together and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I had the sudden feeling he was a little nervous.

  “Shall we?” he asked, stepping forward and offering me the crook of his elbow formally, the way ushers do when they walk you down the aisle before a wedding.

  I smiled and threaded my arm through his. As we strolled toward the front door of the restaurant, I couldn’t help but notice the hostess staring after us.

  It would be no exaggeration to say that the date with Michael was the best one I’d had in years—even better than those first few magical dates I’d had with Francesco in Rome years ago.

  I’d never been with someone so easy to talk to or someone who made me laugh quite as much. He was a great storyteller, and as we walked the few blocks uptown to the fondue place, our arms still comfortably linked, he told me about deciding to open the restaurant and how he had to fight the bank to prove why he was worthy of a loan.

  “It’s just not that easy here,” he said, shaking his head. “When my grandfather opened his restaurant in Rome fifty years ago, all he had to do was promise the bankers free meals for life.”

  I laughed. “Your grandfather owns a restaurant in Rome?”

  “Well, he did,” Michael said. “He passed away a number of years ago. My uncle has been running it since I was a kid.”

  He paused as we reached the door to the fondue place, which was called The Big Dipper. I smiled at the logo on the door, which was a cartoon image of a cat sitting on the edge of the moon, dipping a fondue utensil into a cheese-filled constellation.

  As we sat down at our table a moment later, Michael continued his story. “My father used to take me to Rome for a few months every summer when I was a kid,” he said. “I don’t have any brothers and sisters, but I have about a billion cousins over there. I taught them and their friends to speak English; they taught me how to run a restaurant. My cousins still work in my uncle’s place. I’m sure they’ll take it over someday soon. That’s one of the nice things about Italy; everything is family run.”

  I smiled and nodded. “Where’s the restaurant?”

  “It’s near the Pantheon,” he said. “Do you know Rome?”

  I nodded. “I lived there for a summer.”

  “You’re kidding!” he said. “Don’t tell me you have family over there, too.”

  I hesitated. My mother’s parents and sister still lived in Rome, as far as I knew, but the summer I’d lived there, I had deliberately avoided seeking them out. I knew exactly where I could find them if I wanted to—they owned a scarf shop near the Piazza Colonna—but I couldn’t bring myself to go. What if they
rejected me, too? But I spent a great deal of time anxiously studying strangers’ faces on the street, wondering if I’d see my mother’s deep green eyes on an unfamiliar face or hear a tinkle of laughter similar to hers. It was like looking for ghosts.

  “No,” I said finally. “I don’t.”

  The words felt heavy between us, the way lies sometimes do.

  “So, did you like it?” Michael asked after a moment.

  I blinked at him, confused. “What?”

  Michael smiled. “Rome. Did you like it there?”

  I hesitated. I thought of the feeling of being surrounded by my mother, a sensation that, oddly, made me feel both anxious and protected. I thought of Francesco, the first man I’d ever fallen in love with, even though our relationship lasted only the length of the summer. I’d heard from him only a few times after I returned to the States; he’d said he couldn’t do long distance. I thought of the feeling of being free, if only for two and a half months—free to come and go when I pleased, free to wander the streets and do what I wanted, free to worry about myself for once.

  “I loved it,” I said softly.

  Michael beamed. “Me, too,” he said. “What was your favorite place in the city?”

  I didn’t even need to think about it. “The bridge near the Castel Sant’Angelo.”

  Michael looked surprised. “That’s always been one of my favorite places, too.”

  I smiled, took a breath, and continued. “It sounds silly, but whenever I felt sad or needed to think about something or make a big decision, I went there. I mean, you’ve got a million people walking by, but no one looks at you. It feels like you’re sitting in this bubble, just looking out over the world.”

  “I agree,” Michael said softly. He was looking at me differently now. I liked what I saw in his eyes.

  We ordered a cheese fondue and a bottle of sauvignon blanc, and we talked and laughed over the meal, telling stories about our childhoods, our favorite things about Rome, and the things we loved and hated about our jobs.

  We discovered that we’d both been voracious readers as kids, and that we’d even shared an interest in the same kinds of books. He sheepishly admitted to reading his mom’s old Nancy Drew hardcovers once he had finished reading all of the expected Hardy Boys books, and I laughed and said that I’d read the Hardy Boys along with Nancy Drew. In high school, we’d both developed an interest in F. Scott Fitzgerald after reading The Great Gatsby, and we’d both gone through a British Classics phase in our twenties. We had both been raised Catholic, but we admitted that although we still believed in all those things we’d been taught in church as kids, we didn’t go to Mass nearly as much as we should, and we felt a little guilty about it. We both loved Flight of the Conchords and Entourage. And we discovered we liked similar eclectic mixes of music. We’d both been to see Elton John and Billy Joel when they toured together; we’d both attended Radiohead’s most recent concert in New York; we’d been to see Guillaume Riche twice; and we’d both been in the audience at a Sister Hazel show at Irving Plaza a few years earlier where Pat McGee Band from Virginia had opened up. We both had Mandy Moore’s new album and Courtney Jaye’s old one on heavy rotation in our iPods, and we both thought that Paul McCartney and John Lennon were the most talented songwriting duo in history.

  By the time our chocolate fondue dessert arrived, my stomach was full of butterflies, and I found myself feeling even more nervous than I had when the date began. It was all so perfect. I suddenly felt like I was waiting for something to go wrong.

  “So, how many times have you been back to Rome?” Michael asked, interrupting my self-destructive thought process as he lowered a banana chunk into the vat of chocolate on our table.

  “I haven’t.”

  He paused mid-dip and stared at me. “You haven’t been back?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “Why?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “No real reason to go,” I said. “My life’s here. I have a good job. My sister needed me for a while, when she was younger. I like to be close to my dad in case he needs anything. You know.”

  Michael studied my face. “No,” he said, “I don’t know.” He looked a little troubled. “So it’s a place you love. But you haven’t tried to return there? Because you feel like you shouldn’t?”

  I shrugged, feeling a little silly. “I don’t know,” I mumbled.

  Michael was silent for a long moment. I looked up at his face, expecting to see judgment. But instead, there was only concern. “You should go back,” he said softly. “You and I know better than anyone that life can sometimes be too short, right?”

  I shrugged. I pretended that his words didn’t mean much to me. But the truth was, they cut deep. He was right. Life was short. Even if you got to live all the years a normal person was allotted, it didn’t feel like enough time sometimes. And I hadn’t really lived, had I? My stomach lurched a little.

  “Anyhow,” Michael continued, seeming to sense that I was getting lost in my own head again, that his words were doing something to me. “Enough about that. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about Rome in the future, right?”

  I smiled at him. “Yeah.” I liked that he had mentioned the future, as though it was a given. It made me feel a little safer. I liked safe.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ve had a really good time with you tonight.”

  I smiled. “Me, too.”

  “I’d love to do this again sometime soon,” he said.

  “I’d like that,” I said. We smiled at each other for a long moment.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were strolling back toward Michael’s restaurant. He had suggested a walk around the neighborhood, and then maybe a glass of wine somewhere, but he had to stop quickly and drop an overdue check off for his head chef, he said. He’d meant to do it earlier, but he’d forgotten.

  Once we reached the doorway to Adriano’s, Michael paused and took a step closer to me. The world around us seemed to slow as he put one hand on my waist, drawing me closer, and the other hand on the side of my face. He gently stroked my cheek with his thumb as he gazed into my eyes. I held my breath as he closed his eyes and dipped his head slowly closer to mine until our lips touched, ever so slightly.

  It felt perfect.

  We stood like that for a moment, suspended in time, our lips just barely touching, and then the kiss grew more passionate. I should have felt silly, kissing a man I barely knew right in front of the restaurant he owned on a busy Manhattan street. But instead, I only felt butterflies. My head swirled. It was the most perfect kiss I’d ever had. He continued to hold me gently, stroking my cheek with soft fingers while he threaded his other hand through my hair. The kiss seemed to last forever, and when we finally pulled slightly back from each other, I was breathless. He seemed to be, too.

  “Wow,” he said, gazing into my eyes. He took a step back and raked a hand through his hair. “Wow,” he repeated.

  “Wow,” I echoed. I could tell that I was blushing, but I no longer cared.

  Michael cleared his throat and blinked a few times. “I, um, have to run that check inside quickly,” he said, nodding at the door to the restaurant. “Do you want to come in for a moment and wait? And then maybe we can take that walk?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Good,” Michael said. He smiled at me. “Because I was thinking maybe I’d like to kiss you again.”

  My heart thudded. “I think that sounds like a very good idea.”

  A slow grin spread across his face. “I’ll be right back,” he said. He gave me a quick peck on the lips. Then he opened the door for me, and we ducked into the dark interior of the front room of Adriano’s. He showed me into his office, a small room just off to the right of the waiting area, and told me to make myself comfortable. I sat down in one of the padded chairs facing his desk and waited while he went off to find his executive chef.

  A few minutes later, he returned. “You know, I was thinking,” he said as he strode into the office. �
�I should give you the number of a woman I know in Rome who rents rooms by the month. She’s an old friend of the family.”

  I smiled. “You’re really convinced I need to go back there, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “I’m just looking for an excuse to come visit. Would you let me crash on your couch?”

  “That’s a long way to go for a second date.”

  “I was hoping we’d have our second date before then,” he said, holding my gaze for just a moment longer than necessary. I could feel my cheeks heating up as I smiled at him. He scribbled something on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to me. I glanced at it quickly. It had a woman’s name—Karina, a phone number, and the word Squisito.

  “That’s the restaurant where she works,” he clarified. “It’s right near the Pantheon. I haven’t talked to her in a few years, but if you tell her you know me, I’m sure she’ll give you a great rate.”

  “I feel like I’m meeting with a travel agent,” I said with a smile. But I folded the piece of paper and tucked it into my wallet, knowing that if I did indeed make it to Rome, I’d probably stay at a hotel. But I didn’t want to insult Michael, who was obviously going out of his way to help me.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  I nodded and stood up. He took a step closer, and we looked at each other for a long moment. He pulled me close, leaned in again, and kissed me slowly, tenderly. I felt like I was in a dream. I could have stayed there forever.

  But the spell was broken by the restaurant’s gum-snapping hostess, who appeared suddenly in the doorway of his office. “Um, Mr. Evangelisti?” she asked hesitantly. We stepped away from each other quickly, as if we’d been caught doing something wrong. She looked tentatively between the two of us and then cleared her throat. “There’s, um, a phone call for you.”

  He glanced at her. “Can you take a message?”

  She looked nervous now. She glanced at me again and cleared her throat. Then she looked back at Michael. “Well, uh, it’s your mother-in-law,” she said.

  My stomach dropped.

  Michael’s eyes darted immediately to my face, which doubtless had turned ashen in a moment.