what are u doing 2nite?
It was from Rag-Trade Roberto, whom I had met the day before; we had shared a table at Cibreo. He had started chatting with me while I worked my way through some mini pizzas that Beppe had pressed on me. He told me he worked “in the rag trade” and I liked his deep voice, his playful manner. Quite unlike Beppe’s vacant stare, Rag-Trade Roberto’s eyes had been mischievous and warm, lively and curious behind round spectacles. His flicky brown hair was worn a little long, and he sported preposterous sideburns, two triangles of hair trimmed deep into his cheeks.
He had asked me where I was from, and I had retorted, “Well, not from the nineteenth century like you,” and he had roared with laughter. That’s when I had noticed the gap in his front teeth and all thoughts of Sex du Soleil were forgotten. He was devastatingly sexy, a grown-up, handsome man.
I had given him my number while Beppe had been busy serving a customer.
Now I texted back:
female art show with neighbor
He wrote back immediately:
is it glamorous?
I looked around. The neon-lit room was like the classroom of an adult education college. The exhibits—paintings, collages, and even a frame containing little knitted figures—were pinned up on moveable whiteboard walls. On long tables, there were paper plates with little piles of chips and peanuts; someone had, inevitably, brought hummus. Moving through all this were scruffy, dirty-haired women in combat boots and shapeless hand-knitted sweaters. They were unlike almost all the other Italian women I’d met.
no I texted back.
is there any food?
not really. Giuseppe said maybe pizza later
basta pizza! Send me the address, I am coming to get u
Ten minutes later a shiny black Audi was purring outside and Roberto was grinning at me from the open window. He was wearing a pistachio-colored cashmere sweater under a cord jacket, his hair was flicked back off his face. I caught a whiff of cologne as he kissed me on the cheek and I inhaled deeply. As I lowered myself carefully down into the low leather seat, he declared dramatically: “You must stop eating like a tourist. All that pizza!” I laughed. “I am going to give you a proper meal!”
He turned the full force of his gap-toothed smile on me and charisma flooded the car. My stomach flipped. I beamed back and nestled in. We raced through the night until we drew up outside the center of the city at a small restaurant filled with the hum of elegant dining. I had dressed up my casual outfit with enormous earrings as usual, but I was dramatically underdressed compared with the other women there in their silks and furs, hair groomed smooth, heels sky-high. I took in the scene—my first proper date at a good restaurant in Florence. I felt scruffy and unsophisticated, and even more so when Roberto was stopped at several tables by polished ladies who pawed at him. He seemed to know, and be loved, by everyone. “Italian women,” he murmured in my ear, “never knowingly underdressed…”
I giggled, liking the hand that touched my back, guiding me through the tables.
Taking my seat, I regaled him with descriptions of the art collective: the adult education classroom, the women in their combat pants, and the installation that featured several small knitted figures.
“Ah, lesbians!” he declared. “Good I came for you!”
He offered to order for me, and I gladly accepted—I didn’t understand the menu and it felt so considerate. I watched as he chatted to the waiter about the freshest dishes, what was good that day, barely glancing at the menu as he ordered, the whole process a conversation.
“All the women I spoke to tonight,” I said, “told me I was mad to leave London and move to Florence. I couldn’t understand it.”
Roberto leaned in. “Florence is small, cara,” he said. I was leaning in too and could hardly concentrate on what he was saying, his hand on his glass was so thrillingly close to mine. “You may love it now, like all the tourists, but you’ll go home in a couple of months. It’s always like that.” He tossed his head as if it were a foregone conclusion.
Before I could protest, he told me that he loved London but could never countenance living there. He was a gourmet. “You see, cara, there is no food culture in England. People don’t know how to eat. They cook boring food or go out for overpriced boring food. And the vegetables—”
“I know,” I cut in, “they are tasteless, poor us! But Roberto!” I felt bound to defend my home city. “It’s not like that anymore. We have wonderful restaurants in London and TV cooking shows are all the rage, everyone’s into Slow Food and organic…”
“Yes, yes.” He dismissed me with a wave of the hand. “That’s the point. To eat well in London it has to be a trend—a movement or fashion. Last time I was there my friends took me to a place, how is called, ’Olefoods. All my English friends so excited—look at the tomatoes, they said, just like in Italy. And there were a lot of different sorts, is true. But it was seven pounds for two tomatoes…”
“I know,” I lamented. “It’s nothing like Sant’Ambrogio.”
“Ah, so you see!” he exclaimed. “In Italy, eating well is not just for rich people. We Italians like pleasure, cara, we are not in love with denial like you English…”
Right on cue, the food arrived. A plate of mature pecorino cheese with honey from the owner’s own beehives over which we both umm’d and ahh’d. The small bowl of steaming tagliatelle with wild boar sauce so rich that on tasting it Roberto closed his eyes in rapture, raising a hand and waving it by his head in that wordless Italian gesture understood the world over. He leaned in and told me that he was a hunter himself. “I love to be on the land, cara,” he drawled in a low, intimate voice, as if confiding something very important to me. “I love to hunt, to fish, to be with nature…”
I licked my lips. The food was exquisite, and the permission to drool over it a nice novelty too. But most of all I was finding Roberto’s close presence almost overwhelming—his wit, his lightness, his passion for his food, the way he had of leaning in and catching me in the beam of his attention, his devastating smile. By the time the main course came around, I was having trouble breaking eye contact for long enough to check what I was putting into my mouth.
After our primi—which was all the pasta had been—the largest T-bone steak I had ever seen arrived on a wooden board, practically bleeding. Small plates of vegetables accompanied the steak, which Dino—as Roberto now insisted I call him—carved for us, putting two thick slices on my plate.
“Bistecca Fiorentina!” he announced. “The traditional dish of Florence. I think you have been so busy with pizza”—he twinkled—“you haven’t tried this yet?” He drizzled some oil on top, piled garlicky spinach and zucchini from the side dishes on my plate, and urged me to eat. The meat was thick and tender, the juices swishing around my mouth, my recent vegetarianism abandoned without a thought.
“The secret to Tuscan food, cara,” said Dino, “is that it is all from here. This meat comes from the Chianina cow—have you seen them all over the countryside? They are white…”
I confessed I had yet to leave Florence.
“Dai!” he exclaimed. “Well, this cannot be. I am going to the country this weekend, to a friend’s house near a hot spring. You know there are many in Tuscany? No? Ah, yes, we are very volcanic here you know, cara, full of heat…” With a wink, he continued enthusiastically, “It’s marvelooooous, you must come.”
I demurred. According to Luigo’s rules—which he had recently drilled me in, taking pity on my pathetic way with men—I was already being too easy, having dinner just a couple of days after we met. I was the prize, I reminded myself, I must not get carried away. With as much conviction as I could muster, I politely declined his invitation.
Italian men don’t take rejection personally, Kicca had once told me, and I was relieved to find it so when Roberto skated smoothly over it. He regaled me with tales of his wild past—mentioning more than once that he had been quite the playboy—of his “tragic” health, the digest
ive problems that had started when he had been working in America and had finally resolved when he had returned to his beloved Tuscany and the Italian diet. When, over coffee, the talk inevitably turned to love, I told him that I had been single for years, skipping over the Nader episode, which I had resolved to relegate to a parenthesis too. He sighed. “Ah, we are the same. I have been single for a while also.”
“We are?”
“Si, cara, we are both adults and we like to play.” He peered at me over the top of his wineglass. I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on. “Love that lasts forever I don’t know about”—he was now looking me intently in the eyes—“but I believe in passion and in living your passion, whether it lasts ten minutes or twenty years.” I gulped, and he smiled a wicked smile. “Life is for fun…We both know that it’s all a game…”
* * *
—
When I rang Dino the next day from Luigo’s bar to thank him for a wonderful dinner, he retorted with a smile in his voice: “Yes, but did you enjoy me?”
He was preposterous and I adored it.
Luigo took one look at my dreamy face when I hung up and put a plate of cold pasta salad in front of me.
“Eat this and come back to earth, bella,” he said. “That was Dino on the phone?”
I nodded.
“So you kissed him?” he quizzed.
“No!” He had ended the evening at my door with a solemn kiss on the forehead and I had floated up to bed on air.
“No kiss and you are like this!” he declared. “This could be trouble…”
* * *
—
A couple of days later, on a rainy Thursday afternoon, I got a text.
do you miss me?
I typed back:
more than you can imagine…
Dino: i know
Me: and how much do u miss me??
Dino: probably more than you
Me: PROBABLY??!!
Dino: amore mioooooo: probably cos I don’t know if u miss me really…but is a lovely game. I send you kisses
I was still trying to work out a witty response when another message arrived.
Dino: tomorrow lunch or dinner? don’t answer both…too much
I could see the flared nostrils and the toss of the head. I laughed again. But I must make him wait, I had promised myself—and Luigo—and I had lost so much time to daydreaming of Dino at my desk that I had planned a quiet weekend with my book. I must stay true to my mission.
Me: yes it’s a lovely game! Can’t do lunch OR dinner but ask me again soon?!
I fervently hoped he would.
* * *
—
The weekend slipped by quietly and there was no word from Dino. I went to the market, flirted with Beppe, walked for hours, and worked at my book, but everything felt boring. We are playing a game, I reminded myself—but had I overplayed my hand? So when, on Monday afternoon, just as I was fidgeting at my desk I received a text from him, I nearly punched the air. He blinked first, I was winning!
i have booked my favorite fish restaurant Wednesday night. Don’t say no, i won’t ask again
I replied immediately:
in that case, yes
* * *
—
The restaurant was outside the city walls, in a neighborhood of artisans and old silk factories called San Frediano. There was another city gate here through which we walked, his arm draped around me as if we were already lovers. The whole evening was seamless, a gratification of a week of waiting, of putting him off, of saying no. I was prepared for the date this time, wearing a red dress Antonella had chosen for me from her own collection of vintage designers—a genuine Fontana Sisters number—and I felt like a million dollars in it. When I shed my coat inside the restaurant, Dino stepped back, his eyes bright, smacking his lips in appreciation, declaring: “Bellissima!”
Sitting at the white-clothed table, he ordered several courses of raw seafood followed by oven-baked mains of the fresh catch of the day of river fish, transported from the owner’s own streams on his land. Dino dressed my salad when it arrived, poured me wine, and placed tender pieces of flesh smelling of the sea in my mouth, a tsunami of attention. Everything I said he found hilarious, everything I did was charming, all his stories led somehow back to me. I felt like the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Better than pizza, no?” he asked at the end of the meal, and I agreed. I recounted the story of a recent date when I’d been taken for pizza (again, in following Luigo’s rules, I had been dating men other than Beppe) by a boy called Giacomo who wanted to split the bill.
“Amore, that’s what you get for going out with boys,” he said in mock horror. “From now on you must go out only with me!”
As we walked slowly back to the car, he drew me in close and I leaned in to the cashmere softness of him. We walked in step and I held my breath, waiting for the kiss that would surely follow. Instead he told me about one of his clients, a cashmere company from Scotland.
“I looove cashmere, amore,” he explained. “I wear nothing else. Even in bed. Don’t you?”
“Er, no!” I laughed. “I don’t think I know anyone who does. I am obviously moving in the wrong circles.”
“Amore, we must fix this immediately!” he exclaimed. “Why not come with me tomorrow? I am visiting one of my wholesalers and you can choose anything you want. My gift…”
My eyes lit up.
“I can’t think of anything I’d like more,” I said honestly.
* * *
—
The day dawned sunny and it was nearly warm. I was so excited I could hardly breathe. Dino and I had had two dates and he hadn’t kissed me yet, dropping me off last night with a heart-stopping smile and another kiss on the forehead. I had paced the apartment in frustration—the actual physical discomfort of thwarted desire—before forcing myself to go to bed. It was the first time I was going to see him in daylight and bags under my eyes would not do.
Now I was installed in his fancy sports car and he was taking me shopping—not for diamonds, admittedly, but for cashmere, which was probably more useful in the changeable April days. Days that were timidly warm alternated with a cold that harked back to midwinter. Showers were followed by sunlight, which shone with a golden shimmer. Its rays had embroidered every bush and hedge with small white flowers, their sweet scent weaving in with the fragrance of iris, which wafted all over the city.
When I came down, Dino was leaning against his car, holding up the traffic. I stepped easily into his open arms and, oblivious to the hooting of other drivers, he embraced me before opening the passenger door. In the car, we grinned at each other. His eyes twinkled behind his glasses, his sideburns had been freshly shaped, his cashmere sweater was a soft dove gray, and his cologne tangy. He was so sexy, so quintessentially Italian, I couldn’t believe my luck.
Daytime Dino was more brisk, his phone permanently clamped to his ear as he wove at great speed between lanes on the motorway, steering with one hand. He also managed to hold a cigarette with another, and also keep a hand permanently on my knee—quite how he had so many hands doing so many different things I never really understood, but I did notice with some alarm at one point that he was steering us between two trucks with his knees. “Business, amore.” He rolled his eyes as the phone rang again and again. We drove out into the countryside south of the city, a mesh of motorways cut through a dreamscape of Tuscan valleys until, half an hour later, he drew up at a large warehouse on an industrial estate.
I followed him into a hangar full of designer brands. Dino disappeared into an office, leaving me alone with instructions to pick out anything I like. This should have been a dream; in fact, it probably has been, literally, a dream I’ve had. In my former life I would have run amok here. But now, I looked around, unable to get excited about anything I saw; even Prada dresses lost their allure on being squeezed in unceremoniously with hundreds of others. Try as I might, I was unable to see anything I wanted. I had
to admit the bitter truth: here in Italy, the home of fashion, my shopping habit had died an innocuous death.
Contentment is probably consumerism’s biggest enemy, and I had accidentally found it here in Florence. After so many years of peddling dissatisfaction to women through the pages of the glossy magazines I edited and contributed to, making sure they felt wanting enough in themselves to keep shopping for absurdly priced designer goods to keep the fashion economy booming, I had fallen in with fashion’s ultimate nemesis. Because I felt content with my lot, there was no desire left to compete in a race to display the right labels, to be part of a global hierarchy of fashion status. Now, in San Niccolò, I was part of something that was more fulfilling than wearing the latest, coolest brands. I had a community and connection with people in the city that satiated most of my needs. Here in this warehouse, I found myself fingering clothes only to think, But I don’t need that.
Dino emerged to find me standing empty-handed among the rails, my tummy rumbling. He was determined to give me something and he headed straight to a rack of cashmere sweaters and pulled one out, trying the color against my face. It was dark lavender, somewhere between the violet of Florence and the pale lilac of its irises. “This for you.” He pushed it into my hands, ignoring my protests. “Amore, I really insist, you must have it.”
I accepted. It was lovely and more so for being from him. Clutching the soft sweater, I followed him out to the car, where he turned to me, taking the last drag on another cigarette. “Now I am all yours, amore!” he said with a big smile, jettisoning the butt. “I take you to lunch.”
Dino decided that we would have lunch in the country. We drove farther south through a landscape of cypress trees and olive groves smattered through undulating hills lit by soft golden light. It was the classic picture-postcard view of Tuscany, and it was gorgeous. Half an hour later, we drew up in an unremarkable village and walked with his arm around my shoulder to what he promised was a “marveloooooous” restaurant on the large central piazza. My heart was thumping as we strolled over the piazza, the urge to kiss him so strong I didn’t know how much longer I would be able to hold back. The lunch was indeed marvelous, but I barely tasted a thing, the butterflies in my stomach were fluttering so hard. Then Dino pronounced the interior of the restaurant too dark and we decided to have our coffee in the sunshine.
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