“It’s like the absolute perfect lemonade. Not too sweet. Not too tart. No, not lemonade; more like a melted lemon sorbet,” I said.
“Be careful,” Danny said. “It’s lethal. The alcohol content is quite high.”
BY THE TIME WE dropped Mary at her plane and got back to the hotel, John had curly blond hair, Rocket wore the purple hat and pink chiffon scarf, and a Sally with long black hair had convinced Danny to come to Ravenna with us when he got back from Chianti. It just seemed like the best idea to all of us. John had his arm around Danny and told him he could bunk in with him and they’d show the Brits how to have a good time. Seemed to me the Brits had figured it out fairly well on their own. We agreed that Danny would meet us back here on Thursday so we could travel to Ravenna together.
Danny walked me to my room and I leaned back against the closed door; leaning was easier than walking or standing. He rested his hand on the door next to my head. “You okay?”
“I’m great. I still can’t believe you came all this way for my party.”
“Why not? You came to mine.”
“That was across town. This was across England and France and . . . did you have to cross Spain as well?”
“No. But I would have.”
“That’s because you’re sweet.” I slurred it slightly.
With his one hand still on the door and the other by his side, he leaned in toward me and rested his cheek against the side of my head. “Mmm. Casey. Casey. What is it about you that attracts me so?”
“My knife skills?”
I could feel him take a deep breath, and then he leaned back so he could look at me. If he found my comment amusing, he wasn’t laughing. He was looking at me in a way easy to recognize, and I took a deep breath of my own. He lifted his hand from his side, slid it around the back of my neck, and drew my face to his. At first, his kiss was light and then it became deep and demanding. I could taste limoncello on his tongue and I ran my tongue over it hungrily. He wrapped both arms around me and his kisses became so wanting that they sent a quivering warm sensation to the spot that an hour ago was cold and damp from Rocket’s spilled water. Or maybe it was my own wanting of him that was making my nipples tighten and that spot feel warm. My arms were around him and my hands had a life of their own as they caressed his strong, firm back. He felt so unbelievably good that I let myself simply melt into him. I was close enough to feel that his own watered-down body part was reacting, and I slid my hands down to his hips to pull him closer. He moaned softly and ran his hands the length of my body, then stopped and concentrated in the area of the slit.
“Wait,” I said breaking from his kiss so I could reach into my bag for the room key. He took the key from me and unlocked the door. I walked to the center of the room and sensed that he wasn’t walking with me. I turned to see him leaning with both hands against the doorjamb, looking pained. He wasn’t moving into the room, and a Bill Anderson song rudely pushed its way into my head: “Walk Out Backwards (So I’ll Think You’re Walking In).”
“No, Casey.”
“No what?”
“Not like this, though Lord knows I want you.” I really wished he hadn’t brought the Lord into a situation in which I was so willingly eager to sin. “You’ve had more than a little to drink, love, and if I come in, you might regret it in the morning.”
“I won’t. I won’t. I double-swear I won’t.”
He reached around the door and put my key on the dresser. “I don’t want to take that chance, because if you do regret it, you’ll hate me tomorrow. Sleep well. I’ll see you Thursday,” he said and closed the door.
“I hate you now,” I screamed at the closed door.
Chapter 18
An empty bottle, a broken heart, and you’re still
on my mind. —Emmylou Harris
The next morning there was a note under my door and a pain in my head so intense it made it impossible to focus on the words. I needed coffee and a hot shower. I put the unopened note on the dresser and called room service. “Caffè in abbondanza, per favore. Quattro caffè. Caffè italiano, non caffè americano.” I had found that American-style coffee in Italy was little more than colored water. I needed coffee with substance, but the thimbleful the Italians serve was not going to do the trick, so I’d ordered a lot of it, along with dry toast.
“Subito, signora”.
“Immediately” meant I had the twenty minutes I needed to stand in the shower and defog my head. My breakfast was delivered ten minutes after I stepped out of the water. Still wrapped in the hotel’s terry robe, I sat down with my four small pots of Italian coffee, dry toast, and the note, which I had already guessed was from Danny. I opened the envelope and pulled out the piece of hotel stationery. “Dear Casey. It’s not nice to tell people you hate them. I’ll see you Thursday morning at eight-thirty in front of the hotel. Don’t be late. I have your birthday present. Danny.”
Well, if he planned to give me what I had wanted last night for my birthday in front of the hotel at eight-thirty in the morning, we’d be arrested.
Half an hour later, I was dressed and in the lobby. Sally arrived next.
“Buon giorno,” she said.
“Not so buon,” I groaned. “I guess limoncello is not exactly just melted sorbet.”
“You feel okay?”
“Better now, but I wouldn’t have given odds on my survival an hour ago.”
Ten minutes later, Sonya came running up, out of breath and apologizing for keeping us waiting, and the three of us got into the Mercedes. I wasn’t exactly happy when she said she felt as lousy as I did, but I was glad to know that I wasn’t the only one who had misjudged my dinner wine.
Once we were under way, Sonya took a small pile of papers out of her tote and handed them to us. “Michelle, my new assistant, sent me an e-mail with these attached. They’re messages that viewers sent after Danny’s live show. The response has been utterly overwhelming. Viewers absolutely loved him! We haven’t had a response like that since your first shows, Sally. They want to see more of him.”
“Why that’s wonderful,” said Sally. “You should grab him for more shows now.”
“I’ve thought about that, and I think I have a great idea. I wanted to run it by you first. Since you’re going to be in the studio to do the voice-overs a week from next Monday, how about doing a show together with Danny?”
“Why not?” said Sally. “I think that would be great fun.”
“Fantastic. I’ll ask him on Thursday when he gets back from Chianti.”
“If he says yes,” Sally said, “we can go over what we’ll do when we’re in Ravenna. That’s perfect. Did you tell him already about his fan mail?”
“Not yet. He’d left by the time I called his room this morning.”
Sally looked at me and raised her eyebrows. She had that glint in her eye. “Unless he slept elsewhere?”
“He didn’t,” I said.
“Oh?” she said. “Last I saw you two were walking off together.”
Sonya looked over the tops of her reading glasses at me. “Do you and Danny have something going on that I don’t know about?”
I looked down at the pile of love letters to Danny Every-one’s-Vole-But-Mine O’Shea. “Do you mind? I’m pretending to read here.”
GIUSEPPE DROVE INTO THE hills north of the city and dropped me off at a restaurant known for its Florentine specialties, particularly its bistecca alla fiorentina. The classic dish is not just any steak. The beef is cut from the very large, white Chianina breed of cattle, and the bistecca is a two-pound or more T-bone served blood rare. The crew had already taken B-roll of the cattle, Sally was on her way to the macelleria, the butcher, to see the beef being cut into steaks, and I was on my way to slaughter.
Chef Mario Ponti, the talent, was about five foot ten, with curly brown hair, a rounded belly, and wandering hands. When they weren’t busy with the food they were busy with me. The first time he pinched me I gave a little scream and wagged my finger at him.
I probably should have punched him, because he obviously took my reaction as encouragement. The next time he grabbed a whole cheek and squeezed. I pushed his hand away and told him not to do that again.
“Mama mia. You American girls are too tight up.” I didn’t know if he meant my butt or my attitude, but it made no difference. I was going to have to set some rules here. The problem was, I didn’t want to make him mad. I’ve known Italians who’ll kick you out of their places for a lot less than rejecting their manhood. He grabbed his crotch—or, as my mother would say, “adjusted himself”—and gave me “the look.” “Ah, che corpo!” he said, looking the body he was admiring up and down. This guy took flirting to a whole new level, which was freaking me out.
“Mario, you’re a nice man,” I lied. He adjusted himself again and grinned at me. I continued: “But I’m . . .” I tried to remember the right vegetable from episodes of The Sopranos. Not eggplant—that’s a black guy; not squash or cucumber—those are dopes; fennel. Yes, fennel. “Una finocchia!”
He removed his hand from his crotch, looked me up and down once more, and said, “What a waste!” I guess I had it right. A female fennel is a lesbian.
“Not to my lover,” I said.
From that point on it was all business. By the time the others arrived, by putting his hands to their proper use, Mario had a wood fire going in the fireplace for the bistecca and had made six pots of ribollita, a Tuscan vegetable, bean, and bread soup, in various stages of boiling and reboiling. We set up for the bistecca first.
The bistecca was not a demonstration but the final scene in the segment on Chianina beef. The segment would open with B-roll of the cattle with Sally’s voice-over describing what they were, then proceed to the butcher showing how to determine if the cut was authentic, and finish with Sally eating one in the restaurant.
Sonya directed the cameras to set up by the fireplace, and the opening shot showed the red-hot wood coals burning under the footed Tuscan grill and the raw steak sitting on a board on the fireplace hearth. “Action,” said John. Mario salted the meat, drizzled it with olive oil, and transferred it to the grill. After a few minutes, which would be edited out, he turned the steak and John let a few more disposable minutes pass before directing Mario to transfer the steak to a plate. The meat was so large it completely covered the plate and hung over the sides a bit. After a long close-up of the plate, John said, “Cut” and the cameras set up by the table where Sally was sitting. The next shot was of Mario putting the steak in front of Sally. Sally said a few words about how big and gorgeous it was and then sliced into it. There was a close-up to show how red it was; then Sally took a bite and, once she’d swallowed, said, “Now, that’s a steak!” She wished us all a good appetite and John said, “Cut. Nice job.”
We threw a couple more steaks on the fire and cut them up for lunch before we went on to Mario and Sally demonstrating the soup. I kept my eyes on his hands to make sure they were on the soup and not Sally’s butt.
WE STAYED IN FLORENCE that night and the next morning drove a few hours south to wine country. Today’s shoot would take place completely at one location, but what a location. The Fontana al Sole vineyard and winery was set in the rolling hills of Chianti, overlooking miles of the Tuscan landscape. The property was a large fifteenth-century villa that had been restored to an extraordinarily beautiful working estate. As well as producing their own wines, the owners, Carlo Pina and his wife, Michaela, our talent of the day, pressed their own olive oil, made pecorino cheese, produced chestnut honey, grew all their own vegetables, and raised their own chickens and pigs. It was idyllic, or so I thought when Giuseppe dropped me off at the front door.
A uniformed maid answered the bell, and I could hear the ruckus coming from the kitchen in the back of the house. At least, I surmised that it was the kitchen from the sound of dishes breaking against a wall. I hoped that wasn’t our set. There was a lot of yelling, and I could hear a female voice say, “Un sacco di merda.” That’s a sack of stuff you step in if you don’t watch where you’re going.
The maid disappeared, and a few minutes later Carlo appeared. He was a dashing man, in a Marcello-Mastroianni-when-he-was-forty sort of way.
“Come in. Come in. My wife, she is a little upset right now.”
“I’m sorry. Did something happen?”
He turned his palms up and assumed a look of exasperation. “She seems to think so but, well, you know how these things are.”
Unfortunately, I did know how “these things” were. I figured I’d better find our talent and begin damage control. I asked Carlo to show me the way, but I could have just followed the sobs. They were coming from a shapely blond woman who was sitting at the long wooden kitchen table with her head down on her folded arms. When she heard us come in, she looked up and screamed at Carlo, “Va via. Sei una montagna di merda.” In less than two minutes, he had gone from a sack to a mountain of the stuff. This was so not looking good.
Carlo left me alone with the sobbing Michaela, who was about forty and, if you looked past the mascara running down her face and the swollen, red eyes, very pretty. I didn’t have a clue where to begin. She was obviously not thinking about making panzanella, and we needed a finished one for the opening shot.
“I’m awfully sorry. I guess I’ve come at a bad time.” How observant am I? I was standing in the remains of six place settings of Ginori china, some with food still attached. “Did you remember about the television show today? You know, you’re going to show us how to make the Tuscan bread salad, the panzanella.”
She stopped sobbing and looked at me. For a moment, I thought the gentle, rational sound of my voice had brought her back to the task at hand. But she’d only been gathering her strength to bring her sobs to a whole new decibel level. Now Sally, Sonya, John, Rocket, the crew, and I all knew that no matter what, “the show must go on,” but I wasn’t so sure that Michaela grasped the concept. I needed a better point of reference to get her moving. And I had it—my kitchen at home, my mother, my aunts, my cousins, my Nonna—anyone who was having a “situation.” Cook and talk. Bitch about men.
I moved around the kitchen and opened closets until I found a broom, then I began to sweep up the mess and start a diatribe about the worthlessness of the male species. She jumped right in, calling them all lying, cheating bastards. This was good. She got a dustpan and held it for me and said Carlo was a pig. I found the stale bread for the salad and said none of them could be trusted. She pulled down a large salad bowl and said Carlo was a snake in the grass. I put the stale bread in a bowl of cold water and said men were all scum. She reached for the olive oil and red wine vinegar and said she should never have married him. I reached into baskets on the counter, took out red onions and garlic, and said we’d all be better off without them. She chopped some tomatoes and basil and said—well, my Italian is a bit limited in this area, but I think she said Carlo had a limp, undersized penis. I sliced the onions and garlic, put them in the salad bowl, and said men were useless. She put the tomatoes and basil in the bowl with the onions and garlic and said she hoped he went to hell with a broken back. I squeezed the water out of the bread, broke it up into the salad bowl, and said men were dickheads. I doubted that she understood “dickheads,” but I was running out of insults in English and Italian. She added, salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar to the salad, I tossed it, and we vowed together never again to have anything to do with men.
By the time we’d finished preparing the salad, Michaela was no longer sobbing and I was beginning to think we just might make it through the demonstration. I wasn’t so sure about the footage we needed of Carlo and Michaela touring the grounds together.
Michaela pulled through for the demonstration, but the tour of the estate was a completely different state of affairs. Affair is probably a poor choice of words, considering the circumstances. It was a horror show. There were occasional outbursts, with Michaela trying to kick Carlo in his undersized, limp penis and Carlo telling her to back off. Sally was begi
nning to look like a boxing-match referee, standing between them and telling Michaela repeatedly stay on her side. Poor Nicole was constantly repairing Michaela’s makeup and telling her, “There. There. It will be fine.” When we set up the cameras for shots of the olive oil press, the alleged site of Carlo’s alleged sin, Michaela’s emotional dam burst anew. Sonya had reached the limit of her patience. “Basta!” she yelled at the startled Michaela, using her favorite new Italian word. “Pull yourself together or all of America will think you are a whining, whimpering stunad.” I’d taught her that word. That did it. We finished the shoot, packed up our gear, and gratefully headed back to Florence.
THAT NIGHT, SALLY, SONYA, and I agreed to have an early, light meal and go to bed at a decent hour. The day’s shoot had left us all drained. We stopped at the first restaurant we found and ordered pasta.
“Boy, I didn’t think we were going to make it through that disaster this afternoon,” Sonya groaned, shaking her head. “I have never seen anyone that emotional.”
“You should come to my house more often,” I said.
“I thought the husband was a real twerp,” Sally remarked emphatically, making me laugh at her choice of words. “I was kind of hoping she’d get him where she was aiming to kick.”
Over espresso, Sonya mentioned that we had to work out the travel details for tomorrow’s drive to Ravenna. “Rocket and the crew are driving the van there tonight so they can shoot B-roll early tomorrow morning. He wants to get a sunrise on the Adriatic. So we have to take John and Nicole in the Mercedes. That makes it kind of crowded, and I thought you could ride with Danny, Casey.”
Oh God. I knew I was going to have to face Danny on Thursday, but I wasn’t planning on spending a whole lot of time alone with him. The tables had taken a very ugly turn from him hitting on me to me looking like a desperate, sex-starved predator throwing myself at him. He’d probably think I’d asked—no, begged—to ride with him, and the last thing I wanted to resemble was another woman panting over him. I had planned to collect my birthday present at eight-thirty, thank him politely, and then get in the car with Giuseppe at nine. “Why don’t I go with you and Sally in the Mercedes and let John ride with Danny? They were very buddy-buddy the other night and would probably love the time together.”
Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance Page 20