“That won’t work because I need the time to talk to John. Now that we’re close to the end of shooting, we need to go over editing details.”
“Nicole?” I pleaded.
“I know she’d love having Giuseppe to talk to in Italian. She’s spent so much of this trip trying to keep up with the crew’s English that it would be nice for her not to have to work at talking.”
I raised my eyebrows at Sally, hoping she would offer up her spot, but instead she raised her eyebrows back at me. “I think it will be good for you to get to know Danny better.” She smiled and added, “If he does more shows, you’ll be seeing a lot more of him.”
I didn’t mention that my attempt to get to know him better the other night had had not resulted in my seeing the particular more of him I had anticipated.
Chapter 19
I hope that I don’t fall in love with you.
—Tom Waits
By the time I walked through the front door of the hotel the next morning, I had rehearsed enough lines to put two weeks’ worth of a sitcom in the can. I couldn’t not mention the other night, but I wasn’t sure which way to play it. Maybe an alcohol-induced memory lapse: “What a night! I don’t remember a thing after Sally put on the wig. How’d I get home, anyway?” Or I could be brazen: “You have no idea what a good time you missed by closing that door, gorgeous.” Penitent and professional: “I apologize for putting you in that position. I acted foolishly. It won’t happen again.” I hadn’t quite decided which way to go when I stepped outside and saw Danny. He was sitting on a bench facing me, and he was not holding a present. That would eliminate “Look, I don’t want a present from you. I don’t want anything from you.” He stood and smiled. “Audrey. Right on time.”
“Excuse me?” I stared at him blankly, confusion clouding all my carefully rehearsed lines.
“It’s me, Gregory. And for the next several hours”—he took me by the hand and led me to the curb—“this is our Vespa scooter.”
“Oh my God! Danny! What’s going on?”
“That movie you told me about when we went to McLaughlin’s place. Remember?”
“Roman Holiday,” I said in a warm, fuzzy tone I had not rehearsed.
“When Mary asked if I’d come over for your birthday, I tried to think of a present but I couldn’t come up with anything. Then I remembered what you’d said about touring the city on a Vespa scooter and thought you might like this. It’s Florence, not Rome, but I didn’t think that was a crucial component.”
“Not at all! Oh my God, I wish my mother were here.”
“I’m afraid it’s just a two-person scooter, love. We can take photos.” He nudged the kickstand and righted the scooter, then sat on the seat and stretched his long legs out to either side to keep it upright. “Okay, Audrey. Hop on.”
“Wait. I told Sonya we’d meet them in Ravenna by lunchtime.” I turned toward the door of the hotel. “I’d better let her know we won’t be there.”
“She knows. I checked it out with her first. She told me to have you back by tomorrow morning in time for the shoot and mentioned that you should check your e-mail in case there are any scheduling changes.”
I beamed at him and slid onto the seat behind him. “I can’t believe you’ve done this,” I said.
“I’m curious about something,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Was the scooter red in the movie?”
“I don’t know. The movie was in black and white, but I bet it was.”
“Had to be, and you said the movie was old, so this one’s the oldest I could find. A ’sixty-three. Not much torque, but fun to ride.” He started the engine. “So where does this holiday begin?”
“Well, first I have to sneak away from the palazzo by climbing out of a third-floor window, running downstairs, and stowing away on a catering truck. Since I’m already out here, we can skip that part.”
“Good idea. What’s next?”
“I sleep in the street for a while, you find me and take me to your bedroom, I start to undress, and you leave. We’ve done that scene already.” There. I’d mentioned the other night.
He turned his body and grinned at me. “Maybe we need a retake.” And that was all that needed saying about the other night. Sometimes ad-libbing is the way to go. “What happens next?” he asked.
“I buy shoes, cut my hair . . .”
“How many times have you seen this movie?”
“You don’t want to know. I had to buy a second copy because Mom and I wore the first one out.”
“Okay, shoes, hair. Where does the Vespa come in?”
“Now.”
“Thank God. I thought we were going to spend the day shopping and primping.”
“No. We drink champagne and smoke cigarettes at an outdoor café and then we zip around the city and you show me all the touristy spots in a way a princess never gets to see them.”
“That I can do. Let’s go. We’ll make one stop before the outdoor café.”
DANNY OBVIOUSLY KNEW THE city well since he navigated it easily, zigzagging around to avoid the many areas where no vehicle traffic was allowed. We scootered on the outskirts of the city, ascended a hill, and stopped at the Piazza Michelangelo.
“I wanted you to see all of Florence from up here first,” he said as we looked down at the rooftops, domes, and towers of the city.
“Wow. It didn’t seem so large from down there. It’s a lot to take in.”
“I’ll do my best, but we’re only going to get a quick look at most of it and we’ll have to walk a lot of it since you can’t drive everywhere. But we have the whole day. I figure we should leave here at sundown, turn the Vespa in for a car, and drive to Ravenna tonight. Hop back on. Time for champagne and cigarettes.” He drove back down to the city, parked the scooter, and led me to a small café in the Piazza della Repubblica, where he ordered champagne and asked for two straws.
“You’re going to drink champagne through a straw?” I asked.
“They’re props. Cigarettes. Unless you want the real thing. I can go across the square and get you some.”
“No thanks. I’ll smoke the straw.”
From there we walked to the nearby Piazza del Duomo, where Dante Alighieri was born, and then to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, and the green-and-white-marbled baptistry, and the Duomo with its Brunelleschi Dome, which had dominated my view wherever I had been in Florence. He insisted that we climb up the 414 steps to the top of Giotti’s Campanile and just as we got there, the tower’s bells and bells all over Florence erupted into waves of ringing.
“It’s for your birthday,” he announced over the din.
I opened my eyes wide. “Are you serious?”
“No. Even I’m not arrogant enough to think you’d believe me.” He took my hand and hurried me down the stairs. “Okay, back to the Vespa.”
We parked the scooter, walked to the San Lorenzo food market, and tasted our way through as much of the two stories of stalls as we could. Back outside, we walked a bit and then he led me through a narrow side street that opened out onto the Piazza della Signoria, the center of Florentine political life since the fourteenth century. “There’s Michelangelo’s David,” I exclaimed, walking ahead to get a closer look.
“Not even close,” he replied. “It’s a copy. The real one will be our next stop.”
When we walked through the hall of the Galleria dell’Accademia and I saw the real David, I knew what he meant by “not even close.” The real David loomed so large over us, and was so breathtakingly magnificent, that I got goose bumps.
“Okay,” he said. “A change of scenery.” He drove to the other side of the Arno River. “This area is called the Oltrano,” he said, and then parked and paid some euros so we could walk through the Pitti Palace and into the manicured Boboli Gardens. My feet hurt and I was glad to sit for a while and take in the plantings, sculptures, fountains, and looming cypress trees.
“God, Florence is such a beauti
ful city!”
“You’re getting a real whirlwind tour, Casey. Florence is a city meant for slow, meandering walks. It would take days to do justice to the museums alone. It’s a crime to be here and not go through the Uffizi Gallery, but we just don’t have time.”
“How do you know Florence so well?”
“My aunt. My mother’s sister is an art teacher in Dublin. Four times a year she brings classes here to go to the museums, churches, and all. When we were young, my cousin and I would go with her. At first, we’d try to lose the group and find anything we weren’t supposed to. But after a while, I realized she had something interesting to say, so I stayed with her. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the city seeing it with her. I come over anytime I can.” We sat quietly for a little while, absorbing the magic of the gardens, and then he said, “You ready, Audrey?”
“Anya.”
“Hmm?”
“Audrey’s name was Princess Anya in the movie.”
“So what’s mine?”
“Joe.”
“You get a name like Princess Anya and I’m just plain old Joe?”
I shrugged. “Hey, it’s my movie.”
“Where to next, Joe?” I asked once we were back on the scooter.
“Lunch. And it’s at a plain old Joe place.”
The “plain old Joe place” was through a tiny door that opened onto a narrow, stone alley. The only color on the street came from the flowers that cascaded from a window box below a small, iron-grated window. I asked how he’d found such a hidden place and he told me that his aunt always brought her groups there. The family knew Danny well, and when we walked in, Mama saw him right away. “Daniele! Mio caro.” She beamed, putting her hands on his face just as Nonna does to me. Then she frowned and told him he was too thin. “Don’t they have food in America?”
“Not like here, Mama.” Danny laughed and introduced me.
Mama took both my hands in hers and scrutinized me. Italian girls are used to being scrutinized by Italian mamas, so I smiled and let her look me over. She tilted her head to the side, squinted, and then asked Danny if I was his girl.
“You bet.” He grinned at me.
“Bellissima!” she said. “A little thin, but better to be that way before all the bambini come. Then you don’t get too fat.”
I was beginning to squirm. Danny grinned and let me squirm. When Mama finished with my wedding plans, she led us the few feet through the restaurant and out the back door. A small overgrown garden with an overhead pergola of grape vines was set with five small tables. She sat us down at one of them and left, saying she would feed us properly.
“Properly” meant starting with an antipasto of a variety of crostini topped with chicken livers, tomatoes, and olive paste accompanied by plate-sized slices of fennel-and-garlic-laced salami. I was eating more than my share of salami and told Danny I had never had one that tasted quite like it.
“It’s a local specialty called finocchiona. It’s made with wild fennel. That’s what gives it the subtle flavor.”
“Do you want that last piece?” I was trying to be generous.
He laughed. “You take it. But beware. Mama’s on a mission.”
Mama’s mission was pappardelle al sugo di lepre, wide pasta noodles with a deep, rich rabbit sauce, followed by arista, a boneless pork roast larded with rosemary and garlic and served with fagioli all’uccelletto, white beans stewed with sage, garlic, and tomato.
“Why are the beans uccelletto?” I asked.
“Because they’re cooked in the same way as little birds are,” Danny told me.
The pork and little-bird beans were followed by salad and then wedges of local sheep’s milk cheese and Mama was back in the kitchen rounding up dessert.
Danny stood up and said, “I’m going to break her heart and tell her we’re going to pass on dessert.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Because we wouldn’t have room for gelato and I know the best place not far from here to get it. Surely Joe bought the princess a gelato in the movie?”
“No. She bought one for herself before they hooked up.”
“So she wouldn’t have to share.”
“You got it.”
Mama sent us off with hugs, pinches to the cheeks, and a scolding to Danny not to be gone so long and to bring his girl back again.
We walked, with our gelati and a crowd of people, back and forth over the Ponte Vecchio, looking in the jewelry-store windows and marveling at the bridge itself, which had miraculously survived World War II. Danny told me it was the only bridge over the Arno that hadn’t been destroyed.
“Now we’re going to one of the coolest places in Florence.”
“Where’s that?”
“A pharmacy.”
“You’re taking the princess to a drugstore?”
“I said a pharmacy. Climb on.”
Profumo Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella is a pharmacy only in the ancient sense of the word. As soon as I saw and smelled what “pharmacy” it was, I recognized it as the origin of the exquisitely wrapped, handcrafted soaps, colognes, potpourris, and creams I had seen in their shop on New York’s Lower East Side. But nothing could compare with seeing them in the frescoed chapel where thirteenth-century Dominican friars had first experimented with elixirs and potions. Centuries-old apothecary jars and bottles sat on the shelves of carved wooden cupboards that swept almost to the top of a high, vaulted ceiling. I walked slowly around the room, taking it all in, as Danny spoke to a smartly dressed salesgirl.
“What an incredible place!” I sighed, walking over to stand beside him. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Pretty special,” he agreed, putting his hand high on my back and turning to the salesperson. “I think mimosa,” he told her.
“A very good choice, I think,” she said, dabbing a small amount of mimosa eau de cologne on my wrist and then my neck with a delicate applicator.
Danny bent forward so he could smell my neck, then stood back. He drew his eyebrows together and put his hands on his hips. “I definitely think that’s you. First, you get this oddly enticing tart kick, then you detect the sweetness. It’s a subtle sweetness—not overpowering, but definitely there.”
“Hilarious,” I said sarcastically and kicked him playfully in the shin.
“Then you get the kick again,” he winced, rubbing his leg.
I lifted my wrist to my nose. “Hmm. That’s actually pretty nice.”
“I don’t know if it’s in the movie,” he said, reaching for his wallet, “but I’d like to buy it for you.”
“Well, thanks, Joe.” I smiled at him and thought, This is how he does it. Not by the bold flirtation, but by being so damn charming you’re ready to follow him anywhere.
I bought several bars of pomegranate hand soap for gifts. The salesgirl explained that the soap was made with aged milk and all-natural ingredients. Much of it was still done by hand and always with great care. She could have been talking about food.
As the sun was beginning to set, Danny said we had time for one more stop. We parked the scooter and walked to the Straw Market, a bustling semienclosed bazaar under a loggia. He took my hand and led me past tables of cheap leather goods and overpriced touristy trinkets, racks of tangled hanging belts and scarves, and the occasional straw good of the type that had given the market its name.
“So, did we miss any scenes?” he asked while shaking his head no to a vender who was holding up a leather jacket for him to try.
“Well, there was the one in which Anya drove the Vespa.”
“I never thought to ask you if you wanted to drive. Have you ever driven a scooter or a motorcycle?”
“No. But neither had she.”
“How’d she do?”
“She went out of control, drove through a crowded outdoor café, upturned a fountain, sending a shower of water over them, knocked down an art exhibit, and crashed into a vendor’s cart. Then she and Joe got arrested.”
&nbs
p; “Jeez, Casey. That sounds like the best part. How could you leave that out? What else did we miss?”
“They go to a dance on a boat, and then they get into a wild brawl, she hits a royal plainclothesman over the head with a guitar, and they jump off the boat into the Tiber River.”
“You’re making this up.”
“I’ll loan you the videotape. You can see for yourself.”
“And in the end they fall in love.”
“Well, they fall in love but they can’t be together because she has to go back to being a princess and he has to pretend he doesn’t know her.”
“That ending sucks. Does he at least get to keep the Vespa?”
He had stopped in front of a bronze statue of a boar. The bronze on the animal’s body was weathered beyond recognition, but its nose was bright and shiny. “The legend is, if you rub the boar’s nose and toss a coin in the water, you will return one day to Florence.” He handed me a coin. I looked at him and couldn’t bring myself to say what I was thinking. No return trip could ever compare with this one, and I couldn’t imagine coming back without him and letting some lackluster visit cloud the joy I felt about the day. “You’ve made this day very special, Danny. Thank you,” I said, toning down the intensity of my feeling. “As Princess Anya said, ‘A day I will cherish in memory, as long as I live.’ Something like that.”
Danny and I both threw our coins, and then he put his finger under my chin. “I think the legend also says that if you kiss the person you are with when you rub the boar’s nose, you’ll return to Florence with that same person.”
“You made that up.”
“Yup.”
I kissed him anyway. In my family, you don’t fool around with legends.
Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance Page 21