Book One of the Santa Lucia Series

by Michelle Damiani

  Patrizia shook her head as she helped wipe the dirt off Luciano’s pants and coat. “Luciano? What happened?”

  Luciano’s cloudy gaze cleared as he looked into Patrizia’s familiar eyes, the crow’s feet deeper than he remembered. “Patrizia?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Luciano, what happened? With Massimo?”

  Luciano mouth twitched as he thought for a moment. “I . . . the cobblestone and the water.”

  Patrizia frowned. “The water?”

  Luciano sagged.

  Patrizia pulled him up. “Luciano, when did you last eat?”

  Luciano just shook his head.

  Speaking softly, Patrizia said, “Maestro, you need to eat. Here, come to the shop. Let’s find you something.”

  Luciano shook his head again, more forcefully. This seemed to clear some of the cobwebs. “I couldn’t.”

  Patrizia scoffed, “Of course you can! The porchetta just arrived, let me make you a sandwich.”

  Luciano ducked his head, a gesture that hearkened back to his old charm. “Patrizia. Such an angel.”

  As he walked down Via Romana, Edoardo nudged his hair forward from the crown of his head, gathering up the front like he’d seen in Uomo Moderno. Approaching Bar Birbo, he practiced smiling, trying to loosen the tightness in his cheeks. He wished for some gum. Or even a mint.

  Several calls of “Edo!” met him as he opened the door.

  “Ciao, ciao, ciao,” he waved and called to the collection of coffee drinkers, dropping a kiss on the cheek of his aunt, Chiara, and murmuring an affectionate, “Buongiorno, cara.” Chiara smiled up at her nephew and patted his artfully stubbled cheek. She saw so much of his baby sweetness in him, still, at 19. It was sometimes shocking to notice his wiry frame and arresting features and recognize him as a man almost fully grown.

  Edoardo opened a drawer with a swift motion and withdrew a freshly laundered apron. He snapped it open with one easy tip of his left hand, while his right plucked the string out of the air. He clicked his feet together as he rested the apron over his trim hips, crossed the strings in the back, and then swiftly knotted them together at the level of his navel. The florist’s daughter, Ava, who had lingered in Bar Birbo in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Edoardo, sighed inwardly at his fluid movements. No longer able to pretend to be savoring the last few bubbles in her cappuccino, she reluctantly abandoned her place at the bar.

  As Chiara was frothing milk for the two newly arrived police officers, Edoardo turned sideways to slip past her to the register.

  “Il solito? Your usual?” he asked Ava with a smile.

  Ava fought the image of herself leaning over the copper plate and running her fingers over that full lower lip. Instead she stammered, “Sì, grazie, Edo.”

  Edoardo’s hands flew over the cash register, but it didn’t open. He sighed and tried again, calling out, “Chiara! When are you going to get a cash register built this century?”

  Chiara looked up at her nephew’s words laced with uncharacteristic bitterness. She bit the corner of her cheek, as she took in Edo’s clenching jaw. He scowled and avoided her gaze, punching at the yellowing button again and again. The register finally flung open with a homely binging sound. The patrons released their attention back to their conversations. Ava scrambled through her purse, looking for exact change, as Edoardo drummed his fingers on the bar and whistled tunelessly to the tinny music spooling out of Chiara’s faded radio. Fumbling, Ava found the coins that rolled infuriatingly around her purse and handed them to Edoardo, who caught them with a tight grin. Ava jolted a bit when her fingers brushed Edoardo’s palm. But he didn’t blink as his hands closed around the coins and dropped them in the till.

  Magda tugged the door behind her. She started to turn away, but then stopped and pushed one more time against the solid wood. Satisfied, she wrapped her cardigan around her narrow frame to ward off the morning breeze, cool as a lizard’s belly. She considered watering the pots of flowers that lined the rental property beside her apartment but, squinting at the sky, decided it would likely rain and save her the trouble. Besides, she wanted to get to Bar Birbo and show Chiara the article. Eagerness propelled her steps down Via Romana.

  Despite that anticipation, she couldn’t help but stall when she saw tourists on the steps that led to the dilapidated castle. A quick survey established that these weren’t the renters staying in her larger apartment. She seemed to remember that those were Australian. She wondered where these were lodging. A scowl crossed her already furrowed face as she thought about her other rental property standing empty, this one with a terrazza overlooking the deep valley to the rolling hills and stark mountains beyond. Why didn’t these tourists book with her?

  She ran her hands over her face to iron out the creases and approached the couple as they took turns pointing into their guidebook.

  “I am afraid you will find little information about that castle in any book!” she called gaily.

  Startled, the tourists looked up.

  “How did you know we spoke English?” the man asked.

  Magda briefly flirted with the idea of pointing out their running shoes, the bags strapped to their waists like udders, their shorts, or his wife’s flyaway hair, but instead doled out a measured laugh and said, “Lucky guess. I am always looking for a chance to practice my English. You see, I have a rental property in Santa Lucia and I know how valuable it is to have an English-speaking host.”

  The woman nodded companionably, but the man shifted his weight and frowned.

  Magda’s smile stretched further as she asked, “Are you staying in Santa Lucia?”

  Ah, that’s where this was going. Even just knowing Magda in a cursory way, one probably should have known.

  The woman, however, did not know Magda even in a cursory way. Or, at least she didn’t remember that she did. “No, unfortunately. We wanted to stay here, but the room we were interested in didn’t have a dryer.” The man nudged his wife’s foot with his own.

  Magda made the connection just as the wife blushed faintly. Magda barked in a way that the man assumed must be a laugh. “Yes! You are that American couple! I remember! I told you that if you wanted to dry your clothes as easily as picking up a burger, you should stay in America! Oh, that was very funny!” Magda laughed, her mouth open wide.

  The tourists exchanged alarmed expressions.

  Magda sighed, quite pleased with herself. “You are so lucky. I almost did not write again, but then I decided to be charitable, and I referred you to the hotel in Girona, where I send guests when my apartments are full. As they so often are.” Magda nodded at her generosity. “Yes, I send many people to that hotel, and they always thank me. So does the hotel. ‘Oh, Magda!’ they say, ‘Before you sent us all these tourists, no one knew us! But now we are on the TripAdvisor with many positive ratings! All because of you!’”

  Magda pulled her shoulders back and beamed at the tourists who smiled woodenly.

  “Now, this castle you are looking at. It was built in the 1500s to protect the citizens of Santa Lucia from the constant battle between the Pope and the Baglioni in Perugia. The people of Santa Lucia have never wanted to be part of conflict, that’s why they built their town so far off the Via Flaminia. Hoping they could rest—how do you say? Uncorrupted?—away from the battling armies. In larger wars, like the salt war, not even Santa Lucia’s distant location protected the town from being pulled to support one side or another. So the castle was built by the Duke. As a castle, it is fairly small, but the walls circled the town, which makes it special. With the natural spring bringing water from the mountain caves, the people of Santa Lucia could live under siege for some time. Have you seen where the water was routed to create our famous falls?”

  The couple shook their heads and the man’s arm wound around his wife’s waist. Magda failed to notice the man’s grip, the firm pull away from the scene. She droned on,
“Yes, it’s not visible from the drive, the only real place to see it is from Bar Birbo’s terrazza. I am on my way there now. Come with me! You can buy me a coffee for all my wasted time helping you!” Magda laughed. This time the couple did not smile. Instead they both started talking about wanting to get something to eat at that charming bakery, so perhaps another time.

  Magda stepped between them and linked her elbows with theirs, pulling them toward the bar. “No! Oh, I am saving you from a disaster. The forno, how do I say? It is too old, too antique. They bake their bread in the traditional Umbrian way, without salt, and tourists find it not possible to eat. And their pastries are too dry. Besides, Sauro the baker is not a good man. He plays the horn for the Santa Lucia band and refused to play at the party I hosted for my 70th birthday! Anyway, to understand Santa Lucia you must see the falls. People come from all over the world and say that the falls, though less sculptured than Trevi fountain in Rome, are more special, more beautiful.”

  She led them firmly down the steps.

  As the couple shared a moment of panicked eye rolling behind Magda’s back, their expressions changed. Where once they registered comedy-infused horror (“Just wait until we tell our friends back home about this!”), their eyes widened in confusion, before cringing with incredulity tinged with disgust. For Magda was passing gas with every few steps. Step, step, toot. Step, step, toot.

  The tourists leaned forward and away, trying desperately to gain distance from any possible odor. Magda appeared not to notice as she directed the couple through the doorway of Bar Birbo.

  “Ciao, Chiara, ho trovato clienti per te!” she greeted Chiara, congratulating herself on bringing customers into the busy establishment.

  Chiara nodded and smiled at the tourists, gesturing that they were welcome to sit on the stone terrazza with a view of the falls. The faces of the villagers followed the tourists, pulled along by Magda.

  “Poor tourists,” muttered the construction worker to the sindaco, the mayor.

  The mayor, Dante, sighed and sipped his coffee.

  The heavy iron bells of San Nicola carved the blurry sky in ten even strokes. The last stragglers from the morning rush stretched out their goodbyes before heading to work. Even the tourists left, Chiara distracting Magda by asking her opinion on the school system’s decision to keep to a six-day-a-week schedule, allowing Edo to gracefully escort the American couple out the door. He waved off their attempts to pay. He was just sorry that the final press of customers prevented him from intervening earlier. Nodding and waving them out of the bar, Edo offered up a prayer that they wouldn’t tell their friends back in America that Santa Lucia was full of blooming idiots. He remembered very little of his middle school English classes, but blooming idiots had somehow stuck. Probably because he and his friends had delighted in adopting mock British accents and announcing that the others were blooming idiots.

  Magda finally bent her steps out the door, but only after haranguing the old man affixing a poster to the wall advertising the cinghiale hunt that presaged the town’s November festival. The man grumbled to himself, and continued hanging the poster. He called out a merry, “Ciao! Come state?” to Edo and Chiara above the continued chastising at his wasteful use of tape. Magda scowled before cinching her sweater around her narrow waist. Then she bustled out the door, head cocked to glare at the sky. The aged hunter followed with a harrumph.

  The bar stood quiet.

  Chiara ran a snowy linen under warm water and began scrubbing at the bits of dried milk on the La Pavoni espresso machine. She deliberated before asking, “Tutto a posto, Edo?”

  “What do you mean? Of course. Everything is fine.”

  Chiara chewed her right cheek and said nothing.

  Edo put his hands up. “Okay! Okay! Enough with the third degree. I’ll tell you.”

  Smiling, Chiara turned around and rested her damp rag on the sink as she gazed searchingly at her nephew’s face.

  He grinned, but then his smile faltered. He ran his hand over his forehead with a sigh.

  “Tell me, Edo.”

  “I don’t know how to. I mean, where to begin? It’s just . . . not good at home. They don’t get me. I don’t get them. I know you have to side with them because Papà’s your brother. So I’m not sure why we’re even having this conversation.” He finished, lamely.

  Chiara reached out to place her palm on Edo’s arm. “It’s okay. I love my brother, but we all know he can be a bit bullish. Tell me what happened.”

  Edo put his other hand on Chiara’s before slipping away to pour a glass of mineral water. Chiara watched him, hoping nobody would enter the bar.

  Draining the glass, Edo deposited it in the sink before turning back to Chiara.

  “They hate me.”

  “Oh, Edo. No. They don’t hate you.”

  “No. Yes. I know you’re right, but it really seems like they hate me. I’ve been such a disappointment. I never played soccer. I never got great grades, I didn’t even finish high school. Plus, they can’t stand my friends. The ones I’ve dared to bring home.” Edo sighed and ran his hand along his well-defined cheekbones. “Isn’t this the plot of every bad American movie? Is this the part where I say I’m so misunderstood?” He offered up a wry smile, which Chiara didn’t bother returning.

  She glanced at the door before saying, softly, “Edo, love. They want you to be happy, and they’re worried about you not finding your way. I know they probably act angry, but—”

  “He told me to move out.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Chiara felt the ground slip beneath her. She clutched the bar for support.

  Edo went on, “I got home late last night. Not so late that I’d have a hard time getting here on time, obviously, but too late for them, I guess. They were up waiting for me and told me I was wasting my life and to get out.”

  “Wasting your life?”

  “Because all I do is party and work here at the bar.”

  Chiara closed her eyes against this fresh assault. She always wondered if her brother and his elegant Milanese wife looked down on her for working the family business.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Chiara, I didn’t think.”

  “No, it’s okay. Your father has always been strange with me about the bar, and I could never decide if that’s because he thought it was worthless or because he was jealous that it was left to me.”

  Edo considered. “I don’t know. Both, maybe?”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “I mean, remember all those Christmases that he and Mamma stormed out of here complaining that you got all the special treatment? We all tried to tell them that of course the family doted on you, after . . .” Edo’s voice collapsed as Chiara’s eyes shot toward him. “Oddio, Chiara, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—my foot is living in my mouth.”

  Chiara shook her head and patted Edo’s hand. “It’s okay, Edo. I know what you mean. It doesn’t matter. Too many years ago. Anyway, your father probably isn’t a fan of you working here. With me.”

  “I am though.”

  “I know, caro, I know.”

  A pause. Each of them exhaled in relief at skirting an edge neither of them wanted to cross.

  Chiara began again, “So what are you going to do?”

  “Do?”

  “Yes. Go, I mean. Was your father serious? Do you have to move out?”

  Edo considered. “I don’t know. I’d like to anyway, to be honest. At home, I can’t breathe.”

  The bell over the door rang, startling them to attention.

  “Buongiorno, Bea,” Chiara said. “Un cappuccino?”

  “Just un caffè today, Chiara.” The older woman said, plopping down onto a stool to re-roll her thick knee-high compression stockings. “I have to get to the farm and get chicken feed. Almost out. Do you need eggs this week?”


  Chiara moved to make the coffee, but Edo swatted her out of the way, leaving Chiara to turn to the older woman who was rooting through the bowl of sugar packets. Bea scowled, “Don’t you have any diet sugar?”

  Chiara reached for the bowl at the other end of the counter, and her fingers skipped through the white and brown packets searching for—“Yes, here you go. We haven’t had a chance to refill since the morning rush.”

  Bea thanked Chiara before taking the blue packet and tapping it on the counter. She looked up at Chiara expectantly.

  Chiara wondered what Bea was waiting for and then realized. “Oh! The eggs. No, I still have most of the dozen you brought me a week or two ago.”

  “No pistachio yogurt cake for you lately? No frittatas?”

  Chiara smiled and leaned to the left, allowing Edo to place the cup in front of Bea. “No, no visitors for awhile and when it’s just me, I don’t have the energy enough to do more than boil pasta.”

  Bea snorted. “Yes, I know. When Paolo goes fishing with his cousins, my dinner is toast with Nutella. Don’t tell my grandchildren.” Bea knocked back her espresso in three hearty swigs. She sighed as she wrenched herself off of the stool. “Uffa . . . ugh, I hate being old and fat. Remember Chiara, when I was young?”

  Chiara smiled and accepted the euro as Bea turned and swung open the door to draw in the smell of low lying clouds that had begun framing the street.

  Chiara scraped a bit of cornetto off her shirt sleeve before venturing, “You know, Edo. You could live here.”

  Edo looked up at Chiara, eyebrows knotted together. “Here? Really?”

  “Sure, if you want to. I have more than enough space upstairs. It’s not new construction, you know. There are some oddities that come with age, and you’d have to be okay that.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. If you’re sure you want me here. Apparently I’m not that easy to live with.”

  Chiara leaned towards Edo, pressed her check against his and said, “I’m not worried.”