Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (27 page)

“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 beautiful 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.”

“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.

W
E ARRIVED AT THE
hotel in Ravenna, and while Danny looked for a place to park, I checked myself in and then went to call Sonya and Sally from the house phone. There was no answer in either room; I guessed they were at dinner. I went to the ladies’ room, and when I came back out Danny was all checked in and waiting for me. “Do you mind going right out? I’m really hungry.”

“Me too. Let’s go. Do you have any place in mind?”

“The backyard,” he said, leading me out the back door of the hotel. “I don’t know Ravenna at all, but I said, ‘Seafood,
outdoors, near the water’ to the desk clerk and he pointed this way.”

“What? You didn’t ask for a moon as well?” I asked, following him out the door.

The outdoor restaurant was practically in the water in our backyard. We sat at a simple wooden table next to a stone fireplace where the chef, a large man with a deep baritone voice, was tending to several small whole fish on the fire and singing Italian songs about the sad lot of fishermen. A waiter brought an unlabeled bottle of local sparkling white wine to our table and left menus. Danny was watching the chef, and I was watching Danny and wondering when I had let myself go from “Not interested” to “No problem—I’ve always wanted a fling with a meadow vole.” It was Italy. I was letting it cloud my judgment. I should tell him again, now, that I don’t want to get involved. Let him know that the other night, it was the
limoncello
talking. Tell him that today was fabulous, but, as I said, I’m not looking for a relationship. I’ll offer a good friendship.

He turned to look at me, then gazed up at the full moon in the sky. “I guess you ordered the moon, because I forgot to ask for it.” He lowered his head and his amazing blue eyes smiled into mine. “Thanks.”

Then I thought about Mary and all the money she had spent on the lacy French underwear she’d brought me for my birthday. I was wearing it, and I knew it would hurt her deeply were I not to take advantage of it. “You’re welcome,” I said with the best come-hither smile I could manage.

In the corridor outside my room, I stopped, closed my eyes, stood on one foot, and put my finger on my nose.

“What in all creation are you doing?”

“This is the test the police use to determine if you are sober enough to drive or engage in other activities that require a clear mind. I wanted you to see that I am in good condition for the other activities part.”

He put his hands on his hips and gave me a shocked look. “Are you hitting on me, Casey Costello?”

“All that Irish charm and you have to ask? I just don’t want you to use my wine consumption as an excuse to walk away again.”

He slipped his arm around my waist and opened the door. “There isn’t enough wine in Italy to make that happen tonight.”

When we walked into the room, I saw that his bags were there as well as mine. I had been curious about how he’d planned to handle sleeping arrangements. Now I knew.

“Well, you were very sure of yourself,” I said, pointing to his luggage.

“Not
very
. That’s why I bought you the perfume.”

“I wish I’d known. I would have held out for the body cream as well.”