Summer in Tuscany (17 page)

And you know what? I would have gone anywhere he wanted to take me. I hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. I was on a magic carpet ride.

Lavender clouds puffed in dainty scallops above the hills, with here and there fat towers of puffy white cumulus. Beams of sunlight forced their way through, painting the skyscape with a golden wash and tinting the sluggish River Arno amber.

I was walking down the Lungarno delle Grazie, somehow
hand in hand
with my sworn enemy, and thinking blissfully that I had never seen a lovelier sight than the river and the old stone buildings, and the man I was with.

I couldn’t explain it. Was it just that I was in Italy? Or that I was a weak little woman? Or maybe that, hey, I was just enjoying myself? Nothing serious. No going back on my vow or anything drastic like that. Just having fun for a change. Oh, what the hell, why didn’t I just enjoy it?

For someone seeing Florence for virtually the first time, I had the perfect guide. Ben knew all the details, the dates, the history of every great building and every statue.

We stood in the Piazza Santa Croce taking in the amazing proportions of the enormous square lined with thirteenth-century buildings. Then Ben said, “I have something special to show you,” and he led me into the church.

Our footsteps echoed in the lofty silence as we walked to the basilica. And there, my friends—was the tomb of Michelangelo. I got that same feeling I’d had in Rome when I saw the ruins of Marcus Agrippa’s temple. The shock of how ancient it was, how much a part of life, even of our lives today, had hit me in the solar plexus as well as the brain. Well, that’s exactly how I felt now.

I thought of Nonna at the Hassler and the Michelangelo of Long Island, and I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Ben whispered.

When I told him, he laughed too and said, “I’m glad to know at least you were thinking about me.” Our eyes met over Michelangelo’s tomb, and I do believe, for a breathless moment, the world stood still.

The baptistery looked like an octagonal wedding cake with its walls of white Carrara and green Prato marble, and I craned my neck until it ached gazing up at the astonishing mosaics on the inside of the dome, crafted by Venetian masters in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

Next we stood awed in front of the great East Door of the Duomo, the cathedral (by Lorenzo Ghiberti, 1378–1455, Ben told me, and he also told me that an admiring Michelangelo had dubbed it “The Door of Paradise”). There were ten bronze panels depicting what Ben described as “the Bible’s top ten stories,” but what was even more interesting were the twenty-four heads of artists of that era, including Ghiberti’s own self-portrait.

Then Ben took my hand again, and we walked, single file—there was room for only one person at a time—up a spiral stone staircase so tight and narrow it terrified me into claustrophobia. By the time we reached the top, after what seemed like miles, my heart was pounding for all the wrong reasons. I stared over the narrow ledge, at Florence far below and Tuscany beyond and the river threading through it all, and then the world dissolved into a whirl of color. I shrank back against Brunelleschi’s great dome.

“I can’t
stand
heights.”

Ben was leaning over the edge, taking in the view. He turned and grinned at me. “Scared, huh?”

“Right,” I whispered, and seeing my agonized face, he took pity on me and took my hand and guided me down those endless narrow, worn stone stairs, back to the safety of the street.

Then, to calm my shattered nerves, my guide—who was, believe me, acting like Mr. Charm himself—took me to the Caffè Rivoire in the Piazza della Signoria, an old art nouveau–style tearoom, where, since there was a sudden chill in the air, we drank hot chocolate and shared a rich pastry confection, getting sugar all over our faces, just as though we had been doing this together for years.

I had expected Ben to be prickly, antagonistic, angry. What, I wondered, was going on? But I really didn’t want to know. I was happy. And I certainly wasn’t thinking about the past—or the future. This was what was called “living for the moment.” And there’s a lot to be said for that. Sometimes.

Even though the grand piazza is now almost entirely a parking lot, you can still sit and look out at the fourteenth-century Palazzo Vecchio, which Ben told me was the very heart of Florence, and at the marble Fountain of Neptune. Relaxed, content, I wondered why the sound of a fountain on a sultry summer afternoon was so seductive.

We didn’t talk much. We were too busy looking at Florence and, stealthily, at each other. I was just saying that the hot chocolate was like sipping molten gold, when quite suddenly Ben said to me, “Did you take a shower today?”

I knew it had been a long day, but surely things couldn’t be that bad. He wasn’t smiling either. He was, all of a sudden, deadly serious.

“Of course,” I said primly. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes. But with great difficulty.”

I could not imagine what he meant.

“There’s been no water at the Villa Piacere for the past two days,” he said. “I had to carry water from the old cistern into the house so we could bathe and make coffee.”

I wondered what this little piece of personal information had to do with me, or the fact that we were sitting in Rivoire’s drinking hot chocolate and, I had thought, having a good time. “I’m sorry,” I said politely.

“The man at the Water Board told me there were too many tourists taking showers, too many swimming pools; he said it happens all the time.”

“And does it?”

“It’s never happened before.”

His eyes locked onto mine. In other circumstances, I might have considered drowning in them, the way heroines do in romance novels, but he obviously did not have romance on his mind.

“It never happened before you and your family came to Bella Piacere and claimed that you owned the villa.”

It was my turn to lock on to his eyes. “Are you…can you
possibly
be saying that
I
had something to do with it? That
I
sabotaged your water supply?”

I guess honest righteous indignation told him he was wrong, because he sighed, then apologized. He said he didn’t know what had happened, but that he’d handed over sufficient lire in what the Water Board had told him were “unpaid back expenses” to have his supply returned by tomorrow.

“Well, good,” I snapped. “Then you can take a shower in peace.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, taking my hand across the table. “Of course you didn’t have anything to do with it. You’re too noble. You’re a doctor. You wouldn’t stoop to sabotage, even though you do want to get me out of the villa.”

“I want to find Donati and show you the will and get you out of the villa honestly,” I said. “And that’s the truth.”

We were in the Oltrarno—literally the “other side” of the river, in an area of small
botteghe,
musty-smelling little workshops where artisans carved wood into glorious curlicues for mirrors and overmantels and where elaborate gesso frames were made, then gilded, ready to enhance old, and sometimes new, paintings. Where the softest leather was crafted by hand into smart bags and exquisite gloves; where marble tables were inlaid with patterns of mother-of-pearl and malachite and lapis. Where goldsmiths fashioned rings to be sold on the Ponte Vecchio and the Via de’ Tornabuoni, and ceramics were painted in the same designs they had used for centuries.

A lone tree rustled in the sudden wind as we wandered happily down the narrow twisting streets, peering into windows and deciding what we would buy if we were rich. Of course, Ben
was
rich, but that didn’t seem to matter: the game was the thing.

We bought a bag of ripe black cherries from a vendor, and I bit into one, sending out a sudden squirt of rich juice. Ben wiped the cherry juice from my chin, then licked his fingers. I felt myself melt inside. It was one of the sexiest things that had ever happened to me. We just looked at each other, and then he bent his head and kissed my juicy lips. I shivered as
I
looked at him, thinking how I would like to be in love again.
Crashing into love!
Wasn’t that a line from a Marc Anthony song? It described the way I was feeling—hurtling,
crashing
…into love. That is, if I could just allow myself. But of course, I could not.

A distant rumble of thunder broke the spell. Huge raindrops bounced off the cobblestones and our heads. We ducked into a doorway, and Ben said, “How come we never noticed it was going to rain?” and I wanted to say, Because we were just too caught up in each other, that’s why, but of course I didn’t. And then his arms were around me, and we were kissing again, but
really
kissing this time.

His mouth pressed on mine, parting my lips, drinking me in until I was breathless, dizzy with delight. My stomach did double flips, and the cherry juice seemed to have slipped all the way down to between my legs. I wanted this man.
Really
wanted him. I clung to him, tasted him, wrapped myself closer. I smiled, remembering the Romans I had seen embracing in doorways. Now I was one of them, and I quickly tried to tell myself that of course it was really Italy that was seducing me, not this man. This lovely man whose body was hard against mine.

When we surfaced, he stroked back my hair. His face was so close I breathed his breath. “Your hair is standing on end,” he said wonderingly, and I put up my hand to feel it.

“Like a curly blond halo,” he said. “My Botticelli angel.” And then he kissed me some more.

The next time we came up for air and to try to regain our equilibrium, Ben looked up at the lowering gray sky and said, “This storm is here to stay. We’d better get out of here.”

“But where shall we go?” I clutched his hand, teeth chattering from nerves and the sudden damp chill. The sultry heat had disappeared with the first clap of thunder, and now the rain came steadily down, interspersed with flashes of blue lightning. I hate thunderstorms; the power of nature terrifies me.

“Scared?” He raised an eyebrow with a smile.

“Yes,” I admitted, for the second time that day.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you,” he said. “But we’ll have to make a run for it.”

By the time we got to the end of the street we were soaked. An opportunistic vendor in a kiosk had put out a display of umbrellas, and we bought one, then huddled under it, searching the empty street for a cab.

“We’ll have to walk,” Ben decided, and when I asked him where we were going, he said, “To a place I know.” So we sloshed off through the puddles again.

Ben held the umbrella, and I held his arm, but he was taller, and the wind was blowing hard now, and it was blowing the rain on me. Ben stopped suddenly and looked around. “I need to ask directions,” he said.

Wet and shivering, I said, “But you
know
Florence. This is your turf. Why do you have to ask directions
now
?”

He gave me a pitying glance. “Because we’re lost, of course.”

I drooped under the umbrella. I hated to think of what I looked like by now.

We asked directions in stumbling Italian from a man just getting onto his Vespa, only to have him answer, in our very own American accents, with a decidedly poor-tourist-fools glare, that we were walking in the wrong direction. We must go back, cross the river again, walk a couple of more blocks, and we would be there.

So back we went, umbrella thrust forward, sloshing through a torrent of water, back over the river (gray and sullen), down a deserted street—and there it was. Cammillo’s on the Borgo San Jacopo. Paradise!

Only we were not exactly a paradisial sight. My shirt was plastered to my back—and front, my feet were soggy, and my hair had that just-washed-dog look.

Cammillo’s yellowish walls reflected the lamplight, and it smelled of flowers and wine and herby sauces. The trattoria was as old as the rest of Florence and had been serving good food to its customers for decades. It had a glass door with a lace curtain, and a bell that jingled as we entered. They knew Ben there, shook his hand, took our umbrella, and sympathized with how wet we were, then ushered us to a table in the back room.

We laughed as we looked at each other, then said what the hell and patted ourselves dry with Kleenex, under the disapproving stares of a couple of country-club American matrons, who obviously thought we were bringing down the tone of the place.

“They have no sympathy for a couple who have braved the storm to get here,” Ben whispered to me.

“Not only that,” I whispered back, twisting rainwater out of my sodden locks, “
their
hair is immaculate.”

All of a sudden I remembered Livvie and Nonna. “I’d better call home,” I said guiltily, meaning the inn.

“Me too.”

“You first,” I said, in what was becoming our usual repartee. So he disappeared and came back a few minutes later, smiling.

“Guess what, it’s not raining in Bella Piacere. Anyhow, Fiametta is taking Muffie over to Maggie Marcessi’s to spend the night.”

“My turn.” I got up and squelched through the restaurant to the phone. I had no trouble getting through to Nonna. “What rain?” she asked suspiciously. “It’s not raining here.”

“Mom,” I said with a sigh, “there’s a terrific thunderstorm. It’s a washout here in Florence. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Anyhow, I’m here with Ben Raphael, and we’re trying to sort things out.”

“About the villa, you mean?”

“Of course that’s what I mean, Mom.” I crossed my fingers because this was a lie. “Tell Livvie she’s off kitchen duty for tonight,” I added. “She can keep you company.”

“Okay. But Rocco Cesani is coming over for dinner also.”

“Then there’ll be three of you, Momma.” I thought about Rocco, suddenly suspicious. “You wouldn’t know anything about the water being shut off at the Villa Piacere, would you, Mom?”

“Water? Of course I know of no such thing,” she said briskly, but I couldn’t help wondering if her fingers were crossed too.

Ben held my chair for me. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.” I was still thinking about Rocco Cesani and the water.

“I ordered red wine,” he said, filling my glass with a fruity young Chianti. We attacked the delicious bread as ravenously as if we had not eaten all day, which come to think of it, apart from a couple of pastries and a few very juicy cherries and, almost, each other, we had not.

We ordered hot, homey spaghetti bolognese to start, and ate it holding hands across the tiny lamplit table, steaming slightly as we dried. Ben’s hand was warm on mine. Watching him, I wondered what he was thinking.