Menu Turistica, Episode V

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Non perche non perche non perche. Now the words bounced around her own footsteps. She paced the wall several times. By now, surely, Luigi was far below, cursing at the Italian traffic on its way out of the city. Or perhaps he decided to stop at the bottom of the hill and give her another chance. Or perhaps he decided to stop at the bottom and lie in wait. Or perhaps he decided to stop along the winding road down. Or perhaps he was still watching her from the parking lot. Or perhaps. Or perhaps. Non perche non perche.

The sun having given the last of its display, the last of the tourists wandered away from the wall toward their cars. A few young lovers stayed on, making out. A car rolled up to the edge of the parking lot and tipped out onto the road down.

Elena measured the descent toward the river. At one end of the stone wall, the wide path took a 180 degree turn and descended directly below her, terminating at the next tier of the road. A petite sports car whipped down this road and disappeared. Across the road, a much narrower path disappeared into trees. It was all she could know of the path. The dark foliage closed around the path and the rake of the mountain obscured the unknown. Down much further, football fields away, she could see another stone walkway, the back side of a building, the road that ran alongside the Arno. She considered walking along the road, but the roadway had two dangers—sports cars and Luigi. For all she knew, he had waited at the top of the Piazzalle until he thought she might come to this very point, where he could scoop her up and carry her away. It was an irrational though; she could feel what little light was left in the sunset slowly trickling away from her, fuddling her mind. Surely, the walk was not more than ten or fifteen minutes. She could and would do it, quickly and confidently.

The wind kicked up in the trees. A trio of young Asian women tottered at the head of the path, their giggles high and bright like wind chimes, fading up and out of the breeze. Their heels clattered on the pavement. A man’s cologne caught Elena’s nose and she turned her head quickly, wondering if Luigi had returned. Not Luigi, the man in the plaid shirt lingered at the wall, taking surreptitious glances at the trio of Asian women. He was plain-looking, unmemorable and slightly unkempt. In a less baggy pair of jeans, perhaps wearing one of those fine merino black sweaters and squared-toed shoes with nice stitching, he might have had a chance with them, Elena thought. But not slumped over, hands up under his shirt tail searching for his pockets. She felt sorry for him. In that moment, he began to move toward the descent as well. The five of them looked as if they would converge and caravan. Elena was relieved. Safety in numbers.

Elena shifted her weight toward the trio. The man in the plaid shirt, walking more swiftly, passed her, and then the trio at well. His passing made them hesitate and stop, but Elena was already walking purposefully toward them. She did not slow; she had made the decision to go, and go she would. She would follow the man and the women would follow her. Walk confidently. Know where to go. Be purposeful. Non. Perche. Non. Perche. She pushed the heel of her hand against her forehead, but she could not keep from replaying the events of the day in her mind, how she should have turned away from the conversation, how she could have gracefully turned down the coffee. It was the coffee that set the wheels in motion.

As she passed the trio, they slowed their pace. They slowed their pace just as the momentum of the hill was carrying Elena further. She turned back to see them stopping. Elena wondered if she should stop. She hesitated just a moment, one foot in the air, but the momentum carried it down, and she stumbled forward the next few steps, forcing her back into a more steady pace. She paced but looked back up at them, now. They had their heads together and they were whispering. How silly they seemed, in their escalator shoes, their short skirts and their swingy hair. Keep going, Elena willed them. Keep walking. Oh what good were they. Those shoes! They wouldn’t dare hike down a mountain. If they hadn’t been so stupid, she would have questioned their reason for stopping—the way they looked down the hill, the way they giggled and pushed each other back up to the parking lot. It was as if they knew something that she did not. Something shamefully comical. Quaintly pathetic.

Elena turned back toward the man in the plaid shirt. He had stopped a little way from the road. He was hidden now from the people above but not from Elena or the three women. There had been something about his motions that had caught her eye earlier, but she had been too busy pondering whether she could find safe comraderie with three grown women wearing tarty variations on a schoolgirl’s uniform. Now she saw what he had been doing—unlooping his belt. She looked at his face, but he was staring out toward the Arno. He eyes were unfocussed, blissful, frightened, business like.

He dropped his pants and pulled up his shirt, exposing himself. He stood like a sculpture, his pair of old tennis shoes just peeking out beneath the folds of his baggy jeans. Elena’s mind played a trick on her and on him. It blocked out the rest of the picture, fuzzed it over. Static filled her ears as well. It wasn’t happening and couldn’t be happening. Dirty old men and flashers were the stuff of bad bar jokes. A priest and a rabbi came hopping out of the forest. She turned and saw three blind women sitting on a park bench. Three nuns came riding by on a bicycle-built for three followed by a duck and a chicken. A bus carried a troop of munchkins; it was driven by a monkey with wings.

The regular world returned, the man in the plaid shirt, the giggling of the girls at the top of the hill, the sound of her feet on the pavement. Elena blushed, the blood adding to the pressure in her head, against her chest, swelling in her hands and feet. She was moving too quickly to brake her pace but still she tried make the decision whether to turn back or continue. In her hesitation, she slowed as she approached him, then, realizing her error, picked up speed and passed him, a statue in the growing dark. Dark figures swayed up at the Piazzalle, unaware of the events below.

She entered the wood, the most direct line through the surreal. Perche. Non. Risk management, her father once said over a pork chop dinner. It’s amazing how many bad things can happen. If you knew the statistics, you wouldn’t ever drive a car. Her mother had burned herself on the oven, again. Sometimes she had trouble doing things with her right hand. Her right hand—Elena could barely see it in front of herself. Even the last lingering rays peaking up from under the horizon could not illuminate the dirt on which she stepped. She pulled a keychain from her pocket and illuminated a small penlight. It cast a halo of light on the path, barely large enough to discern more than her next step. But the light made the shrubs seem to gather in more closely. The wind made them chatter and rustle—the extended fading away of applause. She refused to look behind her, concentrating, instead, on placing her feet carefully on the uneven trail. She swung her light into the bushes up ahead.

Risk management. Don’t ever get into a car. The car was just a step in the process, the chain of events set into motion by agreeing to have coffee. If she had thanked him for his suggestion but said she had somewhere else to be, he may have simply nodded his head and departed. Unless he was more than just a dirty old man. Would he have persisted or looked for another easy target? She was the easy target of the day. Yet to step out of bed in the morning was to accept risk. If she were honest with herself, she would admit that she was feeling more reckless. When her father died, she realized that his risk, so carefully managed, meant nothing next to the statistics. He always wanted to go to Italy, her mother said one night, much later and inexplicably.

She came up to another patch of the road. She barely bothered to look left or right. Forget the sportscar. She feared Luigi and the half-naked man chasing her down the mountain. He would catch up to her and make her look at him. Make her peer right at him. He would catch her wrist so that she couldn’t escape. He would put his hand at the back of her head so that she couldn’t look away. She would try to keep her eyes on the rumpled jeans and his dirty tennis shoes, the top edge of a white sock, vaguely loose where the elastic was overused.

Perche. Perche. Perche. Perche. Perche. The wonderful things he does. Lions and tigers and bears. She did not know whether to be noisy and large or invisibly silent. What was it one did in the vicinity of black bears, lecherous men? Make noise and act crazy? For grizzlies and rapists, play dead—or was it the other way around? She stumbled on a rock, but did not fall. Her feet thudded on the hard-packed ground. She saw the outline of a dark figure ahead of her, but instead of stopping and turning back, her momentum plunged her toward him. So did the inevitability of her own recklessness.

Oh my. The statistics. Chances are the bullet will miss you if you are running away. Statistically, she was destined to die young. The wind caught up her hair and blew it in her face so quickly, and as she reached up to push it back out of her eyes, the penlight swung up into the trees and sent the shadows around her fluttering like bats. The figure moved from side to side, like a blocker in a game of football. An eyelash caught in her eye and blinded her momentarily. She heard the figure laugh; it sounded like the guffawing of a car engine, the bark of a dog.

The figure loomed, about to jump out of the shadows. She walked more quickly, she would barrel over him. She would embrace him. She would rock him in her lap like a Renaissance Jesus. Have you ever been to Piazzale Michelangelo? It’s the most romantic place in Florence, the most beautiful views in all of Tuscany. The light is idyllic. The women swoon. The vendors sell peanuts and Italian flags until sundown. It’s a carnival. Her breath filled her brain and her heart beat like a Spanish drum on Good Friday. A high scream slithered out of an engine with a belt in need of lubrication.

It was a pillar. In fact, it was the pillar marking the exit of the path. The forest ceased. The sky opened up above her. The Arno swished along like a woman on her way to a ball. Elena stood, shivering, on a half-circle of cement, a perch that overlooked the Arno. It had a stone railing, as if it were a balcony, and uneven steps down to a parking lot. She paused, but just for a moment.

She took the stairs nearly at a run. They zig zagged under the bridge and terminated into a dark parking lot, where Luigi’s car had been parked. The traffic was louder, now, as a traffic light released another group of cars. She ran her eyes across the hoods of the cars, looking for predators she could not know and did not understand.

She felt footsteps behind her before the traffic sounds faded enough for her to hear them. She could not turn, could not bear it. She did not want to expose her face. She kept her head down. She was walking quickly, but he came upon her more quickly. It would be Luigi. He would grab her arm and spin her toward him, raise his hand and…

The footsteps belonged to a businessman in a trench coat, a briefcase bobbing along with his steps as he passed her, keys rattling in his hands as he approached his car. She breathed again. It was not Luigi and not the man in the plaid shirt. It was not Massimo #1 or Massimo #2 or the waiter at Casalingha. It was no one paying attention to her. She pulled a slip of paper from her pocket and stared at the unfamiliar email address. She was suddenly and terribly hungry.

[in the next episode, Elena tries to drive South]

Menu Turistica, Episode IV

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A line of tourists dropped one by one onto the sidewalk from the high steps of a bus. They hardly touched solid ground before checking their camera settings. Viewfinders against their eyeballs, they swarmed around Elena, carrying her from the street into the museum, colliding off of her like June bugs. The museum entrance was rather unassuming, the foyer shabby and well trodden. Signage and hallways forced visitors toward Michelangelo and his masterpiece, the David, and Elena felt sorry, in a way, for the other art at the museum, which was forced off into small side rooms, just another Virgin and child, one more altar triptych, a further room of sculpture. They barely contributed to the place’s moniker of museum rather than renaissance amusement park. The crowd carried her along the museum ride, their boat/train/teacup flanked on either side by Michelangelo’s most mysterious sculptures, the slaves that he left unfinished, writhing in their marble. She-half expected one of them to leap out at her. She thought she heard the echo of a recorded conversation, a plinkety-plink tune on a repeating reel.

She found a bench at the edge of the main room. Even from her low vantage, she could see David’s face and his torso above the crowd. His shoulders reminded her of riso gelato at Vivoli, panna cotta, or an uncooked round of sourdough. His marble skin seemed to stretch over a body of real substance. He seemed like a nice boy. She recognized the expression on his face—fear, awe, determination, anger, resignation. He looked like a case of post-traumatic stress disorder waiting to happen.

The room resounded with foreign accents and mechanized shutterclicks. The click and whir only faintly resembled the sound it was meant to recall. Elena’s mind wandered over the concept. A film camera had a shutter that opened and closed. It made a particular sound. Humans came to associate that sound with the taking of a photo. Cameras no longer had shutter. They no longer needed to click and whir. Yet humans needed some message that their camera has taken a photo. Click and whir had become so closely associated with taking a photo that manufacturers replicated in a device that had no need for it. Other tourists had joined the tour group, and Elena had heard at least three different languages while sitting on her bench against the wall. Yet their cameras all made the same sound, and everyone knew what it meant. It was a strange language of familiarity. And when Elena finally rose from her seat and walked toward the statue, one of the tourists asked her in a series of universal gestures and unfamiliar words for Elena to take a photo of her, her husband, and her two young teenagers. An impossible photo: the 13-foot statue was placed on a high pedestal, nearly level with the father’s head. She framed up family and feet, then family and knees, then family and family jewels. Click and whir. Not exactly an appropriate Christmas card photo. They mistook Elena’s grin for generosity and admiration. They peered at the screen on the back of the camera. Yes, all were smiling, no eyes closed. Only later, when looking closer—

The tourists were annoying and the statue was too perfect. She needed another destination. Elena headed back down the hallway, pulling her guidebook out of her bag. It slipped from her hand and dropped to the floor, only to be retrieved in a flash by a man standing next to her. In that moment, she realized that in the crush of the tour, she had dismissed the most interesting part of the museum, the hallway that led toward Michelangelo’s David. Posted on either side were Michelangelo’s slaves, a series of supposedly unfinished statues. They were rough and rogueish, not caricatures. They moved and writhed and lived within their marble—pain and desire and even hunger. She stopped, shifted her weight to her back foot and crossed her arms, then let out and audible “Hm.”

“Extraordinary energy and beauty,” the man said as he handed her the book. He had a deep accent.

She assumed he was referring to the statues. “I think they are very p-p-p-p powerful, unfinished.”

“That’s what the critics say. Michelangelo was lucky that the government ran out of money. You know the story?”

She shook her head.

He explained these marble slaves had been meant to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II. Contractual disagreements and money issues stalled the project. Therefore, Michelangelo left the slaves in this state so as to turn to other work.

He had pure white hair and wearing a bright red sweater, so she asked him: "Are you a docent?”

He laughed. “No, I am Luigi.”

What an unfortunate name, she thought. He held out his hand to her, and she shook it. He was handsome as old Italian men would be handsome. His face was smooth. His sweater looked to be cashmere. He also wore gray slacks and beautiful shoes. “The marble for this is from a quarry called Pietrasanta, near the famous Carrara. I grew up not far from those quarries. You should visit while you are in Italy."

He seemed well-traveled, as if he’d lived elsewhere. Someone who lived in one place all their life had a base familiarity to them, as if they no longer had to dress up because there was no one left to impress. Luigi could have been a successful international businessman on a day off or even a priest. She suspected that he was in his 50s, though he could very well have been older.

"You are studying here?"

No harm in lying. “I’m on a break.” She changed the subject. "Do you still live there, in Carrara?”

"We live in Fiesole, oh, fifteen miles away, but it's always nice to see a bit of home.” He gestured toward the statues.

“What are the marble quarries l-l-l-like?”

“Extraordinary, really. May I tell you about them?” He checked his watch. “Come. Let us have a caffé”

Strange invitation, she thought. Why would an older gentleman want to spend time with a foolish young woman like herself? He must be tired of her. Was she tired of him? Well, yes, he was tiresome as older men are tiresome, but she also had an insatiable curiosity to find the Florence that tourists did not see. The only path to this was to follow a tiresome old man into a coffee shop. In Italy, having a coffee with a stranger was really no different than standing in a museum talking to one. So why not?

“Come come,” he said, holding his arm out toward the door as if gesturing her toward her seat at the theater. She felt obliged to float in that direction. And she could think of no reason not to go where he directed. “Parli italiano?” He asked her?

“Si, un po,” she replied.

“Molto bene. Vuole practicare? Si?”

“Si vuole. Bene. Grazie.” As she followed him, practicing her Italian, she again wondered whether she was tiring him. Wasn’t he anxious to be home with his family, his attractive wife with dyed hair, maybe his son or a daughter—yes perhaps a daughter and Elena reminded him of her. Surely that was it.

“I know the best caffé in Florence." He led her through the narrow streets and then ducked into one of the bars that lined the streets. “Molto famoso.”

“So kind of you to show me around.” She said. He glanced at her, a pensive half-smile on his face, a strange expression in his eyes.

“It’s nothing,” he said and chuckled.

She was used to the grungy and bright bars of Firenze. They had little character other than the personalities of those who ran them. In some, one could obtain a sandwich or pastry as well as a caffé. The tables were usually mismatched and cracked; the clientele stood up at the bar and sucked down their coffees quickly. She loved these places, the fact that they offered her satisfying victuals, a crunchy sandwich, salty with cured meat, at the moment she seemed ready to faint from her hunger.

But Luigi escorted her to a place where bright yellow cloths covered small round tables, and the waiters wore black tuxedo vests over starched white shirts. One came around to the table and took their order—two caffè macchiati. While waiting for their order, Elena learned that Luigi taught English at a high school in Florence and sometimes stopped at the museum after work. He seemed a good teacher, gently correcting her Italian, so that she didn’t mind at all. And he patiently answered her when she asked him “Come si dice quarry” or some other such vocabulary word that momentarily escaped her. He also explained to her how they had removed marble from the quarries, by inserting wooden pegs into cracks in the marble, then soaking the pegs with water. As the wood swelled, it would cause the cracks to fissure around a block intended for the sculptor's chisel.

"Yes, you should visit Carrara, or near there. And I know just the man to contact. An old professor of mine. Rents apartments to Americans." He took a piece of paper from his pocket and ripped away a rectangle, where he wrote an email address. "If I remember right, this should be it."

He pushed the paper across the table to her, and Elena picked it up, hardly focussing on the small letters, gpuzzo was the handle, and then a domain she did not recognize.

"It's out in the country, but very beautiful. Vineyards all around. Living for a month in an Italian hill town is the best way to learn the Italian way of life. Fewer people speak English, so it will help you with your studies."

"My studies?" The waiter brought two small cups to the table. "Oh, yes," she said quietly. "My studies."

Luigi picked up his spoon, dropped three sugar cubes into his cup, and began to stir. “So, you like Michelangelo.”

"It's difficult not to like Michelangelo, don't you think?" How interesting that she was not stuttering in Italian. Sometimes her own condition fascinated her.

Her face took on a graceful curiosity, and Luigi noticed, and Elena noticed him noticing. "Mm, " Luigi stopped stirring for a moment.

She concentrated very hard on choosing the right sugar cube, which she dropped into the cup. It landed on the foamy cap and stayed there, obstinately. She took her spoon and tapped out it, then shoved it down so that a little volcano of inky liquid shot up over the milk. Then she, too, began to stir.

"Well, there is one more place you must see," Luigi said almost to himself, stirring. "Yes, veremente..."

He did not seem to be what his name suggested—not slick or slimy. Sure, his attention was unnerving, but the intensity of his stare seemed no worse than that of any of the Italian men she had met so far. It must be a cultural thing, she thought.

So she, stirring, agreed to let him take her to the Piazzalle Michelangelo, but first she asked: “Are you sure you don’t have to go home?”

He did not answer, only said: “if we are to see the Piazzalle at its most beautiful, we should go now,” Luigi said. He stoped stirring and shot his caffe back as an American would drink Cuervo. Elena thought it a bit of a shame not to savor its syrupy bitterness, but perhaps there was something more to it that she did not yet understand, would not understand until she drank many more caffés. She sipped the drink down quickly, liking the bittersweet coating it left in her mouth, like a piece of liquid coffee candy.

They paused only to pay at the counter. When she began to pull out a few coins, he stopped her. “Non!" He waved her money away. "I invited you,” he grumbled. Chastened, she returned the coins to her wallet, his face softened again and his blue eyes became as placid as Lake Como. She couldn’t explain why his paying for the coffee made her feel uncomfortable, and a moment later when he told her a slightly racy story about Cosimo di Medici, he laughed, reminding her of a young-looking Santa Claus. Maybe it was the sweater.

They crossed the Arno. He led her into a parking lot, a bit up and away from the road. As they wove through the cars, she trailed a bit behind him. She couldn’t figure where they were going and parking lots always made her nervous. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket.

“Aren’t we going to walk?” she asked him.

“It’s much too far up,” he said as they approached a Volvo. She again heard her mother’s voice reminding her not to get into the cars of strangers. Dare she tempt fate twice in two days? She hesitated, backing up from the car.

“It is quite steep!”

“I’d prefer to walk,” she said.

His face seemed to age. She saw now that there was perhaps no wife in Fiesole, no son or daughter, or if there were, he preferred to postpone his return to them. He was lonely. And she—she had accepted his offer to go to the bar, to speak Italian, to go the Piazzalle. He had bought her coffee, yet she had failed to consider him a potential suitor. Now she refused to trust him with a short drive to a tourist destination. It was practically impolite. He drove a Volvo, which was a very safe car. He raised his hands and dropped them back at his sides. His frustration did not come across as menacing. It was honest. She felt that he was honest for all that.

She opened the car door and settled inside. After all, she had already tempted fate in Massimo #2’s Volvo. Surely this was no different.

Of course, the magazine articles always say not to get into the car with a stranger. If you get into the car, you’re dead. It doesn’t matter if he has a gun. Run away—at least you have a chance. But don’t ever get into the car. If you get into the car you’re dead.

But Luigi had not shown her his gun. He had merely picked up her book in a museum and offered her a few interesting facts about a historic City. Luigi drove out of the parking lot and onto the street that ran alongside the Arno. They passed a hotel and a few restaurants. Then he turned right onto a road that led up the mountain. Up was the right direction; she knew it from the map. He pretended not to sense her discomfort, and his story-telling left her with her own thoughts. With each turn, the light shifted beneath the canopy of trees—devil, Santa Claus, devil, Santa Claus—

She envisioned herself pulling on the handle and rolling out of the car to safety, but he took the road rather quickly, and she didn’t fancy tumbling onto the side of the road like a tomato flung off of a tomato truck. Swerving around a slow car, he cursed loudly. “Such pazzi on this road.”

Indeed.

Then the trees and the mountain road gave way to the piazza. She was surprised to see that most of it was a parking lot with a statue at the center and a low wall along one side where visitors gathered to look across the Arno toward the City. He parked and looked at her. She smiled and tried not to act too surprised when the door opened easily under her hand. At least he wasn’t a serial killer who had jiggered his car to trap women in the passenger seat. She was so happy to be out of the car that she smiled widely and nearly skipped toward the viewing area.

Luigi followed her toward the promenade where the mountain dropped below and the sun was beginning to set over the city. She had no idea that the Piazzalle was up so high, or that the hill on which is sat was surrounded so completely by park. It wound around, each tier of roadway separated by a dense trees, thick with trees and tangled bushes.

Laid out before her were the red tile roofs of Florence. The Arno snaked below, frosted on each side by the headlights of little Italian cars. Mopeds grunted. Sheets hung out of windows to dry fluttered and moved as if they were the sheets of pasta fluttering in dark, boiling water.

This was the spot where Italian men took women to seduce them. Elena realized it too late.
Just then, Luigi reached for her hand and took it in his own. When she pulled away from him, he sought her hand again. He tried to wrap it in his arm. He tried again. She pulled away. He tried again…

She: “Non.”

He: “Che cosa?”

She: “Non.”

He: “Perche?”

She, taking her hand back again: “Perche non.” Because you are a dirty old man. She did not say, but her eyes said it.

Because you led me on. He did not say, but his eyes accused her of it. She was so stupid. Of course this was where men took women to seduce them. She knew it while eating tripe. She knew it while drinking green tea. Why had she not known it while drinking espresso? He said: “Don’t you like adventure?” Because I saw the way you were looking at that statue.

“Non.”

“You would prefer to spend tonight alone when we could have a nice evening together?” How dare you put these words into my mouth. I am Santa Claus!

“Si,” she said, still answering his English with Italian. Because I am afraid of you.

“I know a place, a beautiful restaurant, down in a cave, where they serve a fig risotto, which is….” a gift, bait, an invitation against my loneliness, your last meal…
The fig risotto gave her a pause. She’d never even considered such a thing, and it sounded magical. It colored her face, and he moved closer toward her, gestured to reach up and touch her hair. “Which would you prefer, little Elena?” Because I have enough money to buy your affection, if I have to.

It was nice to be called “little Elena,” but Luigi wasn’t the kind of man who made her that hungry. She backed up from him, one step and then two. “I think I will stay up here and then walk back down, alone,” she told him.

His face went from agony to ecstasy and back to agony. “But it is getting dark!” He looked away from her. You prefer to risk the dark path and the strangers that may linger at its outskirts rather than climb into a car with me, rather than go to dinner with me.

She took another step back from him. I don’t trust you. I don’t like you. I don’t want you.
He gave her an unkind look, said something low and unintelligible in Italian, then: “Allora.” These American women! They travel alone and think that this kind of thing won’t happen!

She shook her head and looked down at his beautiful Italian shoes. He spun and walked away from her, his leather soles clattering on the pavement. The sound of his shoes climbed up into her mind and stumbled across the non perche non perche non perche that was still echoing there. She put her hands to her ears. She could not watch him go, although she should have. Instead, she went to the low stone wall and pretended to look out at the view. The light turned from pink to purple, and the dark road slowly merged into the darkness of the park.

She walked along the edge of the wall, past the tourist families, the couples face to face, and one lone man wearing a plaid shirt, who softly watched her as she went by. What was the expression on her face? Confusion, regret, fear. It was the look of a woman learning perspective. To this point, she assumed that the people around her would act with motivations and rationalities that made sense to her. She thought she could read their body language, the expression on the face, the accent, and then make sense of the actions that followed. To find herself surprised by the man’s character after spending an afternoon with him—or perhaps he was kind. Oh, she didn’t know. And now she could not be sure that Luigi had left the parking lot. Was he the kind of man who would stay, in the hope that she might change her mind? Was he full of rage—did he gun his engine down the mountain? Was he vengeful, waiting with some other motive?

She must make her way down the mountain soon, before it grew any darker.

[In the next episode, darkness descends over Florence.]

Menu Turistica, Episode III

Mopeds swarmed the streets, buzzing up and around Massimo #2's Volvo. Massimo #2 steered through them, like a kayak through rapids—one hand on the wheel, the other gesturing as he told her. On Italian city terms, Elena decided Massimo #2 was a very careful driver, but he cursed as most people say um. After a few miles, the whole scene stopped shocking her, and she relaxed back into her seat, wrapped in the moped buzz and his Italian accent that softened the final syllable with an italianesque: “Fucka italian food. So boring. I meana, Shita! When you can get the best fuckinga hamachi... ”

At the restaurant, he parked half on the curb and ran around the car to let her out. The interior of the restaurant did not seem Japanese with its brick walls and orange candles, but they sat on tatami mats and ate sushi sparkling with fish eggs while the people around them spoke Italian. The woman who served them was Japanese speaking Italian, and Massimo #2 spoke English to Elena with an Italian accent while they ate take rolls and sat on pillows and drank green tea. Massimo #2 did not ply her with alcohol as an American man would, as an American man would need to where an Italian man does not. An American man needs a slick car and a bottle of Vodka to get an American woman to go to bed with him, but an Italian man can drive a burgundy Volvo station wagon and drink green tea. Of course, he must have a cellular phone. All the men in Italy had cellular phones.

He paid the bill and then kissed her later, outside her hotel, with his burgundy Volvo parked at the entrance to the alley, in front of the church. They kissed while a homeless woman passed them and then stood two feet away staring intently into a shop window. This made Elena uncomfortable, but Massimo #2 simply directed her face back towards his. She hated her own reluctance; she was really a very good kisser when her mind was in it. She hoped he wouldn’t think his money and time badly spent.

In this way, he convinced her to take him up to her room in the pensione, and she saw then that he had been simply biding his time until he could come into her room and unbutton his pants for her to touch him. She could see he was in it for his pleasure alone, as though his kisses and accent were enough to satisfy her. It was what she had wanted from the beginning, wasn’t it? She wanted to believe that those attentions came without her permission, but now, when she invited them, she saw them for what they were not.

In her fantasy, she would meet this very Italian boy, 23, nice, and Italian-looking, she would sneak him into her bare but clean hotel room. It would be exactly as it had happened, their quiet steps on the stairs. She asks him to wait while she goes in to make sure the proprietress is out of the way. When she walks in, the proprietress intercepts her and tells her she has received a phone call. (It would be Massimo #1, of course, to remind her that he was jealous of Massimo #2.) She thanks the proprietress, perhaps with too much enthusiasm. She suspects that the proprietress can tell by the way she has not completely closed the front door that there is a young man waiting on the stairs. The proprietress turns back to her own room and Elena makes motions to go to hers. She even puts the key in the lock and turns it. Then she sneaks back to the front door and beckons him in.

He is shifting his weight back and forth, has his hands deep in the pockets of his bomber-style jacket, his black scarf wound once around his neck. He smiles and winks when he sees her. She beckons him in, forgetting the word for “quickly” in Italian. She’ll have to find her dictionary later. He makes an exaggerated act of sneaking in. This annoys her, because she’s always been a good girl and she doesn’t like breaking rules. The proprietress has been quite nice, the room is very clean, and she’d hate to ruin things now. But her fantasy is walking into the room and taking her around the waist and kissing her.

She reminded herself that in brief affairs in foreign but beautiful countries, no one is supposed to engage in earnest conversation. But her body didn’t believe her and refused to reach out an arm to caress the Italian boy. Her mouth did not kiss, but instead said “I’m so very tired.” How does one say “your accent is not enough. Talk to me and I will wrap my long legs around you. I will sit on your lap and nibble on your ear. Talk in that delightful accent and make me believe—even if it’s not true—that if I lived here, in a little tile-roofed apartment building, if I hung my sheets out on the line, if I invited you over for risotto every Sunday night and then played the piano for you while outside the buzz of mopeds drowned out the soft, emotional part of the piece, tell me that you would want to see me every Sunday, as a friend. If I never kissed you again, tell me you’d still come over on Sunday nights with your smile and a bottle of wine, in the car borrowed from your father.”

When she grew still and silent in his arms, Massimo #2 pulled his sweater over his head and said he was cold. Then he said he needed to get home—it was getting late. He had driven forty minutes from Fiesole in a car borrowed from his father to see her, he said, and his eyes added: And for what? To be disappointed by the American girl? American girls were supposed to be fucking easy.

She snuck him out again, his tiptoeing exaggerated and her still not remembering how to say “quickly” in Italian. At the door, her turned to her. “You are to call Massimo tomorrow,” he said, pressing his phone number into her hand, “do not let that be the only Massimo you call.” He mouthed his soft ciao and gave over his dimpled smile. She closed the door carefully behind him.

When she awoke the next morning, she half expected to see a Massimo of some type lying next to her, but of course she was alone and grateful. She rose and went to her window. If she stood very close to the wall on the left side, she could just see the waters of the Arno. The morning sun was tying the sky in pink ribbons like some cherub painted by Vasari, the buildings appeared blue and on fire, the river sending up sparks. She decided to go to the Galleria dell'Accademia to spend time with Michelangelo’s David. That beautiful boy would not touch her—just stand, brave and innocent, for her to admire as long as she wanted. He would ask nothing in return—or so she thought.

[In the next episode, Elena finally goes to Piazzalle Michelangelo—but not with Massimo.]

Menu Turistica, Episode II

After a reasonable sleep in a neat and unassuming pensione and a breakfast of hard roll and jam plus tea, Elena stepped into the crisp Florentine morning. On her way out the door, she nearly ran head-long into an Australian. She immediately envied him for his boyishness and for his backpack. He was wearing socks with smiley-faces on them. "Hullo," he nodded to her, his blond hair shaking with his greetings. He bounced down the cobblestone street, his backpack seeming to weigh nothing upon his back. He looked perfectly filthy. Not a care in the world. Barely enough money to make it from town to town.

She fit better with these aimless souls than the world back home. It wasn't an enormous trust fund, but it was enough—enough to live a modest life and do absolutely nothing, an accepted quality in a place like this, among people like this.

Though it was early spring and the tourists had not yet begun to swarm the street, the novelty painters sat at easels outside the Uffizi. Elena went to each station and thumbed through the paintings. Some of the painters did terrible tourist portraits in charcoal or watercolor. Everyone had an assortment of views of the Arno. She pondered a painting of the Ponte Vecchio, to send back to her friends and family, a kind of expensive post card that didn't tell them she would be home soon or that she wished they were here.

“Gianni is the best of them,” someone said to her in unaccented English.

She barely looked up at him. She continued to look at the paintings on the easel. They were indeed the best she had seen, his mustards and olives more closely matched the matte palette of the city. The young man began to speak to the painter in perfect Italian. She was surprised as she thought he was American. She looked more closely. He wore black-rimmed glasses too large for his simple face and his hair was fuzzy at the temples where it was beginning to disappear. Still, he was young, probably just a few years older than her—surely not yet even thirty. He was short and badly dressed—not very Italian at all.

"So, are you going to buy it?" He asked her, again, in English.

She shrugged, but he pressed her: the usual questions of where she was from and how long she was in town and had she been to the Uffizi. After several days, she was learning to be evasive—San Francisco, a week or so, and a shake of the head.

"You have to see the Uffizi. Would you like a ticket? I work here." It was disappointing, really, to meet someone who worked in Florence but wasn't Italian. She also realized it was a strange response; it occured to her that it was perfectly reasonable for him to be an American working in Italy. Then he introduced himself. His name was Massimo, and he wasn't an American in Italy, he was just an Italian who had spent too much time in Kansas. This was truly disappointing—an Italian without an Italian accent. "I'm pretty good at picking up accents, I guess," he said when she commented on it. "So, did you want to go in or what?"

She bought the watercolor, and let him lead her to back entrance, where he worked in the offices. He told her to come round after she had looked through the gallery—perhaps they could fetch a drink. He seemed vaguely harmless; more important, he seemed useful. What other back doors could he open?

In truth, she had been to the Uffizi before. When she was ten, her uncle brought his brother and his brother's family—her uncle's only family—to Italy for two weeks of vacation. She barely remembered having walked these long hallways before; it all seemed vague and unfamiliar. The Birth of Venus, she remembered. In truth, she was finding that she didn't remember much of Florence from their trip—perhaps only the gelato and seeing Michelangelo's David for the very first time. Even then, she knew she wanted to come back.

She lingered in a small octagonal room that she admired without necessarily thinking much of the paintings in it. In retrospect, she recognized that her uncle may have been a lonely man, if pleasantly so. She remembered him on his own in a big house filled with art, books, and musical instruments he could not play. The clutter of it reminded her of this room, which he might have liked, back then. She wished she remembered.

The grand hallways echoed back to her the sound of her boots against the tile, a delightfully cavernous sound.

After her tour, Massimo walked her to a place on the opposite side of the Arno. The bar displayed a beautiful spread of foccaccia, olives, pasta salads, and potato chips. On Massimo's recommendation, she ordered some sort of Campari cocktail; it arrived with a twist of lemon, was bitter, refreshing. He sat across from her and put his cellular phone on the table. He spoke English to her, which made the bartender, with his slick black hair, think they were both Americans. The bartender also spoke to them in English, which bothered Elena. She was in Italy after all. She needed to practice her Italian. Also, in Italian, she could hide the fact of her stutter under the ruse of not knowing the language very well. But Massimo spoke English too well, it was easy to fall back into it. When he came into the full realization of her stutter, she looked down so as not to see the pity in his eyes—the pity and the realization, too. She knew what it looked like and she knew what it meant. She was ultimately conquerable, now.

During their second set of drinks, Massimo took a call. His Italian blended with the other Italian being spoken in the bar, so she could not always hear him, even less understand. As he spoke on the phone, she ate and thought about speaking Italian and also how she was not at all attracted to Massimo, but had allowed him to buy her two drinks now. He hung up the phone. “My friend was berating me for not taking you out to dinner,” he said. “But I can’t.”

Elena’s face grew warm. “I’m certainly not expecting you t-t-t-t-t-“ she breathed, “t-t-take me out to dinner.” The stutter made it sound unintentionally as if she did expect him to take her to dinner—the stutter was helplessness, the rest of the sentence, delivered aggressively just so she could get it out, sounded angry. She was about to be misinterpreted again, she could tell, and she didn’t want to lead him on through dinner, too, after which he might expect to kiss her.

“Well, he’s right. I should. Massimo—yes, his name is Massimo, too—always knows how to treat women. He’s better looking than I am and when we go out the women all go for him. I’m very jealous of him. He would take you out to dinner if he’d met you, but I can’t.”

Maybe dinner would not be so bad.

“You’ve been so nice to bring me here after just meeting me.”

“You make me wish I didn’t have a girlfriend.”

She suddenly felt very lucky. He had bought her drinks and he had a girlfriend, so he wouldn’t be kissing her. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

“I don’t think I wanted you to know I had a girlfriend.”

“Is that why you can’t take me out to dinner?”

“No. I just can’t. I have to go somewhere.”

“Oh. Your friend should take me out to dinner, then.” She said it with a laugh. She couldn’t believe she said it, then she couldn’t believe he agreed with her.

“He should. I can call him back.”

“But he doesn’t even know me!” By now, of course, she was hoping that Massimo would call his friend who was more handsome and knew how to treat women. She was pleased when he picked up his phone.

“You’ll like him.” Massimo held the phone up to his ear and showed his teeth, which were as oversized as his glasses and surprisingly white. He was not bad looking, just mediocre looking. She had high hopes for his friend, but when the friend showed up a half hour later he was mediocre looking, too, though impeccably dressed in a dark sweater over an even darker shirt. He had olive skin and large murky green eyes framed with thick eyelashes. She could see how some women would find him attractive, but she found him short. Still, he had an accent, which improved his looks considerably.

“What kind of food do you want?” He asked.

“Why, Italian food, of course.”

He waved his hands. “I never go out for Italian food. What’s the fucking point? I know a great Japanese place.”

She tried not to look too disappointed, but if he was going to take her to dinner, they should go to a place he liked. “OK,” she said.

“My car is outside.”

“Your car?”

"It is too far to walk.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She measured him.

“He’s a good driver,” Massimo #1 said.

“I drive a Volvo stationwagon.” He was young and prosperous looking, but most of all, he seemed harmless—harmless because he was trying to seem dangerous, with his black leather jacket and his cellular phone and... his Volvo.

“Well,” she said again. "That's a very safe car."

As she said goodbye to Massimo #1, he asked: "have you seen the Piazzalle Michelangelo?"

Of course, she had not.

"Call me tomorrow," he said, giving her his phone number, written on to the flap of a pack of matches. "I'll take you there." Then, as he walked away from them, he yelled back. "Don't let Massimo take you there before I do..."

[In the next episode, Elena lives her Italian fantasy—sort of.]

Menu Turistica, Episode I

On the matter of eating alone: a single woman peering into the interior of a restaurant creates an odd set of anxieties. A couple or a group in the process of evaluating a potential dining establishment possesses a collective confidence. But a woman alone—a woman standing and staring, breeze catching the edge of her coat and face illuminated by the interior lights—she appears unsure, naive, lonely. It does not matter how studied her approach. She seeks comfort, lovely plates, alluring odors, friendly staff, and a table in a corner where she will be left to her own. Looking up, guests are startled by her, other patrons brush past her on their way in, the wait staff wonder if she is a mere begger.

Elena hated the thought of it, so she rushed into restaurants and regretted her rashness—or she spent hours walking quickly, confidently, hungrily, past restaurant after restaurant. She could not decide which was worse, a faulty choice (regretted instantly), an appearance of hesitance, or enduring the terrible walking hunger that dragged her toward the deepest kind of sadness.

On her first night in Florence, she walked hours, miserable. Finally, she settled on the small storefront of Casalinga, a trattoria near Piazza Santa Trinità. Inside, the space opened to fit many tables. Like most trattorias, it was extremely well lit, as if the restaurant owners wanted to display the clean floors—and they were very clean and very white. The whole place with its pale peach walls and pink tablecloths was altogether cheery and not at all romantic.

Italy was supposed to be one of the most romantic countries, lush in its languor. Elena thought of siestas—bed in the middle of the day—and long late dinners to be taken only after the sun went down. Indeed, the satisfaction of human needs—bodily needs—was taken seriously, artfully. Sex. Yes sex. Elena was afraid of sex, but in the same way she was afraid of traveling alone. The thought of it exhilarated her even as she drew back from it. It was all related really: sex and food and traveling and art museums and Italy. She wanted all of it, or at least something.

The hostess hesitated. A tall, impossibly beautiful, young woman standing alone—surely she must be meeting someone or perhaps was part of the crowd entering. In that case always consult the tallest man in the crowd, or the oldest. Elena lifted one finger. If she had wanted to speak—but she didn’t; she never did—she might have said solo me but the woman, with her brown curly hair, broad face, and sparkling white apron, wouldn’t know that.

The waiter seemed confused, too; he waited, as if for someone to sit down across from her, not helped by her remote look of a woman who had always had everything she could want and too much attention because of it. Elena opened her shoulder bag and removed a novel about people who left home to live in other countries. She set it on the table in front of her and then looked at him. He was forty-something with dark hair, fair skin, and earnest brown eyes. He was not fat, but he looked like he enjoyed food and life; his cheeks were ruddy. Elena could pass for Italian and so he spoke to her in Italian.

“P…p…parli inglese?” When she replied, her stutter betrayed that she was American even before the words. This, she thought, was fascinating to him and she rather hated him for that. She managed to seem terribly bored. Near her, ten patrons were eating through the entire menu. The antipasto and the wine were just starting to go around and already everyone was very jolly. The waiter circled them and offered up all of the best morsels from the menu and they took. In reality, he did not offer, he simply made a statement and asked how many they wanted: a bowl of minestrone, a plate of anchovies and olives, perhaps some gameroni, caught fresh this morning. A few raised their hands and he counted them off with his fingers.

She tried to pay attention to her novel. He eyed her again, brought her the quarter-liter of wine and the bottle of acqua minerale she had pointed to on the menu and left her to study her choices. She eyed the tripe, scribbled on the menu in pen. She had heard that the Florentine method of preparation was quite good. She enjoyed reading menus in restaurants because it gave her something to do. It was the one time during the meal when she was occupied in a way that didn’t make others curious about her. The waiters and guests still assumed that someone would join her; perhaps they wished to join her. In the past few years, she had sometimes sat at bars in restaurants where other patrons made her acquaintance. She was often joined by men and usually two of them. Now that she thought of it, she had not recently sat at a bar in a restaurant to eat her dinner wherein a man had not eventually made her acquaintance. It was a new world, cause and effect: eat dinner at a bar, meet a man. She had only recently come to an age where such things happened. Now, if she sat at a bar, she might meet a man and perhaps he would be attractive. But perhaps he would be unattractive and that’s why she didn’t always sit at the bar. Not that all the men she met and talked to needed to be beautiful, but if she was going to eat dinner next to him, he might as well be attractive—so much better for the digestion.

When the waiter returned to her table, she shrugged. She looked back at the menu, then back again, then pointed to the special. He took a step back and measured her. He said, “the chicken is very good tonight." She felt sure he thought that she did not know what it was. It took the air out of her. Maybe she was wrong to want the offal of a grazing beast.

He seemed to sense her disappointment, considering her again. “Trippa, eh?”

She gave him a long, slow-blooming smile.

The tripe looked like wide pasta in a tomato sauce. It didn’t taste much different, but before the bite melted away, cilia brushed across the roof of her mouth. It was furry, luxurious. The waiter returned to ask her how she was enjoying it. She had enjoyed her wine and was feeling relaxed.

“Molto b-b-b-bene. Grazie.” She took a deep breath and another sip.

He tipped his head to the side and smiled. “Where are you from?”

“San Francisco.” She was no longer stuttering, but all of her words started with long slow consonants that slithered between her tongue and teeth.

“How are you enjoying your trip?”

“Firenze is very beautiful.”

“That it is,” he said. “There are many place to see. You must go to the Piazzalle Michelangelo. The best view of Firenze,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

“What would you like now?” he asked her.

The trippa was heavy and rich, but she ordered insalata mista and then tiramisu.

He served dessert to the group of ten Italians and then brought over a bottle of grappa. She followed the bottle of clear liquid with her eyes. He noticed her glance and raised the bottle toward her. She shrugged and then nodded. He brought her a glass and poured it out for her. She raised it to her lips and took a sip. It numbed her lips and burned her mouth. Then she took the second draft and this dropped into her throat with stunning warmth.

“Are you finished?”

She nodded.

“Allora,” The waiter leaned over her table and wrote on the white paper square that protected the white cloth below. He listed off each of the things she had ordered and wrote the corresponding amount on the table. He listed tripe and salad, the wine, her espresso and then he totaled it.

She shook her head and looked at him inquisitively.

He waved the pen in the air and pouted his lips. She paid slightly more than he had written and stood.

“So you have not yet seen Piazzalle Michelangelo,” he said to her.

“No.”

“You should see it,” he said. “The best view in the world. I could take you there—I am off work in . . . ” he looked at his watch, “an hour. At ten. You come back here and I will take you.”

She considered him. She had mistaken his charm for the false courtesy of a waiter. She was almost startled enough to take him up on his offer, but perhaps he asked every American woman to Piazzalle Michelangelo. And why would she say yes anyway? She didn’t find him a bit attractive, though he certainly wasn’t ugly. He was too old, though perhaps the difference was only fifteen years—not unimaginable but not desirable either.

“Sono stanca,” she said and yawned to punctuate it.

“Perhaps another day, then,” he said.

She smiled and made her way to the door.

[In the next episode, an aimless Elena meets Massimo and his friend Massimo and must decide which one of them will take her to Piazzalle Michelangelo.]