Sauro nodded as he put the cream-filled pastries in a brown wax bag. Fatima noticed that he slipped an almond biscotti alongside the cornetti before placing the bag on the counter. The baker lofted a finger over his lips with a genial smile. Fatima grinned in thanks. She pushed the euros across the glass display case, exact change, just like the baker preferred. He dropped the coins in the register and wished her buona giornata.
Fatima tilted her body sidewise as she left the bakery, as usual calculating how many fewer bead strands she displaced than when she entered. She was relieved to notice Maestro still outside gazing up—seemingly without seeing—at the Madonna, safe in her heavenly niche in the stone wall. Fatima approached him and put a hand on his arm. He startled. The haze in his eyes lifted a bit, and before it could crash back, Fatima reached into her bag and drew out a cornetto, handing it to Luciano.
He started to hesitate, but then hunger took over. “Grazie,” he whispered before gingerly taking the pastry from Fatima’s hands. She nodded and gently guided him to the benches in the piazza. Once they were seated, she pulled out her own cornetto from the bag as well as the napkins she’d remembered to bring from the bakery. These cornetti were always overflowing with cream.
Fatima concentrated on eating her own pastry to give Maestro an opportunity to devour his. She worried about how long it had been since he’d eaten. She hid her concern by swinging her legs and chatting. She wanted to tell him what happened to her cousins in Perugia, the ones who owned the kebab shop, the way she would have confided in him before. No, she needed to keep it light. She prattled on about a new pop song she’d heard on the radio. Time was, Luciano would have raise an eyebrow, knowing how her parents disapproved of Western influences. She and Luciano would have engaged in a long-ranging conversation about variations in culture, perhaps touching on her fear of both immersing herself in her new home and leaving the old behind. But this time he said nothing. She spoke about how the song reminded her of a book she’d read years ago, so she’d started reading the Italian version. She confessed she still struggled with the passato remoto tense. It used to be a joke between them, but now Luciano’s eyes simply grew unfocused and soft. Fatima patted his hand, which made him blink and sit up. “Okay, time for school. Ciao, Maestro!” She lifted her heavy backpack over her thin shoulders and ducked nimbly out of the piazza, startling Carosello who had been deep into his project of driving an empty plastic tub lined with dried cat food along the stones of the piazza with his nose.
Luciano watched Fatima’s receding back.. His insides quickly twisted again into their customary clenched shape. He doubled over, desperate to numb the pain.
He rose, shambling toward the alimentari. Wine, he needed wine. As grateful as he’d just been for the nourishment in his stomach, now he railed. All that cream would impede the buzz from silencing his brain, from untangling his heartstrings.
Plunging his hands into his pockets, he felt nothing. Nothing except a withered olive still attached to its stem and leaves. Luciano turned the leaves over, from the light green side to the dark green side.
You should know that an olive leaf is a remarkable thing. Amazing, in fact, how the two shades of green translate to the silver halos that float around the trees. There was a time when Luciano would have marveled at those slightly dried out leaves, even though he’d had the identical admiration of the green-to-silver scores of times in his life. Now, he merely thrust the debris deep into his pocket without noting its color at all.
Wine, he needed wine.
There were ways to get liquor, even with no money. He had done it before—slip in with a group of customers, and when Giovanni was ringing up purchases he’d pluck a bottle of wine and step out.
The odds of getting caught were slim. What would Giovanni do if he caught him anyway?
He needed to slow his racing heart first.
A challenge, when the promise of sweet oblivion was jostling his temples.
Edoardo watched the little girl dash into school. He had seen her slip a pastry to Maestro, and his heart warmed. He wondered at the connection between them, and then remembered that for years Luciano had made it his mission to teach foreigners Italian. There had been an influx of Moroccan families settling around Santa Lucia in the last five or ten years and Luciano had always cushioned their adjustment, usually by volunteering to teach them Italian. Edo remembered Luciano telling him that fathers and sons were his usual takers, but sometimes he was allowed to work with the mothers. Rarely the daughters.
Reaching back in his memory, Edo remembered now having a conversation with Luciano before everything went dim for his old teacher. They had stood in the streaming sunlight, Luciano had laughingly told him about a family he was tutoring. The father, he’d said, was a bit less stringent in his religious doctrine than other Moroccan men. He’d sigh in exasperation, but accepted his daughter and wife learning alongside the males at the kitchen table.
It was that girl that Luciano spoke about animatedly, his eyes glimmering with fondness. The girl who was quicker than anyone in the family. Luciano said, affection warming his voice, that the parents and brothers didn’t seem to mind being outshone by the girl. In fact, they took pride in her quick mastery of difficult concepts.
More than her facility for learning, Luciano relished her questions. Moving from Morocco had made her insatiably curious about how many more ways there were of living in the world. When she’d heard that Luciano had once visited Vietnam as part of a tour group,
