“Sei pronta, Isotta? Are you ready?” At her silent nod, eyes naked with longing, Massimo smiled and said, “Then let’s go.” He plucked Isotta’s purse out of her seat, and then popped open the trunk to heft out her overnight bag. All the while, Isotta stood transfixed. Hardly able to believe she was here, with him, in his town with its saturated light.
Massimo laughed and reached for her hand to tug her out of the parking lot. “I think you’ll like Santa Lucia. It’s not Florence, of course, but it doesn’t pretend to be. Do you know about the falls?”
She shook her head.
“Ah, you can’t see them from this side of the mountain, but I’ll take you to see them later. They are spectacular,” a note of pride rang in his words.
Isotta nodded and gestured toward the olive groves flanking the town’s entrance. “Those trees are enormous. They look like they are going to twist right out of the ground.”
Massimo smiled again at Isotta’s phrasing. “Yes, they are ancient, planted long before the Romans thought to put a town at this outpost. Not all of those old trees are still here.” Massimo’s sweeping gesture took in the trees stretching into the hill above the street. “But just about all of us have at least one ancient tree in our plots. We believe that’s what makes our olive oil so particular.”
“Plots?”
“Oh, yes. You wouldn’t have this in Florence. Here, most of us own a section of the groves. Soon we’ll all harvest and send our olives to the mill we passed on the way up the road. Then we each get a bit of the oil and sell the rest to tourists. I’ll send you home with a bottle. No offense, but Tuscan olive oil leaves much to be desired. Too gentle and Americanized. Ours is strong, like these Apennine mountains.”
Isotta thought about the oil her family got each year from their distant cousins. How its fruity butteriness perfumed the air when sprinkled on hot vegetables or meat or pasta. Instead of answering, she pointed her chin toward the long-hair white cat sleeping in a flowerpot. “How sweet.”
“Yes, Santa Lucia is lousy with cats. During the summer when everyone escapes to the water, some joke there are more cats in Santa Lucia than people.” He grinned at Isotta as they walked and she beamed in return.
“I like cats.”
“So do I. Or at least I like how rat-free they keep the town. We never need traps.”
“So do they belong to anyone?”
“Some, but they’re mostly strays that the old ladies have taken to feeding. The town pays for almost all of them to be fixed so we don’t replace a rat problem with a cat problem. Now, look! Through this break in the buildings you can see across the valley.”
Isotta lifted her hand to her eyes to shield her vision from the glare, and squinted down at what at first blush appeared to be another alley. But this one was framed not just by buildings, but an arch made of single stones draped between the creamy, rough-hewn walls. The effect reminded Isotta of the photo she’d seen of a landscape as viewed through a keyhole. A black cat picked its way to the top of the arch, turned once, and curled into itself. “It’s beautiful.” And it was. Olive trees glimmered, sending a confetti of light into the top of the mountain covered with trees so deeply green they appeared indigo. Behind the mountain, the sky sighed overhead, the blue of an angel’s eyes.
Chiara checked her watch. If Edo wasn’t down in the next thirty minutes, she’d have to go up and look in on him. She wondered if she should dash upstairs in the next break between customers. Just a real quick check. He’d gotten home later than usual last night, and seemed to struggle to put the key in the lock. She hoped he remembered that she needed to go to the park later with Patrizia. There wasn’t anything she could do for her friend, she knew, but she looked forward to sitting together in the park with gelato, letting the last of the summer sunshine warm their faces while Marco went around and around the spinning disk like he liked to do. It would be restorative for both of them.
She was dragged from her imagining by the entrance of the mayor.
“Ciao, Dante, un caffè?”
“Sì, grazie.”
Dante paraded to the bar and repeatedly turned a business card over on the bar. Each click of card on stone was a small explosion.
Chiara’s eyes flickered toward him, thinking about Stella.
Placing the cup on the saucer, Chiara handed the coffee to Dante. “Would you like anything to eat?”
Dante was staring outside the door and still turning the business card to rap each edge on the bar.
“Dante? Vuoi qualcosa da mangiare?” Chiara repeated.
The mayor startled. “Oh! No. I apologize, Chiara. I was thinking.”
“You seem distracted.”
He sighed importantly. “Yes, it appears I am. Sometimes I wish this town would run itself for a little while.”
It seemed to Chiara that he hitched his shoulders back a touch as he made his pronouncement.
Chiara answered with a smile, “The demands of the wooden-spoon-waving grandmothers and gelato-eating children a bit too much for you?”
“You’re mocking me, Chiara. It’s hardly appreciated.”
The grin disappeared from Chiara’s face. “I apologize, Dante.”
He sighed. “I shouldn’t snap at you, it’s not your fault. But it seems like no one is ever happy. Half the town wants me to preserve their old ways of living. Subsidize the oil mill so they can press their oil as they have for generations. While the other half of the town wants to modernize. ‘Why can’t we get faster Wi-Fi? Recycling? Email at
