by Jenny Nelson
A dust cloud formed in her wake as she ran through the gate, her legs churning underneath her. In the past, she’d managed to rise above tyrannical bosses, creepy investors, and customers who didn’t know the difference between arugula and rugelach yet still complained that the food wasn’t up to snuff. But a boss like Bruno—one who seemed hell-bent on destroying her credibility as a cook—was a new beast entirely.
Sprinting up the hill, she passed the hand-painted sign for the Etruscan tomb. The road dipped, then elbowed sharply, and she felt herself lose traction on the turn. She tried to slow down, but her feet skidded out from under her legs. Before she could catch herself, her right shoulder crashed into the dirt, followed by her head, hip, and knee. Her limbs bounced up slightly, then thudded back to the ground, her head turned awkwardly to the side. When she opened her eyes, she was staring at the bottom third of an olive grove—roots and trunks as far as she could see. In the sky above, a group of large birds circled, hoping they’d just discovered breakfast. She lay still for a moment, then stood up to assess the damage.
Her knee was mottled with dirt and shredded skin; her shoulder throbbed with each beat of her heart. After the one-two Marco/Glenn punch, plus the demotion to sous, what else was left to do but fall flat on her face? She brushed herself off and began the painful walk back to the villa, convinced that somehow Bruno was to blame.
Despite her mangled limbs, Georgia still managed to report for duty on time. No way would she let Bruno call her on tardiness. After she’d organized her mise en place, she started preparing branzino saltimbocca, a twist on the original veal preparation. Each slice of her knife sent shivers through her shoulder, and she waited for the four Motrins she’d swallowed to kick in.
“Are you okay?” Vanessa asked. “You look a little pale. And your cheek is swollen.”
“I’m fine. I fell running, but I’m fine.” Georgia threw a handful of kosher salt on the branzino.
“Easy on the salt, Georgia.” Bruno stood behind her, hot-breathing her neck. “It’s saltimbocca, the salt’s already in there.”
Georgia glared at him. Did no one understand aggressive salting? Between Bruno and Mercedes Sante, you’d think salt had been outlawed. She slammed down her sauté pan just as Claudia walked into the kitchen. Claudia’s mouth, which had been half open, snapped shut. She stood in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest, unnoticed by the dueling cooks.
“As I always say,” Bruno said, “more fire, less—”
“Bruno!” Georgia yelled. “Will you please back off? For just one second, please. I know you’re my boss, but can you let me cook in peace for one second?” She slammed the sauté pan again in case he’d missed it the first time.
“Georgia!” Claudia said sharply. “What is going on in here?”
Georgia spun around to face her boss. “Nothing. Everything is fine.” She felt her cheeks burn.
“Because in my kitchen we don’t slam pots and pans. Or knives, or feet, or doors. And we don’t yell. And this is, I trust you remember, my kitchen.”
The kitchen stopped. So infrequently did Claudia raise her voice or appear anything less than delighted with her staff that no one would have been surprised if she had fired the American on the spot.
“Do you understand me?” Claudia asked. Her eyebrows shot up almost to her hairline.
Georgia nodded. The universe had come knocking. The road rash decorating her knees and shoulder was its none-too-subtle calling card, and she had slammed the door in its face.
“Then we’re okay.” Claudia walked out of the kitchen. “Cook,” she said to the staff, twirling her hands over her head as she left.
Vanessa walked over to Georgia and squeezed her shoulder. Georgia grimaced.
“It’s all right,” Vanessa said. “She’ll get over it.”
“Not the shoulder, please.” Georgia removed Vanessa’s hand and shut her eyes. The truth was, it wasn’t all right. She’d been acting like a mini-Marco in training. Though she’d sworn she never would, she had become That Chef. Worse, she had become That Sous-Chef.
Bruno walked up next to her and cleared his throat. “Claudia knows you’re a good cook.”
“I guess so.” Georgia took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second, dreading what she had to say. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk. I—” She stopped, hoping he’d let her off the hook.
“You what?” No such luck.
“I’m used to being head chef. And I, for some reason, thought I was going to be head chef at Dia. And then I found out I wasn’t, that you were. And I didn’t handle it at all well, maybe because I was fired from my last job, or maybe because I’m used to being head chef, or maybe because you weren’t all that nice to me.” She held up her hand to stop herself. “Which is no excuse. Either way, Bruno, or, I guess, any way you look at it, I behaved badly. And I’m sorry.”
Bruno nodded his head slowly. “Okay. I accept your apology. And I owe you one too. I’m sorry for all I said about you not being able to cook Italian food. You cook it quite well… for an American.” He paused for a second. “I’m joking.”
“I got that.”
“Don’t forget that this restaurant is important to both of us. We all need it to succeed, but maybe you and me a little bit more than everyone else.”
“I know. I lost track of that for a while, but I won’t again.” It was true. If Dia was a success, it would make waves that would cross the Atlantic and reverberate all the way from Brooklyn to the Bronx. New Yorkers loved nothing more than a big, crashing fall from grace and a subsequent redemption. Dia would redeem her career. Could redeem her career. But only if she let it.
“We need to make some changes,” Bruno continued. “We have to get along. We don’t have to be best friends, but we have to get along.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. So can I. And you have to remember that I’m the boss.”
She swallowed. “Okay, Bruno, I mean, um, Chef.”
“And you have to hold the salt.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “Chef.”
He shrugged his shoulders and began to turn away.
“Okay, okay, from this moment forward, I’ll lose the attitude and the right to salt. Anything more than a pinch of either, and I’ll get permission first. But no more ‘American’ comments. If you don’t like my food, tell me, but don’t tell me it’s because I’m American.” She held out her hand. “Deal?”
He looked at her for a second before shaking it. “Deal.”
That night, in the middle of dinner prep, Claudia asked Georgia to join her on the patio for an aperitivo.
“Sure, Claudia.” Georgia removed her apron.
Vanessa offered her friend an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry,” she mouthed.
Georgia followed Claudia into the hall, through the French doors, and onto the patio, steeling herself for the worst. Two Camparis, a ficelle, a bowl of green olives, and a wedge of prima caciotta sat on a tray on a round table. The sun was poised to begin its descent into the ribbons of hills. A warm breeze filled the air.
“Please sit down.” Claudia pulled up two chairs to face the sunset and sat back in one. Georgia did the same.
“Look at that sky,” Claudia said. “It gets more beautiful each time I look at it.”
“It’s amazing.” Georgia reached for her drink, changed her mind, and folded her hands in her lap.
Claudia turned to her. “I am sorry you have been unhappy. Especially because I don’t understand what you have to be unhappy about.”
Georgia opened her mouth to speak, but Claudia held up her hand.
“We all have things we wish were different in our lives. Problems, disappointments, frustrations—whatever you call them, we all have them.” She cut a few pieces of cheese and took one for herself. “Take me, for example. I have a restaurant opening in a few weeks. The kitchen isn’t done, the chairs are so uncomfortable no one will be able to sit through an entire meal, the floor is the
wrong color. I still don’t have a signature dish, and my staff”—she paused—“well, let’s just say my staff needs a bit of fine-tuning.”
The words staff plus tuning sent a shudder through Georgia’s already throbbing shoulder. How, she wondered, would she ever recover from her second sacking in less than three months? That Brentwood job was starting to sound pretty good.
“On top of this,” Claudia said, popping an olive into her mouth, “on top of this, my boyfriend hasn’t set foot in my house in three weeks.”
“Your boyfriend?” Vanessa had confirmed his existence, but almost a week into Georgia’s stay at the villa there was still no sign of him, and Georgia assumed he was out of the picture for good.
Claudia sighed. “I’m forty-two years old. I have three successful restaurants. I’m about to open my fourth. I have two cookbooks, a cooking show. Sergio, he wants to get married.”
“He—Sergio—wants to get married and you don’t?”
“I tell him things are good as they are. We don’t need to get married. But”—Claudia pulled on her drink—“he wants a child.”
“And do you?”
Claudia looked off to the hills. “We tried for a long time, but the injections, the hormones, I can’t do it anymore. Not now, with the restaurant opening. And later… well, later isn’t an option.”
Georgia considered Claudia’s words. It was true. Sure, there was the odd celebrity who gave birth at forty-two, forty-three, but postforty births for regular folk weren’t exactly the norm. Then again, Claudia wasn’t exactly regular folk. “So what will happen with you and Sergio?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t understand that my restaurants are my children. I love him. And I don’t want to lose him, but—” She stopped short and drew her arms across her chest. A few seconds passed before she spoke, and her manner had become matter-of-fact, dispassionate.
“I’m not telling you this to burden you, but so you can see that you’re not the only one with—how do you Americans call it? Issues. You lost your job, your fiancé, but here you have another chance. Stop looking for what you don’t have, and start seeing what you do.”
“I will. I mean, I do.”
“I couldn’t make you head chef. I considered it, but I couldn’t do it. You know what people would say if I had an American running Trattoria Dia? Pazza, they’d say. She’s crazy.” She tapped her skull to demonstrate. “Bruno is a good chef. Not as creative as you, but consistent. You can learn from him. And he won’t hold you back.”
Georgia stared out at the open sky. It was purple and blue, soft, like a growing bruise.
“So we’re okay?” Claudia stood. “We understand each other?”
“We do.” What Georgia understood was that even people who looked as if they had it all had issues of their own. Relationships, children, work—Claudia grappled with the same problems Georgia did. But instead of focusing on what she didn’t have, she focused on what she did. If it worked for Claudia, maybe it would work for Georgia. Or so she hoped.
Claudia patted Georgia’s head like a puppy’s. “Don’t think too much. Overthinking anything—food, love—it spoils it.” Claudia walked across the patio, pulled open the door, and stopped, her hand resting on the handle. “Georgia,” she called out. “I have an idea.”
“Yes?”
“The specials. How about if you run the daily specials?”
“The specials?” A smile spread across Georgia’s face. “Really?”
“Really. Bruno is still head chef, but you’re in charge of specials.” With that, Claudia disappeared into the villa.
Georgia sat underneath the inky sky, her hand wrapped around her drink, slightly dazed by the turn of events. Instead of firing her, Claudia was giving her a chance. Maybe focusing on what she had wouldn’t be so tough after all.
Georgia, Vanessa, and Effie walked single file, their eyes scanning the ground for a bunch of wild arugula, lavender, maybe some late-season morels. They wore chunky rubber boots and wide-brimmed hats pulled low on their foreheads. Neither offered protection from the hot Tuscan sun, and their feet and brows perspired profusely. June had been unseasonably warm and wet, and the black dirt beneath their feet was rich with vegetation.
“What about this?” Effie squeezed the head from a purple coneflower.
“Echinacea?” Georgia asked, turning to look at his upturned palm. “I don’t think so, Ef. Unless Claudia’s fighting a cold we don’t know about.”
“Have you ever tasted echinacea tea?” Vanessa interjected. Her hair was piled under her hat, and a few sweaty tendrils stuck to her forehead. “Or those pills that are supposed to keep you from getting sick?” She stuck out her tongue to catch a bead of sweat rolling toward her mouth.
Georgia had never met anyone, male or female, who sweat more than Vanessa. After five minutes at the flattop, she was as slick as a tenth-round prizefighter.
Effie shrugged and put the coneflower in his front shirt pocket. The trio continued forward, making their way down the dusty dirt road. With their oversize utility pails and rubber boots they looked like fly fishermen off for a little catch-and-release instead of a bunch of cooks foraging for their supper.
Since arriving in San Casciano, the Dia staff had been camping out under the bright lights of a kitchen, first in the villa and with construction finally completed in the restaurant itself. They’d spent the last month creating, shaping, working, reworking, tweaking, and scrapping menu items, which could make even the sharpest chef a bit loopy. As Dia’s grand opening grew nearer, they’d been leaving the kitchen only to sleep, shower, and shave (though, as Effie’s amorphous facial hair attested, shaving was optional). They were a frazzled and pasty lot. Fearing either a mutiny or a collective nervous breakdown, Claudia decided that a sun-drenched scavenger hunt was the pick-me-up they all needed. She split them into two groups and instructed them to get out and find as many viable ingredients as they could for that night’s dinner.
“Have fun!” Claudia called as they wandered outside, squinting beneath the dazzling sky, dazed expressions on their pale faces. With less than seventy-two hours before they’d serve their first customer, no one was worrying about his or her daily dose of vitamin D.
“Hey, guys, wait up,” Effie called to Vanessa and Georgia. He stood over several bunches of silvery sage plants.
“Good one, Ef.” Georgia knelt down next to the plants. She plucked a leaf and rubbed it between her fingers, then held them to her nose. “This sage is gorgeous.”
“Speaking of gorgeous,” Vanessa whispered.
“What’s that, Vee?” Georgia looked up.
Vanessa gestured to a chestnut-haired guy pacing in front of a stone wall forty feet away. Behind him was a sign that read VIGNA DI VOLPE BIANCA in crimson letters superimposed over a drawing of a white fox with sharp teeth. The guy waved one hand in the air and held a cell phone in the other. Wearing close-cut jeans, an untucked white shirt, and chocolate loafers without socks, he had that elegantly disheveled Italian look down.
“Who is he?” Georgia asked.
Effie had finished pillaging the sage and was fingering some fronds sprouting from a gangly yellow plant. He sneaked a peek at the guy. “Gianni. He runs Volpe Bianca, the vineyard next door. They’re doing Dia’s house wines. They’ve got a great Chianti and a good Sylvaner, if you’re inclined to whites.” He wrinkled his nose.
“More importantly, is he single?” Vanessa asked.
“How would Effie know?” Georgia said.
“Actually I do, and, yes, he is. He’s a huge playboy.”
“Really,” Georgia said as noncommittally as she could muster. Since the guy in Florence, the one she so totally and mortifyingly misread, she hadn’t met anyone even remotely interesting. She’d dutifully been following her friends’ advice to give single living a whirl, repeating her Claudia-inspired mantra so frequently she could hear it in her sleep: focus on what you have (Italy, new friends, the experience of a lifetime), forget what you don�
��t (her own restaurant, a husband, a boyfriend, a guy to smooch). But this guy, she thought, was interesting. And really, seriously cute.
Gianni snapped shut his cell and slipped it in his pocket. He turned to the trio and flashed a dazzling smile. “Buon giorno!” he called out.
“Ciao, Gianni,” Effie said, removing his hat and holding his hand in front of his eyes like a visor. It was approaching noon and the sun was beastly hot.
Gianni sauntered over, clearly relishing the attention of his audience. His curls bounced as he walked, and his olive skin gleamed. The two men shook hands and Effie introduced Georgia and Vanessa before wandering off to a purple patch a few yards away that he swore was the coveted and elusive wild asparagus.
“You must be the famous American,” Gianni said, kissing Georgia’s hand. “Enchanted to meet you.”
Georgia smiled. “I don’t know about famous. Infamous, perhaps.”
He chuckled. “Beautiful, a master in the kitchen from what I hear, and a sense of humor too. You American girls truly have it all.”
“Hey, Italian girls aren’t so bad either,” Vanessa chided.
“Italian girls are the best, of course. But there are a few exceptions.” He looked pointedly at Georgia, who felt her face redden under her hat. She’d forgotten about her dopey hat.
