Lost in Rome

by Cindy Callaghan

  Rico said, “Those are Maria’s favorite three words to hear.” His name and appearance were blatantly Italian—dark hair, skin, and eyes—but he had no accent. It seemed that Aunt Maria had somehow attracted Americans.

  Aunt Maria said to everyone, “Mangia.” Then she called, “Meataball! Psst! Psst!”

  The cat ran in and sat on his haunches next to a plate of fettuccini that Aunt Maria had cut up and put on the floor for him.

  “It’s his favorite,” AJ said to me.

  Then she dished out a generous bowl of pasta for each of us. My stomach growled at the squishy sound of the white cream sauce hitting the plate. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.

  “Did you work hard today?” Aunt Maria asked Gianna.

  Gianna said, “Jane and Rico don’t stop. Not even for lunch.”

  Aunt Maria said, “Then you eat a big dinner, like AJ.”

  AJ twirled pasta around his fork, making sure no noodle went astray. Then he crammed the forkful into his mouth. “You can always count on me to be hungry,” he said through the mouthful of pasta.

  We didn’t talk for a few minutes while we all took the edge off our hunger. Then I asked, “What happened with Eduardo Macelli today?”

  Gianna asked, “Who’s that?”

  Aunt Maria said, “He is a man from the bank.”

  “Did he agree to give you an extension?” Jane asked.

  “We are a . . . a bit behind in some of our payments since Pizzeria de Roma reopened,” Aunt Maria explained. “But Eduardo Macelli is going to give me an extra month. This is good.”

  “That’s great news,” Jane said. She held up her Coke. “Salute!” she said.

  We all repeated, “Salute!”

  “What changed his mind?” Jane asked.

  “He loved the food and thought there was a lot of customers,” Aunt Maria said. Then she asked, “What happened? Why so many customers today?”

  I explained about the samples and the stories on the square. “It seems they like good food, a good story, and a traditional Italian experience. You can give them that,” I said.

  You can give them more, but you put the kibosh on matchmaking.

  “You know,” I said, looking around the restaurant. “The place could use a little refresh.”

  “Refresh?” Aunt Maria asked.

  Gianna clapped her hands. “Oh, I’m so good at refreshing. We can go with colors like red wine and espresso brown. And we can get fresh plants and cut flowers and pretty little candles on the tables. Plus, it will give me something to do while I’m here, since I’m not working in the shop.”

  Aunt Maria looked around. “Maybe the place does need a—what you call it?—refresh.”

  Gianna said, “It’s kind of a big job. We’re gonna need some help.”

  “No worries.” Rico leaned back in his chair. “I know a few guys who can come over.” He crossed his bruised legs under the pink pouffy skirt.

  “I’ll help too,” I volunteered.

  AJ’s mouth was full again, so he raised his hand, indicating he would help too.

  Gianna walked around, explaining her vision for Amore Pizzeria’s face-lift. “A mirror could go here, and I can dress up all these frames and rehang them.”

  “I have any dress-up supply you could ever need,” Jane offered.

  “And I never travel without my bling kit,” Gianna said. “Then we can get a few trees, maybe a ficus, and wrap them in little white lights—a very classy and romantic feel.”

  Romance. That was exactly the direction I wanted to go. But noooooooo.

  “I’ll make a new curtain,” Jane added.

  “Oh, and get this: when it gets dark, we can line both sides of the street with LUMINARIES!” Gianna squealed. “Oh, I love, love, love luminaries.”

  Aunt Maria said, “This sounds all very good, but like a lot of money.”

  Rico said, “I know a guy who owns a florist shop. He owes me a favor. He can bring the stuff you need.”

  “Okay. Is a good idea. A little refresh,” Aunt Maria relented. “Tomorrow is Wednesday and we no open. This is the day I go around Rome for my ingredients and make sauce. Can you do it in one day?”

  “Totes,” Gianna promised. “Except for the walls. It could take some time to get that paint off the brick. We can do that at night. The rest is easy peasy.”

  “ ‘Totes’?” Aunt Maria looked confused. “ ‘Peasy’?”

  10

  The next morning I found Gianna in the pizzeria early. She studied the current decor with a tilted head and occasionally wrote things on a clipboard. She would DIY this place from falling apart to fabulous.

  “Aloha!” Rico said, walking through the back door. No skirt today. Ripped jeans and worn black basketball high-tops.

  Aloha? Random.

  Rico led three people who I guess were his “guys.” Their tool belts told me they were ready to work. He said, “These are my friends.” I gave them a wave. “They’re good at hammering and stuff.”

  “I’m sure Gi has stuff to hammer,” I said. “I’ll head upstairs to see if I can help Jane with curtains, but I’m not really the sewing type.”

  “Okay, but promise me one thing.” He looked very serious.

  “What?”

  “Please help her choose the colors. She is an amazing designer, but her fabric selecting? Ugh!” He covered his face.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, but the truth was that I was kind of “ugh” myself.

  • • •

  Jane dashed from one side of the apartment to the other, throwing around balls of yarn, yards of fabrics, spools of thread, and measuring tape. I had to duck or a flying sketch pad would’ve clocked me right in the noggin.

  “Redecorating Amore Pizzeria is a great idea, Lucy,” Jane said excitedly without looking up from her searching.

  If she thought that was good, she hadn’t heard my best idea of all. “Thanks.”

  “Here it is.” She pulled a key ring with swatches of fabric from under a stack of fashion magazines and flipped through them. “Oh, I can’t decide. I like this one and this one and this one. And this one is pretty.” She stared at them. “Hmmm . . . What do you think?”

  “Um, I’m really not great at this stuff.” I remembered what Rico had said. “Maybe we should call for backup.”

  She nodded and stomped on the floor four times.

  Bam—bam—bam—bam.

  “We’ll ask Rico,” she said. “He has a great eye for color.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe because he’s a boy.”

  “True, but he’s a boy with an eye for fashion,” she said. “A good eye too. I like that he is confident enough to be this tough guy who likes typical boy stuff, but this stuff too.”

  I nodded. That was pretty cool.

  I was walking around the apartment/sewing studio waiting for Rico, when I heard a sound coming from downstairs. I walked toward it. It floated up from a vent. The same way I had heard what was happening up here when I was in the kitchen, I could hear people downstairs.

  It was Gianna. She said, “What are you doing here? My aunt would flip out if she knew.”

  The only person I could imagine she would say that to was Lorenzo from Pizzeria de Roma. He was here early. I didn’t like that Lorenzo was in Amore’s kitchen. I had just made up that stuff about the recipe being locked in a safe. For all I knew, it was written on a Post-it or sitting on a counter somewhere.

  I heard Lorenzo say, “I wanted to tell you something.”

  I waved to Jane. “Come here. Listen,” I whispered.

  She bent toward the vent.

  “Really, you can’t be in the shop,” Gianna said. “Maybe we can go out for a walk or something?”

  Lorenzo asked, “Can I have a Coke?”

  Rico walked into the apartment to find Jane and me crouched on the floor. “Looks like fun,” he said.

  We both shushed him.

>   “Jeez,” he said, and bent down next to us.

  Lorenzo was saying, “I am very thirsty.”

  Gianna said, “Fine. I’ll get you some Coke, but then you have to leave.”

  “Sì. That is good.”

  I could hear Gianna’s wooden sandals clopping on the floor as she left the kitchen and walked to the bar area, where the soda was kept in a refrigerator. I wished I could see what Lorenzo was doing.

  Gianna and her shoes came back in. “Here you go.”

  “Grazie,” he said. Then he exclaimed, “Whoa! That is a grande cat.”

  “Lots of him to love,” Gianna said, and I imagined her scratching Meataball’s ears.

  Then I guess Lorenzo had sipped his soda, because he said, “Oh! It is great. And you know what else is great? You. You look very pretty today. I love your hair.”

  “Thank you,” Gianna said. She was probably twirling a lock of it and blushing.

  Rico whispered, “He’s smooth.”

  “Shhh!” we snapped at him.

  “What was that?” we heard Lorenzo ask downstairs. Had he heard us?

  “Some friends who are helping me redecorate,” Gianna said.

  “What are you redecorating?” Lorenzo asked.

  “The dining room,” Gianna said. “Did you have something to tell me?”

  “Sì, I came to tell you that I would like to see you again,” Lorenzo said. “I want to show you Rome. Can I come get you later?”

  “I’d like to see you, too,” Gianna said. “Maybe I can sneak out for a while. Text me.”

  We heard the back door of the restaurant close.

  Rico laughed, “She’s a rebel, defying your aunt Maria. Not many people do that.”

  But if she had, maybe I could too. . . .

  “Love makes people do crazy things,” Jane pointed out.

  “They just met,” Rico argued. “How could it be love?”

  “You don’t believe in love at first sight?” I asked.

  “I think maybe there is a spark or something at first sight,” he said. “But—”

  “Shh,” I said, because I heard another sound. Noises came from downstairs: boxes sliding on the floor, the walk-in refrigerator opening and closing, and the whistling of a cheerful tune.

  “It’s just the deliveryman,” Rico said. “He’s here, like, every day.”

  Rico took his messenger-style bag, which hung diagonally across his chest, and tossed it into a chair. “You banged on the floor. What did you need?”

  Jane held up the four swatches.

  “Curtains?” he asked.

  Jane nodded.

  “This one.” He chose the plainest of the three. “It’ll be perfect.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That was fast.”

  He shrugged. “I have an eye. Not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse.”

  “You mean because fashion and sewing are usually for girls?”

  “No. That doesn’t bother me. I meant because everyone always wants my fashion advice. I get lots of calls and texts from guys who want me to help them pick out clothes for a job interview or a date.”

  “Do you help them?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I have a gift, and it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t use it to help people who need me,” he said. “But I get something too. Then I can call and ask them for favors. It’s not a bad deal.”

  “I guess that explains all the guys you know.”

  “Yep.”

  He picked up the worn leather bag, tossed it over his shoulder, and said, “And for the record, fashion isn’t just for girls.”

  “Oh. Sorry. You’re right.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” His cell phone rang. He answered it, and after a few one-word responses, he said, “I gotta go for a while, but I’ll be back.”

  “A fashion emergency?”

  “My mom. I left without cleaning my room,” he said. “She gets mad about stuff like that.” He shrugged.

  “Mine gets mad about that too,” I said.

  As he left, I got another weird feeling, like I’d seen him do that shrug before. But I couldn’t have seen him do that before—I’d just met him yesterday.

  Weird.

  11

  It was late in the day and time to show Aunt Maria what we’d done with the dining room.

  She’d finished making sauce a few hours earlier and had gone to her apartment for a nap. AJ, Rico, Gianna, and I were sweeping the tile floor when Jane pushed the door open with her butt.

  One of Jane’s hands covered Aunt Maria’s eyes while the other guided her to sit on a stool. Jane held the door open with her foot for an extra second, allowing Meataball to waddle in behind them.

  “I found her baking at the apartment,” Jane said. A basket of something steamy hung from her wrist.

  “Thank goodness,” AJ said. “I’m starving.”

  “I cannot wait to see what you kids have done.” Aunt Maria giggled.

  Gianna said, “One, two, three, TA-DA!”

  Jane moved her hand.

  “Mamma mia!” Aunt Maria cried. “It look so lovely. How did you do all of this so fast?” She wiped away a tear.

  “Rico’s friends were very helpful,” Gianna explained. She started the tour with the biggest wall. “The pictures are in their same frames, but I added an antique finish, so they all match.” They’d been hung in a lovely pattern around a huge mirror whose frame was also antiqued. The mirror made the whole dining room look bigger and brighter.

  Gianna continued, “Each table has fresh-cut flowers. The tablecloths, which Rico hemmed, match the curtains.” To Rico and Jane she said, “Thank you.”

  “What can I say?” Rico sipped espresso from a little white mug. He had proven that he was as good with a hammer as he was with a sewing machine—definitely an interesting combination for a teenage boy.

  “The seats have been re-covered with black fabric.” Gianna held one up to show everyone. “Tonight while we’re all sleeping, someone is coming to scrape the paint off the brick. That will really look great, but it might take several nights.”

  “Perfetto!” Aunt Maria gasped. “Since Ferdinando passed away, I have not been keeping up on these things.”

  “The menus need updating too,” Gianna said. “I’ll work on that tomorrow.”

  “Can I help?” I asked Gianna. “I have a few ideas for some new pizzas—with a little American inspiration, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure,” Gianna agreed. “You can help me before I show it to Aunt Maria for her approval.”

  Aunt Maria gave Gianna the first big hug, then the rest of us. “You must all be very tired. Why don’t you get some rest?” She pulled a napkin away from the contents of her basket and a puff of sugary sweetness floated upward, covering the smell of cleaning products. “Not without a little food in your stomachs. Something that will stick to your ribs.”

  Let me tell you about a warm sfogliatella pastry. It’s amazing with a side order of WOW.

  “Oh yeah!” Rico grabbed a pastry and left the restaurant. I watched him through the front window as he rode away on his bike. Rico was an interesting guy. Probably pepperoni or onion. It was hard to peg. I wished I could figure out who he reminded me of. Someone—but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I was almost too tired to eat. Almost. So I took a pastry and walked out the front door, practically bumping into a woman on my way.

  “Oh, pardon. So sorry.” It was the French woman from yesterday, a.k.a. Bianca with asparagus and burrata mozzarella cheese.

  Gianna said, “We’re closed on Wednesdays.”

  “Oui. I know. I came to talk”—she gestured toward me—“to you.”

  “Huh? Me? Why?” I asked, confused.

  “You mixed up my lunch check yesterday with Angelo’s.” She sighed when she said his name.

  “Angelo?”

  “The man at the other table.” That must be the man who’d ordered the margarita pizza. “We walked around Rome all afternoon. We have so
much in common,” she said. “I just wanted to say thank you. So, merci!”

  Gianna whispered to me, “You didn’t?”

  “Just a little,” I whispered back. “She was the only one. Aunt Maria saw and told me, ‘No mess with the love.’ ” I imitated Aunt Maria.

  The woman heard me. “Mess with love?” she asked.

  “You see, I think maybe I can make love matches based on what pizza people order,” I explained. “No biggie. But I tried it on you and Angelo.”

  “Not maybe. You can!” she squealed. “You’re a matchmaker? C’est fantastique!” She held out her hand. “I am Murielle duPluie. I used to be quite a popular TV news reporter in Paris. Now I work for the Rome newspaper. All of Rome needs to know about this. I will come back tomorrow with a photographer.” She looked out into the open air and moved her hand along words that weren’t there. “Pizzeria Matchmaker.”

  Gianna and I stared at the imaginary letters.

  “You may get famous,” Murielle duPluie said. “And Amore Pizzeria, too!” She skipped down the alley. I looked at it for a minute and imagined what it would look like lined with luminaries on either side.

  “Wait,” Gianna called out after her, but Murielle duPluie had already lifted her cell phone to her ear. Gianna said to me, “That’s not good.”

  “It’s not good; it’s great! Maybe I am a”—I looked out into the open air and moved my hand along words that weren’t there—“Pizzeria Matchmaker! Just think, people could get awesome food and meet the love of their life. What could be better?” Without waiting for an answer, I said, “If Amore Pizzeria is famous, it’ll make lots of money and stay in business. That’s the best thing we can do for Aunt Maria.”

  “I don’t know, Lucy. You know what Aunt Maria said. I don’t think she’ll go for it.”

  “She wouldn’t if she knew.”

  “You’re not gonna tell her?” Gianna asked. “I think she’ll notice a reporter and photographer in her restaurant.”

  “Not if we get her out for a few hours.”

  “How are we gonna do that?” Gianna asked.

  “I have an idea.”

  Gianna grinned. “You always do.”