Carmela tried to rein in her confused frown before it creased her forehead, and failed. Franco never cared about her English. To him it seemed little more than a puzzling pastime. Now he was peddling her basic knowledge of it?
“We’ve heard they’re about to start looking for land,” a second man, shorter and rounder than his colleagues, piped in. “They’ve got some rockets they want to shoot up into the sky. My cousin’s son works at the base sometimes. People are talking. They’re going to fly planes and play war games. Plenty of dollars to give us landowners in return.”
Carmela opened her mouth, hoping something half intelligent might come out, but before she could speak, the last man, the silent of the three, wrapped his fingers around the plate loaded with cubed cheese and sliced smoked lard. He lifted it and offered it to her. A lazy fly heaved itself off the side of one of the rinds and landed on his knuckle, long enough for Carmela to note the black under his nail.
“Thank you, gentlemen, it all sounds very interesting, but if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been sent on an errand to Bar Svizzero for my godmother, and I really ought to get along.”
“Piacere,” the first man said, holding out his thick hand. Carmela shook it, out of courtesy, wishing she didn’t feel that it bound her to him in some way. Then she turned to Franco and kissed each cheek. His eyes drifted past her on the second kiss. She had disappointed him. These men must be more powerful than she had guessed. It would have been polite to partake in some food at least. A sweaty piece of cheese or a tiny nibble of greasy lard wouldn’t have been such a great sacrifice in order to place Franco in a favorable light.
Bar Svizzero became a welcome oasis on the other side of the piazza. Carmela headed straight for it—the poster would have to wait till after work. A couple of ladies eating dainty balls of gelato out of glass cups looked up and gave her a polite nod, then readjusted their hats. She smiled back, having the vague sense they had been into Yolanda’s several times for small alterations. What must it be like to have the biggest choices in your day be which hat to wear or whether to try the local honeyed nougat or toasted hazelnut gelato?
Franco was holding court at Bar Nazionale, where men played cards and smoked. He felt most comfortable doing his business there. Bar Svizzero, in contrast, prided itself on attracting the wealthier female clientele—wives of traveling merchants, landowners, or fallen aristocrats with Savoyard money left over from the days when Sardinia was its own kingdom. The owner, Antonio, had once spent a summer in Switzerland with a distant aunt. On his return he had changed his bar’s name, ordered an ornate counter from Turin, and doubled his profits. The valley wasn’t called Logudoro for nothing, after all.
“Buon giorno, Carme’.” Antonio smiled as Carmela entered the cool of his bar. The low vaulted ceilings gave the impression the room had been chiseled into the rock.
“Caffè?” he offered. His crisp white jacket was spot free even though he was the only one manning his barely tamed, highly polished chrome espresso machine.
“No, Anto’, I’ll take a spremuta, per piacere. And some magnesia.”
“Wedding jitters already?”
Carmela smirked. He was almost convinced.
“My sister was the same,” he said, reaching for three lemons from the basket on top of the empty glass display cabinet where Antonio kept the fresh breakfast pastries. The scent of vanilla sugar still powdered the air, alongside the toasted nutty caramel from the morning’s roaring espresso trade.
“Lost ten kilos before the big day,” he said.
“She was a beautiful bride, Antonio.”
“Thanks to you. No one else could have made her look half her width and twice her height!” He sliced the fruit in half on a pristine marble chopping board and twisted the lemons on a glass juicer. “Mother was lucky to get her married off when she did.”
The fresh smell of citrus had the desired effect.
“There you are, Signorina.” He poured the juice into a flute, then stirred two generous spoonfuls of sugar into it with a long, slim metal spoon, and finally topped it with sparkling water and a tiny spiral of rind. “I’ll run next door for some more magnesia. I’m clean out.” With that he parted the bead curtain. Carmela watched them tip-tap to stillness.
She took a sip of spremuta and her tongue tingled sour and sweet. She emptied the flute and glanced over the rainbow of cordials behind the counter. Their labels fascinated her, intricate works of art, embellished in gold, with elaborate, decorative lettering. All that pomp and polish for alcohol. It was beautiful, maybe a little frivolous? Across the piazza, men were pouring wine out of plain green bottles. Would her father’s gruff concoctions taste better if they were decanted into one of these bottles?
From where she sat, she could just about see Franco’s tiny head through Antonio’s delicate lace curtains. She watched him holding court. She and her fiancé existed in different, yet parallel, worlds. What of it? This was a good thing. A strong couple was not a marriage of similarities. Would she have wanted Franco to sit by her and admire Antonio’s collection of liquor? Discuss her morning or Mrs. Curwin’s appointment later that day? Did he wish Carmela had stayed by his side for the rest of that meeting with those three shirts? Even though the answer to all of the questions starting to swirl in her mind was a resounding no, Carmela took more than a moment to shake off the brief wave of uncertainty that swelled. She berated herself for letting a careless faux pas affect her longer than necessary. She watched Franco reach out his hands to the men. He looked happy, as did they. What harm she thought she may have done was already forgotten. Her etiquette was not going to clinch or lose a deal after all. There was comfort in that, at least. And plenty of time to hone the art of being a wife to one of the most influential men in town.
Dressing the many women who came through Yolanda’s doors was the exaltation of God-given gifts. To some, it was deemed simple, sinful vanity. But to Carmela, the presentation of anything revealed the respect a person had for it. A dirty plate with cheese and lard slapped on in haste offered less physical and spiritual nourishment than a simple basket laid with a few homemade bread knots upon a starched square of linen. One revealed and revered the time and effort of preparation, where the other displayed a scant respect. A perfectly cut skirt, suit, or wedding gown exulted the wearer and gave permission for the onlooker to feel uplifted too. There had to be power and purpose in beauty. Why else was the earth strewn with breathtaking sights? What could be the purpose of the penetrating azure of her island’s sea, the fire red of May’s poppies, the intoxicating fuchsia of a prickly pear’s fruit, if not to exhilarate a soul?
Antonio prided himself on importing obscure concoctions from far corners of the continent, especially Paris. Though so far, by the look of the unopened bottle, no one in Simius had acquired a taste for violet liqueur. Did Antonio’s love of all things foreign reveal a worldly attitude? His curiosity about life beyond the parameters of their small town was something she respected. No one gossiped about the fact that he still lived with his mother. If he had been a woman, he would have been labeled a spinster, an unwanted, an unlovable. But as a man in his early forties, he had simply earned a mixture of respect and pity from his peers, having sacrificed his own life to take care of his mamma.
At the end of the counter was a copy of Vogue that Antonio kept on display. He said it attracted the ladies who had an eye for fashion and the purse to match. Some such must have been leafing through it, because it was folded open at a beach spread. Carmela thought about her grandmother’s expression if she imagined any of her grandchildren at the beach dressed in short puffy shorts, pulled in tight at the waist and attached to a bodice that left little to the imagination. The model in the shoot played with a multicolored paper balloon that floated just beyond the tips of her fingers. Carmela was moved by the buoyancy of the moment that the photographer captured.
She picked up the magazine and turned its pages, convincing herself it was preparation for Mrs. Curwin’s appointment, even though no doubt she would arrive, as always, with a small shipment of dog-eared magazines to show the outfits she adored. Carmela