The Pairing(98)

For dinner, Fabrizio takes us to a little osteria in the Spanish Quarter with walls covered in painted majolica tiles. An older woman bursts out of the kitchen to greet us in a white-collared red dress, her dark, wavy hair cropped close to her face and her eyes keen under strong, mobile brows. She is glorious, commanding the room with the brash, unflappable air of a woman who must have been mind-bendingly hot in her prime. Fabrizio lets her kiss him twice on each cheek and introduces her as his mother.

“It takes me many summers with the tour company to convince them,” Fabrizio tells us, “but tonight, we dine in il ristorante di famiglia!”

The menu is a straightforward tour of Neapolitan staples: pappardelle in eight-hour ragù napoletano, pasta alla genovese, braciola, roasted squid, octopus cooked in white wine. For antipasti, Fabrizio’s mother brings out plate after plate of eggplant involtini and fried nuggets of mozzarella. We devour more pasta than any human should ever eat and follow it with hunks of pork and beef stewed in the ragù. It is, unpretentiously and unassumingly, the best meal I’ve had in Italy.

Maybe it’s the atmosphere of a traditional Neapolitan cucina. Maybe it’s Fabrizio’s father sweating under his heavy beard in the kitchen, stirring enormous vats of stew, communicating only by shouts through the kitchen window in the voice of a man who gets incredible deals from the local butcher. Maybe it’s Fabrizio’s mother, who dances in and out to deliver more parmigiana or squeeze Fabrizio’s cheeks or interrogate someone on why they haven’t cleared their plate. Or maybe it’s how happy Theo seems to be here, nearly weeping with laughter at the photos of teenage Fabrizio and his brothers on the walls.

Just as Fabrizio’s mother is beginning to nag him about the length of his hair, my phone sounds a long buzz in my pocket.

It’s probably Cora, forgetting I’m in Italy and calling to chat about what she’s been reading, or Maxine with a recipe question that’s easier to explain over the phone. But neither of their names are on the incoming call.

I slip away from the table and out the front door.

“Paloma?” I answer.

“Bonsoir, mon petit américain,” says Paloma’s crisp voice over the line. “?a va? Where are you?”

“I’m good,” I say. “I’m in Naples.”

“Ah, Napoli.” Paloma sighs. “Beautiful city. Excellent fish. Are you eating well?”

“So well,” I say, rubbing my chest where I can feel the threat of impending heartburn. “Maybe too well.”

“As you should,” Paloma says. “And your Theo?”

I press my shoulders to the restaurant’s brick wall and lean my head back.

“My Theo is as brilliant as ever.”

“Have you confessed your love yet?”

I cover the phone with my hand, like somehow Theo could overhear from all the way inside.

“Paloma, not that I’m not happy to hear from you, but is there a reason you called?”

“Yes, there is,” Paloma says. “You remember the patisserie under me? The one with the macarons, and the old woman?”

“I do.”

“Every Thursday I bring her dinner with fresh fish, so she likes me, and she tells me her secrets. Usually it is about Fran?ois across the road—she thinks he is very handsome—but tonight it was about the patisserie. She wants to close next year.”

“Oh, no,” I say, still unsure why Paloma felt she needed to call with this news.

“And,” she goes on, “she wants to sell it. She wants to find a young patissier who will do something nice with it and stay for a long time, the way she did. She asked if I knew anyone, and right away I thought of you.”

“Oh,” I say. “Oh, wow.”

“And?” she prompts. “What do you think?”

It sounds like a dream. The kind of gorgeous, sugar-spun dream that is never as easy as it feels in my head. The kind of dream I was chasing when I lost Theo, the kind my kitchen in Paris wrung out of me.

“That’s so kind of you, Paloma,” I say, “but I have a job, remember?”

“Yes, the job you hate.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“But you don’t like it.”

“That doesn’t mean I can just quit.”

“Why not?”

“Because I put all this time into it,” I say. “It’s what I worked for.” It’s what I lost Theo for.

Paloma laughs over the line, a short, sarcastic grunt.

“Crois-moi,” she says, “?a ne veut rien dire, si cela ne te rend pas heureux.” That doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t make you happy.

I find myself without an answer to that.

The door of the restaurant opens, and people filter outside in knots of laughter and tipsy conversation, each flushed with the intoxicating joy of a good, simple meal prepared by someone who loves what they’re cooking. I can hear Fabrizio’s parents inside, making jokes with the cooks and foisting boxes of leftovers on the last guests. It seems like a good life. A messy and abundant life, possible because they share it with each other.

“Think about it,” Paloma says.

Theo finds me as they exit, all curious eyebrows and Aglianico lips, and I rush out a goodbye to Paloma and hang up.