Page 59 of The Sicilian Inheritance

“Wait,” I interrupt. “When did he start speaking?”

“When he left. He could always speak, apparently. He chose not to. He said he didn’t think anyone wanted to hear what he had to say, that he didn’t think anyone was listening to him until he became an important man.”

“That’s sad.”

“Now I think he has more power than the mayor, because he has more money than anyone in town even though he never shows it off.”

We eased onto another road along the top of perilous white cliffs, plunging into the sea. I wanted to tell Luca a story in return, perhaps about Serafina and the diary I found, but then he motioned down to the sea.

“Would you like to go? Lay in the sand for a while? Take a swim? I will not pull you under. I won’t even go into the water. I swear.”

I nodded and he slowed to take a sharp turn to the left, onto a road that wound down closer to the water. We went another mile or so.

“Oooooohhh,” I suddenly exclaimed. “I want to go there.” I pointed in the opposite direction from the sea, at a massive building that I recognized as a Sicilian big-box grocery store called Conad.

“Are you hungry? We can get food from a bar on the beach.”

“No, no. I just want to go in and look around if that’s OK.” How could I have explained it to him? My deep love of grocery stores, especially grocery stores in new places. How they were these fluorescent tinted windows into the everyday lives of the people who lived in a place. I adored strolling through the produce aisles, guessing what was fresh and local and what had to be transported by boat from a continent away. The prepared foods in the deli section told me what busy people bought for a quick meal. A well-manned butcher station showed an appetite for meat in a place. You never saw a smaller butcher station than in a grocery store in Northern California where everyone professed to be more vegan than everyone else. I’d only been out of the country once before this trip, on my honeymoon to Mexico with Jack, but I spent several hours in grocery stores in Cancún and Tulum, reveling at the local delicacies.

“We shall go in,” he agreed. “We could make a picnic for the beach.” He pronounced it “peek-neek.”

“I’d love that. Meats, cheese?”

“Bread? Wine?”

“All of the above.”

Inside the whoosh of the automatic doors, I inhaled the familiar grocery store dry air-conditioning.

“Do you want to find us the snacks?” I asked. “I’m going to look around.”

He nodded, hooked a basket around the crook of his elbow, and was gone. A man who could navigate a grocery store on his own without a shopping list would never know how truly sexy he was.

First, I clocked the different flavors of potato chips: flowered mustard, cherry tomatoes, carbonara, pesto! I snatched up a bag of mint and peperoncino, exited the aisle, and returned for the pesto chips, because you truly did live only once.

I was delighted to see cartons of Mugello milk in the dairy section. It was a legend among small dairy farmers in the States. I had it once when a friend smuggled it back from a trip to Florence. Mugello is made exclusively from cows who live in the rolling green pastures around Tuscany and their claim is that happy cows make happy milk, which I completely believe because I also think happy cows produce fattier and tastier steaks. Mugello was the richest and creamiest liquid I’d ever put into my mouth and I wished I could open one and drink it straight from the bottle right in the store, but I controlled myself.

My sense of control disappeared when I reached the aisle with the fig preserves and pistachio cream. I should have grabbed my own basket. By the time I ran into Luca rounding the corner I was cradling an armful of food like it was a lumpy baby and he let out a laugh reminiscent of a delighted five-year-old riding a merry-go-round for the very first time. He’d upgraded from basket to cart, which was now filled with cheeses, cured meats, two loaves of pane nero di Castelvetrano, and small containers of delicious things like olives and anchovies.

“Are we stocking up for the week?”

“I cannot help myself,” he replied, taking the chips and jars from my arms. “And, it seems, neither can you.”

His refusal to let me pay made it all feel like a very comfortable third date even though we’d never been on a first or a second and he was just doing me a favor with this ride. We chattered about various local delicacies on the way to the car and as we drove across the strip of concrete to the sea. The beach was positioned on a spit of land between two massive granite cliffs that rose above the horizon like the jaws of a wild animal. We carried our food in the cloth bags Luca kept in the trunk and made our way along the narrow trail to the water.

“This is one of the most popular beaches in all of Sicily. You can’t find a patch later in the summer. It is still early in the season and there are no tourists from up north yet so we will be fine,” he told me.

The path led us to an expanse of powdery white sand nestled between the rocks. Jagged cliffs formed a perfect oval of calm sea with languid turquoise waves lapping quietly on the shore. Orange lounge chairs dotted the beach along with bright-red-striped umbrellas. Maybe a dozen families spread out on the chairs and blankets. A group of teenagers had set up camp close to the water, lazily smoking long, skinny cigarettes and lounging in the desultory way of teenagers the world over. A baby howled in demonic despair as its mother left it alone to try to tackle a toddler sibling making a beeline for the waves. The moment we took off our shoes we were approached by a trio of toned young men wearing bright yellow Speedos. They offered us chairs, umbrellas, and a drinks menu. The sand was carpeted in the tiniest perfect pink shells that made a pleasant crack beneath my toes.

“My god, this is the exact opposite of the Jersey Shore,” I mumbled as Luca slipped the Speedo-clad beach boys some cash and followed them to a spot that wasn’t too close but also not too far away from the water. I excused myself to slip into my bikini. In the bathroom, the mirror reminded me that my boobs still sagged from breastfeeding and my belly would never retain muscle tone again. But the rest of my body was strong from the butchering I used to do and I liked most of what I saw in the reflection.

While I was gone, Luca had prepared a feast on a towel splayed out on one of the chairs. Thin slices of dark bread smothered in the fig preserves were topped with salty anchovies. I brought one to my lips and let the fruit juice and briny oil drip generously down my chin. I could feel Luca’s eyes on me, how he liked that I was eating and enjoying the things he’d prepared for me.

He asked me to tell him about myself. His direct questions about my restaurant indicated that he’d already googled me.

I began when I graduated from culinary school and started working in restaurants around Philly. I told him a little about how they exhausted me. How there was so much bullshit and waste and a lack of respect. I left out the fact that the entire culinary school ecosystem and the restaurant world had been a pyramid of misogynies I was always teetering on the top of, trying not to tumble off. I explained how I wanted to be back closer to the source of the food, getting my hands dirty.

“I got a job at the butcher counter at the ShopRite in South Philly and I loved it even though my mom and dad were so pissed that I used my fancy degree to work at the grocery store around the corner. After that I got to apprentice with some incredible butchers on smaller farms here and there. I made less than zero dollars most of the time, but I was happy. And then I got this idea for a whole-animal butcher shop and restaurant in Philadelphia, a place that would only source happy animals, that would make sure to use the entire animal, that would help educate people about where their meat came from. At first, I sold meat out of a trailer at farmers’ markets. I also had a grill and I’d make sandwiches and ribs. Once in a while I even did some fancy steaks. That’s what people loved. Getting a filet mignon in some church parking lot. I finally got the attention of some investors and then I got to open my own place.”

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