Page 90 of The Pairing

Evening sun lights Theo from behind as they lean back in their chair. I watch them laugh at Dakota, who discovers that a spritz is the only way to get a full glass of ice in Italy and orders three more in rapid succession. They take notes on flavors, push their fingers through their hair, recline into their typical legs-akimbo Theo posture, take out a bandana and tie it around their neck. When I first moved to the US, I thought Theo might have been one of those cowboys from the American books my dad bought me.

Cowboys, flowers. David, Venus, Theo.

I don’t know how I didn’t guess it sooner. I certainly felt it long before Theo put a word to it. How could Theo not have always had everything I want? Everything I’m most attracted to, every aspect of masculine and feminine I like best. I don’t know if I love Theo because I’m queer or if I’m queer because I love Theo, but I know there’s nothing I need that Theo doesn’t have. If I’m a man in constant pursuit of decadence, Theo is the ultimate. The most of everything.

I wonder, if Theo had never been on their own, would they have ever discovered this? Or did safety and familiarity keep them smaller? Would there have always been a limit to how much they would know of themself, how much of them I would get to know?

What tragedy that would have been, a comfortable, diminishing love.

I’ve always agreed with the French that a meal should begin with sweetness, but I’m beginning to wonder if the Italians have it right—if, sometimes, discovery wants bitterness first.

“Theeee-oh, Theeee-oh, Theee-oh!”

It was the Calums that got the chant started, but our entire table has joined in, banging their fists until plates rattle. Theo stands, flushed but clearly pleased with the attention.

“Fine, I’ll do it!”

Fabrizio passes down three empty glasses, and Theo turns away while I pour a different red wine into each. When I’m finished, they sit back down, and everyone leans in to watch.

Theo picks up the first glass and swirls the wine.

“Oh, baby. Deep ruby in color, fading to a garnet rim. Brilliant in the light. Already thinking Sangiovese is the main grape here, and like, duh, Tuscany.” They bring the glass to their nose and take a whiff. “Whew. Okay, off the rip, lots of dark fruit. Black cherry for sure. Blackberry, maybe pomegranate. Hold on.” They tip the glass to their lips and close their eyes to taste. “Mm. She’s got a lot going on. Full-bodied and intense, and those fruits are preserved. Bit of balsamic, bit of oregano, bit of leather. A lot of tannins, but they’re gentle, like they’ve had a long time to think about it. Long finish. Sort of like making out with a sexy nun. Gotta be Brunello, Riserva. Around ten years. Slightly candied, actually, which makes it a warm vintage, and 2014 was a cooler year, so maybe 2015?”

“2016,” I read off the bottle, jaw slack in astonishment. “But yes, you got it.”

Montana gasps delightedly, and our table cheers. Ginger Calum puts his fingers in his mouth and whistles. Theo takes a silly little bow.

They taste the other two and correctly identify a Chianti Classico and a Carmignano, each time to riotous applause. A ridiculous balloon of pride swells in me. I spent so long wanting Theo to throw themself into something the way I knew they could, and here they are, being great.

I once read a line inMrs. Dallowaythat stuck with me because of how well it described Theo’s place in my life. Clarissa sees Sally in her pink dinner frock and, after listing every other visitor and activity in the house, thinks,All this was only a background for Sally.To me, Theo is the eternal foreground. I put them at the center of every room. It’s gratifying when the room agrees.

Trattoria Sostanza is ours for the night, booked out for an endless Italian dinner. The restaurant barely fits our entire tour group, but that only adds to the experience. Bottles of wine and water flow from hand to hand, plates of oil and herbs from table to table, baskets of bread passed around like the collection at Sunday mass. My back is pressed to Stig’s back like we’re two travelers from the north crammed into the same carriage on a Grand Tour. Fabrizio is leaning over to the next table, shouting to be heard as he explains the courses of an Italian meal.“That is the beauty, in Italy you do not have to choose pasta or meat! You have pasta for primi, meat for secondi!”

For primi, we have hand-pinched tortellini simmered in butter and rough-cut pasta in a perfectly simple meat sauce, and then comes secondi, when we truly feast. Fabrizio expounds on the subtleties of traditional Tuscan cookery that make a country dish like bistecca alla fiorentina taste so complex: how the charcoal embers must be stoked to the exact right temperature, hot enough to achieve a fragrant crust when the beef is laid close to it for a few short minutes, but not so hot that it cooks out the marbled, ruby-red center. Meanwhile, a skillet of breaded chicken fried in a centimeter of pure, golden butter requires no explanation—it’s just fucking delicious.

But as our plates are cleared for dolci, I think the dish that hassurprised me most is the tortino di carciofi—eggs swirled in a pan around a cluster of fried artichokes to make a puffy, perfectly round omelet.

“Fabrizio,” I say, “do you know the story of Caravaggio and the artichokes?”

He doesn’t, so I tell him how Caravaggio, a hotheaded young bisexual street brawler and one of the most masterful Italian painters in history, went to dinner with friends at an osteria in Rome. The waiter brought him a dish of artichokes, some cooked in oil and some in butter, and when Caravaggio asked which was which, the waiter told him to sniff them and find out.

“And so Caravaggio—”

A hand slides into my lap, and my thoughts skid to a halt.

Beside me, Theo innocently sips their wine, as if their other hand isn’t on the inseam of my shorts under the tablecloth.

“Go on,” Fabrizio says, “what does Caravaggio do?”

“Yeah, Kit,” Theo says, smiling. Their hand slips higher. “Go on.”

I shoot Theo a pleading look, undermined by the way my legs reflexively spread under the table.

“So Caravaggio’s furious, and he grabs the artichokes, and hhh—” The word evaporates as Theo fully palms me through my shorts. I play it off as a cough, reach for my glass. “He throws the whole dish at the waiter’s face.”

“No!” Fabrizio gasps.

“Hits him right in the mustache.”

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