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1
By the middle of November at the Villa Orlandini, I couldn't remember what seventy degrees and sunny looked like. Anywhere. It was as if there were some meteorological dial that fluctuated between Mist and Drizzle and back again. Since Mist became my preferred setting, I started fine-tuning it. There was blanket mist that seemed to hang, pinging mist that had an edge, spritzer mist that was kind of a refreshing aerosol.
I found myself longing for late autumn back in what I increasingly began to refer to as my native land-even though I knew full well that Weehawken, New Jersey, was completely capable of leaving Cortona, Italy, in the mud when it came to the soul-sucking weather of November. At least Cortona, where I had been working for two months designing a cooking school, had inhabitants who either commented cheerfully on the daily drenching or acted like it didn't even register in what was a fatalistic worldview in the first place.
In the last month, certain things had happened at the Villa Orlandini. The final build-out of the commercial kitchen. The decamping of Annamaria Bari, the sous chef and very former love of Chef Orlandini. Annamaria was the sixty-year-old stalwart who kept the villa running both in and out of the kitchen, which was her throne room, until two months ago. Her throwing in the cheesecloth after four decades of assistance would have left a big enough hole even in what had been the old villa kitchen, let alone the new, expanded, fully outfitted, and glorious kitchen I had designed and finally brought to completion. Now it echoed. Every footfall clattered in the sheer absence of Annamaria. Can a thing of beauty be an empty joy forever? What if Michelangelo had painted a chapel ceiling, and nobody came?
Although her absence was keenly felt, nobody mentioned her. Not, at least, in front of Chef. He was pained, he was betrayed, he was off his game on the bocce court. He appeared close to committing the Italian version of hara-kiri, namely, drinking box wine. Personally, I didn't waste any sympathy on him since he had pretty much brought on the decamping of Annamaria Bari himself, what with casting her aside in the kitchen to ingratiate himself with one of our students, who was busy ingratiating herself with him. With all that reckless ingratiating going on, something was about to blow.
It did.
It was Annamaria.
Bad enough she had been charged with murder-somehow, the victim hadn't even been her kitchen rival-that, she could stand. But after forty years as Chef Claudio Orlandini's sous chef, she had some reason to expect it was turning out to be a life appointment. So, when it was all cleared up, she was released from a murder charge, and the clearing up included her own vision on the matter of Chef. Annamaria Bari wasted no time taking herself off to New York to visit her aged mother for an unspecified amount of time.
If Chef had simply broken some pots to vent his simmering feelings of betrayal, I wouldn't have minded. I had a job to do. But what I didn't see coming was just how the absence of Annamaria was bound to come down on my own unsuspecting head. The final stages of the kitchen build-out meant I, Nell Valenti, was on hand a lot. In the kitchen. Riding shotgun on the contractor, making last minute changes, solving a whole crop of unforeseen problems, stepping up my meal prep game for the villa "staff," just to exercise the kind of control I like during that process when things are disturbingly disorganized.
In the four weeks since Annamaria had left, what Chef discovered-and truly, I didn't see it coming, but then I found the man unpredictable-was that he liked having me around. I became his surrogate Annamaria. When I found new ways to hang cookware, he made the kinds of jokes he always made with Annamaria. When I jazzed up leftover dinners, he nearly genuflected the way he did with Annamaria. When I spied this particular train, finally, roaring toward me where I stood quaking on the track, Pete dismissed my concern.
"He'll get over it. He's just enjoying the return of his routine, that's all."
This attitude goes to show you just how dangerously ignorant a child can be about his parent. But Pete had received a boost in the ignorance department: toward the end of October, Pete's picture had made the November cover of the slick bimonthly magazine Bellissimo!, whose target readership is "For Those Who Celebrate Life Arts." By "Life Arts," they mean food, drink, adornment, travel, and transportation. In the three weeks since the magazine hit high-end hair salons the world over, Pierfranco Orlandini had become a celebrity.
He hit every demographic in Bellissimo!'s readership. The cover photo showed him standing just inside the olive grove, leaning against the little Ape, his arms crossed, one hand holding a glass of red wine tantalizingly askew, and travel (not to mention female fantasies) was hinted at in the title of the cover article inside: "Under the Tuscan Son." As for adornment, look no further than the man himself in his tight-fitting jeans and work shirt, squinting sexily into the bright daylight. Behind Pete, the villa property laid out the rest of this Bellissimo! environment, what with the charming tumble-down fountain sporting the seventeenth-century Veronica of the Veil statue, plus the stonework of the looming villa buildings. Lesser and greater splashes of sunlight made what could be viewed by any rational human as shameful decrepitude into, instead, an invitation into a mysterious Tuscan past.
Pete was so busy being Pete in the weeks leading up to Ziti Variations that I was a bit relieved when he announced his manager Vivi had set up business meetings in Rome. This was the first I had heard of his manager Vivi.
"Why do you need a manager, Pete?" I asked him as I towel-dried my hair. "You're an olive grower." I managed a smile all on my own, with no help from a Vivi. "You're not a performer."
Nodding absently, he said with a faraway voice, "You never know."
As I sat down next to him on the bed, I heard the mattress creak. I realized it might have been creaking for days or weeks, maybe even longer, but at that moment, I was hearing it for the very first time. I searched Pete's face, and he slipped an arm over my shoulder.
"Look at your father."
"My father?" Dr. Val Valenti, half shrinkster, half huckster, with a cable TV show for what he himself called "the worried well."
Pete made his case. "He's a psychologist, like I'm an olive grower"-as I listened, I was thinking of how it happens that the term "significant other" can suddenly feel like it's shifting away from the "significant" zone and landing more in the "other" territory. Pete had dreams, it turns out, that had nothing to do with expanding his olive oil production-"first and foremost," he asserted.
"I see." If you're saying the same thing twice, like "first and foremost," then you're really not saying anything at all.
"But look how television has acted like a handmaiden to him, to getting his message across."
"My father has no message"-as he started to interrupt, I lifted my hand-"although his show has plenty." I gave a halfhearted little laugh, and Pete drew me in, but not before I saw on his face a look that made me think-unbelievably-he felt a little sorry for me. My heart flopped. The mattress creaked. In that moment, I decided to stay cheerful and to trust that he'd see through all the nonsense. After all, he had seen through Chef Claudio Orlandini's nonsense years ago.
A dazzling momentary light will find other patsies who celebrate "life arts," and Pete would be back designing the expansion of his olive oil production space. I would ignore my concerns that the article "Under the Tuscan Son" barely mentioned the Villa Orlandini Cooking School, and no mention of girlfriend Nell Valenti.
The night before Pete left for his business meetings in Rome, Chef closed himself in the kitchen, where he spent two hours clattering around, all alone, preparing a special meal for Rosa, Sofia, Pete, and me. Of the four of us, only Rosa viewed this activity as suspicious. She was fond of Chef, but had well-developed crap antennae that, I noticed, mostly twitched when he was within a mile of the rest of us.
It wasn't until he escorted me to my new seat-my heart sank when it turned out to be Annamaria's-at the villa dining table in the chapel of the Veronicans, the medieval order of nuns whose convent the building used to be. Pete, Sofia, and Rosa all sat as Chef poured wine, a lovely and pricey "super Tuscan" he kept for special occasions, and announced the menu.
Beef carpaccio, beef braciole, beef bollito misto . . .
Down the line he went. And I knew we were sunk. I had only been at the villa for two months, but that was long enough to know that when a meal prepared by Chef ran heavy on the beef, he was absolutely up to something. And he was, but he made us wait, there in the plentiful candlelight, lulled by an endless loop of the Three Tenors softly in the background, through the carpaccio course, which I found overseasoned with thyme. When Chef is in the grip of what he believes is a great idea, he loses track of herbs and spices. It was when we were forking a sensational beef braciole that he came out with it.
"Ecco la Bella Nella," he intoned, grabbing my fork hand to his breast as though we were in a death scene, "la mia nuova sous chef!" Spoken with all the weightiness of white smoke drifting upward from the Vatican chimney.
His new sous chef? I choked on my braciole.
He didn't notice.
Pete's eyes widened in alarm, but I couldn't tell whether it was Chef's announcement or my gasping for air, but he probably figured I was a goner either way. Sofia looked pleased for me, murmuring something in Italian along the lines of an employment opportunity of a lifetime. Rosa's eyes narrowed, thinking no doubt of her dethroned sister Annamaria, who might want to resume her role at the villa, and although I wasn't entirely sure of the windup to a lusty malocchio-the dreaded Italian curse-I had seen that same look on Annamaria when a curse was about five minutes away. I managed to catch Rosa's eye as I chugged my wine, conveying my horror at my fate. Rosa knew me well enough to know my look did not refer to detouring a bit of savory rolled beef down my windpipe.
As I caught my breath, I surveyed the table.
Pete's knife and fork were poised midair.
Rosa gripped the edges of the eighteen-foot dining table. Malocchio averted.
Sofia looked like she was picturing Pl‡cido Domingo in his dressing room.
Only Chef himself flounced back into his seat, smacked his lips, flung his napkin onto his lap, and dug in, having solved the problem of the kitchen vacancy in one grand unilateral announcement, shocking in its tone deafness. Had he run the harebrained idea by me? No. Had he consulted the rest of us, a pretty competent and well-meaning group of villa denizens, as to how to remedy the absence of Annamaria? No. His Bella Nella, as he called me, had one foot out of Cortona already, thinking ahead to stateside jobs in cooking school design.
I had already turned down the same offer of a sous chef job from Stealth Chef, who had attended a four-day marinara workshop last month. And the only reason my other foot was still on villa grounds was Pete. The timing was awkward. I could see I needed a job if I stayed on past the completion of the cooking school, but playing sous chef to the mercurial Chef was not what I wanted. But nothing else was being offered, we were nearing the booking for a four-day private party, and there was a gaping absence of kitchen help.
At that moment, I realized a truth about cooking school design. When, exactly, the project ended was really rather up for discussion. Was it officially ended when the space itself was ready? Or was it ended when the program was up and running? If that, then for how long? Two workshops? Three months? Day one, when the first student alighted from the Cucinavan delivering the group to our doorstep? When it came right down to it, just how responsible was the designer-in this case, me-for dragging the school into the zone of established success? Could that possibly be my responsibility? It hadn't been with my other two school designs, so why was it feeling like an issue here at the Villa Orlandini?
Was I taking a more mature view toward the scope of my career?
Or was it just a blind for not wanting to leave Pete?
I said the only sensible thing in the circumstances. I said yes. For me, this felt like conceding a limb or an eye, but Chef nodded, paying me hardly any attention, and asked Pete to pass the bread. So I actually flung my napkin down on the table, rose, and voiced my stipulation in Italian: Chef must actively interview for Annamaria's replacement (here he snorted, Rosa's nostrils flared, and Pete lifted an eyebrow), for which I would give him one month. At that, everyone rolled their eyes. Including me. With a sigh, I knew I'd have to find the replacement myself. Before going to bed, I'd advertise the job on a few online culinary job boards.
While Chef hummed his way back into the kitchen, promising tarts upon his return, Pete moved closer to Rosa and Sofia, and went over the plans for the four-day private party we were calling Ziti Variations, arriving in two days. I stared at the play of candlelight on my wine. Almost enough light, almost enough wine. Since Pete had assumed (I would say "seized," but no matter) control of the day-to-day operations of Villa Orlandini Cooking School, I had stepped back, which pretty much meant I didn't weigh in on anything short of total incineration. But when I heard a lively discussion kick up between Pete and Rosa, not even the promise of a beef tart from Chef could pull me away.
The issue was the sleeping arrangements for Copeland Party of Three turning up by car for Ziti Variations. New York billionaire philanthropist Philip Copeland was treating his eighty-year-old mother, Mimi, and her best friend, Muffy Onderdonk, to the four-day luxury trip to the villa. When I heard him use the word "luxury," I felt the tectonic plates of my internal organs rumble and shift. No good could come of it. The perception was all a matter of where you stood. We were a cooking school with excellent pedigree and adequate accommodations, not a high-end villa hotel with some amusing cooking classes thrown in instead of snorkeling or golf.
