The pairing, p.31
The Pairing, page 31
“Ohhh. You think I invite you here for—ah, I forget the word in English.” He turns to his wife. “The sex with three people?”
Valentina helpfully supplies, “Threesome, amore.”
“Threesomamore.”
“No, amore. Threesome.”
“Ah, yes. Threesome.”
Theo and I lock eyes.
Do we tell him?
Of course we don’t fucking tell him.
“We—” I start.
“We weren’t—”
“I wouldn’t say we—”
“I mean, I may have gotten the impression—”
“We just—we—” I’m losing the plot. “Maybe we—”
Theo glances at me, eyes huge. “I guess we might have…”
“We…” Fuck it. “Did. Yes, we did think you wanted to have sex with us.”
After a beat, Theo adds, “Respectfully.”
Orla sits back and takes a hearty swig of wine.
“And we’re so sorry for presuming,” I say. “And to you, Valentina.”
“Oh, no need for that,” Valentina says. “This happens sometimes when he tries to make friends.” She takes Fabrizio’s face in her hands and wobbles it side to side. “Look at this man, who could resist you?”
“I keep telling him he’s got to flirt less with the guests,” Orla says to us, “but I don’t think he knows how to stop.”
“I cannot help that I am so full of love,” Fabrizio says earnestly, “and also so very good-looking. It is my cross to bear.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many people finish this tour thinking they could have slept with Fabrizio if they’d had the opportunity,” Orla goes on. “I reckon we could sell T-shirts. Nearly Fucked Fabs: The European Tour.”
“I am providing memorable customer experiences!”
Orla snorts and says, “Love, it’s alright to like the attention. You’d wear a ring if you didn’t.”
“Yeah, to be fair, I had no idea you were married,” Theo chimes in. “Sorry, again, Valentina.”
“That is my idea, actually,” Valentina says, releasing her husband. “Once, not long after we were married, he forgot his ring at home and came home from the tour with twice as much in tips, so now I tell him to leave it with me. People tip more when they think he is available.”
“Especially the Americans,” Orla adds.
“Oh my God.” I bury my face in my hands. “I’m Americans.”
“Professore, no!” Fabrizio says. “With you, it is not just for tips.”
When I lift my head, Fabrizio is looking at Theo and me with pure, bare sincerity.
“Every tour I enjoy the people, but on some tours, I meet people I think could be my friends,” Fabrizio says. “And I want to bring you to my home and introduce you to my wife because I hope that after this trip is over, we can stay in touch, if you like. I hope we do not become strangers when we leave Palermo.”
There’s something so admirable about his directness. I like you. Stay in my life. It’s perfectly simple, when he says it like that.
I turn to Theo and find them smiling.
“We’d love that,” Theo says.
“Che bella!” Fabrizio says, raising his glass. “Then, let us drink to that! To friendship!”
Valentina adds, “And to love!”
* * *
“I have a question for you,” Fabrizio says to me after we’ve finished the wine.
We’re alone in the kitchen. Theo’s out on the balcony with Orla and Valentina, their laughter occasionally drifting like sea breeze through the half-open door. All the olive brine made us crave something sweet, so I volunteered to make dessert from whatever’s on hand, and now Fabrizio is playing sous while I improvise a gâteau au yaourt—French yogurt cake, the first thing I ever learned how to bake.
I’m wrist-deep in a big mixing bowl, white and sky-blue porcelain passed down from Fabrizio’s parents’ honeymoon in Siena. A delightfully weird sea monster is glazed into its bottom. Fabrizio says it’s supposed to be a dolphin, the symbol of one of Siena’s seventeen contrade, but it has scales, and eyebrows. God bless medieval zoology.
As I massage lemon zest into sugar with my fingertips, I realize I haven’t once stopped to think of the next step. I’m going by heart, making best guesses and dreaming of finishing it with Valentina’s homemade apricot marmalade instead of the traditional lemon glaze. This might be the most fun I’ve had baking since my first week on the job.
“What’s your question?” I ask Fabrizio.
“You are in love with Theo, no?”
I nearly tip the bowl.
“Fabrizio.”
“Oh, they cannot hear,” Fabrizio reassures me with a wave of his whisk. I’ve put him in charge of the dry ingredients. “Too much noise from the street.”
I sigh.
“Is it that obvious?”
“If I am honest, yes. But I hear from Orla.”
“Orla.” This is what I get for assuming all women in safari hats can be trusted.
“You must know we talk about everything. The tour is the same every time, but the people are different. The guests are our entertainment.”
Satisfied with the sugar, I reach for the little glass pot of yogurt Valentina took from the refrigerator and add it in.
“Well, I hope we’ve given you a good show,” I say, genuinely meaning it.
“I think right now it is a tragedy. Tell me, why are you not together? You do not tell Theo how you feel?” He reads my face, then puts down his whisk in despair. “Why, Professore?”
“Because I don’t know if I deserve to.”
I crack the eggs and add vanilla and, as I whisk it together, tell Fabrizio the most simplified version of our story. Our lives together, the Paris mistake, the breakup, my father, how I never let Theo go, what I almost did last night in Rome before I caught myself. When I’m done, I have Fabrizio sprinkle the flour and baking powder and salt into my bowl while I go on mixing.
“I understand,” Fabrizio says. “You love Theo. You do not want for Theo a selfish lover who takes away choices.”
“Yes.”
“And so, you take away the choice to be with you.”
“I—” My hand falters on the whisk. “No, that’s not—”
“This is what it sounds like to me.”
“I—I just want to do the right thing for Theo.”
“Sì, and only you know what this is?” He’s at the pantry, searching for the last ingredient, a neutral-flavored oil. His tone is casual, as if he delivers axis-shifting insights to all his houseguests. “Ah, it is as I fear. Only olive oil. Okay?”
“Uh—sure,” I say, barely hearing him.
He sets the oil beside his mother’s mixing bowl and takes in my expression, then reaches out with easy affection to stroke my cheek.
“When I met Valentina,” he says, “there was another man who loved her. He was the son of a rich man, with a good job close to home, and her mother liked him very much and me not at all, so I believed she will be happier with him. So, when he tells her he loves her, she says to me, ‘Fabrizio, what should I say?’ And I tell her, ‘I want you to be happy.’ And when he asks her to marry him, she says to me, ‘Fabrizio, what should I say?’ And again I tell her, ‘I want you to be happy.’ And the night before her wedding, she comes to my door, and she says to me, ‘Fabrizio, what should I do?’ And I tell her again, ‘I want you to be happy.’ And she says to me, ‘Fabrizio, idiota, all I ever want is to be happy with you.’”
The oven dings, preheated.
“What I mean is, if I say how I feel sooner, Valentina’s father does not have to tell the priest why his daughter is not coming to her wedding,” Fabrizio says with a grin. “It was not for me to protect her from my heart. It was only for me to let her see it and decide if she will keep it.”
He glugs oil into the bowl and takes the whisk from my hand, replacing it with a well-seasoned wooden spoon. I should start folding if I want the batter to come together. But I’m frozen on the spot, overpowered by the plain truth. Maybe it’s not a matter of whether I deserve to tell them. Maybe it’s that they deserve to know.
From the balcony, laughter grows. The door slides open.
“I will say one more thing,” Fabrizio adds in a low voice. “How Valentina looked at me the night before her wedding—this is how Theo looks at you.”
* * *
Near midnight, full of wine and olives and cake, Theo and I call a cab back to the hostel. We make it two blocks before we dissolve into long-delayed, incredulous laughter.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” Theo says, wiping their eyes.
“I think we might be friends for life? With Fabrizio? Somehow?”
“What the fuck.” They smooth a hand down their face. “God, this whole competition was so … stupid. We’re being stupid, aren’t we?”
“It definitely hasn’t been my finest work,” I say. “Sexually, yes, but not intellectually.”
“It’s stupid,” Theo concludes. “And it’s immature. We’re adults.”
“That’s what I keep hearing.”
Theo shakes their head. “But when I first saw you in London, it was like I was an insecure twenty-two-year-old again.”
Ever since they crashed in that first day, I’ve wondered what they felt when they saw me. I didn’t want it to be that, but it’s nice to be reminded that they never hated me. They still thought enough of me to care what I thought of them.
“When I saw you, I thought I was dreaming,” I confess. “I couldn’t possibly get that lucky.”
Theo frowns like they don’t understand.
“Lucky?”
“I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to make things right,” I say. Afraid of giving myself too much credit, I add, “And I don’t know if I have, but—”
“I think so,” Theo cuts me off with a small smile. “I mean, it’s a process, or whatever. But I’m not mad at you anymore. It wasn’t one person’s fault.”
“That’s good,” I say, warmth pooling in my chest. I wish I could dip their fingers inside me and let them feel it. I settle for confessing something else, pouring a little out. “The competition … when you suggested it, I said yes because it was an excuse to keep talking to you. That was all I really wanted. Although I did enjoy the sex.”
“I … I didn’t understand it when we started, but I think I wanted to prove I was over you,” Theo says. “To you, and to myself. And maybe I wanted to make you jealous.”
“Why?”
“Because of this thing I have where I need to win the breakup, which I’ve realized is meaningless,” Theo admits. “It doesn’t leave room for me to care about you as a person. I don’t want to not care. I want you to be happy.”
I watch the traffic lights change in the reflection of Theo’s eyes and think of Fabrizio’s story. All I ever want is to be happy with you.
“I’m happy right now,” I say.
Theo nods. “I’m happy you’re happy.”
I feel it in the pit of my stomach: Fabrizio is right. I have to say it. Theo should know they have a choice.
I love them. I should tell them. I’ll tell them in Palermo.
“So, should we call it off?” I ask. “The competition?”
“Yeah.” Theo nods. “Cut it loose.”
“Okay.” I make a sweeping, pinching gesture in front of my face like I’m pulling some invisible mask away from it, and cast it off into the air. “Done.”
Theo’s brows draw in realization.
“Was that the thing from Face/Off?”
I smile. I knew they’d like it. “That was the thing from Face/Off.”
“God,” they groan, grinning, throwing their head against the headrest. “One of the greats.”
“As we’ve learned, I can eat a peach for hours.”
“Speaking of, let the record to show that I was in the lead and would have won.”
“It’s done, Theo.”
“I’m just! Saying!”
PALERMO (DAY ONE)PAIRS WELL WITH:
Bitter amaro, sfinci di San Giuseppe
The first time I almost tell Theo I love them in Palermo, we’re at Mercato di Ballarò.
“Quanto,” they say, enunciating. “Not quando, that’s when. Quanto is how much.”
“Quanto,” I repeat.
Theo nods. “That’s the only word you need.”
“Quanto?” we ask the leathery old woman grilling stigghiola under a thick cloud of smoke, and she sells us skewers of lamb guts for two euros. Quanto to panelle (crispy chickpea fritters) and quanto to pani ca’ meusa (lamb spleen sandwiches). On and on through the noisy, endless street market, to rickety carts and steaming gingham-covered vats, between pungent bins of fresh-caught fish and produce stands so overfull that artichoke leaves cascade to the ground. We taste everything we can. Somewhere ahead, Pinocchio bobs above the crowd like our merry little North Star.
“I feel so much pressure to pick the best arancini,” I say, eyeing yet another cart selling them. “It’s like, we only get one chance to have our first arancini in Sicily.”
“I think all fried rice balls are precious gifts from God,” Theo says. “Ooh, but those are really big, holy shit— Ciao! Quanto?”
Once, when we first moved in together, I accidentally killed my thyme plant. I’d carefully caramelized onions and figs and made pâte feuilletée from scratch for this one perfect galette, and when I went to snip some sprigs for the finishing touch, I knocked the plant out of the window. While I was mourning my exploded thyme on the sidewalk, Theo was substituting a spoonful of Aleppo pepper flakes in total disregard of my vision. It was improvised on instinct, and it was better.
I love ingredients because they have memories. Stories, histories, personalities. A peach has a memory of every finger that’s touched it. A vanilla bean cures for months. Sometimes when I take a first bite, I try to name every individual ingredient, to find the gardener who pruned the tree that yielded the olives for the oil coating this specific pan in this specific kitchen watched over by one specific cook, who came to work thinking of his mother’s skillet back home.
Theo cares about all of this, but they’re an instincts-first eater. They understand ingredients like old friends who don’t need anything when they come over. They know when to apply their knowledge and remind me when to think less and simply open my mouth. They question me, surprise me, challenge me. Taste is what I do; Theo makes me better at it.
Theo buys an arancini the size of a grapefruit and splits it down the middle, gasping as it reveals a center of spiced yellow rice and dark ragù. When it hits their tongue, they close their eyes and wiggle their shoulders with pleasure.
I almost say it then. It’s so clear in my mind. I’m in love with you.
The man dunking whole octopuses into a huge vat of boiling water bellows at the top of his voice, “Polpo, polpo!” And the moment passes.
* * *
The second time, it almost slips out on a laugh.
We’re on the stairs of Teatro Massimo, the opera house near the city center, digesting between market crawls. Theo counts the steps, finds a spot, then lays their long body down.
“What are you doing?”
“The Godfather Part III,” they say, as if this should be obvious. They speak up into the sky, their head nearly resting on the stone. “This is where Mary dies at the end.”
“How could I forget.” I climb up and gaze down at them. Their sunglasses have slid onto their forehead, and their freckles are on glorious display. “You know, I didn’t think Sofia Coppola was that bad.”
“That’s because you have a soft heart and you liked The Virgin Suicides.”
I offer them my hand, and they give me that familiar look, eyes narrowed, mouth taut at the corners like, If I say one word I’ll kill us both laughing. That look made our homeroom teachers stop assigning seats in alphabetical order to keep us separated.
They take my hand and, instead of letting me pull them up, they pull me down beside them.
Sometimes, when people first meet me now, they think I’m a serious person. They see an art degree drinking espresso in a Parisian kitchen and imagine some Nietzsche-reading gourmand. They don’t know how loud my laugh can be, or how shamelessly I’ll commit to a bit, or the dirty jokes Theo and I taught ourselves in Elvish to use at the Renaissance festival when we were thirteen. It’s a shame, because I like that about myself. My favorite parts of me are the ones that Theo brings out, the ones that grew to match theirs.
It almost comes out as we’re laughing together on the steps. The stones reflect the sun like we reflect each other, and I think, I love you.
Theo says, “Is that guy choking on a sausage?”
I say, “What?”
There is, it turns out, a tourist on the sidewalk choking on a hunk of street meat. We sit up as Blond Calum leaps into action, deploying an expert Heimlich maneuver to completion. The gathered crowd cheers, and the tourist gives Calum a grateful hug. He’s a hero. It’s no longer our moment; it’s Calum’s.
“Damn,” Theo says, as Calum is enveloped by six arms—Dakota’s, Montana’s, Ginger’s. “He’s definitely getting laid tonight.”
* * *
The third time, the words stick in my molars like candied orange peel.
Secreted away in the monastery behind the Chiesa di Santa Caterina is a tiny dolcería selling sweets made from the nuns’ recipes. I learned in Venice that most of Italy’s famous sweets originated in monastery kitchens, crafted by monks and nuns with no indulgences but sugar and flour. These nuns make Fabrizio’s favorite cannoli in Palermo.
In the piazza between the church and the monastero everyone still buzzes with Blond Calum’s heroism. Theo’s helping Montana fix a broken dress strap with safety pins and keeps glancing from Montana to the Calums to Dakota and back, observing everything.
Our eyes meet.
I’m gathering valuable intel, go get cannoli and I’ll tell you what I find.
Inside the dolcería, every confection suggests the simplicity of a kitchen with only a handful of ingredients and the obsession of a thoroughly cloistered nun. Almond paste molded into clamshells and stuffed with cream and apricot jam, or sculpted and painted to make glossy, lifelike figs and pears and peaches. A few extravagant cakes are topped with piped curls of white icing and piles of sugared fruit—a sign declares these TRIONFO DI GOLA—TRIUMPH OF GLUTTONY. God, if I could title my memoir.
