Read Online Seven Seasons in Siena by Robert Rodi - Free Book Online

at least safe from that mortification.
    â€œRob!”
calls a voice from across the kitchen, shattering even this small comfort.
    I turn, and there at the doorway stand Dario and Rachel. They look crisp, cool, and collected, as though they’ve just stepped out of the shower and into freshly dry-cleaned clothes. Rachel even carries a jacket over one arm. I glare at them in horror.
    I manage to smile and give them a wave, creating a shimmering mist along the arc of my arm.
    â€œHow’s it going?” Dario calls out.
    â€œGreat!” I say, willing him not to come any closer.
    â€œWe’re just on our way to dinner,” he says.
    I wrinkle my brow in confusion. “You’re not eating here?”
    â€œNo,” he says, grinning. “Someplace quieter.”
    I blink. Twice. And I feel a twinge of unaccountable irritation. He got me this job from Hell, and now he’s bolting? All because he’d rather conduct his romance in a place where there aren’t eighteen hundred people who all know him by name?
    But this flash of annoyance passes as quickly as it came. I remind myself that this isn’t about me; or rather it is, but it’s about the extent to which I can submit, submerge, sublimate—give myself over to a higher cause, become a small part of something grander and greater.
    Accordingly I give Rachel a wink and tell her to have a good time, and she beams me a dazzling smile in return. And then she and Dario—apparitions of the outside world, a place of caressing breezes and billowing hair to which I hope someday to return—go on their way and leave me to discover how much more bread I can slice before I sputter down the floor drain entirely.
    But salvation is soon at hand; Duccio comes to me and, again in his impeccable English, says, “I think that is enough bread for tonight. Would you like to join us for dinner?”
    â€œThank you, yes,” I say, and I realize that I am in fact quite hungry. My extreme discomfort has distracted me from it, but the fragrant aromas of the lasagne and the chicken have been tantalizing me. I’d salivate if I had any bodily fluids left.
    I give my face a quick rinse in the bathroom sink—what the hell, my entire head; it needs it—then towel dry and join the rest of the staff, who have already sat down at one of the prep tables and begun tucking in. Typically for Tuscans, they’ve done so in style, with a bottle of wine every few inches and a little vase of sunflowers in the middle.
    Here’s my reward, I tell myself; I’ve labored like a goat all night, now I’ll be welcomed into the fold and invited to tell my story in my halting Italian. My passionate interest in these people will finally be repaid by their curiosity about me.
    But no. They’re not so easily diverted. They’re tremendously polite, of course, and make certain I have plenty to eat and drink, and if I ask a question they answer it as fully as I could wish; but otherwise they go their own garrulous way, chattering back and forth at a velocity I can’t even begin to follow, a babbling brook of conversation in which nary a consonant is allowed to impede the flow. Occasionally the entire table bursts into riotous laughter, and I really wish I knew why. I could ask, of course, but is there anything in the world glummer than the guy who needs to have the jokes explained?
    Eventually I finish my meal and quietly rise and slip away. The others are now well into their wine and so don’t notice me in time to protest; or perhaps they simply respect me enough to allow me the freedom to go.
    I suppose my job here is completed, but despite the toll it’s taken on me, I don’t really feel I’ve done enough. I haven’t bent sufficiently low, made adequate obeisance, to attract even a modicum of approbation from the brucaioli. I have to keep at it until someone, anyone, turns to me and … what? Offers a