Letters to the Baumgarters Read Online Free PDF Page B

maybe I was just being ungrateful. I put the necklace on and found
myself thinking of Nico with a little spark of hope.
    * * * *
    I had come to Italy for so many things, including the great food, of
course, but sometimes I just wanted a good old American cheeseburger. The Mood
Café had the best cheeseburgers around, and that’s where I told Nico I’d meet
him for lunch. He was late, and I was already eating, drinking a vanilla Coke and
dipping my fries in hot mustard, when I saw him walking up the cobblestone
street.
    The day was bright, a little chilly, but I’d decided to sit outside
anyway. Italians were oblivious to the weather. In America, life was about
comfort. In Italy, it was about experience. If it was cold, you were cold. If
it was hot, you were hot. If it was raining, they didn’t care. In the summer,
there was no air conditioning anywhere, and it was hot as hell—but no one
cared. Those weren’t problems to be fixed, but rather things to be experienced.
    I smiled as he approached, seeing his eyes light up when he saw me. I
couldn’t help my body’s instant response when he bent to kiss my cheek,
remembering his lips, his mouth, his hands. It still felt like a dream, like
something that had happened to someone else and not to me.
    “Thank you for waiting, bella,” he murmured against my ear.
    “Last minute gondola customer?” I guessed, smiling at the waiter as he
refilled my water glass and took Nico’s order—cheeseburger, fries and cherry
Coke.
    “My mother.” He sipped his own glass of water. “She asked me to come home
to help her move a table.”
    I blinked. “And you left work for that?”
    “I didn’t have any customers.” He shrugged. “Carnavale is over and the
tourists have all gone home.”
    “But you had a lunch date with me,” I reminded him.
    “And here I am.” He spread his hands, taa-daa , and smiled.
    “Yes, here you are.” Late, I thought, but didn’t say it. “So tell
me something…”
    “Anything.” He reached over and snagged one of my fries, crunching
happily and grinning at me. There was something about him that made me want to
smack him and kiss him at the same time. He reminded me of someone, but I
couldn’t quite put my finger on who.
    “How do you become a gondolier exactly?”
    “Do you have career ambitions?” He raised an eyebrow and then laughed.
“The training is actually quite extensive. You have to go through a year-long
apprenticeship and take several tests.”
    “Really?” I moved my plate out of his reach when he went for another fry.
“I had no idea it was so involved.”
    “The association actually caps the number of gondoliers they’ll allow to
work in the city.” His gaze wandered to the people passing on the street and I
noticed a pretty blonde—and noticed him noticing her.
    “So it’s kind of an exclusive club.” I offered him a fry, a distraction.
I didn’t blame him for looking—the woman was stunning—but I also didn’t feel
like competing.
    “I suppose it is.” He took my peace offering. “My father was a gondolier
and my father before him.”
    “Wow. So it’s a legacy. Sounds like you were destined to do it.”
    “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He smiled thinly as the waiter appeared
with his cheeseburger. Nico dug in immediately, wolfish, talking with his mouth
half full. “So what are you going to do with your degree?”
    “Probably find a job in the states doing translation. Spending lots of
time traveling back to Italy for business.” I watched him swallow a huge bite
of cheeseburger, washed down with a swig of cherry Coke. “At least, I hope.”
    He paused, chewing his last bite thoughtfully before swallowing. “Why
don’t you stay here, work here… live here?”
    “I’ve thought about it,” I admitted, seeing the hopeful look on his face
and deciding to change the subject. “I have to tell you something.”
    “Oh?”
    The blonde was coming back this way and I saw his gaze shift again