The tone was suggestive, but I stayed cool. “Let’s do the milk,” I said, redirecting my attention. “When you’re just steaming milk — for a latte, for example — then you want to place the wand’s nozzle close to the bottom of the pitcher.”
“I see.”
Bruce’s eyes were on me so intensely, I felt a little flustered all of a sudden. “For a cappuccino, however, you want to do more than steam. You want to create an angelic cloud of froth, which means you need to add air, so you want to place the tip of the nozzle just beneath the surface of the milk and gradually lower the steaming pitcher as the foam grows.”
“Go ahead and show me,” said Bruce.
I did, filling the pitcher halfway with whole milk, clearing the steam valve, then placing the nozzle inside the container.
“Rookie baristas think it looks cool to move the container all over the place,” I explained. “Up and down and round and round — but that’s not the way to do it.”
Bruce stepped up behind me. “Wait. I want to get this straight. Let’s go over it again.”
“Which part?” I swallowed, trying not to let the heat of his body affect me, which was about as easy as trying to keep an ice cube from melting on the surface of the sun.
He placed his hands on the hips of my little plaid skirt, gently but insistently pulling me against him. “Up and down? And round and round? Not the way to do it, you say?”
Slowly, he moved my hips with his.
“Uh, not when it comes to foaming milk. No. You just want to lower the pitcher slowly as the foam builds. That’s why you only fill the pitcher halfway — to leave room for the foam to grow.”
“Room for growth?” he said, his hands still moving my hips with his. “And round and round and up and down?”
“No,” I said softly, “you don’t want to do that. It gives you an inferior product. Overly aerated foam with big short-lived bubbles and lousy texture.”
“I’m hearing you. What else do I need to know?” I felt his mouth on my hair, gently inhaling, then kissing and caressing my neck.
“Ah, let’s see…” Still trying to stay in control, and barely managing, I licked my lips and cleared my throat. “The milk shouldn’t spurt or sputter, either, but should sort of roll under the tip of the wand. A gentle sucking sound is what you should hear — ”
“Say that again.”
“What?”
“What you just said.”
“A gentle sucking sound?”
I felt his mouth, warm against my ear. “Again.”
“Bruce…”
“Say it.”
I inhaled sharply when I felt his lips touch my earlobe.
“Gentle sucking sound,” I whispered.
He turned me in his arms. The kiss wasn’t gentle, it was full of heat and hunger and I wasn’t stopping him.
When we came up for air, he reached behind me and hit a button on the machine. The little ON light faded out.
“Change your mind about that cappuccino?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I think I’m stimulated enough.”
I smiled as he covered my mouth with his again, and the world went away.
This time when we finished, he took my hand and pulled me gently back into the parlor and onto the soft futon in front of the fireplace. He kissed me deeply, then stretched out beside me.
“Are you okay with this?” he asked.
His eyes were kind and warm and waiting for my answer. “Better than okay,” I said, touching his cheek.
And then, for a long time, there were no more words.
Sixteen
Twenty years ago.
The Mediterranean sun was a lemon in the sky. Brightness full of promise yet painful, too, like a squirt of citrus to the eye.
A young man played with a dog on the sand. He wore fraying combat fatigues cut into shorts and nothing else, the woven hemp choker appearing white as spun sugar against his deeply tanned chest.
The young woman was not a native of this Italian village. She was just visiting, staying with her father’s relatives so she could study art history for the summer. One week before, she’d been ogling the works of Michaelangelo in Rome, and she looked at this romping man the same way — like a sculpted statue come to life.
She admired how his chiseled calf and thigh muscles contracted and relaxed as he ran along the sand. How his flexing bicep flung a Frisbee into the surf over and over again for a happy, excited dog to fetch. She found it mesmerizing, and, at the time, had no way of knowing this was simply a “rest day” for the young man — a brief break from his typically more strenuous pursuits of bicycle racing, wind surfing, rock climbing, and cliff diving.
She didn’t know his name, had never been introduced to him or his family, and, despite her admiration of him, or maybe because of it, she kept walking.
It was the big black mixed Lab that for some reason came right for her. Probably the heavily perfumed shampoo she’d bought in the village, which gave off a strong lavender scent, most likely the same scent as someone the dog knew and loved. As if they were old friends, he bounded right up, jumping high, his big paws landed and she was slammed down into the sand.
“Mama mia! Scusi, signorina.”
Long, damp black hair, loosed from its ponytail, hung into his face. It was a pleasant face. Open and joyful. It was the kind of face that took pleasure in everything it could. And the brown eyes were curious and kind.
“It’s okay,” she said, surprise reverting her to English. “I’m not hurt.”
“You’re American! You’re from home!”
The pair chatted amiably. He told her he’d been backpacking across Europe and was passing through, visiting extended family and friends all over the Continent. He invited her to dine at his cousins’ house that evening. But she declined his invitation and kept walking.
The young man would tell her, much later, after they were married, that he’d kept his eyes glued to her ass the entire time she’d walked away. Her chestnut hair had reached all the way down her back then, and he’d been mesmerized, first by her green eyes, then by the way she’d looked leaving him, her long, dark wavy hair swinging just above what he’d call her “sweet-looking blue-jeaned booty.”
A few days later, she found him reading at a café. When she asked about the cast on his forearm, he explained that he’d broken his wrist spinning out on a motorcycle. He wasn’t sexually aggressive in the least with her, just warm and genuine. And when he politely asked if he could accompany her on her next long trip to Rome, she found herself agreeing.
Maybe it was the cast and the helpless way he asked. He seemed almost touchingly pathetic — at total a loss for what to do with himself next. And she couldn’t get over the fact that he’d been visiting Italy on and off for over a decade of summers and had never bothered to visit the Vatican museums. So she became his guide.
She’d already resolved not to sleep with him, to fend off any aggressive advances, but he wasn’t the kind of young man who came at a girl head on. He was more like a cup of espresso, warm and inviting, yet still very potent. He knew how to relax and excite at the same time. And when her guard was finally down, he played her with his light fingertips and laughing mouth and she melted like morning chocolate, right into his hands.
In the end, she would often become melancholy thinking about the way they’d met — the prophetic nature of it. How the sun had been so bright with promise it proved painful, making her smile and squint at the same time, ultimately limiting her vision.
How he’d wanted her most when she was walking away.
I opened my eyes.
How odd, I thought, to dream of Matteo. To recall so vividly my first time making love with him — which had also been my first time, period. The dream didn’t disturb me. For some reason, I found it strangely comforting.
On the futon, Bruce’s arms were still around me, his body warm, but I was cold. It was hours later, and the flames in Bruce’s hearth were dying. He was sleeping deeply beside me, and I knew it was now or never.