Adriana Trigiani - Very Valentine

There used to be big gray garbage drums locked with chains in front gardens, and bicycles hanging off the chain-link fences. Now those same gardens hold marble urns spilling over with exotic plants, and the bikes have been replaced by decorative vines of orange bittersweet berries loaded with blossoms in the spring and berries in the fall. Magazine prettiness has replaced real life.

The poets and musicians who wandered these streets have been chased away by wealthy ladies from the Upper East Side in black town cars shopping for European couture. They haven’t paved over the cobblestones yet, but you get the feeling that’s coming. How many limousines will have to bounce over them, tossing rich people around in the backseat, before someone objects? As long as there are cobblestones, I will have proof of my childhood. Once those are gone, I won’t be so sure about where I came from.

I push the door open. I take a quick look in the shop. The leather Gram cut this morning is laid out on the worktable. The back windows are cracked open; a soft breeze blows over the pattern paper, making it rustle slightly. “Gram?” I call out to her.

The powder-room door is open, but no sign of her there. There’s a note on the cutting table from June Lawton, our pattern cutter: “Finished up. See you in the A.M.”

I climb the stairs with the grocery bags. I hear a man’s voice in the apartment. He talks about food.

“Quando preparo i peperoni da mettere in conserva, uso i vecchi barattoli di Foggia.”

He says he cans peppers.

“Prendo i peperoni verdi, gli taglio via le cime, li pulisco, dopodichè li riempio con le acciughe.”

Now, he’s saying something about stuffing the peppers with anchovies.

“Faccio bollire i barattoli e poi li riempio con i pepperoni ed acciughe.”

The voice still isn’t familiar.

He goes on, “Aggiungo aceto e spicchi di aglio fresco. All’incirca sei spicchi per barattolo.”

“Così tanti?” Gram says to him.

I walk into the apartment with my bags.

Gram is seated at the kitchen table. The man sits at the head of the table with his back to me. Gram looks up at me and smiles. “Valentine, I’d like you to meet someone.”

I take the bags into the kitchen and place them on the counter. I turn around and extend my hand. “Hi…” The man stands up. He is instantly familiar to me. I know him from somewhere. I shuffle through my memory bank, all the while smiling, but my mental hard drive is coming up with nothing. He’s good-looking, sexy even. Is he a supplier? A salesman? He’s not wearing brown, so he’s definitely not the UPS man. He’s not wearing a wedding ring either, so chances are he isn’t married.

“I’m Roman Falconi,” he says. The way he introduces himself tells me that I should know his name, but I don’t.

“Valentine Roncalli.” I extend my hand. He takes it. I release my grip. He doesn’t. He stands and smiles with an expression of knowingness. Maybe he went to school at Holy Agony? I’d remember that. Wouldn’t I?

“Nice to see you again,” Roman says.

Again? Nice to see you again? I roll his words around in my head and then suddenly it hits me. Oh no.

This is the guy from the apartment. The Meier building. Last night. The guy in the Campari T-shirt. This is the man who saw me naked. I run my hands over my clothes, relieved that I’m wearing them.

Roman Falconi towers over me. He’s definitely taller in person than he seemed in the apartment. Of course, in a glass building, when it’s dark out, with distance and the angle, he looked small to me, like one of those bugs trapped in resin for science class.

His nose makes the schnozolas in my family seem demure, but again, everything on his face seems larger up close. He’s got thick black hair, cut in longish layers, but it doesn’t look coiffed. It would be wonderful if he were gay. A gay man would have looked at my nudity as a study in light, contrast, and form. This guy looked at me longingly, like a ham sandwich and a cold soda accidentally found in the glove compartment on a long car trip with no place to stop and eat for miles. He is not gay.

His eyes are deep brown, the whites around them pale blue-this is genuine Italian stock here. He has a wide smile, excellent teeth. I wiggle my hand out of his grasp. He has a look of surprise on his face, as if to say, What woman has the temerity to ever let go of my hand? Big egos go with big hands.

“Valentine is my granddaughter, and the apprentice in the shop.”

“Do you take care of the garden on the roof?” This time his smile is, well, dirty.

“Sometimes.”

Gram interjects. “Valentine is up there all summer. Every day. She’s the real gardener in the family. I don’t know what I’d do without her. The stairs are getting to be too much for me.”

“You’re just fine, Gram.”

“Tell that to my knees. Valentine is a lifesaver.”

I wish Gram would stop bragging about me. With every word she says, he buys time to remember the woman on the roof as compared with the one standing before him. This man has seen me naked, and believe me, there are states I wouldn’t enter if I knew that were true of any of its inhabitants. I like a little control in the nudity department; I prefer to be naked on my own terms, and in circumstances when I have a say over the lighting.

“Last night, I was looking at some ground level real estate next door for a potential restaurant space. The broker asked me if I wanted to see an apartment upstairs for fun. She was hard-selling me on the view of the river. And while the river was a knockout, I saw a woman on this roof who definitely beat that view.”

“Who?” Gram looks at me. “You?”

I shoot her a look.

“Who else could it have been?” she says and shrugs.

I cross my arms over my chest, then uncross them and place them on my hips. This guy has seen everything anyway, and he hardly needs X-ray specs to see through my arms to my breasts. “If you’ll excuse me, Roland…”

“Roman.”

“Right, right. Sorry. I have…some things to do.”

“What? We’re done for the day,” Gram says.

“Gram.” Now I’m annoyed. I give her the same play-along face that we give each other when we’re trapped by annoying customers. “I have other things to do.”

“What?” she presses.

Roman seems to be enjoying this. “ A lot of things, Gram,” I tell her.

“I’d like to see the roof,” Roman says not so innocently.

“Valentine can take you. Take him up,” she barks. Gram gets up and moves to the stairwell to go upstairs. “I have to call Feen. I promised to call her before supper. Roman, it’s been a pleasure.”

“All mine, Teodora.”

What happened to the grandmother who didn’t want company above this floor? What happened to the woman who guards her privacy like the savings bonds hidden in a rusty tin box under the kitchen-table floorboards? She’s awfully quick to abandon her house rules in the face of this paisano . There’s something about this guy that she likes.

“Excuse me,” I tell Roman. I follow Gram into the stairwell and whisper, “Gram, what the hell is going on? Do you know this person? We’re two women living alone here.”

“Oh, please. He’s all right. Pull it together.” She grabs the railing and takes a step. Then she turns back to me. “It’s been too long for you, young lady. You have no instincts anymore.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” I whisper. I return to the living room.

Roman has turned his chair out from the table, crossed his legs, and has his hands folded in his lap. He’s waiting for me. “I’m ready for my tour.”

“Don’t you think you’ve seen enough around here?” I say.