Amore and Amaretti by Victoria Cosford Page B

in handfuls of shellfish and toss them around before splashing in white wine. Meanwhile the pasta is cooking; once it is al dente, it is drained quickly, added to the pan of clinking shellfish, mixed briefly, then toppled out onto plates.
    Strawberry risotto is fashionable this year, and at the height of summer it remains fixed on our specials board. The strawberries are simply puréed, seasoned with salt and pepper, then stirred through towards the finish of a plain risotto, a little grated cheese and butter added at the very end. A silly sort of dish, but very popular, particularly when served alongside shiny-black squid-ink risottos, which we often do. On my boyfriend’s birthday, he comes for lunch and I send out his strawberry risotto in the shape of a heart.
    Annunzio is an oasis of calm and wisdom. Around him Cesare, Antonella and I flap hectically from one mistaken experiment to another, while the summer blazes on. Cesare and Antonella have spectacular rows in the middle of the restaurant while customers dine. Cesare’s long legs in loose trousers stride off, contemptuously, leaving Antonella crumpled.
    The pizzeria owner and I drift apart after the evening we lie side by side in his sordid caravan discussing the beauty of certain people we know. I am bold – rash enough – to ask if he thinks I am beautiful, to which, without hesitation, he replies, ‘No, you’re not beautiful, but you are a character.’ I am wounded, of course, especially because it has always seemed to me that people for whom you feel affection attain a kind of beauty; being a character strikes me as a very poor consolation prize. The pizzaiolo and I find ourselves together one late afternoon, sitting on a cliff looking out at the ocean, the luxury of being alone at last, with suddenly nothing to talk about and desire which has shrivelled.
    I flip in and out of one-night stands, and the night Gianfranco comes over to visit we both drink a lot, then go down to the midnight beach together. Our clothes come off quickly and we make love in wet sand. I feel a brief, gloating victory over the absent Marie-Claire, but mostly a sense of familiar disappointment with myself. Down at Bar Roma over drinks and ice cream, I describe my life to Annunzio in veiled vague terms I will him to see through, and he always does, which afterwards comes to me as a sort of blessing. ‘È una vacanza,’ he often reassures me – it is a holiday – excusing my promiscuity on the grounds that it is not real life.
    A lanky boy from Brescia arrives to do our washing-up. As I cycle away to the beach at three o’clock, I leave him sitting in my chair at the little table opposite Annunzio. When another Australian friend comes over to the island to visit, she and the new dishwasher sit on the seawall long after the rest of us have left the pizzeria. They sit there all night and talk – or at least that is my friend’s version. At any rate, they fall in love. Yet another friend flies back for a visit, and over Travel Scrabble in her pensione room she tells me how her new affair is progressing. Bells toll across the piazza on the half-hour and I am conscious of being frozen in one of my pointless limbo periods with no idea what to do next, while all around me others are radiant with self-definition or love. Sometimes I visit a trattoria for solitary dinners, leaving the dishwasher and Annunzio to explore the meaning of the universe while the owner flirts with me and I respond politely.
    Toward the end of the season Gianfranco pays another visit. He is businesslike: the three partners of his restaurant would like me to join the partnership, returning to my old stomping ground and running the kitchen there. Our mutual friend Signore Lorenzo has offered to put up the money for my part. Gianfranco and Marie-Claire plan to leave on a holiday to Chile in October and it would suit him enormously if I could be back in Florence by then.