Seven Seasons in Siena by Robert Rodi Page A

of claiming to have won awards for it when I regain control of myself and shut up. Satisfied, she smiles and leaves me to it.
    I start in on the unfinished loaf, carefully examining the pieces that have already been sliced so that I can match their width with mathematical precision. Antonella will surely be astonished by the uniformity of my work. Possibly I will be asked to give a short seminar on bread cutting afterward. I start to rehearse it in my head, so that when the time comes I’ll have the proper vocabulary at hand. While I’m trying to think of the Italian for “calibrate,” I carelessly produce an uneven slice. I can’t put it into the basket with the others; it isn’tworthy. Not knowing what else to do with it, I stuff it into my mouth. Mm. Pretty good. Nice crust.
    I work my way through the loaves, eating my mistakes, until I’ve filled several baskets for distribution to the tables. My slices are models of conformity; each one contains almost exactly the same amount of bread. I’ve even allowed for the curve of the loaf by cutting slightly thicker pieces toward the ends. It is a masterwork of egalitarianism; no one who partakes of my bread will be at a disadvantage to his neighbor. All will receive an equal share. I’m puffed up with pride and wonder why I didn’t try my hand at kitchen work years ago. I could have had my own reality show by now. As I clear the crumbs from the work surface, I debate the merits of signing with Bravo over the Food Network.
    I’ve worked up a sheen of good, honest sweat, so I run my arm over my forehead again to make myself presentable, then catch Antonella’s eye and motion her over. I display my brimming baskets and smile. She smiles as well—though not with quite the sense of awe I’d hoped—and gives me an odd kind of look, like she doesn’t know what to make of me.
    â€œYou’re bored now?” she says. “You want to try something else?”
    I blink. Does she not see my artistically arranged baskets? I gesture toward them and say, “Well, yes. Because I’m done here.”
    Her eyes flicker tellingly past me, then meet mine again with an even more questioning look.
    I turn and notice for the first time resting against the wall an enormous sack of bread. There must be three hundred loaves in there. I don’t know how I can possibly have missed it before. It’s the size of a body bag.
    â€œOh, sweet Jesus,” I blurt out. “I didn’t even see those. Of course I’ll finish the job.” Embarrassed, I fumble one of the topmost loaves out of the sack and start hacking away at it.
    â€œIt’s all right if you’d prefer not,” she says.
    Oh, no, I think; nosiree, no bruca pura is going to get the chance to tell her friends about the shiftless Americano who couldn’t even finish a simple task like cutting a hundred thousand pieces of bread. Nuh-uh. I came here to win these people over, and that’s what I’m going to do. They asked me to slice, goddammit. I. WILL. SLICE.
    â€œThank you,” I reassure her, “I’m fine.” And she leaves me sawing madly away at the crust, sending golden flakes flying everywhere, like sparks.
    Now my embarrassment has twined with the closeness of the air to make me sweat in earnest. Pools collect in my eyebrows and in the tip of my beard and start to drip onto the floor at my feet. I have to stand several inches away from the cutting board so that they don’t splatter right onto the bread. That means I have to extend my arm all the way to hold the loaf, which makes it look as though I’m afraid something’s going to jump out of it and bite me.
    The ungainliness of this approach makes it nearly impossible to cut the slices with any degree of regularity, so that soon I’m producing carbuncle-shaped hunks that look like a species of albino sponge. But what can I do? I can’t stand any