Grey day. I left Lucky cleaning my house at about 11:30, and trooped back to the apartment I’m trying out for the weekend. Rachel had met me here earlier, we went over some basics (like getting the hot water hot), then fell into one of those congenial conversations that happen easily with people you think of as friends on first meeting. She let me complain about how I was feeling this morning, and I got to find out more about her work, her son, her husband, and her time in Orvieto. I look forward to the next chapter.
The apartment is a beautiful BnB. It is filled with air and light, spacious, clean, and fitted with the latest conveniences. It has also never been occupied. Most of my day was spent napping and trying to imagine living here. I was more successful with the naps (and very happy with the sofa). As to the other, I’m going to see it through to Monday, even though I could return to my clean house and home at any time. I have to give this a chance. And because I’m pretty sure I know why the first part of my day was so off, I have reasonable expectations that Sunday will bring some clarity.
Friend Marilyn put me in touch with a lovely person with the equally lovely name of Maria Silvana who has an almost ground floor, soon-to-be-vacant apartment on Piazza del Popolo. I would love having Maria Silvana as a neighbor, but the place is too interesting. Had I my youthful energy, I might have considered it, but no; I’m looking for an abode with minimal need for input. Good luck, say I to myself, with a ironic bite in my delivery. But maybe.
I finally got to a real walk around five. To begin, I went by the pizzeria where I’d taken out lunch to pay my bill in exact change, as all she had earlier was a twenty and a fifty. Then I cut across town to descend the Confaloniere. My mood improved as I passed people I know, and again when I was meowed at by the green-eyed, long-haired, three-legged cat. The movement down hill woke my muscles, and I arrived on Via Roma much improved, but still grouchy.
As I rounded the bend from Via Montemarte to Via delle Pertiche No.2, a gentleman with glasses, little hair, and a white mask, grunted as he tried to set a foil-wrapped dish onto the passenger seat from the driver’s door of his car.
“My old bones aren’t up to this,” he muttered, more or less in my direction.
I looked at what he was trying to accomplish and doubted that anyone’s bones would be up to it.
“I’m seventy-nine. How old are you?” he asked without introduction.
“You don’t look seventy-nine,” I said, truthfully.
“You don’t look your age, either. How old are you?”
“Seventy.”
“There. Nine years smaller than me,” a phrase no one had used on me since grammar school, “you look good.”
I tried to protest that I felt nine years older, but he was on to the next thing, having decided to bring his foil-wrapped item to the hatchback instead of the passenger seat.
“I worked as a restorer. What about you?”
“What do you mean? Like art restoration?”
“No, restoration. I restored Le Grotte del Funaro, for instance.
“Oh! You mean you’re a restauranteur!”
“No, a restorer. They were caves, I turned them into a restaurant. Like that.”
“Good job.”
“Lots of work, but feel here,” and he offered his right bicep. It was, unflexed, impressively hard. “I loved the work. You haven’t been in Orvieto long.”
“I moved here about five years ago.”
“I thought so. What do you do?”
“I’m a writer,” I said, settling for shorthand.
“Of what?”
“I wrote a play about Orvieto that was presented here in June.”
“Ah, yes. I saw that. Very beautiful.”
“You saw it?”
“Oh yes. It was excellent work, the whole thing, and I don’t give compliments readily.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you. I’m off now,” he said, placing the foil-wrapped item on the passenger seat, this time using the passenger door. “Whatever you do, keep writing.”
I walked home (to pick up yesterday’s pizza for supper) and back to Via Garibaldi, a bit stunned, but more fleet of foot than I’d been all day.
The photo is of Le Grotte del Funaro.