Living in a Foreign Language (20 page)

We opened a second bottle of wine while the pasta was cooking. The first had disappeared in a whisper.

Under the pergola with Bruce and Jill

“Tell us about Mexico,” said Jill. JoJo and Bruce had taken a two-month vacation in the Yucatán that winter.

“We looked at birds,” said JoJo. “And we danced. That was about it.”

“Doesn't sound so bad.”

“It was too hot to do anything else.”

“Have you guys bird-watched before?” asked Jill.

“Nope. First time. Lots of great birds there.”

“Did you photograph them?”

“No. I just looked at 'em. Bruce took some pictures, didn't you, honey?”

“At first, but not too much. We didn't really go down there to work.”

“How's the food?” I asked. They both shrugged and made a face.

“Nothing to write home about. Some fresh fish comes by in a truck every day. And the tequila's good and cheap. Mexico's not really about the food. Not like Italy.”

“Mexico's the music,” said Bruce. “There's always something playing—out of a doorway or blasting out of a truck on a loudspeaker. It gets so that you don't even notice it. It's just there in the background—like a sound track.”

“Yeah, we managed to dance every day,” said JoJo. “That's our goal down there. When we're not watching the birds.”

I tasted the pasta, which was just three bubbles away from perfect. The sauce, warm and ready, was bits of sausage, cream and porcini mushrooms—
Pasta alla Norcina
, in celebration of a trip we'd made there the day before. You can find some pretty fantastic sausage in Norcia.

I opened another bottle of wine—Montefalco Rosso, which was fast becoming my favorite. By then it was time to dish out the pasta and pass around the
parmigiano
for grating.

Making pizza dough

We talked and ate in that way you do in Italy. The time passes gently; there's no sense of hurry or direction. The fire would be ready when I needed it. I dropped another thin log in the back every now and then so that the coals would be hot whenever we finished the pasta course. The rule seems to be that the cook sits with everybody and leisurely partakes of the first course. Then there's a break while he—or she—goes to get the next course together. The idea is to take your time and enjoy the company and not be popping up all the time.

I could tell that Jill really liked these guys by the way she was getting so personal with them so quickly. By the time we got the meat on the table, she was giving them her rap on the Enneagram, which was one of the New Agey things we had picked up in Marin. It differentiates personalities into
categories—numbered one through nine—and you have to figure out which number fits you best. The Enneagram comes from an ancient Sufi tradition, I think, and some people study it quite seriously, but we mostly use it as a dinner party game. Jill lists the nine different personality types, doing five minutes or so on each of them, and then our guests try to figure out which number best suits them. By the time everyone's properly identified themselves—with the opinion of their mate thrown in, of course—a kind of psychic strip poker game has taken place.

Bruce is a Seven, like me. Sevens are called
The Epicure
. We epicures love to get a taste of everything—food, locales, sensory and sensual experiences, professions . . . everything. We're a lot of fun to be with. JoJo's an Eight—
The Boss
. We talked about what a good combination they were—with JoJo calling the shots and Bruce, with his vast array of talents and interests, delivering the menu. Jill's a Three—
The Performer
. Which means that she wants everything she does to be the best. Or rather to
appear
to be the best. That's an important difference. Otherwise she'd be a
Perfectionist
, which is a One. Are you following this?

I cracked another Montefalco Rosso, which went very nicely with the ribs and the conversation. Jill brought out a green salad and we lingered, the talk—now that we were all properly numbered—drifting on to our kids. Their son, Miles, would be going off to college the following fall. He was thinking about going back to the States—after spending the last eleven years growing up as an Italian kid. It was going to be a big transition.

“It'll be a transition for us, too,” said Bruce.

“And an opportunity,” added JoJo. “That's what Mexico is about.”

“How'd you choose Mexico?”

“It's cheap. And it's warm; I hate the cold.”

“And how ‘bout those mosquitoes?” said Bruce. “Can't find anything like them in Italy.”

“Well, you'll just get one of those nets and hang it around the bed, right?”

“Right,” said Bruce, smiling. He'd give JoJo anything she wanted.

All this talk of Mexico was a little off-putting. Were they really thinking about leaving? For a year? Who would pay my taxes if they were in Mexico? Who would fix my
caldaia?
Who would teach me how to make pizza in my wood-burning oven? Not to mention that they're the most fun people we'd met in years. I was not at all happy at the thought of losing Bruce and JoJo for a year.

“All right, here's an idea,” said JoJo, somehow sensing my dip. “We'll crank up the tape and all clean the dishes together. Then after, we'll dance.”

We all agreed this was a good idea. Bruce opened a bottle of grappa they'd brought and we all had a little glass before getting up from the table. Then we had a second—except for Jill, who doesn't drink much. She can nurse a single glass of white wine for an entire evening and talk the next day about how she's got to slow down. Bruce turned up the volume of the tape player and the sounds of Kay Kyser and his orchestra bounced off the stone walls of our cottage as we moved into the kitchen to start cleaning up.

The grappa was now flowing like wine. We were harmonizing along to the music, washing and drying the pots and pans and putting everything away where it belonged, and somewhere between “Blue Moon” and “I'd Give a Dollar
for a Dime,” the fateful second bottle of grappa was opened.

We cleared the floor as best we could in the living room so that there would be room to really swing about. Bruce racked up “In the Mood” and the dancing began.

Jill and I have done quite a bit of dancing over the years. On one anniversary, back in our New York days, Jill surprised me with ballroom dancing lessons, while I had gotten her an evening of dancing at the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center—all unbeknownst to each other. It was like our own little O'Henry story. So we know how to Lindy.

Bruce and JoJo, on the other hand, looked to have more zeal than actual practical terpsichorean skill. We could see elbows and knees flying off in all directions and big enthusiastic grins on their faces, but nothing they were doing really resembled dancing. The room was rocking, though.

Then, after Gene Krupa's solo on “Sing, Sing, Sing,” Bruce came across the room and grabbed Jill's hand, indicating it was time to change partners. Jill had realized with the opening of the second bottle of grappa that the evening had slipped out of her control, so she shrugged and twirled herself under Bruce's arm, trying to get her steps and Bruce's—and the music—to somehow agree with one another. After a while, though, I noticed that she gave up and was just waving her arms about wildly and bouncing around the floor, following Bruce's energetic lead.

JoJo and I were not doing so well, either. First of all, there was the question of who was leading. Remember, JoJo's an Eight, and what with all the wine and grappa, the Enneagram was screaming at her to take control. I tried following as best I could, but moving backward with my right
foot was a very odd way to begin a dance; I couldn't get the hang of it. Not that it mattered—Benny Goodman and JoJo were not in any way marching to the same drummer. But by God she had enthusiasm! At one point—she was coming at me out of a spin at seventy miles an hour, minimum—I frankly didn't know what to do with it. My whole life flashed in front of my eyes. Just standing my ground—or God forbid trying to catch her in some way—would have been to commit suicide. I held out my arms wide, running back and forth like a shepherd, somehow herding her toward the center of the room. We needed space. Help me, Jesus, we needed space.

Later, after the sweat dried, we sat around and recovered. JoJo and Bruce told us stories about their times together and we did the same. We had a lot in common, in that we've changed our skins a number of times over the years; and we've let—nay, encouraged—our partners to change theirs as often as they felt necessary. This seems to me crucial if you want to stay together for a long time. We all value having a “passport” that allows us to cross between the arty, bohemian world and the straight world and be accepted on both sides of the border without too many questions being asked; this is important, because there's too much to miss on either side. This passport thing is big. Sometimes money will afford you one; fame is even better. JoJo and Bruce have neither and yet manage to do brilliantly. This is because they have the most important prerequisites, which are a strong, sure sense of who they are, a heady sense of adventure, and the support of a mate, who—at that crucial moment halfway out on the gangplank when you get weak in the knees and fear you're being a fool—assures you that indeed you are a fool, and that's just fine.

We offered them a room to sleep in.

“No, Bruce can drive; he's very good.”

Bruce nodded to me, and I knew it was true. The dancing had sobered him up enough to drive home safely. We hugged them good-bye and sent them on their way. Then we climbed the stairs to our bedroom, feeling fairly exhilarated, as I recall. Maybe we were surprised we still had a night like that in us.

T
HE NEXT MORNING DAWNED PAINFULLY
and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to move my head. The three aspirin I took in the middle of the night were long past being any use to me. It was one of those mornings when you swear off grappa forever. If only the pain would go away—never again. When I came downstairs, Jill was having breakfast outside. I made coffee and joined her.

“Bad night, honey?”

I grumbled back at her. She knew damn well I'd had a bad night. She just wanted to remind me—to underline it. She feels that because I'm a Seven—remember that Enneagram stuff from the last chapter?—my tendency is to forget pain and remember only pleasure. That's why we Sevens tend to overdo on a regular basis—we only recall the fun part. Her goal in life is to help me remember the pain, which on this particular morning was redundant.

Martin had called, she told me, and invited us to take a hike up in the mountains above Pettino, which is a tiny village about fifteen kilometers above us. Jill wanted to go
because Martin had told her the wildflowers would still be in bloom at that altitude.

“Now?” I really didn't think I could make it right away.

“No, we're picking up Caroline from the train station at noon, remember?”

This “remember?” had the tone of an accusation. She was pissed at me for drinking so much.

“Of course I remember. Who's Caroline?”

She let go a rueful little laugh and the tension was gone. Thirty-four years together and I can still make her laugh. This could be the whole secret.

“We'll pick up Martin and Karen around three—after lunch—and we'll all go in one car,” said Jill. It was a done deal; I was going hiking with a major hangover.

Martin and Karen are another couple with a reckless sense of adventure—as well as a very romantic history. She's a bit older than he is. Well, let me rephrase that—he's a bit younger than she is. They met in Munich, where she was teaching a modern dance class. Martin was taking the class with some other young architects because they thought that learning to dance would somehow inform the way they looked at their architecture—something about bodies moving through space or some such nonsense I never understood. Anyway, here's this German architect stumbling through an American modern dancer's class in Munich, and they took notice of each other. They were both in other relationships and not really available, but the spark was undeniable.