Tutti Italia: A Novel (7 page)

“Oh yeah?  Then I guess it’s about time that someone did it
to you again, isn’t it?”  He gave her a look that said he gave up.  He shrugged
his shoulders before bowing and holding his arms out like he was waiting on her
to lead the way.  She took a second to cement that image in her memory, then
she straightened her back and squared her shoulders before sticking her nose in
the air like she was a stuck up little princess and parading past him.  She
only went a few steps before she stopped and looked behind her to make sure he
was coming with her.  He was shaking in silent laughter.

“What’s so funny?”  She crossed her arms across her chest,
trying to keep her coat as tightly wrapped around her as possible.

“You just looked like the perfect little hoity toity
princess, parading by a servant that was beneath you.  It just reminded me of
my little sister.  She’s seven, and when she gets mad at me, she sticks her
nose in the air like you did and just stomps by me.  The last time she did it
though, she ran face first into a door, and I had to die laughing.  You walking
by like that reminded me of that moment.”

“So, you’re trying to convince me that you weren’t laughing
at me?  Is that what I’m getting?”  Jason laughed and caught up to her.

“Yes.  Because it’s true.  I really
wasn’t
laughing
at you.  I bet you never knew that you were such a good seven-year-old
impersonator, huh?”  Rachel smiled at him.

“No, but then again, I didn’t know that I was impersonating
anyone, either.”  She stood up straight and started do an exaggerated pageant
wave.  “I would like to thank the Academy for having such faith in me!  My
parents, for always giving me a reason to pout and whine when I didn’t get my
way. And my brother who makes me so mad that I put my nose in the air and stomp
away from him.”  Jason burst out laughing. 

Chapter 9

Rachel was caught up in looking at the old towns and
fields that they drove through to get to the winery.  It wasn’t as long of a
drive as the restaurant had been, but it seemed that way.  There wasn’t much
variety outside.  There were fields and vineyards, vineyards and fields.  She
could feel herself dozing again.  The warm sunshine was the culprit.  It bathed
Rachel’s face in a warm, soft glow, and the tediousness of the countryside
didn’t help her any.  She woke with a start as Jason gently nudged her
shoulder.

“Hey, sleeping beauty, wake up.  We’re here.”  Rachel
stared around with wide eyes.  Damn it!  She’d fallen asleep after all.  Well,
at least Jason was keeping an eye on her.  She was a little shy about that. 
She didn’t know if she should get involved with someone that she probably
wasn’t going to see anymore after today.  She’d think about that later.  She
wanted to enjoy the day without a proverbial cloud of doom settling itself over
her. 

“I can’t wait to try out the wine.  They must have so many
different kinds here.”  Rachel got off the bus and saw an old stone building
with a red tiled roof, covered in vines that had huge clusters of grapes hanging
everywhere.  It was exactly what she’d pictured a vineyard to be.  There were
miles and miles of grapes surrounding the building, and there was a larger
building a little ways in the distance.  “That must be where the distilleries
are.  I hope we get to see them up close.”  Jason looked at her with a blank
expression.  She laughed good-naturedly at him.  “Don’t tell me you’ve never
heard of distilleries.”  He held his hands up in protest and shook his head. 
“You are
so
missing out.  It’s how they make wine…well, any alcohol
really.  They’re these huge metal containers where they let the grapes ferment
and then they press the juice out of them.  Depending on what they want to
make, they may add a few other things, but essentially, then it flows down into
another huge metal container that gets stirred continuously until it gets
bottled up.”  Jason had an impressed look on his face.  Obviously this boy
didn’t read as extensively as Rachel did.  If he had, maybe he would have been
able to make sense of what she’d just said.  She made a mental note not to show
off her knowledge in front of him anymore, and make him feel bad.  She took the
lead on the tour, because learning about things was a passion of hers, and she
wanted to be right there in the thick of it.

“This is where we have our little store,” the young woman
giving them the tour said.  “This is mostly what people see.  They don’t
understand all the hard work that goes into making wine because they’ve never
done it, and they don’t want to learn about it.  So we just show them where
they can buy the bottles.”  The woman left them to browse in the vine covered
building that the bus had stopped in front of.  Rachel could completely
understand what she was talking about.  She’d seen it herself.  An older man
with a very bushy mustache walked over to them.

“Hello!  My name is Geovanni. I am the owner of the
vineyard.  Are you ready to taste our wines?”  A cheer rose from the crowd
gathered around him, and he took a tray of glasses and passed them out to everyone. 
“Make a line and I will pour while I talk, ok?”  No one had a problem with
that, and they did as they were told.  Geovanni went into great detail about
how this particular wine was made, and what gave it its distinct fruity taste. 
Everyone sipped from their glasses while he spoke.  He brought out a new bottle
of something different, and this time he didn’t have to tell them to make a
line, they were ahead of him, with glasses ready to be filled again.  This
pattern repeated itself a few more times, and then the woman who had given them
the tour came back with an empty tray that she used to collect the empty wine
glasses.  When she came back, she had another tray with small black squares on
it.  At least, that’s what it looked like to Rachel until she got closer.  They
were small black cups with something dark and shiny inside them.

“This is our famous chocolate liquor.  We serve it in
chocolate shot glasses.  Go ahead and take your shot before your glass melts.” 
He didn’t have to tell Rachel twice.  She loved chocolate to the point where
she even considered it an extra food group.  She downed the shot, but she
scrunched her face up in distaste.  It tasted nothing like chocolate.  It was
straight liquor, and she didn’t like it.  She wished that she could take it
back.  It cleared up her sinuses quite well, however, because it smelled like
paint thinner.  She hurriedly ate the chocolate shot glass that it had come
in.  She smiled.  That was better.  Even though she wasn’t as partial to dark
chocolate, it took the taste of the liquor out of her mouth, and for that she
was grateful.

“What did you think about all the wine we tried?”  She was
trying to make conversation with Jason on the bus ride back to base.

“I wasn’t too partial to the first one.  It was way too
fruity for me.  The shot at the end was alright, but I could have done without
the chocolate shot glass.”  Rachel adopted a nose in the air attitude again.

“How dare you!  We can’t be friends anymore, we simply
disagree on everything.”  Jason laughed at the show she was putting on, and she
continued.  “I thought the first one was simply divine.  I bought three
bottles.  The fruity ones are the best, I find.  The liquor was absolutely
atrocious, and the only good thing about it was the chocolate shot glass.  The
rest were tolerable, but the Spumante was the best.”  She finished her little
act and laughed with Jason.  The base loomed up ahead of them.  Rachel’s smile
faltered.  She wanted to spend more time with him, but she wasn’t going to be the
one that asked to see him again.  If he wanted to get together,
he
would
ask…otherwise it really wasn’t that important to him.   That was her
philosophy, anyway.  The bus went through the gate, and butterflies took flight
in her stomach, wondering if he was going to ask her to hang out again was
torture.  She let him get off the bus first this time.  As she neared the exit,
she told herself to go about her business.  Don’t stop to wave, don’t stop to
say goodbye, simply get off the bus and head in the direction of her room.  If
he was interested he would come after her.  She took a deep breath as her foot
hit the last step.  Ok, Rach, you can do this.  She walked along the side of
the bus, rounded the corner, and was about to cross the street.  Still nothing. 
Her shoulders slumped in disappointment, but she kept going.  She would be
fine.  It wasn’t like the boy meant anything to her.  She just thought he was
cute and was hoping to see more of him.  When she got to the stairs, she
hazarded a look back towards the bus and she could see him talking to three
other boys his own age that hadn’t been on the trip with them.  Maybe he knew
them from work or something.  Speaking of work, she needed to make a phone
call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Rachel.  We just got back from our wine tasting
tour, and I was wondering when I would be going to work and where?”

“Oh!  Hi, Rachel.  Did you have a good time?”

“It was wonderful.  I even bought three bottles of wine.” 
Rachel smiled into the phone as she took her shoes off and stood them up next
to the door.

“I’m glad you liked it.  Listen, I will come and get you on
Monday at seven thirty.  Then I’ll show you where you’ll be working.  Dress for
a teaching job.  I have to go, my boyfriend is taking me out, but I’ll see you
on Monday, ok?”

“Ok, sounds good.  Have fun.”  Rachel hung the phone up, a
little glumly.  She still didn’t have any friends here, and she definitely
didn’t have a boyfriend that she could be doing things with.  She couldn’t even
make friends with her roommate. 
That
was embarrassing.  She vowed to
fix that as soon as she could.  She’d be friendly to everyone that she met, so
she could have someone to spend time with and do things with.  She was ok being
a lone wolf most of the time, but there were times when she wanted to go out
with friends and have fun and be able to tell wild stories at work the next
day.  She had to admit to herself that she was a little bit jealous and a
little disappointed in herself.  Maybe a quick trip to the mini mall would
cheer her up.  She’d gotten off her bed and was half way across the room when
she stopped herself.  No.  She didn’t know when she’d be able to open up a bank
account, so she had to save her money for things that she really needed.  She
flopped down on her bed and stared at the small slits of the outdoor world that
she could see through the blinds.  She left them barely open so she would get
some light in, while keeping nosy people from being able to look in on her. 
She pulled out her journal and started writing down everything that had
happened that day.  She was just lamenting about her lack of a social life to
her diary when she heard the door to the kitchen open.  She could hear her
roommate talking to a boy who responded in a rough voice.  She went back to her
journal.  A few minutes later, she could hear animalistic noises coming through
the paper thin walls of her roommate’s bedroom.  Rachel blushed a brilliant
shade of red before she scrambled off her bed and dove into the bathroom.  She
locked the door and started the water.  She wanted to get a nice hot shower in
before the two of them defiled the shower, too.  Besides, if she was under the
hot spray, she wouldn’t be able to hear anything that was going on in the other
room.

When Rachel tentatively stuck her head out of the shower to
see if the noises were continuing, she heard nothing, and it made her feel a
little more comfortable.  She wrapped herself up in her towels, and unlocked
the door on her way out.  She was sitting on her bed, drying her hair off when
she heard her own door to the bathroom lock.  So she was right, they were going
to be using the shower.  She just smiled.  She’d beaten them to it.  Once she
put on some sleep pants and a t-shirt, she sat back down and toweled the ends
of her hair dry.  Braiding it over her shoulder, she made a random grab at the
few books that she’d brought with her and settled in for a nice, relaxing
read.  She must have dozed off, because when she woke up, it was dark outside
of her window, and the book had fallen to the floor.  She roused herself enough
to pick up the book and find the page she’d been on.  She marked it with a
bookmark and put it back on the shelf.  Then she crawled under her blankets and
curled up in a little ball to go to sleep.  She’d gotten all of her thoughts
out earlier when she’d journaled, she’d thought, but she’d been wrong. 

Chapter 10

Rachel woke up on Saturday, wondering what she was going
to do to entertain herself for the next two days.  She had books, but she
didn’t know if she wanted to spend the whole time in her room.  She had money,
but she didn’t want to spend any on just a shopping trip, because she still
hadn’t opened a bank account here that her paycheck could go in to.  She
decided she would go for a walk to see if she could find anything else around
her dorm that she might want to go to sometime.  It was a sunny day, and she
didn’t need a sweater.  Making sure to tuck her card key into the back pocket
of her jeans, she headed out.  Across the street was the mall, she knew that
already.  So she decided to take off in the other direction.  As she walked,
she saw other buildings that were probably important to the base, but held no
interest for her whatsoever.  As she continued on, she noticed a big building
off to her left that caught her attention.  There was a group of people outside
playing soccer, and being as she loved the sport, it caught her attention.  She
checked for traffic, looking both ways, before she crossed the street.  There
were bleachers surrounding a soccer field, and she eased herself down on one of
them. 

It was hard trying to figure out from the stands who was on
what team, but apparently, they knew who was who because there were no
interruptions in the game.  She watched for about twenty minutes, then she
decided to look in the building that was only a few yards away.  She would bet
that it was a gym, but it wouldn’t hurt her to take a quick look.  She’d been
right.  It
was
a gym.  There were basketball courts on one side, with a
few machines and racquetball courts leading up to them.  Directly in front of
her was a juice bar, and a little area with chairs and high tables to sit
down.  The layout of the gym was like an X.  There were two entrances, then two
arms of the gym.  The other side had a spin room, the locker rooms, and the
weights and other machines that a typical gym would have.  She liked the
layout, and she stopped by the front desk to pick up a spin class schedule. 
This really wasn’t a bad place.  Everything looked brand new, even though she knew
it wasn’t.  Once she got herself some more workout clothes, she would
definitely be coming here.  She had to face reality, there was really nothing
else that she could do unless she started to order things to read and do from
Amazon.com.  She loved shopping there.  They had everything, and with her prime
account, she got free expedited shipping, plus some discounts.  That would be
something that she could spend some of her money on that she could justify to
herself.  She checked the time and saw that she’d been gone from her room for
about forty-five minutes.  She decided she might as well head back.  She’d
taken her walk and found a gym, so she didn’t consider it a total loss.  She
thought about what she had in her suitcases that she could do to pass the time
with.  Oh, crap.  She hadn’t even unpacked her suitcases yet.