My coworker Daniela picks me up in her clean, sporty Fiat. She treats me to a creamy cappuccino at her favorite coffee bar in Cassia, and then she takes me to her hair stylist. With me in the salon chair, the two women confer, in rapid-fire Italian, on how best to work on my uneven, frizzy hair.
Daniela's brown hair is glossy, and her skin is impeccably suntanned from spending the month of August (chiuso per agosto) vacationing at the seashore. She's stylish and feminine, and I happily submit to her beauty expertise.
For lunch, Daniela takes me to meet her parents. Her mother, also stylish and feminine, serves us pasta that she herself rolled and shaped. Daniela translates back and forth, doing the talking for the four of us. At each opportunity, she patiently teaches me Italian words and phrases.
At day’s end, my girlfriend Daniela drops me off near the apartment on Via Sesto Miglio. After spending this Saturday with her—someone who possesses her own new car, a trendy loft apartment, fashionable clothes, money, and a sense of belonging with Italian language, culture, and family—I feel ashamed to have none of these things.
Each Friday, like a father paying allowance to his daughter, Signore Latini reaches into his dark wool trousers for his wallet. He then meticulously counts the Italian lira (roughly 80 dollars), my week's wages, and politely hands the bills to me. I would be mortified to ask him for money, so I am appreciative that he never fails to pay me.
Signore Latini, a classic distinguished gentleman, is a scientist. Although he's not working in his field, and instead partners with his New York-born wife on running the American Business School, he's a voracious reader of scientific journals. Since much of what he wants to read is not translated into Italian, he speaks not only impeccable, self-taught English, but is also fluent in Russian. He's never traveled to the U.S. or the Soviet Union.
When he learns one Monday about how my billfold (with the equivalent of 50 dollars in it) was swiftly lifted from my purse on a jam-packed bus, Signore Latini is genuinely sad and sorry. "These thieves we have here" he says, shaking his head, "are despicable." He then shrugs, adding, "But it's a living for them. It's not respectable, but that's how they make their living."
