Sisterchicks in Gondolas! Read Free

first chance to make good on that promise.
    “Excuse me, sir,” Sue said, and the man lifted his eyes to study us. She spoke slowly and loudly, as if he could understand her better if she treated him as someone whowas hard of hearing. “Do you know where we might find a place called Camp-o A-po-stal-ee?”
    He looked at Sue as if she were a strange little red-feathered bird that had landed on the cobblestones before him and now stood there helplessly peeping with her head cocked.
    Reaching for the e-mail in my hand, Sue pointed to the words and stated, “Camp-o A-po-stal-ee.”
    An expression of recognition on the man’s face was followed by a nod. “Qui,” he said, pointing to the bench and making a circle with his finger around the small plaza area.
    “Kwee?” Sue repeated his single, definitive word.
    “Si. Qui. Campo Apostoli. Qui.”
    “This is Campo Apostoli?” I asked, putting together the pieces. “This little park is Campo Apostoli?”
    Now he was the one tilting his head and looking at me like a curious bird. “Si,” he said. “Qui. Campo Apostoli.”
    “Oh, of course,” I said. “I remember now. A
campo
is like a plaza. This must be it then.”
    Giving him her sweetest smile, Sue tried out her first Italian word. “Grawt-see.”
    He gave her a grimaced response.
    “It’s my accent, isn’t it?”
    I nodded. She tried again. “Grat-see.”
    The man held up his hand with all his fingers pinched together at the tips and touched the edge of his lips. He spoke in slow, exaggerated Italian and measured out theword, “Gra-tsye,” effortlessly, putting a spin on his “r.” Again he repeated the word with the accent on the first syllable and continued to expressively use his hand. “Gra-tsye.”
    Sue tried again, this time involving her hand in the process, as if she were trying to pluck the word from the edge of her lips. “Graw-tsye.”
    The man turned to me, as if we were students in his open-air classroom, and it was my turn to recite the morning lesson. He didn’t know that my Midwest background, along with my fascination with accents, would make this an easier task for me than for Sue.
    “Grazie.” I found the word carried a familiar feeling on my tongue, even though it had been ages since I’d last tried it.
    “Bella!”
he declared with a clap of his hands.
    “You little show-off!” Sue teased.
    A loud clanging sound echoed from Paolo’s café in the corner of the piazza. We turned to watch as a stocky man in a white shirt rolled up a metal awning. He then went to work, removing chairs that had been stacked during the night and placing them around the outdoor tables.
    “Looks like the café is opening. Do you want to wait over there? We can sit at a table and order some breakfast,” I suggested.
    Sue nodded, and I said “ciao” to our gracious teacher.
    He repeated a long sentence in Italian that I hoped was polite.
    “What does
‘chow’
mean?” Sue asked. “I’ve heard that before.”
    “‘Hello,’ ‘good-bye,’ ‘see you later.’”
    “You really should do all the conversing, Jenna.”
    “Why? Because I can say
grazie
and
ciao?
Those are the only words I know.”
    “And
camp-o
. That’s three times as many as I know. And people here understand you. They just look at me like I’m the most pitiful thing they’ve seen in a month of Sundays.”
    “No they don’t.”
    I stepped up to the counter of the open café. In front of us was a freezer and under the frosted dome were several shallow metal bins of something that I felt happy to see after all these years. Gelato. Rich, creamy, dense Italian ice cream.
    “Buon giorno,” the man in the white shirt greeted us.
    “Buon giorno,” I repeated. “Two gelato?” I held up two fingers like a peace sign.
    “Due,”
he said, instructing me by holding up his thumb and forefinger and pointing them to the side like a gun. I remembered then how Italians counted, always starting with their thumb as