He lifts me off the counter. I wrap my legs around his waist. The towel drops. He carries me three steps to the kitchen table, sets me on the edge. The wood is cool against my bare skin. He pushes me gently back. His mouth goes to my throat. My collarbone. Lower. He takes his time the way hetakes his time with everything. Wine. Paintings. The woman on his kitchen table.
We don't eat breakfast until eleven.
The ragù is his mother's recipe.
He pulls the ingredients from the refrigerator like a man preparing for a ceremony. Beef. San Marzano tomatoes. Onions, celery, garlic. A bottle of red wine for the sauce and a second bottle for us. He sets everything on the counter with the specific placement of someone who learned to cook from a woman who did not tolerate chaos in her kitchen.
"The meat goes in whole," he says. "Not ground. Ground meat is for people in a hurry."
"And ragù is for people who aren't."
"My mother's words. She also said the sauce needs four hours, which means we have four hours to fill."
"I can think of ways to fill four hours."
He hands me a knife. "Chop the onions."
I chop. He works beside me at the counter, breaking down the garlic with the flat of his palm, the gesture efficient,practiced. His bare shoulder six inches from mine. Our arms brush when I reach for the cutting board.
He says something about the garlic needing to be crushed, not minced. He demonstrates by pressing the clove under his palm. I watch his forearm flex. The scar. The tattoo peeking from beneath his wrist.
"You're not watching the garlic," he says.
"I'm watching your technique."
"My technique is in the garlic."
"Your technique is everywhere."
He leans over. Kisses the corner of my mouth. Quick. Casual. The kiss of a man who has been kissing me long enough that he doesn't need a reason. He goes back to the garlic.
The ragù goes into the pot. Onions, garlic, celery, the meat searing in olive oil. The tomatoes. The wine. He stirs with a wooden spoon worn smooth at the handle from decades of use. His mother's spoon. He adds salt the way his mother added salt: by instinct, not measurement.
"More garlic," he says, imitating her voice. Higher-pitched. A Vomero accent. The impression is so specific and so tender that my eyes sting and it isn't the onions.
He puts on music. Puccini.La Bohème. The tenor's voice fills the apartment like incense in a church.
We open the wine. Barbaresco. His insistence. I tell him he should try something new. He says he found what he likes and sees no reason to experiment.
"You're not talking about wine," I say.
"I'm talking about wine."
"You're not."
He pulls me to him. One arm around my waist. The wooden spoon in his other hand, dripping sauce. He holds me against his bare chest while the ragù simmers.
"I'm not talking about wine," he admits.
I take the spoon from him. Taste the sauce. It needs another twenty minutes. I dip my finger, hold it up to his mouth. He takes my finger between his lips. Slowly. His eyes on mine. The sauce and the taste of my skin, mixed. He releases my finger.
"More salt," he says.
"You'reimpossible."
"I'm thorough."
The afternoon unravels. We eat ragù on the couch, bowls of pasta with the four-hour sauce, tearing bread, drinking the last of the Barbaresco. He tells me about the Caravaggio forgery he identified during his graduate work. The violence was too clean, he says. Caravaggio's violence is messy. The forgery painted the idea of blood. Beautiful, but not true.