Living in a Foreign Language by Michael Tucker Page A

length of cord, cut it and set about to connect the plugs on either end. He worked slowly and meticulously, as if he were creating a fine work of art. By the time he was done, we thought so, too. It was, without a doubt, the finest extension cord I have ever owned.
    He then wrapped it up in brown paper, put a rubber band around it and proudly handed it to me.
    â€œQuanto costa?”
I asked.
    It was a dollar and change. For a masterpiece.

Twelve
    O N SUNDAY , J ILL AND I DROVE DOWN TO THE ROME airport to pick up Caroline, who had finally arrived to stake a claim on her share of the Rustico. When she emerged from customs with an exhausted frown on her face, Jill reached into her purse—which seems to hold all the world’s goods—and produced a mortadella sandwich. Once we managed to get a few bites of it into our tired, frazzled Korean, she perked up considerably; some people are easy. As we walked to the parking lot, Caroline filled us in about the triathlon she had triumphantly completed the day before. She had to swim a full mile across an ice-cold lake, peel off her wet suit and immediately jump on a bike and pedal twenty-six miles—up and down steep hills—then ditch the bike and proceed to grind out a six-mile run to the finish line. Then, with barely a day to recuperate, she’d hopped on a plane and flown fourteen hours to Rome.
    â€œI slept the whole way—like a rock. Right through all the airplane food!”
    I told her that we had an invitation that night to go withBruce and JoJo to a
sagra
, which is kind of a harvest festival, but we’d completely understand if she wanted to pass on it.
    â€œNo, I have to eat dinner, after all,” she said, chewing happily on the sandwich. “But I’ll see how I feel later; maybe I’ll crash from the jet lag.”
    We pulled out of the airport parking lot and Jill and Caroline immediately fell into conversation, catching each other up on all kinds of things. I focused on the driving and let my mind wander, the soothing, burbling white noise of their girl talk easing me into a blissful meditative state.
    The drive up from Rome is just under two hours and it works as a kind of decompression chamber. Once you clear the Grande Raccordo Annulare, the ring road that circles the Eternally Chaotic City, the noise, the traffic, the fumes, the impatient honking, the road rage all slip away behind you as the scenery shifts from urban sprawl to farms, haystacks and little ancient hill towns in the distance looking down on the strip of highway that cuts through on its way to Florence and beyond. We exit the A1 at a little town called Orte and headed east into Umbria. When we clear Terni, the highway narrows into a two-lane country road—the Via Flaminia—which heads north through a steep valley into Spoleto. Just south of town, we pass by a sign on the side of the road for a local bar called the Bar Belli. Both Jill and Caroline get a big kick out of observing that it must have been named after me. I press down a little harder on the accelerator whenever we get to that point in the road, hoping to slip by it unnoticed, but so far, no luck. The Bar Belli. Very amusing.
    A few minutes later—once the hilarity had cooled down—we passed beneath the breathtaking aqueduct that spans the deep gorge between the town and the mountain on the other side and we knew we were home.
    After Caroline unpacked and reacquainted herself with the house, the three of us took a long hike up the hill to the Castello and beyond. We walked on a path through the woods that twists up and around, finally emerging at Silvignano, the little
borgo
that sits on the hill overlooking our property. A
borgo
is a loose collection of houses—always without shops, cafés or restaurants, but still big enough to get a name of its own. The houses of Silvignano are the only neighbors we can see from the Rustico. When we got back down the hill, Caroline decided