Taking Tuscany by Renée Riva Page B

fun.”
    â€œBut I don’t know how to dance anything but the kalamatianos .”
    â€œOh, just come anyway—I don’t want to look like I’ve shown up alone.”
    Okay, I get it. It’s not sisterly bonding she’s after—she just needs me there as a fixture to keep from looking stupid. Whatever. Back to my novel.
    Romantic Ending: Janeà walks by the park and two big Saint Bernards come running over. They jump all over her like they can’t get over seeing her again. Then some guy yells, “Christopher, Robin, get down!” He comes over to apologize for his dogs, but suddenly stops. “Janeà?” He whispers. “Can it be?”
    â€œTanner? Is it really you?”
    He reaches in his pocket and pulls out the lucky rabbit’s foot. “Here, you made me promise to give this back to you someday. I’ve been to kingdom come and back looking for you. It’s been gnarly, but here I am.”
    Like two magnets attracting from opposite ends of the earth, Tanner and Janeà fall headlong into an embrace. Tanner takes Janeà’s face in his hands and looks into her sparkling chartreuse eyes. “You could have left a forwarding address, you know?”
    She looks back into his hypnotic hazelnut eyes. “But then you would have mailed it back. This way you had to come in person.” She looks down at the rabbit’s foot that brought them back together, and a tear falls from her eye. “You got it all dirty …”
    â€œYou’re such a girl,” Tanner replies. He draws her lips to his and gently devours them, while Christopher and Robin bark for joy under the moon over Milan.
    The End
    I can relate to how Herman Melville must have felt the day he finished writing Moby Dick . What a relief!

    On the way to dinner we pass by Paradise again. I linger a bit as we walk by . I sure would like to buy that. Maybe if I bought it, it would help remind me to pray—for my enemies, like Annalisa. Help pray her into heaven. Actually she might already believe, in which case I’d have to pray that she likes me by the time we get to heaven or that we live at opposite ends. Maybe Daddy would loan me some money to buy it—I could tell him I’d pray for him more often if I could borrow the money …
    â€œGet along, little doggie, you’re holding up the whole herd.”
    This probably isn’t the time to ask him for the money.

    After dinner Adriana tells Mama and Daddy that we’re going for a beach walk. We end up at the Sea Palace Beach Club, a dance club cabana with a live band. Adriana leads me to an outside table, where people are actually dancing barefoot in the sand. I must be the youngest person here.
    After our sodas arrive, two guys come over and sit at our table, uninvited. They start speaking to us in Italian. Adriana responds in pig Latin. The guys look completely baffled. Even I can join in on this one. So I ask her in pig Latin why she doesn’t want to talk to them.
    â€œArried-may,” she says.
    I look at their hands—ep-yay . Yep, wedding rings. “Uck-yay!”
    They finally get the hint and go away.
    Moments later a dreamy guy—with no wedding ring—asks Adriana to dance, and she accepts. That leaves me sitting here alone. Before long, the parasailing salesman wanders by. “ Buona sera, ” he says.
    â€œOh, hi … er … buona sera. ” And no, I don’t want to go parasailing in the dark.
    â€œ Vuole ballare ?” Would you like to dance? he asks.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œ Neanch’ io ,” me neither. He says his name is Antonio, and that he doesn’t like to dance. “May I sit at your table?”
    â€œGo ahead, just don’t ask me to go parasailing again.”
    He points to the guy with Adriana and says that’s his uncle.
    â€œ That’s your uncle?” The guy who drove the boat for the lunatic in the sky?
    He nods.
    Great.