Original Prompt 1, Week 3

We rounded a corner, that's what Gubbio is--hills and corners, and we, exhausted, worked our way to the truck where the man chopped slices of pork for one of his customers. Taylor slipped in line behind her, asked for a pork sandwich, and I, tired of the salted smell of slivered ham, took a couple steps back to stare into the wide, cobbled hills of Gubbio sunshine. Taylor held her lunch up, the thin traces of pink darted in and out of the crispy promise of what I knew would be delicious bread. She asked me if I wanted a bite, but the prospect of eating another bite of a meat I never really cared for, even before coming to Italy, didn't settle well with my stomach. Instead I walked under a narrow archway where a small market worked in the Saturday wind. "Let's go there?" I suggested and we disappeared under the shadow of the marketplace. Fruit stands: small swells of peaches, the tempting mystery of pears that I recognized but knew so little that I wouldn't know if they were fresh enough to eat even if I wanted them. A farmer, grizzled and smelling like the grit and bite of dirt, a sort of layered brownness that clung to his skin and clothes, finished with another customer and approached me, sort of rushed and breathless in his Italian. I've learned, as a sort of pre-excuse for stupidity, to hold up my hands, vaguely waving the fingers as I tell them, sheepishly, "Non parlo Italiano." I still try, don't get me wrong, but that way, as I butcher the pronunciation and try desperately to pronounce foods (that, as I've learned, often euphemize some personal aspect of the body) they won't get offended or otherwise hate me for my queer, ever-present Americanness. He presses in closer and I'm grateful, despite the soil-smell sifting from his shoulder, that he has excused me from butchering his language at high volume. He points to fruits and in steady but solid Italian he names things I might be interested in: una mela, una pesca. I finally settle on bright red dots, rattled in a crate container and he points at the and repeats their name twice: ciliegia, ciliegia, cherry, cherry? I nod my head and he asks me how many I want. I stare at him strangely and look to Taylor, lost, afraid to say something stupid. He asks me if I want a kilo. I ask him how much? We keep our sentences short, to the barest, most successful punch. After a couple moments of back and forth debate, mostly between Taylor and me, because we are, at this point, inherently baffled but desperate for the taste of cherries, we decide on a mezzokilo, 3 euro and 50 cents. I do not even wait for lunch before I dip my hand into the brown paper bag and sink my teeth, ready and willing, around the ripe give of fruit and the hard, promise of pit.