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At noon, a burly-chested Italian arrived to lock the doors. In Italian, he said, “We won’t be opening today.” Diana felt skittish with fear. Something about all of this was off.
Diana tapped one of the line cooks on the shoulder and asked him softly in Italian, “What’s going on?”
But the man brushed her off and burst with Italian to the guy beside him. “What do you think? Do you think there’s any hope he’s still alive?”
Fear curdled in Diana’s stomach. “Alive?” she rasped.
The line cook turned back toward her and gave her a heinous look. She shut her trap. Whatever this was, it was serious.
Diana slipped out of the kitchen and ran through the dramatic alleyways of Rome to reach Sergio’s restaurant. A few line cooks were outside, smoking cigarettes. They recognized her as Ryan’s girlfriend and told her where he was; she could go in if she wanted to.
Diana hurried inside to find Ryan in front of a heap of sliced onions. He whistled to himself as he worked. “Ryan!”
Ryan turned. “Diana! What are you doing here?”
Diana dove against his chest and held him. In a few words, she explained that Arturo and the boss were gone; a strange man had come to the restaurant, saying they wouldn’t be opening. And one of the line cooks had asked if Arturo was still alive. She was frightened.
Ryan led Diana to the back office to find Sergio. Sergio took one look at Diana and shook his head. His eyes were shadowed.
“Arturo has gotten himself involved in a bad, bad business,” he explained.
“What does that mean?” Diana asked.
Sergio dabbed his handkerchief across his forehead. “I don’t know much. The Mafia protected the restaurant, and Arturo and the boss got behind on their payments.”
Diana’s mouth went dry.
“I think they fled,” Sergio offered. “But I can’t be sure.”
Diana’s mind raced with fear. “We have to do something,” she said. “We have to help them somehow.”
Sergio raised his shoulders. “I love Arturo like a brother, but this isn’t something we can help him with. Wherever he is, God bless him. I hope he figures a way through this. He needs to find a way to pay his debts.”
Diana’s eyes filled with tears. For hundreds of hours that summer, she’d learned from Arturo; she’d laughed at his Italian jokes; she’d opened herself to the wonders of another culture and life. It was beyond her to think that Arturo was just gone—or worse.
She didn’t want to think about the worst possible option.
Sergio let Ryan out early that morning to tend to Diana. They went back to Diana’s apartment and lay on the bed, holding one another. Diana had never felt so homesick. She itched to call her parents and ask them for help to fly home early. But what good would that do?
And more than that, Ryan felt like her home now. She didn’t want to be away from him.
“It feels like the rules here are different,” Diana whispered. “I thought I was catching on quickly. But I don’t even know if I want to learn about this.”
Ryan pressed his lips against her forehead. “We might have to be okay with not knowing what happened, Diana.”
Diana’s heart thudded. “I don’t know how to handle that.”
“We’re adults now,” Ryan said. “I think we have to make peace with not knowing a lot of stuff and doing our best.”
Diana couldn’t speak. Her throat was tight.
That evening, Diana and Ryan walked by Arturo’s restaurant to find it swarming with cops. Diana’s head throbbed with confusion. Although she spoke in Italian, nobody paused long enough to explain anything to her. One of the cops said something very cruel to her, something she didn’t want to repeat to Ryan in English. Tears sprang to her eyes.
Eventually, they gave up and had a drink in the same piazza where they’d had their first date. Diana felt as though her dreams were slipping through her fingers. She felt selfish for thinking that, especially when Arturo’s safety was in question.
Ryan tried to make small talk about this and that. He even brought up the concept of the future, about the upcoming autumn. “Maybe we could go back to the city for a while.”
Diana knew “the city” didn’t mean anywhere but New York. But thinking of returning there only made her stomach lurch. On top of everything else, she imagined that the minute they returned, Ryan would realize he didn’t need her anymore. They’d be surrounded by beautiful American women who spoke his language. Some of them probably weren’t as obsessive about their careers as Diana was. Probably, they were easier to deal with.
