Giancarlo had decided to be right on time, well, closer to 8:30, and Nicola decided to be fashionably late, too.   As a matter of fact, she’d arrived earlier but held back, hiding behind one of the massive archways of the Galleria until she saw Giancarlo arrive.  Since the night was warm enough to dine al fresco, he asked for a table outside, under a white canopy.  The cameriere, who was very familiar with Il Marchese Cavallacci, unfolded his guest’s napkin and asked if he’d like to see the wine list while waiting.
        For a few moments Nicola just stood and looked at Giancarlo, impeccably dressed in a double-breasted gray flannel suit with a white button-down shirt and a thick silk tie deliberately set just a half inch askew against his collar.  Seeing that it was twenty minutes after eight, she circled back past the archway so that it seemed she was coming straight from the piazza in front of the Duomo, as the yellow moon moved out from beyond a cloud.
        He saw her coming toward him—Nicola using the nonchalant walk she had displayed on the runway, her hips slightly swaying with each step, not shifting up and down on her legs like pistons, as the other models did.  As he rose from the table, Nicola sprang her smile on him and Giancarlo feigned—or so it seemed—a small swoon.
        “Ciao, Nicola,” he said, “You look so beautiful!”
        “Grazie, Marchese,” she replied, fully knowing Giancarlo did not expect her to use the aristocratic title.  “What a gorgeous night!”
        “It cost me a great deal of money,” he joked, immediately cursing himself for saying something so stupid.
        The cameriere hurried over to seat Nicola but, seeing Giancarlo was already behind her, stayed back for a moment then greeted the new arrival, calling her “Signorina Santini,” as he’d been informed by Giancarlo.  He then turned and brought a bottle of spumante—not the sweet Asti Spumante made from moscato grapes but a dry version made from pinot nero grapes.  
        “I hope you like this wine,” Giancarlo said as the cameriere popped the bottle’s cork and poured the fragrant,  frizzante wine into their glasses.  “It is made by the Giacosa winery for my family using the French méthode champenoise, so it’s more like Champagne. Salute!”
        Nicola sniffed the wine then tasted it, bringing out her broad grin. “Oh, Giancarlo, this is so delicious. It is a lot like Champagne”—remembering when her father had served the French bubbly upon the news that she’d be going to study in Italy and when Signora Palma had ordered it at Bagutta.
        “The Italians have made magnificent progress in producing excellent wines,” said Giancarlo, “and I’m proud to say many of the best are from Piemonte, where I’m from. So tonight, we drink only Piemontese wines, okay?  The wine cellar here carries all the best names—Giacosa, Gaja, Pio Cesare, Prunotto, all the best.”
        Sensing he might have too easily gone into a reverie on Italian viticulture that might bore Nicola, he said, “But, Nicola, tell me how you are feeling this week.”
        Nicola, too, feared boring her host with a dolorous description of her family’s sorrow, so she simply said, “It was difficult for a few days, but my grandmother told my family she didn’t want me to fly back to New York to watch her fade away and that it was her dream for me to be here in Italy, so ...”—she lifted her glass, “Let’s drink to mia nonna tonight! I’m sure she is looking down on us right now.”
        They clinked glasses again and both felt assured that the night would now be all theirs to enjoy and to get to know each other without the intrusion of other people.
        “So, what did you do this week, Giancarlo?” asked Nicola.
        “Nothing worth talking about. Work, work, work. Contracts. Things I needed to get away from.  The family business is strong, but my father, he is not so well and he is worried that I, as his male heir, will not want to take on all the responsibility of both the investment company and the marble company.  Or maybe he thinks I am not actually capable of doing it.”
        “Are you?”
        “I think so. I don’t know.  I went to school to learn the investment part, but I think I have more of a head and heart for the rest of the company. But that’s not the part that makes much money.  What I do know is that I am not made for the board room, which my father adores because he comes from a long line of men who love nothing more than to make a strong deal that always turns out much better for him than for his competitors. He feels he truly needs to win. I’m not quite that, well, determined, I suppose.”
        “What about your sisters?” asked Nicola.
        “Well, one is a doctor, the other is studying to be a lawyer. I think they feel relieved that they won’t be expected to hold the company together when my father dies.”
        “And your mother?”
        Giancarlo smiled. “My mother is a fascinating woman, and she is totally devoted to my father.  So,” he said, moving his hands as if he were scooping the air, “We have a lot of, shall I say, interesting discussions, and I have to fight back a little.  But, forgive me, I don’t want to speak about all that.  I want to eat and to look at you all night, Nicola.  By the way, may I ask where you got that beautiful dress?”
        “Will it come as a surprise if I tell you that I got it from Signora Palma?”
        “Ah, Signora Palma! She is an extraordinary woman, a true diva.  Neapolitan, you know. Very dramatic!”
        “I have noticed that about her.”
        “And she is an old family friend.  Her clothes are a little too stylish for my mother to wear but my sisters do.”
        Nicola ran her finger around the base of the wine glass. “Do you mind if I ask you if Signora Palma was ever married?”
        Giancarlo smiled slightly and nodded, “Yes, she was married for a long time to a very nice, very smart man who handled all the company’s finances for years.  But to make a long story short, it turned out that he led another life, as a gay man.”
        “You’re kidding!”
        “No, I’m not.  But the sad thing was that Signora Palma, who in her business had been around gay men her whole professional life, wasn’t bothered so much by his being gay.  She thought they could live civilized, separate lives within the same walls, and they did for a while.”
        “So what happened?”
        “Ah, eventually he told her he had fallen in love with a younger man and that he was moving out of her life entirely. Which he did. I don’t think they’ve seen each other in five years.”
        “That is so sad,” said Nicola.        “Si, but, as you can see, La Signora is very tough, very resilient, very ... Neapolitan!  And she worked harder and got better at the business side of running the company, and she’s done very well.  Now she’s ready to conquer the world.”  Then, leaning in towards Nicola, he said, “And she’s got a new boyfriend.”
        Nicola was so happy to hear the news she asked, “Was he at the party the other night?”
        “Oh, yes,” said Giancarlo. “He was the tall Italian gentleman.”
        “Lucio? Her investor?”
        “Ah, you met him then.”
        “Wow, that’s terrific.  I’m so happy for her.”
       “Well, let’s order dinner. I’m very hungry. Are you?”
        “Starving.”
        “Do you mind if I order for the two of us? I’ve learned over the years what they do best at Savini.”
        Nicola shrugged in agreement and Giancarlo called over the cameriere and asked to see the menu.  “Do you want to look at the menu, Nicola?”
        “Sure,” opening the overlarge folio with pages of items, all without prices.
        “You like risotto alla milanese? They do it very well here. Then, if you like pigeon, they cook it perfectly, not too rare.  Then we see about dessert.”  Giancarlo brought back the waiter with a wave of his hand and ordered for the two of them, adding that he’d like a bottle of Angelo Gaja Barbaresco, saying to Nicola, “Have you had Gaja’s wines?”
        She shook her head, having little experience with Italian wines outside of the carafes she and her friends usually ordered.
        “I think you will love it.  Gaja is a magnificent revolutionary! He really challenged all his colleagues to make better wines by making different wines, and in the bargain breaking many worn-out traditions.  Now his Barbaresco is considered one of the world’s great red wines, like a Bordeaux or Burgundy cru. But you tell me what you think when we drink it.”
        There was still some spumante left, and, while waiting for the first course, they nibbled on grissini breadsticks, very thinly sliced prosciutto and warm puffy focaccia bread glossed with olive oil.
        “Oh this is so delicious,” said Nicola.
        “I’m a little surprised you eat bread. I’ve never known any model who eats bread, and most of them don't eat much pasta.”
        “Well, if I do any more modeling, I may have to stop eating both.  But I will tell you one thing, Giancarlo.”
        He looked comically intrigued, waiting for what she’d say.
        “Pizza,” she replied.  “I cannot imagine a world without pizza.”
        “Oh, I love pizza!,” said Giancarlo. “And I love the New York pizza—it’s thicker than they make it here, but, of course, Milan is not a city for pizza.  For that you have to go to Napoli.”
        “Or to a place called Bella Napoli on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. It’s probably the best pizza in the entire city.”
        “Now that sounds like it's worth a trip to New York,” he laughed, then said, “By the way, Nicola, when do you go back to New York?”
        “Well, the plan was to finish the semester and go back in May, but I got an offer from a new American fashion magazine to do some modeling, and they said they’d fly me back during Easter week, when I’m off from school anyway.”
        “So you do want to model?”
        Nicola took a deep breath. “I’m really not sure, Giancarlo. The money is good, of course, and it seems easy, so if I have the time while I’m studying, maybe I might do something now and then.  But from the little I’ve seen and all I’ve read, it just isn’t the way I see my life going. The business just seems to rip through these girls, then discards them.”
        Nicola had in fact been thinking a lot about a once famous, dark-haired, dark-eyed Italian-American model named Gia Carangi, the daughter of an Italian restaurant owner in Philadelphia.  Gia had become a rebellious teenager, obsessed with extreme fashion and open about her bisexuality. In 1978, at the age of 17, she signed with Wilhimina Models in New York and had a meteoric rise to stardom, becoming an overnight favorite of the era’s best photographers, who put her on the cover of every important magazine within months.
         And then, at a time when fashion and the club scene conspired to kill off their young, Gia was lured into heroin addiction. Before long her needle marks needed to be airbrushed from photos.  Her beautiful face became drawn and sallow. Losing contracts and bouncing from one agency to another, she fell in and out of drug use, so that by the end of 1982 only catalog work was available to her; on her last job Gia was dismissed by a German mail-order clothing company for being stoned during the shoot.
         And so, of no further use to the industry, Gia Carangi was forgotten, and it was said that by 1985, in and out of treatment, she’d been working as a checkout clerk, then in the cafeteria of a nursing home.
         Nicola merely mentioned Gia Carangi’s name to Giancarlo and said she had no intention of ending up like her.  Giancarlo said he remembered the name vaguely as one of the top models a few years back.
         “Anyway,” said Nicola, “I haven’t the time for the foreseeable future to do even much part-time modeling much less as a full-time career.”
         “Well,” said Giancarlo, touching her hand, “I for one think you are unusually beautiful among the girls on the magazines right now.”
       At that moment, the risotto arrived and the cameriere opened the bottle of Gaja Barbaresco.  “Buon appetito,” he said after allowing Giancarlo to approve the wine.
         Scented and colored by saffron, the risotto was a rich golden yellow color, its fragrance rising in the air.  The rice was creamy—what Italian cooks call “all’onda,” wave-like, and its texture was tender, almost chewy, suffused with rich chicken broth, butter, white wine and Parmigiano cheese.
         Nicola sipped the wine and nearly gasped.  “Oh my God, Giancarlo, this really is the best wine I’ve ever tasted,” she said, trying not to betray her ignorance of wines of this quality and price.  “It tastes like ... it tastes like what they must drink in paradise.”
         “Or at least on Mount Olympus, perhaps.”
         “Yes. You see so many paintings of the Greek bacchanalia. Poussin did several."
         “Si, and Tintoretto, no?”
         “Oh, yes, he’s one of my favorite painters.”
         “Well, then you must go to Venice. That’s where all the best Tintorettos are.”
         “I’d hoped to get there this semester, but time is running out.”
          “Well, maybe we could go together some time before the semester ends,” said Giancarlo, trying to make it seem like an innocent day trip. “It’s only about three hours’ drive or by train.”
         “I think I’d like that,” replied Nicola, well aware that the suggestion was not quite so innocent.