Citta della Pieve, Umbria.
“Call me.  I can do any­thing for you.  AN-knee-theeng.”

This strange man had just thrust his card in front of my face, so close that even with my read­ing glasses on, I had not a prayer of read­ing it.  He had fol­lowed me through the piazza on my way to buy­ing sfuso wine, ask­ing me if I worked here, and seemed delighted to hear my Amer­i­can Itang­lish.  I was brush­ing him off as best I could, and thought I had shook him off when I set­tled in to a nice cap­pu­cino with my British friend Ingrid, at Stefanini’s Bar.   But here he was, lit­er­ally in my face.

I did not under­stand his Italian–the accent was more Sicil­ian than my ear was used to, so Ingrid trans­lated for me.  Sig­nore Ste­fanini appeared in the door­way of his cafe, over­see­ing this inter­ac­tion.  He had his arms crossed over his chest, and was shak­ing his head decid­edly and vig­or­ously “no” indi­cat­ing that this inter­loper and would-be “any­thing” man was… bad news.  Signore Stefanini’s ances­tors I am cer­tain were the orig­i­nal Roman mod­els for the com­edy and tragedy masks, so clas­sic are his facial lines.  And a non­ver­bal “no” from him holds omi­nous overtones.

I put the card firmly on the table, push­ing it away from me.  Ingrid and I debated leav­ing it there or throw­ing it in the trash, and opted for leav­ing it, know­ing that Sig­nore Ste­fanini would prop­erly dis­pose of it.

Ingrid’s well honed British social sen­si­bil­i­ties were incensed on my behalf.  She was quite put out, and upset that this town which she so loved would har­bor such a rude would-be Lothario.

“You must come to din­ner with me tomor­row night,” Ingrid declared emphat­i­cally, as if this some­how ended this sit­u­a­tion.  “We will meet here at 8 o’clock and go to Serenella’s.” Of course I was delighted to accept.  Ingrid is won­der­ful company.

I arrived at the appointed time, sur­prised to find Ingrid accom­pa­nied by two men:  Haki, a gen­tle Kuwait man  and Anto­nio, a dap­per and courtly Italian–both mar­ried to friends of Ingrid’s, both Eng­lish women (who hap­pened to be trav­el­ing out of the country–and Ingrid was leav­ing shortly as well).

Ingrid intro­duced us with “Jill, these gen­tle­men will be your hus­bands.  They will give you their phone num­bers, and should you need to pro­duce a hus­band at any point, to deal with that Lothario, they will be happy to stand in.  I assure you they will act quite appro­pri­ately and pro­tect you.  You need only to ask.  We are all going to din­ner now, and we will take our evening walk around town so that you are seen with them, should that man be lurk­ing about.”

We had a delight­ful din­ner together, just like mar­ried folks.  The men chat­ted away with each other, and Ingrid and I chat­ted away together too.  I never saw the card holder in ques­tion again, and I had my two Ital­ian hus­bands to call upon at any time, for appro­pri­ate protection.