The thing I remember most is the view, the warm light streaming through the olive trees on a westward hill at sunset and the way it dances on the natural flagstones of the terrace. Tiled roofs of neighboring houses punctuate the trees around the valley that sweeps towards the azure waters of the Ligurian Sea.

A road runs in front of that villa-our villa. Well, road might be too strong a word. It's really nothing more than a dust and gravel path, barely suitable for pedestrian traffic and occasionally frequented by a brave bicycler. Over the course of the year she and I were there, I don't remember seeing a car. Just across that path and down the way a bit, an abandoned vineyard slowly succumbs to the destructive forces of the great mullein and Saint Bernard's lilly growing wild in that part of Tuscany. Who knew that such beautifully fragrant white flower could be such a destroyer.

Further down the road lies a village populated entirely by people who do not speak English. They understand broken phrases, picked up over the years from the American and British tourists who occasionally take up residence in the many ancient houses that dot the hills surrounding their small corner of Utopia. The Tuscans understand phrases like "need pasta" or "tomatoes and garlic." But they fail to grasp the finer points of American life like "e-mail" and "fax machine."

The mornings are peppered with the thick aroma of fresh coffee. Roosters call out from the valley floor, beckoning their still sleeping owners from bed and signaling the start of yet another day. By noon, a stiff breeze carries the smell of orange trees and fresh bread through the villa. By evening, mandolins serenade the valley until their owners are too tired to play anymore or their audiences are in bed and asleep. Every day, the familiar aromas of Mediterranean Italy floated through the open windows of our bedroom and into our bed, tickled our noses, forced us to awaken. Never willing to remove ourselves from the warm embrace of the feather mattress, we snuggled together for several minutes.

Most mornings, we simply stared into the other's eyes, said nothing. We never had to speak of what we felt for each other; we just knew. Words would not have provided any more adequate a voice to our feelings than those mornings I spent lying in bed, looking into her soul. In this idyllic setting, we chose to capture the essence of our romance, to stage our play.

Moving to Tuscany started out as a lark, a joke. We never thought we would actually do it, actually go to Tuscany, so it only made sense to "plan large." We inquired about villas on mountainsides and found just how expensive they were. We calculated how much money it would cost us to live there for a year, what we would do when we got back. It was our exercise in escapism. Escape from the confines of our lives, from the stress of jobs and family.

Then it happened. I found myself standing in the airport, passport in one hand, her hand in the other. Twenty hours later, we dropped our bags on the bed and stepped onto the balcony for the first time.

"It's--," she began, but she couldn't continue.

"Enchanting?" I muttered, sliding my arms around her waist and resting my head on her shoulder. Her head fell against mine; her blonde hair grazed my nose. I am still reminded of the hyacinth fragrance in her hair.

Later that first day, after we spent an hour on the terrace, we cooked dinner-pasta and bread, the only things we could get that late in the evening. We found the pasta in a jar on the kitchen counter, probably intended for decoration rather than consumption. The bread we borrowed from the neighbors, an older British couple renting the house up the road from us. Margaret and David Clark would become our best friends.

Nestled together on a green canvass chair, the only piece of furniture on the terrace, we ate pasta from the same bowl and sipped wine from the same glass. The mandolins, the birds, the laughter, an occasional bell-all of the sounds of late-summer Italy-serenaded our meal while we watched our first of over three hundred sunsets.

She sat a glass of Chianti on the corner of the plank-board table, and turned to leave the room. I lifted my head from the stack of papers spread out before me and smiled. "Thank you," I said. She always knew how to be supportive of me, of my work, always chiding me to finish the chapter, continually pushing me away until I showed her the hash mark indicating a finished passage.

Her hand brushed my shoulder as she passed from the room. Moments later, she returned with a plate of bread and a garlic-butter dip. "I'm trying out a new recipe. Margaret told me about it. Tell me what you think," she said as she tore a chunk from the loaf. She dipped the corner into a small bowl. I opened my mouth like a hungry bird. "Feed yourself!" she said, laughing and placing the bread in her own mouth.

"I-" I began to speak, but she threw her hand up in protest.

"Don't say it," she replied too quickly. She always shuddered anytime I began a sentence with the word I.

"I was going to say I want to go for a walk later, come get me in an hour," I continued, gently removing her hand from in front of my face. Our fingers intertwined and lingered together for a moment.

"Oh. That's fine," she said, smiling and wandering from the dining-room-turned writer's studio. I heard the door to her room close.

Even though we shared a bed, shared our lives, she needed that room, that sanctuary from the world. And her retreat there was never an insult to me. It was her space, and I freely granted her the right to that space as she freely granted me the right to her love. Whenever she went into that room, I knew not to interrupt, not to knock, not to disturb. I still don't know what she did in that room. Yoga, reading, sleeping, or just staring out her window at the small flower garden. Whatever it was she did during those times, the times were hers, and I had no right to them.

An hour later, just as I was jotting my final notes on the page, I heard the latch open, her footsteps on the bare wood in the hall.

"Ready?" she asked. I looked at her over the tops of my glasses. They had fallen too far down my nose again. She smiled, sat across my lap and pressed them back up the bridge of my nose with a single, slender finger. "There," she said, pressing her forehead against mine. "Ready?" she asked again. I nodded. Taking my hand, she led me from the villa.

We wandered down the path and into the abandoned vineyard we had only recently discovered. Row upon row of dead or dying vines lined the terraced hillside. We wandered through the underbrush, careful not to hang ourselves on the thorns that were slowly overtaking the grapevines. She led me towards the back of the vineyard, deliberately pausing to smell a flower or to try and catch a butterfly.

"Why are you taking me back here?" I asked.

"It's a surprise," she said. I was skeptical, but curious.

"Okay, I'll bite. What surprises could possibly await me in the back of an abandoned grape farm?" She hated that, when I called the vineyard a grape farm. Every time I would ask about the grape farm, she would roll her eyes.

"It's a vineyard! Not a grape farm!"

"Grape farm. Grape farm. Grape farm."

"Vineyard!" she exclaimed, laughing and poking at my sides. I tripped over a rut, pulling her to the ground with me. "I'm poking you," she said as she rapidly thrust her fingers into my ribs.

"I know!" I gasped between laughs. Ticklishness is my greatest weakness. I pinned her hands by my side. "So, what's the big surprise?"

"This," she said, placing her lips against mine. I closed my eyes and slipped my arms around her. After several moments, she pulled her face away from mine, half smiled, half sighed.

"That was a wonderful surprise," I said.

"Not that. That's just a kiss. This is your surprise," she said, springing to her feet. I tried to stand but she stopped me. "No, stay." She pulled a grape from the vine. "Eat this."

The succulent sweetness of the freshly picked grape ruined me. I still can't eat domestic grapes. They don't compare with that one grape in Tuscany. "I found them the other day when you were working on chapter four. I went for a walk and there they were, just growing. I almost ate myself sick."

She took my hand, pulled me to my feet. We pulled two bunches of the grapes from the vine, and she led me back to the villa where we ate a lunch composed entirely of grapes, bread, and garlic dip. We spent that afternoon curled up on the sofa, a single ball rather than two, napping and listening to a songbird perched on the terrace.

© 2001, Michael DeVault