Member-only story
Pavarotti and I
What it felt like to imagine preparing dinner with the Maestro
Luciano Pavarotti just walked into my kitchen.
He is crying,
not for all those arias that made their way through him
when he was a younger man,
but for the ones not yet written,
the joy of a thousand composers still unborn.
He asks me if I have a clove of garlic,
which I am glad to say I do and toss it to him,
amazed at how large a man he is.
He finds the knife, himself,
humming as he makes his way across the room
and begins chopping, slowly at first
and then with great abandon,
almost as if the 10 million people he has performed for
were all in the room with us, which they are,
hearts bursting like unpicked pomegranates beneath a Tuscan sun.
Pavarotti, I am happy to say, keeps on chopping,
even when I think, for the third time,
the pieces are small enough for the sauce
he won’t begin to make
until all my neighbors are asleep.
