The Magic Moment - Turning Tuscan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Going Native - page 25

a fixer-upper, and, after shuffling through his pile of papers, the agent said that he had one
left that had just been renovated two years ago. We followed him around the corner and up
a travertine stairway to a luminous upper floor apartment with wood beam ceilings and tile
floors. The master bedroom had been built into a 16 th century defensive tower, had three-
foot-thick stone walls, and looked out at the village church. From the kitchen and the living
room the windows looked over the tile roofs of the village and across the Tuscan hills. In
the distance we could see the cathedral and towers of Siena. Pam and I looked at each other
and knew that this was it. All that remained were the details.
One major detail was what to do with the other two couples that wanted to share this little
slice of heaven with us. The more we thought about it, the more we realized that it made no
sense whatsoever to purchase our home with partners. It was not big enough for everyone
to stay there at the same time. If we treated it as a timeshare, we would need to pack up and
stay elsewhere if either of the other couples wanted to stay here during our relatively long
vacations. After chewing it over, we realized that the place was just perfect for one family,
but would be a disaster as a ménage à trois.
“So, who's gonna break it to them?” I asked Pam.
“You are,” she said without hesitation, as if this were obviously some kind of “guy thing”
that I ought to be ready to take on, like confronting the saber-tooth tiger at the entrance to
the cave.
“No way.”
So, we flipped for it, and I lost. I took a breath and called Lou back in Petaluma to share
the disappointing news with him.
“Hello, Lou? This is Sam calling you from Italy. How are you?”
“Sam! We're doing fine. I'm so glad you called. I've been trying to get a hold of you.
Listen, you know I'm retiring from my practice next year. Well, Jan and I sat down and did
the numbers, and there's just no way we can make it all work. We'll be stretched pretty thin
as it is. And our friends said they didn't want to go in without us. So, I'm really sorry but
there's no way we can go forward with the house. I hope we didn't put you out too much!”
Over the phone you can't see people smile. The least I could do was to let him off the hook
easily.