Tranquil old-world elegance is boasted by a wall of sanded stone. An operatic drama of arched windows. Gold lettering winks from polished glass.

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Novelli

The building is Tuscan modern. Sexy as a building can be. An olfactory language purrs through cracked windows of this chic ristorante. Where the rhyming couplet of coffee and chocolate recite the rich poem of a tiramisu. Where the choicest cuts of meat share sizzling gossip in garlic oil. Crisp consonants of hot salmon skin spat from a hot grill. Nutty drawl of browned butter. And the occasional musk of a grated truffle murmured like an erotic patois.

On the outdoor patio, tourists sip prosecco in glamorous Borghese, because the weather is warm. Before autumn wraps them in the spell of woodsmoke, her golden leaves illuminating their lovely lesson about change.

“Good heavens, what is that?” asks a tourist attempting to pass the three-Michelin-star paradise. He is an Englishman who has recently sautéed his head to the hue of tuna tartare. A smell has caught this tuna in a sensory snare. He is the latest victim of a walk-by sniffing. The ristorante’s glass menu display case is populated with nose prints. So many, in fact, they call for a twice daily polishing.

The only thing that ever deters anyone from Novelli is its prices.

You follow the invisible invitation. A vine-wrapped door opens for you as if by magic. Inside, you admire decorative wine barrels. Sommelier-blessed wine bottles backlit with an ambient blue glow (blue being psychologically symbolic of tranquility and self-expression). You are warmly welcomed by someone who is either a maître d’ or a runway model.

Waitstaff flitter from table to table as if biddable little Italian bees visiting a thousand flower faces to make millefiori honey. Chandeliers shaped like tortellini give every patron a flattering glow.

As you tread deeper into the ristorante, the aromatic language intensifies. Because now we are in a cityscape of sharp edges and shining silver.

Novelli’s kitchen.

Here is where the owner and renowned chef—certainly the best in Borghese, and one of the most highly regarded in all of Tuscany—is curled over an edible composition. His pewter hair lifting up into pomade curls like frozen seaside froth. A matching beard has been bossed into a tidy triangle. He carries the generous padding a nightly steak propagates, washed down with a midnight Chianti. With steady hands, Chef Umberto Micucci is painting a pastry brush along the borders of a fine china plate.

“And now,” he says, lifting the plate, pressing the funky Day-Glo orange frames of his glasses against his face. “Tell me what is missing.”

His minions—the picture of youth and cleaver-sharp ambition—hover close, holding their breath. They are the best of the best, these white-wearing chefs, all of them rising stars. A truth, bitter as radicchio, is that this season’s culinary inquest has pushed them to their limits. In hierarchical order—his direct report and chef de cuisine, Adroa Mbabazi. Fastest fingers and finest culinary creative Umberto has known. But due to pressures from the competitive hustle of haute cuisine, Chef Adroa is also taking part in a migraine trial and wears a mouth guard to deter him from grinding away his own teeth in the pepper mill of his mouth. Next, Sous Chef Ichika Tanaka. A chef who handles flavors like an intrepid pioneer of the tongue, a wayfarer of the avant-garde and the unexpected. A chef who has also explored the emergency ward three times this year for some equally enterprising accidental self-stabbings and who has taken to wearing her chef hat even outside of the kitchen due to several sizable bald spots. Next is Novelli’s pastry chef, Alban Toussaint, a master of sugar work, a chocolatier who once built an eight-foot Eiffel Tower out of cacao, but who is also on medication for “sleep cooking” after having recently set fire to his home kitchenette. And finally, Sauté Chef Farah Ahmad, small and ferocious, the self-proclaimed hurricane in a hijab. Executive Chef Umberto sees the most potential in Chef Farah. She has that drive, the passion it takes to carve out her own spot in the cutthroat culinary world. Or is she a they? Chef Umberto is having a hard time keeping up with all these youthful requisites, like rainbow-colored hair, internet dance trends, and pronouns. And time, doesn’t it seem to slip away lately, as silently as the steam from a seafood hot pot? He sometimes remembers the never-ending hours of a single day biking around his home village as a boy. Now, the world is moving faster, and he is moving slower.

When did it all get so complicated?

Chef Umberto stares at his team, who—forgiving the blackened eye bags and a generous peppering of hives—look like auditioning contestants of Junior MasterChef Italia. Che bambini sono! Relocating to Borghese from all over the globe, they are here because these rising stars of consommé, culatello, and chiffonade have a chance, under his tutelage, to become supernovas. To dazzle during l’ora di pranzo when Novelli serves a luxury lunch, taxing in itself. But after four p.m., when the evening unfolds her royal navy robes and the Aperols begin to spritz, is when the real adventure begins. Chef Umberto has outdone himself. This year, he has created a world-class nine-course gustatory extravaganza, a culinary celebration of seminal life experiences. Gastronomica calls it an “unparalleled epicurean awakening of the soul.” Two early patrons have—mid nine-course meal—fainted. Another sobbed so hard she had to be sedated. The chefs have a daunting schedule ahead. Over the next nine weeks, they will introduce multisensory dining experiences.

Week 1: Birth
Week 2: Family
Week 3: Friendship
Week 4: Battles
Week 5: Sex
Week 6: Failure
Week 7: Success
Week 8: Death
Week 9: Reincarnation

Chef Umberto speaks to his hastiness of cooks in a voice rich and robust as ragù. “I want you all to remember that we are sorcerers of taste and scent. Scientifically speaking, smell and the memory are linked by the biological makeup of our brains. Emotion and smells are inextricable because they are stored in our olfactory bulb as one memory. And we must create a visual extravaganza on every plate because we humans smell in color.”

Chef Farah Ahmad squints, her pupils hard as the pits of plums. “With all due respect, Chef . . . what do you mean that we smell in color?”

“What color are you picturing when you first inhale that fresh cut grass? Or when you sniff a rose? What hue do you imagine when you inhale a bundle of lavender?” Each eager chef closes their eyes, transported through sensory experience.

“Do we comprehend?”

“Yes, Chef,” they bleat. They even look a little like a flock of sheep, Chef Umberto thinks, in their pristine white uniforms. More like lambs. Feeble lambs with flabbergasted faces, lost in the Apuan Alps.

Of course, he sees that these young chefs are run ragged; he isn’t blind. But Chef Umberto knows that to become truly extraordinary, they must be dismantled and rebuilt. Rising stars must sink or swim. And a truth about stars is that the bigger they are, the quicker they burn up their fuel supply. Chef Umberto has to admit, he is exhausted with sustaining the success of Novelli. He is secretly a little bit bored with being the best. And all the little lambs sent his way seem to get younger and younger. Plus, he’s having a hell of a time getting their pronouns right, even though he has practiced them within an inch of his life. “They is chopping the su vide.” “They has severed they’s finger while they was manning the mandoline.” “They is in the process of spilling half a gallon of roux on the floor.” Chef Umberto doesn’t feel old, but it does feel that everything is changing fast. Does he take issue with these changes? Certainly not. He wants to get it right, to remain relevant; it’s just that he can’t get his matured mind to retain these shifts in language and sacrilegious online food trends. He still has an insatiable fire inside him, but maybe he is ready for a change of pace. During the few hours he is in bed, he has taken to calling out their names and pronouns in his sleep.

He stares at his sous chef, Ichika Tanaka, and the three separate bandages fused to her fingers. “Remember that each dish is a journey, a nostalgic foray into the past or the possibilities of the future. This is about creating new neurons in the human brain through taste and scent and texture. Through food. Now, what are we going for with this dessert of Week Five?”

“An . . . intimate affair,” braves Chef Farah Ahmad.

“Sex, yes. Very good. So what’s missing?” He hears throat clearing. Witnesses lambs blushing. “There is no room for shame in culinary exploration.” He points at the enticing dessert, its phallus of a pistachio-dusted plantain, the guava gel–covered cheesecake to represent a pair of testicles. A haphazard slash of passionfruit coulis as an abstract suggestion of the volatile nature of passion. Gold leaf and edible flowers to symbolize fertility. Or is it the Garden of Eden? Or nipples? The young chefs cannot remember.

“I can’t hear you, chefs. What is missing from this scene?”

Alban Toussaint, the bombolone-eyed pastry chef, makes a suggestion, his voice cracking. “A clitoris?”

Umberto raises his eyebrows and twists his mouth. He nods his head vigorously. “Very good. And what would you suggest we add to the dish to represent it?”

“A pomegranate?” Chef Alban Toussaint asks, thumbing the bottle of Lexapro in his pocket. The other rising stars all pull faces suited to sewage smells. Chef Alban Toussaint had not expected his lack of experience with the female anatomy to hinder the culinary career that is the reason for his lack of experience with the female anatomy.

Chef Umberto shakes his head, ashamed of the young pastry apprentice.

Chef Alban Toussaint tries again, desperate now. “Tempered chocolate . . . I could mold one.”

Chef Umberto squints hard. His orange frames become terrifying portals, threatening to suck young aspiring cooks right through their lenses. “The cacao will overwhelm the dish; it will upstage the subtleties we’ve spent three days harmonizing.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Scoffs. Shakes his head. “Chocolate clitoris. Tsk.”

Chef Alban Toussaint’s facial tic returns with a vengeance. His fingers instinctively find the patch of eczema on his elbow and linger on it as though it were a small oasis. Chef Ichika Tanaka is staring at her sous vide–spattered shoes. She is suffering from pronounced PTSD after slipping on a dropped ostrich egg.

“What is your opinion, Chef?” Umberto sets his unflinching focus on Chef de Cuisine Adroa Mbabazi.

Chef Adroa squeezes his eyes shut, wary not to squeeze so hard he summons another migraine. “Lychee?”

The chefs hold their breath, awaiting the verdict of Chef Umberto.

“Hmm. Citrus perfume notes will complement the passionfruit. You’re finally thinking, Chef. Now go get some.”

Chef Adroa Mbabazi bolts to the walk-in refrigerator as though trying to clock the finish line of the Florence Marathon. In the high-end culinary world, it can be difficult to regulate your stress levels, so the chefs often find themselves racing through relaxing activities—engaging in frenzied knitting, high-speed gardening, and listening to audiobooks at three times the natural pace. In the refrigerator, Chef Adroa Mbabazi takes advantage of his solitary moment in the subzero environment to squash his face against a wrapped prosciutto leg before his frantic search for a small fleshy fruit.

They are like terrified little Glis glis, thinks Chef Umberto, having just watched his chef de cuisine streak across the kitchen as though he were trying to outrun the Frecciarossa high-speed train. It’s not his fault if they can’t handle a little heat. Yes, Chef Ichika Tanaka may still have the willies from sliding around in an ostrich egg, but Chef Umberto is here to expand the frontiers of food. He is here to push his people and his patrons until either their minds or their pants explode. Like many a live lobster, he often finds himself in hot water. Chef Umberto is infamous for adding unconventional ingredients to his tasting courses. An edible balloon filled with a harmless huff of laughing gas. A lemon with a little dusting of deep-fried Brazilian ants. A squirt of epinephrine injected into foie gras to induce a physical and existential panic attack for the resurrection course. Authenticity is everything. Occasionally, the police come to investigate these dalliances, yes; it’s their duty— but after a roasted rack of lamb and three majestic glasses of Brunello, everyone is forgiven. And all of it just brings more publicity, more celebrity, more Michelin stars. In a rather boring way, Chef Umberto finds that he is utterly untouchable.

The striking young woman from the front of house spills into the kitchen like a refracted rainbow. Her tight obsidian dress renders her figure legible. It is a figure that, only last summer, caused a seven-car pileup in Rome, and earlier this spring, caused a tourist to become disoriented and speed his Saab illegally through the Vatican. Chef Umberto finds her youthful beauty arresting but ephemeral. Intense and intoxicating, but without nuance or complexity. A perfume whose top notes are strongest. He enjoys that she is carefree and untethered, light enough to be blown around by a breeze. But she is unworldly. She wears her inexperience like cheap, ever-present earrings. A million questions tied around her tongue. He finds her exhausting. Exhilarating. A beautiful island surrounded by the gulf of all she has yet to know. She is a blank book waiting to be filled with words.

“Um, excuse me, Chef?” She mouths vowels with her Australian accent as though rolling macarons with her tongue.

“Yes, Marilyn?” Chef Umberto keeps his voice even. Chef Alban Toussaint eyes a lychee and then Marilyn. “You are required at the front of house, Chef.”

A long, constipated pause. “I will meet them front of house when I am finished here.” He looks back down at the plate. Of course, the lychee is making him think of Marilyn, who he was careful not to let his eyes linger on. He hasn’t so much as hidden their relationship as obfuscated it, and he doubts anyone even suspects it, given how subtle they have both been.

“It’s urgent?” says Marilyn, her voice slightly higher than normal, which, incidentally, is how everyone knows that she and Executive Chef Umberto are sleeping together. Also, the fact that they keep typing on their phones at the same exact time, and the most telltale sign of all—they started actively ignoring one another at work about six months ago, despite their close professional proximity.

Chef Umberto, his tone gentler and lower than normal, adds, “I’m occupied. I will see them when I am finished here.”

Marilyn’s charming little struffoli of a nose wrinkles. “I don’t think—”

“Marilyn,” he scolds her in a tone used for a child. Chef Umberto forces his eyes to stay locked onto the intimate affair on his plate rather than the intimate affair standing at the swinging doors. Since he is not looking at her, he does not see that she is pouting her naturally pouty lips. “This networking of the creative impulses is an integral process in creating a culinary masterpiece. It cannot, ever, be interrupted. I will be available when we are finished here. Tell the person here to see me that I will be with them when we have given the time this creative exploration asks of us.” He lowers his orange frames to the phallus on the plate. He is still very much not looking at her.

Marilyn lets out a mutinous bark of laughter, louder than the yell of her youthful beauty. “Food doesn’t ask anything of us.”

Chef Tanaka gasps. Chef Toussaint stress-squirts an arc of béchamel sauce into the air.

“Marilyn,” says Chef Umberto through gritted teeth. In the beginning, their entanglement was an irresistible intoxication. Forbidden fruit. Chef Umberto finds the generation gap is sometimes quite charming, like when over a text he told Marilyn he was listening to the Beatles, and she assumed he had taken up entomological studies. But often it is less charming, like when she misunderstood the identity of his old VCR and forcefully inserted her cheese sandwich into the tape deck. Perhaps he struggles most with the particular horror that, although she is dating a world-class chef, she still insists on eating an inelegant hunk of cheese clapped between sacrilegious slices of white bread.

Marilyn lifts her eyebrows, hands on hips in an act of insurrection. “Anyway, it’s not a person here to see you. It’s a village.” Umberto has barely had time to digest her words before most of a medieval village storms into his three-Michelin-star kitchen.

His flock of young chefs trots nervously as the intrusion of exhilarated senior citizens bombards their workplace. A migraine blooms in the corner of Chef Mbabazi’s mind. Chef Ichika Tanaka slips trembling fingers under her chef’s hat, uprooting several strands of hair.

Chef Umberto’s eyes glisten with recognition as he spots the twins from the village of his birth. Then Padre Francesco, Carlotta, a haggard-looking farmer Leon, and finally Stefano, wheeled by Benedetto, into his territory. He fails to see Giovanni slinking in last, brow beaded with sweat. A curiosity swaddled in his dirty dog towel. But he clearly spots Poliziotto Silvio striding into the kitchen with an air of authority. Chef Umberto feels his resolve collapsing like an over-baked soufflé. But the carabinieri is not what concerns him most in this moment.

“Is she . . . here?” he asks, his flock of chefs hearing fear in the voice they are afraid of for the first time.

“She’s not here, but we are!” sings Valentina.

“What about—”

“Your brother is not here either,” says Rosa, icily.

His main fears assuaged, Chef Umberto nods at Poliziotto Silvio. The carabinieri have been in this kitchen many times before, but always the Borghese precinct. Never the lone poliziotto of Lazzarini Boscarino, whose most prolific police work was the apprehension of a pants-pilfering goat when it absconded with a clothesline. And, though he has never spoken of it since, the time Poliziotto Silvio was called into the piazza because a rubbish bin was pulsating with a suspicious object believed to be a bomb but that turned out to be an abandoned vibrator. A cold case that has never been solved. Does it seem likely that Poliziotto Silvio is here to charge him with violating patrons’ privacy for the “family week” epicurean experience where Umberto hides a surprise edible portrait of a guest’s loved one in a white chocolate-and-cardamom mousse? It does not. But he’d ordered three cases of Brunello, just in case. Nor does it seem likely that the poliziotto is here with a health violation charge. Chef Umberto has been very subtle about the thousands of live crickets, mealworms, scorpions, and cicadas he ordered for the week with the theme of “failure.” He has demanded complete discretion from his entourage while he navigates his insect experimentation phase.

No, this is something else. He’s been at enough award shows to recognize that crackle in the room.

Chef Umberto places his pastry brush on the counter. Frowns. He is a self-made culinary sensation, his sense of dignity built with every brick of his accomplishments. He stands on his Michelin stars. And here, the very village he worked so hard to get away from—in geography and reputation—has just barged into the clandestine kitchen of his glamorous restaurant. It is an outrage. The young chefs and Marilyn idolize him. He cannot have his roots exposed like this. He has done too much to hide his humble beginnings.

“There are too many chefs in my kitchen!” he roars.

Chef Adroa Mbabazi signals for all the chefs to busy themselves at the far end of the cucina with prep for the tasting extravaganza that is—a quick glower at the wall clock confirms—just about to start. He and Chef Ichika Tanaka alone will stay by the side of Head Chef Umberto as he handles whatever half the village of Lazzarini Boscarino has in store for them.

“The bravado! What has possessed you to waltz into my private kitchen, just as we are about to start serving a pièce de résistance in a replication of the miracles of life?”

Benedetto ruffles his oversize suit. “A real miracle of life.”

“I know what this is,” says Carlotta. She is bent over Chef Umberto’s plate like an antique reading lamp, scrutinizing Chef Umberto’s plated delicacy through her Coke-bottle glasses. “It’s a dessert holy foreskin!”

Chef Adroa Mbabazi dry-swallows a Xanax.

“Someone needs to tell me right now—” Chef Umberto starts, running a hand through the suspended silver flames of his hair. Flattening signature orange frames against his face. “What is the village of Lazzarini Boscarino doing in my restaurant?”

Valentina opens her mouth to explain.

“Wait . . .” Umberto’s pupils dilate. Saliva pools in his mouth. He feels a small butane torch making a brûlée of his insides. A quick succession of memories slam into him— champagne glasses clinking in his honor at the White Truffle Fair in Alba. His heart filling with foam during a life-changing phone call, as he learned Novelli had been awarded its first Michelin star. Marilyn and the plastic strawberry smell of her, tangled up in his bedsheets as he brings her an Australian breakfast of farm-fresh eggs, bacon, grilled tomato, and mushrooms to stave off her homesickness.

There is only one gourmet comestible that can transfix him this way.

The white truffle.

To Chef Umberto Micucci, success is the smell of a truffle. Woodsy reek. Garlic gas. Sweat on leather. An earthen umami cologne. Naughty sulfuric skunk of the finest marijuana. But what he smells now is knocking his socks off. A bomb has detonated in his cucina, diffusing the most intoxicating lust potion. He has never smelled any truffle quite like the little lumps he imagines are waiting for him in that odd bundle Giovanni is cradling. And—what luck. Lately, with all the dry weather and changing climate, truffles have been stunted and strange, most offerings reminiscent of dehydrated Glis glis spleens. Piattelli— little plates—they call them. The value of truffles has skyrocketed in recent years. The pungent little treasures in Giovanni’s bundle might actually be worth their lofty price tag.

“Giovanni, you’ve brought me truffles.” Chef Umberto’s nostrils beat like bat wings. He is drugged. Aching with desire. “You’ve brought me lots and lots of truffles.”

A parting of villagers reveals the gentle truffle hunter cowering at the back of the cucina. His scruffy truffle-hunting dog is by his side, a health violation that Chef Umberto is far too intoxicated to address.

Giovanni looks small next to the large mechanical animal of an industrial mixer. His misty gray eyes are bloodshot. Skin cemented with mud. He is cradling a filthy dog towel. The tremors quivering along his arms pique Chef Umberto’s interest. As does the shocking amount of grime the gentle hunter is lacquered with. How strange to see Giovanni in the kitchen. Umberto usually greets him at odd hours, under a smattering of stars or during the first stanza of sparrow song. Always in clandestine meetings at the delivery entrance of Novelli. The two of them alone, sifting through a velvet sack of pungent secrets.

Chef Umberto steps closer to the truffle hunter, and the smell slips its shackles around him. A step closer, it swallows him whole. A strong-arm of a smell.

“Show me,” he croaks, his eyes watering.

Valentina and Rosa flank Giovanni. Each twin takes a side of towel, and they whisk it aside as though magician’s assistants. Pupils balloon behind orange frames. “Oh, Santa Maria Maggiore . . . that’s one truffle. How can it be? I . . . when . . . where did it come from?”

Giovanni stays silent. Chef Umberto knows that the answer will go with Giovanni to the grave, but he couldn’t help himself. “A gift,” says Padre Francesco, raising a spatula for dramatic emphasis, “from God.” Rosa shushes him and confiscates his spatula.

Chef Umberto gestures at the gargantuan truffle. Giovanni nods. The famous chef approaches slowly, deferentially, as one would a monarch or a long-lost relic. His hands are quaking, sweat shimmering across his brow. Behind orange frames, his engorged pupils decipher its shape. A preserved brain.

*

Peeking through a layer of dirt, a beige color brings to mind ancient bones. A chill whispers across his skin. Chef Umberto is no stranger to the world’s most exclusive culinary luxuries— caviar from rare albino beluga fish, scarlet threads of saffron. The umami magic of matsutake mushrooms, rare as a result of deforestation to their pinewoods and a villainous worm called the pinewood nematode. He has cooked with the poisonous fugu pufferfish, nests of swallows stolen from cliffsides, moose cheese made from one of only three lactating domestic moose in the world. He has dabbled with kopi luwak java beans, eaten and then excreted by a palm civet, beef from Wagyu bull calves who are massaged and serenaded with classical music, and even the elusive ayam cemani chicken, whose bones and skin and plumage are all black as charcoal.

And truffles?

Chef Umberto Micucci is the King of Truffles in Borghese. He deals directly with the best truffle hunters in the region, often selling the excess up the ladder to further fatten his finances. To truffle dealers all across Italy. A profit is a profit. Business is business. And the sexy little sale of a truffle is Chef Umberto’s business.

Chef Umberto lifts a finger in suggestion. When Giovanni nods, Chef Umberto carefully drags the quivering nail of his forefinger along the dirt layer of the truffle. A bawdy stench of success is giving him a searing rush, a wasabi kick up his nose. Volatile organic compounds slip along chosen neural paths in every brain. Summoning specific memories to everyone. A walk in the woods. Raindrops releasing the essence of the earth. First sips of a summer wine, pupils swelling with desire.

The villagers are silent as Chef Umberto, Chef Tanaka, and Chef Mbabazi begin a delicate dance, cleaning the truffle with the softest brushes. Chef Umberto is overcome, steadying himself by holding on to the stainless-steel range. The truffle is not holding much dirt. Merely a dainty layer. Wormless. Not a mouse nibble nor a stone in sight. Which means that this mass is all truffle.

It is solid gold.

Words are eluding him. He bites the insides of his cheeks. Then gestures to his professional digital kitchen scales.

Everyone in the kitchen holds their truffled breath, eye-whites glistening. Giovanni gingerly places the truffle on the scales. It looks obscene sitting on the measuring plate. Grimy and grotesque. Hysterically absurd. An excavated alien with no equal. A lonely subterrestrial.

Breathlessly, everyone watches the digital display.

In the split second he waits for a number, others swim to Chef Umberto.

2007: casino mogul Stanley Ho bids on a 3.3-pound white truffle and wins for the sum of $330,000.

2010: Stanley Ho bids again on two pounds, fourteen ounces’ worth of white truffle for $330,000.

2013: Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin pays $95,000 for a batch of truffles totaling four pounds.

2014: Sotheby’s auctions off a 4.16-pound truffle, the largest known to man, and receives multiple offers from Chinese bidders. It sells for $61,250.

2021: at the Alba White Truffle Fair auction, a two-pound truffle sells for $118,000.

Chef Umberto remembers precise figures because he bid on some of these beasts. He has never landed one of the treasured tubers, and here—as if an attracted atom drawn here by his own desire—the most valuable truffle on earth is now rumbling its high vibrational siren song in his kitchen.

The digital number blinks into being. Chef Adroa Mbabazi chokes on air.

Six pounds, fourteen ounces.

Six pounds is the weight of three liters of milk. A drip coffee maker. Two laptops. An adult Yorkshire terrier. A newborn baby.

No one on earth has ever found a truffle this size. Not one with a fragrance as arresting.

History is leavening like a pale dough, right before their eyes.

Chef Ichika Tanaka yanks out a handful of hair and yelps.

This fungus crown will bring on a price tag all of its own through hysteria. By those who have to have the world’s biggest and best truffle. To be the owner of a great white whale.

“How . . . much?” Chef Umberto says, staring at the filthy truffle hunter he has known his whole life. Umberto pulls on his poker face, heart pounding. He can do nothing to stop the tear of sweat slipping down the side of his face. “What is your price?”

He must not show that he is head over heels, that this truffle is making a junkie of anyone within its sphere of influence. A full moon to make us all a little mad. Because now is when the wheeling and dealing begins over the sale of this treasure, and, as seems befitting of truffles, there is a lot more trickery than in your average negotiation. What Chef Umberto is banking on is that truffle hunters never see the biggest bucks. Chefs buy fresh truffles from hunters directly to use that night, each generous grating of truffle snowing over eggy tagliatelle skyrocketing a patron’s bill. If the truffles are pristine, rare, large—they sell to dealers, urban wolves who take them to the highest-end clients and auction houses. That is who makes the real money. The hunters see a fraction of the final amount a gourmet restaurant will pay for their filthy little treasures. Middlemen usually bridge the gap between hunters hobbling around in the dirt and the chefs of three-and four-star restaurants who will pay through the nose to snuffle a truffle. Peddling a product that must be moved faster than cocaine, dealing in anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 in truffles per day. But Chef Umberto has known Giovanni since he was a young man, cultivated this relationship like roots and a friendly fungus. Cut out the middleman. Chef Umberto will pay Giovanni handsomely—maybe a few thousand euros—and then he will sneak right past the dealers and take it to an international auction house. And—a good guess—sell it for more than half a million. Business is business. And Chef Umberto is a boar about his business.

Chef Umberto is already famous. He is about to become infamous.

Giovanni has not given his price. Umberto clenches his fists, veins crackling with adrenaline.

“I’ll give you twenty-five thousand euros,” says the famous chef.

The twins gasp.

Giovanni’s pale eyes widen. “I . . . I need to think . . .”

Chef Umberto can’t have Giovanni thinking; he needs to bargain swiftly. “I’ll take the truffle off your hands, Giovanni.”

“I know, I just need a moment—”

“Forty thousand euros.” He extends a sweaty hand.

Benedetto has to steady himself against the deep-fat fryer.

All the villagers’ stares bore into Giovanni. Their mouths are agape in disbelief—What is he waiting for?

Umberto is overcome with the moment, with the promise and potent scent waves swimming into his nostrils. Giovanni looks at his shoes. His eyes close. He is calculating the worth of the truffle, oh, no, Umberto needs to get ahead of this. Go big or lose the biggest culinary prize of his life.

“One hundred thousand euros, Signore Scarpazza.”

Cries of shock lance across the cucina. Padre Francesco lifts his hands toward the heavens. Stefano, quite overcome with excitement, snatches up a fistful of flour and throws it into the air.

Umberto wipes the sweat from his brow. Pulls together his poker face and fixes it on the truffle hunter.

“One hundred thousand euros. My final offer.”

But before Giovanni can agree to the price of the tuber treasure he hunted, the doors to the kitchen of the best restaurant in Borghese wallop open.

The villagers stare wide-eyed at Chef Umberto, waiting for his reaction. The young chefs freeze. They breathe as quietly as possible. There are, after all, small piles of yeast that garner more respect from their head chef. And no one is sure about what will happen next.

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