The Year We Left Home (39 page)

Before he could do so, another man, this one older, slighter, with a ring of grizzled hair, came up to the bar and put one arm around Ryan, one around the pompadour man. Greetings were exchanged in quick, incomprehensible Italian, then this new man said to Ryan, “German?”

“No, American,” Ryan said, allowing himself to feel annoyed. He guessed it had to do with being blond.

There was another pantomime of apology. Ryan hoped it wouldn’t lead to another drink. The smaller man edged in between the two of them and spoke to the barmaid. Then to the pompadour man, who relayed it to Ryan. “He says, American is better than German. More new.”

“What’s new, you mean, it’s newer that Americans come here?” The bar was getting noisier by the minute. People were lining up at either side of the front door, as if in expectation.

“New country,” the man shouted at him.

“Is that good?”

“New and shiny.” The man smiled with apparant approval.

Yes, Ryan guessed it was. At least compared to a few thousand years of emperors, plagues, invading Huns, Medicis, and Mussolini. It would give you a different worldview, all those centuries of triumph and wreckage.

But new and shiny? The shine was pretty much knocked off by now. Or maybe that was just him feeling old and tired and cynical. He was
past forty. He guessed it was hard to live through forty years of any kind of history without cynicism.

Ryan straightened and looked around him. Family groups were coming in now, moms and pops, little girls in flower dresses, leggy teenagers, everybody excited and chattering. The waiters in the back were now hurrying into the unseen rear room with platters and trays of food, wineglasses, bouquets in crystal fishbowls.

Clearly he had come in on some private party or celebration. Maybe there had been a sign he couldn’t read. “Good night,” he said to his new friends, waving foolishly. “Ciao. Nice meeting you.”

But he was too late, because at that moment the doorway filled with applause, and a bride and groom entered, carried along by some momentum, as if they had been hurled into the room like projectiles.

The couple was young, handsome, and attended by a squadron of other splendid-looking young people. The bride appeared to have been inserted into a structure of white satin shells and swags. The groom resembled a man in the last period of a strenuous athletic contest, attempting to get to the final horn. A general cheer went up. Someone went behind the bar and tried to start the recorded music. After some amplified skips and scratches, a love song, he guessed it was, began, with a singer who made Ryan think of the term
crooner.
Were weddings the same everywhere? Every one he’d seen, his own, certainly, all of them more alike than different. The strain of so much public happiness. The promises everyone expected to keep. A procession of couples all the way back to some dim start of time, the past gaping like an open pit at his feet.

He had to wonder at himself, such strange and windy notions. He was tired, he didn’t belong here. But there was no clear path to the door, and the best he could do was to sidle around the edge of the room. Sooner or later he supposed the wedding party would go into the back room for their supper. Or maybe someone would shoo him away: no Germans allowed. Trays of wineglasses were making the rounds. His new friends from the bar were raising their glasses to him, and so he took one also and toasted them. It was fizzy, some kind of
sweet champagne that coated the inside of his head with another layer of dullness.

A group of young girls, teenagers, was between him and the door, and just as he became aware that they were staring and goggling at him, one of them walked up to him. “Hello. I am winning a bet.”

“A bet?” She had a thin, vivid face with eyebrows that moved as rapidly as antennae, a cloud of dark curls. She was wearing a black silk dress that looked too old for her, and a pair of stiltlike high heels.

“My friends, ah, say I am scared.” She pivoted toward them and then back to him, with a humorous expression.

“They dared you to talk to me.”

She laughed and showed her pretty teeth. “What is your name?”

“Ryan.” She was very young. He was nervous about talking to her. Not that it wasn’t flattering to be singled out. He’d reached the age when he’d begun to tell himself that he looked pretty good, considering.

“I am Gianna.” She did another pirouette back to her friends, who were twittering like a flock of sparrows. “You want to dance with me?”

“Sorry. I’m not much of a dancer.”

“Are you from California?” she asked, sounding hopeful. “You look California.”

Better than Germany, at least. “No, Chicago.” He guessed that she wouldn’t have heard of Iowa.

“I like California. And New York. And Tokyo. Here I am going very soon.”

He tried not to smile. She reminded him of . . . it was difficult to say. Of every pretty, bold, knowing young girl in the whole world. The bride and groom were in the center of the room now, being admired and congratulated. “Who got married? I didn’t even know there was a wedding going on here.”

Her mobile face registered an exaggerated boredom. “Ah, my
cugino.
Cousin. And some silly girl. Who are perfect with each other. I will never get married.”

“And why is that?” Her certainty amused him.

“I will be a fashion model.” She struck a pose, hands on her jutting hips. “And a singer.”

“Opera singer?” He couldn’t help teasing her.

Gianna hit him lightly on the arm. The freight of gold bracelets on her wrist rang. “Funny man!” She sang along with the recording for a few bars in a trilling voice. “Good? You think?”

“Very nice. And I think you speak very good English.”

“Thank you. I practice. What are your business?”

“I own a computer-software company.” She inclined her head toward him, puzzled. “Computers,” he said, moving his fingers across an imaginary keyboard.

“Ah,” she said, comprehending. “Do you have a lot of money?”

“Gianna, I have to tell you, in America that would be considered a rude question.”

“So you do have,” she said happily.

Ryan shook his head, attempting to deflect her. But in fact the leap he’d taken six years ago, putting the skills he had to work for himself instead of for everybody else, had paid off extravagantly. He’d never expected to have so much money. He worried about his kids growing up thinking it was the way everybody lived. “What’s the Italian for ‘none of your business.’”

She tapped his arm again in punishment and swayed toward him. Her perfume was a warm wind. He really did have to leave. “Well, Gianna, it was awfully nice to meet you. I hope you have a very successful career.”

She was distracted by something behind her, some kind of ecstatic signaling from her friends. “They want to talk you too.”

“Sorry, but I have to go home now. Ladies.” He made a mock bow in their direction, which set them off into paroxysms of laughter. “Enjoy your evening.”

“Good-bye.” Disappointed in him, she made another face. “Funny funny.”

He gained the doorway and walked two dozen paces downhill before he realized he didn’t have the keys to the rental car.

He stopped where he was, in the middle of the promenading crowds, then moved to one side of the street and conducted the sort of calm, methodical search he made his children go through at such times. Were they sure, were they absolutely sure they didn’t have whatever it was? Yup. No keys.

He tried to remember if he’d had them in the bar, perhaps taken them out of his pocket. He didn’t think so, and he wasn’t inclined to plunge back in to look. It was more likely that he’d dropped them on the street or stupidly left them in the car. He set off again downhill, at a quicker pace now.

The car was gone. Ryan stood at the edge of the lot, marking the empty space. He really had been that stupid. How was he going to get back to the villa? It had a phone but he didn’t know the number. He’d left his cell phone behind because it didn’t work here. He turned and went back in through the arched entrance, heaping abuse on himself, even if it was only a rental, even if this was what insurance was for, because it was all going to be a giant pain in the ass.

No doubt there was a police station somewhere, that would be a good place to start. Except he couldn’t find it. He hiked a little farther up the hill, straying into what turned into sleeping residential districts, other streets that dwindled to alleys. By the time he made his way back to the main thoroughfare, and the square he’d seen in daylight a couple of days ago—the statue of somebody or other on a horse, the fourteenth-century church—there were fewer people about, and most of them seemed to be hurrying home. The square had a creepy look, veiled with shadows, the cobblestones ringing with echoes. Ellen would be worrying about him by now.

Finally, at one of the streets leading into the square, a
polizia,
engaged in what seemed like casual conversation with a couple of loitering young men. Ryan approached.
“Scusa . . .”

The officer turned toward him, looked him over. Did he even know the word for
car
? For
stolen
? If he ever had, he didn’t now. And he wasn’t drunk, exactly, more like thickheaded, out of his element.
Macchina!
His brain presented him with a gift.
“Scuza, signore, mi
macchina . . .”
He ran out of vocabulary here. “Stolen.” He made a pantomime, shading his eyes with his hand, looking from side to side, giving up and shrugging his shoulders. “Stolen,” he said again, reduced to idiot repetition. He made a show of sticking his thumb out, hitching a ride.

This was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. They laughed and smacked each other on the back. Ryan laughed along with them, politely. It occurred to him that he didn’t know the license-plate number of the car or have any of the useful documents that detailed the rental agreement. They were in the car, of course. He’d have to wait until tomorrow, then call the English-speaking office of the rental company. Oh ha ha ha.

The three men recovered from their laughing fit. Each of them stuck his thumb out in imitation of Ryan. Then they waved, bye-bye, turned their backs on him, and walked off into the shadows.

Maybe he’d said something unintentional, maybe sticking your thumb out in Italy meant something it didn’t in other places, something along the lines of “I like to pick my nose.” He left the now vacant square, hoping he’d found the right street. They were all narrow and they jogged first one way then another, so you couldn’t tell where they led. His eyes were tired and the streetlights were developing veils and halos. Maybe if he got back down to the car park, he could catch a ride with some other tourists on their way back to the villas.

From some distance, another street beyond him, voices floated toward him. Ciao, ciao, good night.

Then silence. The street was so narrow, the ancient houses built out so far over it, there was very little sky overhead. Strips and lozenges of stars. Here and there, a light behind a curtain. A voice he didn’t realize was coming from a television until it was shut off in midword. How quickly the streets had emptied out, everyone gone home. He wondered if the wedding party was still going on, and if he could find his way back there. Let his new friends buy him more drinks. Marry him off to Gianna.

He’d thought that all he’d need to do was keep heading downhill to
reach the gates, but the street ended suddenly at a wall, solid except for a drainage pipe along its lower edge. Well all right. Ryan retraced his path, uphill this time. The effort made him break a sweat but the cool air turned his skin clammy. He was trying to get back to the church square and take one of the other streets down to the gate, but he was out of his reckoning and the square refused to materialize. He began talking to himself, silently, once more using his calming, father’s voice: Let’s just try to figure it out, it won’t help, getting upset. And really, it wouldn’t.

Think of yourself (he continued, as if speaking to Anna or to Sam, as if there was an answer for everything and one had only to ask the right intelligent question) as a more persevering sort of tourist. Someone who’s gone off the map. Pushed a little farther into unknown territory.

Another, broader avenue presented itself, this one with a mercantile character, a row of shops beneath a columned archway. Ryan passed along a wall of glass windows, looking sideways at his own reflection. He looked old, even a little soiled. He couldn’t imagine why Gianna and her friends had bothered flirting with him, except out of perversity. Pretty girl, made brave by her own newness. His own daughter, he foresaw, was going to give him merry hell in a few short years, with all the reckless behavior he could imagine, as well as those things she would actually do.

Uphill? Downhill? His legs were tired. He hobbled a little way in one direction, then the other. For a town that made its living off tourists, they could have put up a few international street signs. Someday his daughter would be not just a teenager but a young woman, a mother, old. Beyond that he could not go. It was easier to imagine his own death. Oh too easy. He was all his history at once, a big boo-hoo story. It was the Bronze Age and he was overrun by tribes of prehistoric Greeks. He was a papal state. He was liberated by Garibaldi.

He laughed to show himself how foolish he was being, foolish and fanciful, but it was the cold truth that although he mourned many of the things he had done, the broken chain of his own good intentions,
he might not have done much of anything differently even if he could, including the difficult territory of his marriage, for fear of making some worse mistake.

Chickenshit.

As if he’d reached the end of thought and need go no further, he arrived without warning at the main gate, draped with its national and city flags, lights still blazing even though no one but himself was there to see them.