Path of Love

by M. L. Buchman

  * * *

  “What am I drinking?”

  “Wine.”

  “I can see that.” Ridley squinted at it. It was a small glass. He looked over at his companion’s. “Yours is bigger.”

  Then he looked up at his companion. “You’re Conrad. Earl of something.”

  “Evenston, yes. I am sipping a rather pleasing Bordeaux. I find the Cinque Terre whites a little thin on my palate for any serious drinking. You, Mr. Claremont, are consuming grappa. Hence the smaller glass.”

  “Grappa.” Ridley stared back at his glass.

  “Sì, grappa. Il mio grappa,” a voice said from the other side of the table.

  He knew the man’s name. Had just a minute ago. A small man. Sixty, seventy, eighty, who could tell on an Italian? They tipped from aging to ageless rather than decrepit. Maybe it was all the wine they drank. If so, he should be all set here.

  Ridley trusted the balance of his head to one propped elbow, took up his glass, toasted the two men, and knocked it back. It burned all the way down.

  Emilio—that was his name, Emilio—matched him gesture for gesture.

  They slammed their glasses back down on the bar together with a sharp thump. At the punch of the grappa, they both released a hard breath like a roaring steam engine, “Ahhh!”

  Emilio topped them up again from a gallon-sized jug bound up in one of those Italian straw baskets. Ridley’s head was back to needing two chin props to maintain its attachment to his neck. The next glass would have to wait awhile.

  He looked around, as much as he dared without having his head fall off.

  “Nice place.”

  Conrad, Earl of Somewhere translated for him.

  “Grazie,” Emilio answered.

  It was. Nicest restaurant in Corniglia. He’d asked around. Well, he’d asked Hal because it was easy and the guy looked like he knew things. Though why he wore such a sad looking tie was a mystery. Sad like gray rain that would never end. Like—Ridley didn’t want to think about what.

  “Just across the carruggio,” Hal had answered. “Best in town.”

  Ridley had made a reservation for tonight. He figured it was time for Erica to let him treat her to a nice dinner. Instead…today had happened. When he’d stopped in to cancel the reservation, Conrad had been dining there and invited him to join in.

  “I remember this place.” He remembered seeing it that first day when Erica found that cute little tooled leather purse that he should have bought for her.

  Give her trinkets—that way you both understand what the relationship is.

  But he hadn’t. So now he didn’t.

  Then he’d looked in the next window and admired the wine collection and the restaurant’s chalkboard menu. He’d been right; Erica would like this place. Old stone, cozy tables. Personal. Intimate…

  Some part of his mind had that labeled as a danger zone to be avoided at all costs. So instead he focused on what was right in front of him.

  “Good wine!”

  “Sì!” Emilio agreed and they both slammed back another grappa.

  Conrad raised his glass in a toast, but didn’t drink.

  “Don’t know if I trust a man who doesn’t drink on a drinking night.”

  “Is that what this is?”

  “Sure not a thinking night.” Nor apparently a thinking day. His head slipped off its singular support—he’d forgotten to replace his other chin-palm-elbow-table support after the latest round of grappa. His forehead thumped down on his forearm, all that kept him from denting the table with his thick skull.

  “Perhaps you should consider Emilio’s problems rather than your own,” Conrad prompted.

  “Emilio’s problem is that his grappa might be excellent, but it hasn’t killed me yet. C’mon, Emilio. Put me out of my misery.”

  Conrad translated.

  Emilio shook his head and started to cork his jug.

  Ridley made his best sad puppy dog look—the one that never worked on Erica, except it did because she always laughed. Damn but that woman had a laugh on her.

  Emilio poured them both a half and then put the jug firmly on the table behind.

  Ridley raised it in a toast to Emilio. “Grazie to a man who makes a fine grappa and a better meal.” The meal he’d shared with Conrad had been excellent. An opener of calamari in a walnut sauce. Hand-rolled tagliatelle pasta with shrimp in a red pomodoro sauce for the main. Then a killer freda-something-or-other that had been half chocolate cake and half fudge.

  He really should have brought Erica for that last. She’d have gone nuts for it. Why hadn’t he? Oh, because he’d cut her heart out and thrown that into the ocean when he’d have been better off throwing himself in. Right.

  Each course had been matched with a local wine. For dessert, the sweet Sciacchetrà had landed a high alcohol punch that had fit his mood perfectly. As the restaurant had emptied, he and Conrad had remained. Finally, the chef had brought his own form of moonshine to the table—fiery homemade grappa.

  After Conrad translated, they all three drank to Emilio’s mastery.

  Emilio rattled out something, Conrad translating even as he spoke.

  “The vineyards. My poor vineyards. You have seen them,” Emilio waved a hand vaguely toward the outside world.

  Ridley could only nod. He’d seen them. He knew the pain.

  “All the young men leave: 1960s, 1970s, whatever. They go to the cities. Now the tourists come, but the young men don’t return. We have big consortium now. A cooperative where we cooperate. And what does it get us? I’ll tell you what it gets us. A lot of old men working the vines.”

  “Have to get the young men back.” Made sense to him. Actually, despite the alcohol, it sounded as if it actually made sense.

  “We tried. We offer free vines to anyone who maintains them for five years.”

  “Didn’t work?”

  Emilio gave one of those Italian shrugs that seemed to answer almost everything. This time it said “A little, not enough.”

  “Why not? Never mind.” He knew. The hills were steep, the work would be hard. To fight that hard for the wines, you had to really love them.

  He pushed to his feet and weaved over to a display niche that might have once been an arched window in the old stone wall. Photos peeked out from behind empty wine bottles. Emilio as a young man, stomping grapes in a vat.

  “You still do that?”

  Emilio shook his head. “Macchina.” Machines, no need to translate that.

  First prize at something called the Basilico Festival—Basil Festival.

  An old menu card.

  Then he focused on the wine bottles. Each of the ten was marked with a prize across a span of thirty years.

  Emilio crashed a fist on the table.

  Ridley turned to face him. Then had to reach out a hand to the stone wall as the room kept spinning without him.

  “Primo. Primo. Primo.” He emphasized each shout of “First Place” with a thump of his fist on the table.

  Then he pointed to a niche farther down the wall. Again with the banging fist, “Primo. Primo. Primo.”

  “First Place. Sure didn’t earn that today, did you, Ridley?” he asked the wine bottles. Then he focused on the rusted pruning and harvesting tools that were tacked to one of the wooden beams. “Just be glad that Erica couldn’t get her hands on one of those this morning.”

  He weaved his way back to the table, managed to land mostly in his chair, then leaned forward to thump his head against the table. It hit once and stayed there.

  Emilio asked something.

  “He wants to see this lock of yours. The one you had his cousin work on this morning. Based on certain, ah, observed events—such as you being alone for the first time in two weeks—he’s supposing that you still have it upon your person.”

  “His cousin?” Figured. Couldn’t get away with shit in a small town. Together every night for two weeks? Didn’t sound like any Ridley Claremont he knew. Even wild flings needed a night out
at a sports bar or racing motorcycles or something.

  He tugged the lock out of his pocket on only his third attempt and dumped it on the table.

  “Should have thrown the damn thing in the ocean.”

  “The sea,” Conrad said carefully. “The Mediterranean is a sea, not an ocean.”

  “Sea. Sì.” At the moment, that struck his wine-soaked brain as kind of funny. “S-e-a. S-i.” But no one else was laughing. Maybe it wasn’t a funny kind of moment. “Whatever.”

  Only silence answered him. He sat up and saw the two men leaning forward like tipping Towers of Pisa to look at it. He waited to see if Emilio would tip right over, but apparently old Italian men were made of sterner stuff than that. So he leaned in as well and made them the three leaning towers of Corniglia.

  “Bel lavoro,” Emilio noted.

  “He states that it is nice work.”

  Ridley looked down at it. It was a good lock. A stout piece of brass with a thick shackle that could really take the pressure if needed. The kind of lock that felt good in your hand. Not some wimpy symbolic thing, like the ones he’d seen on the gate. He’d chosen a lock meant to really lock things—making the symbolism even more heinous, if that was possible.

  Their initials RC and EB had been engraved in elaborate capitals with curlicue flourishes. Instead of a plus sign, the cousin had used a far more elaborate and decorative ampersand. Not two things to be added together but rather two things that belonged together. It was nice, but…

  “Can’t say as she liked it much.”

  Both men turned to him. Conrad managed to straighten, but Emilio continued to lean into a strong wind.

  “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I thought it was kinda sweet.”

  Emilio said something but Conrad didn’t translate.

  “What’d he say?”

  Conrad just shook his head.

  “What?”

  “You may not wish to know.”

  There were a whole lot of things he didn’t wish to know.

  “Hit me with it anyway.”

  “He said it is the kind of lock you make promises with.”

  “Oh shit. Why did you tell me that?” But it was. Except Ridley hadn’t seen that. Not even when Erica had yelled it at him had he gotten it through his thick skull.

  He’d seen a pretty bauble for a sweet moment. It was the next scene in the movie. Girl swoons for guy, gets her happy-ever-after for a day, end credits roll. He’d taken enough women to chick flicks to know the scene. Every Bond film, too, as if he needed more proof.

  End-credit sex. Then in the next movie, Bond was single once more and the girl was never mentioned again. James only broke the rule once and married her—which had earned Diana Rigg a bullet to the brain instead of end-credit sex.

  That’s how it worked.

  Except not for a woman like Erica.

  He offered her a promise…except she’d known it was a lie.

  He hadn’t been just dumb, but cruel on top of it.

  Shit.

  “Tu!” Suddenly Emilio aimed his finger at Ridley’s chest.

  Ridley jumped like he’d been shot. Lord knew he deserved to be.

  He couldn’t follow the next part, but Conrad translated for him. “You will come work the vines with me.”

  “Sì!” He needed to do something. And it had to be something without a heart he could break.

  “Domani!”

  “Tomorrow? Sì.” If he could get out of bed, which experience told him was gonna be a tough one.

  Emilio named a time.

  Ridley was wrong, not tough. Brutal.

  “Sì,” he barely managed a whisper. No less than he deserved. Didn’t they just have some medieval Italian dungeon they could cast him into instead? Bound to be one or two still hidden away in a town this old. Perhaps at the base of some ancient tower…

  He glanced out the window. Over there, in the dark tower above the Il Cane café…

  Prepare to meet your doom, Mr. Bond.

  Too late, he already had.

  Ridley looked back at the two men.

  “Either of you have a couch I can borrow?”

  Chapter 11

  In the mirror, Erica saw that Good-girl Erica was back. She wore a plain blouse, jeans, and sandals.

  “No,” she told her reflection. “I’ve changed.” She methodically stripped off jeans and blouse and slipped them back into the small armoire. Glaring down at her cotton underwear and bra, she had to think hard.

  What part of that was her? Was she a woman who went without? Or was she a woman who went without because men liked it? It had certainly heated Ridley’s kiss to a fiery heat, a lethally fiery heat. It had consumed her heart and…

  Down that path lay more tears and she’d cried enough of those last night. She could feel more, deep in her chest, but they felt as if they were going to stay there for now.

  Instead, her chest was wrapped in a plain white cotton bra and she had a decision to make: her or not her?

  Her, she decided, and pulled out a blouse the color of the Mediterranean Sea just before the morning sun broke over the high hills. Slacks followed.

  And then she stared into the armoire again and considered. Her pack lay at the bottom in a flaccid heap. How little it would take to stuff it full and walk out the door. She understood the Italian trains now and could be in another town, another city, even the airport by midday. Or another country by this afternoon.

  She remembered her first day of college when the American Society 101 professor—the first required course in the economics and business track—had started reading out the statistics of their class. “Fifty students are now sitting in this room. Within twenty years, eighty percent of you will have married, fifty-three percent of those will have divorced, two-thirds of those despite having children. Four of you will be dead…” And he’d gone on and on. Some students had been horrified, but she’d seen it as the underlying basis of life. She wasn’t a statistic, but a society could be reduced to numbers.

  When he’d finished, and the nervous giggles of some of the students had subsided under his bushy-eyebrowed glared, he’d said one more thing.

  “You cannot escape these statistics. They are your generation’s future. It may not mean that they are yours individually.” Then he’d delved into how the statistics had been generated.

  But Erica had already understood, could see the underlying truth.

  And now, standing in front of her closet, she could see that society might expect her to be the one to run away. The woman’s role: to retreat. Yet Cinque Terre had been her dream, not Ridley’s.

  He’d nearly usurped it. Not through malice the way Dwayne would have, but with his sense of charm and adventure.

  Well, it had worked. He’d changed her. But into what? She wasn’t going to find that out any better in Boston or Prague than in Corniglia.

  She closed her armoire, leaving her empty pack as little more than a prop for her few pairs of shoes.

  One more decision.

  The sea glass necklace.

  It wasn’t a question once she’d thought of it. The necklace was New-girl Erica. Even if she didn’t know who that was yet, a pretty necklace of sea glass was a part of it. She deserved to wear it.

  That was a new thought: she deserved.

  What else did she deserve? The woman in the mirror wearing the pretty necklace didn’t know, but maybe it was time to find out.

  Her newfound determination nearly failed her as she came down the treacherous staircase. Around the very next bend was Ridley’s door. She half hoped and half feared that he would show up with flowers and an apology. But he hadn’t.

  A deep breath, then she rounded the landing.

  No Ridley.

  Down two more flights.

  The monster motorcycle was still in its spot. She wasn’t going to think if that was a good thing or bad. He was the one just passing through. And now she’d be just some memory along with the actresses, masseuses, and mod
els of his past. But he was still here.

  She chickened out enough to peek through the window rather than walking in the front of the café. Hal was tending the few patrons, his long graying ponytail a clear identifier even though he was on the far side of the room at the moment.

  Close by the window, Bridget sat at a table with her laptop open before her.

  She spotted Erica and waved her in. She might have mouthed, “All clear.”

  Erica hoped so. It took only two more deep breaths of courage before she found enough nerve to peer around the corner.

  Hal delivered a cappuccino to a German couple seated at one of the outside tables. They’d be obvious from the walking poles and stout daypacks if not from their speech. He turned to her.

  Much to her surprise, he walked up and simply wrapped her into a big bear hug.

  She let herself sink into it for a moment and feel comforted. His tie was a smiling cartoon grizzly bear.

  “I thought you Brits weren’t big huggers.”

  “For the best ones, I make exceptions.” Then he patted her on the back once more before shooing her into the café. “Hot cocoa coming up.”

  And that’s when she realized that she’d never ordered it that first time, but somehow Hal had already known that she preferred it to coffee, especially in the mornings.

  Inside (still no Ridley), Bridget patted the place beside her at the table.

  Snoop lay in his dog bed between them.

  “You’ve certainly got it tough, haven’t you?” Erica greeted him with a belly rub that earned her a moan of happiness. After all, what did Snoop know of broken hearts?

  “You are looking better, luv,” Bridget narrowed her eyes at her. “Is your pack empty or full?”

  Erica couldn’t help but laugh. “Empty, but it took me a while to decide that.”

  “Good girl,” Bridget patted her hand. Then she slapped her laptop closed. “And thank you for saving me from this.”

  “What is it?”

  “You remember Conrad?”

  She nodded. They’d passed him a few times in Corniglia—even stopping to chat a time or two. When she’d found the nerve to ask, he’d assured her that the car was all taken care of.

  “I maintain his accounts. Not the day-to-day money, but his business interests are…” she heaved a big sigh that showed off her generous chest. Just the kind Ridley liked on his wom—