Red, White & Dead

by Laura Caldwell

  Theo picked me up and wrapped my legs around his waist.

  “This is getting to be a favorite position of ours,” I said.

  “Mmm-hmm.” His mouth was on my neck, just below my ear.

  He walked, my legs still around him, until he reached the table at the far side of the room, where everything was covered in darkness. He sat me down on the table and drew me closer. I thought I knew what he would do. I thought he would do exactly what we’d been doing in my condo stairwell the few nights before I left town. But instead, he put his arms around me and embraced me gently. For minutes. I don’t know how many exactly, but they were long, soothing minutes.

  And then he started kissing me. He kissed me as though there was nothing else he wanted to do, not at that moment, not ever. He seemed to be drawing something out of me, something from a very small pit deep inside me that the eye couldn’t see, a place that held calm and clarity. With every kiss, I felt myself loosening, felt that calm rising to the surface.

  We never did have sex that night. We kissed on the table for an hour.

  Finally, he said, “Let’s go to bed.”

  That night, in a twin bed, tucked in Theo’s arms, I slept better than I had since all the craziness began.

  “She doesn’t scare easily,” said the voice on the phone from Napoli, telling Dez exactly what he didn’t want to hear.

  But then again, that’s what he prized about Neapolitans, about his “coworkers” in the System. They told it the way it was, not how you wanted it to look.

  “Well, then handle it,” he said. “Try harder.”

  34

  The ferry port was a chaotic place, full of garbage and concrete that smelled of urine. Behind the port, the city slept while the sun crept up, its shimmering backdrop outlining Naples, making it appear, for the moment, a simple, straightforward city. On the other side of the harbor, Mount Vesuvius loomed in the distance, looking more like a huge, grassy mound than an active volcano.

  Few people at the port seemed to speak English, or maybe it was simply too early for them to be accommodating. As a result, the four of us scuttled from ticket counter to ticket counter, asking for a ferry to Ischia, only to have surly clerks shout, No, no, no! followed by a lot of pointing and unintelligible strings of words.

  Theo, it turned out, was unflappable in these situations. “Let’s try there,” he’d say, pointing at yet another counter, not seeming tired or annoyed, just matter-of-fact.

  Bernard, an unexpected companion on this part of the trip, didn’t seem to be the type to get ruffled, either. He made it his job to pacify Maggie, who grew crankier by the minute, muttering, Jesus Christ and Oh, that’s helpful.

  When Bernard’s alarm had buzzed earlier that morning, he had sat up, his black hair standing at odd angles on his head, making him look even taller than he was. “We’ve got to get to the ferry, right?”

  We had all grumbled and hauled ourselves up into seated positions. I looked at the clock-5:30 a.m. The first ferry to Ischia was to leave in fifty-five minutes, and I wanted to be on it. I wanted to be away from Naples and those guys, whoever they were.

  “You’re coming with us?” Maggie asked Bernard. She put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed a little, a gesture that made it look as if they’d been together for years. “Don’t you have to teach?”

  “Not yet. Not for two more days. So, if you’ll have me…” He and Maggie looked deeply into each other’s eyes, then Bernard seemed embarrassed. He looked around the room. “I mean, if you’ll all have me, I’d like to go to Ischia.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Theo said. I nodded sleepily. It seemed that all that Maggie could do was smile.

  Then Maggie gasped. She stood and clapped. “It’s Izzy’s birthday! Happy birthday!”

  “Damn,” Theo said. “I forgot.”

  “So did I,” I said.

  “Happy birthday,” Theo said. And then right in front of Maggie and Bernard he gave me a birthday kiss. A really, really, really good one.

  “Okay, enough,” Maggie said, pulling me to my feet and into a hug. “Wait, I have your present.” She went to her bag on the floor and rooted around inside it. She pulled out a small package wrapped in green paper and handed it to me.

  “Mags, you’re not supposed to get me anything. You’ve been paying for everything on this trip already.”

  “It’s nothing big, trust me.”

  I pulled off the paper. Inside was a small wooden box, and inside that, a small bag of seeds.

  “They’re wildflower seeds.”

  I looked at her with a question on my face. I’ve never been a gardener.

  “I was thinking,” Maggie said, “that you’re starting your life over right now, you know? So in a way, you’re repotting yourself. And I know you’re going to flourish. But I just thought that you should put some other flowers in with you. Remind you to look around and see how amazing life is and how different it can be. So when we get back home, I have another present for you. It’s a flower box for your roof deck, and we’re going to plant these wildflowers, and whenever you see them, you’re going to remember that you’re growing, too.”

  “Mags, you’re a sweetheart!” I stood and hugged her.

  Bernard went and found an innkeeper to get a pastry with a candle in it, and I blew it out, surrounded by Bernard and Theo and Maggie and thinking that, so far, it wasn’t a bad birthday at all.

  At the dock now, we finally managed to score tickets and boarded the ferry to Ischia. The outside deck was painted white, no seats in sight. Once on the ship, all the passengers trudged inside to a big room carpeted in blue and rows of what looked like airplane seats. At the front of the room, a large TV blared an annoying Italian cartoon. No one seemed to notice. Most of the passengers grabbed seats, threw their bags down and promptly went to sleep.

  The ferry pulled out of the harbor slowly, but when it hit open water, the captain must have pulled back on the throttle because the boat picked up speed. Meanwhile, I paced around the ferry ten times, staggering a little when we hit a wave, pulling Theo along with me until he finally declared that the guys who’d run after us last night were definitely not passengers, at least not ones we could see.

  Once we got that out of the way, the ferry was rather calming. Theo and I tucked ourselves onto blue upholstered chairs and watched as we sliced through the cobalt sea. Outside our window, Maggie and Bernard stood at the railing, talking fast, not even noticing their surroundings. Bernard had to bend down and lean on the railing in order to hear Maggie.

  As I watched them, I smiled at first. Maggie was clearly head over heels, and although it was hysterical to see her with a big bear of a guy like Bernard, it was somehow fitting, too.

  Theo took my hand in his and followed my gaze out the window. “So she just met him yesterday?”

  “Yeah, he came up right as we got on the train and helped Maggie with her bag. It was so cute because they were wearing the same…” I let my words die away as my mind got stuck on a phrase I’d just uttered-he came up right as we got on the train.

  I thought back to yesterday. We’d gotten on the train and Bernard was there immediately. Immediately. Where had he come from? And the train car wasn’t full, so what were the odds that his seat was right across from ours?

  “What are you thinking about?” Theo said to me.

  I stared out the window at Maggie and Bernard. Suddenly, he seemed not so much a gentle giant, but possibly a sinister one.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I went out on the deck. The air smelled sharply of salt and fish. In the distance, we saw little villages perched on rocky outcroppings.

  “Mags,” I said, stepping up to them. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  “You two hang out,” Bernard said in what seemed a friendly tone, but who knew? “Izzy, I don’t mean to monopolize your friend.”

  “You’re not monopolizing me,” Maggie said.

  I stayed quiet.

  “I want to say hi to T
heo,” Bernard said. “We really didn’t get to talk or meet properly.”

  He went inside, and I watched his back, waiting until the doors closed behind him.

  I turned back to Maggie. “You know, he’s right. He is monopolizing you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Are you jealous, Iz? That’s so cute.”

  “I’m not jealous. I’m just concerned.”

  I told her what I’d been thinking-how Bernard had gotten on the train so quickly after us, that he was the one person we’d told where we were staying, how those guys had come in the hotel and run after us last night, right after we got back to the hotel with Bernard.

  “I don’t get it,” Maggie said. “What are you accusing him of?”

  “I’m not sure, but I went to the antimafia office in the morning, and told them I was looking for someone with knowledge about the Camorra. It would have been easy for someone to follow me when I left there. I got you, and we got on the train, and there he was.”

  She shook her head. “Still don’t get it. Are you saying he’s Camorra?”

  “Who knows? Maybe.”

  “He’s Filipino, for Christ’s sake.”

  I looked over Maggie’s shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of Bernard inside. He was sitting with Theo, and it looked like a typical guy-bonding kind of conversation-lots of nodding, laughing.

  “Iz,” Maggie said, “I think you need to be taking a vacation on this trip instead of…”

  “Instead of what?”

  “Oh, baby girl.”

  I snapped my head back to look at her. Maggie only called me “baby girl” when she was really worried about me. It was what she called her nieces, like the niece I had once babysat. Her name was Kaitlyn, and she was a handful. But even kids like Kaitlyn had bad days, and so if she fell down on a playground and busted a lip, and then had been bullied by a pack of older kids, Maggie would sit her down and say, “Oh, baby girl.” And now she was saying it to me.

  “Are you seriously that worried about me?” I asked.

  “Well…” She drew out the last word. “You have been…I don’t know how to put it…You’ve been a little off lately, and who wouldn’t be? I mean, this thing about your dad, the thing with the police a few months ago, Sam disappearing a few months before that. You’ve been going through a really hard time. It would be nuts if someone wasn’t, you know…going nuts from all that. I just think you need to take a breath.”

  “Are you saying I’m being paranoid?” I wasn’t even insulted. I was in such a tailspin with all this, who knew what was cooking inside my head? And I trusted Maggie to be an objective observer.

  “No,” she said. “Not paranoid. I just don’t think Bernard has anything to do with…anything.” She looked over her shoulder and stared at him inside the window. “Except me.” Bernard saw Maggie looking at him. He smiled, waved. She did the same.

  “Wow, you are into this guy.”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”

  “I don’t want to jinx anything. Let’s not talk about it. Let’s talk about Theo.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “I think he’s the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen in person.”

  “Hey! We finally agree on a guy.”

  “I agree about his looks, but I could never date him.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t date a guy who’s better-looking than me. I don’t have enough self-esteem.”

  The ferry hit a few waves and the boat lurched. Maggie and I gripped the railing. Inside, Theo mouthed, You okay?

  I gave him a thumbs-up and looked back at Maggie. “Do you think he’s prettier than me?”

  “I think you guys are sizzling together.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “ Ischia!” a voice called over a loudspeaker. “ Ischia!”

  Inside the ship, passengers began to gather their stuff. Bernard and Theo got up from their seats.

  “You ready?” Maggie said.

  “I guess.” I only wish I knew what to get ready for.

  35

  Ischia was a sandy, hilly island covered in wide swatches of grass and shrubs-all a vibrant green. Amongst the green were purple flowering trees and pristine white houses with arched doorways. The port was full of vendors selling coffee, snacks, trinkets and maps. We found a cab station and squashed ourselves and Maggie’s huge bag into one.

  The driver knew the Poseidon Gardens and squealed away from the port, heading to the right and forcing the little car upward.

  We would, we decided, go to the gardens for the day and look for Elena. If we didn’t find her, we’d get a hotel. The driver told us that hotels were plentiful, especially on the other side of the island where Poseidon was located.

  “What are the chances we’re actually going to find Elena?” I said, suddenly deflated.

  Bernard turned around from the passenger seat in the front. “What does she look like?”

  I described Elena, a woman in her fifties with chestnut-brown hair and brown eyes flecked with green.

  “We’ll try, Izzy,” Maggie said.

  “Yeah, we’ll try,” Theo said, taking my hand in his. “That’s all we can do.”

  The cab dropped us at the Poseidon gates. We paid and were given maps of the place. When Theo asked the ticket taker exactly how the garden was laid out and what we were supposed to do here, she held up a finger. “Wait, please for inglese.”

  Soon another woman came over. She spoke English. “You see,” she said, pointing at one of the maps, which was dotted with different blue shapes. “These are all pools. The pools marked with number one are the coolest. The temperatures rise, so you go to a pool with number two, then three and so on.” She looked at us. “You understand? You go inside any pool number one, then you relax, then find a pool number two, and then three, and you keep going until you get to a number six. Then you do the whole thing over. But make sure you rest in between.” She pointed at the other areas of the map. “Lots of places to rest and to eat. Maybe you lie on the beach.”

  We thanked her and wandered through the gates and into the gardens.

  The place was stunning, full of lush green bushes, magenta bougainvillea, cypress trees and orange blossomed plants, all of it riding the coast of a sandy beach and the sparkling blue sea.

  The gardens were full of nooks and crannies, lots of lounge areas, each with yellow and orange canvas chairs and thatched umbrellas. And scattered throughout the property were steaming pools, waterfalls running alongside them, coursing down from the cliffs above.

  When we got to the locker rooms, an attendant directed us to the one for donne-women-and the other for uomini. In halting English, she told us bathing caps were required. I had never worn a bathing cap in my life, and I must have looked perplexed because the woman pointed to a boutique, then redirected her finger to my hair, frowning.

  “Wow, she’s right,” I said, looking over her shoulder at one of the pools. Everyone bobbing in the water wore a cap. Even the people lounging around the sides had bathing caps on. “That’s going to make it even harder to find Elena.”

  “Let’s give it a shot,” Maggie said.

  In the locker room, we stowed our luggage and I put on my blue bikini, while Maggie slipped into a red one-piece with black racing stripes, the kind designed for swim teams. I had never been able to convince her to wear anything other than a trusty one-piece.

  I had bought a blue-and-white cap, and after changing into my bikini, I stood in front of the mirror and pulled the cap over my head. The material was thin, and I couldn’t seem to stuff all my curls under the thing. Orange spirals sprang out on all sides.

  A woman walked into the changing room, saw me, laughed. She dug in her bag and fished out a ponytail holder.

  “Grazie, grazie,” I said.

  The woman laughed, nodded, walked away.

  Maggie and I grabbed towels and walked outside. Bernard
and Theo stood there, Theo in long surfer shorts slung low on his hips, showing those distinct muscles that carved lines over every inch of his body. Bernard wore a T-shirt and baggy brown trunks that looked about twenty years old. They both held bathing caps in their hands.

  “We’re the only guys not wearing Speedos,” Theo said.

  We glanced around. It was true.

  “Lots of banana hammocks,” Maggie said.

  “I’m starving,” Bernard announced. He had said the same thing at least four times since we’d gotten up that morning, and he’d had something to eat each time.

  “Let’s find something.” Maggie took him by the arm. “We’ll all look for Elena, and text each other if we see her. Otherwise, we’ll meet back here later?”

  Theo and I nodded, then walked around the sprawling gardens, studying the pools, the beach, the ristorante. All the while, my eyes were searching for Elena. I seemed to draw a lot of looks from the other bathers, some of them openly staring at me as they bobbed in one of the pools or gazed at me from their supine position on lounge chairs. I knew it wasn’t my hair, which was now under the cap and out of sight, so at first I thought maybe I was looking particularly good in my bikini. But when I heard an older man murmur, bianco, I realized that they were commenting on my Casper ’s-ass-white skin. Everyone else in the place was tanned to perfection. Actually past perfection and moving toward crispy.

  I kept glancing at people’s faces, checking for Elena’s eyes, but everyone looked the same under those caps. I began to relax when I realized that aside from my Casper ’s-ass skin, I looked the same. My hair hidden, I was anonymous. There was nothing to do but move from pool to pool, consulting the map and deciding which number two pool to head to next, then which number three and four. At each pool, we eased ourselves into the soothing water, and I found something equally soothing about being with Theo, being with him in that beautiful place so far from home.