We Run the Tides(62)

“A lot,” I say. “It’s what I do.”

“That’s really your job?” she says. “Like your profession?”

“It’s on my business card,” I say and shrug.

“Can I see?” she says.

“My card?” I ask, taken aback. “Sure, I just got new ones.” I open my purse and hand one to her.

She studies the card and turns it over. In her hands I see that the paper stock is flimsy. She turns her profile to me as she looks out into the distance. “Sorry I’m so distracted,” she says, “but I’m here on business.”

I can tell she’s waiting for me to ask what kind of business and so I do.

“I’m thinking about buying the hotel.”

“The hotel we’re staying in?”

“Yes,” she says. “And maybe the festival, too.”

“It’s for sale?” I ask.

“Oh, Eulabee,” she says. “Everything is for sale.”

I try to catch her eye, but she starts looking through her purse for something. “Ah, found it,” she says, and produces a tube of lipstick.

To get back to the hotel we have to return the same way we came. I take in the fact we are together on the promenade with the electric blue water below. We spent much of our youth walking side by side, and here we are again, on another cliff, above another ocean.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” I say and pause.

We continue walking and she looks away, at the many boats below, as though something has caught her attention, as though knowing what I’m going to ask.

“What do you think happened that day when we walked to school and there was the white car . . . ?” I say. I try to speak casually, but it comes out sounding planned.

“What?” she says.

“Remember the white car? There was a man in it, and the police were called and came to school.” I look at her to see if she really could have forgotten.

We walk in silence for a minute longer.

“Yeah,” she says. “That was really weird.”

“Yup,” I say.

Yeah, she said. Yup, I said.

I look at her and try to see her eyes through her Celine glasses. But her silence and her body, which is tense, tell me I have lost her again.

When we return to the hotel, she holds my shoulders with her hands and kisses me on both cheeks. This is the exact way she greeted me at the pool.

*

I DINE WITH INêS and several of the other festival authors and translators. The restaurant is elegant and we are all underdressed. Inês talks about her day at San Michele, and how the owner of the estate, someone named Munthe, was the personal doctor to Queen Victoria of Sweden, who was unhappily married to King Gustaf. Munthe required the queen come to him on Capri for treatment, and everyone suspected that their relationship was more than that of doctor and patient. This story is discussed and laughed about through the first three courses. But after the fourth, we each look at the menu, discreetly trying to ascertain how many courses are left before we can leave.

We excuse ourselves before dessert—we blame jet lag (me) and old age (Inês)—and walk arm-in-arm down the maze of steps that will eventually take us to the hotel. We stop to ask directions from local residents walking their well-groomed dogs. Back at the hotel I escort Inês to her room. She seems worn out by the trip, and disappointed in the day. I think she had romantic intentions for the young man who escorted her to San Michele, and things did not pan out as she wished.

I stand on the tiled balcony off my room, staring out at the terra-cotta roof of another hotel. I was looking forward to this weekend and now I just want to be home with my husband and his suede-colored eyes, and my son and his trains and warm hands. For years I wanted to see Maria Fabiola again and talk about what happened with us. I wanted an ending, or an explanation for why she had started the avalanche of lies all those years ago. Instead I met her husband, who had been told so little about her past.

*

I SEE HUGH AT BREAKFAST. He’s wearing a peach collared shirt and eating alone at a table set with silver. Maria Fabiola is skipping breakfast because she doesn’t want to run into me.

“Good morning,” I say to him.

“Good morning,” he says, and wipes his mouth. He stands and gestures for me to join him at the table. I sit and he helps push my chair in before returning to his seat.

“Heading off today?” he asks.

I tell him my mother-in-law is packing and after breakfast we’ll take the ferry back. He gives me a recommendation of a restaurant he loves in Naples and tells me the name of the ma?tre d’. This is what the wealthy do, I think. They spend their expensive meals talking about other expensive meals.

The waiter comes by and offers me a cappuccino. “Signora Batista was already here,” he says. “You missed her.”

“Yes,” I say. “I slept in.”

“Hotels,” Hugh muses when the waiter has left. “They know everybody’s business. They probably know my wife is having a massage right now. She’s the only person I know who gets massages at ten in the morning.”

Hugh is easy to talk to. I have forgotten what he does for a living and settle into thinking of him as a tennis pro. His conversation is an intermediate lesson given to a new pupil. He lobs me a ball and waits for me to hit it back. If I miss, he serves me another ball.