“You can dispose of my luggage as you see fit,” Sophie had actually said, a half-hour before boarding the ferry to Naples.
How does one dispose of luggage? For the first few weeks Anton kept Sophie’s suitcase in the wardrobe beside the bed, but its presence was oppressive. On a bright clear afternoon in late October he came up from the piazza and was bothered yet again by the way the wardrobe wouldn’t quite close. He lifted the suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. He was overcome for a moment; sweet, faint, her hair, her skin. She was the kind of preternaturally organized girl who remained packed for entire vacations, extracting a set of clothes every morning and leaving everything else folded neatly, hand-washing the previous day’s clothing in the sink and hanging it up to dry on the hotel balcony overnight, re-folding it the following morning. Everything was clean. There were three pairs of pants, several shirts, a skirt, the blue linen dress she’d worn in Naples. He laid it all out on the bed like evidence. There were t-shirts, a wrinkled blouse, underwear, socks. A bra the color of daffodils, a biography of Jim Morrison; he read the first few pages and then returned his attention to the suitcase. It was empty now but for a wadded-up pair of socks, so he began methodically checking the outside pockets. In the first pocket was an Oxford Italian-English dictionary, two blank postcards from Rome, an article about nuclear ethics torn out of a newspaper, and a packet of sugar with a picture of Capri on the back. In the other pocket were two folded maps (Rome and Naples), a partially consumed bottle of water with condensation clinging to the inside, and an envelope addressed to Sophie c/o the New York Philharmonic.
The envelope been opened. Inside was a typed note on San Francisco Symphony Orchestra letterhead, dated August 15th:
Dear Ms. Berenhardt,
As per our telephone conversation of August 4th, it is with great pleasure that I acknowledge your acceptance of our invitation to join the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for our upcoming season. As discussed, Jacob Neerman from our personnel department will contact you within the next two weeks to work out the details. We are happy to provide a stipend to offset your expenses in relocating to San Francisco this fall. Jacob will discuss the details when you speak with him.
Sincerely,
Arthur Gonzalez
Administrative Director, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
“San Francisco,” Anton said. The room was silent. He carried the letter out to the balcony, where he read it again and then stood for a while looking out at the sea. After a few minutes of this he went back inside. His cell phone was flashing a low-battery warning on the desk, so he picked up the keys and his wallet and ran down the hotel stairs and around the corner to the piazza, where a tourist was using the pay phone. He stood nearby, impatiently shifting his weight, and realized that the page was still in his hand. He read it over a few times and then lost himself for a few minutes watching a passionate soccer game being played by boys on the beach. They were the children of fishermen, of restaurant workers, of the woman who ran the newsstand, and they played on the beach all day while their parents worked, an emotional society of small tanned boys in swim shorts who formed and broke alliances, went swimming individually and came back together again, organized themselves into soccer teams and then disbanded to pester their parents for ice cream.
“Ich vermiss dich so sehr,” said the tourist, on the phone.
He wanted to call Sophie and ask when exactly she had planned on telling him that she was moving to San Francisco. As per our telephone conversation of August 4th. He remembered August 4th. He had stood in front of his bathroom mirror that morning, extracted a piece of glass from his face with a pair of tweezers and held the shining transparent thing up to the light. Sophie had stood in the doorway and asked if he’d been shaving with glass and then hadn’t wanted to talk about it later. Had she really decided to leave him that day? But married him anyway? He’d gone off to work, she’d stayed home and placed a call to San Francisco and then behaved as if nothing was wrong that night? He was incredulous. The whole thing seemed pathetic. He was disgusted with both Sophie and himself. A yellow-and-blue boat was coming into the harbor.
“Ich werde niemals zu dir zurückkommen,” said the tourist. She was silent a moment, listening, and then hung up the phone without saying anything else and walked away toward the water. Anton moved in immediately and made the call, but their home phone number in New York had been disconnected. He called Sophie’s cell phone, but it went to voice mail and he didn’t want to leave a message. Anton hung up and dialed a different number but then remembered that he and Gary weren’t necessarily on speaking terms and hung up before Gary answered. He went to the fishermen’s café and read a newspaper until David appeared. It was a bleached-white day, cloudless, the sky so bright he couldn’t look at it.
“Mind if I join you?” David sat down across the table from him without waiting for an answer. He had green paint under his fingernails. He was carrying his own newspaper. He opened it, folded it carefully to expose the crossword puzzle, and ordered a beer from the waiter before he looked up at Anton again.
“What’s the matter?” David asked.
“Something I read.” The letter was still in Anton’s pocket. He unfolded it and gave it to David. “My wife,” he said. “I didn’t know she was going to leave me.”
David took the letter from him and read it through quickly. “She said nothing about it? No hint?”
“Nothing. I found the letter in her suitcase. I mean, to be fair, I guess I left her first.”
“Why didn’t she take her suitcase?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she wanted me to find it.”
“Are you all right?”
“More startled than anything.”
“I would be.”
“I mean, I was cheating on her,” Anton said. “I didn’t think she’d . . .” He trailed off and there was a silence, during which a fisherman climbed into his red-and-white boat and started slowly out of the harbor. “It’s all so pathetic,” he said. “I don’t know why we got married. It just seemed like the right thing to do, but why would either of us . . .” The putt-putt of the motor played counter-point to the calls of the soccer boys on the beach.
“Hey,” David said, “I think Gennaro wants you.” Anton followed the direction of his gaze. The owner of the hotel was coming around the corner into the piazza. The white FedEx envelope in his hand shone almost painfully in the sunlight.
Anton felt as if the envelope were floating toward him, a glaring white rectangle that he found hard to look at dead-on. The wait was agonizing, so he stood up from the table and went to meet it.
“Good afternoon,” Gennaro said. “This envelope arrived for you. I signed for it, thought I’d give it to you in person.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.” It was addressed to an Ali Merino, care of Anton Waker. He recognized Aria’s handwriting. She’d used Gary’s father’s store for the return address. “It’s for a friend of mine,” he said. “He forgot some papers.”
“Ah,” said Gennaro. “A beautiful day, yes?”
“It is.” Anton raised the envelope to shield his eyes against the sun and tried to smile.
“Well,” Gennaro said awkwardly, “goodbye.”
“Goodbye.” He watched Gennaro recede for a moment before he returned to the table where David was sitting.
“Your package?” David asked.
“After all these weeks.”
“You going to open it?”
“No,” Anton said. Strange to have it before him after all this time, shining innocuously in the sunlight.