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Scent of sea and palm,
Craggy and ancient, a world
Bathed in saffron
- #17, In Blue Solitudes, S. Wilson-Osaki
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“A. S’okay.” Bleary eyed and bone weary, Sébastien stared at the sign for two minutes before it registered. He kept his distance, glanced around the bushel of sun-ripened cab drivers and chauffeurs waiting to squeeze every last euro out of their charges, but no.
This was him. Smile so bright it blinded, like glare off a windshield. Footballer’s frame decked in team colors and too-tight shorts. Face Bernini could have sculpted. Hair black as an oil slick, greased into a neat, perfect slope. His tortoiseshell eyes twinkled in Seb’s direction when he took a cautious step forward.
“Signor S’okay?”
“Osaki. Yes.”
“Ah, Osokay.”
“Osaki. O-sak-i. Japanese.”
“You fly from Japan?”
“No. Canada. Montreal.”
“Si, si, Signor Osaki. Sebastiano.”
Seb opened his mouth to correct him but nodded instead. “That’s me.”
“Andrea Sorrentino.” He thumped a hand on his chest. “You want I take your bag?”
“Uh...”
Before he could decide, the driver clacked down the handle on his extra-fee-heavy suitcase and hefted it under his arm like an unruly toddler. “Vieni, vieni.” He dove into the crowd before Seb could get his bearings.
Spotting the clean line to the exit, Seb set his own pace, his tipsy head still mired in a post-flight fugue. Thirty-two sleepless hours, plus a morning spent tracing and retracing his path through the labyrinthine halls of the Rome airport to make his connection, left him listless. With exhaustion but also nerves. What had he been thinking, shipping off to a country he’d never been to and where he didn’t speak the language?
The answer, of course, was Henry. Who should have been there, propping him up with his rock climber’s arms, but also with his wonderment, the kid-in-a-candy store way he’d seen the world. Henry had puffed all his energy and excitement and fire into Seb’s lead balloon and—in his latest impossible feat—made him fly.
Clutching his backpack like a life preserver, Seb practiced his deep breathing as he waded through the stream of travellers. More of a trickle, really, now that he was in the flow. One foot in front of the other, he reminded himself, looking for a focal point. A taut jean-clad ass, with a carefree swagger all its own, lured him the rest of the way. Seb staggered out of the airport terminal...
... into a whole new world. The hazy afternoon sun swaddled him like a warm blanket. Ripe with the scent of palm trees and petrol, the parking lot was more social gathering than frantic hub, with drivers chatting, smoking, and laughing as they waited for clueless travellers to wander by. Stoic mountains—silent sentries at the gate to paradise—shadowed the horizon, rings of mist crowning their crater heads.
Woozy with relief, Seb lowered his lids to half-mast and basked in the moment. This was Henry’s world. He was safe.
A hulking black SUV screeched to a halt in front of him, blocking the view. Before Seb could decide whether to be terrified or outraged, his driver slid open the side door, beckoning him into his luxury air-conditioned chariot. Too polite to give in to the urge to collapse across the seats and zonk out, Seb stumbled into the nearest chair. His hands shook as he fought with the seat belt. Something about that fateful click brought the reality back home—he was trapped in a jet-fuelled coffin with a man who could barely pronounce his name, soon to be zipping down a highway where speed limits weren’t even guidelines, thousands of miles from home, by a world-famous volcano that once scorched everything for miles—
Hand on his knee. There was a hand on his knee.
“Signor Osakay? You want I get you espresso? Water? Food? Is no trouble.”
“No.” Seb shut his eyes, sucked in all the air he could. “I... I’m just tired. Didn’t sleep on the plane.” When he opened them again, he met soft eyes shimmering with kindness. His exhalation came easy. So did his smile. What was his name again? Andrea Sorrentino. A gentle name, full of music.
“Granita al limone. Un momento.” A squeeze to Seb’s knee, and he hopped out the door.
Andrea returned a few minutes later with a small plastic cup half-filled with yellow slush. A DayGlo-green straw canted archly over the rim, the non-business end cut at an angle like stems at the bottom of a vase. At his expectant look, Seb took a quick sip... and jolted back in his seat as tart, tasty goodness ripped across his tongue. He went in for a second, longer draught of the cool lemonade-on-steroids slush, unable to stop from moaning in approval. “On steroids” didn’t really do the flavor justice—sweeter and tangier than normal lemonade, the drink was more like gourmet sorbet, though no grain of sugar had ever polluted this nectar. Seb wasn’t even a quarter of the way done, and already he wanted another.
“Yes?” Andrea had the look of a puppy begging for its master’s approval. Something in his expression silenced the last of Seb’s worries.
“Perfect. Thank you.”
“Now... to Amalfi?”
“Please.”
Seb downed the last of his granita—instantly regretting drinking it so fast—as they zoomed onto the highway. Traffic and Andrea’s smooth driving helped regulate their speed. Seb soon found his eyes drooping, not helped by the sparse, industrial scenery, the sea and the mountains too far away to impress. Even the ruins of Pompeii, which Andrea excitedly pointed out, looked like a shantytown in any poor country from this distance. But then the Villa of the Mysteries probably wasn’t all that mysterious after thousands of years trapped in rubble.
The click-clack of the turn signal ticked down like a timer in his head. Seb swallowed hard, straightened in his seat. A swerve, and the side of one of the not-so-distant mountains blacked out the windshield, its slope soaring up into the clouds. A sharp right turn led to another, the bulky SUV scraping around hairpin corners and playing chicken with the motorbikes that chased it up the narrow roads. Heavy on the horn and light on patience, Andrea barrelled along the dusty paths as if pitchfork-wielding villagers raced him to the summit. Seb bit the side of his tongue to keep from crying out and dropped his gaze into his lap, but that was somehow worse than watching the near misses and almost collisions in action.
“You fly solo, Signor Osakay?”
“Uh... yes.”
“Long way?”
“Ten hours. Fifteen if you count the layover and getting to the airport.”
“Is cold in Montreal?”
Seb would have rolled his eyes if they weren’t so busy trying to make sure they hadn’t hit anything. Every non-Canadian thought they lived in 24/7, 365-day arctic conditions. “Not in September.”
“Is warm?”
“Not like here.”
“Ah, here is bellissimo.” Andrea took his hand off the steering wheel to gesture at the sun; Seb counted the seconds, fighting to control his heaving breaths. “First time you come to Amalfi?”
“Yes.”
“You will like. You have friend?”
“No. Just me.” Seb hugged his arms around his backpack, wondering how much he should say. To his driver. A person he had met a half hour before. But then Henry’s number-one piece of advice had always been to get to know the locals.
“Just you? I give you cards.” To Seb’s horror, Andrea wrenched his hips around to dig into his pocket with only his elbow on the wheel. He pulled out a stack of business cards that would not have been out of place at a convention. With maybe half an eye on the road, he flicked through them. Too choked with fear to reprimand him, Seb almost resorted to prayer. “Villa Napolitana... Ah! Very close, Taverna del Duca. You tell them Andrea send you, they give you good meal. Pasta, pizza, fish, all good. Very close to villa.” He passed the Taverna’s business card back without looking at Seb or the path but somehow managed a 180 turn up at steep hill.
“That’s very kind of—”
“In Piazza del Dogi, Ristorante L’Abside. Best pizza in Amalfi. You tell them. Andrea. Also Da Gemma. Same menu from 1872. You know what is Genovese?”
“From Genoa, you mean?”
“Si, pasta Genovese. Onions, meat, wine, cooked long time. Don’t miss.”
“Any seafood? Fish?”
“Everywhere. Everywhere in Amalfi. So fresh, still move, eh?” Andrea’s smile was just distracting enough to make Seb forget they played bumper cars on a road used to ferrying horse-drawn carts. One way. “For special night, Marina Grande.” Andrea plucked two more cards out of his pack. “What you like? Prawns? Polpo? Lobster?”
“All of it.” Seb would have murdered a huge bowl of seafood pasta if his stomach weren’t currently lodged in his throat.
“Bene. Where else you go?”
By the time the SUV hit a flat stretch near the summit, Seb had a full deck of recommendations, each suit capped with the Italian version of “you’ll get a discount if you tell them I sent you.” Seb doubted the sincerity of this but not of the man himself. With his easy smile and eagerness to help, he would remember the warmth of Andrea’s welcome long after memories of minor inconveniences had faded. With the windows down and the wind ruffling his slick locks back into curls, Seb thought he caught a glimpse of the man beneath the manscaping. He soon realized it was the same guy he’d been seeing all along. Andrea’s enthusiasm for people was as genuine as his love for his little Campania town, and Seb happily lost himself in their conversation.
Until the view caught him up short. They circled around a dead-drop valley, stunning if Seb dared to look down. A chandelier of mist hovered in midair, dripping its crystalline wisps down the mountains’ décolletage. He gaped until they rounded the far side of the second mountain, and then... the sea. An indescribable ribbon of blue stretching out to the gauzy horizon. The color of the serenity he searched for. The color of Henry’s eyes. All at once Seb understood why his husband insisted he see this place, stand on a beach where every pebble was kissed by history and stare out into the Tyrrhenian blue.
Henry blue.
“Magnifico, no?”
A bobsled run down the latest slope shot Seb back to the present. And his terror of not making it to his villa alive.
“There are no words.” Or none he’d care to share. He scoured his mind for another of Henry’s tips. Ah, yes. Get people talking. “How long have you lived here?”
“Always. My father, he drive since I was little...” He patted an invisible child’s head. “Then we do together. Now is me.”
“He’s retired?”
A few heartbeats of silence, and Seb cursed his stupidity.
“No. Cancer. Too much smoking.”
Swallowing back a surge of emotion, Seb rasped out, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked...”
Andrea’s shrug caught him by surprise. “Is life. I drive for him, sister take care of Mamma. Italian way.”
But Seb couldn’t leave it, couldn’t escape the words that burned on his tongue every minute of every day for the past three years. Their fumes wet his eyes and choked off his breath, same as the moment the police knocked on his door. Maybe if he confessed them to this gentle, happy man, his jollity would finally douse their fire.
“I lost my husband.” The words were out before he knew what to do with them, hanging in the air like the mist between the mountains. “That’s why I’m here alone. It’s... It would have been our tenth anniversary.”
Gray-green eyes met his in the rear-view mirror, and the world stilled. The jostle of the SUV as it screeched around another corner, the suffocating humidity that poured in through the windows, the epic view and the weight of Andrea’s admission all fell away as their gazes met. Seb saw nothing but the deepest compassion in Andrea’s glinting eyes.
“He is here with you. His spirito.”
Seb filled his lungs with sea air, nodded. “More than you know.” He dug into his backpack, pulled out Henry’s book. A few pictures threatened to spill out, but Seb tucked them back in. “He was a travel writer. Guidebooks. For Lonely Planet. This was one of his favorite places. I have all his notes. All the stuff he couldn’t fit in the book.”
“Ah, then you tell me a little lie, Signor Osakay. This trip you are not alone.”
For the first time in a long, long time, Seb found his smile.
“No. I guess not.”
The SUV screeched to a halt in front of a pair of towering iron doors better suited to a bank vault than vacation apartments. The dregs of Seb’s granita buzz wouldn’t have fuelled a fly. He tumbled out onto the stone sidewalk, stared up at the fortress-like walls that protected the Villa Napolitana from the ravening hordes of tourists. Granted, the cardigan-clad seniors and hand-holding newlyweds that clogged the main street hadn’t looked all that mercenary except when clamoring for a good deal, but Seb appreciated the extra layer of privacy all the same.
Until Andrea swung open one of the doors, revealing a staircase that put the 491 steps to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica to shame. Or so it seemed to Seb, who seriously considered asking Andrea to throw him over his shoulder—as he now did with Seb’s suitcase—and gallop up the steps with the ease of an Italian greyhound. Not even Andrea’s succulent ass could tempt him into action. He heaved his backpack onto his shoulders, not quite Atlas bearing the weight of the world, but close. Seb crawled up the first few steps to the small landing behind the doors and considered curling up in a shadowy corner with the slinky little tabby hiding there.
“Vattene, Andrea!” With a hiss and a clap in the cat’s direction, Andrea came bounding down again. “Fila!”
Seb’s exhausted mind processed this as slowly as the cat uncoiled itself, stretched, and ambled away. “He’s an Andrea too?”
“Si.” The full force of his thousand-ampere smile bedazzled Seb anew. “Sant' Andrea sleep in the Duomo. You know, we pass. He is santo patrono of Amalfi. Many, many people have this name.”
“And animals, I guess.”
His musical laugh almost lulled Seb into a trance. “Yes, many. Piccolo Andrea live in the supermercato. He catch the mice. But here there are birds, people...”
“Treats and cuddles.”
“He stay too long, not do his job. His mamma no like.”
Seb poorly stifled a yawn. “But I think he had the right idea.” He slumped down onto one of the steps, a wind-up toy that needed a good crank. And wasn’t that the truth?
“Ah, signore! You want I help?” Andrea swallowed a laugh, proffered an arm.
As inviting as that tan, toned support looked, Seb clung white-knuckled to his dignity.
“Call me Seb.”
“Eh?”
“Sébastien. Seb. No one who’s put up with me like this should call me ‘sir.’”
“Sebastiano, si.” The brightness of Andrea’s grin could have powered a small village. Seb wondered if everyone in this country was so high voltage. “Lucia, she wait with your key. You want I take your bag?”
Seb gripped the straps of his backpack, glanced up the endless staircase. Even in the shade, his skin slurped up the day’s humidity like a sponge, leaving him clammy and bloated. His breaths heaved with moisture like a trout slow drowning on dry land. A dull percussion beat on the backs of his eyes, war drums signalling an incoming migraine. And here before him, his own personal Mercury, ready to wing his belongings up to Olympus.
“Please.” He slipped off his backpack, which made standing much easier. Once shed, its weight somehow tripled—he barely managed to keep it a foot off the ground as he handed it off to Andrea. To his surprise, his godly companion didn’t wing off into the clouds, but matched his pace as Seb tackled the steps.
Too winded for polite conversation, he was relieved when Andrea launched into a narration of the property’s virtues. The website photos hadn’t deceived: the sun-swept three-story building with wrought-iron terraces and a red slat roof slotted into a succession of fieldstone-speckled ledges that had been carved out of the mountainside. Green with dense shrubbery and gray with old igneous rock, the mountain loomed over the Villa Napolitana like a sleeping giant.
At a peak-a-boo archway in the garden wall, Seb stopped cold—not to wheeze, but to gasp. A teardrop-shaped pool nestled in a bed of grass. On the far side, a grove of thin-trunked, bushy-leaved trees sheltered two rows of chaise longues. A simple wood gate underscored a breathtaking view of inner Amalfi, the full-bloom sun hanging over their giant peak’s twin. Seb estimated he had just enough energy left for a sprint and a cannonball into the beguiling waters.
Instead he turned back toward an equally beguiling sight: Andrea, eyes glinting with knowing and mischief.
“I think I’ve come to the right place.”
With what Seb would come to recognize as a classic Italian shrug, Andrea steered him back toward the stairs. “Your amante would not send you wrong.”
Seb attempted a laugh; it came out more like a cough. “I chose this place. The company he worked for paid for all his expenses. I had to be more...”
“Frugale.”
“Exactly.”
As he lumbered up the last flight, Andrea hovering behind as if to break his fall, the heat and humidity and stress and jet lag waged a full-on assault on his senses. Seb swayed, cursed, steadied himself. The final three steps stretched up like hurdles in his mind’s eye. He would not pass out, he inwardly scolded himself, in front of the first man whose smile he could bear without feeling like an adulterous worm.
A gentle touch—or was it a wisp of breeze—nudged the small of Seb’s back. Closing his eyes, he summoned up the strength to climb one, two, three calf-straining steps to... a lovely little terrace with a cozy table for four and a higher angle on the spectacular view. Spellbound, at first he didn’t notice the short bottle blonde with the round face and the peppy Jack Russell terrier.
The dog soon made itself known, lunging for Andrea, who dropped to his knees and welcomed him like a long-lost child.
“Signor Osakay? I am Lucia Barroso, manager of the Villa Napolitana.”
“And this is Matto,” Andrea said between furious licks to his face. “He is a bit...” Another shrug. “But very nice.”
Seb offered the dog his hand for sniffing, but he was no match for Andrea.
“You are in number three, signore.” Lucia gestured toward the furthest of three doors at the very end of the terrace. “I’ll show you.”
Seb nodded but couldn’t quite pry away from the sight of Andrea cooing at and caressing Matto, who revved up further with each pet—a miniature rocket ready to launch into the stratosphere. Lucia whistled, and the little dog wriggled out of Andrea’s arms and trotted to her side, leaving Seb to stare dumbly at the man who was, after all, only his driver. Not, say, a life preserver he could cling to for the rest of the trip.
“Well...” Seb cleared his throat. “Thank you. For everything.”
“I see you in the piazza.” He handed over his backpack; Seb didn’t think he imagined the lingering brush of his fingers. “Amalfi very small. We say ‘buongiorno.’ You tell me what you do. In your book.”
“I will.”
“You remember. Granita al limone.”
Seb found his smile. “How could I forget something so deliziosa?”
Andrea’s laugh echoed up through the valley and over the mountains.