Keep Away
Monday, July 7th, 2008
It should not matter, but it does. It sticks.
I tell him that I’m from Boston and he looks at me and says, “Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. These are both Italians. Stefano Talerico. You know this?”
This is how it starts. He talks to me for an hour before I have even put my bags down. He says, “You are so sweet, like the Pannetone that bears your name.”
It’s ridiculous. But I let him keep talking because buried in the midst, is the core of something. I can sense it.
It surfaces when he tells me that I should read the works of no fewer than four philosophers, two of them German, to fully understand Star Wars.
He’s a nerd.
He’s an Italian nerd, so it plays a little differently — a little more grandiose, maybe, more distinctly connected to the romantic — but the symptoms are always the same.
Exhaustive knowledge of The Force and its workings. Same t-shirt every day. But he’s smart and what he has to say is interesting, so I let him keep going. Even when he gazes at me and says, “You. You are my future widow.”
I figure, he does this to everyone. To every American, especially.
He interrupts them during breakfast and asks, “The Prestige. Does the machine work?”
I hesitate.
“Yes.”
“No!” he shouts. “NO. You totally misunderstand this film.”
When I excuse myself to go talk to some other people who have congregated in the next room, he laughs. “Why you want to talk to them when you could talk to me?”
In the next room, there is an Australian, shaggily bearded in protest against Morgan Stanley, his former employer. There is an American girl — a blonde Texan, ankles still dirty from a morning trip to Pompeii — who seems dismayed by everything. There is a Canadian entranced by the TV.
I realize in about four seconds that he’s right. So I go back to talk to him.
Steven King. The philosophical difference between tango and waltz. French pop music. A million and one complements. You are. You are so. You make me feel.
He pours me a drink. When I’m done, he says, “I put a potion in that. Wait until tomorrow morning.”
*
In a church in Napoli, one of the four trillion churches, all of them beautiful, all of them the kinds of places I love to visit. Quiet. Dense with candle light and the smell of incense. Peeling paint. In a church in Napoli, there is a statue of the Virgin, life-sized, in a life-sized, sewn, cloth dress and veil.
Or maybe she is not the Virgin because there is no serenity, no smug satisfaction at never having to actually die, on her pretty face. She is Our Lady of Extreme Misery, Saint Somebody. She looks heavenward, mouth open, tears streaming down her face. If she really is the Virgin, she is not any of the usual Marys: Most Favorite or Ace Favor-Getter or Most Unsullied. She is a totally basic thing: A woman who lost her son.
The dress and veil are of a stiff brown cloth but they are both embroidered to the hilt with flowers and flourishes in pale yellow and green. The work is careful and done with great care. I imagine grieving parishioners of generations passed hunched in chairs, fingers stiff, squinting in low light. A thing to do. To keep busy. To forget.
At midday on a Tuesday, there is one person in the church besides me — a older woman praying in a pew. As I search for a plaque or an inscription near Our Lady of Extreme Misery and her fabulous dress, I hear a noise behind me. The woman in the pew has begun to cry.
I take a new candle from a stack nearby and drop the recommended 50 cents into the dented pewter box. There are ten other candles, half melted away, dripping into their holders. Mine lights with a woosh. I imagine it as the sound of heavenly ignition, the sound of things lifting off the ground, being taken away, being sucked up to heaven and leaving only quiet.
*
He knocks on my door. I am exhausted, splayed out on my bed, hovering over a guidebook with whatever strength I have left. He does not say hello or ask me about my day.
“In the last ten years, there have only been two great American pop artists.”
I wait. And it’s a stupid thing. It’s a really stupid thing. But.
“The New Radicals and Fiona Apple.”
For an instant, fleeting but real, I hate myself for not loving him. I smile, nod, biting back all the things I could say.
On the way out of the room, he shouts, “I would slay dragons for you!”
Why this is not enough for me, I have no idea.
*
The hotel owner does his best to scare the shit out of me. On my way out, he stops me.
“No. You cannot take this. You leave here.”
He’s pointing at my bag.
“They take it. They crazy. Right off your shoulder.”
The guidebooks say it. People on the street say it. Napoli is rife with petty crime, with con men pulling passports out of money belts and kids on scooters snatching bags. Out on the street, it’s not hard to believe. In a city that is constantly screaming, honking, triple-parking, running reds, scarfing pizza, fighting, it is no surprise that a few wallets, watches, passports, should go missing.
I don’t know enough Italian to tell him that a woman without a purse in a city full of women carrying purses is more of a target than less of one, so I just tell him that I’ve taken almost everything valuable out of it, which is true.
On the street, I am New Yorker Laura. I am the queen of chic, collected paranoia, eyes everywhere behind my sunglasses. I walk with my bag toward the wall, not the street. I keep a hand on the straps.
I keep hold of everything. My bag. My money. Everything you can see.
