by D. M. George
“Teddy’s right—she’s a master of the craft. She introduced me to Etienne. I had been divorced several years and had given up on love. Neither of us guessed our encounter was anything but accidental.”
Perla needed a moment to decide whether she was angry or not. Coming from the cold and impersonal Silicon Valley, suspicion of strangers was instinctive. People kept to themselves and rarely reached out to newcomers with genuine concern. Did there always have to be a catch though, she wondered, or was that just her low self-esteem speaking?
Perla reminded herself she wasn’t in California anymore. She also reminded herself that Italy had embraced her the moment she arrived and had made her feel more at home than home. So much so, in fact, it seemed as if her life had been waiting here for her all along and all she had to do was show up and start living it.
“I’m embarrassed but grateful,” Perla conceded. “Vito’s dreamy. You had only met me once though—why did you care?”
“I’m a good judge of character. When we talked that day, your kindness immediately shone through. And when you asked how Roman was doing… Well, it warmed my heart.”
“And Vito?”
“Roman once mentioned Vito didn’t have a steady girlfriend. You both seemed lonely, and I thought you’d be good for each other. I was right. You two hit it off immediately.”
“Okay, I forgive you for meddling—just help me find the perfect dress to wear to his party. Any ideas?” Perla circled the racks of clothing, running her hand over the fabrics.
“Put this on.” Teddy handed her a long black dress with a full skirt and three-quarter-length sleeves.
“This is pretty,” Perla said, “but won’t ankle length be too formal?”
“Not at all. Italians are dressier than Americans, as you’ve noticed. We never wear shorts, pants, or sundresses to an evening out.”
Perla went into the dressing room to change and came out to model for her friends. Teddy and Maria stood back to study her. She liked the way the crinkly fabric swished against her skin as she moved.
“It needs a belt,” Maria said and handed her a woven leather cummerbund. “Yes, much better—show off your waist. Always accentuate your best features. Unbutton the bottom to show some leg. Don’t be afraid to be a woman.”
“Dressing like an Italian is all about simplicity: neutral colors, natural fabrics, clothes that fit well and aren’t trendy,” Teddy explained. “Don’t you agree, Maria?”
“Yes. The secret to sophistication is to always dress for who you are. And always choose quality over quantity. The goal is to be seen, not looked at.” Maria handed Perla a sleeveless knit dress that ended right below the knee. “Here, try this next.”
They clapped when Perla came out of the dressing room and twirled in front of a full-length mirror.
“Perfect! It shows off both your waist and calves. But it needs something to tie it together.” Maria rummaged through the built-in wall shelves stacked with neatly folded sweaters and scarves, then pulled out a beige cashmere wrap. It had a rolled collar and covered her shoulders and upper arms.
“Your arms are great, but it’s classier to cover them. You’ll need this in the evening anyway when it gets cooler,” Maria said, adjusting the folds expertly.
“I like this one.” Perla admired her reflection.
Maria and Teddy agreed and started searching for accessories.
“With a few wardrobe essentials, you can make this dress into an outfit. You’ve got something around your neck, all you need now are high heels, a new handbag, designer sunglasses, and one piece of statement jewelry,” Teddy said and asked her shoe size.
A moment later she returned with a pair of taupe stilettos and matching clutch purse, which complemented the cream-colored dress perfectly.
“You need earrings for the finishing touch.” Maria unlocked a jewelry case and removed a pair of gold chandelier earrings. “I’m loaning you these. Just return them after the party. Wear your hair up to show them off.”
“Are you sure?” When Perla put them on, they sparkled. The perfect exclamation mark for her beautiful ensemble.
“Of course. I’m happy to help polish you up for Vito,” Maria replied.
Perla went into the dressing room to change back into the blouse and jeans she’d arrived in.
“You don’t have to buy expensive sunglasses either. I’ll loan you my Bulgaris.” Teddy cracked the dressing room door to hand them to Perla and screamed.
Maria poked her head in and also screamed.
“Oh my God—you can’t go on a date wearing those granny panties!” Teddy said. “They look like diapers! High-waist panties are outlawed in Italy, you know.”
Perla had never given her underwear much thought. She wore them for comfort. They were breathable cotton after all.
“No, no, no. It’s simply not done here,” Maria explained. “Italian women pride themselves on their lingerie. You have to be sexy under your clothes before you can be sexy in them.”
“Okay, I get the message, but I… uh, don’t know how things will go tomorrow night with Vito. This dress will probably stay on.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Teddy chimed in. “You wear lingerie for yourself first and for whomever you’re entertaining second. All our work dressing you up will be for naught if you wear those ghastly things. Pay Maria and then I’m taking you to my favorite lingerie store—my treat.”
Maria wrapped Perla’s new outfit in tissue paper and put it in a glossy white bag with handles. Perla thanked her profusely for the earrings, and she left the store with Teddy, stressing about her growing credit card balance. Hell, she’d worry about it later. What mattered now was being feminine and sexy on her first dress-up date with Vito.
After a trip to Teddy’s lingerie store, they bade each other goodbye at the iron gate. Perla hugged her shopping bag as she continued down the steep path to Marina Grande. The nude lace bra and panty set that Teddy had selected for her was exquisite, but guilty thorns pricked her conscience. Was she taking advantage of Teddy’s friendship? Although Perla had been first out with her wallet, Teddy insisted on paying—her gift, she said. Clearly Teddy and Maria enjoyed dressing her up. Nevertheless, her father’s muffled voice admonished her from the grave. Don’t be a freeloader. Why did she only think of her father when she felt unworthy?
Perla admired the spectacular view of the harbor while she walked. She noticed whitecaps dotting the harbor that weren’t there earlier. The sky remained cloudless, but the gentle midday breeze had turned into a strong wind. She stopped to put her hair in a ponytail and her cell phone rang—Vito. He was delighted to find her in Capri and asked her to meet him at Roman’s boat slip in the marina. His voice sounded mischievous.
A few minutes later, Perla spotted Vito pacing in front of the boat they’d used in Baia. When she stepped out of the crowd, he lifted her in a bear hug and swung her around like a doll. So tall, so strong, so delectable, she thought.
“Miss Perlita, do you ever do anything naughty?” His face split into a wide grin.
“Other than using the men’s room now and then when I think nobody’s looking, no. What do you have in mind?”
“The Blue Grotto is closed to tourists now because of the wind. The swells are too high for the rowboats to get through the opening without smacking the ceiling. Do you want to swim there with me? It’s not allowed.”
“But I don’t have a swimsuit.”
Vito just raised his eyebrows.
“NO WAY!” Perla exclaimed.
“I dare you.”
“Pretty forward of you, don’t you think?”
“We have no secrets, remember?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Besides, your virtue is safe with me. My three-date rule is still in effect. This is only our second. Il Duce will behave himself.”
“You’re on!” Perla couldn’t resist.
Vito took her hand and helped her into the boat. She recalled the tour to the Blue Grott
o she’d paid for but missed on the day she’d met Parthenope. No trip to the Amalfi Coast is complete without experiencing the Blue Grotto, but she hadn’t gotten around to rebooking the tour. Now she was glad she hadn’t. How many people could say they had swum in the Blue Grotto at all, let alone naked and with a middle-aged stud muffin? This was a bucket list moment.
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting naked on the boat’s swim platform, putting on their fins and tightening their headlamp straps. Vito had anchored away from the rock wall, within swimming distance to the Blue Grotto. They tied their towels to the ladder to keep them from blowing away and fell backward into the water with a big splash.
“Why is skinny-dipping so much fun?” Perla asked.
The water amplified her senses. Every pore tingled with delight.
“Because it makes you feel like a kid again.”
They kicked at a leisurely pace through the heaving sea to the mouth of the cave. The entrance area, normally a parking lot of tour boats, was vacant. Swells smashed against the low ceiling of the grotto, seconds apart. They stopped and tread water close to the opening, but not close enough to get slammed against the vertical rock wall.
“How long can you swim underwater?” Vito asked.
“A really long time.” Perla grinned but touched her left armpit nervously. What if her gills accidentally triggered while she was swimming? How would she explain that to Vito?
“Follow me!” Vito dove deep and kicked hard.
They resurfaced into an inverted netherworld. The water below them was pure light, the space above pure black. Sunlight reflecting up from the submerged cavern floor colored the water a phosphorescent blue. Perla imagined herself swimming in air. Vito clicked on their headlamps, but blackness absorbed all but a tiny spot of light. She could barely make out the cave’s sheer walls and rounded ceiling.
“This is so incredibly beautiful!” Perla said, taking in the bubbles that sparkled like diamonds in the strange blue light, frosting her arms with silvery glitter.
“Spectacular…,” Vito said. They rose and fell on gentler swells. “This was Emperor Tiberius’s personal nymphaeum. He brought slave children here in his pleasure boat to swim with him. He liked this place so much he built resting platforms and affixed statues of sea gods onto the walls. They were mounted on pedestals and submerged to their knees so the light illuminated the figures from below. What a sight it must have been.”
“I’ve heard the tales,” Perla said, thinking about Parthenope’s harrowing story, not the statues. “A wicked, wicked man. This place is too heavenly for such a monster.” Her voice trailed off. She shook thoughts of Tiberius from her mind and turned to Vito. “Did you know that as a teenager I was on a synchronized swim team? I went on to win ten gold medals at the Olympics. Let me show you.” She grinned playfully.
Vito laughed as Perla dropped underwater and shot back up to her waist, her arms spread. It was easy with fins on. She had never been a synchronized swimmer but had always wanted to. In her view, the sport was one of those fundamentally feminine things, like wearing cameos and breastfeeding, that celebrate the intrinsic beauty of womanhood. She put her hands together over her head, submerged completely, and resurfaced, legs first, then did a scissors kick and spun in a complete circle. Vito pulled her into a hug at the end of her show.
“Brava! Perla, you are shameless!”
The opening of the grotto had become as calm as a swimming pool, but Perla dismissed it. She was lost in the sensation of Vito’s chest hair against her nipples.
“May I give you a proper kiss?” Vito held Perla away by her shoulders. “I want it to be memorable.”
Until then, he had only given Perla a quick kiss on the lips while they ate gelato in Baia and polite hello-goodbye pecks on the cheek. Perla consented with a dumb grin.
“Follow me.” Vito sank underwater, fanning his hands like a seahorse.
Perla piked and drifted down into his open arms. For a magical moment they were suspended in liquid air, steeped in pure blue light. There was no up or down, only the two of them in the center of their own sapphire universe. Vito pushed up their headlamps and pulled her into a long, deep kiss. They wrapped themselves around each other, legs entwined. His expert lips pressed against hers with exactly the right amount of pressure to tease, command, and arouse. His mouth parted slightly, just enough for his tongue to dance invitingly against hers.
Perla would have drowned in ecstasy if Vito hadn’t disengaged and pulled her to the surface.
“Wow!” was all she could say between gasps of air. It was her most memorable first kiss; the best, in fact, of her entire life. They hugged tightly, breathing hard.
Perla repositioned her headlamp and saw something move behind Vito. She scanned the darkness and found Parthenope sitting on a narrow ledge with her back against the cavern wall, scowling down at her. How long had she been spying on them? Was she jealous of Vito?
Vito turned toward Parthenope, but Perla twisted his face away and kissed him hard on the lips. She hugged him tightly, jabbing her thumb toward the exit behind his back.
Parthenope dropped into the water and replied with a hand signal of her own—a quick circular motion of her index finger above her head. At once the blue light directly under Perla and Vito dimmed. A huge, amorphous shape rose and engulfed them. Thousands of tiny fish schooled in a vortex so tight their fins touched, but they never collided or lost direction—a perfect synchronized swim team.
“Good God, a sardine tornado!” Vito shouted.
He pressed Perla harder against him as the fish swirled faster and faster. Scales slid against their bare skin in a slippery, tickly massage. They sounded like a rushing mountain stream, Perla thought. The sardines rose to her chin in a crescendo.
Perla pushed Vito away and flailed her arms, trying to disperse the fish. How dare Parthenope! Did the prank end here or would she call out her army of lobsters next?
“We gotta get out of here!” Perla yelled.
Perla and Vito kicked hard, broke through the column of sardines, and swam straight through the cave opening. They blinked in the sunlight, flabbergasted by another unexpected sight: half a dozen tour boats idled in front of the grotto, waiting for the ferrymen in their rowboats to arrive. The one nearest them brimmed with Asian tourists. Someone pointed, followed by a flurry of photo snapping and giggles.
“We are so busted.” Perla twirled in place. “Let’s go!”
Vito dove under first. His bright white buttocks flashed like a neon sign. Perla pointed her fins and sank vertically before swimming away. But even ten feet under, the crystal clear water obscured nothing from their audience.
Perla and Vito surfaced halfway to their boat, sputtering with laughter. They covered the remaining distance in a high-speed crawl without looking back. At the edge of the swim platform, Perla paused to catch her breath.
“Uh-oh.” Vito pointed up at the ladder. “Look!”
The towels they had tied to the rungs were gone. Perla silently cursed Parthenope. She scrambled over the transom, one hand covering her pubis and the other covering her breasts like Eve running from the Garden of Eden.
Perla immediately noticed several bright green scales and a trace of slime on the deck. For God’s sake… she wouldn’t! Perla ducked under the canopy and leaned over the empty front seat where they’d left their clothes.
She had.
“Our clothes are gone too!” Perla crawled under the bow, shaking with anger and cold.
“Another one of Roman’s practical jokes.” Vito laughed. “I’m going to pay him back good for this.” He sat on the back of the driver’s seat in all his manly splendor, started the engine, and accelerated past the Blue Grotto, waving at the Asian tourists.
The Third Date
Perla glanced at herself in the mirror one last time before locking the hotel room door behind her. Lipstick? Check. Deodorant? Check. Breath mint, hand lotion, light cologne? Check, check, and check. Shoulders back and
chin up, she smoothed her dress over her hips and adjusted the cashmere shawl. Wavy tendrils of hair escaped her loose bun and framed her smiling face. Maria’s chandelier earrings tickled her neck when she swung her head. Where was the woman who, less than a month earlier, had skulked around in a frumpy maxidress? Despite the cameo’s spell, she credited the glow on her face at that moment to love—the best cosmetic of all.
Perla teetered down the stairs in her stilettos and across the lobby’s marble-tiled foyer. How lucky she’d been to find this cute little hotel so near Piazza Tasso. The weeks had passed pleasantly since checking in as her younger self. The staff was attentive and the breakfast buffet unexpectedly lavish for a budget, one-step-above-youth-hostel accommodation. Best of all, she wasn’t embarrassed to meet Vito here.
Vito. There he was—standing by the front desk, holding a bouquet of mixed flowers, looking delectable in his navy linen blazer, open-necked aqua shirt, white slacks, and leather loafers with no socks.
“Bella Perlita!” Vito stepped back and stared at her. He seemed awed and slightly off-balance. For the first time, Perla sensed vulnerability behind those smiling eyes. A crack in his funny-guy facade? After a restrained hug and kiss, Vito thrust the flowers at Perla like a nervous prom date.
“Thank you—these are gorgeous.” Perla held them to her nose without losing eye contact. “And so are you. I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”
“Should I strip?” Vito exhaled a sharp laugh.
Jacopo, the hotel manager whom Perla had befriended, pretended to study his computer screen. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He kept his eyes lowered behind black, fusilli-shaped curls.
“No, I had my fill of public humiliation at the Blue Grotto yesterday. Our photos are probably all over WeChat now, scaring Asian tourists away from Italy. Can you imagine the memes? ‘I came to the Blue Grotto and all I got was this photo of bare butts.’”
“What’s a meme?”
“A modern incarnation of the pillory. You take a photo of someone you want to ridicule, digitally alter it or add a funny caption, and share it on social media.”