Sex and Vanity

by Kevin Kwan

  The two of them walked out of the hotel and Lucie, by habit, started veering left toward Via Ignazio Cerio.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Olivia asked.

  “Aren’t we heading to Via Camerelle?” Lucie asked, referring to Capri’s most famous shopping street.

  “Hell no! You can’t walk through town before five, are you crazy? We’ll be trampled to death by tourists! Locals and those of us in the know avoid town at all costs between the hours of ten and five, when all the hydrofoils from Sorrento and Naples arrive and spit out thousands of day-trippers.”

  “Really?”

  “Lucie, trust me, don’t even think of being seen in town until after five, when the last boat has left for the day. That’s when the island becomes magic again and all the bright young things come out from hiding and head to the piazzetta for drinks.”

  “I had no idea,” Lucie said, amused by Olivia’s insistence.

  “Well, learn from me, kiddo. I’ve been coming to Capri every summer for years.”

  “But aren’t we going to miss all the sandal shops if we avoid town?”

  “Not at all. Because there is only one sandal shop you need to go to, and I’m going to take you there via the back route, where we can avoid the huddled masses and their snot-nosed, sticky-fingered enfants.” Olivia expertly guided Lucie through a maze of back lanes snaking behind the hotels. The quiet little streets seemed a world away from the rest of Capri, even though they were only a few blocks away from the main square.

  They found themselves in the heart of a neighborhood where the walls rose up high on both sides, making Lucie feel as if she were deep within a remote medieval hill town. The patina of glitz so ubiquitous throughout the rest of Capri had vanished. Here, the white walls were gray with dirt and the windows didn’t gleam. There wasn’t a single luxury hotel or designer boutique anywhere in sight, but instead they passed a tailor, a little grocery stall with crates of fresh produce stacked outside, and a trio of boys playing soccer along a wall.

  Lucie found the rustic modesty rather charming and beautiful in its own way. “How did I miss this whole neighborhood?”

  “You think the locals all shop at Prada? This is the real ’hood, where the shops cater to people who actually have to live here year-round. Look at that old tailor working away in there…isn’t he absolutely adorable? And these little tykes trying to kill each other over a ball. Christ, this one’s going to break his neck!” Olivia observed, carefully sidestepping a laughing boy as he slammed his body full force against the wall trying to defend the ball.

  As they walked by a hair salon with faded posters of models in the window that, judging by the hairstyles, hadn’t been changed since the mid-1980s, Olivia continued her monologue: “The true beauty of this island is in its people and all these authentic areas off the beaten path. Think of all the tourists who only come to Capri for one day and rush around trying to see everything on the tourist map but miss all this. Or the ones who arrive at Marina Grande, take a boat out to see the Blue Grotto, and don’t even realize that the town of Capri is actually on top of the mountain and not part of the harbor below. I think they should actually ban day-trippers and require all visitors to spend at least three nights on the island. There should also be a fashion assessment before they can get off the boat—no tacky tourists. Now stop!”

  Lucie stopped dead in her tracks, suddenly alarmed.

  “Take a deep breath!” Olivia ordered.

  Lucie relaxed and inhaled deeply.

  “Tell me, what do you smell?”

  “I don’t really smell…anything,” Lucie lied politely. The odor of cat piss was so strong, it made her eyes water.

  “You’re smelling the real Capri here. La vera Italia! ” Olivia announced, before marching on. Turning down an impossibly narrow lane, they descended a flight of stone steps and found themselves in front of a tiny, unpretentious shop that looked like it had been carved into the rock face of the hill centuries ago.

  “This is Da Costanzo, my favorite sandal maker.”

  Lucie stepped into the shop and felt like she had been transported into Aladdin’s cave. Thousands of leather cords, buckles, and gemstones in every color imaginable hung along the walls of the shop, and arrayed all over the floor and on shelves were the most stylish sandals Lucie had ever seen.

  “Buongiorno, Antonio! Buongiorno, Alvina! Come stai? This is my friend Lucie from New York. Tell her what she absolutely needs to have this season.” Turning to Lucie, Olivia said, “Now, Antonio’s been making all these sandals by hand for decades. His father, Costanzo, who was the original sandal maker, touched the feet of Jackie Kennedy, Sophia Loren, and Clark Gable. Imagine that!”

  “Oh, wow,” Lucie said. She tried to picture one of those legendary icons standing in the same little space she was in, but all she could think of was poor Costanzo having to handle thousands upon thousands of sweaty, stinky feet every day.

  “Everyone is wanting the rose-gold leather this year,” Antonio said, reaching over from the stool where he sat making the sandals every day and handing Lucie a sandal with two simple cords of shiny leather crisscrossing the big toe and wrapping around the ankle.

  “Try it on. Feel how soft the leather is,” Antonio’s wife, Alvina, said with a warm smile. Lucie slipped a pair on and was amazed by how comfortable they were.

  “So chic! So sexy! So minimalist! It’s the Donald Judd of sandals! You could wear this to the beach and head straight to cocktails!” Olivia pronounced. “Antonio, I want one, please. But could you do me a pair on the black leather sole?”

  “Of course,” Antonio replied.

  Olivia suddenly caught sight of a man in a white linen jacket with a waxed mustache on the other side of the street holding a big golf umbrella over an elderly woman swathed in a bejeweled headscarf. A few paces behind them walked two security guards in dark suits and sunglasses.

  “Oh, it’s Mordecai! I have to have a word with him about tomorrow’s excursion!” Olivia dashed out of the shop before Lucie could say anything.

  Lucie took her time leisurely trying on different styles, chatting about New York with Alvina, and getting her foot measured by Antonio. In the end, she chose two pairs of sandals for herself: one in the rose gold, but done in a dramatic gladiator style with the leather cords wrapping all the way up her calves, and a classic T-strap in pale pink suede accessorized with two matching suede tassels. Antonio would custom-make them to fit her feet perfectly and have them delivered to the hotel. She also bought tan leather flip-flops for her brother, Freddie, and a faux-leopard-print pair for her mother.

  Thirty minutes had passed, and Olivia had still not returned. Deciding not to wait any longer, Lucie paid for her purchases and walked out onto Via Roma. It was half past four, and the street was wall-to-wall packed with tourists dashing about in a frenzy doing last-minute shopping, catching buses, or heading for the funicolare that would take them down the mountain to catch the last ferries.

  About fifty Japanese came marching along, trying valiantly to maintain an orderly line behind their tour group leader, who was holding up a stick with a yellow rubber duck on the end of it. Lucie was jostled along with the crowd for a few minutes before she darted quickly into the vestibule of a vintage jewelry shop for a moment’s respite.

  She was a little annoyed that Olivia had abandoned her and wondered if she would be able to find her way to the hotel along the back lanes again. The crowd thinned out for a moment, and Lucie managed to make it to the piazzetta without incident, where she found the last available table at the Gran Caffè. She sat down gratefully, placing her shopping bag on the wicker seat next to her and poring over the leather-bound menu.

  A silver-haired waiter in a dapper white blazer approached the table and said with a bow, “Konnichi wa!”

  Lucie stared at him in confusion for a few moments before reali
zing he was greeting her in Japanese.

  “Er…Ni hao ma? ” he tried again.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Chinese,” she said, turning up the volume on her American accent.

  “Ah, Americana! Easy peasy. Let me guess, you want Diet Coke with ice?”

  Lucie forced a smile. “Actually, I think I’ll try the granita al limone.”

  “Lemon granita! Perfect for this hot day,” the waiter said jovially.

  The sun was just cresting over the mountaintop directly in Lucie’s sight line, so she put on her sunglasses. In her short white Erdem shirt dress with the cute Bresson lace sleeves and her dark glasses on, she somehow felt very European and grown-up at the moment. This is what she loved doing the most whenever she traveled to Europe—sitting at an outdoor café, watching the world go by. Whenever they visited Paris, she always insisted on dragging her mother and Freddie to an outdoor table at La Palette, her favorite café in Saint-Germain, and she wished that they could be here with her right now.

  Lucie glanced covertly at the people seated around her. She loved checking people out and making up stories in her mind about them. On her left was a young, attractive Italian couple, looking longingly into each other’s eyes—on their honeymoon, possibly? To her right were two smartly dressed men: an American guy with dark blond hair in a blue-striped T-shirt and navy blazer talking to an Asian guy with a goatee wearing a pair of round 1930s retro-style sunglasses. They looked like they worked in fashion and were here on business. She overheard the Asian guy saying, “I need to remember to get sandals made for Alexandra and Jackie,” and she wondered if it was because he noticed her shopping bag from Da Costanzo. Behind her were two middle-aged women smoking and having an intense discussion in German while a humongous Great Dane sat quietly at their heels. Were they sisters rehashing an old family feud?

  Within a few minutes, the waiter returned and placed a large glass bowl on her table containing a mountain of slushy lemon granita, accompanied by a single thin slice of cantaloupe wedged onto the rim of the glass. Lucie smiled in delight at the dessert before her. It reminded her of the desserts she loved getting at Serendipity when she was a kid, although this presentation looked decidedly more elegant.

  She sat at her table sipping the granita contentedly from the straw. It was deliciously icy, and the freshly squeezed lemon juice was so refreshingly tart as it went down her throat. She was wondering if she should take a nibble of the cantaloupe now or save it for after she finished the granita when out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tall, elderly white-haired man enter the piazzetta, wobble slightly, and then stumble against the table where the Italian couple was seated. The Italian man sprang up from his chair and helped the man to his feet. The old man stood for a split second, took a step forward, and then went crashing down again, his head landing right on Lucie’s dessert, breaking the glass bowl and splashing lemon granita all over her.

  Lucie found herself glued to her chair, unable to move. It seemed as if time had stopped. No one did a thing. The Italian couple stared helplessly at the old man, the Germans just sat there, and the waiters stood like statues. All around them were dozens of glamorous-looking people, frozen at their tables and gawking. She heard the American beside her say, “I think he’s dying,” and then somewhere behind her, a lady with a British accent cried, “We. Simply. Must!” The man’s eyes rolled back, she heard a rattle deep in his throat, and his face turned blue, but all she could see was red—the red blood vessels in the whites of his eyes, the red gushing from his head onto the white tablecloth. She finally stood up, and then she felt the ground beneath her spin and everything went black.

  * * *

  —

  Lucie had no idea how long she had been unconscious, maybe it was just seconds, but when she came to, she felt something warm and soft cradling her neck. She looked up and saw George Zao looking down at her and realized that his hands were cushioning her head.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, and then she turned and saw a waiter hovering over the old man, who was now lying on the ground in front of her. The waiter was pounding on the man’s chest repeatedly as the Great Dane started whimpering.

  “Just stay here. Don’t try to get up,” George said, jumping up and heading toward the man on the ground. “Stop hitting him like that.” He pushed the waiter aside. “Someone call a doctor!” he shouted, as he bent down, lifted the man’s chin, and gave him two quick rescue breaths.

  Lucie got up from the ground slowly and began backing away from the scene. George was now frantically pumping the man’s chest and yelling, “Fucking call a doctor!” Something within her told her that she couldn’t look anymore. She couldn’t stand there and watch this man die. She turned around and started walking away. The minute she rounded the corner, out of sight of the piazzetta, she started to run.

  VII

  Arco Naturale

  CAPRI, ITALY

  George found Lucie sitting on a stone bench, staring out at the Arco Naturale, a gigantic natural limestone arch that rose out of the mountainside 650 feet above the sea.*1

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Lucie fixed her eyes out on the view, purposely not looking at him. She knew there were bloodstains on his shirt, and she couldn’t bear to see them. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t. After leaving the piazzetta, I just felt like coming here.”

  Lucie could feel her jaw tighten. Why was he always showing up where she least wanted him to be? She got up from the bench and leaned against the green iron fence that faced the sea, hoping he would get the message.

  George inhaled, as if about to say something.

  “Please…don’t speak! Please don’t tell me what happened to that man. I don’t want to know,” Lucie blurted in a choked voice.

  George walked up to the fence and stood near her. Just beyond the fence, the arch towered over them, rising so unexpectedly and improbably out of the cliff it looked like it could have been placed there by aliens. Through the arch was a perfect view of the sea hundreds of feet below, the water glowing in lustrous shades of aquamarine.

  They took in the otherworldly view in silence, and after a while, George spoke. “The first time I came here, when I was about twelve, I was so blown away by the sight of this arch that I thought it had to be a vortex. Like maybe some sort of gateway to a parallel universe. I wanted to leap through the arch and be transported somewhere else in time.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being somewhere else in time right about now,” Lucie said numbly.

  “Follow me.” George moved suddenly, and Lucie thought for a second that he was actually going to hop over the fence. Instead, he began heading toward the trail that led down the mountainside. She debated whether she wanted to follow him and then thought, What the hell.

  Lucie walked a few paces behind George as they headed along a steep paved trail and then down a long set of steps that wound along the thickly forested part of the island.

  “Pablo Neruda would hike this trail every day when he lived on the island,” George said.

  Lucie said nothing, but she was surprised by this bit of trivia coming from George. He didn’t seem like the type to read poetry. At the bottom of the steps, they rounded a corner and she found herself standing at the mouth of a cavern. She realized with an unexpected jolt that they were at the Grotta di Matermania. It was one of the places she had put on her must-see list—a natural cavern that was one of the most ancient archaeological treasures of the island.*2

  “You wanted to go somewhere back in time, so here we are,” George said.

  Lucie wandered into the cavern, where walls and stairways had been carved out of the limestone to create different levels and spaces within. This was once a nymphaeum for the ancient Romans, she thought, placing her hand against the cavern walls, strangely warm to the touch, and wondering w
hat mystical rituals these ruins must have witnessed through the ages. She could feel a strange energy pulsating throughout the cave, the same energy she felt when she had visited other ancient sites like Stonehenge and the Mayan temples at Tulum.

  At the back of the cavern rose a natural formation that resembled an altar, no doubt the focal point of ceremonies when the cavern was itself a temple. Lucie climbed up to stand in front of the altar and closed her eyes. She wasn’t religious by any means—her mother’s family was Buddhist and her father’s was nominally Episcopalian—but something compelled her to say a silent prayer for the man in the piazzetta.

  When she opened her eyes, George was nowhere in sight. She wandered out of the cavern, but he wasn’t there either. Should she head back up the steps, or keep going down the trail? She decided to explore a little further, feeling a bit annoyed with herself as she wandered along a path that seemed to be taking her farther and farther down the hill. Where would this lead to? Why in the world was she even looking for George? Hadn’t she told him she wanted to be alone? There was something about George—something in the way he spoke, his mannerisms, and his whole vibe—that she found so unsettling, and yet here she was thinking about him again.

  It dawned on her that she had never really known an Asian guy before. Asian women, like her mother, Isabel, and so many of her classmates, had naturally always been part of her life, and at Brearley there had even been three other half-Asian girls in her year. But somehow she had lived her whole life hardly ever interacting with an Asian boy. Freddie didn’t count at all—in striking contrast to her, he took after their father in appearance and behaved like the quintessential WASP, right down to his smelly old Sperrys. Strangers meeting them never thought they were related, and someone even mistook Freddie for her boyfriend once. She had met some of her male Chinese cousins from Seattle and Hong Kong when she was younger, but they barely made an impression. Of course, it didn’t help that she had gone to an all-girls school like Brearley and lived her whole life on the Upper East Side. Sure, there were a few Asians here and there at the private schools around her neighborhood, but most of the Asian boys in the city went to Stuyvesant,*3 or so she heard. Plus, the guys she had known were all Asian Americans, and George was nothing like them. He was a Chinese boy from Hong Kong who had spent a few years in Australia. So what exactly did that make him? He didn’t seem Australian, despite his quasi-Aussie accent. He was much more Chinese in his ways. He sounded strange, he moved strange, he dressed strange. He probably smelled strange too.