by Kevin Kwan
Shifting from Instagram to Twitter, Lucie found twenty-three George Zaos, but after some detective work she realized that none of those accounts was his. It made sense that George wouldn’t be on Twitter. Since he hardly spoke, why would he ever want to tweet? She went next to Facebook, where she located him quickly since they were both “friends” with Isabel and Dolfi. However, his account was set to the highest privacy settings, so it didn’t give much away. She couldn’t see how many friends he had; she couldn’t see any of his posts. What she could see was his Facebook profile pic and his banner photo, which was a black-and-white image of a gorilla sitting on a beach. Standing nonchalantly off to the side was a man with a surfboard, looking out at the waves and completely ignoring the gorilla. Was it meant to be funny?
George’s profile picture was another black-and-white shot of him grinning into the camera. It looked like one of those pictures purposefully chosen to be casual, as if he just put up whatever random photo was available. It wasn’t perfectly composed and he didn’t look too posed or too cute in it. In fact, he looked a few years younger—his face rounder and less chiseled—and he was wearing a nondescript black T-shirt and a cap. She tried to make out the logo on the cap but it was blocked by a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers tucked over the brim.
Frustrated that she wasn’t finding much on his social media, Lucie tried googling his name. There were hundreds of other George Zaos, of course, but only one decent hit—a headline from the Daily Telegraph in Australia in 2009:
MOSMAN SURFER GEORGE ZAO EARNS SPOT AT WORLD JUNIOR TITLES IN TAIWAN
To the right of the headline was a small picture of George at around fifteen in a wetsuit, standing against a backdrop with Surfing NSW and Quiksilver logos. His hair was down to his chin, and there appeared to be blond streaks in the front. Lucie clicked on the story excitedly but came up against a paywall that revealed only a short excerpt:
…Mosman surfer George Zao has secured after taking a break from his HSC studies to compete at a surf event in Victoria. Whether he wins or not, George will be a contender for…
To read the rest of the article, she would have to pay twenty-eight dollars a year for full digital access. Lucie tossed her phone to the side with a groan. How had she wasted so much time? She had spent the past hour searching online and had learned nothing new about George Zao except that he was a good photographer, liked disgusting high-calorie foods and gorillas, and had been a champion surfer when he was younger. Where were the silly random tweets, photos of ex-girlfriends, or posts about whatever he happened to be passionate about?
There was a quick series of knocks on the door, which Lucie immediately recognized as Charlotte. “Lucie? Are you there? Can you help me?”
Lucie climbed out of the bed reluctantly, undid the security latch, and opened her door.
“Lucie! Why aren’t you dressed yet? The concert starts in twenty minutes!” Charlotte exclaimed.
“I fell asleep,” Lucie lied.
“Can you help me with the hooks? This dress is absolutely impossible,” Charlotte said as she fussed with the fasteners along the back of her vintage silk brocade cocktail dress.
“You look very pretty in it, though,” Lucie said, making fast work of the hooks.
“Thank you, dear. Mainbocher. It was our grandmother’s, you know. There’s a picture of her somewhere wearing the dress at El Morocco, sitting in a booth with William Holden.”
“Who’s William Holden?”
Charlotte shook her head with a sigh. “Millennials! The first thing I’m going to do when we get back to New York is sit you down and make you watch The World of Suzie Wong. Now quick, quick. Get ready. You haven’t even done your hair!”
“I’m just going to put it in a French twist. It’ll take me two seconds.”
“Chop, chop! Get to it! We don’t want to be late!”
“It’s not going to start on time, Charlotte, and we’re going to be so unfashionably early as always. We’re in Italy, remember?” Lucie said.
“Well, Olivia and the Ortiz sisters said they would be in the lobby at six forty-five sharp, and I haven’t been brought up to keep anyone waiting. Now, are you sure you don’t want me to help you with your hair?”
“I’ll be fine,” Lucie said as she herded Charlotte toward the door. After her cousin had left the room, Lucie plopped down on the sofa with a sigh. A memory began to surface, and for a moment she was transported to a beautiful beachfront house in Hobe Sound.
She was six years old, squinting in pain as the sour-faced Irish maid pinched her right shoulder to steady her, while with her other hand she brushed Lucie’s hair forcefully, stinging her scalp each time with the hard wire brush. Lucie sat there quietly, her eyes brimming with tears. She knew better than to make a sound.
“It’s no use, ma’am. I’ve given it a hundred strokes and it’s still frizzing up like a French poodle.”
“Good God, you’re right, it is just like a French poodle.” Lucie’s grandmother laughed dryly. “Lucie, did you not wear your swimming cap like I told you to before going into the pool? Did you get chlorine in your hair?”
“I wore it, Granny.”
“Ugh, what impossible hair! I’ve never seen anything like it. Okay, change of plan, Oonagh. Why don’t we use some coconut oil to slick it down and get rid of the frizz that way? It’ll give it some gloss. Then we can give her braids on either side, and she can wear my Lacroix dragon jacket like it’s a robe. If we can’t make her look like the other girls, let’s give her the china doll look. Lucie, remember how we used to play china doll? You’re going to be my precious little Chinese empress at the party tonight!”
Lucie stirred herself from the memory, wondering how she was ever going to face George tonight. He probably thought she was a total freak. Why in the world did she kiss him? She didn’t even like him. What came over her to make her lunge at him like that back at the villa? Over and over, she was doing nothing but making bad decisions and embarrassing herself. Ignoring him, crying on him, kissing him. What would her grandmother think if she saw her behaving like this? Maybe she had Stendhal syndrome, being surrounded by so much beauty at that spectacular villa overlooking Positano. She had heard of people arriving in Paris or Rome for the first time and bursting into tears uncontrollably, overpowered by the exquisiteness of everything. No, she blamed Charlotte and Olivia. It was all that kissing talk between them after lunch that stirred her up and confused her.
Just then, she heard a strange shuffling sound on the floor. She looked down and saw that a little envelope had been slid under the door. Jumping off the sofa, she rushed to the door and opened it, peering out to see who was there.
The hallway was empty.
Lucie tore open the envelope and found a folded sheet of beautiful Italian parchment paper. Unfolding it, she let out a quick gasp. Written on it in prep school cursive was one line:
In one kiss, you’ll know all I haven’t said.
—Pablo Neruda
*1 This line is just one example of the kind of bullshit Auden learned to write in his Deconstructing Art of the Postwar Era course at Amherst. If he hadn’t dropped out, he might have had a whole other career as a critic for Artforum.
*2 This architectural masterpiece by Le Corbusier was formally named the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut.
XII
Certosa di San Giacomo
CAPRI, ITALY
As luck or Murphy’s Law would have it, the one time that Lucie and Charlotte were a few minutes late in Italy was the one time the event started early. From Via Pizzolungo, the Certosa di San Giacomo looked smaller than it did when one actually passed through the narrow iron gates and entered the monastery. Here, the cousins discovered that they had to walk for what seemed like miles through a complex of ancient buildings, passing magnificent cloisters and expansive gardens that overlooked the sea. Arriving at the chap
el at long last, they found the space packed and the concert about to commence.
“I’m sorry, I tried to save seats for you, but the Queen of Sheba wasn’t having it,” Olivia told Charlotte in a hushed voice, darting her eyes at the elderly Italian lady with the enormous shellacked beehive festooned with emeralds seated next to her.
Charlotte forced a smile. “That’s perfectly fine. There are a few seats left at the back, I believe, otherwise we can just stand.”
Seeing how cross Charlotte was, Lucie apologized again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have washed my hair. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking, Lucie? You know your hair takes ages to dry, and I told you we were already going to be late. And no one can even tell that you washed your hair when it’s put up.”
“I just wanted to get the sea out of my hair,” Lucie lied. She hadn’t washed her hair at all; she had spent the past thirty minutes trying to calm herself after receiving the mysterious Neruda poem, trying on six different outfits in a panic and finally settling on the long black gown with a bandeau top—the one her mom called her “Rita Hayworth dress”—that made her feel more sophisticated and grown-up. She had worn it at the Frick Young Fellows Ball,*1 where Bill Cunningham had complimented the dress and taken her picture, and she felt that she needed this armor against George, even though she was sure he wouldn’t notice—he dressed in such a nondescript way and would probably be oblivious to her sartorial efforts.
As they took their seats in the back row, Charlotte wondered out loud, “Where did all these people suddenly come from? I hardly recognize anyone.”
“I think many of them arrived just in time for the wedding tomorrow,” Lucie surmised, using the excuse to stand up and scan the room. She was trying to spot George but couldn’t locate him anywhere in the crowd.
Conte Andrea De Vecchi, a tall, imposing man in his sixties, and his wife, Contessa Laudomia, a striking strawberry blonde dressed in an emerald-green gown that Lucie recognized from Valentino’s spring collection, approached the altar in front of where the orchestra of musicians had been set up. Looking very distinguished in a dark velvet dinner jacket, the Conte tapped on the microphone with his finger and addressed the crowd in charmingly accented English: “Your Majesties, Highnesses, Holinesses, Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen, my wife and I are so honored that you have all come tonight from different corners of the earth to celebrate the nuptials of our son Adolfo to la bella Isabel. We are here in one of the oldest buildings in Capri, and to me the most beautiful. It was built in 1371 on the orders of Count Giacomo Arcucci on land donated by my ancestor Queen Giovanna D’Angiò of Napoli as a sanctuary for the Carthusian monks. Tonight, as we take sanctuary together in this sacred place, we are very lucky to have with us the maestro Niccolo Miulli leading the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma, who will be accompanying the incomparable Dame Kiri Te Kanawa!”
The crowd gasped in surprise as the celebrated diva took the stage in a billowing cape of orange shantung silk over an iridescent violet ball gown. The orchestra began to play, and as Kiri bellowed out the first notes of “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” from Puccini’s opera La rondine, Mordecai could be heard letting out a moan of ecstasy so loud it sounded slightly obscene.
Even from the back row, Lucie was transfixed by Kiri’s incredible voice. She couldn’t believe that anyone could hit those high notes with such clarity, and as she sat there in the chapel, lulled by the ethereal beauty of Kiri’s next aria, “Bailero,” from Chants d’Auvergne, she found herself staring up at the vaulted arches of the chapel. The ceilings and walls had once been completely covered by a fresco, much like the Sistine Chapel, but now only a few colorful fragments from the original painting remained on the white plaster ceiling, punctuating the starkness in a random way that reminded her of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Why did her life suddenly seem like a jigsaw puzzle that had been overturned? She had always gone through the world with such certainty, such methodical precision, like a perfectly sung aria, and now in just a few days it seemed like everything had become so confusing. Messy. And more than anything she hated messy. Was George actually the one who slipped the poem under her door? It had to be him, right? After all, he was the only person who had mentioned Neruda to her. What exactly was he trying to say with that line?
Lucie was a bundle of conflicting emotions. On one hand she was willing to admit that she found herself intrigued by George, but on the other hand she was repelled by her own interest. He was the absolute antithesis of the type of guy she liked. She sat there, fixating on all the things she couldn’t stand about him. He was a mama’s boy. A pretty boy. A surfer/jock. A tank-top-and-Birkenstock-wearing slob. A self-righteous eco-warrior. A brooding weirdo who took himself much too seriously.
Kiri capped off the concert with her most enduring song, “O mio babbino caro,” and the audience murmured in approval. As the swoon-inducing aria filled the chapel, Lucie found her eyes wandering to the fresco under the dome of the chapel, where some artist centuries ago had painted the typical scene of God and Jesus with saints, angels, and cherubs, their limbs all tangled up together in the clouds. At the apex of the fresco, Jesus floated above the clouds partially swathed in teal-colored robes that had been pulled down to his waist, exposing his muscular torso. Lucie stared at this decidedly hunky Jesus, counting the muscles in his six-pack, following the line of shading that accentuated his pecs, thinking, What beautiful nipples. God, what is wrong with me? I’m going to hell for thinking of Jesus’s nipples in a monastery!
As Kiri sang the last notes of the aria, her voice effortlessly trailing off into a delicate whisper, Mordecai was the first to jump out of his seat. “Brava! Bravissima!” he shouted, clapping wildly as the rest of the audience rose to give the legendary soprano a rapturous standing ovation. After a few minutes, as the guests began to disperse outside for cocktails, Lucie and Charlotte headed toward Olivia, who was standing in the middle of the chapel chatting with Dolfi’s parents.
Through the crowd, Lucie caught sight of George at last. He was standing near the altar speaking to the conductor, and as he stretched his arms out, gesturing enthusiastically, Lucie was surprised at what a commanding presence he cut tonight. In his cream linen suit, crisp white band-collar shirt, and suede oxfords, there was a distinct air of sophistication about him. Thank God I wore the Tom Ford, she thought.
As Lucie got closer to George, she racked her brain thinking of what she might say. Was there some subtle reference she could make about the poem? Should she compliment him on his outfit, maybe say something like, “I didn’t realize you cleaned up so well.” Ugh, no, that was terrible. Maybe she ought to quickly google a poem of Neruda’s and recite a line to him as a greeting. It would be very enigmatic. Yes, that’s what she would do. As Charlotte and Olivia began oohing and ahhing over each other’s outfits, Lucie got out her phone and quickly typed: Pablo Neruda poem.
The first thing that popped up was this:
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
Hell no, Lucie thought. As she scrolled through the next poem, she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. Oh God, it’s him. She braced herself and turned around, taken aback to see Auden smiling at her.
“So what do you think of Diefenbach’s paintings?”
“Um, who?” Lucie put her phone away quickly.
“Karl Diefenbach. The paintings in the refectory?”
“Oh, I haven’t seen them. We got here a bit late.”
“Here, come with me,” Auden said, taking her by the arm and whisking her down the corridor before she could protest. “You really must see them.”
They entered the refectory—a large, serene space where the austere white walls were hung with massive oil paintings by Diefenbach. The paintings were uniformly dark and moody, depicting the island from different vantage points. There were dramatic cliff-top landsca
pes, stormy seascapes, and even nighttime views of a grotto seemingly lit by candlelight. Lucie studied the canvases intently, quietly moved.
“What do you think?” Auden asked.
“I love them.”
“I knew you would,” Auden said with a little laugh.
“This isn’t what I was expecting. What are they even doing hanging in a monastery?”
“I believe Diefenbach spent his final years living on the island.”
“They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen. So haunting…surreal almost,” Lucie said as she stared at a particularly dramatic painting of the Faraglioni glimmering in the moonlight. She remembered being at Da Luigi and standing in the same spot that Diefenbach had, gazing out at the mystical rocks. Turning to Auden, she said, “I wonder why he chose to paint everything so dark, when to me Capri is all about the light.”
“I would venture to ask the same thing about your paintings. Diefenbach was a symbolist. I feel like painting was for him a way to explore the inner landscape, rather than the outer one, don’t you think?”
Lucie smiled, revealing nothing.
Suddenly, the sound of a familiar piano composition could be heard echoing through the chamber.
“The Goldberg Variations, my favorite!” Lucie exclaimed. They wandered back into the chapel and found it empty except for Isabel, Dolfi, and a few others clustered toward the front of the altar where the grand piano was. Isabel turned to beckon Lucie to join them, and that’s when she saw George seated at the piano. Lucie stepped closer to the piano and watched in astonishment. George’s fingers were gliding over the piano keys with such apparent effortlessness, such grace and fluidity, it didn’t even look like he was actually playing. She noticed for the first time George’s long, elegantly tapered fingers and saw that his eyes were closed as he swayed slowly back and forth, completely lost in the music that he was creating.