Red, White & Dead

by Laura Caldwell

  Bernard led us through the streets of Naples to Antica Pizzeria Brandi della Regina on a street called Anna di Palazzo. Like many other Naples streets, it was chaotic, but Pizzeria Brandi della Regina was a refuge, its ivory awnings shading it protectively from the craziness of the rest of the street.

  I took a peek inside and saw a huge wood-burning oven, tiled in mosaic, the name of the restaurant spelled proudly on its flank.

  As we took our seat outside, a waiter came over and boasted about the restaurant. “We are the inventors of the pizza Margherita.”

  “The pizza Margherita?” Maggie said, and even in English, you couldn’t mistake her disbelief.

  The waiter puffed up his chest. “Yes. In 1889. Other pizzerias, they will tell you that they invented it. They will tell you they have the real pizza of Napoli, but it is here. We invented it. We make it.”

  He and Maggie had a standoff with their eyes. She caved and gave him a little shrug. Bernard laughed.

  When the waiter walked away, Bernard leaned in. “They passed a law here. In order to be official pizzerias, your pizza has to be a certain width and height, and there are all these rules, like the dough has to be kneaded by hand and certain olive oil and mozzarella have to be used.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble,” Maggie said. “If a pizza is good, who cares if it’s official?”

  A passing waiter apparently heard Maggie’s words and understood English. He stopped and gave her a grave look, his hand still holding aloft a tray of glasses, before he moved on.

  “Sheesh,” Maggie said.

  But when the pizza came, we could see what all the fuss was about. We had ordered the traditional Margherita, which sounded boring, but it was divine-the crust spongy and buttery, the buffalo mozzarella soft and bubbling, the tomatoes tasting as if they’d been picked today. We also took the recommendation of the waiter and ordered a broccoli and sausage pizza, which was enough to make all of us swoon.

  In two minutes, both pizzas were gone.

  Bernard looked at the empty pans, a forlorn expression passing over his features.

  “We should order more,” Maggie said.

  Bernard’s face lit up, and the two of them bent toward each other to consult the menu.

  “What do you want, Izzy?” Bernard asked.

  He seemed like the kindest of men, and since we’d left the hotel, he’d been trying hard to include me in their conversation, but it was impossible to ignore the feeling that I was on a date-their date-and yet I couldn’t have been more pleased about it. Other than Wyatt, the much-older two-timing slick boyfriend that Maggie had tried twice, she hadn’t dated much in the last few years. She’d been the third person on many an outing with Sam and me, and I was happy to return the favor.

  “Whatever you guys want,” I said. “I’m game.”

  As I sat across the table from the two of them, my thoughts crept to Theo. Why in the hell had I asked him to come to Italy? Aside from the night we met, I had spent very little time with him outside my condo. So what was I doing agreeing to have him come to Europe?

  I looked at my watch. From what he told me, he would be landing at ten Naples time. Which was only three hours away. And what would I do with him then? Well, I mean, aside from what I usually did with him?

  It was tough enough to travel internationally with a good friend. Could Theo and I handle being in another country together? Could he handle it? The kid was only twenty-two after all. Would I even like the guy outside the sex-charged confines of my condo?

  After the second round of pizzas, we left the restaurant and wandered down the street until we came to a coffee bar across from a beautiful cathedral. The waiter in his white shirt and black vest frowned when I asked for something decaffeinato.

  “Decaffeinato espresso?” he asked, clearly put off by the thought but willing, grudgingly, to put in the order.

  “Actually, do you have decaffeinato tea?” The concept of decaf tea only made the waiter frown more.

  Bernard stood, towering over the waiter as he did everyone else, although I noticed that he always stayed a step away from people, as if not wanting, intentionally, to intimidate them. But it was hard not to be intimidated when looking straight up at a huge Filipino guy, as the waiter was now doing.

  Bernard said something in Italian to the man, gesturing at his watch.

  “Sí, sí!” the waiter said excitedly, before pulling Bernard away.

  “Be right back,” he called over his shoulder.

  “What is that about?” I asked Maggie.

  “I have no idea.” Her voice was tinged with awe as she watched Bernard’s retreating back. “So when is Theo getting here?”

  I put my phone on the table so I’d hear it when he called or texted. “Soon.”

  “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “I’m just realizing that none of my friends has ever met him.”

  “No time like the present. And hey, you look great tonight.”

  That afternoon, when I’d gotten back to our room after talking to the concierge, I changed out of the dress I’d worn all day. I told Maggie now what I’d learned from the concierge. “Bizarre,” she said, and she was right. Whenever I thought of the Mafia, I imagined the Mob being involved in gambling, drugs, prostitution. But fashion?

  I’d had a slightly more pressing fashion dilemma that afternoon. What to wear now that Theo was coming? Maggie and I had spent some time selecting my outfit-a navy-blue sundress that showed a little cleavage.

  The waiter came back and placed white cups of espresso in front of Bernard and Maggie’s seats. Then he placed a blue cup on a saucer in front of me. A silver tea strainer drifted in the steaming water.

  “Decaffeinato,” the waiter said with pride. He pointed to the flecks of white on the saucer. “Sugar, if you like.” He placed a tin with a spoon in it on the table. “More sugar, if you like.” He followed that with a tiny white pitcher full of milk. “And latte.”

  “Thank you,” I said, not feeling marginalized anymore.

  A few minutes later, Bernard returned to the table.

  “What did you do?” Maggie said. “Suddenly, Izzy got the tea she wanted.”

  “Good, good.” He lowered himself into his chair. “My first French horn teacher was Italian. From Naples. He made me an Italian football fan.”

  “Soccer, right?” Maggie asked.

  “Football. Always call it football.”

  “We’re Bears fans,” Maggie said, giving him a frown. “That’s the only kind of football we recognize.”

  Bernard paused, looked about to argue, then he smiled and nodded. “Well, the Naples soccer team has an interesting history. They dropped to Serie B. It’s like if the Cubs got demoted to a farm team. But they keep working their way back to Serie A, the top level. I asked the waiter if the game was on. He took me back in the kitchen and we watched for a while. We talked about the glory days of Diego Maradona, and-” he nodded at my cup “-you got your tea.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Well, if you’re a fan and you root for the same team, it almost doesn’t matter what you say. You have a bond. So I just had to give them a few words of encouragement.”

  Maggie squeezed his massive upper arm. “You are so smart.”

  He grinned bashfully in her direction, then looked at me. “It didn’t hurt that a couple of the waiters in the back were asking about the rossa.” He gestured at my head. “They must have a crush on you.”

  “Any man who loves redheads loves Izzy,” Maggie said. “This is a constant thing.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “God, I wish men were always having crushes on me.”

  “Well, you’re always getting noticed for your hair.”

  Bernard took a sip of his espresso. “I kind of understand that. I feel like I’m always noticed with this.” He gestured down at himself, at his big self.

  Maggie looked over her shoulder. “Are those the rossa fans?”

  Two men stood at the
entrance to the kitchen, and they were staring at our table.

  “That’s them,” Bernard said.

  I smiled in their direction, but neither smiled in return.

  “Sheesh,” Maggie said. “The Italian guys really are different than they used to be.”

  My phone beeped from the table. A text message. I just landed, Theo wrote, and I can’t wait to see you. Where are you?

  “Theo?” Maggie said.

  I nodded.

  Maggie turned to Bernard. “Theo is the guy Izzy has been dating that I told you about. A very young guy.”

  Bernard raised his espresso cup to clink with mine. “Good for you,” he said. “From what you guys were telling me about your last year, you need that.”

  I laughed. “I do actually.”

  I texted Theo back. Grand Hotel Vesuvio, along with the address.

  “Come with me?” I asked Maggie and Bernard. “We can have a nightcap in the lobby bar.”

  Bernard downed his espresso, nodded. “Let’s go.”

  30

  It was almost eleven at night, and Theo hadn’t shown up at the hotel, hadn’t texted or called.

  At first I didn’t care. The Maggie and Bernard Show was entirely entrancing.

  A woman of Maggie’s size should never ingest more than two alcoholic beverages. She certainly shouldn’t try to match a huge three-hundred-pound Filipino drink-for-drink. But that’s exactly what she did. Within forty minutes of being at the lobby bar-a luxurious, rather sedate place with plush couches, oil paintings and a musician playing a grand piano in the corner-Maggie was on a roll.

  “Hey, do you think you should maybe have a water?” Bernard said when she ordered another Moretti beer, right when he did.

  “I’m in Italy!” she bellowed, as if that explained it all.

  The waiters, who were exceptionally friendly and had to handle only a few other patrons in the bar, happily brought her a cold one and put more snacks in front of us with a look that said, This will soak it up for her.

  When Bernard got up to compliment and tip the piano player, I told her, “Mags, slow it down, sister.”

  “But I’m happy!” She seemed shocked to find this sentiment true. She raised her glass, the foaming beer almost dripping over the side.

  Bernard returned and sat down.

  Maggie looked between the two of us with a huge smile. “I really am happy, because I’m with my best friend and…” She seemed to catch herself and realize that it was probably a tad too early to categorize anything with Bernard. She let the sentence trail off, returning her beer to the table in front of us, then cocked her head and stared at me. “I do love you soooo much, Iz.”

  “I love you, too.” I laughed and gestured at the waiter for another wine for myself. When Maggie got liquored, which wasn’t often, the emotional outpouring started. And really, who doesn’t like being told how much they’re adored?

  Maggie turned to Bernard and described how we met in law school. “I walked into the student lounge, and she was sitting there with this guy. I’d seen her around-she’s hard to miss-but we were in different sections and we’d never talked. After the guy left, Izzy and I ended up at the vending machine at the same time. I introduced myself and told her that she and the guy made a cute couple.”

  “It was Blake,” I said, picking up the story. “And I was standing there trying to figure out how to break up with him. It just wasn’t right between us. Never had been.”

  “So she told me about this,” Maggie said, “and I helped her figure out how to lose Blake, although it took a few tries before their breakup would stick.”

  “Yeah, Mags helped me, and in the process of losing Blake, I got Maggie.” It was what we always said when we told this story.

  “And ever since we’ve been best friends.” Maggie slugged back more beer. She told me she loved me again-about twenty-three times-and then we continued on with some of our favorite stories. Like the time Maggie and I went skinny-dipping in Lake Michigan and got out to discover that our purses and clothes had been stolen. And the time we were in a department store, Christmas shopping, and Maggie dared me to sit on Santa’s lap.

  “She did it!” Maggie said. “She was like this…” She put her beer down and climbed onto Bernard’s lap. He seemed more than happy to play Santa in the reenactment.

  Watching tiny little Maggie perched atop this large Asian man, watching them giggle happily, that I realized I would like to climb in someone’s lap myself. A very specific someone. I glanced at the clock on my cell phone.

  “Theo landed a while ago,” I said. “I wonder where he is.”

  “Could be dealing with customs,” Bernard said, dodging his head under Maggie’s arm to look at me.

  “But he flew private. It shouldn’t take that long, should it?”

  “Don’t forget this is Italy.”

  I called Theo. No answer. I texted. Also nothing.

  I was just starting to get worried when I felt him.

  I mean just that-before I had moved an inch, before I had turned around, I could feel him.

  “Yowza,” Maggie said, looking over my shoulder.

  I turned, and there he was, standing at the entrance of the bar, taller than I remember, his hair longer, and his face even more beautiful. He wore jeans and his army jacket. When he saw me, he dropped his bag on the ground. And he grinned.

  I got up and walked to him. “You made it.”

  “I made it.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded across the room at Maggie and Bernard. “Your friends?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can I kiss you in front of your friends?”

  “Yep.”

  That’s exactly what he did. The bartenders started clapping. Maggie hooted and shouted. And yet it all receded when he wrapped his arms around me, as if everything had been pulled away into a swirl, and we were the only things left standing.

  When he finally let me go, it all rushed back in-the tinkling piano music, the lobby’s marbled floors, the laughter of Maggie and Bernard.

  We picked up Theo’s bag and walked back to join them. I introduced everyone. But then suddenly a voice in my head began hollering. I tuned in and heard that voice say, It’s time to leave, Iz. It’s time to leave NOW.

  I froze my body. I listened harder. Get out, you idiot, the voice screamed.

  The thing is, I’d heard this voice before. And it had always been right. The fact that I didn’t hear that voice last autumn, when Sam disappeared and my world fell apart, had bothered me. Had I lost my intuition?

  But no, here it was-intuition that was screaming ban-sheelike, Get out!

  “What’s wrong?” Theo said, a chuckle in his voice.

  I peered around him. Two men walked into the hotel and approached the front desk. They were both wearing black pants and black jackets, their dark hair making them look almost indistinguishable. For a second, I thought they might be the waiters from the coffee bar, the ones who had a crush on the rossa, but no, not the same guys.

  One of the front desk clerks was shaking her head at them, gesturing as if to say, Leave, leave.

  Carlo, the concierge I’d spoken to earlier, was still there, and after listening to the men talk, he glanced up at me, and his expression seemed to be saying the same thing as my hollering intuitive voice. Go! Leave!

  The men must have caught his look. They jerked their heads over their shoulders and looked right at me. Then one of them raised his arm and pointed through the lobby, right to me.

  31

  I grabbed Theo, pulling him by the hand. “Get up,” I said to Maggie and Bernard. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “What’s wrong?” Maggie hissed as I half pushed them toward the back of the bar, where a white-banistered staircase went up and away. To where I didn’t know, except that it was away from those two guys.

  I had no idea who they were. I had no idea what made me run from them, other than the yelling in my head and Carlo’s f
earful expression.

  Theo clearly thought I was losing it. “Uh…” he said. “What are we doing?”

  “Just take your bag and go upstairs, please. There’s something wrong with those guys, the ones who just came into the hotel. I don’t know why, but I feel like we’ve got to get away from them.”

  I looked back and saw them. They looked directly at us, walked directly toward us. They glanced around like animals sizing up territory, then looked back, at me.

  Bernard, climbing the stairs, saw them, too. “Izzy, if you’re scared of those guys, Theo and I can handle them.”

  Theo stopped and glanced over my shoulder. “Hell, yeah, we can.” Why did he sound sort of gleeful about it, as if he’d like to get in a fight with them? Such a twenty-two-year-old.

  “Just get up the stairs. Please!”

  They did as I asked-Maggie, then Bernard, then me and Theo. When Bernard and Maggie were about to the top, I heard Theo say, “Whoa.”

  I looked back at the guys. They were moving toward us. And I saw then that they were both reaching into their jackets and holding guns.

  “Move,” Theo said. Apparently, his gleeful thoughts of a fun-filled rumble had ended at the site of weaponry.

  But if that moment was scary, it was even worse when we saw one guy extract the gun from his jacket and aim it at us.

  “Keep moving!” I yelled at Maggie and Bernard.

  Maggie stopped at the top of the stairs, her hand on her hip. “What is going on?”

  “Go, go, go!” Theo bellowed. When he added, “They’ve got guns,” Maggie spun and took off running, Bernard right behind her. I’d never seen a big man move as fast as he did.

  At the top of the stairs, there was another restaurant/bar. But it was closed. I remembered the meeting rooms where Carlo had taken me on the other side of the same floor.

  “Come on, you guys.” I pushed the doors and hurried into the empty restaurant, headed for the other side of the hotel. I gestured for the group to follow me.

  “What’s going on?” Maggie said again.