by kc dyer
Which I don’t, not really.
A babble of voices makes me open my eyes. “Ce l’abiamo fatta! Lei è una sirena! Si! Si una sirena!”
Three swarthy young men dressed in shorts, colorful Hawaiian shirts in various states of disrepair, and each wearing bloodstained leather gloves are kneeling around me. It’s like a scene from an operating theater in a surreal movie, their heads forming a perfect circle around my line of vision.
One of them is holding something that looks like a giant yellow shepherd’s crook, and they are all smiling broadly.
I turn my head and see that the spongy bed I’m lying on is actually a bulging fishing net. And inside the net, looking back at me, is the same enormous eye I felt resting on me earlier, deep under the water.
And just like that, I’m back on my feet.
“What the hell?” I manage to shuffle my way backward onto a narrow walkway surrounding the open deck at the back of the boat.
“Americano!” the young men say delightedly to each other, but I’m no longer looking at them.
Whatever is in the net absolutely fills the deck of this boat, which has to be fifteen feet long. Its rubbery body is mostly grey, with a kind of pinkish tinge at the margins. The only other thing I can see in the net is a small, silvery fish, which flaps feebly a few times and then lies still.
One of the fishermen, sporting a substantial Magnum P.I.–style mustache, kneels down and lays a reverent hand on the monster in the net. “Is squeed,” he says and then mimes something which kind of reminds me of the way one would munch a cob of corn. “Calamari gigantesco. We catch heem. Then we catch you!”
They all laugh again, and the one with the yellow crook taps it on the deck like a soldier banging his spear.
The squid does not join in and neither do I. Instead, I fold my arms across my stomach and shiver. The squid just stares upward with one baleful, pale blue eye peering through the mesh of the fishing net. The tip of one of its tentacles has slipped out through the net, displaying two neat rows of suckers.
I am awash in relief at being out of the sea, but my primary bodily urge at the moment is to throw up. Something in my expression must translate itself to the fishermen, because the one with the mustache barks orders at the others, who dash off immediately. He leans into the cabin of the boat and pulls out a ratty, oil-stained towel. Flapping the towel skyward with the air of a conjurer performing a trick, he wraps it around my shoulders, wrinkling his nose.
“Spiacente—sorry, sorry. Is no much nice. Santo get something—mmm—meglio.”
The towel is stiff and threadbare, but it’s such a relief to have something to wrap around me that I try smiling, though I’m sure it comes out more as a grimace.
“Thank you,” I manage, at last. “Grazie.”
This use of his own language clearly delights him almost as much as my nationality. Pulling off one of his gloves, he holds out a hand. “Mi chiamo Mattia Forzani,” he says, patting his other hand to his chest.
“Gianna Kostas,” I say and shake his hand.
His face falls. “Ooo, so cold,” he says, and after squeezing my hand once, he yells something else, this time to the man who disappeared down the stairs.
“E miei fratelli Santo,” he adds, pointing first to the man inside the cabin, “e Giuseppe.”
Santo has a ponytail, and Giuseppe looks like he hasn’t shaved for a few days but has neither ponytail nor mustache. Apart from the variation in hairiness, their smiles are so identical there’s no question they are all brothers.
Giuseppe’s head reappears at the top of the stairs. He is carrying a silver thermos in one hand and a striped blanket in the other.
“Sit, sit,” says Mattia, pulling forward a plastic chair that may have once been white. “Lei ha freddo,” he says to Giuseppe, twirling his finger. “Fretta, fretta.”
Giuseppe pours steaming dark liquid—immediately identifiable as coffee—into the lid of the thermos and holds it out to me.
“Uno momento!” commands Mattia, and reaches down between Santo’s feet inside the cabin. Pulling out a metal flask, he pours a shot of something into my cup.
“Salut,” he says and clinks the flask against my cup before draining it into his mouth.
“Salut,” I whisper and swallow the whole thing in one gulp.
As the wave of warmth washes through me, Mattia takes the blanket from his brother’s arm and, after removing the oil-stained towel, tenderly wraps it around my shoulders. “We go dock, sì?”
As if on cue, the engine revs up again, and the boat lurches forward. Santo has taken the wheel inside the cabin, and there’s nothing for me to do but sit here and watch Capri come thankfully, speedily closer.
From my spot on this fairly rickety chair, I can see the boat is pretty much an exact replica of La Fortuna, the boat that carried us on our disastrous crossing of the Aeolian Sea. The resemblance between the two carries right down to the smell, which, to be fair, should only be expected of a fishing boat. In any case, I am not complaining because, unlike the La Fortuna, this boat has me stepping back onto land in a matter of minutes.
By the time Mattia and his brothers pull their boat up to a mooring spot on the dock, I feel completely back to myself again. I’m not sure what was in Mattia’s flask, but all the circulation has returned to my fingers and toes, and I’m no longer shivering at all.
I turn down the Forzani brothers’ kind offer to escort me to the lifeguard station, but they refuse to take back their blanket. So with the striped blanket still draped over my shoulders and the paddle in hand, I wave goodbye as their boat—which I now see is called Athena—putts away from the dock. After which I turn and head off down toward the rental place, trying desperately to come up with a good explanation for how I find myself missing exactly one kayak.
chapter thirty-five
STILL SATURDAY
Ravioli Caprese
Gia Kostas, special correspondent to NOSH, on the Italian Isle of Capri
With a basic dough unique to this jewel of an island, made of only a special flour and hot water, this ravioli combines the best of the flavors this locale has to offer. Start with the creamiest ricotta . . .
Since my phone, my bag, and all my dry clothes are locked up in the public changing room by the rental place on the Marina Grande, I really have no choice but to go and explain to them what happened. Maybe if I throw myself on their mercy, they won’t charge me the full replacement fee. I can’t be the only person to have been tossed from a kayak, after all.
Still, the thought of having to pay a huge fee makes my heart sink. It means almost all the money earned for my series of articles will go to cover this one mistake. Why couldn’t I have been content to just sit on a beach? I tuck the blanket under one arm, take a tighter grip on my paddle, and hurry away from the dock.
Pausing to wait for a break in the traffic, I hear a clock tower chime from somewhere on the cliffs high above me. I count the chimes absently while crossing the street and then stop stock-still as the last chime fades away. Twelve chimes. Twelve chimes.
“That’s impossible,” I mumble to myself, and then nearly jump out of my skin when a car, impatient to turn the corner, honks at me.
I scramble across to the sidewalk as quickly as I can—considering I’m a barefoot New Yorker with feet that have never seen pavement—and make a beeline toward a gelato vendor parked on the corner with his cart.
“Ciccolato, dulce le leche, gelaaaaaatoooooooo,” he bellows. “Caramello, matcha tea!”
“Excuse me,” I say as he turns his best salesman’s smile on me. “Scusi—do you have the correct time?”
“Ees good time for gelato,” he says, beaming at his own cleverness.
“No, thank you.” Still, even after all that’s happened this morning, I am unable to stop myself checking out the contents of his freezer case. The select
ion looks wide-ranging and very tempting.
“At least—maybe later. My money is locked away.”
At his look of puzzlement, I mime turning a key, and point toward the kayak rental place, as if that might make things clearer.
It doesn’t.
“No money.” I point to my own bare wrist and then to his wristwatch. “I just need to know the time.”
“No money, no gelato,” he says. No more salesman smile either, apparently.
I step around the cart and clutch pleadingly at his arm. “Please—I just need the time. I’ll come back for the gelato when I get my money.”
He swats me away like a fly. “No money, no gelato,” he repeats firmly. “Andarsene!”
“Fine.” Turning away so quickly that my fish-scented blanket flares out behind me like a striped cape, I stomp off.
But not before reading the time on his watch.
Point Gianna.
I hurry along the waterfront with new purpose. As unbelievable as it seems, the chiming clock was correct. It is now just a few minutes after twelve noon. Which means my entire adventure—from strapping on my life belt, which I suddenly realize I’m still wearing, to being drawn in and nearly crushed on the rocks by the call of the six-packs, then swept out to sea, sucked down in a whirlpool, and finally plucked from a watery grave by a trio of Italian fishermen—took just over an hour.
I’m not even expected to return the kayak until one p.m.
Which gives me a thought. Maybe I won’t have to pay the replacement cost, after all.
Bypassing the rental kiosk entirely, I follow a sandy path past the end of the docks and work my way around the rocky headland. The path weaves through some low, scrubby bushes, but I use the paddle to push aside the worst of the thorny branches. After only a few minutes, the path takes a sharp turn, and—
I’m at the cove.
What are the chances my kayak has made its way back here? After all, I fell off while almost inside this cove. My efforts to escape the nautical version of jumping out of the frying pan—getting crushed on the rocks—meant, of course, that I ended up inside the fire—in this case, getting sucked out to sea. Okay, so the whole frying pan–fire thing is maybe a bad metaphor. My point is, I might be able to pull one good thing out of this day if I can actually recover the kayak.
Both the wind and tide have shifted in the last hour, and the surface of the water is no longer glassy smooth. Instead, small steady waves, some up to a foot high, are coursing in orderly lines and breaking on the shore. Gazing upward, I see all the cliff jumpers are gone. Or perhaps they’ve just swapped venues—the waters past the rocky promontory are now filled with dozens of surfers, riding the waves.
Shading my eyes, I scan the coastline inside the cove.
And sure enough, at the far end of the now rapidly disappearing beach, I spot a splash of orange bobbing in the waves near the rocks.
The tide is coming in fast, and I’ve had enough swimming in the Mediterranean to last a lifetime, but I figure if I scoot along the edge of the rocks, I should be able to wade in, nab the kayak, and return it with no one the wiser.
I drop the smelly striped blanket and the paddle on the shore, hopefully far enough back to be out of the reach of the incoming tide. But just as I sidle sideways along the somewhat slippery edge of the rocks, I hear a shout.
Looking up, I see one of the surf gods is hailing me. Unlike the rest of the crew that are out in the choppy waters beyond the cove, he’s not standing on his board. Instead, he’s lying on his stomach, paddling his way in to shore.
At this distance and staring right into the sun, I can’t make out much. Dusky skin, a bit sunburned on the shoulders. Dark hair, a mass of wet curls swept back from his face. It’s not until he hops off the board and into the water that I realize it’s Raj.
Holy crap—those abs can compete with any of the surfer gods, I think wildly, before remembering that I am still wearing the stupid life belt over my university training suit.
I feel like a toddler in water wings.
Raj comes slogging up through the water, his surfboard tucked under one arm. “I thought it was you,” he says, smiling.
It’s a real smile too, with teeth and everything. Not the polite, upward curl of the lips he generally reserves for his conversations with me lately.
I can’t help smiling back. “I didn’t know you were a surfer.”
“I’m not,” he says quickly.
I gaze pointedly at his surfboard, and he laughs. “Okay, well I’m very new at it. And not exactly brilliant, as you can tell from the lame way I’ve just paddled in here.”
I cross my arms in front of the life belt. “I thought you were going with my dad to meet some guy?”
He hauls his board out of the water with a grunt and props it up awkwardly in the sand.
“Right. Did that first thing this morning. Introduced your father to the mad monk himself, picked up the camera I’d loaned him, and . . .”
His voice trails away for a moment, and then he adds suddenly, “He’s an odd duck, Brother Wilde, but he and your dad got along famously. They didn’t need me hanging about.”
With his free hand, he points to the top of the cliff. “The museum is right up there, so afterward . . .”
“I thought it was a monastery,” I ask. “Isn’t Brother Wilde a monk?”
“Yeah, well, it used to be a monastery but it’s mostly a museum now and a school. As for . . .”
“Whoops,” I say and lunge for his board, which is beginning to tilt dangerously. He grabs it with both hands and, after a moment’s struggle, leans it back against his shoulder. “Hopeless,” he grumbles, grimacing.
“So, are you heading back to return that now?”
He nods but doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave. I risk a quick glance over my shoulder in time to see one end of my kayak bash up against the rocks.
“I s’pose so. It’s not due in until two, but I think maybe I should take a lesson before trying again.” He gestures at my life belt. “What about you? Where’s your board?”
I puff up for a single moment that he would even consider me in the same category as a surfer girl, and then, as my kayak bashes a second time against the rocks, this time with an audible crunch, I sigh.
“I don’t surf. I’ve been out kayaking, but I sort of—ah—got thrown off. And if I don’t go rescue it right now, there won’t be much of it left to return.”
“Christ—is that it out there?” he says, following my gaze to where the hapless craft is bashing itself to death on the rocks.
“Yep. So, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
“Let me help,” Raj says, hoisting his board. “I can paddle out and tow it in.”
“Not a chance. The undercurrent is terrible right there by the rocks, which is why I got sucked in. You don’t want your board to get wrecked too.”
“Fine,” he says, replacing his board on the sand firmly. “But I’m not letting you scramble over those rocks by yourself. You’ll get all scraped up.”
He glances down at my legs and then does a double take. “Whoa—what happened there?”
I look down to see a large purple bruise blooming on my knee. “It’s where I bashed myself,” I begin, but then he drops to the sand, and I see he’s actually peering at my ankle.
It’s ringed in a neat double row of bright pink sucker marks.
“Holy mackerel,” I whisper, shocked at the sight. “He really did grab me.”
Raj turns a confused face up to look at me. “Who grabbed you?”
“It’s a—long story.” To avoid further explanations, I begin scaling the sandy side of the rocky promontory.
From here, I can see the remains of what must have once been a pier. Most of the wood has rotted away, but in places, an old, slippery plank or bit of cement piling emerges from its rock
y foundation.
Without a word, Raj climbs up beside me, and we begin to gingerly clamber our way along the outcropping. Down here, the rocks are wet, slippery, and covered with sharp barnacles, but somehow we slither our way down to the water’s edge.
There is a dull sort of thudding sound as the water smacks the poor kayak repeatedly against the rocky outcropping, just beyond reach.
“You wait here,” he says, edging his way closer. “I can lower myself down and pass it up to you.”
“Be careful,” I yelp, but it’s too late, and he slides off the rocks and into the water. Instead of disappearing under the waves, though, he’s somehow only waist-deep.
“Ledge,” he gasps and then, “Got it.”
Clutching a blackened shard of rotting wood, he’s managed to reach out with one long arm and snag the bit of rope on the prow of the kayak. Fighting the pull of the surf, he yanks the boat closer, but as he does, the wood under his hand gives way, and with the next wave, he loses his footing.
The rotten old piece of dock has essentially crumbled away under his grip, but as his arm flails, I spot the rusting bolt that once held the wood in place. Slithering down the rock to where Raj is still fighting the kayak, I hook my elbow around the old bolt, grab his hand as it flails by, and pull.
Seconds later, we’re both lying atop the rocks beside the battered remains of my little orange kayak. One of the fiberglass panels on the front is completely caved in, but the rest of the boat looks relatively unscathed.
I can’t say the same for the two of us.
Raj’s chest sports a diagonal scrape from one shoulder to his navel—the result of slipping against the barnacle-covered rock. I’ve only scraped one arm, but in combination with my bruised knee and sucker-scarred ankle, I feel like I’ve been through a war.
An enormous wave slaps the rocks and soaks us, driving us to our feet. We carefully retrace our route back to the beach, each of us holding one end of the kayak and trying not to slip. Stepping onto the warm sand of the cove feels like a victory, and as we drop the kayak onto the beach above the tide line, Raj reaches in and pulls a wet sodden mass out from under the seat. When he holds it up, I see that through some miracle, my hat has survived. Raj shakes it out, hands it to me, and then gives me a triumphant high-five.