Capri, a party, a kiss.

[before this: running into Bruno; remembering Capri]

Timo flirted with the DJ, the waiters flirted with the models, everyone drank more limoncello ices, and Francesca started to feel like a chaperone at a school dance.  She had work to do tomorrow–not much, but enough to keep her occupied until her afternoon flight back to Milan.  She still felt ambivalent being in Capri.  She was looking for something that just wasn’t here, it seemed.  And then Bruno was beside her.  As a party guest, he seemed entirely at ease mingling and laughing; she had watched him entertaining a gaggle of girls, discussing Clyfford Still with the art director, and even John Waters films with Timo.  She was fairly certain he was having a better time than she was.  He handed her a beverage with lime.

“Sparkling water,” he said.

“Thank you–I don’t think I could drink anything else.”

“Neither could I.  You looked like maybe you were getting dehydrated,” he smiled.  “Thanks for bringing me here.  It’s been great.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.  Sometimes these things can be a bit much.”

“But this is Capri,” Bruno said.  “Everything’s always just right here.”  He paused.  “Are you ready to go?”

Francesca nodded.  “I’ll just tell Timo,” she said.  But when she found Timo, on the aft deck, he was having an animated phone conversation.  It was probably with Dario, she guessed, and rather than interrupt him she just waved at him, and he waved back, and she decided that was as good as telling him she was leaving.

It was a starry, moonless night in Capri.  The stillness of the off-season island echoed in the darkness, the cool breeze the only indicator of the coming winter.  Francesca stumbled off the yacht’s gangway onto the dock, and Bruno caught her arm.

“Easy, sailor,” he said.  Her crystalline laugh cut the quiet night as she steadied herself.

“Easy yourself,” she answered.  They walked a few steps, Bruno still holding her arm, lightly, but present.

“Does anyone still call you Francie?” Bruno asked.

“How can you possibly remember that?” Francesca was surprised.

“I remember a lot about you, Francie.  I had never met a girl like you.  You were so serious, and smart–one time you spent the afternoon in my parents’ garden reading a book and when I asked you what you were reading you told me it a biography of Leni Riefenstahl.  And you were twelve, probably.”

“Weren’t you a little old to be so curious about a girl my age?”

“I was.  But I was only curious then,” he answered.  He was right.  Whatever Bruno had thought of her, Francesca had never known.  “I may be more than just curious now.”

Even in her wedges, Francesca was still shorter than Bruno, and in the dock’s half-light she could only make out the angles and the contours of his face, just the shadows of his expression.  She couldn’t tell if he was still joking, like he had been all night, or if he had become serious.  He held her shoulders gently, stroking her cool skin with his warm thumbs.

“Are you still so serious and smart?” he asked quietly, and leaned in to kiss her.

[after this: waking up in hospital]

remembering Capri.

They used to go to Capri on holiday, when she was very young, at first, her mother and father and Ricci and Michele.  And after her father died, she and Ricci and Michele would go occasionally with Marco and Letizia and their children, always staying in a big rented villa overlooking the sea.  She remembered swimming all day long, snorkeling in the grottoes and only leaving the water to go back to the house for lunch.  On Saturday nights they would go into town and have dinner at a restaurant–the cook got the night off–where everyone knew Marco and stopped at their table to say hello.  She had a necklace from Capri, a gumball-sized polished coral bead on a gold chain.  Her father had given it to her as a souvenir on their last trip, when she was seven, because he had just taken her snorkeling for the first time and she had seen where the coral grew.  When her father died, Anna put the necklace away in her jewelry box, worried that Francesca would lose it.  She had to beg her mother to get the red bead back; Anna made her wait until she turned ten–an arbitrary number, considering Francesca had lost not even a sock as a child, much less anything more significant.  She wore the bead on a longer chain now, with a couple other talismans she’d acquired over the years: a gold cross from her grandmother and a Dodo zebra from Cristina when they’d both graduated from school.

She had loved Capri, loved learning how to swim there, loved the carefree afternoons riding with her brothers on scooters, picking oranges from neighbors’ trees, even loved going to the shops with Letizia.  Ordinarily, she would have been thrilled at the prospect of three days there.  But Paolo–she couldn’t wrap her head around him.  Maybe there wasn’t anything to try to understand.  Capri just seemed so far away–from Florence, from Turin, from Milan–from everywhere.  Out of sight and out of mind.

[after this: running into Bruno on Capri, party on Capri]

waking up in hospital.

After Bruno had left Timo came back, bringing Francesca her bag.

“About last night,” he began.

“What about it?” she asked, digging through her bag with her right hand to find her phone.

“You and Bruno–”

“I have a horrible headache, Timo.”  She pulled her phone out from her bag only to find it was dead.

Timo took the phone and plugged it into the wall.  He really did think of everything.  “I saw you last night.”

“I imagine you did,” she replied.  “I don’t see what–”

“You said he had a girlfriend,” Timo interrupted.

“Really?  You, of all people, you’re going to give a lecture on the finer points of morality?”

Her phone buzzed to life.

“On the contrary.  I think it’s good,” he answered.  “I think you were getting a little obsessed with Paolo.  You need some sort of distraction.”

“I think you’re more obsessed with Paolo than I am,” she countered.  “And Bruno wasn’t a distraction.  It was a mistake.  We’d been drinking, it was late–”

“So it made perfect sense to get on a scooter,” Timo interjected.

“How did you get home?” Francesca asked him.

“I rode with the models.  We hired a G-wagon.  Everyone got home fine.”  He raised one eyebrow imperiously.

Francesca could tell she wasn’t getting anywhere with this conversation.  “Will you find out when I can leave, please?  And pass me my phone?”

Timo tossed the phone onto the bed and walked out of the room.  Francesca gingerly typed in her passcode and checked her messages–missed calls from her mother and Elena, a string of emails, and a couple texts.  One from a number she didn’t recognize.

Cesca, hi from Firenze.  Hope you’re enjoying Capri.  I’ll be in Milano on Friday.  Can I see you this weekend? X PR.

Firenze.  PR.  Paolo.  She looked at the details and saw that he had sent it this morning.  She saved his number in her phone as Paolo, just Paolo.  She’d remember who he was.

She leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes.  He was coming to Milano for the weekend.  He didn’t say why.  He was obviously coming for some other reason than to see her, but he wanted to see her.  She wondered if her head injury was making her more confused than she ordinarily would have been.  As she drifted back to sleep she began composing her reply.

Ciao Paolo.  Capri was beautiful.  I’m free for dinner on Saturday if you want to meet then. xx Francesca.

Cesca, great.  Saturday is great.  I have a request–can we eat at your place?  I’m not trying to presume, but I’d like to be somewhere private. X PR.

That is presumptuous, Paolo.  And you assume I can cook.  Why all the secrecy?  xx.

party on Capri.

image via The Sartorialist

Timo flirted with the DJ, the waiters flirted with the models, everyone drank more limoncello ices, and Francesca started to feel like a chaperone at a school dance.  She had work to do tomorrow–not much, but enough to keep her occupied until her afternoon flight back to Milan.  She still felt ambivalent being in Capri.  She was looking for something that just wasn’t here, it seemed.  And then Bruno was beside her.  As a party guest, he seemed entirely at ease mingling and laughing; she had watched him entertaining a gaggle of girls, discussing Clyfford Still with the art director, and even John Waters films with Timo.  She was fairly certain he was having a better time than she was.  He handed her a beverage with lime.

“Sparkling water,” he said.

“Thank you–I don’t think I could drink anything else.”

“Neither could I.  You looked like maybe you were getting dehydrated,” he smiled.  “Thanks for bringing me here.  It’s been great.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.  Sometimes these things can be a bit much.”

“But this is Capri,” Bruno said.  “Everything’s always just right here.”  He paused.  “Are you ready to go?”

Francesca nodded.  “I’ll just tell Timo,” she said.  But when she found Timo, on the aft deck, he was having an animated phone conversation.  It was probably with Davio, she guessed, and rather than interrupt him she just waved at him, and he waved back, and she decided that was as good as telling him she was leaving.

It was a starry, moonless night in Capri.  The stillness of the off-season island echoed in the darkness, the cool breeze the only indicator of the coming winter.  Francesca stumbled off the yacht’s gangway onto the dock, and Bruno caught her arm.

“Easy, sailor,” he said.  Her crystalline laugh cut the quiet night as she steadied herself.

“Easy yourself,” she answered.  They walked a few steps, Bruno still holding her arm, lightly, but present.

“Does anyone still call you Francie?” Bruno asked.

“How can you possibly remember that?” Francesca was surprised.

“I remember a lot about you, Francie.  I had never met a girl like you.  You were so serious, and smart–one time you spent the afternoon in my parents’ garden reading a book and when I asked you what you were reading you told me it a biography of Leni Riefenstahl.  And you were twelve, probably.”

“Weren’t you a little old to be so curious about a girl my age?”

“I was.  But I was only curious then,” he answered.  He was right.  Whatever Bruno had thought of her, Francesca had never known.  “I may be more than just curious now.”

Even in her wedges, Francesca was still shorter than Bruno, and in the dock’s half-light she could only make out the angles and the contours of his face, just the shadows of his expression.  She couldn’t tell if he was still joking, like he had been all night, or if he had become serious.  He held her shoulders gently, stroking her cool skin with his warm thumbs.

“Are you still so serious and smart?” he asked quietly, and leaned in to kiss her.

It happened so fast, it seemed–he was kissing her, and she was kissing him back, long and sweet.  He surprised her with his tenderness; she was so accustomed to a kiss being just a prelude to something else, something more, but with Bruno the kiss was the whole point.  They were on an island, this man who was so different now, but the same, kind Bruno.  She wanted to see him at work, to see how he traded his kindness for shares and equity.  He stroked her ear gently and kissed her deeply, completely.  And then she pulled away, shocked.

“I’m sorry–” she stammered, disoriented.  For a moment he was gawky, geeky Bruno again, compass hanging from his belt, socks too high.

“I’m sorry, Francie.  I didn’t mean–”

“No,” she said, “no, it’s okay.  I’m just confused.  We haven’t seen each other in so many years.  I think I’ve had too much to drink.”  She looked past him, back to the yacht, and saw Timo on deck, leaning over the rail watching them.  “I think I’ll just go home now,” she said, walking back towards the harbor.

“Please, Francie, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.  Please, I’ll drive you home.  I don’t know what came over me.  I’m just going to drive you home.”

She stopped walking away from him.  It was late, she could call a car or try to hail a taxi but it would take time, and she was exhausted.  She just wanted to go to sleep.

“Francie, please,” Bruno pleaded.

She nodded and walked silently towards his Vespa.

It was cooler away from the shore and Francesca sat close to Bruno, trying to keep from shivering but trying not to hold him too tightly.  They flew around the dark curves at acute angles, and for a minute she was scared and she buried her head in the warm, strong space between his shoulders.  Their headlight cut a narrow beam through the blackness, glancing off lemon trees and stone columns as they ascended the curvy road.  She heard it first, the sound of the skidding and the gravel and the tires, she heard it because it was too dark to see anything and then she felt a sharp crack and then nothing.

waking up in the Armani Hotel; back at the office with Timo.

Francesca collapsed back onto the pillows and sighed.  All she wanted to do was stay in this perfect hotel room all day, but she knew any minute Timo would be calling to find out what had happened the night before and to give her the rundown on the work they needed to do today.  She picked up the phone on the nightstand and the front desk answered immediately.

“Buongiorno signorina Jolie,” a polite woman said.

He had signed her on the register as Angelina Jolie.  She had to laugh and could barely order her room service.  Cappuccino, fruit, cheese, and bread.  She was famished.  Her next call was to Timo, preemptively, to tell him she was going to be a little late.  By some incredible stroke of luck his phone rang four times and went to voice mail.  Fantastic.  She left a quick message and by that time, her breakfast had arrived.  Francesca surveyed the cheese (pecorino romano, drizzled with honey), the bread (a crusty roll), and the fruit (figs and blood orange segments, with more honey) while she drained her cappuccino.  She dove into the food with her hands, breaking the cheese into pieces and smearing the honey on the bread.  The figs were exquisite, ripe and bursting their crimson insides through the dusky mauve of their skins, oozing sweetness.  She was making a mess of the bed and licking the honey from her fingers but she didn’t care.

Thirty minutes later Francesca had showered and dressed, and she checked out of the hotel wearing her same clothes and with the staff still calling her “signorina Jolie”, though they could clearly tell she wasn’t.  She drove the quick fifteen minutes to her studio, anxious to avoid Timo’s wrath at any further tardiness.  But to her surprise, when she arrived at the studio, TImo wasn’t there yet.  She found her jeans in the closet and pulled them on, along with her boots from the day before, carefully hanging the pleated Prada skirt and putting the Giuseppes back in their box.  And then she set about to making another cup of coffee; Timo’s absence disoriented her and upset her morning routine, so she wandered aimlessly around the studio, trying to decide what to do first.

When Timo finally burst through the door Francesca was at her computer with her third cappuccino, clicking through sports news reports of the game the night before.  Timo was wearing the same black and white striped sweater and white jeans he’d worn to the football game, and Francesca raised an eyebrow at him.

“I called you this morning,” she said.

“I must have been in the shower,” he answered.

“Doubtful,” she said.  “You’re wearing your same clothes.”

“So are you,” he said, “but you smell like jasmine soap.”

“Ok, so you were in the shower,” Francesca conceded.  “Whose shower?”

“You probably won’t remember, because you were so absorbed with secret messages and meeting places and stolen glances across the field–”

“–I was not!” she protested.

He waved her off.  “You definitely were.  Whatever.  But if you had actually been paying attention, like I was, then you would have noticed the absolutely adorable boy sitting two rows up from us–”

“Not the one who was there with his parents?”

“Uh, no.  He was six.  Not my scene.  The one beside them, who was there with his friends from university.  I told you you didn’t notice.  You were too busy being all ‘oh, look at me playing it cool and pretending like I’m not thinking about Paolo Romaldo’s big thick dick.'”

“Fine.  Maybe I was trying to follow the game.”

“Anyway.  Dario’s studying physics at the university.  He’s from here.  It was hilarious, he snuck me into his parents’ house and we fucked all night long and got the maid to bring us risotto in the middle of the night and in the morning I had to escape out the back door.  So that’s why I’m late.”

“Dario,” Francesca mused.  “Dario the physicist.”

“Dario the dreamfuck,” Timo rejoined.  “But where are my manners–I haven’t asked what happened to you last night.”

Francesca sighed.  “So we met at the Armani Hotel, but he wasn’t staying there, he just wanted to meet there for drinks because if we went to his hotel there would probably be photographers there–”

“And he didn’t already realize you are a photographer?”

“And he wanted to go someplace more private, so he picked the Armani Hotel, which was a good choice because it was very private.  But I was worried, at that point, that this was a friendly drink, a since-I’m-in-town-I-popped-by-for-a-drink kind of drink, not a drink that was a precursor to going upstairs, because he didn’t have a room upstairs.”

“Nice girl that you are, you don’t want to give the wrong impression during a friendly drink.”

She rolled her eyes at him.  “I introduced him to Fernet and Coke–”

“Your two best friends–”

“And we started making out right there in the lounge and I felt it.”

“His penis?”

“God, Timo, you are on fire for having not gotten any sleep last night.”

“I’m sorry, please.  Go on.”

“There’s not much else to say.  He had to leave and take the bus back to Torino.”

“The bus? Ugh.  Really?”

“Apparently it’s a thing.  They ride the bus together.  As a team.”

“It sounds kind of gay to me,” Timo fluttered his eyelids and got up to make himself another espresso.  His phone buzzed and he ran to grab it, reading the text as he walked back to the couch.

“Dario?” Francesca asked.

Timo didn’t look up from typing on the screen.  “Yes, finally.  Sounds like he just woke up.  He’s so cute.  So where did we leave off?  The bus.  He’s taking the big gay bus of football players back to Torino.”

“Right.”

“Do you think he sits at the back of the bus?  Between the drinks and the bus what happened?  Other than feeling it?”

“Have you ever been to the Armani Hotel?  The beds are amazing.”

“Wait, you said he didn’t have a room.”

“He got a room.  And it was gorgeous.”

“You’re being very vague about this whole situation,” Timo said.

“I don’t know what else there is to say.  You were right about the skirt, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Francesca answered.  “Paolo liked the skirt.”

“Obviously you should listen to me more often.”  Timo got up and walked towards his desk.  “So what’s next?  Do you have to wait for another treasure map to see him again?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.  “I gave him my number–”

“Shit,” Timo interjected.  “I completely forgot we have to book that trip to Capri for the Bazaar thing.  Shit shit shit.  That will teach me to sleep through my reminders.”  And he started typing furiously at his computer.  “We need the proofs from last week, too.  Are they on the shared drive yet?  We should have about a hundred.”  He clipped his headset to his ear and she could hear him start talking to their travel agent.

running into Bruno in Capri.

via Assouline.

Francesca walked down the main street, looking desperately for a pharmacy where she could buy a bottle of aspirin–something to alleviate the splitting headache she’d developed during the shoot.  She was still wearing her work clothes–long, skinny white jeans, a slouchy Alexander Wang navy t-shirt, and K Jacques sandals, but she’d left her big Bottega bag in her hotel room and carried only her zippered Valextra wallet.  She’d spotted the green sign of a pharmacy about a block down the street when she heard someone calling her name.

“Ciao, Francesca!”

She looked across the street to a sidewalk cafe.  A man waved at her and she walked across to meet him, realizing as she walked that it was Bruno, the boy who had lived in the villa next to the one Marco and Letizia rented when they were children.  Bruno was Ricci’s age, several years older than Francesca, and she hadn’t seen him since the summer before he’d left for university, when she was only thirteen.

“Bruno!” she smiled.  “How did you possibly recognize me?”

He smiled sheepishly, gesturing to the chair next to his.  “I guessed,” he answered.  “I figured, here’s a beautiful woman, walking down the street like the ghost of a girl I knew in Capri, the worst thing that could happen would be that you kept walking.”

She ordered a limonata from the waiter.  “I still can’t believe it.  It’s been ages.  What are you doing now?”

“I’m working for a bank,” he answered, vaguely, and Francesca knew from his dismissive tone that he did something similar to her brother, and it was the kind of work one didn’t care to talk about.  “But you, you’re a big photographer now,” he said.

“Hardly,” she replied modestly.  “How did you know that?  I don’t imagine you read fashion magazines.”

“I’ve kept in touch with your brother.  He’s told me about your career.  You were such a funny little kid,” Bruno said.

“You keep in touch with Ricci?  Or Michele?”

“Ricci.  We ran into each other at a meeting several years ago.  I live in Roma now, but I call him when I visit Milano.  I’m surprised I’ve never run into you there.”

“I travel a lot,” Francesca explained.  Also, she did not explain, she lived five minutes from Ricci and hardly ever saw him.  She wasn’t surprised at all.

Bruno had been a gawky teenager–she remembered that distinctly.  He was a nerd, so her brother had reluctantly recruited him as a sidekick, primarily because he had a boat.  It was just a dinghy, but it meant that Ricci wouldn’t have to ask Marco to borrow his tender, an advantage that more than compensated for the size of the boat.  If Bruno had had a dinghy as a child, Francesca was pretty sure he now had a yacht.  All traces of his former awkwardness had been polished out by education and corporate life, and he seemed entirely comfortable and confident sitting across from her, all Rolex Milgauss and Lacoste polo, a successful businessman on holiday.  “What are you doing in Capri?” she asked him.

“I was in Napoli closing a deal,” Bruno explained, “and I promised my girlfriend we could come here for a few days when I was done.”

Francesca looked around and began to stand up.  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt–”

“Oh no,” he said.  “She gets in tomorrow morning.  I finished up early today so I came over this afternoon.”  He paused.  “What are you doing here?”

“Work,” she answered.  “Just work, unfortunately.  But I thought about wandering over to the old neighborhood and seeing what it looks like now.”

Bruno’s face lit up.  “I’ll go with you,” he offered.  “My parents sold their place about ten years ago–some Germans made them an offer that they couldn’t refuse–so I haven’t been back there since.”

“Oh, good,” Francesca said.  “I’m not entirely sure I could remember how to get there any more.  It’s been such a long time.”

“We can take my scooter–for old times,” Bruno said, gesturing to a black Vespa parked nearby.

They drove across the island quickly, with Bruno taking the back roads and shortcuts–Francesca remembered he had been obsessed with maps and orienteering, another reason Ricci found him useful.  With the wind in her hair she forgot all about her headache.  Bruno pulled onto the street where they used to spend their summers and parked the scooter halfway between the two villas.  They seemed both more and less imposing than they had when she was a child, she thought–more, simply because of all the work the new owners had done to the homes, lots of additions and landscaping, a swimming pool at Bruno’s old house and a tennis court at Marco’s.  But the house that had seemed so endless to her as a child, where she could hide for hours on rainy days and never be found because it had so many rooms, that same house looked small now in light of all the other massive homes she’d seen in the years since.  She and Bruno stood silently in front of the houses.

“I thought it would help me remember him if I came here,” Francesca said flatly.

Bruno looked at her quizzically.

“My father,” she explained.  “You wouldn’t remember.  We came here with him, before Marco.  He died when I was eight.”

“You’re right,” he said.  “I’m sorry I don’t remember.  I knew your father was dead, but I didn’t know him.  I always thought you lived with Marco and his family.”

“Only on holiday,” she answered, a little too quickly.  “Hey,” she said.  “Let’s go.  There’s a party tonight that the magazine is throwing.  You should come with me.  It’s going to be fun–they’ve hired a yacht.”

Bruno laughed.  “You know I’ll do anything if it involves a boat.”

“I remember that about you.  Come on.”