Heddi Goodrich - Lost in the Spanish Quarter

“Man, what an awesome place New Zealand must be …” said Angelo dreamily.

“Awesome my ass,” Tonino spat back.

“It can’t be all that dangerous. Look at those wide-open spaces, they can do whatever the hell they want. I’d love to go there one day.”

“Sure, blondie, better to get an ass whipping from a Maori gang than a kneecapping from the Mafia.”

Angelo frowned, defiantly pulling up the plaid blanket. He had a nose ring and a proud Sicilian accent that should have lent him an air of toughness. But, whatever the situation, Angelo was like a kid in a candy shop and this was something Tonino just couldn’t let him get away with. It certainly didn’t help matters that Angelo had the complexion of a Swede, a washed-out color that didn’t stop at his face and hair. I only knew this because I’d nursed him back to health once when he was suffering from excruciating neck pain. Angelo had turned facedown onto that cow rug and pulled down his pants; quickly, before I lost the nerve, I jabbed the syringe of anti-inflammatory into his right buttock.

“Well, one day I’m gonna go there,” Angelo reiterated through a mouthful.

“You’re as baked as that cookie,” said Tonino.

“You should go. The world is a book …”

That last enigmatic sentence emerged from Luca’s smoke. I hadn’t even realized he’d been listening. Yet another night scene plunged the room into darkness, but Luca’s Arabic pendant, carved out of what looked like bone, shone as if reflecting light from an unknown source.

“New Zealand’s too far,” I said, and in fact I preferred destinations like Sardinia, Umbria, the Netherlands, Kiev, Vienna—with or without my family. Or better yet, Capri, Procida, the Phlegraean Fields, the streets of Naples. “Who wants to come with me to the Maria Santissima del Carmine Church during the break?” I suggested. Another one of my “field trips,” as the boys called them.

“A church over Easter?” said Angelo. “I’ll pass. I’d rather be sitting around a table stuffing my face with cassata.”

“It’s also known as the Fontanelle Cemetery,” said Luca. “Definitely worth a visit.”

Hope swelled up inside me. Maybe, just maybe, this time Luca would set aside his band practice or research for his thesis to wander with me through the city that was his by right of blood. But he said nothing more and slipped definitively back into the darkness.

“Well, I wouldn’t be able to go for all the pussy in the world,” Tonino said. “March is when we prune our olive trees … Oh, that’s right, you intellectuals wouldn’t want your hands getting dirty, now would you? But it would actually do you some good. Check out these muscles. You think they’re just for show?”

The boys burst out laughing and I sat up with a jolt. Pietro . I hadn’t even looked at the tape since he’d given it to me the night before. I had a habit of doing that, setting aside letters and packages from home, sometimes for days on end, savoring the anticipation of opening them. Or maybe I’d just wanted to forget all about it after Sonia’s confession. But now I was beset by a sense of urgency. Where had I put it?

“Hey, where are you going?” Angelo called out behind me. “This is the part where Nig gets initiated into the gang!”

My suede skirt hadn’t forgotten last night: it smelled like a bonfire and was still holding on to the fragile little package I’d entrusted it with. In good lighting I could now see that the neatly written song list was framed by cartoonish drawings of ladybugs and fish in rust-colored ink, a detail of such playfulness, kindness, and undeniable intimacy as to make my head spin.

I sat on the bed and put the cassette into the tape deck. The first song was Aretha Franklin’s version of “Son of a Preacher Man.” I let out a sigh. My love life up until then had been a series of melodramas and misunderstandings.

In Castellammare di Stabia I met Franco, a rookie in the Camorra, the local Mafia. At the time it felt a lot like love. Or a movie about love, with scenes of gripping his thick waist on the back of a Vespa that snaked through the ruins of his ghostly neighborhood, which over the centuries had taken one too many punches from earthquakes and landslides. Watching his mother in their poorly lit vascio wail with chronic pain in legs as swollen as tree trunks. Listening to the story of how his friend had been shot dead by a rival gang. Holding Franco in my arms as he broke every code of honor to cry and cry against the backdrop of a friend’s uninhabited apartment that didn’t even have electricity. I was sixteen and I wanted to save him. One day without an explanation he broke it off. The ending was unsurprising, even desirable. After that, those adolescent sunsets over the polluted sea became even more beautiful and raw, like blood oranges.

Cesare was an error in judgment I paid dearly for. In hindsight, I could have guessed that his brilliance and eccentricity were the early symptoms of schizophrenia. But at the time I was enamored with how enamored he was with me, his searing gaze, his crooked teeth. He was disheveled, possibly even ugly, but he possessed a blinding confidence and wrote terse, dense poetry that read like haiku. Cesare quickly betrayed signs of obsession: only later did I learn he’d given me the cheap, useless gift of his virginity. Long after he left the university to be hospitalized back in his hometown of Catanzaro, he continued to send me packages, even to my dad and Barbara’s house in DC, containing self-published volumes of love poems or top-secret instructions for building a bomb. Those declarations of undying passion, which became more and more grandiose, intensified my bouts of cold sores and also my shame, verging on disgust, for how I’d played the part of the carefree girl and used sex as an intellectual experiment in carnality, for how careless I’d been and how easily my instinct for self-preservation had won out over my compassion.

And then there was Luca. Or rather, there wasn’t. Late one night while watching a movie on his bed we’d drifted into sleep and he tangled himself around me. I woke up. The movie was over and Luca’s torso was rising and falling in a faraway, untroubled rhythm that seemed extraordinary in itself. His hair had come loose from his ponytail and his lips were slightly parted, but even in his sleep Luca was still ruggedly handsome. I was only pretending to sleep. Paralyzed with pleasure and awe, I let the night tick away with the flashing green of Luca’s digital clock as his pendant pressed its cryptic script onto my skin. I was afraid to wake him. I wanted to lie next to him for as long as the universe had miraculously granted me, to absorb everything about him. His esoteric knowledge, his composure, his patience and faith in himself. During that long magical night, I gained an important insight: what I felt for Luca was not a crush, it was far more than that. I didn’t want Luca Falcone, I wanted to be him.

I dropped back on my pillow and listened. There was a certain euphoria, and an unmistakable sensuality, to the song that I’d never noticed although I’d heard it a thousand times. I wondered if Pietro could fully understand the lyrics, if he was aware he’d given me a love song.