Things I'm Seeing Without You Page 16

  I was still staring at his suit. Fortunately, Daniel came to life beside me.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ Sì. We’re on our honeymoon. We’re young, but we’re super Christian. Bambino Gesù! We love that guy! So that’s why we’re so young and everything. We saved ourselves for the Lord. Sexually.’

  I think Daniel was still high on Dramamine. The clerk just smiled, his blue eyes sparkling in the light of the chandelier.

  ‘Bene,’ he said. ‘Bambino Gesù. Bene.’

  He winked. Then he took our passports and typed our information into a computer. All the while he kept sneaking glances at us. Either he was stealing our identities or picturing us having sex. I couldn’t decide which I preferred. Then, abruptly, he began walking towards a minuscule elevator, speaking over his shoulder.

  ‘Andiamo,’ he said. ‘I show for you now, the room, ragazzi. Follow me. Follow me.’

  We went up a few floors and the room he showed was beautiful, but small, with two toilets. My glance volleyed between the two.

  ‘That one is the bidet,’ said Daniel, reading my mind.

  I turned it on and it shot out a stream of boiling water.

  ‘How do you know all of this?’ I asked.

  He shrugged and sat down on the bed.

  ‘My dad used to be in the Air Force. We travelled a lot. I’ve seen my share of toilets.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘A real toilet connoisseur.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  I nodded. And then everything got sort of quiet. It took me a moment to realize it was because we were in a hotel room together. Alone. In another country.

  Did I mention alone?

  Up until now, most of our interactions had been chaperoned in some way. Now there was no one in the room but us. So, I stayed in the bathroom for a minute, switching the bidet on and off, pretending to be fascinated by it. Finally, I walked out and just looked at Daniel on the bed. His face was really tired. His eyes were slits. His dark hair was sticking up in the front.

  ‘What are we really doing here?’ I said.

  He opened his eyes a little more.

  ‘We’re creating something for Jonah,’ he said.

  ‘Is that true?’

  I walked over and sat at the foot of the bed. There were fresh flowers in the room and the smell was overpowering.

  ‘I don’t know anything about this place,’ I continued. ‘I don’t know what he would want here. And I don’t know if I’m really here for him.’

  I slumped over on my side and watched the gauzy curtains ripple in a breeze.

  ‘So, why are you here then?’ said Daniel.

  His voice was quiet.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s just to escape. Maybe it’s . . . for other reasons.’

  He leant back against his pillow and closed his eyes.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Say that’s true. Is it so bad?’

  ‘The whole idea was to plan a funeral for Jonah.’

  ‘So what?’ he said.

  I looked at him through narrowed eyes.

  ‘What do you mean “so what”?’

  ‘I mean there’s no protocol for this, Tess. We’re on our own with our grief. But at least we’re not pretending that nothing happened. At least we’re trying something. Maybe we can forgive ourselves a little bit.’

  I stayed where I was.

  ‘If you wanted to get me in a hotel room,’ I said, ‘we didn’t need to fly all the way to Italy. There’s probably dirty motels in New York.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ he said.

  He sounded genuinely hurt, but I didn’t turn around to see his face. We were quiet then for a few minutes. Outside, I could still hear the traffic in the street. The staccato honk of the horns. I heard Daniel breathing heavily and I thought maybe he had gone to sleep. But, then he spoke up again.

  ‘You don’t really think he’s watching us, do you?’ he said.

  He paused a moment.

  ‘I mean, you don’t believe . . .’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘It’s hard, but I don’t think so. I thought he was still alive on the internet for a while, but it just turned out to be some creep who was stalking me.’

  Daniel sighed.

  ‘Why would anyone who’s dead spend their time watching the living?’ he said. ‘That’s what I want to know. If there’s an afterlife, there have to be more interesting things to do.’

  ‘Like what?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Flying. Being out of your corporeal body. Living outside of time. Any of that would beat the TV station of my life. I can tell you that much.’

  ‘Mine too, I guess,’ I said. ‘Except when I’m naked.’

  He didn’t say anything to that. I raised my body off the mattress and crawled up to the top of the bed and settled into a spot next to him. We lay still for a minute, only inches apart. I felt like I could feel every ounce of blood pulsing through my body.

  ‘Put your arm around me,’ I said.

  He put his arm around me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Like this.’

  I moved it over my hip and across my waist. He kept it there.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I didn’t really mean what I said before. About the hotel. But I just want you to know, I have to be here for Jonah. It’s the only thing that’s holding things together right now.’

  I rested my hand on his chest.

  ‘I understand,’ he said.

  I blinked. The jet lag was finally kicking in, and I found I could barely keep my eyes open.

  ‘Some honeymoon, huh?’ I said.

  He let out a long breath.

  ‘I don’t have any others to compare it to,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s perfect.’

  And with that, we both closed our eyes.

  The next morning, we grabbed our small bags and boarded a tour bus and took off through the heart of Sicily. The bus was big enough for fifty, but there were only five of us. Me and Daniel and some random guys on a TV film crew from the States. There was a hefty dude named Paul, who had the largest, thickest black glasses I have ever seen, and another slightly less hefty man named Archie, who had tattoo sleeves and a bumbag.

  The film guys were camped out at the back of the bus, surrounded by black cases of equipment, passing a tablet Scrabble game back and forth without speaking. Finally, there was our driver, a white-haired Sicilian who only answered to Capo. Within the first ten minutes of the ride, he shouted a word that sounded like ‘catso’ over and over again. I asked Daniel to look it up on his phone and we found out it meant ‘dick’.

  I kept thinking that I should have felt calmer – I was on a bus, finally heading to Siracusa, a place with real meaning for Jonah. Instead my nerves were fraying one at a time. The problem was that there were still so many loose ends. We didn’t have a plan yet for the ceremony. We didn’t even know where we were staying. And I had yet to turn on my phone to see the barrage of messages from my father and others.

  As soon as this bus came to a halt I was going to have to create something meaningful with nothing but a tiny container of ashes. I tried to do some deep breathing, pulling the stale air of the bus through my nostrils. After a few breaths, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Daniel, reaching over from the seat next to me.

  ‘Look,’ he said, motioning out the window. ‘It’s so green.’

  He still looked a little out of it from the Dramamine. His hair was messy, and his eyes were glazed. But I followed his pointer finger to the landscape rushing past the bus, and it was, without a doubt, green.

  I didn’t know much about Sicily, but I had imagined it sun-baked and dusty, beige cities edged by rinds of twinkling turquoise water. But this was the height of spring, and the land outside was an unending sweep of green hills leading to the foot of olive-coloured mountains. The only break in the wall of green was the occasional citrus grove, bursting with fat lemons.

  I felt a momentary calm come over me. How could anything bad
happen in a place that looked like this? I wasn’t the only one moved. When I turned to look at the back of the bus, I saw Paul aiming a state-of-the-art digital camcorder out the window, trying to capture what I’d just been admiring. He was showing a sizeable amount of plumber’s crack, and Archie was behind him, helping him hold the camera steady.

  An hour passed like this. A series of gorgeous landscapes and hairpin turns down narrow roads. After a while, I started to take the scenery for granted. My eyes glazed over and I let the green of the land and the blue of the sky blur together. I had been dozing off and on for about fifteen minutes when the bus took a sharp turn around a bend and I opened my eyes wider. I caught sight of something in the distance. Up a steep grassy hill, split in half by a row of cypress trees, was a tight cluster of little houses. A small walled-in town.

  The layout was a perfect rectangle. I had never seen a town so compact and perfectly planned. But that’s because it wasn’t a town at all. As we got closer, I could see that the small-scale houses were made of stone. And they weren’t houses. They were mausoleums.

  ‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Stop the bus, please!’

  At the sound of my voice, Capo stomped on the brakes, and the bus jerked to a skidding halt on the winding road. I held on to Daniel’s arm and braced myself. Behind me, Paul slammed into a seat back, somehow keeping hold of the camera as his black-rimmed glasses launched from his face.

  ‘What in the hell was that?’ he said.

  I met each of the men’s eyes individually. I cleared my throat.

  ‘I apologize for the abrupt stop, guys, but . . . um . . . I’d like to step outside just for a moment to see something. Thanks. Grazie. Thanks.’

  I motioned to a stunned-looking Daniel, and he followed me off the bus and on to the gravel-strewn road. There were no other cars and the air was as fresh as I’d ever breathed. I crossed the road and began to walk up the hill towards the walled cemetery-town before me. Daniel was a step or two behind.

  The others were slow to leave the bus but, by and by, I heard the sounds of their voices, too. Eventually, I reached an open gate and stepped inside to find a series of streets, complete with tiled signs, lined by one-storey crypts, each bearing a small black-and-white photo of the entombed.

  I started walking down a street named Viale San Giovanni, and as I got further towards the centre, the tombs became more ornate. Some of them were more like churches than homes, their facades swirling with carvings of angels. But of course there were churches; I was in a city for the dead.

  It should have been spooky. We were the only ones in the cemetery, walking the streets of a literal ghost town. But, when I approached one particular mausoleum with a small dome on top, I looked at the two images of a married couple, grinning in black-and-white, and I felt comforted somehow. At least they were together.

  I turned around to see Daniel watching me. I wanted to say something to him, but I didn’t know what. Then I heard a loud, unintelligible sentence from behind me.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  Capo took a step forward.

  ‘Un terremoto,’ he said.

  He paused a second, squinting as if he were searching for something on the horizon. Then he shook his hands. ‘The earth . . . quakes!’ he said. ‘Capito?’

  ‘There was an earthquake here?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Sì,’ said Capo. ‘Un terribile terremoto.’

  I noticed then that Paul was filming this, too. Capo walked up and stood directly in front of the camera, as if he had just been waiting for this moment to host his own television show.

  ‘The whole città. . . tutto destroy. Abbandonato!’

  I looked again at the little crypt homes.

  ‘These are the victims?’

  Capo seemed to understand. He nodded and gestured towards the crypts. I reached out and touched a wall. It was rough and chalky against my palm.

  ‘So, this is the only town left?’ I said.

  Everyone was quiet.

  I looked at the nearby tombs. Most of the pictures portrayed the victims in their youth. I didn’t know if this was because they’d actually died young or because these were the only photos the bereaved could find.

  But each face seemed not much older than Jonah’s.

  ‘It must be a relief,’ I said.

  Daniel squinted at me.

  ‘How do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘To the families. Just to know the dead are not alone,’ I said. ‘They have a whole town. They have one another.’

  Capo crossed himself before he walked back to the bus and started it up again. Paul and Archie put their equipment down and took their seats. We rode for the next few hours in silence, and finally, in the early afternoon, the bus pulled up to the outskirts of Siracusa, unable to go further due to the narrow roads.

  Daniel and I stepped out with our bags. The film crew stood surrounded by dollies, mics, and lens shades, like castaways with no tools useful for survival. I walked up to them.

  ‘What are you guys filming, anyway?’ I said.

  They looked at each other. Then Paul stepped forward.

  ‘We don’t really know,’ he said. ‘Some kind of Italian nature show. But we haven’t heard from the client in days. Instructions have been a little loose.’

  I looked them over. The beginning of an idea was coming to me.

  ‘How would you gentlemen like some side work?’ I said.

  Bringing on a film crew for no specific reason was my first mistake. Turning my phone back on was my second. As we crossed the Ponte Umbertino, a bridge into the historic quarter of Siracusa, Daniel was asking a lot of questions about the first of these decisions.

  ‘What are we going to use those guys for?’ he said. ‘I thought this was just for us. Seriously, Tess, why did you ask them? I don’t understand it.’

  Meanwhile, I watched the message app on my phone explode with angry texts. I opened it up and glanced at the feed. I saw phrases like ‘calling the embassy’ and ‘have him arrested’. And further towards the top, ‘I’m afraid for you, Tess. I’m not sure you’re thinking clearly.’ I tuned back to Daniel, who was chattering away beside me.

  ‘. . . just don’t want to do anything over the top like your dad does. This isn’t some customer we’re trying to dupe; Jonah was our friend. It just doesn’t feel right to do some kind of gimmicky thing—’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  Below us, on the reflective water of an inlet, some tied-up kayaks drifted into one another.

  ‘What the hell did you just say?’

  Daniel took his sunglasses off to wipe them on his shirt. His eyes squinted in the sun. He shifted his duffel bag to his other shoulder and avoided looking at me.

  ‘I’m just saying I don’t know why you asked that film crew—’

  ‘After that.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Look, Tess. I like your dad. He’s cool and weird, but his ideas are kind of ridiculous. You can see that, right? I just don’t want Jonah’s thing to be a joke like that.’

  My throat was tightening. I felt my fist clench at my side.

  ‘Mamie’s funeral was a joke to you?’

  ‘The one with the strippers?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The one where a woman who had been censored by her husband got a final celebration with her old friends. Doing what they loved. That was a gimmick?’

  ‘Tess,’ he said. ‘C’mon. You know what I mean.’

  But in that moment, I didn’t. So, I just started walking.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’

  He started to jog to catch up. I turned around and stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘I don’t want to see you right now,’ I said. ‘Go manipulate someone else into hanging out with you.’

  His shoulders dropped and he looked down at the cobblestones. He clearly wanted to be comforted, but I couldn’t do that right now. I had no comfort to give. So, I just kept w
alking into Ortygia, the historical centre of Siracusa. I took deep breaths and tried to forget everything except being here in this present moment.

  Everything on the island was quiet. Everyone was taking their afternoon naps. All of the little businesses had closed their metal shutters, and the outdoor displays of Limoncello and foldable chalkboards with seafood specials were safely stored inside.

  There were only a few wandering tourists. It was a beautiful place, though. Maybe the prettiest place I’d ever been. A Mediterranean palette of two-storey buildings in reds, pinks, beiges and yellows. The stone facades were chalky like coral, and the balconies were crowded with succulents, spilling over the metal railings. If I squinted my eyes, I could almost pretend I was underwater. No wonder Jonah romanticized this place.

  I kept walking until I hit my first major landmark. The Temple of Athena. It was absolutely massive, bright white and ornate. A sign nearby said it was from the fifth century BC. And it gave way to the smoothest, cleanest public space I had ever been in. I almost felt like I should wipe my feet before stepping on to the time-smoothed stone beneath me.

  The sun reflected off the white stone and seemed to create a burst of light around everything. I moved towards a bench on the far end of the piazza. I knew as I approached it that I was going to lose it once I sat down. It was all too much. All of this. I needed to cry or lie down or both.

  I got within a foot of the bench when I saw him.

  He looked self-possessed, sitting there by himself, sipping an espresso beneath a sign that read ‘Caffè Minerva’. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was close. He had the tangled blond hair and the glasses. And his body was lanky and lean in dark jeans and a crisp white T-shirt. The cafe must have just closed, but still, he sat there alone.

  The other Jonah.

  Right when I was about to take a seat nearby, he finished his coffee and dropped some euro coins on the table. Then he got up and began to walk away. I wanted to call out to him, but what would I say? ‘Hey, you! Stranger! You’re my dead internet boyfriend’s doppelganger!’

  So, instead, I followed him across the piazza to the opening of a narrow cobblestone street. I realized on some level that what I was doing was not rational. The world was telling me to pull myself together and stop acting ridiculous, and I was calmly saying: No, world. Sorry. I will keep at it.