“I wouldn’t do that if I were—” Dario starts.
Too late.
The mushy lump of a barely chewed green olive slides off Beau’s outstretched tongue.
“Fuck, that was putrid!” he shouts.
He rushes back to the group, obviously in search of the cooler, only to curse that they left it on the boat.
“Here.” Dario offers up his untouched water bottle. Beau’s gratitude is telegraphed in his eyes. “Olives need to be cured after picking to remove the compound in them that makes them bitter.”
Beau flicks his tongue like a lizard. “That was nasty! How do I untaste that?”
Dario chuckles like this is adorable.
Charlie ignores the devil on his shoulder telling him to forget this competition and the foreclosure of his childhood home and make a new home on this island where he can live alone, off the grid forever, outside the reach of jealousy and capitalism.
“I may have something that will help you,” Dario says to Beau. From his pocket, he unfurls a handkerchief. Inside are a few grapes, olives and roasted nuts from the charcuterie on the boat. “I thought I might need a snack on our hike.”
He feeds Beau one of the grapes as a palate cleanser. Beau acts like an Egyptian king on a gilded throne. They share an intimate laugh. Charlie looks away and walks past, even though he isn’t sure he is leading them in the right direction.
Some ways on, past a stone farmhouse, at the top of the island, they enter the ruins of the Church of San Secundo. They pass through the mighty, arched entrance. The side walls and roof are long gone. All that stand are columns. A ghost of a house of worship.
It reminds Charlie of the nightmare he had a few nights ago about the storm on his wedding day that tore away the church and his clothes right along with it. He battles fears that this place might be an omen about what’s to come for the house on Cemetery Street.
If his family gets evicted, will the city tear it down and expand the graveyard? Build a new fast-food joint? Leave it to rot beneath vandalization and overgrowth?
Charlie shudders to think of it. Not that he loves the house itself with its peeling wallpaper and loose molding; it’s everything it stands for—the foundation of his family—that he cares for. He’d hate to see that left in shambles.
And yet, Charlie runs his hand along the fractured lumps of stone that have withstood time, almost like he can absorb the history and majesty of this place through his fingertips.
“It’s beautiful,” he muses aloud. He does not expect Dario to be standing close enough to overhear him.
“Beautiful? You think it’s beautiful?” Dario asks. It’s the most they’ve spoken since their kiss last night.
“Don’t you?” Charlie asks. “I mean, this is practically in your backyard. Maybe seeing it all the time makes it less special.”
“It is not that.” Dario shakes his head. His seaman’s cap has been replaced by a different hat, another fedora from what must be an impressive collection. How he pulls those off, Charlie may never understand. If Dario were American, he’d probably be mocked for wearing them, but somehow, here, in those hats, he embodies an unmatched old-world elegance that makes Charlie swoon. A feeling he didn’t even know he was capable of.
“What is it, then?” Charlie asks.
“Whenever I come here, I feel sad. I imagine what the rose window looked like and how the pews were arranged and how grand the altar must’ve been before all the battering and erosion it suffered.”
“You talk as if a building has feelings,” says Charlie. If the house on Cemetery Street had feelings, Charlie is sure it would have a severe case of depression, what with its stripped siding and faulty hot water heater. But the love and warmth that exist inside it? That is what Charlie is here in Italy to save.
“Maybe I’m projecting.” Dario shrugs, stepping over a low-lying stone.
Charlie follows around the half wall, unwilling to let this fleeting moment of privacy go while the others are occupied. “You don’t strike me as a pessimist.”
“Not in business, but in life—emotionally—I can be,” he confesses. “You see, I had my own Max not that long ago, and he left me like this.” Dario gestures at the debris of the formerly glorious church.
Instead of asking Dario what happened, which he wants to do but fears won’t go over well, Charlie extends his hand. “Come,” he says. They step back inside the no-longer-there nave.
“What are we doing?” Dario asks, hand warm inside Charlie’s.
“Look up,” Charlie says, recreating a moment from his childhood.
Dario uses his free hand to shield his sensitive eyes from the glare of the sun. “What are we looking at? All I see is sky.”
