“I don’t have sex with people I resent.”
He blinked.
“In fact,” I said, “I don’t really have sex with people. You should consider yourself lucky.”
His eyes moved to the TV. There was a couple fighting. A handsome man with jet-black hair threw a lamp across the room.
“I’ll tell you before I disappear,” I said. “Okay?”
I touched his leg.
“Or I’ll send you a message on Post-Life.”
He smiled slightly.
“Do you have any real pants?” I asked.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
“Real pants,” I said. “You know. Pants pants?”
“I think so...” he said.
“Great,” I said. “I need you to put them on.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to a funeral.”
The ride out of the city was hot and windy.
Grace rented us a van, and the air conditioner was broken. She drove into the morning sun with bloodshot eyes. I sat shotgun. And in the back, a quiet Daniel watched the rocky Sicilian landscape whip past the windows as the van headed out of Siracusa.
Behind us in a Fiat was Paul from the film crew. His other project had fallen apart, and his partner had gone home. But he was still here and game for our plan. Everything in the last few hours had happened so quickly that I was grateful for a moment to catch my breath. It was a thirty-minute drive to the Necropolis of Pantalica, home of the cave graves, and I hoped to use each one of those minutes to figure out what to do when we got there.
The desire to go to the caves had come to me so sharply on the bridge. And when it arrived, it was like a giant fist had finally unclenched in my chest. The city of Siracusa was the place for Other Jonah to live, not a place to put the real Jonah to rest. It would be better to put him in his own city of the dead like in that village cemetery I’d seen off the road.
“North of here,” I read to Daniel from Grace’s guidebook, “in Sortino, there is a limestone ravine. It was carved over thousands of years by two rivers. The Anapo and the Calcinara. Inside the ravine is a lush valley. Cut into the limestone cliffs of the gorge are over five thousand tombs as old as thirteenth century BC.”
We wound around the blind curves of southeastern Sicily. We were over halfway to the magical tomb gorge, and I was finally becoming fully aware of what was happening around me.
“I probably should have mentioned this sooner,” said Grace. “But I have no license to do any of this here. And I’m not exactly sure about the legality. This is a UNESCO World Heritage site.”
She was driving erratically, nudging over the median on sharp turns, following the brown tourist signs for Pantalica. The windows were all open, and warm air was blowing through. Daniel didn’t comment. The only thing he askedme when I told him what we were doing was about the cameraman.
“He’s for Marian,” I said. “To make a tape for Marian to see.”
I didn’t know that was his purpose until Daniel asked me, but then it was clear as day. I wanted her to be able to experience this, too, whatever it was going to be.
Eventually we made our way to the entrance of the trail, driving the last few miles on a smaller road, flanked by a rustic limestone wall, where each rock looked like a puzzle piece fit perfectly by an ancient mason. The sight was calming to me, brief evidence of a world where even the most jagged, random shapes could be pieced together into something whole.
When we arrived, the park wasn’t open yet. But the barrier was easy to get over, and we all made the decision to trespass without talking about it. Grace seemed a little less hungover, but when I watched her almost topple over the small fence, it was hard to tell how much hiking she was going to be able to do.
“Your father would be appalled,” she said, wiping beads of sweat from above her lips. “I was supposed to bring you back yesterday. And now look at me, breaking and entering. And I might still be drunk.”
She took a long pull from a water bottle.
“My father has exploded dogs on a beach,” I said. “He has no moral ground to stand on.”
