“Are you all right?”
I nodded, which obviously did me no good. “Can we maybe meet?”
It was like Teo had been waiting for me to ask. “Yes,” he said immediately. “When?”
I paused, trying to think the whole thing through. Paul had duty that night, which meant that I’d drop him at the pier at a little after five and wouldn’t pick him up until the following afternoon. “Are you free tonight? Paul’s out at Santo Stefano, which makes things easier for me.”
We agreed to meet at a bar in Aggius, a tiny town up in the mountains, about half an hour from Palau. It seemed doubtful that anyone would recognize me there.
“I’ll look forward to seeing you,” said Teo as we were getting off the phone.
“Me, too,” I said, then felt terrible because I knew I was leading him on.
103.
THE BAR WAS EXACTLY WHERETeo had told me it would be, and when I pulled up in front of the building, I could see him standing under a cork tree, waiting for me.
I rolled down my window and said I’d be right there, then parked on a side street because I was paranoid that someone from the command would come flying down the main road and spot our bright blue Chevelle with the white racing stripe and Armed Forces plates.
Teo met me on the corner and gave me a kiss on each cheek, then, because I was American and couldn’t help myself, I pulled him into a hug that we held for maybe a second or two too long. “Thanks for coming,” I said into the soft collar of his shirt.
“Of course.”
He led me into the bar, which wasn’t nearly as nice as the bars in La Maddalena. It reminded me of the American Legion where my dad used to sometimes go for a beer. You know the type of place. Tiny windows, dingy linoleum floors, and fluorescent lighting. Teo asked what I wanted to drink, and I said I’d take a glass of white wine, so he asked the kid behind the counter for two. Then we grabbed a small table in the back. “This place feels very authentic,” I said, and Teo laughed.
“If Aggius has seen a tourist in the last ten years, I’d be surprised.”
I smiled at him across the table, and for a moment, it was easy to forget why I’d come. “It’s good to see you,” I said.
“You, too,” he said, and reached for my hands across the table. It was an intimate gesture, but not necessarily a sexual one, and I didn’t stop him.
While we waited for our drinks, I asked about his work. He was researching a big investigative piece about these shepherds in Sardinia’s Ogliastra region. They kept getting diagnosed with cancer—at much higher rates than the general population—and he couldn’t figure outwhat they had in common aside from the fact that they all let their sheep and goats graze the same fields.
“Can you test the soil?” I asked.
“That’s what’s coming,” he said with a shake of his head.
I had begun to read Teo’s stories religiously, but my Italian was still too weak for me to judge the quality of his prose. I suspected he was a good writer because he was thoughtful and a good listener and because he worked hard to see the world from multiple perspectives.
Our wine arrived.
“I read the piece you wrote last week,” I said. “About the kidnapping in the Barbagia.” Over the last decade, there had been dozens of kidnappings in that area, but this most recent one was noteworthy because the victim was a woman.
“It’s unusual for sure.”
“The husband just fled?”
“That’s how it goes,” he said. “These bandits, they’ve never gone after a woman before. It’s part of their code. So if the man of the house can secret himself off the property, the family is always fine.”
“It’s just not very chivalrous,” I said. “Leaving your wife to fight off a bunch of bandits.”
Teo laughed at that. “Okay, you’re right.”
“Will they get the money?” I had read that the bandits were demanding fifty million lire for the safe return of the man’s wife.
“Maybe,” he said. “I just hate that, of all the stories I write, this is the one that will get picked up on the continent. It’s the only time Sardinia ever ends up in the national news.”
I cleared my throat. “Speaking of Sardinia ending up in the news, that’s actually why I’m here.”
