Paul had a copy ofAll Quiet on the Western Front, and I had brought alongCarrie, which I’d purchased at the airport, so we lay there reading on our towels for, I don’t know, maybe seven or eight minutes before Paul announced that his book was boring, then asked what I thought of mine.
“It’s good,” I said, hopeful that if I didn’t elaborate, I’d be allowed to return to it.
“Do you want to swim?”
“Too cold.”
Paul sighed, a little too loudly for my taste, then spent several minutes digging a shallow trench between our two towels with his flip-flop. I continued to read, or at least pretend to, but then he started complaining about the wind.
“Maybe you could go for a walk,” I suggested before returning to my book.
Paul sat up and stared out at the water, then over his shoulder at the walled fortress or whatever it was at the far end of the peninsula. “Want to go explore that thing?”
I didn’t lift my eyes from the book. “Not really.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, tracing a finger along my thigh. “It could be fun.”
I’d asked to go to the beach and Paul had granted the request, so I felt I should be allowed to enjoy it. “Thisis fun,” I said, gesturing at our beautiful surroundings, but I knew I’d already lost.
The fortress thing was actually a collection of cottages and outbuildings surrounded by a tall stone wall. A narrow path traced the perimeter of the complex, and Paul beckoned me to follow him around the backside, where there were these huge granite boulders and a two-story concrete tower built right into the rocky coastline.
“It’s pretty isolated back here,” Paul said, suggestively.
I was annoyed by what had happened on the beach. “I am not having sex out here, if that’s where you’re going with this.”
If Paul picked up on my irritation, he didn’t let on. “Too exposed?” he asked, nodding at the sailboats in the far distance.
“Paul!”
“How about just a blow job?”
I rolled my eyes so far back in my head, they were in danger of getting stuck there, but in the end, I followed him behind a big boulder and obliged him. Not my finest moment, but there it is.
30.
I TELL YOU ALL THISto explain why, on our way back into town, I barely noticed the crowd until we were upon it. I was in my own head, wondering how we’d managed to make such a mess of the afternoon, when Paul, who was walking a few feet in front of me, slowed and held out a hand. I thought the hand was a peace offering and took it, but then he stopped completely.
We’d reached Cala Gavetta, and ahead of us, on the other side of the harbor, were maybe twenty or thirty people chanting something about America and waving a bunch of signs I couldn’t read, much less begin to interpret.
There was one sign with a big American flag shaped like a submarine. It was actually kind of stunning, like a Jasper Johns painting, if Johns had been into subs. I could see it hanging in a fancy foyer or maybe over a couch in an expensive New York City apartment. But as we drew closer, I realized that someone had painted a thick black line through the flag.
Paul was very obviously on high alert. I could feel it in the grip of his hand and the pulse of his thumb. “Let’s take it easy,” he said in a low voice.
“Is this the group Tom warned us about?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“What do their signs say?”
He started translating them. “That banner there says Italian Communist Party. And you see that red-and-yellow sign with the hammer and sickle?”
I said that I did.
“That’s the Italian Socialist Party. The PSI.”
“What do the letters stand for?”
“Il Partito Socialista Italiano.”
