Once we were all on board and Bruno had given the signal, Salvario made for the mouth of the harbor, and Teo turned a plastic bucket upside down and urged me to take a seat. When I did, he gave me this sort of disbelieving smile, as if he thought maybe he’d conjured me out of thin air. “I’m glad you came,” he said.
I was glad, too.
80.
SALVARIO DROPPED ANCHORat Stagno Torto, an inlet on the northernmost end of the island. “Il mio lavoro è finito,” he said, and I trilled because I knew enough Italian to understand that he’d said his job was done.
Luca and Nina spent a few minutes fussing with some buckets and nets, then I watched as they stripped down to their bathing suits. Nina wore a very small black bikini, but Luca’s trunks might have been smaller. I shouldn’t have been surprised—this was Italy in the 1970s, after all—but I found it difficult to know where to look.
“We’re going to help them,” Teo said as he pulled his own shirt over his head, and I couldn’t help but notice that he actually had a lovely body. Trim, yes, but also toned. Like a sprinter’s or maybe a mountaineer’s, and I wondered if I’d misjudged how much time he spent indoors. Teo caught me looking, but he just smiled, then told me how Stagno Torto had come by its name, something about how the phrase in English meant Twisted Pond. I was trying to pay attention, truly I was, but his swim trunks were every bit as tiny as Luca’s, if not more so.
“You’re not swimming?” I asked Bruno, who was still clothed.
“I’m too old for this stuff now.”
I watched as Teo and Luca and Nina climbed onto the roof of the pilothouse and leaped into the water like teenagers.
“Is it cold?” I shouted to Teo as soon as his head broke the surface.
“It feels great!”
Salvario checked a gauge in the pilothouse and said, “Ventisei gradi.”
I repeated the words, trying to give myself time to figure out what he was saying, but Teo shouted at me from the water, “He’s saying it’s twenty-six degrees!”
“Which is like what again?”
“You Americans,” he said as he wiped the water from his eyes.
“What?”
“Refusing to use the metric system and then expecting everyone—the world over—to do the conversion for you.” He was smiling.
I tried to remember the formula Paul had taught me, but the numbers kept getting jumbled in my head.
Teo pushed onto his back, his eyes closed against the morning sun. He looked very relaxed, which made me want to join him.
“Get in,” he called to me.
I stripped down to my bathing suit, and while Teo made a point of not looking at me, Salvario gave me an approving nod and said, “Che bella che sei,” which was very sweet but also made me want to get off the boat and into the water as soon as possible.
I didn’t know how deep the water was, just that I could see straight to the bottom, where there was a patchwork of white sand, granite, and underwater meadows of bright green Neptune grass. All of it sparkled in the sunlight. “Am I okay to dive?” I asked Teo, and he said yes, so I stepped up onto the gunwale and, with as little windup as I could get away with, sliced through the surface of the water.
The water was warm, and when I surfaced, I practically shouted with glee.
Teo and Luca and Nina were treading water close by, and Luca said, “Non male, vero?”
“Va bene!”
Bruno tossed the four of us snorkel masks, and as soon as we had them on, Luca and Nina and Teo disappeared beneath the surface. I took my time adjusting the strap, then dipping my head into the water to test the seal. For a girl who’d grown up on the silty banks of the Ashley River, it was unreal to be in water so clear I could spot the chips in my toenail polish.
The three of them resurfaced, then vanished again. They reminded me of ducks, and I tracked them as they swam down to the seafloor or as close as they could get. They were looking for something, that much was clear, but it wasn’t until Teo returned holding a large mollusk that I finally understood what we were diving for.
81.
TEO SWAM OVER TO MEand reached for my hand. It was an intimate gesture, but after he’d placed the mollusk in my palm, I realized he probably just didn’t want me to drop it.
“Is it an oyster?” I asked as I held it close to get a better look. Oysters and clams were all I had known in Charleston.
