“You know, that would be an incredibly intelligent thing to do if we had a scanner.”
“How did you do the other documents? There must be one somewhere.”
“There was. But, Tangiers,” he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the sea.
“Right, well, listen, I think you probably need to deal with your stuff, and I need to go chill out somewhere,” she said, turning toward the door again.
“Can you swim?”
“Yes. Why?” she asked, pausing.
“What if I asked you to meet me at the front of the building in an hour with a bathing suit?” He looked at her arms. “And a lot of sunscreen.”
“I would say it depends. I don’t really like boats, just so you know.”
“Perfect. I don’t like boats either. See you in an hour.”
Chapter 10
RESEARCH NOTES
Interestingly, Maslow never directly addresses communication in his work. It is likely that his personal experience of growing up in Brooklyn among many family members and friends made him assume that abundant communication would be universal. While it’s true that one cannot achieve safety, love, a sense of belonging, or self-esteem without communication, defining adequate, positive, and/or prosocial communication has become difficult in modern society.
It didn’t take long for Andrea to drive to his parents’ house, pull the fourteen-foot inflatable sea kayak out of their garage, and strap it to the top of the Panda. What did take a few extra minutes, however, was explaining to his parents why he was doing this in the late afternoon on a workday.He didn’t want to mention Lora. They would start asking questions he didn’t have answers to. And since his last actual date was probably in 2019, now was not the time to mention that he was spending time with anyone. Not that this was a date. It wassomething. There wasn’t really a category for “let’s mutually disappear for a few hours” that he knew of.
“Did someone drown?” Paola had called out to Andrea from inside the house, pulling him out of his trance of affixing bungee cords across the roof rack.
“No, Mamma, I’m going to go for a little paddle.”
“Why?” she’d asked, stepping out onto the terrace.
“Because it’s summer and—” He’d paused, looking around, hoping to find some reasonable excuse for taking a few hours of personal time, which he had not done in recent memory. He gave up. “I just want to. I’m going with a friend.”
“Good. You should do it more. You work too much,ciccio. You won’t win a prize for it.”
Driving back to city hall with the kayak spilling out almost three feet longer than the actual car, he realized that he could probably read any number of things into his mother’s comment. But for now, he was trying to remember if he had the two life jackets still stashed in the trunk of the Panda. He could imagine the headlines in theLevante Newsabout the mayor of Baia Santa almost drowning with an undocumented American and no flotation devices. Luckily, they seemed to be in exactly the spot where he’d put them, along with wire cutters, headlamp, a snorkel, hornet spray, work gloves, a flare, a length of rope, old campaign posters, and a mini chainsaw. He was always traveling, as they say,con la zavorra.
He parked in his spot, and though there weren’t many people around, he wondered for a second if he should have told her to meet him somewhere else. There wasn’t any need to hide, exactly. She’d be gone in a few weeks anyway, and anyone who wanted to gossip about his personal life would be back to judging him for his extravagant installation of a clothes dryer in a place where electricity costs rivaled a car payment. He got out to check on the life jackets, aware that the idea of her being gone was not feeling much like a positive.
“You said no boats.”
Andrea pulled his head out from the trunk. Lora stood with a tote balanced on her hip, sunglasses on, and her long legs in short white shorts that almost broke his sour mood completely.
“This isn’t a boat,” he said, patting the side of the kayak.
“It’s notnota boat. I could be a person who gets seasick, you know.”
“Are you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then get in.”
The Fiat Panda had many quirks. The designer of the car, Giorgetto Giugiaro, had skipped door handles entirely and created a recess in the frame of the door where you’d slip your fingers in and pop the lock with your thumb. Despite the fact that it could be difficult for those who hadn’t grown up with the ubiquitous little car to figure out how to open the damned door, Lora popped it open on the first try. And even though the kayak prevented her from seeing him on the other side of the car, he couldn’t help but nod. This woman was something.
“Should I turn on location sharing?” she asked as she settled in the passenger seat. “We’re not going to be paddling to Elba Island, are we?”
“Capraia is closer,” he said. He could feel her staring at him. “I’m kidding. We’re not going there. We’re going to go along the coast here. I want to show you something.” He pushed the gear shift to reverse and pulled hard at the wheel to crank the car back.
