Everything Beautiful Began After (20 page)

There were no children in the restaurant, and you wondered why.

The restaurant was part of a tobacconist’s shop, and after lunch, you picked up your shopping bag and wandered over to it. Everything in the shop was streamlined. Even the white hair of the tobacconist was brushed back and glistened under the shop light.

Although you had stopped smoking in hospital, you bought a few packets of cigarettes because the boxes were beautiful. You received your change in a chrome ashtray, not in your hand.

As you went to leave a man blocked your path.

The man stood between you and the door.

“Signor,” he said.

You looked at him and gripped your shopping bag.

The man held up some lottery tickets and a small pencil.

When you finished marking one line, the man pointed to the next. When you finished all the lines, the man held the card at a distance from his eyes.

“Foreigners are sometimes good luck,” he said.

You walked around for an hour and then went into a shop that sold crucifixes, hoping to use the bathroom. There were hundreds of crosses in the shop, in all different colors, but with Jesus wearing the same expression in most of them.

The manager said, “If you want to use the bathroom, buy a crucifix.”

“But I have nowhere to hang it,” you said.

The owner shrugged.

“I’d really like to use the toilet, without purchasing an action figure nailed to a piece of wood.”

“Please leave the shop,” the man said. Other staff drifted over.

“I can pay you,” you said.

“Just buy something with Jesus on it,” the owner said. “The toilet is over there behind those shelves.”

“Actually, I think I’ll go.”

You left the shop and peed against some recycling bins nearby. In the alley beyond the bins, sitting atop a black garbage bag, was a typewriter. You went over and pushed a few keys. Then you put it under your arm and walked away.

You ambled back toward the center of town, studying the design on a packet of the cigarettes you’d bought.

Then you noticed a gang of teenagers watching from a park across the street. You had seen them before outside the lunch place. You looked down at your money. How could they know? But then you thought that maybe it had something to do with the typewriter. You considered putting it down and walking away.

You strolled a few blocks to see if the teenagers would follow. They didn’t seem to be behind you, but when you thought you’d lost them, they suddenly appeared ahead of you—a tight group of boys in whitewashed jeans, like a scene from
West Side Story
.

Instead of waiting for them to come upon you, you turned and sprinted down a narrow street. At the end was an opening that led on to a very wide and beautiful street—a street far too handsome to get robbed on.

You looked back and saw two of the boys enter the alley running, and so ducked quickly into the nearest shop. The bell rang violently.

The shop was empty, but smelled delicious—as if someone had been smashing grapefruits. Mannequins in metallic dresses glowed under the lights.

A woman approached you. A mole on her lip made her mouth look exotic.

“I need clothes.” You opened the shopping bag by letting go of one of the handles. “And do you take pounds because I’ve run out of your currency?”

The woman peered into the bag.

“I think we probably could,” she said.

Then she asked if you’d like to put down your typewriter and try a few things on.

Three hours later—after a local tailor was called in to make adjustments—you left the shop in a double-breasted navy suit and a sky blue polo shirt.

The tailor had told you off for carrying money around in a plastic bag and helped you pick out a black alligator briefcase that smelled faintly of mints.

At a nearby barbershop, you received a haircut and a shave. Hanging on the walls were pictures of dead movie stars. The barber was very old and kept going into the back every few minutes to tap something with a spoon.

After another hour walking around on the streets of Milan, you stopped to rest on a street called Via Palomba. There were display cabinets for bottles of men’s perfume, and you thought of George.

You realized then you were starting to feel hopeless and tired, and so decided to go back to the airport. Your briefcase was heavy because it also had the typewriter in it.

It took over an hour to get to the airport in a taxi. It was uncomfortable because the driver wouldn’t open the window and you were too depressed to ask.

You caught the next flight by running to the gate.

Alitalia Flight 522 to LaGuardia Airport in New York City landed on time.

It was a bright morning with many birds.

You walked from the terminal to the hotel in Queens across the freeway. A few people honked.

You lasted a week at the hotel, living off free breakfast bagels and watching cars from your window inch their way along the Grand Central Parkway. There were a few rainstorms but they didn’t last very long.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened at the hotel except for a day spent naked when you sent your suit and polo shirt out for cleaning. You cranked the heat and took long baths with the television up loud.

On your last day in Queens, you realized it had been three weeks since you had spoken to George, and so you wrote something on the Italian typewriter with the intention of sending it to the address in Sicily that George had sewn into your left slipper.

You left Queens on a Tuesday and by early Wednesday morning you were at Keflavik Airport in Iceland.

The airport reminded you of an art gallery, with several interesting sculptures of people running, and very tall windows of uninterrupted glass.

Three German men drank beer with their breakfasts. You sat down and ordered a glass of beer too. You stayed in the airport for thirteen hours—most of which you spent drunk.

Then you took Flight 1455 to London.

And then a long flight to Tokyo.

And then Brisbane.

And then Auckland.

You took your meals on the flights, and got most of your sleep in the air too.

The Continental flight crew was by far the most caring, and if you were able to get on a Continental flight you didn’t care where it was going.

On a Royal Air Casablanca flight, a small boy wandered into the cockpit while the passengers were boarding and the pilots were busy chatting with girls in the business class seats. Within a few minutes, the boy pilot had started an engine and almost raised the landing gear.

Sometimes your flight would be packed and you wondered who
should
be sitting in your seat—and where they would
not
be going because of you.

Sometimes at the airport, you sat with the lost luggage until a destination announced on the loudspeaker piqued your interest.

In order to choose a hotel for the night, you simply stood outside the terminal and got on the first bus that stopped without asking the destination—even if the bus had been chartered to pick up returning U.S. Navy staff for submarine command in Connecticut.