Foreigners (26 page)

Stanley and Shirley had met at, of all places, a mixer. A weekend getaway for lonely widows and widowers, though it wasn't billed as such. It had been called, if Stanley remembered correctly, the Survivors' Club—playing rather clumsily on the appeal of a popular television program. He went at the
behest of his children, who felt that he had become too isolated. He needed to meet people. He argued that he was happy on his own, but they didn't believe him. So to allay their concern, and because the reservation had been given as a Christmas gift, he agreed to attend.

The weekend was held at the Sheraton Hotel and Casino in Niagara Falls, and when Stanley checked in he was met by the organizer, a plump young red-headed woman who beamed at him as one who's never known loss. She pinned a laminated name tag to his lapel after finding his name on the list. After she'd pressed upon him a dun-coloured portfolio with the Survivors' Club emblem on its cover and explained all the wonderful activities that were planned, he excused himself and made his way to the elevator. He had no intention of participating. And rather than attending the “Wine and Cheese Meet & Greet” and the “Getting to Know One Another Banquet Dinner,” he settled down in his room to watch the cable sports station he did not get at home. At half-past ten and feeling like he might enjoy something other than what was on offer in the mini-bar in his room, he went down to the lounge. It was there that Shirley found him.

“You must be Stanley Lesser,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder.

“Yes,” Stanley said after a moment. “How did you know?” He had left his name tag in his room.

Shirley smiled and pulled out the stool next to him.

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Stanley said and watched as she settled herself primly on the seat, smoothing her dress beneath her. “Well?” he asked.

“Buy me a drink and I'll tell you,” she said.

“Tell me and I'll buy you a drink,” he said.

“You were meant to be sitting next to me,” said Shirley.

“I am sitting next to you.”

“Not here. At dinner.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. It was the only empty place in the entire room. I checked.” She gave him a look of counterfeit annoyance. “You stood me up; I hope you realize that. For that alone you owe me a drink.”

“Fair enough,” Stanley said and motioned for the bartender. “You'll have to forgive me,” he said, turning back to her. “It's just that I don't hold much with these sort of things.”

“Really? This is my third one.”

Afterward, they went to his room. And when Stanley woke up the next morning with Shirley beside him, the thought of going back to Toronto and his empty house didn't seem as appealing as it had the previous afternoon.

Stanley Lesser's first wife was named Gloria, and they were married on a bitterly cold February day in 1962 at a small church in the town of Uxbridge, where he'd found a position with the local high school. The church no longer existed, at least no longer existed as a church. It had been disestablished and sold off to private owners who turned it into a gallery for local crafts people. He went to visit it the summer after Gloria died, and when he told the gallery director why he'd come, the man tried to sell him a ceramic vase.

He and Shirley were married at Fantasia Farms, a venue in the Riverdale valley that catered specifically to those who wished for something other than a church wedding. They had both already gone that route, Shirley reasoned, and why shouldn't they do something a little out of the ordinary? There were gardens and fountains, and statues of wood nymphs and gnomes, and the rumour of wildlife in the trees. Their vows were exchanged under a trellis on one side of a shallow fabricated pond that held varicoloured goldfish, while their guests stood watching from the other side. Then it was into a low-ceilinged, dark-panelled ballroom with a glass wall that looked out onto a stone terrace for the reception dinner. They kissed to clinking glasses, and afterward tables were cleared away for dancing. His children seemed pleased for him, if not altogether happy. Shirley did not have children of her own, but did have many nieces and nephews. One, a young man about the age of Stanley's son, drank far too much and tipped over a table of drinks before someone took him outside to get some much-needed fresh air. They saw him there, asleep on a patio chair, when they slipped away near the end of the night.

The hard soles of her sandals clicked on the pavement as she made her way back down the roadway toward Marina Grande. Stanley lagged behind. At the bottom of the hill she stopped and waited for him, her hands on her hips.

“You might have at least stayed in there with me,” she said accusingly.

“I didn't really see the point,” Stanley offered with a sigh. “He'd already made up his mind.”

“Do you want to know what that man did after you left?” She paused as if to let the implications of her question sink in. “He pretended he couldn't speak English, that's what he did. Shrugged his bloody shoulders and said,
‘Non capisco, signora.'
”

Stanley had to suppress the urge to shrug his own shoulders. There was, he knew, little that he could say that would satisfy her, so he said nothing. It was better to suffer her stare than provoke her with the wrong words.

“Well, I'll tell you right now,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the queue of orange buses near the seawall opposite. “I'm sure as hell not taking one of those.”

On this point Stanley was in full agreement. There was almost nothing as unpleasant as riding on a local bus. They'd learned their lesson the day before when they'd caught the orange bus from their hotel to the Piazza Tasso in Sorrento. Not only was it unbearably crowded, but there were no seats to speak of; all the passengers had to stand. And twice Stanley had fallen against the stern-faced conductor when the driver swerved to avoid oncoming traffic.

“We can always take the funicular,” Stanley suggested.

He had actually been looking forward to taking the strange railway-cum-cable-car contraption after having seen pictures of it in the brochures at their hotel. But he could tell by the look on Shirley's face that this was not the answer she was after.

“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “We'll take one of those.” She pointed toward the taxi rank beside the hydrofoil-ticket kiosk, then started in its direction without waiting for his reply.

It was their honeymoon, but they didn't like to call it that; instead, they called it their
trip
.

Shirley explained this to the couple across the coach aisle while Stanley leaned his head against the window and feigned sleep.

“We were actually married four months ago,” Shirley said and patted his hand.

She was talking, Stanley realized, to cheer herself up. It had been a difficult flight, an overly long charter with a two-hour stopover at Exeter to collect an English tour group. After claiming the baggage from the carousel at the airport in Naples they'd had to find their assigned coach. Somehow Stanley had managed to get them on the wrong one. Discovering his mistake, he had to rummage through the cargo well for their suitcases, an annoyance to both Shirley and the coach driver, who stood by, his eyes shielded by dark glasses, refusing to render assistance. When they did find their own coach, Stanley had to stow the luggage, again without the aid of the driver. Then the only vacant seats were at the rear, and by that time Shirley was already hot and tired, so that the added discomfort of having to make their way down the narrow aisle put her in an even worse mood.

“Our hotel is called the Mercato,” he heard Shirley say. “It's supposed to be quite lovely. Do you know it?”

“I've heard of it, yes,” the man across the aisle said. “On the small side. One of those family-run places, if I'm not mistaken. In Sant'Agnello.”

He could feel Shirley stiffen beside him.

“Really? We were made to understand that it was in Sorrento.”

“All pretty much the same now,” the man said. He and his wife came yearly to the Sorrentine Peninsula. “At one time they were separate villages: Meta, Piano di Sorrento, Sant'Agnello. Still, it's an easy walk into Sorrento proper; or you can always catch the orange bus.”

“I see,” Shirley said. “And where are you staying?”

“Us, we're at the Excelsior. It's on Piazza Teatro Tasso. Gorgeous spot. Overlooking the sea. Ibsen once lived there, you know.”

“Well,” Shirley said, “that does sound nice.”

When the tour group representative, who'd been indifferently pointing out the sights during the hour-and-a-half drive from the airport, called out for the Mercato, Stanley and Shirley were the only ones to answer. She hurried them along, and the driver, who had simply stopped the coach in the middle of the busy roadway, retrieved their suitcases from the luggage compartment and dropped them rudely on the sidewalk.

Stanley looked around. “Where's the hotel?” he asked the representative as she climbed back aboard the coach.

“Oh, it's just around the corner and down a bit.”

“And what about our bags?” Shirley demanded.

The representative, a freckle-faced and fair-haired Irish girl of no more than twenty, offered a sweet, well-rehearsed smile.

“It's really not so far,” she said. “I'm sure you can manage.” And with a hiss, the door of the coach swung closed.

At the Mercato, which was indeed
on the small side
, though quaint in its smallness, if a little tired looking, they found that their room was not yet ready. It was still being cleaned, the proprietor explained. He was a frail man with a bruised complexion who wore dark trousers and shirt sleeves that
showed a vest beneath. He invited them to have a drink in the bar, and Stanley and Shirley followed as he led them to a small well-lighted room off the lobby. It was a pleasant little space, Stanley thought: narrow, with a cool marble floor and tall French windows that opened onto the cobbled side street. He had a tall glass of cold beer. Shirley had white wine, but she found it bitter and didn't like that the chairs they sat on were plastic.

The taxi dropped them in the Piazza Vittorio in Anacapri and the driver told them that he would be back in an hour to pick them up and take them to see the Faraglioni. Stanley didn't like the manner in which the man pointed at his watch as he spoke, as if the concept of time might be foreign to them. But Shirley laughed and placed a hand on the driver's arm and said, “Don't you worry, Antonio, we'll be here. On the dot.”

She had flirted with him the entire drive, but Stanley had taken little notice. He'd been more concerned with watching the road. It wound its way precariously up from the port, skirting the boxy whitewashed houses that hemmed it in on both sides, making every bend a blind one that hid oncoming traffic from view until the very last moment. Coming around one such bend, Antonio—he'd introduced himself even before Stanley and Shirley climbed into the taxi—had to quickly jump onto the brakes to stop them from crashing headlong into one of the dreaded orange buses. The disaster averted, the next few minutes were taken up with Antonio and the bus driver arguing over which of them should give way to the other. In the end, the bus driver simply put his
vehicle into gear and began moving forward, necessitating a quick reverse on Antonio's part. But he gave only enough room so that mere inches afforded passage.