The Miracles of Santo Fico (4 page)

How could he have predicted what terrible events this excellent idea would help to set in motion? How could he anticipate that such an innocent little thought would ever contribute to him becoming a criminal—a master thief? Who could foresee such a harmless notion bringing such a world of trouble?

Right now, it seemed to him that his simple little plan was an excellent one, tried and true. How could he have been so shortsighted? Hoping for a free lunch! What had he been thinking? Where was his brain? Leo Pizzola was back! It would be like old times!

Topo pushed himself away from the bar, grabbed his hat, and was out the door. He knew what he had to do. He had to find Leo Pizzola—and quickly.

THREE

A
s he raced down the gravel slope of the coast road north of town, Topo strained to keep his body at least one step ahead of gravity. Nobody could say that Guido Pasolini failed to recognize opportunity when it landed in his lap, and he tried to calculate how much profit there was to be made from his scheme. Unfortunately, he had no idea how much to charge. This was an area where Leo Pizzola shined—at least he used to. Of course, Leo was bound to be a bit rusty after so many years.

Topo arrived at an unassuming break in an old stone wall that bordered the road. The gap in the wall had probably once housed a handsome gate, but now it was just a broken spot in the undergrowth. He tried to make the turn, but his speed had finally combined with gravity to create an unanticipated inertia that carried him straight off the road. Like some runaway torpedo, Topo shot across a sea of brown thistles, accidentally kicking over a “FOR SALE” sign that had been crudely painted in red letters. The makeshift sign disappeared into the weeds, but Topo couldn’t worry about it now. His short piston-legs ripped through weeds and leapt over low cactuses and jagged boulders. Finally managing to slow himself, he turned back onto the rutted dirt lane and scurried on toward the Pizzola family’s pastures by the sea.

Not far from the road and up a sloping meadow, buried in the shade of a grove of cork and linden trees, loomed the ghostly figure of a once admirable house now fallen into dreary disrepair. Topo thought the dark weathered stains on the plaster walls and the branches of neighboring trees twisting themselves into the terra-cotta roof tiles gave the place the look of an abandoned old woman with her makeup smeared and her hair tangled—and she seemed sadly confused by her loveliness lost.

He panted down a road that bordered neatly planted rows of muted green olive trees. Their gnarled branches were wild and unpruned and Topo thought of how annoyed old Signore Pizzola would be to see this. The branches should be heavy by now, weighted down with fruit bursting with oil and juice. But these branches bore only a slim scattering of tiny, rock-hard olives—not worth the effort to harvest. He passed a neglected vineyard whose scant purple berries struggled against the weeds and baked under an uncaring sun, and he kept his eyes on the path, trying to ignore the dying vines. It angered him to see the vineyard going the way of the olive grove and the house.

Puffing across a dry field inhabited by stray goats and sheep, Topo glanced nervously over his shoulder. The Lombolo family leased these fields from Leo to graze their horses, and horses made Topo nervous. The Lombolo horses were fierce and powerful Spanish thoroughbreds that, Topo was convinced, were also treacherous. Fortunately, he didn’t see them right now, so he hurried on toward the only thing to break the landscape for some distance—a small stone dwelling surrounded by a half-dozen flame-shaped cypress trees.

To call this structure a house was flattery; it was little more than a large hut that sat on a rise overlooking the sea and when the wind was right you could hear waves crashing. Probably built by some ancient Pizzola ancestor many centuries earlier, the stone and plaster walls gave the impression of snug lodgings. But for all its quaint charm, it was still just a single-room stone hut with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Why Leo chose to live here rather than in the big house on the hill where he grew up was a question Topo would someday have to ask. He knew it must somehow be connected to why Leo refused to walk into the olive grove or tend the vineyard, and he was pretty sure it had something to do with why Leo mysteriously ran away to America eighteen years ago. Someday he would ask him, but not today.

He leaned against the door and pounded only once before opening it and calling.

“Leo!”

The room was empty. This was not just bad; this was a catastrophe. Where could Leo be in the heat of the day?

Of course! It was Monday! Topo’s heart sank. Disturbing Leo today could be trouble, even dangerous. The secret that Leo had revealed to him about his Mondays was shared in confidence and no invitation had been extended. Leo was going to be angry.

“Well, let him be angry,” Topo huffed. “This is business.” And he scampered across the meadow toward the sea.

Leo Pizzola struggled to pull his lanky frame forward through the tall razor grass with some sense of stealth and still keep his knees and elbows out of the dirt. Why the hell hadn’t he changed his clothes first? It was so stupid to crawl across a field in a linen suit, and he was glad he was horizontal so he couldn’t kick himself. He was the only man in Santo Fico with enough style to even own a linen suit and here he was . . .

A sand flea jumped up his nose and his whole body spasmed at the invasion.

“The price you pay for crawling through their neighborhood with such a big nose,” he told himself.

He flopped onto his back and beat his hands against the marks smudging his elbows and his knees. Fortunately, the pale sand and dust of this region were of a similar hue to the creamy suit so Leo was able to rationalize how the delicate shadings of dust might even enhance the casual nature of the rumpled cloth.

Too late now and it was his own fault. He’d once again lost track of the days of the week, and when he dressed this morning for his usual pointless trip into town, some unexplainable whim told him to put on his suit. He was all the way to the olive grove before he remembered it was Monday, and his run back down the dusty path and then the sprint up the coast had left him sweating and out of breath. Now, here he was, thirty-six years old with grass stains on the elbows and knees of his only suit, crawling through the tall grass like some hormonal schoolboy.

With one final grunt Leo pulled himself to the edge of a low bluff of sandstone boulders that joined a white beach and led down to a peaceful lagoon. Carefully parting the blades of razor grass, Leo peeked over the edge of the cliff toward the sea.

Across the white sand beach an attractive but rather ample woman lazed back on a smooth boulder at the water’s edge. Her bleached tresses rested on a rolled towel and her thin cotton dress was hiked up revealing pleasantly plump legs. Leo realized that in his haste he was becoming careless. He still wore his soiled Panama hat and it stuck out like a white flag in the tall grass, so he swiftly swept it off his head in a strangely gentlemanly way.

At the water’s edge Angelica Giancarlo was having trouble keeping the lids of her large brown eyes from fluttering closed as she baked under the August sun. She knew this much sun wasn’t good for her skin, but at the moment her real concern was falling asleep. So she forced herself to stretch across the warm boulder in an effort to stay awake. Who was she kidding? It was obvious that Leo Pizzola had lost interest. He wasn’t coming. In all the Mondays since she first noticed him spying on her secret swims, this was the first one he’d missed.

She was tempted to stumble back up the hill to town and take a real nap. There would be plenty of time for swimming later—perhaps tonight. Angelica liked to swim at night, under a full moon. When she looked at her naked body standing on the wet sand, the silver haze of moonlight and glistening water hid the tracings of time and her perpetual losing battle with gravity and she felt younger.

Just as she decided to summon enough energy for the hike back home, she saw a small rustling in the grass at the crest of the cliff. Then there was the swift flash of a familiar straw hat.

“Well, it’s about time,” she mumbled to herself.

If this drama were something that either of them could acknowledge, she would certainly give him a piece of her mind for keeping her waiting in this heat. But her best opportunity for an indignant display was when she first saw him peeking at her through the tall grass over a month ago. She wondered sometimes why she entertained his childish peeping at all. It wasn’t like she really knew Leo Pizzola. In fact, they didn’t even speak. She wouldn’t mind it if they did— but of course, that would be too awkward now.

With a somewhat ungraceful effort Angelica hauled herself from the warm rock, and this time as she stretched in the sun, it was more deliberate. Why did she even bother? She didn’t even know him really and already he’s late; probably getting bored—they all get bored eventually. But she knew why. It was vanity. There was so little that made her feel attractive anymore; or alluring; or desired. She quickly dismissed any notion of giving him a piece of her mind, and instead she unrolled her towel and placed it across the flat boulder that jutted out into the lagoon. Then she stepped into the shallow water and delighted at its coolness on her bare feet and ankles. Ah, this was what she needed to wake her. As Angelica slowly waded deeper into the inviting sea, she lifted her light dress a little higher with each step. She wore no underclothing. Underclothing was always so clumsy and ungraceful. This economy made the dance appear much more effortless. Finally, when she was deep enough to justify it, she pulled the dress completely over her head and held it high up in the air. She deftly rolled the colorful print into a tight ball and with a practiced flick of the wrist, the wad of still dry cloth flew across the water and landed perfectly on the edge of the boulder. Angelica held her unveiled pose for just a moment before diving beneath the surface of the cool blue water.

From behind his curtain of grass at the top of the bluff, Leo rested his chin on his hands and watched Angelica’s smooth pink form glide through the translucent blue. Where Angelica Giancarlo was concerned Leo had never quite outgrown the innocent adoration he’d felt when he was a boy. Although she was only a few years his senior, how he had yearned for this full-busted “older woman” of sixteen who was willing to occasionally indulge a twelve-year-old boy with her secret smile. As boys, Leo and Topo and Franco Fortino had been unable to hide their fascination with the voluptuous Angelica. When it came down to it, every man in the village noticed Angelica when she walked by and every woman hated her because of it. But these three boys loved to follow her just to watch the way her round hips swayed as she walked up the narrow streets, the way she tossed her bleached hair when she laughed, the way her eyes flashed like tiny signal lights as she raised or lowered them, or the way she would casually stroke her rib cage just below her breast. This was all great stuff and a tremendous education for three pubescent boys.

Leo was thirteen when Angelica left home. He and every other male in the village was sorry to discover her gone, but being the principal
femme fatale
for the village had probably become a little awkward for the bighearted Angelica—not to mention embarrassing for her mother and stern father. At seventeen Angelica left Santo Fico to find her fortune as a movie actress in Roma—so the story went.

About a year after she disappeared, Leo, Franco, and Topo hitched a ride into Grosseto because Topo swore that there was a movie playing that had Angelica Giancarlo in it and you could see her breasts!

The movie was about sheiks and sultans and deserts and harem girls and it was all pretty silly. But Topo swore that the plump blond harem girl was Angelica. If it was, you certainly could see her breasts and they certainly were beautiful. Unfortunately, all the harem girls wore little masks and Franco insisted it wasn’t Angelica. Topo swore it was. Leo wasn’t sure, so he sided with Franco just because that’s the way things worked back then. Even so, Leo still managed to secretly hitch a ride back into Grosseto one afternoon before that movie closed, because the odds were that Topo was right. Even as a boy Guido Pasolini knew more about movies than anyone in Santo Fico. As Leo seated himself, he spotted Topo sitting a few rows in front of him. He didn’t say a word because he suddenly felt embarrassed about being there. But also because, in the flickering shades of gray light bouncing off the screen he was startled by the expression of adoration on Topo’s face as his little friend stared up at the giant image he swore was Angelica Giancarlo. Leo felt as if he’d invaded Topo’s holy shrine and he sneaked out before the movie was over.

A rustling in the grass behind him disturbed Leo’s meditation of Angelica gliding and turning in the cool water. He turned fully expecting to have to shoo away a sheep or a goat or at worst one of the Lombolos’ horses. Instead, he discovered—a mouse.

“Topo, what the hell are you doing here?” Leo whispered angrily.

The little man could only wave his hands feebly as he tried to catch his breath.

“Get out of here. I knew I shouldn’t have told you about this.” Leo made an ineffectual kick in his friend’s direction.

Topo took an equally unproductive swing at Leo’s foot and recovered his breath enough to gasp, “A tour bus . . .”

Leo spun around in the grass as if he’d received an electric shock.

“How many?”

“I don’t know. Over ten.”

“Back up, back up, back up . . .”

Feet were suddenly headed in Topo’s direction for real this time, so he rolled to one side and let Leo scramble through.

For an instant Topo was alone with the notion that just beyond that veil of razor grass, Angelica Giancarlo’s naked splendor glided through blue water. But he couldn’t look. Some other woman, maybe . . . but not Angelica Giancarlo. Instead he sighed and followed Leo’s disappearing rear end.

Staying on their hands and knees, the two men scrambled toward the path and continued their excited conspiring in whispers.