Dagger Key and Other Stories

We were sitting in the offices of the Villa Ruggieri, where Giacinta worked as a receptionist and I had taken a suite. A showplace in the eighteenth century, its high-ceilinged rooms and muraled walls reverberating with the strains of archlute and cello, by the early twenty-first it had matured into a seedy relic of the Late Baroque, a hotel whose best two weeks came during the annual chile pepper festival (just ended), when all the shops of Diamante, the Calabrian seaside village it overlooked, featured fanciful decorations in their windows contrived of chile peppers, and tourists promenaded along the Via Poseidone wearing chile pepper T-shirts and chile pepper hats. Now in October, both the hotel and the village were in the process of shutting their doors, and, that evening, as Giacinta and I walked down the cliff trail and along a narrow, meandering street, we encountered only a few shopgirls hurrying home.

We stopped at a sidewalk café on the corner of the Via Fiume and the Via Poseidone, where we were to meet Giacinta’s friend, Allessandra, for a drink before going to dinner. Incapable of other than the most primitive conversation, we endured an awkward silence of considerable length. She studied the wine list, wrinkling her nose as if responding to the various bouquets, and I examined the mural adorning the facade of the building across the street—it depicted several Renaissance children, elegantly clothed, chasing each other about the columns of a room in a palace, all done in sepia tones. There were hundreds of murals in Diamante. At least half a dozen were visible off along the block. I was mildly curious regarding the reason underlying such a proliferation, but I did not inquire about them, having no wish to endure a labored explanation couched in fractured English, with table objects used for demonstration purposes. The night air was growing cool. Giacinta threw on a light sweater over her yellow summer dress. She smiled anxiously at me, and I smiled in return.

Allessandra, who arrived twenty minutes late, was a willowy brunette who had spent a great deal of time and money at the hair salon to achieve a fabulously tousled and frosted look. She wore a leather mini that showed off her long legs and enormous gold hoop earrings through which, it seemed, a toy poodle could have jumped. She bussed Giacinta on the cheek, lit a cigarette with scarcely an interruption to her rapid-fire chatter, and began to interrogate me as might an anxious mother on the occasion of her daughter’s prom, asking first how old I was.

“I’m forty,” I told her.

“Gia is twenty-six,” she said.

“It’s a lovely age.”

Giacinta looked to Allessandra, and Allessandra translated, apparently accurately, for Giacinta ducked her eyes and blushed.

“Are forty and twenty-six incompatible?” I asked. Allessandra failed to grasp the word incompatible, so I presented her with alternatives. “Unsuitable? Ill-matched?”

“No, no! I was pointing out that for you, Gia is much less, uh…sophisticated.”

“Ah! I see.”

Giacinta wanted to know what was being said, but Allessandra told her to wait and asked my occupation.

“I do some travel writing,” I said.

“For the magazines?”

“Books, mainly. I own a travel agency with offices in Rome, Paris, London, New York…and elsewhere. The business more-or-less runs itself, and I’ve been at loose ends the past few years. So I’ve taken up writing.”

Allessandra paused to translate. Her perfume overwhelmed the less aggressive aura of Giacinta’s scent. Within the café, under a bilious yellow bulb, two waiters in white shirts and aprons were playing backgammon at the bar, while the bombastic pop stylings of Zucchero leaked into the street, seeming to empurple the air. The lights along the Via Poseidone marked the curve of the shore, otherwise the darkened coastline would have been all but indistinguishable from the sea. Two elderly men in caps and bulky jackets strolled along the sea wall; one threw his right arm over the other’s shoulder and, making repetitive forceful gestures with his right hand, appeared to be offering advice.

“Maybe,” Allessandra said, “you write the article about Diamante?”

“No, I’m here to meet some friends. We try to get together every year somewhere in Europe. This year it happens to be Diamante.” I leaned forward and touched Allessandra’s cigarette pack, resting by her elbow. “May I?”

“Of course.”

“I quit years ago, but I still get the urge on occasion.” I lit up and exhaled a plume of smoke that a breeze swept toward the sea wall. “I’m meeting my friends for dinner tonight. At Baldassaro’s. They’re all bringing someone, and…well, I didn’t want to come alone. I thought Giacinta would make a charming dinner companion.”

Hearing her name, Giacinta again asked for a translation and, following a brief exchange, Allessandra said, “There is a thing I don’t understand, Mister…You…”

“Taylor,” I said. “Please.”