Sorrento (part two)

The plane screeched down, scraping rubber onto Detroit’s tarmac as the wheels caught up to speed. My window set the drizzly background in a plastic oblong frame, and I could feel the artificial light escaping past me into the night. The stewardess thanked us for flying US Air, and she smiled a pretty smile as I stepped past her into the gate. Her complexion and dark eyes almost seemed Hispanic, but her curly blondish brown hair betrayed a fake tan. Her hair split into two pigtails and laid across her blue uniform. Annie wore pigtails when she worked because the owner of the hostel thought it was very American and would attract business. I spent the long walk up the gate trying to think of another way to find her. A huge hug startled me back to Detroit.

“What, you don’t recognize me after a few weeks in Italy?” protested Marc as he stepped away and clasped his hands on my shoulders.

“Buddy!” I laughed at my mental lapse. “How are you, man?” I asked, as I reached out and grabbed his wide shoulders in return.

Marc and I had roomed together for almost two years, and we thoroughly enjoyed each others’ company. His real name, Marco, conveyed his Hispanic lineage; his distaste for the American stigma of Hispanics helped him drop the “o.” His family was wealthy, and I assumed they had been for generations when they first moved to Detroit.

“I’m good, now that you’re back” he remarked, and I could see honesty across his wide smile. “That place just isn’t the same when there’s only one person there. Who am I supposed to beat in foosball all the time? Not to mention those video games. Getting’ hammered online by some Japanese kid just doesn’t have the same effect as my victory dance after I drop a game winner on you at the buzzer.”

“You better keep your fingers crossed, Marc, because that’s never gonna happen,” I said with the traditional arrogance of our video game banter.

“Better be careful there, sport. That almost sounds like a challenge,” he retorted. We joked and talked about the month that had passed as we walked to get the rest of my luggage.

“So, you, a 26 year-old bachelor, gets paid by a tour book company to travel Italy while I spend my days wasting away at a law school that takes my money and makes it financial unreasonable for me to finance a girlfriend?”

“Oh,” I laughed, interested, “so it’s the finances of it now, huh? You can’t afford a girlfriend.” I laughed again. “I have missed this.” His jab lit up my right shoulder; I struggled to pretend it hadn’t hurt, and I laughed harder.

“Yeah. That’s right,” he mocked, “Don’t rub it. Did you miss that, too?” He grabbed my backpack and threw me the third bag. “Oh, yeah, my car is in the ‘Do Not Park Here’ section, so we should probably hurry unless you want to pay to get it out of the impound.”

I laughed again, “Oh, I’m paying? Is that how it works around here? That’s cool.”

“Hey, I don’t make the rules,” he said, lifting his hands in innocence. “I just keep them.”

My parents never left Indianapolis, where my dad ran the public relations department for an aspiring prosthetics company. My undergrad degree in History never got me excited about grad school, so after college I got a job in my dad’s PR division. A year in a cubicle was all I could take, so I set off into Europe. By the time I returned home, I figured I could write travel books better than the ones I used. So I wrote one, and my first one on backpacking the UK was bought by a large travel publisher.

They brought me on staff, and I spent much of the next year checking other authors’ travel suggestions. My parents were happy when I ended up in Detroit—though I was gone about two weeks out of five. Despite all the travel I did for work, Detroit had slowly come to feel like home. Marc and I met through a mutual friend from undergrad, and we rented a nice apartment near his law program just outside the city.

We made it to Marc’s old Saab before the tow-truck, but we didn’t escape the verbal lashing from the middle-aged woman in a blaze orange “Parking Attendant” vest. She made a spirited argument that Marc had to wait for the Police to come because she could not write him a ticket herself. Once inside the car, Marc determined that he could no longer hear her yelling and promptly pulled away.

He took the expressway out to I-69, and we talked of the previous month—his month leading up to year three of law school; my month of research for my next book.

“Research?!” he yelled, “Research?! Ha! Try two years of law school, and then call that ‘Research’!” He enjoyed his flamboyant tirades, and most times, I enjoyed them just as much as he did.

“How are the boys doing?” I asked as we passed a giant billboard showing the Detroit sports teams. He filled me in on the playoff race for the uncharacteristically good Tigers, and the off-season acquirements of the Pistons. I’d never been a fan of any Detroit teams, but living there makes you a fan…makes you. Marc’s dad had season tickets to all three professional teams, and Marco was bred to root for anything “Detroit”—sports, products, people—if it was “Detroit,” Marc was for it. He was fully capable of talking for hours about the highlights and blunders of each team.

“So, you spend just over a month in Italy, and you spend three of the weeks traveling with some chick?” The question caught me off guard, and he watched my face turn.

“Whoa,” he said, immediately interested. I looked back at him, trying to decide if it was too late to hide my facial expression. He barged in—“What did that look mean, chief?” I looked out the window. He continued, “Hey, you’re the one who told me about her in the email. You said she was a family friend, right?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. Her parents were friends of my parents. I’d never met her before.”

“So I assume she’s a pretty girl?”

“Beautiful,” I responded. I couldn’t hold back a pent-up sigh.

“You certainly sound excited,” he said sarcastically. “So far, I think I’ve missed the part of the story where you start making painful faces and sighing every time she gets mentioned. Did something happen to her?” he asked, suddenly cautious.

“No—” I started to say, but realized that I didn’t have any idea whether something had happened to her. She had drifted away, into that night, and I knew nothing after that. “Well…I guess I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Alright, I’m pretty confused,” he began. “I want to make sure I’ve got this,” he said, steering with his knees so he could use his hands as visual aides. “So you and this girl—you run into each other in Naples, Italy; you hit it off; you spend three weeks romping around Italy hand in hand; she leaves and never calls?”

“Well, not exactly,” I responded defensively, telling him of the final moments of our conversation. “I mean she did say that it didn’t make sense.”

“Didn’t you exchange phone numbers, or email, or address…” he paused, wanting to continue the string…“or pictures or names or anything for that matter!? I mean, come on! Social Security numbers for goodness’ sake. She has to be somewhere.”

I knew he wasn’t going to like my answer.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “I have all but the Social Security number.”

“AND?! No response?”

“No. Well, yeah sort of—none of them work.”

His head cocked and he turned toward me, wide eyed. “They don’t work? None of them!?”

“Nope,” I sighed. “None—cell phone was disconnected, the emails addressed to her got returned, and the address was to a hotel in Vienna where she was supposed to be staying with her dad—hotel doesn’t exist.”

“That’s unbelievable!” He sat, stunned and silent.

“I know,” I spoke into the silence. “I don’t really know what to make of it.”

“I’ll tell you what to make of it!” I could feel his tirade coming. “What a tramp! That’s what you make of it—Pretty girl, American. Probably lives in Italy and picks up a different guy every few weeks then jumps ship. I bet you paid for her everywhere you went, didn’t you?”

“Well, no, actually she paid for everything on her own, except dinner a few times when I refused her.”

He kept going; “She probably just lives in Italy, living off good natured American boys who think they’re getting the love of their live. Disgusting!” Marc was mad. “I’m really sorry, man. I had no idea that had happened.”

“Thanks man.” I mustered a hopeful voice, “I don’t know that I’ve given up hope yet.”

“Hope?” He looked at me like I’d told him I was headed back to the hostel—not that the plane ride hadn’t given me ample time to think it. He gathered himself, trying to conceal his bewilderment. “I don’t know, man. I have no idea what all that means, but I can’t imagine its worth thinking about.” I nodded my understanding; it did look crazy. I had no idea what to think of it. But I couldn’t expect Marc to understand; he’d never met Annie. He never saw the resolve wash across her face when she told me she’d find me.

Marc glanced over; seeing me wrestle the question of hope, he moved the conversation away from the aching matter of “future.”

“And how, exactly, did you run into your parents’ friends’ daughter 4,000 miles from either one of your homes?”

I laughed as I told him about my mom’s email; he rolled his eyes and complained—

“So your Mom sets you up with some gorgeous girl on a different continent? In Italy, no less! Ridiculous. I can’t get a date in my hometown—where I, and my mom, have lived for well over twenty years.” I couldn’t resist the comment that snuck into the back of my mind—

“Internet dating, man; I’m telling you; it’s for you.” I laughed through the suggestion before being pounded by him; he draped himself across the wide cup holders, swinging violently to reach me as I clung to the far door, howling at my own humor.

The conversation meandered back to the Tigers, their pitching staff, and their chances of making it to the World Series. A short discussion about his family brought us into the parking lot behind our building. He helped me carry the luggage into the lobby, and we took the elevator to our fourth floor home.

The doors parted with a ding on the fourth floor. Each floor had two apartments; ours was to the left; the uptight Hutchisons at the far end of the hall. His key slid in and opened our door, and as it swung wide, I shook my head at the previous month. I followed him through the door frame, feeling, suddenly, the weight laid upon it.

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