13. The Ghost who Still Has a Heart to Give
Chapter 13
The Ghost who Still Has a Heart to Give
A s expected, sleep wouldn’t come. The lines I had written before bed weren’t horrible, and they were poetic to a certain extent, but…it wasn’t the words that needed to be there. It was more a message to myself to head back up the hill and find my muse again. Or at the least, refill my well of words for this story.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but morning was probably still a couple of hours off. The world was silent and dark, including my room. I couldn’t even see Pisolino. I sat for a second, staring at the window, thinking. When my intentions caught up to my mind, my body moved.
After doing my business in the bathroom, I brushed my teeth, slathered on some of my sweet, citrusy body lotion and perfume, then dressed in a gauzy white dress that tied in the front and gave the impression it was a two-piece, midriff-baring top and flowing skirt. I pulled my hair back into a sea-green scarf, which pulled the green, gold, and light brown from my hazel eyes. I gave Pisolino fresh water and fed him leftover fish from the monger, then packed my crossbody for the day. I slipped my feet into a pair of weathered brown leather sandals and stepped outside.
The night had taken on a softer look. It was thinning, the sun moving closer to take over the day. The heat wasn’t as oppressive, and the tender breezes made me rub my arms. The air wasn’t cold, per se, but cooler than usual.
Almost.
Digging in my purse, I found another peppermint and stuck it in my mouth. Figured I’d get a head start on the sugar since I had a strenuous climb ahead of me. I had only picked at what I had in my kitchen for breakfast. My stomach was filled with too many butterflies to make room for food.
I’d cut two oranges and packed them in a small glass container. I’d eat them while I watched the sunrise, once I made it to the top of the island.
I rushed across the street, then stopped. It felt like someone was behind me, but when I looked, the only thing that had moved was a piece of hair that had come loose from my scarf. I tucked it behind my ear, and after a second, I decided to take the Vespa instead of going on foot.
My heart was overreacting again, and I felt almost breathless, like I had run from whatever or whoever was out in the night with me. I wasn’t scared, though. That wasn’t the feeling I felt. It was the same feeling I got when I’d first climbed the hill.
The story was pulling me back.
The Vespa didn’t make a lot of noise, but occasionally it complained about the steepness of the hills. The small headlight only illuminated so far ahead. I kept glancing in the rearview mirror to see if I was being followed. Or hunted. I hadn’t seen another soul since the road twisted and left the lower part of the island in the dust. But the Vespa started to struggle against the wind, the higher it climbed. The wind was stronger. I even had to stop for a second and untie the scarf from around my head and retie it even tighter. The wind was undoing the knot with its rough, insistent fingers.
Once I reached the top and put the Vespa in park, I took a deep, settling breath. I’d made it back up again. I used the Vespa to chill on while the sun rose in the sky, and I ate my fresh oranges.
The world looked bruised at first, until the brilliant fire of the sun started to push the darkness back and shed relief on a world that was as stunning as it was the first time my eyes set on it. I didn’t even bother taking my phone out. A picture could never do this moment justice.
If I came only for the sunrise, I would have been lying to myself. So, as soon as I could see, I retraced my steps to the castello . The gas lanterns that must have been burning during the night were just going out. And like the time before, the sun adored the cream stone with bronze trimmings. The palms were bowing to it, and the fresh herbs and flowers were perfuming the air around it.
What I hadn’t noticed before, though? A helicopter landing on the other side.
Is that how the ghost got around?
Smiling at the thought, I took my phone out to take another picture of the same window, but I hesitated. What if I looked up and the man, not ghost, was staring back at me? What if he wasn’t a nice…ghost? I kept getting the opposite feeling of that though. And even if I wasn’t as skilled as Eva and Scarlett when it came to reading people, I still felt too much. I would have felt the danger. I felt it radiating off the pages of the threatening letters I received from the supposed killer.
I did feel danger here, too, but it was different…so hard to put into words. Maybe a dangerous entity that used his power for good? Maybe not for the good of the world, but the good of something…maybe what, or who, he loved?
All great things to remember for later when I was writing. But I hadn’t felt the rush of inspiration hit yet.
On the count of three, I forced my eyes to the window.
Damn.
Empty.
Just in case I missed something like last time, I took another picture. And since I was already up here, I was going to sit back on my Vespa and just…be before I headed back down. The citrus stall would be waiting for me. I was looking forward to the next day, my day off. I was going to spend it at the beach.
Claiming my seat on the Vespa, I took a few more pictures, then decided it was time to go. It might be easier going uphill with the two wheeled scooter. I wasn’t sure I could control the speed going down. I looked forward to trying though. After I slipped my phone in my crossbody and set it in the basket with my glass container void of fruit, I started the Vespa and held onto the handles.
My eyes blinked at the new addition to the left bar. A long gold chain with a pendant dangled and swung in the wind. My hand lifted the end of the chain. The pendant was a lion’s face set in gold, and underneath it, a heart made from a ruby. It was beautiful—almost romantic and cruel at the same time, especially when a ray of bright sunshine hit the gem and made it seem like a glob of blood.
I looked around but found no one.
Someone had been here, though. A necklace doesn’t just appear on the handlebar of a Vespa unless someone puts it there. A smile came to my face, and I removed the gold chain and slipped it over my head. “Thank you!” I shouted into the wind, holding the pendant between my fingers. “Er, grazie mille !”
This was going in the book— the ghost had given the only heart he had to the woman outside of the window.
Still stunned, I sat for another few minutes, until I heard it again.
The voice of Rosaria Caffi echoing from the castello . After making sure the pendant rested over my heart, I stuck my earbuds in my ears and turned the music up. I drowned her out as I sped toward town, feeling exhilarated and full of ideas.
Still in a haze from my time atop the hill, I kept zoning in and out during my shift at the citrus stand, my fingers always around the pendant. It had already become a part of me. I’d developed anxiety toward it. Like I was too scared not to touch it every so often to make sure it was still there.
That it was real.
It felt like a real heart against mine, and I had to protect it somehow.
Digging in my bag, pulling out the notebook I had purchased and what I was calling my “lucky” pen (found in the street in town), I scribbled that down for the book.
The lion’s heart seemed to pulse, and in that moment, she knew: his life was in the palm of her hand. She slipped the extension of him over her head, vowing to protect his heart for eternity. Wherever his heart would go, hers would follow, and wherever her heart would go, so would his. In this, they were entwined eternally.
That was so romantic, I could have sworn the paper was glowing, like it was infused with candlelight, and the smell of roses drifted off the page. In reality, it was being perfumed by the brute force of the sun beating down on the paper, and the peppermint candy I had started keeping in my purse—just like bananas do to cardboard or chips if they’re kept too close together.
That balance thing again.
I had to remind myself there was a line between fiction and reality. I wanted the romance to sweep me away, but not consume me to the point that it was all I saw. There would be hard times in this story. That was what made life…life, and believable. But no matter what, the couple would persevere and come out on the other side, her sending the air back in his lungs, the beats back in his heart, because he had become her life.
Sighing, I blinked, bringing the world back into focus. The citrus stall was empty much earlier than usual, and I hadn’t really noticed it. I was entrapped in my mind with my sidekick Pisolino next to me. He sat on the bench in the shade, thumping his tail, his green eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. His coat looked like black velvet, except for the missing patches of hair and what I hadn’t noticed before—he took a few licks in the fight. I made a mental note to stop by the medical building and ask them if they had anything for cat injuries. I didn’t think he’d swipe at me if I tried to apply something to them, but…
I glanced at him.
He was a wild boy, even if he gave me the impression that I was somehow domesticating him.
Scratching behind his ear, I rested my back against the backdrop of the stall, relaxing until it was time to leave. Plenty of people passed down the street, but one look in the wooden boxes and they left.
That was right! We were out. I had been too caught up in my daydreams to remember or care.
I stood too fast, stirring Pisolino, who jumped from his perch and started drinking out of the bowl I’d given him for fresh water. I shut the stall down, put the sign out, and as I was getting my things in the back of the Vespa, Iliana and Pirtinaci strolled down the street.
Pirtinaci checked to make sure his stall was secured, and Iliana set a hand over her eyes, staring in the empty boxes.
“We are running out too fast,” she mumbled.
That was good, right?
“This is good,” Pirtinaci said, probably reading the look on my face, or maybe I had read his mind—eerie, I know, but what could I do? “But we will not have enough to last for the season. Our farm is still small.”
Maybe not bring as many? I was going to suggest, but Giulia, the woman who assigned me this stall, sped up on her Vespa. After she greeted us, she looked into the boxes and gave me a different assignment on a different area of the island. I’d be selling chili pepper in all its forms.
“Okay,” I said, looking forward to a change of scenery. I’d miss the citrus stall, and Iliana and Pirtinaci were nice enough, but peppers seemed fun to sell too .
The three of them looked at me, as if searching my face for something, and after I cleared my throat at the sudden awkwardness, I told them I was going to have dinner in town. I could have gone to the apartment and cooked while I immortalized some words into the pages, but I found if I couldn’t sit and write straight through, it was harder on me. Go and stop, stop and go was a torturous pace for me. It drained me.
Giulia thanked me, as did Iliana and Pirtinaci, and then I started the Vespa. Pisolino jumped on the back of the wicker basket, and we headed into what I called the downtown area of the island. It even had its own piazza.
On the way, I remembered about Pisolino’s wounds, so I pulled to the side of the road and checked the map. The medical clinic wasn’t far. I smiled as I took off again. Two older women loitered outside of their apartments, wearing robes and house slippers, and were complaining about their husbands, who were trying to figure out how to move a car that must have been having trouble starting. The old men were waving at the women and the women were waving back, but in that Italian way that meant— What you gonna say about it, ah? You have-a ah, better idea? It wasn’t the arguing but the complaining that was so entertaining to watch.
It didn’t take me long to arrive at the medical building. I guess because the island didn’t seem to have any troubles, I was expecting to find something more…island-ish, but it looked like a real hospital, or l'ospedale. I ran inside, the cold smell of antiseptics bringing me back to Nonna and a time I refused to think about, and spoke to a nurse. She told me there was a veterinarian just a few doors down, so I headed that way. Two women in scrubs met me at the counter after I arrived, and I pointed out the window as I explained to them what had happened. Pisolino was still perched on the basket, tail swaying.
“Let me get Dr. Accolti,” the woman said. “We are not busy.”
Dr. Accolti was good looking, but I knew he wasn’t a Fausti. He didn’t have that “Fausti look” about him, and no tattoo marked him. All the men seemed to have the same one, a lion with a sacred heart in its mane, a rosary around its neck, but on different parts of the body.
The vet seemed nice enough, and he seemed to love all animals. I was almost positive I heard a goat bleating in the back of his practice. He smiled at me after I repeated the tale of Pisolino and his valiant pissing match with the orange tabby to keep him outside of our home.
“Men are known to do this!” He laughed even harder. “Especially when it is over such a beautiful woman.” He winked at me, his warm amber eyes kind. “Let us see if Pisolino will allow me to look at him.”
That was a big fat no. Pisolino wasn’t having it. I felt so bad when they got him inside of a carrier and took him inside. He stared at me with eyes that hissed, traitor! I set the pendant in my palm, barely covering it with a fist, and tapped my foot until Dr. Accolti came back out.
“We will keep him until morning,” he said. “He has a few deep gashes. You say there is another cat around your place that is wounded as well?”
I nodded, caressing the gold. “A big fat tabby. I think Pisolino might have blinded him in one eye.”
“Where do you live?”
I told him.
“Ah.” He nodded. “You are working here for the summer?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’d love to take Pisolino home with me.”
“Home…?”
I told him where I was from in America, and we had a conversation about how he had moved to New York and stayed with family while he finished his degree in veterinary medicine. After, he moved back home to be closer to his mamma and papà. Before I could ask where his parents lived, he told me they had decided to retire on the island.
“It has a lot of animals,” I said. “You can do good here.”
He reached over the counter and grabbed a pen and piece of paper. He scribbled down his name and phone number. It didn’t say Dr. Accolti but Dante.
“Call me anytime,” he said, the amber in his eyes sparkling against the setting of the sun and his light brown hair.
He didn’t add anything to that, like, call me anytime an animal is hurt, and you notice it. He wasn’t being pushy with his flirting, but subtle with it.
While tugging at the lion against my heart, I nodded and lifted the paper. “ Grazie .”
He watched me walk to the door. “I will be by soon to find this great enemy of our Pisolino,” he said. “Also known as ‘nighttime.’”
Of course. Pisolino meant “little nap” in Italian, and nighttime was the time Italians awoke and became lively. Like strikes of lightning across the sky. It made me laugh a little at how corny his comment was about the name as I made my way across the island and found parking in the “downtown” area. When I looked at the basket, and then down at my feet, void of my sidekick, sadness washed over me. That blue Nonna always talked about. Though being inside of a hospital had brought back painful memories and started it.
Would the ghost have them? Painful memories?
I pulled out my notebook and jotted down… incredibly hard past. That was what my writing senses were telling me anyway. I considered this as I decided on an employee trattoria instead of the tavola calda . It had both inside and outside dining (aka al fresco ). I chose al fresco . It had a great view of the water, and wanting to relax, I ordered a glass of red wine with my dinner. As they say, in Italy do as the …
The color of the wine reminded me of the ruby inside of the lion’s heart. It was the first time the soft glow of sunset had touched it, and it made it seem so real, like my pulse was adding life to it. I pulled out my notebook and pen again and started to write while I waited for my food, not even bothering with the view. Which was saying something. The Mediterranean at sunset was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen.
If it was a bride in the morning, it had become a wife at night. A wanton woman ready to be romanced and find her worth in her man’s world while the rest of the world faded.
Large speakers were suspended on each corner of the old place, and they serenaded me with a moonlit sonata. The busy sounds of a restaurant surrounded me, the delicious smells coming from the cucina entrancing my stomach , and it all seemed to feed into the romance pouring from my heart. Yet it all disappeared at the same time. All but the music. This was why it took me a moment to realize someone was standing on the opposite side of my table.
Dr. Accolti smiled at me. “You were lost,” he said.
I sat up straighter, closing my notebook and slipping it toward me protectively, my pen marking my page. “Pisolino?”
“Angry but doing well.”
I nodded, breathing out a relieved breath. I had entrusted my wild cat’s well-being into this man’s hands. That wasn’t something I took lightly.
“Is this seat taken?” He nodded to the one he had his hands on.
“No,” I said, but what I really wanted to say was yes—the ghost is sitting here with me, at this same table, in the chair your hands are on, and you’re interrupting our time.
“Am I welcome to it?” He lifted his eyebrows, giving his face a genial look.
I nodded. He sat, and after he ordered a glass of red wine and his food, he sighed as he gazed at my face. I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I have heard things about you,” he said.
“Me?” That took me by surprise.
He laughed. “ You. You are Aria Bella?”
“If not, someone else will be getting the bill for Pisolino’s care. ”
He waved this off. “This does not matter.”
“What have you heard about me?”
“You are lost in your own world most of the time. Which is why you did not notice the citrus fruit disappearing as quickly as it did.” He moved back and thanked the waitress who set down his glass of wine. “The men on this island have been put under your romantic spell.”
“What?”
He laughed again. “Tell me you noticed this, how…entranced they are by you.”
I looked to the left and then to the right, like I was lost to this statement, and shook my head.
“This must mean you have not cast a spell on any one man on purpose then?”
“I’m not a witch,” I said.
“Your eyes say differently.”
“Thanks, I guess?”
He didn’t confirm or deny this either way, and I sat back as my food was set down in front of me. I wasn’t sure what was polite in the situation, but I wanted to dive in. Give my hands and mouth something to do. He wasn’t making me uncomfortable, he was okay company, but what should be a woman’s response to that? I was saved by the waitress when she set Dante’s food down across from him. Hopefully the food would be so good, neither of us could speak after taking our first bites.
The food didn’t slow him down. He was super chatty, and it seemed like he was interested in every aspect of my life. Like…if this was a date, what would we have left to talk about on the second one? It wasn’t a date, though, so maybe it was okay for friends to chat about everything all at once. I reiterated what I had said earlier at his clinic. I grew up in New Orleans, but my dad’s parents were both born in Italy. My mom’s side was Italian, too, but had immigrated long before my paternal grandparents had.
Behind Dante, I noticed the boys who had followed me from the tavola calda to the shore the night before. They were sitting at a table, flicking glances my way, smiling and laughing a little obnoxiously.
The seating area suddenly hushed, and in the quiet, my voice seemed super loud, like when someone turns the volume of the radio down while someone else is blasting a lyric. Dante’s eyes narrowed and then widened. He stood abruptly, and the boys behind him seemed to scatter like mice in the wake of a dangerous cat, followed by Dante.
Suddenly, and out of the blue, it felt like a cold hand breezed across the heat of my neck.
By the time I made sense of it, it was too late. When I turned around, whatever, or whoever, had been behind me had vanished, just like the wind, but I could still scent him there. A rich cologne that made me inhale the air as if it was something much more powerful than that, and I clasped the pendant against my heart with my fingers, checking to see if the overreacting of my pulse had knocked the ruby loose.