Chapter 55
ON A WEDNESDAY MORNING when we’d been on the island for about a month, Marcello finally called. I was in the bath, but I ran to answer the phone and was very glad I did because he told me there was a house that would be available soon, on the Via don Vico, and he wanted us to see it immediately.
It’s possible I squealed. It doesn’t seem like something I’d do, but I must have, because Marcello was quick to cut me off. “Don’t get too excited.”
“Is it not very nice?” I asked, crestfallen.
“I’ll tell you about it in the car.”
It took me a minute to figure out what he was saying. “Oh, you mean we’re going now?”
“Sì,” said Marcello, slowly, like I had most definitely missed the point.
“Paul’s at work,” I said, although of course he already knew that. Everyone’s husbands were always at work. “Could we see it tonight?”
Marcello laughed. “What is it you Americans say?”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“We’ve got to move fast?”
Five minutes later, I was in Marcello’s Fiat Panda, looking for a seat belt that didn’t exist. I’d worn my most conservative skirt with a simple white blouse, in case the landlord needed proof that I was a responsible adult.
But I hadn’t had time to do anything with my hair, so it hung down my back in thick wet cords.
We followed the same road out of town that Paul and I had taken to get to the beach, and while Marcello drove, he gave me some background on the house.
It was actually one side of a duplex owned by a local barber named Giovanni Chirri, whose son had grown up with Marcello.
Recently, Giovanni’s father had died, and Giovanni and his sister—both in their sixties—had inherited the property.
The sister planned to move one of her grown daughters into her unit, but all of Giovanni’s children had left the island, so his plan was to turn his side of the duplex into a vacation rental.
“Does he already have someone lined up?”
“That’s what his son tells me. That some friends of friends in Milan want it for the summer, and they’re sending someone to look at it this afternoon.”
My head was spinning—not just because of the tight timeline but because it was becoming clear to me that Marcello was going to expect me to make a decision on the spot.
What would Paul think if he arrived home from work to find that not only had I looked at a place without him but I’d committed to it?
“Why’d your friend call you?” I thought to ask. “If his dad’s got the whole thing sorted out?”
“He’s worried about his father managing a vacation rental on his own.
He thinks renting to us will be easier, which is true.
” Marcello had a hunch that, if Paul and I offered to sign a two-year lease and asked for very little in the way of upgrades or repairs, Giovanni’s son might be able to convince him to take a bird in the hand.
“Does it need repairs?” I asked as he took a hard right onto a narrow road that led up into the hills.
“I haven’t been inside the place in years,” Marcello admitted. “So we’ll see.”