7. Claire
CLAIRE
The gardener’s hands are green at the fingertips from tomato vines, which is more interesting than the view behind him and considerably harder to photograph without making him self-conscious.
“Just my hands?” he asks again in Italian.
“Only if you still say yes.”
Stefano laughs and holds them up as if I am arresting him. “My wife will say they look terrible.”
“Your wife is welcome to file a complaint.”
He tells me she has been filing complaints for thirty-two years.
I take three frames while he trims a tomato vine, green-stained fingers working through the soft new growth, then lower the camera before he looks up.
The service terrace on the eastern edge of Bellamare is warm with late-morning sun.
Someone washed the stone half an hour ago, and wet footprints fade from dark gray to pale as they cross toward the kitchen gardens.
A stack of old wooden crates leans crookedly against the wall.
One has BELLAMARE burned into the side so faintly I almost miss it.
That is the photograph I want.
The villa and the sea can survive without me. Nobody would bother arranging this version of summer for a brochure.
A crate used long enough for the name to wear off is better.
I crouch, frame the letters through the handles, and hear a familiar voice behind me.
“You are photographing damaged wood.”
I keep my eye to the viewfinder. “Good morning to you too.”
“It is nearly noon.”
“Then you missed your chance to be pleasant.”
Matteo steps into the edge of my frame, white shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, sunglasses hooked into the open collar. He is carrying nothing, which makes me suspicious. In the last week I have learned that he usually has a phone, a folder, a coffee, a plan, or an opinion in hand.
Today it is apparently just the opinion.
I lower the camera. “Did you come all the way down here to criticize the subject matter?”
“I was looking for Stefano.”
Stefano points toward the path with the knife he is using on a length of twine. “You found me.”
Matteo says something quick in Italian about a delivery at the upper gate. Stefano answers, nods, and goes back to his crate without any sign that a billionaire has just interrupted his morning.
That earns him a point I do not plan to mention.
Matteo looks at my camera. “And you?”
“I was invited.”
Stefano lifts one green-stained hand without looking up. “She asks too many times.”
“See?” I say. “Excellent professional reputation.”
“Persistent is not the same as excellent.”
“You would know.”
His mouth moves at one corner.
Before I can leave, Teresa from the main house comes through the arch with a basket of damp kitchen cloths balanced against one hip. I have seen her moving between the kitchen and terrace all week, usually with the expression of a woman fixing three problems nobody else has noticed yet.
Flour streaks one forearm, and one wet sandal squeaks against the stone.
I lift the camera halfway, then stop. “Teresa?”
She looks at the lens, then at the basket. “The laundry?”
“The flour. And the wet footprint. You can say no.”
She laughs. “My face?”
“Not unless you want it.”
She turns her head dramatically away from me. “Then my famous elbow only.”
I take two frames while she shifts the basket and the cloths drip onto the stone. Matteo stands beside Stefano without saying anything. I can feel him watching me ask, wait, shoot, lower the camera, then show Teresa the screen when she reaches for it.
“I look hardworking,” she says in English, pleased.
“You are hardworking.”
She points at Matteo. “Tell him.”
“I know,” he says.
Teresa gives him a look, then continues toward the house.
I glance at Matteo. “You were saying something about persistence?”
“I was observing.”
“Dangerous hobby.”
“Apparently.”
I turn toward the lower path before he can count that as a win.
I make it three steps before Matteo is beside me.
“Are you following me?” I ask.
“This is my property.”
“That did not answer the question.”
“I am walking in the direction of my house.”
“Your house is uphill.”
He looks toward the path, then at me. “Eventually.”
A laugh gets out before I can help it.
The route curves between the lemon terraces and the old boundary wall.
I stop when the light catches a line of wet footprints left by someone carrying crates from the gardens.
One print is sharp at the heel and disappears at the toes.
The next is only a damp crescent. By the fourth, there is almost nothing left.
I lift the camera.
Matteo waits until I take the frame before he says, “Do you ask the person who made those?”
“To photograph footprints?”
“You asked Stefano about his hands.”
“Hands belong to a person.”
“Footprints do too.”
I glance at him. “Are you genuinely interested or trying to find a flaw in my ethics?”
“Both can be true.”
“Of course they can.”
“If I can identify the person, I ask. If it is private, I do not take it. Homes, faces, children, workers doing something that could embarrass them, I ask. It depends on the frame.”
“And if they do not know you are watching?”
“Observation is not automatically intrusion.”
“That sounds convenient for a photographer.”
“Says the man who remembered my abandoned coffee order.”
The amusement leaves his face. I catch it anyway.
“That was information you gave me.”
“I did not realize I was submitting it to an archive.”
“You were not.”
“You say that with the confidence of someone who absolutely has an archive.”
He glances at my camera. “You have contact sheets.”
Of course he noticed the contact sheets. I laugh.
“Those are photographs.”
“With notes.”
“Editing marks.”
“You circled a stool twice.”
I stop walking. “You remember the stool?”
“Your editing marks were memorable.”
“That is not the same as an archive.”
“You had symbols.”
“I regret inviting you for water.”
“No, you do not.”
I raise the camera before I can answer. His smile has gone loose and smug, like he has finally cornered me inside my own argument.
The shutter clicks once.
Matteo’s smile disappears.
The change is small.
His shoulders stay loose, his feet planted, but the ease is gone as completely as if he shut a door.
I lower the camera immediately.
His eyes stay on it.
“Claire.”
“I know.”
He looks at me then. “Do you?”
His voice is careful enough to make me pay attention.
I turn the camera around, find the frame, and hold the screen toward him.
He looks at the image for a second.
“Delete it.”
“Okay.”
I press the button, confirm deletion, and show him the empty playback screen.
That takes maybe four seconds.
Matteo is still looking at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“You did not argue.”
“You asked me to delete it.”
“Most photographers would at least ask why.”
“Then most photographers are exhausting.”
His gaze drops to the camera and returns to my face.
“You are not curious?”
“Of course I am curious.” I hook my thumb under the strap. “That doesn’t mean I get to keep it.”
He goes quiet.
When he still says nothing, I add, “Also, now I will hate the picture by dinner.”
A little of the tension leaves his mouth.
“You would hate the picture.”
“Personally. We would have a difficult separation.”
“You become attached quickly.”
“Only to excellent work.”
“Convenient.”
“I’m not arguing you into a picture. That is not romantic, Matteo. It is exhausting.”
Matteo’s eyebrows lift.
“What?” I ask.
“You make that sound obvious.”
“It is obvious.”
“Not to everyone.”
I nearly ask what he means. The way his face closed when I raised the camera stops me.
So I point the camera at the wet footprints instead.
“Good news,” I say. “They have no objections.”
He looks down at the stones. “You have not asked.”
“I am willing to risk the lawsuit.”
He laughs once, low and surprised.
I take the picture, then another of the crate shadows on the wall.
We make it several minutes without arguing. I do not know what to do with that. Matteo picks up a loose irrigation hose someone has left across the path and hooks it over a stone post without making a production of it. I photograph the wet mark it leaves behind after he moves it.
“That one is my fault,” he says.
“Your contribution to art.”
“I expect credit.”
“Disqualified.”
“From what?”
“You know what.”
His eyes narrow with amusement. “The list is not a competition.”
“I am so glad someone finally explained that to you.”
He starts to answer, then stops.
I grin. “That was almost self-awareness.”
“Do not overstate the evidence.”
A few terraces lower, the wall drops enough to open the water in front of us. The sun is hard on the sea now, too bright for anything useful. I sit on the warm stone and check the last series on the camera.
Matteo stands beside me for a moment, then leans against the wall rather than leaving.
“Show me one you kept,” he says.
I look up. “Of you?”
He considers that longer than necessary. “If there is one.”
I scroll back through the morning and find one.
I had been photographing the old crates when Matteo crossed behind Stefano earlier, before either of us started walking. He knew the camera was up. I remember asking if he minded being in the background. He said, It is your photograph, with the tone of a man granting temporary zoning rights.
In the frame, Stefano is laughing at something off to the side.
Matteo is behind him carrying two empty crates because apparently he cannot see work happening without making himself useful.
One crate has caught against his shirt. His head is bent, his mouth pulled into an irritated line, and a strip of lemon leaf is stuck to his sleeve.
He looks rich only if you already know he is.
Mostly he looks annoyed at a box.
I hold out the camera. “This one.”
Matteo takes it carefully, fingers around the edges instead of the controls.
He studies the image.
“I look ridiculous.”
“A little.”
“You kept this.”
“You said I could.”
“That was before I saw it.”
“You are free to revise your decision.”
His thumb rests against the side of the camera. “Do you like it?”
He wants to know if I like it. The question catches me.
I look at the frame again.
He is still holding the camera like it belongs to a museum, careful not to brush a button with his thumb.
“You know you can touch it,” I say.
“You have spent a week explaining boundaries.”
“That is my camera, not a sacred object.”
“It costs more than Sebastian’s first car.”
I blink. “How do you know what Sebastian’s first car cost?”
“Because he bought it from Luca and overpaid.”
“There is a story there.”
“Several. None improve with repetition.”
I smile. “You people have been friends too long.”
“Fifteen years.”
He says it plainly, but his hand loosens around the camera as if the number belongs somewhere familiar.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you forgot to look like Matteo Bellandi for about half a second.”
He turns his head toward me.
I could make a joke. I almost do.
Instead I say, “You were just helping with the crates. You were irritated by a leaf. Nobody was waiting for you to be impressive.”
His eyes stay on mine.
“That is what you photograph?”
“Sometimes.”
He gives the camera back.
“Keep it.”
I should say thank you, but nothing useful comes out.
For once, neither of us reaches for a joke. Matteo is close enough that I can see a tiny pale mark near his jaw I have never noticed before. His shirt sleeve is still creased from the crate. The stupid lemon leaf is gone.
I become aware of my own hands around the camera, the strap crossing my chest, one knee angled toward him where I sit on the wall.
Matteo’s gaze drops to my mouth.
This time he does not pretend it did not.
Neither do I.
He shifts closer by the smallest amount, enough that I stop breathing normally and immediately resent my lungs for becoming involved.
I tilt my face up.
His hand comes to the wall beside my thigh, not touching me.
For one strange second, the entire argument about observation and intrusion feels very far away.
A delivery van horn blasts from the path below us.
I jerk so hard my camera bumps my ribs.
Matteo closes his eyes.
The horn sounds again.
“Bellamare?” a man calls in Italian from somewhere around the bend.
Matteo opens his eyes and looks toward the sound with an expression I would pay money to photograph if I had any confidence he would let me keep it.
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Do not,” he says.
That does it.
I start laughing.
“This is not funny.”
“You look offended by logistics.”
“The driver is at the wrong gate.”
“Tragic.”
“Luca changed the delivery instructions.”
“Even more tragic.”
The horn goes a third time.
Matteo pushes away from the wall. “I have to deal with that.”
“Obviously.”
He takes two steps, then turns back.
His eyes flick to my mouth again.
That stops the laugh immediately.
“Claire.”
“Yes?”
For a second I think he is going to come back.
Instead he says, “Do not photograph the driver’s expression when I tell him Luca sent him to the wrong entrance.”
I grin. “No promises.”
“You just gave me an entire speech about consent.”
“Fine. I will ask.”
He shakes his head and walks downhill toward the van.
I stay on the wall longer than I need to, pretending to review the images on my camera while Matteo’s voice carries faintly up the path. The driver answers. A door slams. Someone laughs. Ordinary life resumes with embarrassing efficiency.
I look at the photograph Matteo told me to keep.
Then I look at the empty space where he was standing.
By the time I start back toward Casa Ginestra, I have to admit the stupid part.
If that van had arrived thirty seconds later, I would have kissed him.