25. Claire
CLAIRE
I delete a photograph because the spoon is ugly.
Not badly lit. Not out of focus. Not accidentally reflecting my face in a way that makes me look haunted.
Ugly.
It is lying beside a chipped white coffee cup in the breakfast room downstairs, and the handle points toward the wrong corner of the frame. I know this is not a reason to delete a photograph.
I delete it anyway.
The room I rented in Ravello has a narrow desk, one chair, and exactly two outlets, one of which is currently losing a fight with three chargers and a travel adapter.
My camera bag is open on the floor. Two memory-card cases sit beside my shoe.
Yesterday’s shirt is hanging from the back of the chair because the wardrobe smells faintly like cedar and somebody else’s perfume.
I have been here two nights.
I have slept approximately one.
My laptop shows one hundred and eighty-three images from yesterday morning.
None of them are Matteo.
That should help.
It does not.
I move to the next frame.
A delivery man carrying bread through an alley.
Next.
A woman opening green shutters above the square.
Next.
A boy holding a plastic bag of peaches against his chest while his mother argues with someone out of frame.
The peach stops me.
I hate fruit now.
This seems unfair to fruit.
I flag the image anyway.
Work is excellent. It does not ask whether a sunrise was planned for me because somebody wanted to prove a point.
It also does not care that the answer might be both yes and more complicated than yes.
I lean back.
My phone is face down beside the laptop.
It has been face down for eleven minutes.
That is a personal record.
I pick it up.
No new messages.
Of course there are no new messages.
I asked him not to come after me.
Matteo does exactly what I ask.
Apparently this is also terrible.
I put the phone down harder than necessary and open another folder.
The first photograph is a pair of hands rolling pasta.
Useful hands.
My throat tightens before I can stop it.
“No,” I say to the screen.
The woman in the photograph does not care.
I zoom in on the flour caught in the lines of her fingers and make myself work.
At seven nineteen, my phone lights.
My hand moves before I have decided anything.
Matteo.
There is one message.
I stare at his name until the screen starts to dim.
Then I open it.
I heard you. I will not contact you again unless you ask me to. If there is a practical issue you explicitly want me to handle, tell me. Otherwise I will leave you alone.
That is all.
There is no good morning.
No explanation either.
He has not attached an apology I would have to receive.
There is not even a question waiting for an answer.
I read it three times.
On the fourth, I become furious.
It is not the message itself.
It is that he understood.
I wanted space. He is giving it to me so precisely I could draw a line around it.
I turn off the screen.
Thirty seconds later, I unlock it again.
I type, Thank you.
I delete it.
I type, Okay.
Delete.
I type nothing.
That survives.
The phone goes facedown again.
I stand and walk to the window because apparently I have become somebody who needs scenery after reading twelve words from a man.
The square below is waking up. A delivery scooter blocks half a lane. Two old men are arguing beside a stack of bottled water. A woman in a blue apron drags a metal chair three inches to the left, looks at it, and drags it back.
That helps more than the view.
I pick up the camera.
Then I put it down.
I am not photographing from the window like a woman in a breakup montage.
Also the glass is dirty.
Mostly the glass.
At eight ten, Tessa calls.
I answer because if I do not, she will call again and then pretend it was professional urgency.
“Please tell me you ate.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“That was not an answer.”
“I had coffee.”
“Claire.”
“And half a roll.”
“Food did not become optional because you are emotionally inconvenient.”
“That sentence is offensive.”
“You are welcome.”
I sit on the bed.
The mattress makes a noise like it has an opinion.
Tessa says, “How are the Ravello selects?”
“Mixed.”
“Useful mixed or bad mixed?”
“Useful. The bakery sequence is good.”
“And the linen workshop?”
“Still good.”
“That sounded resentful.”
“I resent excellence under pressure.”
“Normal.”
I hear typing.
“Send me twenty by noon.”
“You said fifteen yesterday.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You cannot do that.”
“I absolutely can.”
I glance at the laptop.
“Eighteen.”
“Twenty.”
“Nineteen.”
“Done.”
There is a pause.
Tessa does not ask about Matteo.
I almost wish she would.
Almost.
Instead she says, “Did you find the charger?”
“Yes.”
“The one you said was missing?”
I look at the tangle beside the desk.
“It was in the side pocket.”
“The side pocket you checked?”
“I checked a different side pocket.”
“How many side pockets does that bag have?”
“Too many.”
“Buy a worse bag.”
“I will consider it.”
“You won’t.”
“No.”
She types again.
“Japan producer wants your equipment list today.”
“I know.”
“And the Osaka hotel changed the transfer instructions.”
“Of course it did.”
“I forwarded them.”
I open my email.
There it is.
The hotel is now asking guests to use the east entrance after eight because of street work.
I stare at the words east entrance.
Matteo would already know whether the larger case fits through whatever door they are talking about.
The thought arrives so naturally I nearly reach for my phone.
I stop with my hand halfway there.
Tessa says, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That sounded like something.”
“The hotel changed an entrance.”
“You can survive.”
“I know.”
“I was not being philosophical.”
“Thank God.”
“Do you want me to ask the producer about luggage access?”
“No. I’ll ask.”
“Good.”
I open a reply, type the question myself, and wait.
That is all it takes.
Bellamare stays out of it.
No assistant calls on my behalf.
Matteo does not have to make the problem smaller for me.
Just me asking whether a rolling equipment case clears the east entrance.
I send it.
The relief is tiny and embarrassing.
Tessa says, “You still there?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Nineteen selects by noon.”
“Cruel.”
“Employed.”
“Worse.”
She goes quiet.
Then, carefully, “Do you want to talk about him?”
I look at Matteo’s message again.
“No.”
“Okay.”
That easy.
No disappointed pause.
No best-friend trapdoor disguised as concern.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“Nothing.”
“Very healthy conversation.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Eat the other half of the roll.”
“It is downstairs.”
“Walk.”
“You are unbearable.”
“Yes.”
She hangs up first.
I stay on the bed for another minute.
Then I go downstairs and buy another roll because the first one is long gone and I refuse to let Tessa be right in spirit.
By ten thirty, I have narrowed one hundred and eighty-three images to thirty-seven.
By eleven fifteen, I have made them worse.
By eleven forty-two, I open the Bellamare folder.
I do not mean to.
That is a lie.
I know exactly where the folder is.
RETURN / SUMMER / BELLAMARE.
Inside are weeks of things I loved before I knew I was collecting evidence for anything.
Luca’s hand carrying bread behind the crate.
Nico reaching for a chair.
Sebastian asleep with sunglasses still on.
Adrian reading at the far end of the terrace while everyone else argues about cards.
A wet towel over a stone wall.
Three coffee cups after lunch.
Matteo laughing with Luca and Nico.
I stop there.
The photograph fills the screen.
His head is tipped back slightly. Luca is saying something. Nico looks annoyed in the particular way that means he is entertained and does not want to admit it.
Matteo is not looking at me.
Sometimes.
I hear my own voice from the day I showed it to him.
Is that how you see me?
Sometimes.
That moment is in his note too.
Photo at the table. She kept Luca and Nico in the frame.
For two days, I have been trying to decide whether knowing he wrote that down changes the photograph.
It does not.
The photograph is still good.
His face is still open in a way I had not seen before Bellamare.
I remember the expression he made when I showed him.
And I remember wanting to kiss him before either of us spoke again.
The memory does not become fake because it had a line beneath it in his phone.
It also does not become harmless.
Both things sit there.
I hate both things.
I had stopped bracing around him. That may be the part I am most embarrassed by.
I close the photograph.
Then open it again.
This time I do not ask what it proves.
I look at the light.
The table edge.
Luca’s wrist entering from the left.
Nico’s mouth caught one second before a complaint.
Matteo.
I flag it.
I am not keeping it for us.
I am not rejecting it because of us either.
It belongs in the work.
That is the only answer I can trust this morning.
At twelve twelve, I send Tessa nineteen selects.
She replies with: 14 is wrong.
I look at fourteen.
A doorway.
She is right.
I hate her.
I send back: blocked.
She sends a heart.
I do not respond.
At two, I take my camera and leave the hotel.
The heat sits over the stone streets. Tourists have collected around the obvious views, so I go the other direction.
Down a side road.
Past a grocery where a man is stacking watermelons.
Past a laundry line that somebody has hung too low across a courtyard.
Past a small workshop where an old woman is sanding the leg of a chair while a younger man sweeps sawdust toward the door.
I stop.
Ask permission.
She says yes without looking at me.
For twenty minutes, I work.
Hands.
Wood dust.
The pale stripe where the varnish has been removed.
The younger man brings her water without asking. She drinks half, puts the glass down, and keeps sanding.
I take the photograph.
My first thought is Matteo would notice the water before the chair.
I lower the camera.
Matteo is not beside me to say the angle is wrong.
There is no dry correction waiting for me to mock.
The water bottle stays buried in my bag until I remember it myself.
I miss him so suddenly I have to pretend I am checking settings.
That makes me angry too.
I asked for this.
The quiet.
The distance.
The right to have one entire day without Matteo Bellandi solving anything for me.
I want the distance. I just hate what comes with it.
I also want to send him the photograph of the woman sanding the chair because he would have an opinion about the stool in the background and the badly coiled extension cord near her foot.
My phone is in my bag.
I do not take it out.
The old woman looks at me.
“Finished?”
“One more.”
She sighs like I have personally extended her workday.
I take three.
She is right to be irritated.
By five, I am back in the room with dust on my sandals and sweat under my shirt.
I make backups.
Two cards.
Laptop.
Portable drive.
The battery Matteo charged three nights before I left Bellamare is at forty-one percent.
I stare at it.
Then plug it in myself.
This is ridiculous.
He did not invent electricity.
I shower.
I eat pasta downstairs because I am too tired to argue with myself about whether bread counts as dinner.
At nine thirteen, I get into bed.
At nine nineteen, I get out because I forgot to send the equipment list.
At nine twenty-seven, I get back in.
At nine thirty-two, I pick up my phone.
Matteo’s message is still the last thing there.
He has kept his word for fourteen hours.
I cannot decide whether that makes me feel safer or lonelier.
Probably both.
I open the camera roll.
The chair woman is near the top.
I almost send it.
My thumb hovers over the share icon.
Then I lock the screen.
I nearly send it anyway.
I don’t.
“Great,” I tell the dark room, because apparently arguing with myself is how tonight is going.
The mattress complains when I turn over.
At five forty-eight the next morning, I wake before the alarm.
For several seconds I do not know why.
Then I see the pale edge of light at the curtain.
At Bellamare, I would already know if Matteo was awake.
I would know where the coffee was without looking.
And I would know which chair would stay empty until I took it.
I sit up.
My camera is on the desk.
The street outside is still quiet.
I put on yesterday’s trousers, find a clean shirt, and carry the camera downstairs.
No message.
I do not send one.
I walk until the houses thin and the road opens toward the coast.
There is a low wall above a bend where I can see a small cluster of roofs, a church tower, and the first light reaching the water.
It is not Bellamare.
It is not ours.
For the next ten minutes, it is mine.
I lift the camera.
A man below opens a metal shutter.
A woman sets two chairs outside a doorway.
Farther down, somebody places a coffee cup on a table and leaves the second chair empty.
I take the picture before I can decide whether I hate it.
Then another.
Then one when a dog wanders into the frame and ruins the clean line of the wall.
That one is better.
I keep walking.
Return was supposed to be about why people go back to places when they have other options.
For weeks, I thought I was finding an answer.
This morning I do not have one.
I look down at the photograph with the two chairs.
I still want to go back. I still do not know what I would trust if I did.
I raise the camera as the light changes and keep working.