hopes of meeting Romeo had been dashed.
Antonio made Keira feel very uncomfortable in his company, and not just because of the round, hairy belly that protruded over his waistband. His attitude was harsh, like a school teacher she could already tell she’d never be able to please.
The air was very hot, almost oppressively so, but that didn’t seem to slow him down. They hurried along, Antonio keeping a few paces ahead of Keira, who struggled to manage her cases. She was already becoming sticky with sweat.
“My back is bad,” he said, as way of an explanation for not helping her.
As they walked, Antonio spoke, his words coming out in a huge, fast stream, his voice like a barking dog. Keira thought of her dream Romeo. Antonio could not be further from that!
“Twenty-one days, huh?” he said, striding ahead so that Keira had to skip to keep up.
Already, she was dreading them.
He led her to a car. Keira had been expecting something nice, but instead was confronted with a small, old, rusty-looking vehicle.
“This is it?” she asked.
“There’s no room for the case in the back seats. Put it in the trunk,” Antonio ordered.
Keira popped the trunk and found that the car was filled with shopping bags. As she rammed her bag in beside Antonio’s groceries a waft of cheese stench emanated toward her. One of the bags fell open and some pecorino tumbled out. Keira put it back in, realizing with a mixture of surprise, curiosity, and disgust that all the grocery bags were full of pecorino cheese. Was that all the man ate? she wondered. Then she realized, additionally, that the smell was probably going to leak into her case and permeate all of her clothes. She was going to smell of cheese for the next three weeks!
She grimaced and shut the trunk. As she did so Antonio started the car’s engine, making a cloud of fumes sputter over her legs.
Furious, Keira climbed into the front seat beside him, discovering with horror that they were so close their knees were touching. She looked over at Antonio’s clammy, hairy hands clutching the steering wheel. The smell inside was a combination of cheese, sweat, and humid air.
Before she’d even had a chance to get her seatbelt on, Antonio gunned it. The car lurched forward and she gripped the sides of her seat as he drove, so tight her knuckles turned white. Antonio drove like a maniac.
“So tell me, New York,” Antonio said. “Bad place, huh? Lots of crime?”
Keira looked over at him, shocked. “No. I mean, not really. It has its problems, like all cities, but it’s wonderful.”
“Cold though, no?” Antonio pressed. To Keira he seemed to really be wanting to find the worst in her home city. “Like now it is cold. While we still bask in glorious sunshine.” He laughed wheezily, showing off crooked yellow teeth.
“Have you ever been?” Keira asked, a little offended by his comments.
“No no no,” Antonio replied, shaking his head as if the suggestion was ludicrous. “Never will I go to a godless city like that. Here we’re good Catholics.”
If Antonio had set out to rub Keira the wrong way he had certainly achieved his aim.
But if Antonio himself was a shock to the system, Naples was not what Keira was expecting either. The roads were very narrow, with terraced five-story apartment blocks towering up either side, with balconies made of rusting metal, clothes lines stretched between them covered in colorful linen that fluttered in the wind. There were next to no sidewalks, which meant people wandered into the road, often without looking, darting out from behind parked cars. Even the road signs and street lamps, Keira noted, were actually attached to the walls of the houses, since there wasn’t even enough space for a pole.
None of these obstacles made Antonio drive any slower, however. He just cursed loudly in Italian every time someone stepped into his path, swerving, sometimes honking his horn.
“Che cavolo!” he exclaimed loudly, gesticulating at an old woman who’d just stepped in front of him.
Despite not knowing exactly what Antonio was saying, Keira could tell it was some kind of expletive and felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment and shame for the old woman on the receiving end of his rage. But the woman just gestured rudely at Antonio. Clearly she was used to such occurrences.
Vespas whizzed past them. Keira noticed that the walls were covered with graffiti. There was so much that people had started drawing over the graffiti that was already there!
Keira lost count of the amount of pizzerias they passed. Her stomach grumbled. It had been hours since her bland airplane dinner.
They turned a corner and zipped past a stall set up at the side of the road selling fish. The smell made Keira gag and completely lose her appetite.
“Watch out!” Keira cried, as Antonio careened toward a filthy, mangy cat sitting in the middle of the road.
Luckily it ran out of the way just in time.
“Strays,” Antonio said, as if to explain why he hadn’t even attempted to slow down. “Pests. We’re infested with them.”
The cobbled streets made the car bump up and down. It was an uncomfortable journey to say the least.
“You’ll be able to see the mountain in a minute,” Antonio said. “Vesuvius.”
“Oh,” Keira replied, almost alarmed at what she perceived to be his first attempt to make small talk.
“There,” he said, suddenly, pointing to her left.
If the mountain had been visible it was only for a second, because Keira didn’t manage to see a thing.
“You saw it?” Antonio asked, rather aggressively. “Did you?”
“I must have missed it,” Keira mumbled in response. “We went by a little fast.”
“Fast?” Antonio scoffed. “Fast? I’m driving the pace of a snail thanks to this idiota in front of me!” He threw his arms toward the red car ahead of them, which they were practically touching bumpers with, then honked his horn over and over and swore again loudly.
He swung the car sharply down another side road. This one was filled with bags of garbage. The walls were covered in graffiti and many of the cars appeared abandoned, covered in dust and bird droppings. Here, several of the metal balconies above them were rusted and half falling from the walls. Many of the potted plants upon them were dead.
Antonio laughed suddenly and pointed at a huge billboard hanging over the entrance to what appeared to be a parking lot.
“A sexy lady, huh?” he said. “Our Italian women are goddesses.”
Keira squirmed even more. “Oh yes, they’re very beautiful,” she said.
“You looking at the trash?” Antonio said in his barking voice.
Keira guiltily turned her eyes away from the mountains of bags.
“It’s a big problem,” Antonio added. “Big problem. Here, they call it the Triangle of Death. All the waste causes cancer, birth defects, that sort of thing.”
Keira
