The Singer's Gun Read Free

waters. Three cafés competed on a large open piazza, and from the hillside above the harbor their umbrellas were sharp white circles and squares in the sunlight. Sophie and Anton ate dinner in the hotel restaurant and went to bed early, and in the morning they went down to the piazza and sat for a while reading the paper and drinking coffee together.
    “You know,” Anton said, as casually as possible, “I was thinking about maybe staying on a while.”
    She looked up from her café latte.
    “Our plane tickets are for Thursday,” she said. “We have to go back to Rome tomorrow.”
    “I was thinking if I stayed here for a little bit,” trying not to emphasize the I too cruelly, failing, “I could get some traction on my book. You know, really write for a while.”
    “You’re writing a book?”
    “It’s a new kind of travel book. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it. I just can’t get going with it at home,” he said, “but the atmosphere here . . .”
    “A new kind of travel book,” she repeated.
    “‘We stand in need of something stronger now,’” he said. He was quoting a book review he’d read in the New York Times a while back, but he surmised from her baffled stare that she hadn’t read it. He pressed on regardless: “‘A travel book that you can read while making your way through this new, alarming world.’”
    “That’s what you’re writing?”
    “Well, I haven’t started yet. But here, you know, with no distractions . . .”
    “Well, if you can’t write it in New York City, Anton, you won’t be able to write it here either.”
    “Bukowski,” he said. “I like that.”
    “What?”
    “Isn’t that what he said? Something about writing in the apocalypse with a cat clawing up your back? Anyway, I just think—”
    “No, he said if you’re going to create, you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your back while the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, flood, and fire.”
    “Oh,” he said.
    She regarded him silently.
    “As I was saying. I just thought . . . I just think it might be nice,” he said, “after all we’ve been through, you know, it’s been so intense with the wedding and everything, all the cancellations, I thought maybe we should be apart for a while. I mean, when I say a while, not a long while, just maybe a couple weeks. Sophie, please don’t cry.”
    “I’m not crying.”
    “You probably hate me,” he said. “Suggesting this on our honeymoon of all times.”
    “No,” she said. She was digging in her purse.
    “It’s okay, I’ll pay for your latte. Are you all right? Tell me honestly.”
    “Fine,” she said absently, without looking up. Her handbag yielded a ferry schedule. She examined it for a moment, glanced at the antique gold wristwatch his parents had given her as an engagement gift, stood up from the table and started out of the piazza without looking at him. By the time he found a ten-euro bill in his wallet she was out of sight. He left the money on the table and ran after her, lunged through the door of the hotel and then realized at the bottom of the staircase that she hadn’t gone in. When he came back out into the sunlight, blinking, she was already halfway up the road that led out of the village. He caught up with her as she was getting into a taxi.
    “Sophie, what are you doing?” He thought he’d never seen her so calm before and wondered if she somehow thrived on catastrophe.
    She said something in Italian to the taxi driver, who nodded and started his engine. Somewhat at a loss, Anton climbed in beside her and closed the door.
    “Sophie, come on, this is unnecessary. Your luggage. Your passport.”
    “I carry my passport in my handbag,” she said, “and you can dispose of my luggage as you see fit.”
    Sophie had nothing to say the rest of the way to the ferry terminal. He was on the shoreline side of the minivan; he stared out the window at the jumbled chaos of hotels and villas and the sea beyond,