The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme 13)

The athletic young man--built like a running back--hitched his heavy backpack higher on his shoulder and turned the corner that would take him to his apartment on Corso Umberto I. His head hurt slightly--a bit too much Vermentino and (Heaven help him!) cheap grappa at his early supper a half hour ago.

But he'd earned it, finishing his class assignments early in the afternoon and then wandering the streets, practicing his Italian. Slowly, he was learning the language, which had at first seemed overwhelming, largely because of the concept of gender. Carpets were boys, tables were girls.

And accents! Just the other day he'd raised eyebrows and earned laughs when, at a restaurant, he'd ordered penises with tomato sauce; the word for male genitalia was dangerously close to penne, the pasta (and to the word for bread too).

Little by little, though, he was learning the language, learning the culture.

Poco a poco...

Feeling good, yes.

Though he would have to rein in the late-night parties. Too much drinking. Too many women. Well, no, that was an oxymoron; one could not have too many women. But one could have too many possessive and temperamental and needy women.

The kind that he, naturally, ended up bedding all too often.

Naples was far safer than parts of his hometown of St. Louis but instinct told him he probably shouldn't sleep over in strangers' apartments quite so much, waking to the girl, bleary-eyed, staring at him uncertainly, muttering things. Then asking him to leave.

Just control it, he told himself.

Thinking specifically of Valentina, a few weeks ago.

What was her last name?

Yes, Morelli. Valentina Morelli. Ah, such beautiful, sexy brown eyes...which had turned far less beautiful and far more chilling when he'd balked at what he'd apparently suggested as they lay in bed. It seemed he'd told her--thank you, Mr. Vino--that she could come to the United States with him, and they could see San Diego together. Or San Jose. Or somewhere.

She'd become a raging she-wolf and flung a bottle (the expensive Super-Tuscan, but empty, thank God) into his bathroom mirror, shattering both.

She'd muttered words to him in Italian. It seemed like a curse.

So. Just be more careful.

"Spend the year in Europe, kiddo," his father had told him, upon his departure from Lambert Field. "Enjoy, graduate at the bottom of your class. Experience life!" The tall man--an older version of Garry, with silver in his blond hair--had then lowered his voice: "But. You do a single milligram of coke or pot and you're on your own. You end up in a Naples jail, all you'll get from us is postcards, and probably not even that."

And Garry could truthfully tell his father that he'd never tried any coke and he'd never tried any pot.

There was plenty else to amuse him.

Like Valentina. (San Diego? Really? He'd used that as a come-on line?) Or Ariella. Or Toni.

Then he thought of Frieda.

The Dutch girl he'd met at Natalia's party on Monday. Yes, picturing them being on the roof, her beautiful hair dipping onto his shoulder, her firm breast against his arm, her damp lips against his.

"You are, I am saying, a pretty boy, isn't it? You are the football player?"

"Your football or mine?"

Which broke her up.

"Foot...ball..." Her mouth on his again. Above them spanned the Neapolitan evening, milky with million stars. He and this beautiful Dutch girl, blond and tasting of mint, alone in a deserted alcove of the roof.

Her eyelids closing...

And Garry looking down at her, thinking: Sorry, sorry, sorry...It's out of my hands. I can't control it.

Now he shuddered and closed his eyes and didn't want to think about Frieda again.

Garry's mood grew dark, and he decided that, hell, he'd open up a new grappa when he got home.