Sex and Vanity

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Lucie fixed her eyes out on the view, purposely not looking at him. She knew there were bloodstains on his shirt, and she couldn’t bear to see them. “How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. After leaving the piazzetta, I just felt like coming here.”

Lucie could feel her jaw tighten. Why was he always showing up where she least wanted him to be? She got up from the bench and leaned against the green iron fence that faced the sea, hoping he would get the message.

George inhaled, as if about to say something.

“Please…don’t speak! Please don’t tell me what happened to that man. I don’t want to know,” Lucie blurted in a choked voice.

George walked up to the fence and stood near her. Just beyond the fence, the arch towered over them, rising so unexpectedly and improbably out of the cliff it looked like it could have been placed there by aliens. Through the arch was a perfect view of the sea hundreds of feet below, the water glowing in lustrous shades of aquamarine.

They took in the otherworldly view in silence, and after a while, George spoke. “The first time I came here, when I was about twelve, I was so blown away by the sight of this arch that I thought it had to be a vortex. Like maybe some sort of gateway to a parallel universe. I wanted to leap through the arch and be transported somewhere else in time.”

“I wouldn’t mind being somewhere else in time right about now,” Lucie said numbly.

“Follow me.” George moved suddenly, and Lucie thought for a second that he was actually going to hop over the fence. Instead, he began heading toward the trail that led down the mountainside. She debated whether she wanted to follow him and then thought, What the hell.

Lucie walked a few paces behind George as they headed along a steep paved trail and then down a long set of steps that wound along the thickly forested part of the island.

“Pablo Neruda would hike this trail every day when he lived on the island,” George said.

Lucie said nothing, but she was surprised by this bit of trivia coming from George. He didn’t seem like the type to read poetry. At the bottom of the steps, they rounded a corner and she found herself standing at the mouth of a cavern. She realized with an unexpected jolt that they were at the Grotta di Matermania. It was one of the places she had put on her must-see list—a natural cavern that was one of the most ancient archaeological treasures of the island.*2

“You wanted to go somewhere back in time, so here we are,” George said.

Lucie wandered into the cavern, where walls and stairways had been carved out of the limestone to create different levels and spaces within. This was once a nymphaeum for the ancient Romans, she thought, placing her hand against the cavern walls, strangely warm to the touch, and wondering w

hat mystical rituals these ruins must have witnessed through the ages. She could feel a strange energy pulsating throughout the cave, the same energy she felt when she had visited other ancient sites like Stonehenge and the Mayan temples at Tulum.

At the back of the cavern rose a natural formation that resembled an altar, no doubt the focal point of ceremonies when the cavern was itself a temple. Lucie climbed up to stand in front of the altar and closed her eyes. She wasn’t religious by any means—her mother’s family was Buddhist and her father’s was nominally Episcopalian—but something compelled her to say a silent prayer for the man in the piazzetta.

When she opened her eyes, George was nowhere in sight. She wandered out of the cavern, but he wasn’t there either. Should she head back up the steps, or keep going down the trail? She decided to explore a little further, feeling a bit annoyed with herself as she wandered along a path that seemed to be taking her farther and farther down the hill. Where would this lead to? Why in the world was she even looking for George? Hadn’t she told him she wanted to be alone? There was something about George—something in the way he spoke, his mannerisms, and his whole vibe—that she found so unsettling, and yet here she was thinking about him again.

It dawned on her that she had never really known an Asian guy before. Asian women, like her mother, Isabel, and so many of her classmates, had naturally always been part of her life, and at Brearley there had even been three other half-Asian girls in her year. But somehow she had lived her whole life hardly ever interacting with an Asian boy. Freddie didn’t count at all—in striking contrast to her, he took after their father in appearance and behaved like the quintessential WASP, right down to his smelly old Sperrys. Strangers meeting them never thought they were related, and someone even mistook Freddie for her boyfriend once. She had met some of her male Chinese cousins from Seattle and Hong Kong when she was younger, but they barely made an impression. Of course, it didn’t help that she had gone to an all-girls school like Brearley and lived her whole life on the Upper East Side. Sure, there were a few Asians here and there at the private schools around her neighborhood, but most of the Asian boys in the city went to Stuyvesant,*3 or so she heard. Plus, the guys she had known were all Asian Americans, and George was nothing like them. He was a Chinese boy from Hong Kong who had spent a few years in Australia. So what exactly did that make him? He didn’t seem Australian, despite his quasi-Aussie accent. He was much more Chinese in his ways. He sounded strange, he moved strange, he dressed strange. He probably smelled strange too.

Just when she decided to turn around and retrace her steps to the Arco Naturale, Lucie suddenly caught sight of something through the trees. Down the hill was the most spectacular house perched on top of a little peninsula that jutted out into the sea. The red house was rectangular in shape, but its entire back facade comprised reverse pyramidal steps leading from the ground all the way up to the roof, which was a huge flat patio. It was the coolest house Lucie had ever laid eyes on, and, feeling compelled to get a closer look, she kept on the pathway until she came to a set of steps leading to the house. There was no gate, but painted on the top step was the word PRIVATO.

“Private property,” a voice behind her said, startling her. She turned to see George standing on the pathway just above her.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that! Where did you go?”

“I thought you needed some alone time, so I went exploring a bit further.”

“This house is quite incredible.”

“It’s Casa Malaparte, one of the greatest houses ever built. Wanna take a closer look?”

“You just said it was private property.”

“I don’t think there’s any harm walking a bit farther to get a better look.” George began walking down the steps, and Lucie followed a bit skeptically. When they reached the house, a man suddenly popped his head out a window and called down to them.

“?’Sera, Giorgio! Come va?”

“Va bene, Niccolò. Possiamo dare un’occhiata?” George replied.

“Certo!”