“May I join you?” she asked in English.
“Yes. Is my honor,” Pasquale said. “You feel good, no?”
“Better, thank you. I just needed sleep. May I?” She held out her hand and Pasquale wasn’t sure at first what she meant. Finally, he fumbled in his trousers for his cigarette box. He opened it and she took out a smoke. Pasquale thanked his hands for their steady obedience as he struck a match and held it out.
“Thank you for speaking English,” she said. “My Italian is dreadful.” She leaned against the railing, took a long drag and let the smoke out in a sigh. “Whooooo. I needed that,” she said. She considered the cigarette in her hand. “Strong.”
“They are Spanish,” Pasquale said, and then there was nothing else to say. “I must ask: you choose come here, yes, to Porto Vergogna?” he asked finally. “Not to Portovenere or Portofino?”
“No, this is the place,” she said. “I’m meeting someone here. It was his idea. He’ll be here tomorrow, hopefully. I understand this town is quiet and . . . discreet?”
Pasquale nodded, said, “Oh, yes,” and made a note to try to find the word dus-kreet in his father’s English-Italian dictionary. He hoped it meant romantic.
“Oh. I found this in my room. In the bureau.” She handed Pasquale the neat stack of paper she’d carried down: The Smile of Heaven. It was the first chapter of a novel by the only other American guest who had ever come to the hotel before, the writer Alvis Bender, who every year lugged in his little typewriter and a stack of blank carbon paper for two weeks of drinking and occasional writing. He’d left a carbon of the first chapter for Pasquale and his father to puzzle over.
“Is the pages of a book,” Pasquale said, “by an American, yes? . . . A writer. He come to the hotel. Every year.”
“Do you think he would mind? I didn’t bring anything to read and it looks like all the books you have here are in Italian.”
“Is okay, I think, yes.”
She took the pages, leafed through them, and set them on the railing. For the next few minutes they stood quietly, staring out at the lanterns, whose reflections bobbed together on the sea’s surface like two sets of strung lights.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Mmm,” Pasquale said, but then he remembered Gualfredo saying the woman was not supposed to be here. “Please,” he said, recalling an old phrase book: “I inquire your accommodation?” When she said nothing, he added: “You have satisfaction, yes?”
“I have . . . I’m sorry . . . what?”
He licked his lips to give the phrase another try. “I am try to say—”
She rescued him. “Oh. Satisfaction,” she said. “Accommodations. Yes. It’s all very nice, Mr. Tursi.”
“Please . . . I am, for you, Pasquale.”
She smiled. “Okay. Pasquale. And for you I am Dee.”
“Dee,” Pasquale said, nodding and smiling. It felt forbidden and dizzying just to say her name back to her, and the word escaped from his mouth again. “Dee.” And then he knew he had to think of something else to say or he might just stand there all night saying Dee over and over. “Your room is close from a toilet, yes, Dee?”
“Very convenient,” she said. “Thank you, Pasquale.”
“How long will you stay?”
“I . . . I don’t know. My friend has some things to finish. He’ll arrive hopefully tomorrow, and then we’ll decide. Do you need the room for someone else?”
And even though Alvis Bender should be arriving soon, too, Pasquale said, quickly, “Oh, no. Is no one else. All for you.”
It was quiet. Cool. The water clucked.
“What exactly are they doing out there?” she asked, pointing with her cigarette at the lights dancing on the water. Beyond the breakwater, the fishermen dangled the lanterns over the sides of their skiffs, fooling the fish into feeding at the fake dawn, and then swung their nets through the water at the thrashing school.
“They are fishing,” Pasquale said.
“They fish at night?”
“Sometimes at night. But more in the day.” Pasquale made the mistake of staring into those expansive eyes. He’d never seen a face like this, a face that looked so different from every angle, long and equine from the side, open and delicate from the front. He wondered if this was why she was a film actress, this ability to have more than one face. He realized he was staring and had to clear his throat and turn away.