The One In My Heart

It took me a moment to realize I’d forgotten to think of him as my fake boyfriend.

He told me he’d flown in the previous day and spent the night in Naples. He’d also borrowed a car from a friend, which happened to be an adorkable little silver BMW i3.

“You do enjoy an electric vehicle,” I said as he opened the door for me.

“I’m very fond of them, but I like my bicycles even more.”

“I expected as much from a West Coast hippie.”

He laughed. “It really is great to see you, Evangeline.”

And just like that, more butterflies in my stomach than at a botanical garden in spring. I switched the topic to his work, and he in turn asked about the Munich conference.

The landscape was dominated by the great green cone of Mount Vesuvius. And just when I thought we had driven past it, the road turned west along the coast of the Sorrentine Peninsula, and the massive volcano came back into view again across the blue waters of the Gulf of Naples.

The foothills of Monti Lattari rose sharply to our south. The road was etched where the mountain met the sea, a narrow two-lane highway that drivers mistook for a stretch of the Formula One race. Then the hills dropped away briefly. The road turned south and cut across the peninsula toward the Amalfi Coast.

“Have you been here before?” I asked Bennett, as he seemed to take Italian roads—and drivers—completely in stride.

“Long ago. Somebody in the extended family has a house on Lake Como. We used to spend summers there—and come south once in a while for sightseeing.”

“Were those summers idyllic or idyllically awful?”

“Lake Como is unbelievably gorgeous and I used to be unbelievably bored. I was sulky and ungrateful and in general drove my dad crazy.”

He took the car up a steep incline, driving with a quiet competence that made me want to have his hands on me, touching me everywhere. I bit the inside of my cheek and looked out the window.

We’d gained elevation. The road clung to the side of hills, twisting and winding like lines on a topographic map. Vapors billowed across small valleys—the weather had turned foggy. Ocher roofs peeked out occasionally, and here and there the ruins of an ancient fortification high up the slopes.

“Speaking of driving my dad crazy,” Bennett said after the i3 took its first hairpin turn, “I should let you know I’m expecting trouble on that front.”

His tone, more than his words, made me glance at him. “What kind of trouble?”

“My ex passed away last October. There’s going to be an exhibit of her work fairly soon, and chances are it’ll include pictures she took of me—naked pictures.”

I should have been more concerned by the probability of naked pictures of him coming to light, but it was the ex’s death that caught my attention—October was so recent. “Did you attend her funeral?”

“I was on the West Coast for a few days.”

I couldn’t detect any particular inflection to his voice. All the same, my stomach dropped. Did he still love her? “You gave her eulogy?”

“No, I didn’t have any special role. Her brother gave one eulogy, her longtime camerawoman the other.”

“She never married?”

“She did at one point, after we broke up. But it lasted only a couple of years.”

Which was too bad—a husband acting as the executor of her estate might be more reluctant to exhibit naked pictures she’d taken of another man.

The road veered around the edge of a hill and dropped down—we had crossed the peninsula and were now on the Amalfi Coast. The descent twisted and pivoted; a thick fog nuzzled the sheer cliffs.

“So when do you expect the other shoe to drop?” I asked.

“Weekend after next.”

“What? Is there a nudity clause in our contract that says I can back out if and when naked pictures of you surface?”

He snorted. “Sorry, sweetheart. You’re mine for the next four and a half months.”

I swallowed—I’d rarely heard scarier words. But was I afraid those four and a half months would be too long—or too short?

“You know a lot about me,” he said. “Is there anything I need to know about you, so I don’t sound ignorant in front of my parents? Any significant past relationships?”

“No.” And I didn’t know a lot about him. Not enough, in any case.

“A straight-up no?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never dated anyone for longer than three months.”

“Why not?”

I exhaled. One would think my allergy to anyone really getting to know me would be the reason that I couldn’t stay in a relationship, but actually it had been mostly preempted by another, equally significant cause.

The Vermont farmer.