Chapter 14 - Torre del Lago

The wind was blowing straight in from the sea, letting rough waters make their way into the river estuary through the opening in the brakewater. The boat bounced up and down, spraying me with the cool white foam flying off the tops of the waves as they were slashed by the bow, and with each passing swell the electric hollow rollercoaster feeling in the pit of my stomach was switched on and off. Ahead of us, the sea turned into a brilliant turquoise as if underneath the water the seabed itself was glowing with light, and then farther along suddenly darkened into a deep fathomless blue that I´d always found unsettling. Even now my heart beat a little faster with the thought of us gliding recklessly hundreds of yards above the invisible, dark sea bottom, with only an insubstantial and treacherous liquid sustaining us from the deathly, mysterious depths. To shake off these thoughts I scampered back to Ivan, shedding my disguise of rags and ´70s sunglasses and trying not to fall overboard.

“Do we have enough gas to get to Torre del Lago?” I asked, dropping down on the seat next to him.

He made some quick mental calculations, and nodded. “Not enough to get back, though. Why?”

“I´m meeting Angelo there tomorrow at midnight.”

We had cleared the wavebreaker and he steered the boat to the north, but a frown was deepening between his eyebrows.

“What is it?” I asked, even if I already knew what was bringing him down.

“Is that where you´re planning to dump me?”

Overcome by the feeling in his voice, I stood up and hugged him tightly from behind.

“I´m not going to dump you,” I answered, my voice sufficiently convincing now that he couldn´t see my expression. “We´ll decide together what´s the best thing to do.”

I felt him relax in my arms. “We better.”

I should have gone into the cabin to put away the groceries before the choppy sea ground them into pulp, and to hook up the TV, but these were going to be the last two days I´d ever see Ivan. I remained standing behind him, kissing his smooth neck and my hands resting on the narrow muscular waist, while my skipper manouvered the boat ever farther from the shoreline.

“Why Torre del Lago?”

“Angelo took me there last summer,” I explained. “There´s a gay beach, a few gay clubs, and a gay cruising area in the pinewoods behind the beach. That´s where I´ll – we´ll – meet him because it´s dark and safe.”

“Gay pinewoods? At night? That´s safe?” Ivan seemed alarmed with all three concepts, each more worrying than the previous one.

“Well,” I hesitated, “perhaps it´s better if I go there alone.”

“No.” He shook off my hands. “I´m in trouble already, have been since yesterday, and now I´ve practically stolen this boat for you. So what difference does it make if I stay with you a little longer? Why do you keep selling me short?”

“Because every minute you spend with me you´re getting deeper into that trouble. It´s just not right.”

“I´ll be the judge of that. I´m not a little kid, you know? I can decide for myself.”

“Can you, I mean legally? Are you really eighteen like you said?”

He didn´t answer.

“Ivan…” I said, laying my hands on his shoulders, half expecting him to shake them off this time as well. My erection was pushing painfully against the leg of my pants, and as the boat swayed he could feel it press against his back. “I don´t think the Italian law is as strict as American, but when they catch me I´ll probably get the local equivalent of death penalty for what I´ve done to you.”

“But you´ve done nothing wrong!”

“You didn’t think so the night we first met.” I slipped my hand under his t-shirt, my fingertips tracing the curves of his taut abdominals.

“No one will ever know about that.”

“Let´s see what they do know. I´ll check if the TV works.”

The abbreviated early morning news were on, and as expected we were the main headline. Ivan couldn´t hear the commentary to where he was standing, and I had to relay it to him over the wind and the low groan of the motor. Through the cabin door, I could only see his legs and the lump of his groin, and the smooth hard curve of the muscles of his belly when the wind occasionally picked up the waist of his t-shirt. We´d have to find a place to anchor the boat soon.

“The call was anonymous,” I called out to him, relieved that Luca had at least had the common sense of not to implicate himself and Angelo. “They say I´d left the house only moments before their arrival, and – wait – happened to catch you riding your scooter alone and abducted you. And you´re just barely seventeen.”

Unfazed by the revelation, Ivan called back, “Why not steal just the scooter? Why me, too?”

“Wait – they´re saying that you´re exceptionally attractive – here´s the photo, they´re right – and I´m a sick murderous pervert, and there should be death penalty in Italy for certain crimes.”

Despite my dismissive version of the newscast I couldn´t help a rush of the old familiar panic, but smiled nevertheless when I heard the urgency in Ivan´s voice.

“Which photo?” he called. “Was it good?”

“Yes, very good,” I reassured him. Brutta figura was the worst thing imaginable to an Italian. “Here´s more of them, you´ll soon be as famous as I am.”

His family hadn´t provided only the best photos in the family album, there was a statement as well. “They´re asking me to let you go, and not to harm you…”

“Are they on TV?” Ivan took a quick peek into the cabin.

“No, not yet, it´s just a written plea.” I listened to some more. “They think we might be in Rome, your phone trick worked.”

He sneaked a quick look into the cabin again, smiling proudly. The last piece of information the newsdesk had was that the owner of the house – Carlo´s name wasn´t mentioned – was living abroad and the authorities hadn´t been able to reach him yet. I wondered how long it would take for the police to connect Carlo and Angelo, and if the fact would be sufficiently incriminating to throw Angelo into jail. Then the newscast was over, promising live coverage with ´an expert panel´ starting at nine. Out of Ivan´s sight I sat on the berth, my head resting on my hands, as I tried to figure a way out for my friends. It was useless, of course, as even giving myself up wouldn´t now stop the investigation no matter what lies I told the police. Furthermore, the agonizing moment when I´d have to leave Ivan was inexorably moving closer at seemingly increasing speed, as if the time itself was accelerating, and I still had no idea how to make it happen. No amount of reasonable talk would sway him; in the end I´d have to resort to something vile.

There were no secluded bays in this part of the coast, but we anchored the boat near the shore in front of a wide swath of forest with only a barely visible strip of a beach beneath the trees. A few other boats had chosen the same area but as all of us had done it for privacy´s sake none of them came alarmingly close, and in fear of powerful binoculars we always wore sunglasses and headgear when out in sight, even while swimming. We splashed like two children, had sex, napped, devoured sandwiches, had sex again. Every now and then I caught him staring at me coldly, aware of the impending betrayal, but the stare always melted into a smile and an embrace with the certainty that he´d outwit me when the moment came. In the meanwhile, the TV news and commentary went from bad to worse as there was no word from Ivan to his parents, and by the time we woke up on Monday morning the whole country believed I´d done away with him and dumped the body in the sea in Ostia, or in certain more pictoresque versions into the river Tiber in the very outskirts of Rome after repeatedly having had my way with him. Ivan´s parents kept asking for silenzio stampa, which the news organizations naturally ignored; Ivan was far too good-looking, perfect for the role of the innocent, and there was much emphasis on his age. Marinella was interviewed by the Berlusconi´s flagship Channel 5, Ivan´s schoolmates and cousin by RaiUno, and the lesser characters of the drama by the equally lesser channels. At first we made fun of the newscasts, although somewhat awkwardly, and then stopped commenting on them altogether as the more vicious pundits took over.

Late in the Monday evening we had our last swim, reluctantly scampered back onboard, our spirits dampened and heavy, and soon before sunset Ivan switched on the motor. His eyes shimmered in the last warm rays of the sun as he looked at me, there was a twitch to the side of his mouth, and I had to turn away to clear the sudden lump in my throat. The night fell; the pinpoints of light of the coast slowly slid past us as the digital numbers of the GPS display clicked closer to the location neither of us wanted to reach. Then, inevitably, I recognized the lights of Torre del Lago and the flurry of people crowding the beachfront bars, and the night breeze carried the music to us over the water. It was already ten past eleven, and we didn´t have time to find a proper place for the boat. Protected by darkness, Ivan took us as close to the shore as he dared, anchored the boat, and we took off our clothes and stashed them into the plastic bag along with our money. The water felt cold as I slipped in, holding the bag high above my head, closely followed by Ivan.

“What if someone rams into the boat,” I asked him, bobbing in the waves and looking back at the dark hulk silhoutted against the night sky.

“No one will, I think this is a restricted area because of the beach,” he answered, kicking water next to me. “And it´s too close to the shore anyway.”

I felt his warm hand touch my arm underwater, and we turned and swam towards the lights and the noisy, happy crowd.

Chapter 13 - Marina di Pisa

It was Saturday night, in the holiday month of August, and the traffic grew steadily heavier as we approached the coast. Ivan therefore judged it relatively safe to use certain stretches of main roads every now and then, even though it made us both feel horribly exposed. About an hour into the journey we entered the outskirts of a small town, keeping a wary eye on all the approaching headlights, and stopped at an automated gas station to fill the scooter up. Thankful for the emergency funds Angelo had left me, I gave Ivan two bills for the machine and stood by, stretching my legs, as he proceeded with the smelly job. Once he was finished, he pulled out a cell phone from his pocket and checked the display.

“Eleven missed calls,” he grumbled, looking worried. “My parents. I have to call them back.”

He pressed a couple of keys, and the call was answered even before he had time to lift the phone to his ear.

“I´m fine, just fine,” he said, with the appropriate amount of teenage irritation. “I´m over at Enzo´s, in Pisa, watching TV. You don´t know him. Never mind that, what´s going on?”

A truck carrying two huge concrete elements rumbled into the parking lot, contradicting Ivan´s claims about the imaginary Enzo, and he had to wait for a moment before the call could be continued. Once the driver had turned off the engine Ivan resumed the conversation, listening for a while, and then interrupted, innocently, “Oh, that was why the police stopped me?” However, hearing the answer his expression clouded, he squinted, and then a frown appeared. “No, of course not. What, you let those dogs into the house?”

His focus shifted to me from the call, even as he listened to the anxious warbling voice from the other end. The next question was for my benefit. “What did you say? The dogs ran straight into my room? Why would they do that?”

The pitch of his mother´s voice rose. “That´s what we want to know, too.” More incomprehensible talk followed.

“No. No,” Ivan answered. “If they say that, they´re crazy. No, I´m not coming home, I´m in Pisa, I don´t know Enzo´s home number.”

Someone else came on the phone, with a deeper voice. His father. I thought I heard something like “The dogs were howling around the bed, for Chrissakes-“

Ivan listened for a while, and then interrupted, “If they want to look for me, let them. I don´t care.” Now he was starting to look anxious himself, defying his own father, not an easy task for an Italian. “Listen, I have to go now-“

“He´s with you isn´t he?” This time I could hear his father´s voice quite clearly. “Is he holding you hostage?”

“Don´t be stupid,” Ivan snapped, but his face had turned pale. “I´m just fine. I have to go now. I´ll be home tomorrow morning.”

He ended the call before his father could answer, and started to push the phone back into his pocket, his hand shaking.

“Ivan, the phone leaves a trace,” I said. “When the police checks it they know where we are.”

He nodded, and was starting to turn it off when he saw the truck he hadn´t paid much attention to before.

“It has Roman licence plates,” he said contemplatively, thought about it for a second, and then pitched the phone into a hollow in one of the concrete elements. “At the rate my parents keep calling the battery will go dead pretty soon, but there should be a nice southward trace by then.”

I stared at him, impressed. “You just threw away your music collection.”

He shrugged. “I´ll download it again.”

“Ivan.” I started, gnawed my lip, knowing how stubborn the kid was. “Maybe you really should go back. If your parents think that you´ve been kidnapped they´ll go crazy with worry.”

“That´s what they´ll say,” Ivan answered with a sneer. “For the neighbors´ sake. And stop telling me what to do, thank you.”

“So what are we doing?”

“First I thought I´d take you to our boat for the night but it doesn´t seem like a good idea now,” he said unhappily, but then immediately added. “I have a plan B, though.”

“Which is?” I didn´t want to sound sceptical, but I was beginning to think we were on a dead end street and driving too fast.

“Have you ever seen anyone alone on a boat in Italy?”

I thought about it for a second, and shook my head. The images that came to my mind all pertained to white boats crammed to capacity by young men wearing speedos and usually making a lot of noise.

“I´ll call a friend,” he said, pulling on his helmet.

The apparent lack of details about his plan worried me as we took to the road again. Also, I had to get in touch with Angelo as soon as possible, supposing he hadn´t already been locked up.

The trip had taken longer than expected, and morning was drawing closer. The traffic, however, only seemed to be getting heavier and I suspected that not all the drivers had abstained from drinking. Luckily they kept the police busy enough, and the one patrol car that passed by never saw us thanks to two cars Ivan strategically wedged us in between. The sun was already lighting up the edges of the highest clouds to the east when we entered a small, pictoresque coastal town and found a functioning phone booth, a minor miracle. This time, as I waited, I didn´t take my helmet off to keep my blond hair hidden. The call itself didn´t take long but I noticed that the machine gave no coins back.

“I got Roberto on his cell phone,” he started. “He´s in Marocco with his family.”

“Damn,” I cursed. “Listen-“

“Wait,” he interrupted. “His grandmother is at home. Robbie will call her, and she´ll give us the key to the marina where their boat is moored. We can stay there for a day or two.”

“What did you tell him? Won´t he call the police as soon as the news comes out?”

“I didn´t have to tell him anything, he´s in Marocco,” Ivan reminded me. “I only implied that I needed a place where I could take a girl behind Marinella´s back.”

“The ever valid Italian excuse,” I muttered, shaking my head disapprovingly as if I could afford it. “What about the granny? She won´t even open the door if you don´t show respect and take the helmet off.”

“Right… well, I´ll tell her it´s my brother´s, and so small that it nearly rips my ears off when I put it on or take it off.”

“I don´t know about your brother but the rest of the story is no lie,” I laughed, earning a hard cuff on the side of my helmet.

Roberto´s house was only a two minutes´ drive away, an old-fashioned villa surrounded by a small but lush garden, and while I waited outside Ivan went in to charm the old lady. Soon he returned, with a wide grin and a happily jangling set of keys.

“She´s a bit addle-brained, I think,” he said with good-humored Italian straight-forwardness. “Not only did she give me the marina key, but the one to the boat as well. We can go and have a ride if there´s enough gas in the tank.”

“Won´t the marina janitor, or whatever his title is, call the police when a boat disappears?”

“First he´ll call the granny, and she´ll say that everything´s all right,” Ivan answered.

“Are you sure?”

“If we stay holed in the boat it´ll look more suspicious than taking it out,” Ivan reasoned. “And we´ll get a sunstroke hiding in the cabin all day.”

“True.”

Still, the idea of going pleasure-boating while half the police force of the country was chasing us seemed a bit outlandish. On the other hand, frolicking in the sea would hardly be what was expected of us, and to spend the afternoon slowly rogering Ivan in the cabin, with all the rope one was sure to have available on a boat, and no one within earshot, was not an invitation easily turned down. Besides, if the shore patrol caught us in the act, with Ivan helplessly tied up, no further proof of his innocence would be necessary.

We found an open bar and bought a cache of food, and got some change for me to call Angelo. Back at the phone booth I put a call through to the emergency number Angelo had given me. Thankfully, the cell phone number was working, but it rang several times before Jan answered sounding sleepy and alarmed at the same time.

“Jan, this is a friend of Angelo´s,” I started, but he interrupted me right away.

“He told me that… eh, someone, might call and leave a message.” His voice was suddenly quite friendly, and I remembered our first and only meeting in the villa by the lake and on what a different footing we´d been then.

“Great… listen, would you tell him to meet me tomorrow, that´s Monday, in the pine woods near the bars at midnight? The bars - he´ll know what I´m talking about.”

“All right,” Jan answered, sounding a little puzzled.

“If either one can´t be there on Monday, I´ll be there on Tuesday at the same time,” I added quickly.

“I´ll tell him,” Jan promised. “I hope to see you soon. Take care.”

We began the last leg of the ride, leaving the town behind, and soon I noticed that there were unmistakable glimpses of rippling blue water in between copses of trees to the right side of the road.

“What´s that?” I shouted over the wind, pointing at the water. “Not the sea already?”

“The river Arno,” Ivan yelled back.

I was somewhat stunned by the answer, and nearly dropped the heavy shopping bag I was holding between us. The River Arno, whose almost holy waters, albeit rather polluted ones, had run under the Ponte Vecchio in Florence probably only yesterday, and here we were obliviously riding a scooter right next to it as if it were little more than just another ditch. Traveling in Italy was tricky business; ask an innocent question and the answer is likely to contain words such as Michelangelo, Giotto, or Vestal Virgins.

Then Ivan slowed down, his head scanning the riverside trees and bushes, apparently looking for a hiding place for the scooter. Suddenly a salty sea breeze penetrated into my helmet, and delivered the wave of exhilaration that the first smell of sea always brings. Ahead of us, above another copse of luscious trees, I could now see the edge of a forest of gently swaying white masts. Ivan found a place he judged safe enough, and after drudging the scooter into a thicket across a narrow field, hoping that the two cars that passed by in the meanwhile didn´t find our actions alarmingly odd, we headed for the marina. The gate was still locked this early in the morning, and after seeing we had the key the only person about, an expensively groomed tall man tinkering with the ropes of his sailboat, didn´t ask us any questions despite quizzically following us with his eyes. Under his watchful gaze Ivan lead us to the motorboat, and jumped on board.

The boat had looked deceptively small from the outside, as I discovered that the cabin nevertheless had room for two beds and a tiny kitchen, and a cleverly hidden toilet. Despite the size the only correct word for the vehicle was yacht, with its white streamlined shape, enough room on the front deck for sunbathing, and the back designed for an easy descent into water for a swim. The chromed railings were spotless, and the whole thing gleamed with almost blinding brightness in the early morning sun. We ducked into the cabin and pulled off our helmets with a sigh of relief, but there was not enough time to start fussing with the groceries.

“How are we going to get out of here with that snoop out there?” I asked.

“We´ll improvise,” Ivan answered, familiar with the boat.

He rummaged through a series of minuscule cupboards and came up with a dusty baseball cap, a whitish rag that had clearly been used for cleaning the kitchen and perhaps something nastier as well, and a pair of sunglasses so old that the lenses were scratched useless. In the process he also found a black-and-white portable TV set, with a five-inch screen.

“You go sunbathing on the front deck-“ he started.

“What are you saying?” I interrupted, uncomprehending and shocked by the mere idea of exposing myself publicly after the weeks spent inside the farmhouse.

“Boat thieves don´t sunbathe at work,” Ivan explained. “We cover your hair with the rag, and these sunglasses are so large that I bet they belong to Roberto´s mother. If no one can see her wrinkles with these, they won´t recognize you either.”

“All right, you´re the expert on boat behavior,” I agreed warily as he tried on the baseball cap, pulling it down to cover his face.

Once my disguise was ready, including bare chest, Ivan switched on the motor, ran a quick checklist including the amount of gas we had, and told me to step outside and give him instructions lest we hit the jetty and attract our relentlessly curious neighbor. Careful to keep my back towards him, I managed to guide us away from the quayside, and as we inched our way towards the center of Arno I gave a friendly wave at the man, and climbed on the glamorous although uncomfortably curving front deck. As soon as we were safely out of the harbor I´d plug in the TV and find out all the details of my latest dasdardly deeds, wondering which crime received longer sentence in Italy, murder or kidnapping and statutory rape of someone who was most likely still a minor.