Chapter 5 - Mediterranean

It didn´t take long for Angelo to pry out all the details of the incident, as much to distract me as to satisfy his ever morbid curiosity, and half grudgingly I described him everything he wanted to know. I was still depicting the special throbbing character of the trucker´s foreskin when the road reached it highest point and we began the descent towards Genoa and the Mediterranean coast. Just having the mountain ridge between me and Milan was enough to make me feel a little better.

Angelo narrowed his eyes as the car entered another tunnel, leaving the bright sunlight behind.

“I´ll have to call the police as soon as I get back home,” he said.

I turned to him, alarmed.

He glanced at me. “They´ll check my phone record, too. Sooner or later.”

“That phone booth…” my voice trailed off. “They´ll figure it out.”

“In a way it´s a good thing,” Angelo claimed bravely. “Someone has to tell the police about those two mafia thugs.”

“I shouldn´t have called you.”

“Who else could you have called?” He glanced at me. “Calm down, you look like you´re going to start shaking again. I´ll just tell them you called and asked for help, and I said no.”

“Will they believe that?”

“What else can they do? They can´t prove anything. If they check the autostrada surveillance recordings they won´t see my car, and my cell phone is back home together with Luca who´ll give me an alibi.”

“He´s happy about that, I´m sure.”

Angelo choose not to comment. “I´ll tell the police that you decided to blackmail a married client into taking you to France.”

“I should have thought of that.”

Angelo chuckled at the very idea. “You? A cold-blooded blackmailer? Please.”

I threw him a dirty glance, with no discernible effect. We fell into listening to the radio but after a while, when the transmission was blocked by a tunnel and there was no longer music to distract me, I was back in Gabriele´s house with my mind replaying our encounter and that brief moment during sex when there had been a flicker of connection between us. It made me shudder to think how dismissive I´d been about it, those last moments of his life, and how he must have felt it.

About half an hour later we reached the outskirts of Genoa. Unwelcomingly, the autostrada entry to the city passed through an unsettling cemetary valley crowded with elaborate mausoleums and statues set in tiers on both sides of the road. My voice faltered in midsentence, and I felt Angelo´s reassuring hand on my thigh. I tried not to think either Gabriele or what would happen if an earthquake or a landslide hit us while we were driving through the macabre passage. Instead, I focused on the Mediterranean Sea, glittering beyond the high buildings of the city center, shockingly blue in the morning sun and dotted with white sails. I didn´t have a chance to see much else of Genoa as Angelo picked a ring road, avoiding the city proper, and soon we were back in the mountains with only an occasional sparkle of the sea visible to the right. Then, about ten minutes later, he swerved to an exit ramp without an explanation.

“We´re still in Liguria,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“Pieve Ligure.”

I couldn´t believe it. “The gay beach?”

“Right. It´ll be empty this hour,” Angelo reassured me. “You deserve a quick splash in the sea before holing up in the house for the summer.”

“Is it really safe? I mean, you´re in enough trouble as it is. And it´s an illegal beach, too.”

“Yes, the cliff overhead is dangerous,” he shrugged. “But you need something… normal, before I leave you alone.”

The breakneck beach could only be considered normal by Italians, I thought, but Angelo was right. A few minutes in the waves with a friend would be an important step away from the previous night.

The narrow state road hugging the coast was another spectacle with its view over the sea, sharp turns and unexpected plunges and ascents, and lines of lemon and orange trees squeezed dangerously close to the – presumably – two lanes. We passed through an arch of an ancient fortress, then turned to a side road, and Angelo parked the car at an alarmingly steep uphill stretch as if it was the most natural thing to do.

“We don´t have swimsuits,” I noted.

“So?”

There was no fighting his kind of logic, and we climbed over a railing separating the road from the abyss. There was a sign that said “FORBIDDEN AREA - OFFENDERS WILL BE PROSECUTED ACCORDING TO ALL ARTICLES OF LAW”, which we happily ignored and began the descent. The slope was almost vertical, except for the places where it was vertical, and frayed nylon ropes tied to a couple of gnarled trees which inexplicably managed to hold on to the mountain wall were the only thing keeping us from plunging into the chasm. Halfway through, the path passed along the top of an odd concrete wall that had no apparent purpose, requiring tightrope-walking skills from the prospective sunbathers lest they end smashed on the rocks far below. The rocks themselves, sized between large suitcases and Japanese cars, had fallen from the overhanging cliff with no regard for the unlucky muscleboys sunbathing at their landing sites. It wasn´t hard to see why the beach had been outlawed, even discounting the crusades of local christian politicians against out-of-town gay men polluting their sea. The narrow shingle beach, wedged between boulders as tall as houses, was isolated by two sharp promontories of bare rock which made every other access impossible, and when we reached the bottom the distinct sound of the beach made itself heard with every long, lazy wave.

A straight nudist couple was sprawled on the beach – as far from the cliff as possible – enjoying a respite from gay activities, or perhaps expecting some to help pass the boring hours of sunbathing. Angelo set a bottle of orange juice he had brought along in a pool of cool water in the shadow of a boulder, and pulled off his t-shirt, followed by his shoes and khakis. Then it was the turn for his white underwear, and I watched the strong muscles of his back and legs flex rhythmically as he waded into the waves. After a quick glance at the direction of the couple I removed my clothes as well, and followed Angelo. It was still early morning, and the water was unpleasantly cool at first, but I got used to it after a few strokes. For a while we bobbed up and down in the water like two corks, grinning stupidly. Then I happened to glance back at the beach and noticed that the straight couple was gone. Angelo followed my gaze, but instead of searching for them he turned the other way and scanned the sea.

“Cazzo! A police boat,” he said, kicking water. “Follow me.”

His head slipped under the surface, and I saw him turn underwater and start diving towards the boulders, the surge from his powerful kick making me sway. I took a deep breath, jack-knifed my body, and dived as cleanly as I could. The bottom was mostly covered by green algae, with some colorful sea creatures either jetting by, or clinging to the rocks below, and the dancing reflection of the sun´s glitter would have been hypnotizing if it hadn´t been for the rising dread that made my swimming inefficient, forcing me to surface for breath much sooner than I had planned. Feeling horribly exposed, I managed to gasp twice as quickly as I could before I was lifted to the crest of the next tall wave, my head clearly visible to all directions, and with my lungs still burning I plunged back into the quiet of the sea. Ahead of me, I saw Angelo vanish into a dark shadow between two huge boulders, but I needed to breathe so badly that I had to rise to the surface again for more air. Another rising wave was lifting me alarmingly high and I almost inhaled a mouthful of water in my panicky hurry to dive. Finally the shadow of a boulder darkened the water around me and I slipped between the rocks, rising to the surface with my face scrunched with the pain of oxygen deprivation. Angelo caught a hold of me and kept my head above the water while I gasped for air, and tried to warn him that the police had seen me.

“I know they did,” he said, his big arms tightening around me.

I stared at him, incredulous. “Then why did we-“

“For appearance´s sake,” Angelo said, explaining things to a dumb foreigner. “If they´re straight they´ll pretend they saw no one. I mean, why bother?”

“And if they´re not straight?”

“They´ll come after us only if they´re nosy closet cases.”

“Isn´t that what most Italians are?” I asked, receiving a poke in the ribs as an answer.

We waited, with the waves gently swaying us and Angelo´s arms conspicuously holding me despite the snooping police boat. I was getting distracted by the warmth of his body, and the thick hardening cylinder of flesh pressing against my leg.

A couple of minutes passed, but there was no sign of the law enforcement.

“I told you they were straight,” Angelo mumbled into my ear, his large hands cupping my butt and hitching me higher.

His hard-on pushed in between my thighs, like a long thick beer can filled with warm water, and I wound my arms around his neck for balance. Then his big, muscular tongue slipped into my mouth, and after a while we forgot all about the police.