Chapter Twenty-Two:

At last Fabio turned off the old service road and bounced down a gravel path, through a swampy field. Emily rolled down her window, letting the fresh air in. A few mosquitoes whined against the window; she rolled it up.

Fabio shifted gears as they neared the top of one rolling hill. They coasted down the soggy road in neutral. Gravel crunched under their tires. When Emily twisted around in her seat, she could spot the deep ruts of their tire-tracks behind them. Dirty water seeped in; mosquitoes and dragonflies congregated around them.

Mrs. Walker shrieked as they picked up speed; Emily turned back around, clutching Carmen as they hurtled down the last few feet of the hill and came to a shuddering stop with a huge splash. Fabio shifted up a few gears. The tires spun helplessly, sinking deeper into the mud. The engine sputtered; something clattered under the hood.

Fabio said something in Italian to Tobias, then repeated it. Tobias shook himself, answered in Italian, and got out of the car. The two of them wandered around to the front, slapping mosquitoes off their arms.

They popped the hood. Steam billowed out.

A few minutes later, Tobias came back. He tapped on the glass; Steve reached across the seat, and rolled the window down.

“Guys, Fabio has to tow the car back to the garage. We’re gonna walk the rest of the way. The garage is just at the top of the hill; it’s not much further.”

They hopped out of the car, and got their backpacks out of the trunk. Emily shifted hers on her shoulders; she pulled her long hair out of the way. She braided it messily, and tossed it over her shoulder. “If you didn’t have car trouble when you started out, you definitely would by the time you got the garage,” she said.

“This isn’t the entrance that Fabio’s customers use. That one adds another two or three miles when you’re coming from San Damiano, so we thought we’d take the back way.” Tobias swatted away a few mosquitoes. “Let’s get out of this swamp, guys. Don’t play with the ducks, Mickey.” He grabbed Mickey away from the family of ducklings, and set him on his shoulders. “Can you see the house? The garage?”

“It’s big.”

“Signor Rossi fixes cars up there.”

Mickey squirmed. “Where are the frogs?”

“They’re probably by the lake. Il lago.”

“There’s a lake? Are there boats?”

“We’ll go there tomorrow and find out. Stay put. Don’t wiggle.”

“I wanna get down.”

Tobias set Mickey down.

Mickey ran to his mom. “Andiamo al lago, mamma!”

“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Walker said.

An olive-skinned young man in a grease-splattered T-shirt was waiting for them outside Fabio’s garage. He was wiping engine oil off his hands onto an equally dirty rag. His eyes widened as he saw them coming; he hopped through a few tires to the back door, shouted something through it, and ran back to the front.

Fabio gestured towards them and took a ring of keys off a hook by the garage door. Emily looked at Tobias, confused.

“Fabio’s telling Paul that they need to tow the car into the shop,” Tobias said.

“Paul?” Emily blinked. “Is he American?”

“No, he’s from Marseilles. Jude found him bumming around Torino last summer.” Tobias stepped back; Carmen pulled Billy out of the way as Paul and Fabio backed the tow-truck out of the garage.

“Wow,” Billy said, watching it vanish down the muddy hill.

An older woman came out the back door with tall, sweating glasses of lemonade. Emily took her glass, and drained half of it in one gulp. “Grazie,” she said breathlessly. She held the glass to her cheek, feeling the beads of cold moisture on her face. Vaguely, she heard Tobias introduce them to the woman – Signor e Signora Walker e i suoi bambini, Billy e Mickey… gli studenti Stefano, Carmine, Emilia… the Italian washed over her in a daze. She sat down on one of the piles of tires beside Carmen and Steve and took a few more sips of her lemonade.

About ten minutes later, the truck returned, headlights glaring, towing the mud-splattered, still-hissing Fiat. Paul was driving; Fabio was riding shotgun. He said something to Paul, pointing to the dashboard. Paul nodded to himself. He shifted into park.

Billy’s eyes, already huge, got wider, as Fabio and Paul got out of the truck.

“Wooo,” he said.

Fabio returned the keys to the row of hooks by the door, and said something in Italian to Paul. Paul came up to them, smoothing down his blue bandana self-consciously. “Signor Prezzo?” he said.

Tobias smiled. “Io sono.”

“Come sta, signore?”

“Sto bene,” Tobias said. “E tu?”

“Abbastanza bene,” Paul said. He had turned bright red by this point. He switched to English. “We are having a meeting tomorrow. Do you want to come?”

“Sure,” Tobias said. “Would you mind entertaining my American students this afternoon? Practice your English on them? Fabio and I have some stuff to do.”

Paul’s face fell.

“Signor Rossi’s already told me about your plans; we’ll talk later about them. We have to figure out how we’re getting the Americans into Rome, first.”

“Okay,” Paul said.

“Bravo,” Tobias said.

Paul led them up the little rickety staircase to his room over the unheated garage. He reached in his pocket, pulling out a key on a lanyard. He shoved his shoulder against the door, turning it laboriously. “I have a group of cards and puzzles and some American games.”

“Do you have Clue, man?”

“No, it seems to me to be Monopoly.” Paul shoved the key in the lock again. “This lock does not work well… it was so… how do you say it? Downstairs?”

“Awkward?” Steve said.

“That’s it. Awkward. Violà,” Paul said, as the door swung open. “My room.”

He picked a heap of dirty clothes off the floor and threw them in the hamper beside a battered chest of drawers. He reached up, yanking on the ceiling fan; a few papers stirred on the card-table under the open window. He grabbed a coffee-mug, and planted it on the papers.

“The games are on top of the chest,” he said. He hopped on a chair. “That sounds like a sentence in my English book. The games are on top of the chest… the picture is over the wall…”

Emily lifted the sheet off the futon. “The socks are under the bed,” she said.

Paul took the Monopoly box down. “Do you speak French? Or Italian?”

They looked at each other. They shook their heads.

“Merde,” Paul said. “My English is bad.” He grabbed a few plastic crates, pulled the books out of them, and threw them on the futon. He arranged the crates around his battered coffee-table. Emily sat on the futon and shifted through the books, curious.

He had a copy of the Bible in French, a book of prayers from Lourdes, and a few battered French and Italian atlases. The rest of the books were outdated copies of “France on a Shoestring” and “The Backpacker’s Guide to France” in French and Italian. A giant map of France was taped to the wall beside his bed. He had driven colored push-pins through different cities. Little paper tags fluttered in the breeze from the ceiling fan.

“Do you like to travel, Paul?” Emily asked.

“Yes. I’m going back to France soon. I’m planning my trip.”

Steve leaned against the battered chest of drawers, checking out the map himself. “Mostly Southern France, dude?”

“That’s where I’m from. Marseilles,” Paul said, putting his finger on a large, sprawling city by the Mediterranean. He moved his finger across the map to Nice. “I’m starting here, and am getting a job working for a bar or a café. I’m staying for about six or seven months here,” he said, setting his finger on Marseilles. “In the suburbs. I’m talking to the immigrants there. I will... had? I will had run out of money by then, so I need to work…”

“How long are you gonna be gone?” Steve said.

“Two years. Maybe three years.”

Emily blinked. “That’s a long time, Paul.”

“I’m going to make friends.” He flopped down on the futon. “Do you want to play Monopoly?”

“Sure, dude,” Steve said. He looked up, noticing the diploma taped to the back of the door for the first time. “Why have you turned your diploma into a dartboard?”

“Because it is worthless,” Paul said.

“Ouch, man,” Steve said. “That hurts.”

Paul got up, and opened up the Monopoly box. He set the board on the floor, and lined up a few counters on Go. He shuffled the cards, and put them on their squares. “Do you want to play?”

“Sure,” Emily said. She and Carmen stretched out on the floor next to Paul. Steve stretched out on the other side. He leaned low, like a chess-player surveying the board.

“What are you doing, Steve?” Carmen asked.

“Plotting my strategy… it’s all about the railroads…”

Carmen shook the dice, and moved her piece five spaces, to Park Place. “Where did Tobias come from?”

“Somewhere in America.” Paul moved two spaces. “He came to Italy to study for a year.”

“Where?” Emily said.

“Rome. He went to the American church there. That’s where he heard about the treasure in the field. That was the Gospel reading one Sunday. He had been thinking a lot about what he needed to do to make the faith live again in Italy, and when he heard that reading, everything made sense. He just got up and walked out. He didn’t need to hear anymore. He wandered around outside like he was in a daze…” Paul drew a Chance card. “Go to jail. Again.”

Emily picked up Paul’s piece and put him in jail. “So he just dropped out of school? Just walked away from his life?”

“What did his parents think?” Carmen said.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about the past. Lives in the present tense. Like I used to in English class.” Paul picked up the dice, and rolled again. “Still in jail. Merde.”

“What were you doing in Torino, Paul?” Emily asked. “Were you at the Olympics? Or on a school trip or something?”

“No… I had dropped out of school and was bumming around. Being a disaffected French university student. You know, the kind that light things on fire and write poems full of…” his voice trailed off. He frowned.

“Angst?” Emily suggested.

“Angst?”

Emily wrote it on a piece of paper.

“Oh, angst,” he said, pronouncing like a German word. “Yes. That was it. Poems full of angst. Anyway, I was smoking by the train station when Jude saw me. He said, ‘kiddo, why are you crying?’ I said that I had used up my last Euros to buy pot and that my world was empty and nobody understood me. And he took my pot away and told me that God would always understand me. And he marched me to the deacon of the community in Torino, and he helped me get my job with Signor Rossi.” Paul rolled again. He moved three spaces. “How much this time, Steve?”

“Two hundred dollars.” Steve held up his four utilities cards. “Cough it up, man.”

Paul sifted through his collection of small bills. “Can you lend me twenty dollars, Emily?”

She handed him a twenty.

Steve smiled. He added Paul’s money to the growing pile beside him. He patted it. “You guys wanna call it quits?”

“We’re taking you down, Steve,” Carmen said. She pushed her pile of fives and tens towards Paul’s pitifully small pile. “All of us. Together.”

Emily lay awake that night, looking up at the ceiling, trying to imagine Tobias as a college student in Italy, so many years ago. Tried to imagine, being nineteen years old and knowing what you wanted to do with the rest of your life. She rolled over, and looked at the clock. Almost 2 AM. She closed her eyes. The games are over the chest… the picture is on the wall…

She opened her eyes. The screen door swung shut; the low murmur of Italian voices drifted up from the kitchen downstairs. She got out of bed, and padded to the window. Paul’s light was still on in the garage. He had the blinds down, but she could see his shadow at the window. Why was he still up?

She slipped her flip-flops on, and threw her college sweatshirt over her tank top. She unzipped her backpack, ran a brush through her hair, and eased the bedroom door shut behind her.

Moths were whirling around the ceiling light downstairs. The smell of burnt coffee wafted towards her. Fabio had unfolded a huge map of central Italy; he leaned over it at the kitchen table, marking spots on it, talking in Italian to someone on the phone. Tobias was typing on Fabio’s laptop, sipping coffee out of a chipped mug.

Fabio stopped talking when she came down the stairs.

Tobias looked up over his computer screen. “What are you doing up, Emily? It’s almost two.”

“I can’t sleep. I’ve had too much coffee. I was gonna hang out with Paul.”

“Paul’s still awake?”

“Yeah, the light’s on in his room over the garage.”

Fabio looked at her curiously. Tobias said something to him in Italian. Fabio got out of his chair, and closed the door to the garage.

Emily sat on the steps to the upstairs. She yawned. “What are you doing?”

“Answering some emails. My communities like to write to me.”

“How many communities do you have?”

“Enough to keep me busy.” Tobias took another sip of his coffee, and yawned himself. “I’ve still got a lot of emails to write, Emily. You’d better go back to sleep.”