I think of what Noah told me in his office the night we found the idea for Two Thousand Picnics. He’d said that coming here might change my life. He’d been teasing—I think—and I’d dismissed him, but don’t I want it to be true? Isn’t that why I’m here?
I want to touch my mother’s origins. I want to feel the roots of my grandparents’ love. And now I’ve traveled all this way, and I’m scared I won’t find what I’m looking for. I’m scared I’ll go home knowing nothing more about my mother or myself.
In Noa Callaway books, heroes always find their stories’ meanings. But how do they actually do it? What would a Noa Callaway heroine do in my motorcycle boots today?
What would Noah Ross do?
I wish I could talk to him. I wish he hadn’t been so inscrutable at his apartment the other night.
I wish that he were here.
Lanie, I tell myself, channeling Meg and Rufus, you’re in a parking lot at the threshold of the Amalfi Coast. You’re scared. It’s natural. Take it one step at a time.
I put the key in the ignition. I close my eyes and think of BD. I think of my mother. I think of Elizabeth from Two Thousand Picnics in Central Park.
I start the engine.
The Ducati hums beneath me. I ease off the clutch and gently roll the throttle. The bike and I glide forward. There aren’t many cars around, so I take my time getting acclimated, letting my heart rate slow. I make a few loops, learning how the bike responds. When I feel ready, I exit the lot—and feel a warm slap of sun on my skin.
I whoop as I merge with the traffic, keeping my eyes on the stretch of road where I want to be. I remind myself to breathe, to keep my chin up for balance, to release the tension in my shoulders. The bike wobbles as I come to my first stop in traffic. I will not drop this bike, I vow through clinched teeth as traffic moves again and I wobble back into motion.
I’m on a highway outside Naples. The road is long and straight. The wind is calm, the sky deep blue. I can take it easy. I don’t have to be anywhere until the launch tomorrow night.
Twenty minutes in, I’m jubilant. The traffic has thinned, the Ducati corners beautifully, and I’m riding south on a winding sun-drenched road threading through some of Italy’s most picturesque towns.
The air grows fragrant with springtime scents—lemon and honeysuckle, and every now and then a salty blast of sea. The hills become steep, with only an occasional guardrail. Ahead on my left, the sleeping giant Mount Vesuvius comes into view. I hadn’t planned on any stops on the hour-long drive between the airport and Il Bacio. I thought I might be jet-lagged or struggling with the bike. But when I see the sign for the turnoff to the famous archeological site, I take it. I’ve never been one to let a good sign pass me by.
I park the bike in a dusty lot filled with white tour buses. I pay the entrance fee, grab a brochure, and wander through a maze of ancient streets.
I stand in the center of Pompeii’s forum, invisible columns rising around me. I touch the stones and get goose bumps, imagining a future visitor to New York City, wandering an excavated Central Park. Could she put her hand on a remnant of the Gapstow Bridge, reach back through time, and touch my life? Could she feel what that site meant to me?
In the Garden of the Fugitives, I stop before the figure of a mother cradling her child. Her love glows from the past. When I read on a plaque that these remains were cast from the negative space left behind when the woman and her child decomposed in the volcanic ash, I press my hand against the glass. I know how much can be felt in an absence.
I pause again before two embracing lovers. The anguish in their limbs is clear. I think it’s not just that they know they’re dying. I think they also grieve that a third thing—their love—will die as well.
But did it die? Can’t I feel it, here, right now?
I know life is ephemeral, and we only get to do it once, but some true things—like this embrace, like the best love stories—live on.
I carry this idea with me as I leave Pompeii, as I mount the Ducati again. The bike climbs along a sloping cypress-lined promenade, past terra-cotta church spires, and a vast, immemorial herb garden whose towering hedges of rosemary scent the air. A mist of fog settles over the road, so I slow down, inhaling clouds. I feel a part of everything. I feel as though the deep, disbanded past is reaching out to me with its wisdom.
It’s early evening by the time I park in front of cherry red Il Bacio hotel on the gorgeous Amalfi Drive. The jet lag has begun to set in. I peel myself off the bike, give the seat a grateful pat, and exhume my duffel from the tangled bungee cords.
“Signora Bloom,” the smiling young receptionist says. “We are very happy to host you for the launch of Noa Callaway’s new book. I am a fan!” She flashes the Italian hardcover of Two Hundred and Sixty-Six Vows from the behind the desk. “Everything has been taken care of. I will show you to your room.”
I follow her through an ivy-lined foyer, up a curved flight of marble steps, then a second, more private flight of stairs, which end at a large wooden door. Using a golden key shaped like a cresting wave, she opens the door to my suite.
It’s heaven. I step into a living room whose opposite wall is all windows with full ocean views. There are lilies on the coffee table and a plate of plump, deep purple figs. Through a curtain of glass beads is a separate bedroom, also with ocean views, and big enough for a white tufted king bed to sit in the center of the room.
The receptionist moves around the suite, adjusting shades, turning off lamps, lighting candles, and ensuring that the prosecco, in its bucket of ice by the bed, is properly chilled.
Though she’s probably accustomed to tips the size of my monthly salary, I give her ten euros and a smile. When the door clicks closed behind her, I let out my breath and pop the prosecco. I carry a glass into the world’s best rain shower, then change into the silky peach hotel robe.
It’s sunset, and the view out the windows is astonishing—a horizon of full blue ocean and pink-hued, endless sky. I wander out to the terrace. A warm breeze rustles by, carrying the scent of wisteria blossoming in a great urn on the terrace next door.
Two flights below, a woman in a black bikini swims leisurely laps in the hotel’s infinity pool. Farther down, on the pebble beach, oversize umbrellas make multicolored rows. Bodies glisten on the sand. Sailboats dot the sea.
It’s the kind of overwhelming beauty that makes me feel a little lonely. I turn on my phone to let BD and Meg and Rufus know that I’ve arrived.
I laugh at the selfies I’d taken earlier in the airport lot. There’s one I thought was good, my face in the side mirror of the Ducati. But I see now how terrified I was. Half a day in Italy has already done wonders for my complexion, and my mental state. I’m about to snap a better photo of myself on the balcony now when an email appears on my screen.