Tailwinds Past Florence Read online

  The sorrow squeezing him from within intensified with a distracting familiarity. But why? Alessio could remember committing no mortal sin, no infidelity for which he must atone, no abandonment inflicted.

  Not recently, he knew.

  He winced at the thought, realizing the feeling was reminiscent of a pain he weathered so many years ago. Before his retreat into celibacy. But why should the pain be fresh? He hadn’t thought of her in twenty years.

  Alessio stood, conflicted, wondering where he was if not in his home on Malta. Searching the shadows, he stepped gingerly toward the window, trimmed in a faint strip of moonlight, and was promptly snared by linens piled on the floor. He wrapped the sheets around his waist for warmth and pawed against the louvers, but could find no way to open the interior shutters.

  A pang shot through him as the dread of being trapped pierced his sanity. Trailing his hand along the wall for balance, Alessio explored the darkness. Stepping slowly, one hand on the wall, the other clawing the air in front of him, he advanced. Something moved beneath his finger, a toggle of sorts. Instantly, light was everywhere. He clamped a hand over his mouth and suppressed the urge to scream as a beacon in the ceiling bathed the room in a light far whiter and brighter than any he’d thought possible.

  He leaned forward, tilting his head to better view the room’s arched ceiling. It was a curved expanse he had seen many times before, but couldn’t remember where.

  Alessio ran his hand through his hair and paused, his eyes went wide in amazement. He clutched his wavy black locks, realizing it reached his shoulders, a length he hadn’t maintained since his last voyage to …

  “It cannot be,” he whispered in his native English, as memories of the apartment came rushing back. “How can I have returned?”

  It was so much cleaner than how he remembered. The furniture and decorations were foreign to him, but there was no mistaking the brick floor and tunnel-shaped ceiling of the small studio. Even the wooden door looked similar.

  Once his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he took inventory of the room’s alien contents. On a table sat a large, black, rectangular mirror that revealed only a faint reflection. Beside it, a box with green, blinking lights.

  Alessio spotted a journal atop the kitchen table and rushed to it, hoping it would reveal a clue. The pages felt odd to the touch, like everything else in the room, and contained messages in numerous languages: Italian, of course, but also French and several in English. He tried reading one written in Italian, but the penmanship proved too careless. On the next page was an entry printed in English block lettering.

  We had a wonderful time in your studio. We always dreamed of visiting Italy, and your apartment was the perfect place to make our dreams come true. What a fantastic location! Though we wish our trip wasn’t so short, we will remember this week forever. Thank you so much!

  Regards,

  Katrina and Alan,

  Pennsylvania, USA

  Alessio stared at the signature, repeating the words. It made no sense. Nobody would cross the ocean from America for just seven days.

  Turning the guestbook’s pages in slow, steady turns, Alessio surveyed myriad vacation memories. Messages written in a flowing script that defied the borders of pre-ruled paper; illegible notes scrawled in looping letters and punctuated by more exclamation marks than he’d seen in his entire life. Every page contained a six-digit date, or so it seemed, but the dates made no sense, as each ended in /13 or /14.

  He shook his head as he tried to make sense of it all. Depending on the weather, it had taken him as many as five days to travel by steamer from Malta, and then another full day along rutted roads from Livorno.

  He recalled reading about a railway built shortly after his last visit. The Duke of Lucca was said to have constructed it between his city and Pisa in 1846. Surely more lines had followed, perhaps even connecting to Florence. “Or Milan,” he said aloud as he came to the final entry in the book.

  It was written by an Italian couple from that northern city. They had spent over a month in the apartment and filled the page with affections for their casa lontano da casa. A wistful smile tugged at his lips. It had been his home away from home, too.

  He read on, trying not to think of the pain that concluded that period in his life, but he was brought to a halt at the bottom of the page. There, beneath their signature, printed in large letters and adorned with curlicues and stars, was a final celebratory remark:

  BUON FELIZ 2015!!!

  Alessio stared wide-eyed at the page as his entire body tensed, save for his hands, which now trembled uncontrollably. He dropped into the spindle-backed chair, knocking an empty bowl aside. He refused to believe it. It was utter insanity. “This can’t be real!” he yelled.

  He leapt to his feet and dashed throughout the apartment, from corner to corner, yanking open drawers, tugging on handles. The anxiety he woke with moments ago was a spring breeze compared to the tornado now swirling within him. Kitchen utensils spilled to the floor, plates and mixing bowls rattled on shelves, but nothing rescued him from his nightmare.

  Gasping for air and soaked in sweat, he pulled upon the handle of a large, metal chest and startled as a light blinked on. Inside were several food items: a container of tomato paste, an onion, and a glass bowl with three eggs. Alessio reached toward the source of the light and noticed the air inside the box was cooler. He closed and opened the door twice more, in quick fashion, giggling nervously despite his fear as the light flicked on each time. He closed the door for good, nodding his head in approval.

  Inside a closet he found a large blanket and threw it onto the bed. Tangled within was a pair of the thickest, softest cotton pants he’d ever felt. He pulled them on, in awe of the waistband’s strange elasticity, and noticed that his legs looked thinner, more muscular. His skin was smoother too, devoid of the wrinkles and veins.

  Younger? It had to be a trick of his imagination or some satanic sorcery. This cannot be real!

  He resumed his survey of the apartment, flicking switches, pushing buttons, and twisting the faucets. Each new marvel hammered his nerves, playing an out-of-tune harbinger of his descent into lunacy. Yet, the room was safe. A grace he clung to.

  From across the apartment, he eyed the windows. Not yet, he thought, stalling. Hoping he’d wake before seeing what he feared most.

  Alessio noticed an envelope upon a table near the door marked Spese di Pulizia. The cleaning fee. Inside he found several coins (not one a Tuscan Florin), along with a handful of notes, each a different color and denomination. The slippery papers bore an outline of the European continent and a blue rectangle with numerous yellow stars in a circle. Studying the currency, Alessio recalled the American flag and wondered if Europe had become a single country called Euro.

  He smiled nervously and stuffed the envelope of money into his waistband, then looked across to the window and took a deep breath. Now or never.

  Alessio was a step from the shuttered windows when a high-pitched mechanical scream shattered the silence of the night, sending him scampering onto the bed in absolute panic. Tugging the blanket over his head, he balled his quivering body and began to pray, barely able to hold his palms together, fighting the need to vomit.

  The noise faded into the night, its echoes dying out long before his pleas for salvation gave way to sleep.

  “What have I done to deserve this, oh Lord? Why must I now suffer your wrath when the sins of the past were not my doing?”

  Chapter 3

  Monday, March 30 — Whitefish, Montana, USA

  Six weeks passed since Edward was fired. The first month had been easy, consumed in a dizzying blur of shopping spree and fire sale. He and Kara spent their days collecting the necessary touring gear, the nights shrinking their lives into a pint-sized storage locker. But as the departure date approached, and the last of their furniture was hauled away by Craigslist bargain-hunters, the reality of their undertaking sharpened, becoming piercing, inoculating Edward against Kara�
�s enthusiasm.

  It wasn’t only that he never wanted to bicycle around the world; he knew he wasn’t meant to. Trips like this were the domain of societal outcasts and runaways, college grads warding off their ascent into adulthood, and professional grifters and fundraisers touring the world in the name of the cause du jour.

  If his opinion might ever change, it wouldn’t be while pedaling through the snow-spackled ski town of Whitefish, eight-hundred miles east of Seattle, on a road lined with sprawling estates. Warmth and comfort mocked him from all directions, reminding him of the life he lost. To his right, a modern mansion containing a forest’s worth of timber, an acre of glass. The kind of home that made it all worthwhile. Through a soaring window he saw an upstairs loft lined with books. Perfect for her art studio, he thought before turning away, his teeth clenched in resignation.

  Edward tugged his fleece headband down, brushed off the map case, and carefully wiped the frost encasing the flimsy mirror on his helmet, lest it fall off again. “So this is why everyone keeps telling us we’re two months early,” he said aloud, his voice no match for the spattering snow beneath his tires.

  He sighed. It wasn’t the jealous sigh of a middle-aged man who never was, but of the promising young phenom aware he pried open the shell only to fumble away the pearl.

  The blare of a horn jolted him from his reverie, causing him to jerk the handlebars. He had drifted to the center of the lane—car country—and now fought his overcorrection. He wrestled the bike, willing the tires to regain their grip, as a hulking Range Rover streaked past, dousing his rain pants in murky slush.

  No, this wasn’t how he drew it up in business school. Back before the job at Madsen Ventures. Before Kara.

  Edward glanced at the mirror out the corner of his eye. There she was, her orange jacket a distant spot of sunshine in a monochromatic landscape. He was leading, but he’d follow her anywhere. His breath whistled as it escaped his chapped lips. Even around the world?

  The chain skipped as he eased his pedaling and shifted into a lower gear. He twisted the shifter back and looked over his right hip as he coaxed the chain higher. The derailleur pushed the links across the snow-packed cassette, but they found no purchase. The sprockets were barely visible, their teeth no more useful than those of an infant. He’d have to leave it in the lone clean gear, the one he’d been using since the weather turned.

  “Hey there, speedy, finally decided to wait for me?” Kara’s voice rescued him from the monotony of his thoughts.

  “Oh, hey. You caught up,” he said glancing back. “How are you handling the snow?”

  “It’s not too bad, actually. The tires are great.”

  “Yeah, Schwalbes are heavy, but they’re worth it. Any problems shifting?”

  “A little. The chain skips, but nothing serious.”

  Edward moved his left hand to his hip—an old steadying maneuver he retained from his racing days—and turned to face his wife. Her yellow handlebar bag and panniers were spackled white and her gloves were soaked, but even through the gauzy curtain of flurries he could see her smile and a few curly tendrils of hair sticking out beneath her helmet. Two weeks in and he still couldn’t get used to the purple highlights. “Are you sure you’re okay riding in this?”

  “I am,” she said, blinking away a flake that sailed into her eye. “But so much for making it across the mountains without it snowing.”

  “In March, too,” he added. “What were we thinking?”

  Kara broke into laughter, her face shining with a joy he wasn’t yet used to seeing so routinely. Edward turned at the sound of an oncoming car and settled into a steady rhythm, his mind quieted.

  The road was a cotton-blanketed ribbon of asphalt laid amongst a black forest of Douglas firs and slumbering aspen. The effect was one of a narrow trench cleaved into a plateau of treetops, and Edward imagined the two cyclists mere drifters along a paved stream at the bottom of an inescapable gorge. Out in the distance, the steel-blue silhouette of the Rocky Mountains loomed. It was his first time to Montana, but Edward couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been here before. Not in a goose-bumpy déjà vu kind of way, but something deeper. Like a faded memory, played in reverse.

  It was the way he felt the first time he met Kara, and still felt, to this day, when the light hit her in a certain way. Reflections from an unknown life.

  The forest blocked the northerly wind, save for when a homeowner had cleared a few acres. Twice, Edward heard Kara yelp as the wind gusted across a meadow and slammed into their bikes.

  “Lean into the wind,” Edward hollered over his shoulder.

  “Can’t hear you,” she yelled back, her voice muffled by the wind.

  Edward pointed ahead. His stomach had been growling for several miles and they were overdue for a snack break.

  He leaned his bicycle against a large, brown sign warning visitors to BE BEAR AWARE and rubbed warmth into his hands, arching his back to stretch. The relief felt in that fleeting moment after stepping off his fully loaded torture machine was one of the highlights of his day.

  Kara propped her bike against his and stepped through the snow-fringed grass to get a better look at the map on his handlebar bag. “About fifteen miles to Glacier?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that sounds right.”

  “That puts us around here somewhere,” she said, pointing.

  Edward didn’t see where she pointed on the map, his concentration focused on opening the Cordura pouch hanging from her bike. The barrel lock holding the pull cord was proving too tricky to squeeze with his insulated paws.

  “There’s nothing in there.”

  “Are you serious? We’re out of snacks?”

  “I told you this morning we had to stock up on granola bars when we got food. I ate the last one earlier.”

  He leaned over Kara’s shoulder to study the map and traced his finger along a black squiggle of a line, pausing at an intersection, turning north, then jumping south to the spot marked Columbia Falls. “Shit.” It was barely a whisper, but she had to have heard it. “Sorry,” he added softly.

  “Did we miss the turn?”

  He sucked his teeth and nodded. He’d been caught daydreaming before, but never someplace so remote, with so few options for food.

  “I knew we should have gotten groceries in Whitefish,” she said.

  “I know.” It had been his decision to try to beat the storm.

  Edward estimated they missed the turn by eight miles. And if there was one thing Kara hated, it was backtracking. She’d no sooner turn the car around to see if they left the iron plugged in than double-back sixteen miles round-trip on a bicycle. Least of all in the snow. Shit, indeed.

  “We’ll have to hope there’s something open in West Glacier then.”

  Edward shook his head.

  “There’s got to be at least a visitor’s center or gas station. It’s a National Park.”

  “It’s the off-season,” he countered.

  “Something will be open.”

  “No, there won’t,” he said, his voice raising. “I checked before we left. There were only two places to get groceries, and West Glacier wasn’t one of them. Listen, I’m sorry, it’s totally my fault, but we need to turn around. We’re completely out of food.”

  Kara mumbled something about needing a map of her own as she walked away with her bike. His stomach growled and, when he looked up, Kara was already straddling her bike, out beyond the sign, facing east.

  “We shouldn’t split up,” she said, “but I’m not riding back to town.”

  “So you’re okay going hungry tonight?”

  “I’m not convinced we’ll have to.”

  Glancing at the bear warning, he jerked his bike away from the sign’s green metal posts and threw his right leg over the seat. He wasn’t about to abandon her in the wild. “So never mind the research I’ve done—”

  “You can tell me ‘I told you so’ all night if we go hungry, but it’ll work out, trust me.” Kara clipp
ed into her pedals and started down the road.

  He wanted to admire her optimism, her faith in the universe being on her side. But his was an apple that fell from a far more cautious tree.

  Edward pushed off and accelerated, sprinting out of the saddle, his grip tight as he strained to catch up to her. Tucked into Kara’s slipstream—what little there was at twelve miles per hour—he pedaled on in silence as the passing miles wore down the tread of his frustration. Ahead, the road curved toward a metal bridge spanning the Flathead River.

  The clouds parted and a fleeting ray of sunshine offered a touch of warmth as they crossed the converted trestle. Despite his hunger and longing for home—and work—Edward found something magical in crossing borders and rivers by bicycle. They had cycled into their third state since leaving home and now, with the icy waters of the Flathead flowing beneath them, they were crossing another major river.

  The road soon joined U.S. 2 outside the city limits. Edward had replayed the day in his mind on a loop since realizing his mistake. Not only had they not passed any stores since leaving Whitefish, but they’d seen few cars on the road. And not a single RV.

  Every lodge, outfitter, and campground lining the highway into the gateway town of West Glacier was shuttered. And none looked to be opening any time soon, either. Billboards showcasing majestic snow-capped mountains, advertisements for inns and guide services, offered a glimpse of the alpine views that lay hidden behind the returning clouds and gray pall that cloaked the town.

  It appeared as if all of western Montana was hibernating along with the bears. All except for two hungry cyclists stopping for the night.

  A shuttered convenience store opposite the park entrance provided the I told you so Edward didn’t have the heart to utter. The snow had stopped, but evidence of a wicked winter lay everywhere, piled in drifts that tickled the eaves of the chestnut-stained parkitecture.