This is a story of circumstance, a whim of destiny that altered a life. Rachel and her friend Marion had decided in February to vacation in Italy the following July. Not in August; in August they would find no one but American schoolteachers in Italy, no Italians in August, and since they were American schoolteachers themselves, the prospect of staring at more American teachers during their vacation was thoroughly unappealing. No, they would travel to Italy in July, roam up and down the boot in a rented car for three weeks, and have a glorious time. Marion had an interest in history, Rachel had an interest in art, and they would have a lovely vacation.
They were both unmarried, Rachel thirty-two and Marion thirty- four, both slender women with a certain reserve due to their small-town childhoods, and they had been close friends ever since they'd met in college. They lived apart, but they were constantly together. They had planned their teaching careers together, and the fact that they taught in the same middle school a few hours from New York was not an accident -- they had planned it that way. They were careful planners, and they planned their trip to Italy most carefully, compared prices, tours, itineraries, worked diligently with maps, guidebooks, travel books, and phrase books, and paid their fees and fares well in advance to insure the best arrangements possible. Everything was planned down to the last detail, and then two days before they were scheduled to fly out of New York to Rome, Marion came down with the mumps and their plans dribbled down the drain of an indifferent Fate.
"You must go alone," Marion said on the telephone, her words bracketed by groans about how difficult it was to swallow anything.
"I can't go alone," Rachel said.
"But you must. You just can't throw everything away. It's not just the money. It's all that planning we did.
"I don't want to go alone. I'll be lonely. I don't want to wander around Italy on my own."
"Rachel, you must go."
Marion had the stronger personality, and she finally convinced Rachel that it would be silly not to go, that Rachel needed this trip, that Rachel would find it an adventure to be on her own in sunny Italy, that she would have a lovely time.
Two days later, Rachel boarded an Alitalia flight at Kennedy Airport and flew to Rome while reading a guidebook on the frescoes of Firenze.
* * *
Rachel did not rent a car, she traveled by bus and train. She did Rome, Milan, back to Florence, and then finally down to Naples. This was not her first trip to Italy, but this time she had three weeks and not three days, time enough to begin a love affair with one of the most beautiful places on the planet. But that is not our story. Our story begins on the ferry back from Capri, seventeen days after Rachel landed in Rome, the ferry docking in Naples and Rachel now feeling a degree of mental exhaustion, a surfeit of the beauty and the marvels of Italia, a bit of homesickness and a growing burden of loneliness. She wished fervently that Marion were there, there would be so much to talk about, so many things to enjoy together.
It was now three in the afternoon, and Rachel went straight to her hotel in the Via Chiaia. She had a shower to get rid of the sweat and heat of the day. She put on a cool yellow dress and a pair of brown sandals. At first she thought she might just sit in the cool hotel lobby awhile and read a newspaper, but that proved too boring, and she decided to walk up Via Chiaia and Via Toledo and have a lemonade in that lovely galleria she had visited only yesterday.
Fate, my darlings, a momentary whim. Of course the pattern of a life is more or less already writ, but sometimes the hand of destiny is needed to shake the cloth and make the pattern visible.
It was now five o'clock, the end of the afternoon siesta, and the Neapolitans were back in the streets. Rachel continued walking. She was now in the Via Toledo. She decided she adored Naples, the Neapolitans, the streets, the smells, the faces of the people. She found the women especially beautiful, although the average woman of Naples seemed shorter than the women of Rome or Milan. Finally she entered the cool interior of the galleria. She went directly to the cafe at the center of the cross, selected a table, sat down, ordered a lemonade and reveled in a feeling of serenity. This was nice indeed.
After ten minutes or so, as Rachel sipped her lemonade through a straw, two women sat down at a nearby table. They were obviously Italian, both in their forties, and Rachel thought they were extremely beautiful. They were tall, elegantly dressed, both with dark hair and flashing dark eyes, and they looked as though they might be sisters. Were they sisters? One of the women glanced at Rachel, and Rachel quickly looked away. Had she blushed? She hated getting caught looking at women. Sometimes she thought Marion knew her secret, guessed her secret desires, her yearnings. Unsatisfied yearnings.
Rachel had known for years that she was a lesbian, but so far she'd had only one experience with another woman, during her last year in college, and it hadn't been with Marion. That affair was the only secret that Rachel had ever kept from Marion, who hadn't even known the girl, Rachel's lover during a weekend when Marion visited her family in Ohio. Sometimes Rachel wondered if Marion had her own similar secret. Were they both lesbians and too afraid to admit it to each other? Rachel often thought so. What a farce it was. Rachel prayed that someday she would be brave enough to reveal all to Marion, who was really the only person in her life about whom she cared, the only person in her life who knew her inside out. Or at least partially inside out.
Meanwhile, when Rachel glanced at the two Italian women again, she realized they were both staring at her. Boldly staring. Now Rachel did blush. She felt the heat in her face. And then one of the women rose and left her table and walked over to Rachel.
Paralyzed with uncertainty, Rachel waited. The woman was so beautiful, she could hardly look at her.
When the woman reached Rachel's table, she stopped and looked down at Rachel and said in English: "Are you English?"
