Empire of Light (34 page)

I think back to Trish Wood at Cinecittà, how her warning reminded me of staying out of dark basements in horror flicks.

“
Uffa!
” Dani pouts. “We need light!”

“Had I known you were going to go all Indiana Jones on me I would’ve brought a torch.”

As Dani digs around her purse looking for matches, suddenly the room goes blaze with a golden radiance.

“Whoa!” I exclaim. “Where the hell is that light coming from?”

I feel like I really am in an Indiana Jones movie. Did I accidentally step onto some keystone rig that illuminates baskets of gold?

“
Mio Dio.
This is incredible,” Dani says in awe, stunned at the miraculous light.

We both stand in shock. An ancient dark room, thousands of years old, without even a hint of any electric or burning source, without warning, suddenly shines with an ethereal golden glow. Dani slowly scans the room, her jaw dropped in disbelief. Her gaze lands on me. Her head tilts to the side, like when a puppy hears something queer.

She then begins to smile.

“You!” she shouts.

“Me? Me what?”

“You!” she says again, her face beaming with delight. “You! You are the light!”

“What?”

“You are the light, Jason! You
are
the light!”

She laughs.

“I am the light?” This girl is flipping. “Dani, what the hell are you talking about?”

Dani’s laughing so hard now she can barely talk.

“What!” I demand, feeling way too self-conscious now.

“Your coat! Your stupid yellow coat!”

I look down and notice that a strong sliver of sunlight has beamed through a small window high on the basement wall and hit my jacket. It bounced off the highly reflective material and illuminated the entire room.

“Finally!” Dani screams. “That ugly thing is good for something! Look at this! Your jacket is so fucking loud that it lit up a Pompeii basement!”

I wait for her to calm down, but she doesn’t. The more she notices how well lit the room is, the harder she laughs. Exactly how long am I supposed to stand here like an idiot while this broad laughs at me?

“Wait! Let me put on my sunglasses before I burn my retinas!” she howls, laughing so hard she’s crying.

Screw it. I might as well run with it.

“I am the light…I am a god of light. I am
the
god of light. Behold!” I shout, throwing my arms in the air. “I am Apollo! And I bring you the warmth of my rays! Frolic! Frolic through my warm magic streams!” My voice booms throughout the empty room.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Dani shouts as she spins about the excavated basement.

“What’s this? You dare defile my sacred glow, clothed within the synthetic pelt of man? Disrobe!”

I quickly begin to cross my hands in front of my jacket, cutting through the beam, throwing the room into a flickering nightmare.

“Do not anger me! For I am a vindictive god!”

She sits on the stairs and doubles over in laughter. It’s good to see her so happy. She stops laughing slowly as she stares at the flickering warm light on the wall. I stop cutting through the beam when I realize it looks way too much like fire.

Shit.

I take a step down towards her, moving out of the intense ray, plunging the room into the dark.

“No,” she orders, pointing at me, suddenly very serious. “No,” she whispers, gently nudging me back into the light, returning the warm glow to the room. “This feels good.”

She climbs to the stair above mine and embraces me from behind, careful not to block the light from striking my jacket with her arms.

I am her light.

Maybe I should kiss her now?

“We better go. Your damn jacket might alert security that we’re down here,” she says, snickering. “Tell me something, when you bought this jacket, did it come with a free bowl of soup or what?”

Way to kill a mood, lady.

She continues to tell these horrible jokes about my coat all the way up the stairs, out of the house and back through the broken gate.

Maybe if I stick my tongue in her mouth she’ll shut the hell up. I spin around and I kiss her as passionately as I possibly can.

“Mmffffmfffmff!”

Really? Is she really laughing as I kiss her? I pull away and allow the laugh to explode from her mouth like water from a burst damn.

“
UFFA!
Now I have to go to the bathroom,” she moans. “That coat almost made me piss my pants! I love this coat! Don’t ever get rid of it! Promise me! Don’t ever, ever, ever lose this coat!” she says, punching my chest with her finger.

We make our way to the exit and find the restrooms. After spending the last few hours living in the dark past, these toilets are a massive jolt to our system. We both have to pee like racehorses, but the Jetson-styled outhouses standing before us are completely alien.

“Have you seen anything like these before?” I ask.

“No,” she replies, as she performs the
holding-in-my-pee
dance.

“How the hell do you even open these things up?” I ask as I scan the device for directions. However, the silver and cobalt-colored cylinders offer very little information. In fact, if it weren’t for the male and female signs on the front, I’d never even know the damn things were crappers. Both Dani and my stomachs start to growl and percolate. It looks like our big lunch is finally catching up with us.

“Maybe it’s this,” says Dani desperately as she pushes a fat silver button.

We jump back like a couple of startled chimps as the cylinder hisses open like a sleep chamber from
Aliens
. I follow suit and press the button on my john. We give each other a kiss before entering our respective chambers, just in case we’re trapped in ‘em forever, I guess.

Jeez, taking a crap in this thing is an exercise in intuitive deduction. “Okay, if I designed this thing, where would I have placed the TP dispenser?” I ask myself. I wouldn’t be surprised if this contraption were a giant IQ test, a social experiment to see how smart the tourists are.

I’m failing. God help me, I’m failing how to use a toilet.

After a few moments fumbling around, I finally figure it out. Both Dani and I exit the futuristic johns at the same time, and we watch in amazement as the automatic doors shut and seal and begin to sanitize themselves.

Alarms blare. Hazard lights flash. Hot steam vents. And everybody in the vicinity has now been made aware that Dani and I just emptied our bowels.

“Wow,” Dani and I say in awe at the same time.

After a day stuck in the year 79 AD, it took two Porta Johns to bring us back into the present.

Dani turns to me and playfully slaps my face.

“That jacket,” she snickers as she walks away. “Gotta love this guy.”

***

Saying good-bye truly sucks, especially when saying good-bye in train stations and airports.

Not only was my dad the only person allowed to pick me up when I flew into town, he was also the only one allowed to take me to the airport. The man runs NASA John Glenn Center, but he would take the mornings off, blowing off who knows who, just to sit with me. Back when I was a kid, and I spent my summers down in Virginia, we’d sit at the airport, split up the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, read and talk. I’d wait until the last minute to board my flight, and he wouldn’t leave until he saw my plane safely take air. It’s a tradition lost to 9/11. Now the poor guy can only drop me off at the curb, like a two-bit taxi driver.

Al Quaida can suck my fat black dick.

It wasn’t until this very moment, as I sit with Dani at the train station, that I realized why he sat with me. I just want to milk every second with her before she’s out of my sight.

“You sure you don’t want me to escort you to your car?” I ask her.

“It’s, like, five stops away. No,” she says.

“You sure you don’t want to stay with me at the hotel?”

“How many other girls have you slept with on this trip?”

Hmmm…I wonder if this number includes screwing a ghost?

I take too long to answer the question.

“I thought so. I don’t want to be another notch on your hotel bedpost. It should be special. No?”

“Sure. A special trip.”

“I’ll come visit you in Cleveland. I’ll meet your family.”

Of course. I bet she’d love to latch on to some relatively normal parents.

“Do you want our first time to be with my mom listening from down the hall?”

“At least with her there, I’ll know your sheets are clean.”

“You got that right.”

We look down the track as we hear her train arriving.

Jerk train.

“
Devo andare adesso, amore,” I have to go now,
she says.

“
Si! Ci vediamo presto. Ti amo.” See you soon. I love you, 
I reply.

What the hell did I just say?

I immediately want to stuff the words back in my mouth as soon as they slip out. “I’m sorry!” I scream as I cover my mouth. “I didn’t mean it! I’m sorry.”

“
Ti voglio bene
, I mean,” I say sheepishly.

Dani chuckles off my futile attempt to stuff the toothpaste back into the tube. She stands in the doorway of the train and waves me over.

“
Non ti preoccupare, caro.
Maybe next time we will say these words to each other. Okay?
Ti voglio bene,
Jason
.
”

I walk her all the way to the door.

“Hey. By the way, the last two paintings on the list, stop screwing around and go get them. This is Napoli. Don’t take no for an answer.
Hai capito?
”

The doors close, and I stand and watch until her train is out of sight.

23 

Up Hill Both Ways

Painting 11: The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula

Painting 12: The Flagellation of Christ

I WAKE UP, AND 
my first thought is of Dani. A nice way to start the morning.

Go get those last two paintings.

Ugh. It’s a good way to start the morning except when she’s reminding me of an impending failure.

The Flagellation of Christ
is on loan to Barcelona and
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula
is in a private collection, owned by Banca Commerciale Italiana.

So the question is, whose dick do I have to suck to get to see these things?

Let’s start with whomever picks up the phone at, Il Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, the Museum that owns
The Flagellation
.

“
Pronto
?” a female voice answers over the phone.

A chick. Awesome! I don’t have to suck dick.

“
Scusi ma Lei parla l’inglese?”
Please speak my language.

“Yes. Um…Very little,” she responds. It’s broken English, but goddamn it I’ll take it.

“
Va bene!
My name is Jason. I’m from America. I’m here in Napoli to see a painting by Caravaggio. I understand that it’s on loan in Spain.
È vero
?

“No,” she replies succinctly.

“No? No you no longer own the painting?” I ask confused.

“No, the Caravaggio. It not to Spain,” she responds in broken English.

What? It’s not
in
Spain. Is that what she means?

“
Pronto?”
she asks, wondering if I’m still there.

“I’m sorry. You do have a Caravaggio, right?” I try to confirm.

“
Si.
We have a Caravaggio.
La Flagellazione di Cristo
,” she says happily.

“
Ma non adesso. Vero
? It’s not here, now?”

“
Senti
,” she says a bit frustrated. “We no have one Caravaggio. Now we have,
due
, two works by the
artista 
Caravaggio.
La Flagellazione di Cristo 
came back, ah, to us yesterday and we have another
Il Martirio di Sant'Orsola
.”