To Tuscany with Love (33 page)

Loud voices from the direction of the hotel drew Hope’s attention. The driver stomped into the street, waving his hands and cursing in Italian. The American woman who had accompanied him inside stormed out a step behind him. Her voice carried to where Hope sat. “This is abominable!” With her hands on her hips and her face red, she leaned toward the Italian and yelled louder. “We will
not
stay here. You have to fix this.”

The driver yelled back. It was obvious to Hope that the man had no intention of fixing anything. He paced back and forth by the van, and the woman continued her insistent demands that he must correct the situation.

A taxi behind them started honking, since now they, as well as their vehicle, partially blocked the street’s traffic. The Italian tromped over to the taxi and spoke to the cab driver. Then, to Hope’s surprise, the van driver got into the taxi and left.

The American tourist ran across the piazza after the cab, pleading and swearing. The taxi didn’t slow down, and soon it was too far ahead for the woman to catch it. She walked back with her head lowered. When the woman reached the stranded van, she kicked the side of it in apparent frustration.

Screw Charlie and his rants that she was worthless. Hope didn’t know if she could help these women, but she had to try. She crossed the piazza and stood by the crying woman who had kicked the van. “I saw what happened. You’re American, aren’t you?”

The woman looked at Hope. She nodded. “The bastard stranded us because we refused to stay in this dump. We prepaid as part of our tour. He told us it was a four-star hotel.”

Even from the outside of the building, Hope could tell that rating was inflated. “Tell me what happened when you went inside.”

“I always go in and look at a room first. None of the places he booked us in has been four-star by my standards, but this one is awful. The room I saw was dirty and the bathrooms are down the hall. Unacceptable. I asked him to book us somewhere else, since he’s our guide as well as our driver. He refused to change our reservation or give us our money back.”

“Have you talked to the hotel personnel?”

“No.”

Unfortunately, the group had no leverage over the hotel. These American women had been wronged, and it made Hope spitting mad. Maybe she wasn’t good at sticking up for herself, but she’d go to battle for an underdog every time. “I don’t know if I can help, but do you mind if I try?”

“Please,” the woman said, “anything you can do, even a partial refund, would help.”

Hope walked to the hotel entrance. In the minuscule lobby, a man stood behind the counter with his arms crossed. A sneer was plastered on his face. This doesn’t look promising, Hope thought. The man had to know that the women wanted a change of venue. This will be a challenge.

Hope smiled at the man and approached the counter. “Good afternoon, sir.”

The man stared at her.

Hope noticed the tour group’s confirmation in front of him had been printed in English. Taking that as a sign that he understood some English, Hope launched into her attack, praying the women standing near her wouldn’t blow her story.

“We have an issue.” Hope leaned over the counter and lowered her voice, as if she had something discreet to share.

She grabbed the notepad and a pen from the counter. “One of our members has, uh, a problem. She has a very contagious foot fungus.” Hope drew a foot with sores all over it and an exclamation point beside it. “And with the communal bathroom”—Hope drew a picture of a hallway with one open door and a sink inside—“I don’t think you want the fungus in there.” Her picture now included a circle with a slash through it, the sign for “no” or “do not enter,” over the bathroom.

Hope looked at the man and was thrilled to see a horrified expression on his face. It was all she could do to keep a straight face. She picked up the confirmation and circled the amount prepaid for their rooms, an amount likely three or four times the going rate for this hotel.

“To save you from this terrible disease entering your hotel,” Hope said, “why don’t you transfer these women to another hotel and forward their payment?” She tapped the circled number.

Hope dug out the brochures from her purse that she had collected during her wanderings today. One of them, she remembered, had advertisements for several hotels, all much nicer than the Hotel Americano. Hope pointed to one of the hotels she had walked past, a very respectable-looking place. “Call here.”

The man looked uncertain. He glanced at the cluster of women in his lobby.

“You don’t want this in your hotel.” Hope pointed to her drawing of the infected foot. “Call.” She pointed to her brochure.

He picked up the phone and spoke in rapid Italian. At the end of the call, he pulled a Hotel Americano checkbook out and wrote a check made out to the new hotel. He offered it to Hope. “Go. Get them out of here.”

Of course he spoke English, Hope thought.

Luckily for the tour group, Hope had experience driving big vehicles. One time, she’d even driven a school bus.

Hope slid in behind the wheel of the van, adjusted the mirrors, and thought, God, please guide my hands so I don’t hit anything. She checked her map one more time. The maze of tiny side streets in the vicinity of the hotel left her clueless. The vehicle had a navigation system, but to Hope’s eyes, it seemed far from state-of-the-art. Still, it was better than nothing. Hope entered the new hotel’s address and was pleased when it plotted a route.

She turned her head to face the women seated behind her. “I say we leave this dump and go find a decent hotel. OK with you?”

The women cheered and clapped. In minutes, they started chattering, leaving Hope to both the driving and the navigating.

Hope was relieved to learn that the device gave audible directions. Negotiating the corners was a bit of a challenge, but she didn’t care. These women had been abandoned by their driver, booked to stay in that dump, and overcharged. All the fury that she couldn’t muster to defend herself against Charlie burned in her now. These women needed her, and she refused to let them down.

While stopped at an intersection, Hope glanced at the map displayed on the guidance screen. It showed them to be almost at their destination—a little farther straight ahead, and then a block or so to the left.

She slowed the van to a crawl as their path traveled up a steep, narrow stone street. Hope hated going uphill with a stick shift. She had bad high school memories of rolling downhill backward with a carload of hooting, cheering friends onboard while she attempted to juggle between the clutch, brake and accelerator. Today, at least, there was no one behind them on the hill. “Whew,” she said in relief when they had reached the top.

At the crest of the hill, the street leveled out and three cars had been parallel-parked directly in front of Hope, two facing right and one facing left. She realized it was a “T” intersection. Sure enough, the navigation system instructed Hope to turn left. Fortunately, in this intersection, the street was wider.

Hope pulled the van forward and then backed up, so she could make the ninety-degree turn. The one-way street ahead angled steeply down, with one narrow walkway to the side and no second lane. Hope couldn’t see the end of it but imagined it opened into a piazza in front of their new hotel. She cautiously steered down the narrow street. With her foot more often on the brake than the accelerator, they crept forward. The tour group had stopped talking in the “T” intersection, when Hope had backed up to make the turn.

It can’t be, Hope thought. The street narrowed more. Now, the space between the van and the building to her right wasn’t even wide enough for a single pedestrian, and the passageway on the left could only accommodate the width of two.

One of the women squeaked in alarm. Two men in their thirties walked side by side toward them. Leading them was a leashed greyhound that meandered side to side.

Hope stopped the van to allow them to pass safely. The closest man practically brushed the side mirror as he walked by. The hotel better be ahead, she thought. She glanced at the rearview mirror. Holy shit! If this was the wrong street, it would be impossible to turn around, and she’d have to back uphill—with a stick shift. Hope groaned at the thought.

She turned off the engine, grabbed her brochure with the hotel’s address, and got out. She jogged up to the men who had walked by and showed them the brochure. Hope pointed to the address of the ladies’ hotel and then down the street that the van sat on. She asked them if the hotel was ahead.

One of the men chuckled. The other shook his head. He turned and faced the spot where Hope had made the last left-hand turn, opposite to the direction that she was now piloting the van. He gestured straight, then left and up the hill.

Wrong, she thought. There was no road that went up the hill from the “T” intersection, only right or left. Should she have taken a right instead of a left at the crest of the hill?

Hope tramped back to the van and then walked beyond it. Maybe, she thought, he was sending her in the wrong direction as a sick joke. She decided to walk farther down the street and, hopefully, find the hotel, or at least a sign for it, ahead.

What Hope found made her heart sink. No hotel. No sign for the hotel. Only a dead end.

She drew a deep breath. These women depended on her. She had no choice. She would back that van uphill.

When she reached it, she asked for one calm volunteer. Emphasis on “calm,” Hope thought. The woman who had gone to inspect their hotel rooms before check-in raised her hand. Hope explained what she needed. The woman’s job was to walk backward and direct from the uphill position, pointing to the right or left, to keep Hope from clipping one of the stone buildings that loomed on each side.

Hope knew how to back up a vehicle. But this was uphill, with a stick shift, and in quarters so tight one could practically touch the buildings on each side.

Hope instructed all of the other women to be quiet. The last thing she needed was a chorus of instructions. “Ready?” she asked the woman who stood behind the van.

“You’re a little to the right,” the woman said. “Go a tad this way.” She gestured with her arm to the left as if she were a traffic cop.

Hope knew that her direction changes had to be in inches, not feet. I hope there’s insurance on this sucker, she thought. She put the van in reverse, moved her foot from the brake to the accelerator and eased it down while letting the clutch up, until the engine caught and propelled the van backward.

Thankfully, they rolled downhill only a short distance before the engine caught, and there was nothing in front of them. Hope bit her bottom lip and focused on the woman behind her.

“Straight. Right. More right. Too much—stop! Left now.”

And so Hope edged that van, inch by inch, uphill. Finally, she reached the “T.”

The two men with the dog whom she had asked for directions? They stood at the top of that cursed alley and had been watching her back uphill. Laughing, no doubt, at the crazy Americans.

Hope was shaking. She pulled the van off to the side as much as possible and turned off the engine. The ladies in the tour group clapped and cheered.

“How about we look for the hotel on foot?” Hope asked. She was met with whole-hearted concurrence from the group.

An elderly Italian woman entered the intersection on foot. Hope went over and asked directions, pointing to her brochure. The woman spoke no English but pointed up the hill. Looking more carefully, Hope realized there was a footpath that snaked up the hill from where she had parked. Their hotel must be at the top. Hope helped the women get their luggage out of the van. She sized up the group and then picked up the suitcases for the oldest two women. Together, they trudged up the path.

Embarrassment swept over Hope when they reached the hotel. A wide, two-way street ran by it. The street she should have found. Breathless from carrying the suitcases,

Hope started to apologize to the women. “Are you kidding?” one asked. “You saved us,” another said. “You’re our hero.”

From the looks on their faces, Hope believed them. She went inside with them and verified that the new hotel would honor the check from the Hotel Americano and the women’s rooms were waiting for them.

A gold clock in the shape of the sun hung over the reception desk. It was almost time for her rendezvous at the Duomo. Hope had two choices. Show up without a vehicle, or take the van.

39

B
ella leaned with the Vespa as it rounded the street corners. She dodged pedestrians who lingered on the narrow streets. She pursed her lips and chewed on the foul air of loneliness. She knew she was feeling sorry for herself but couldn’t seem to break out of it.

Bella recognized the shops she passed. The Duomo emerged in the gap of converging streets. Bella throttled down the Vespa. People swarmed the sidewalks and streets for the ritual nighttime stroll. Her pace slowed to a crawl.

An overweight man in plaid orange-and-brown shorts and a white stretched-out T-shirt stepped in front of Bella. She braked. She lurched forward on the seat. Bella felt the scooter’s weight shift to the right. Instinctively, she planted a foot on the street to steady herself. A car honked behind her. Bella clenched her hands on the scooter grips and glared at the oaf who blocked her path.