Chapter Twenty-Two

THE TOURIST PART III

Willie sits sipping coffee at a cafe directly across from the Spanish Steps. Prostitutes and priests pass by. From a distance, a white coated waiter approaches from between tables. Approaches; approaches. He arrives and hands Willie a yellow telegram.

"TELEGRAM" on screen, many typed words beneath.

"Grazi," Willie says.

These are his long-awaited instructions. They outline an itinerary to northern Italy, a city named Vicenza where exists a large American army base and a CIA station as well as the target of his adventure, a mysterious writer named May Barber he's to convince to do something. She's the most dangerous of the dangerous.

Willie has been in Italy now for two weeks, receiving daily calls from Poofer which have sounded scarier and scarier, centered around some guy "in a black hat" who Poofer insists he was "obligated to please." Otherwise, "poof" would go the professor's esteemed job and reputation. This morning, a final call: from Gloria back at the university informing Willie that Poofer was rushed to the hospital last night after a sudden heart attack which left him buried beneath a cascade of books and papers.

"Will he survive?" Willie had asked.

"Does anyone care?" Gloria had answered.

Now at the cafe, Willie thinks about his mission with misgiving. The adventure so far has been as boring as a Henry James novel, albeit with great food and scenery, paid for by his mother's ample credit line. Ahead waits the climax. He'll be putting himself into the hands of this Barber person, who might enlighten him or destroy him. This, in a country where he knows nobody, and where his vocabulary has expanded to twelve phrases, including "Quanto costa?" and "Gelato chocolatta."

He has toughened, however, in that he now looks forward to his fate.

VICENZA
Vicenza is a city near mountains where most of the people look German and the core center of town is medieval. One could be living eight hundred years ago amid castle walls, the native populace strolling quaintly, but for hyperactive American G.I.'s with boom boxes on their shoulders blasting loudly. Willie buries himself within his tweed sportjacket and tries to look native.

To be fair, he sat next to an American lieutenant and his girlfriend last evening at an open-air restaurant and found them well-mannered and intelligent. They both, in fact, had attended Yale. The man enlisted after college, because he'd "wanted to join the fight against terror." Handsome people. An American centurion and his mate come overseas-- to Italy, appropriately. The turnings of Empire. They conversed about books and writing.

"You write?" the pretty girl asked Willie.

"Not very well!" he replied.

That touch of home now bolsters Willie as he boards a green bus, takes out a Michelin map and begins studying street signs.

The street: he steps off and ascends a hill. At the top glimmers a white villa surrounded by pine trees. This has been described in his instructions. The morning sun is hot. He's sweating. He's very thirsty. The point of his quest in sight, his legs are weak. The wrong messenger, he is, he knows. Hapless messenger. The stone house stands before him. Black, ornate doors. What wounded warrior waits inside?