I heard the commotion in the Grand Bassin before I saw it. It was Izzy. She couldn’t stay away from water. Or out of it.

There were signs everywhere warning people to not get in the water with les p’tits voiliers that floated on the wind from one edge of the octagonal pond to another. Because it was a day warmed by summer sunshine, the Grand Bassin was crowded with toy sailboats with colorful sails representing assorted countries and their corresponding national flag.

Since we lived just a short walk from the Jardin de Luxembourg, we had our own little boats. Mine flew the sails of La Albiceleste, the blue and white national flag of Argentina. There were many American flag boats on the pond on any given day, so I wanted mine to be distinct. Besides, I danced the Argentine tango and I thought that qualified me for the selection.

I went to the edge of the Grand Bassin to take some photos of Izzy splashing in the water. First, she ran headlong toward the middle of the pond. Ducks quacked and scattered into the breeze. A blue-uniformed gendarme blew his whistle. And children screeched because their toy boats were bobbing in Izzy’s wake.

Then she turned and ran toward me. I took a series of photos as she retrieved her boat. Izzy’s p’tit voilier was one of a kind. Its black sails were hung on a square rig, which made it faster than any of the other boats. And it had a Jolly Roger – the sign of a true buccaneer.

“Get out of the water,” the gendarme shouted to Izzy as he gestured insistently. “Get out of the water now!” He stood at the edge of the pond and tooted his police whistle several times to emphasize his point. Izzy stayed where she was.

“I am sorry, sir, but I must invoke the right of parley. According to the Code of the Brethren set down by the pirates Morgan and Bartholomew, you must take me to your captain. I know the Code. And if an adversary demands parley, you can do them no harm until the parley is complete,” Izzy said as she stood firmly in her pirate stance, water sloshing up to her knees, holding her boat up for the policeman to see the skull-and-crossbones.

The gendarme was quaking and rendered speechless. He blew his whistle once again at Izzy.

“Izzy, we can’t say that pirates make their own rules.” I stifled a laugh.

“But it’s true, papa,” my little girl said to me in her perfect Parisian French.

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s true,” I responded with a certain amount of resignation. It wasn’t easy being the father of a pirate. Especially one who knew the right of parley.

To try to defuse the tension, I stood up and shook the gendarme’s white-gloved hand a single time with an assurance it would never happen again. But I knew I shouldn’t promise my pirate-daughter would stay out of the water. As King Canute said when he was unable to hold back the tide: Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws.

“She’s just like you,” I said as her mother walked up to me to check on the hubbub. She was cradling our baby son, Patrizio, in her arms. “She can’t stay away from the water. I wonder who she gets that from.”

Izzy looked at me with the devilish look in her eye that I always found so alluring. She didn’t abide arbitrary rules. Especially ones about staying out of the water.

“Let’s be pirates,” she said to our daughter.

I shrugged at the gendarme. He scowled at me and did a little Parisian lip pout. Then Izzy curled Patrizio tightly into her crossed arms and jumped in the Grand Bassin with a colossal splash.

I joined them.

“That’s your chair,” I said as I motioned to a leather-backed armchair at my favorite table in Café Tortoni. “I wouldn’t let anyone sit there. No one. I didn’t care how important they were. Or how famous they were. I was superstitious about it. I always hoped you would come back. I wished for you to come back. And here you are. Yes, that’s your chair. And for this one extraordinary moment, everything is perfect in the world.”

I was exhilarated to be in Buenos Aires with Izzy for our extended honeymoon. I wanted to show her everything I experienced during the year I spent without her. I had missed her terribly. And I tried to fill the chasm of my grief with intellectual and creative quests. I studied Italian. I learned to dance the Argentine tango. I met interesting people.

I traveled to Patagonia with the poet Silvina Ocampo. I savored every syllable as Jorge Borges recited one of his poems to me, first in Spanish and then in English. I immersed myself in the words and thoughts of Alfonsina Storni. And I read armloads of books, many of them at my table at Café Tortoni, where there was always an empty chair beside me, waiting for Izzy’s return.

Then, she was there. She was sitting beside me. In her chair.

Izzy looked comfortable in her seat as she annotated the Agatha Christie novel The Clocks that she bought a few days earlier at La Librería de Ávila, the oldest bookstore in the city. Izzy was an avid admirer of Hercule Poirot, which probably explained her prodigious powers of deduction and intuition. I watched with great fascination as she inscribed notes in the page margins and underlined passages while she sipped her hot chocolate. I had visualized her in that chair a hundred times. But to be sitting next to her, absorbing every nuance of her, was nearly overwhelming.

Every rare once in a while in our lives, the real thing is more potent than the fantasy.

What I didn’t anticipate – what wasn’t part of my imagined time with her in my café – was that Izzy was going to have a burst of creative inspiration that would once again change the trajectory of our lives. My fantasy was that we would go to milongas and tango late into the night. Then make silent love in the madrugada when we skulked back to our room just before dawn.

We did.

We also rose early and spent most mornings at my favorite table in Café Tortoni. I was delighted to see many of my Argentine friends there. And somewhat remarkably, I was able to get my same table, as always. Argentinians are fiercely loyal. And passionate. Once you’re genuine friends with them, you’re friends for life. It didn’t matter that I had been gone a year; it was as if I just left yesterday. My table was mine once again.

“I have wondered what you did here during that time,” Izzy said. She had an insatiable curiosity. She wanted to know everything, and her questions were unceasing. “I see that you know people. Thank you for introducing me. What else did you do?”

“Look at this,” I said as I reached in my leather satchel and pulled out a thick stack of letters in envelopes cinched with red silk cord secured by a bosun’s whistle knot. “I wrote letters to you while I sat here. But I didn’t have the courage to send them. I thought you were getting married in Padua. So, I carried them around with me. And this place, and this moment, feels like the right time for you to have them.”

Izzy picked up the bundle of letters and paused. Most people would have untied the knot and pulled the letters from their envelopes. Or flipped the bundle in their hands. Izzy raised the letters to her face, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply.

“I can smell you in these letters,” she said as she leaned close to me. “It’s the one thing that always brings me back to you. Whenever we’re apart, I think about the scent of you.”

As much as I wanted to leave right then, we, instead, spent the entire day at our table at Café Tortoni reading and discussing the letters I wrote to Izzy from Buenos Aires. She didn’t want to rush through them. She carefully opened each letter and smoothed it flat. She examined every detail – my handwriting, the color of the ink, the watermark on the paper – and then commented on each aspect. After she spent several minutes scrutinizing a letter like Poirot, she then made tiny pencil marks by the coordinates I added in the headers. Then the barrage of questions came about every facet I wrote about. She wanted to know about people and places and foods and dance steps. Details. It made my pulse race when she said, “Tell me something I don’t know about you.” It was always her favorite question.

Izzy teased me by asking how well I knew the remote past tense in Italian. It’s not used often in spoken Italian, but she pressed me on it. Then she looked sufficiently pleased when I was able to tell her some of the stories of my time in Buenos Aires while speaking in a very particular Italian verb form that indicated an unspecified time in the past. Izzy loved to startle me and challenge my mind. I vowed to keep learning. And since I was back in Buenos Aires, I made a note to send a telegram to my Italian language tutor. I was looking forward to seeing her. She was extraordinary.

Izzy elided easily into the intellectual society in the Alfonsina Storni Salon. She enjoyed speaking Spanish, and so did I. There was a magic in the easy flow of the days. One topic of discussion in the Salon was how we, as an artist community, could encourage more art and artists in Buenos Aires. And beyond.

“It’s an opportunity to nurture creativity,” Izzy said to the group one morning in May. “We could create a space for artists to create and display art. And art doesn’t have to be just painting. It could be photographs. And ceramics. And reading. And music.”

I knew we were on the precipice of something new and exciting. And we had the resources to make it a reality.

“Il Patrizio left us an endowment that will allow us to fund a foundation,” Izzy said. I could see a few people around the table make a gesture by quivering one hand that was the quiet Argentinian version of appreciation. “We can start today.”

When we returned to our hotel, I had something else on my mind. But Izzy wanted to plan. Before we left the hotel that morning, she asked the concierge if he could secure architectural paper and a selection of drawing pencils. And an architect’s drafting table. And several easels. And watercolor paints. And a selection of black inks with dipping pens.

“Will all of that fit in our room?” I asked her as she described all the materials she ordered.

“It won’t fit in here. But could you talk to your friends at Café Tortoni and get us a space for a small studio? That would allow our creative friends to come in and out to give us ideas.” Izzy gave me the look she did – half sensual and half insistent – that made it clear I was going to deliver on her request. I wasn’t sure if Café Tortoni would want to grant us what amounted to an artist’s studio. But I’d try.

“I’ll ask. Maybe they will. They love having artists there. Perhaps we could offer them a stipend. It would be worth it to us, and worth it to them.”

“You know what would be ideal? Yes, we can solicit ideas from the literary society. But what if we display our work every day and we ask for concepts from everyone who visits the café?” Izzy had been raised in elite society, but she had a communitarian philosophy about art that was perfect for that era in Argentina.

When the concierge rang our room to ask where we wanted the supplies, I asked him to please have everything delivered to Café Tortoni.

“I need to get over there and ask for a studio. Or at least warn them that the supplies are coming,” I said as Izzy dropped her dress and stepped in the bathtub.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” she said as she splashed a few drops of water at me. I left immediately. I wanted to get back quickly.

Izzy arranged her drafting table and easels in an anteroom at Café Tortoni. The owner was captivated by Izzy’s vision of supporting the arts. That was a mission at the café – they had the Alfonsina Room dedicated to tango. And they had the library where we were meeting. Izzy was there with an idea that complemented their work.

“I propose that we call it El gremio de artistas – The Artist’s Guild,” Izzy said to the literati gathered around her. “I originally thought we could name it Sociedad Il Patrizio, but I didn’t think that would be clear enough for people to understand what we intend. Many of you knew him – or know of him. He was one of the most influential photographers and artists of this century.”

“He left an amazing art legacy. And during his last year, he asked me to carry on with that work. Not with grand balls on Capri – although we will carry on with the Blue and White Gala as a fundraiser for our project – but to encourage art and artists everywhere. We originally thought about developing a location in Capri, but it’s not the ideal setting. It’s too transient. Thomas and I live in Paris, but there is already so much available there. Then we came here to Argentina. Thomas loves it here so much – and now so do I. And we thought, why don’t we create a cultural center here in Buenos Aires and link it to Paris and Capri? We can build an artist’s guild here in its own space, with instruction, supplies, resources. And we will have a library for readers, and a writing room for authors. And, of course, we will have music.”

Izzy radiated her undeniable aura. And the assembled group was enraptured. She was so very attractive. And she was such a persuasive speaker. Hands slapped on the tables and shouts of “Vamos, vamos!” punctuated the end of Izzy’s speech.

“So, we’re going to buy this?” I asked Izzy as we stood in the middle of the two-story library in a building in the Sorrento neighborhood of Buenos Aires. We weren’t far from Café Tortoni and the Plaza Mayo.

“We can live on the upper floor when we’re here. And there is space for a studio and a gallery. We will have to do some renovations. But I think this place will be perfect,” she said.

Izzy found the location for El gremio de artistas very quickly. While I was at my Italian lessons each day, she spent her time looking at properties in the Sorrento and San Telmo neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. She was determined to work quickly.

“This is a very beautiful building. Tell me the truth. Did you choose it because it reminds you of our apartment in Paris?”

Izzy smiled a shy smile.

“It does. Only, this is much larger. It has space we can use for studios and a street entrance for the artists. Plus, it has a beautiful living space.” She turned to the agent showing us the property and said, “Could you please give us a few minutes alone upstairs?”

After we bought the building, a series of events happened rapidly. Izzy rallied influential artists to help with The Artist’s Guild. She talked journalists into writing feature articles about the Guild and its concept for promoting art in the city. And she hired artists-in-residence to staff the foundation.

“We endowed a scholarship for five students to attend Universidad Nacional de las Artes. We’re conducting an art competition for students in secundaria. And on a single day, we are going to review their portfolios and choose the candidates. The key criterion is that the students must come from a less fortunate background. We’re not seeking conventional artists from wealthy families.”

“How do you find all these people?” I asked. Izzy’s energy was undeniable. But this wasn’t her city. I knew how she got things done in Padua and Capri, but not in Buenos Aires.

“Here’s something I learned very quickly about Argentina. Everybody knows a guy. Whenever I ask for anything, the first answer I get is, I know a guy. When I first heard them say it, I thought they were teasing me. But they weren’t. They really do know a guy. Need a plumber? I know a guy. Need to file government paperwork? I know a guy. Need to hire a general director for The Artist’s Guild? I know a guy. And when they say a guy, they mean a man or a woman. Doesn’t matter. They know a guy.”

“It sure is different than Paris, where no matter what you ask, the first answer is, that cannot be done.” I laughed as I considered the cultural differences. “In Paris, everything is impossible. In Buenos Aires, they know a guy.”

We spent the next weeks arranging for the grand opening of The Artist’s Guild. We hired local contractors to help us prepare El gremio de artistas. And we invited the neighborhood for a giant party on the day. The only thing we didn’t anticipate was the sobremesa, which is the hours and hours that happen after the party, when Argentinians don’t go home. The owner of Café Tortoni couldn’t believe it when Izzy and I showed up the next morning wearing the same clothes we wore the night before. Somehow in the middle of the night – and after several drinks – I announced that we would pay for breakfast for anyone who would stay up with us until the dawn. I thought maybe a couple people would. Little did I know dozens of our newfound friends would take me up on the offer.

“No sunrise is ever wasted,” I said as the first rays of the sun glanced off the obelisk on the Plaza de Mayo.

It took us a hours to say goodbye to our new friends after breakfast. Another observation about Argentinians – saying goodbye is a multi-step ritual. I got more hugs on that morning than I had gotten in the decade prior. Izzy and I couldn’t have been happier.

The hardest good-bye was saying good-bye to Argentina. We needed to get back to Paris for a while, but we promised we would be back at least twice a year. And we would stay a while. I was fortunate to arrange some portrait clients while I was there, so besides checking on The Artist’s Guild – which was in good hands with our executive director – we also wanted to be in the Paris of South America. It felt like home to us.

“What would you like to do today?” I asked Izzy as we laid in bed and the sun was peeking in our bedroom window. We had been back in Paris for a couple weeks, and Izzy had spent nearly every waking minute working on The Artist’s Guild. That’s why it didn’t surprise me when she came home a couple days earlier and told me she endowed a ceramics scholarship at Beaux-Arts for a student who needed it. And that she volunteered to teach at the school.

“I would like to take a walk along the Seine this morning,” she said with a little yawn. She always looked beautiful, but I thought she was the most beautiful when she first woke up.

“I would like that. Would it be okay to visit the Louvre for a little while? I would like to do a reconnaissance for a photo shoot I have to do with a new client.”

“Someone famous?”

“Yes, very famous.”

“And beautiful?”

“No one is as beautiful as you, my love,” I said as I kissed her neck.

“As you say,” she purred.

“I need to visit the Galerie des Antiques,” I said to Izzy as I pointed down a long passageway that led to a room lined in grey and red marble. The statue of Venus de Milo was on a pedestal in the middle of the room. “Would you please stand over there and let me take a few shots?” I wanted to test my Leica and Hasselblad cameras in that lighting.

Izzy was wearing a sheer white blouse and a cerulean miniskirt. She pulled her hair up behind her as she looked off in the distance with her neck at the same angle as the statue. Although there were tourists around, no one dared enter the space while Izzy was there. A couple of them snapped surreptitious photos.

“Have I ever told you how much you look Venus de Milo?” I asked as I clicked through a roll of film.

Izzy looked directly at me, pulled a ribbon from her hair, and threw it at me. I took the final shot on that film roll. It was my favorite.

In Paris that year, spring arrived slowly, then all at once. Izzy and I had warmed ourselves by our fireplace nearly every evening in January and February. Then we slopped around in the cold and snow and mud in March. But by April, glorious April, the cherry trees were in full bloom on the Trocadero and the Champs de Mars. Pink blossoms festooned the city from up high and along the boulevards.

The City of Lights became the City of Blooms overnight, it seemed. While there were a thousand places to appreciate flowers unfurling into springtime, my favorite setting to see the cerisier was at the Square Jean-XXIII. I met a client there early one gelid spring morning for a session among an explosion of blossoms and took her photo in front of the Fontaine de la Vierge. The combination of the blush on her cheeks coupled with the pink of the cherry blossoms produced distinctive photos that she said thrilled her. I printed one in large scale and had it framed for her mansion in Passy. She displayed that one adjacent to a photo I took of her inside Notre Dame with the South Rose Window behind her glowing like a lapis lazuli kaleidoscope.

A couple weeks earlier, when it still felt like winter didn’t want to yield, I asked Izzy to join me for a photography session at Jardin des Combattants Espagnols de la Nueve, which is on the grounds of the Hôtel de Ville. I had just gotten my brand-new Hasselblad 500C – the same camera Sid Avery used to take portraits of Audrey Hepburn and that Ansel Adams used to create his famous black-and-white photograph called Moon and Half Dome. I was eager to take some new photos of Izzy with my new equipment.

The day was cold and grey, and there was still a smattering of snowflakes in the park – a perfect day for a photo session with the contrast of new blossoms. Giant magnolias flourished, and the bright yellow daffodils poking their heads through the snowbank and quivering in the breeze made me think of the A.A. Milne poem Daffodowndilly:

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
Winter is dead.

We had an audience of two ancient Parisians during our photo session. When I took a break to load a new film magazine on the 500C, a stooped old man toddled over, tapped his walking stick on the ground, and said to us – curiously in Spanish – how fortunate we were to be in the park when les jonquilles were in bloom. Then he lifted his red Basque beret, ran his furrowed fingers through his grizzled hair, pulled his hat back on tight, and rejoined the old woman who was with him. They stood under the equestrian statue of Étienne Marcel, leaning against each other in the chill as Izzy and I continued our photo session. When we were done, I glanced over at the couple. The old man took my smile as his cue to say more.

“Me basta mirarte para saber que con vos me voy a empapar el alma,” he said in Spanish. Then he spoke in French as he continued. “By just looking at you I know you will fulfill my soul. I said the words from that poem to my lovely bride as we walked here to La Nueve to see how the Narcissus jonquilla were blooming today.”

“Cortázar!” Julio Cortázar!” I said excitedly. It was a poetic moment in the garden, but I didn’t expect an Argentine poem from the old man. Then I spoke half in Spanish and half in French because I was so flustered. “Yes, I saw him read when I was in Buenos Aires. I had heard he was living in Paris now. What a beautiful poem. And what beautiful words for your beautiful bride.”

“Sí, sí, sí, es verdad. Es Cortázar, el argentino. And I thought that phrase was perfect to describe the flowers of the day. And my wife. Ambos. She continues to bloom.” He looked directly at his wife and gazed endearingly at her. She wrinkled the corners of her eyes and covered her mouth with the back of her hand.

 The old man curled his long black scarf another loop around his neck, walked closer, and told a story about how La Nueve – the Ninth Company – were the first to enter Paris in August 1944 during the liberation. He was a soldier in that platoon. He and his wife were Catalonian refugees from the Spanish Civil War who had escaped to the south of France, along with thousands of Spanish Republicans, when Franco seized control of Spain. Then World War II started a couple years after they arrived, and France conscripted Spanish immigrants into the war effort. The old man fought for France for more than three years. His wife explained that they walked from their nearby apartment to the Jardin des Combattants Espagnols de la Nueve every chance they could as a remembrance of that time.

“We especially love to come here in the springtime when the flowers are in bloom and the park is nearly ignored. But you two have not forgotten,” the old woman said quietly. Then she gestured for her husband to show us the war medal he had pinned on the lapel of his suit jacket.

I asked the couple if they would let me take their portrait. They looked long at each other, gripped hands, and agreed. I took extreme close-ups to capture the etchings of their age. I also took several wider shots of Izzy with the couple. The old woman slipped her hand into Izzy’s hand in one of the shots.

As I was adjusting my aperture for another photo, I overheard the old woman speaking in a wispy voice to Izzy, first in Spanish, then in Catalan. I don’t know how she sensed that Izzy would understand her. But I stood aside and watched what was unfolding like it was a movie. Izzy spoke animatedly in Catalan. Then the old woman grinned and gasped. The old man began to wipe away a tear. Izzy kissed him on his cheek. I wished I could have taken a picture then, but it would have broken the magic of the moment.

They talked for nearly half an hour as I stood to the side, kicking my toes into the ground to warm my feet.

“This day has been an absolute pleasure, neta,” the old woman said as she stroked Izzy’s hair, then held her face in her slender and sun-dappled hands. The old woman called Izzy, granddaughter, a Catalan term of endearment for a young woman. Izzy cried when she hugged her and didn’t look like she wanted to let go.

“We will see you here again,” Izzy said to the couple as they hobbled away.

In early April, the wisteria presented their sweet purple blooms on the Île de la Cité. The boulevards were awakening, and the brasseries were swarming with patrons, who were smoking while they read their newspapers and books. Others sat back idly and watched people stroll by on the streets.  

“I made an appointment at la mairie for our civil ceremony,” I said to Izzy as we sat under a colossal wisteria bush on the terrace at Au Vieux Paris d’Arcole. “It will be this coming Monday.”

“Really? Monday, April 20th? In Paris? Perfect. Did you know that twenty is my favorite number?” she asked as she flipped her hair back over her shoulder and then brushed away a fallen flower petal from our table. We had submitted our paperwork to the local authorities in our district a few weeks earlier, and – as with everything in France – it took a bit of planning and a smidgeon of luck to secure a marriage date.

“Can you have more than one favorite number? I know you like thirteen. And seventeen. I will admit I know you love the number twenty. It’s one of the reasons I requested that day for our wedding. And Izzy, there’s an extra piece of magic about that date. On April 20th, there will be a new moon…and a solar eclipse. It’s an alignment of the planets – and the satellites. It’s going to be a ring of fire eclipse. The most beautiful variety. And it is that day. Our wedding day.”

Izzy wore an ivory-colored slip dress, a baby’s breath tiara, and she tied pink ribbons in two places in her long hair. I wore a tuxedo.

During the winter, Izzy had spent a lot of time creating exquisite bouquets from flowers she selected at the Rungis Market pavillion des fleurs. Oftentimes, she filled our living space with dozens of vases of cut flowers from the market. For our wedding day, she created a breathtaking spring nosegay that included pink and white roses, lilies, and orchids. And she made a boutonniere for me with a single pink tea rose.

“I love you, Thomas,” Izzy said to me as she pinned the boutonniere on my white dinner jacket before we left our apartment. “You are my love. I know I don’t speak in poetry like you do. But you have given me more words and more love than I could have ever imagined. I never told you, but when I jumped in the waters of the Blue Grotto, that was the first real act of rebellion in my life. I felt you release that in me. And for that moment, and all the moments since…I have loved you. As you said, every molecule of me is a molecule of you.”

I felt a surge of love that nearly brought me to my knees.

“Izzy. Isa. Isabella. You are the love of my life. You were from the moment you said let’s be pirates. It started at that moment. And now we are at this moment. Let’s be married.”

 “Vous êtes unis par le marriage – you are united by marriage – and you are considered married in the eyes of the Republic of France and of the world,” the officier de l’état civil declared after our brief wedding ceremony. We were presented our livret de famille, had a small party in our apartment that evening, and embarked on our extended honeymoon the next day.

First, we went south to see if we could find some warmth in late April in Juan-les-Pins, a small and elegant town nestled between Cannes and Nice on the Côte d'Azur.

“Shall we order a sloe gin fizz?” I asked Izzy as we lounged by the pool the day after we arrived. “Scott and Zelda used to stay here, and the butler told me the Fitzgeralds always drank sloe gin.”

Izzy laughed and stuck her tongue out.

“I’ll take a pastis, please,” she said as the waiter slid quickly and efficiently over to us. Then she used her thumb to point to me. “And my friend, Fitz, will have his usual sloe gin fizz.”

“Are you making fun of me?” I asked as I rolled toward her on my blue-striped pool chair. “Okay, I’m no F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I can at least drink his drink. Later I might channel some other heroes and drink their drinks. I wonder what Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway drank when they were here. I’ll find out.”

“Yes, and I can be Edith Piaf. Or Marilyn Monroe. I’m probably sitting in her chair right now. Wouldn’t that be your fantasy?” she asked as she wrinkled her nose.

“My fantasy is being here – or anywhere – with you. Now, if you decided to wear a dress like the one Marilyn wore to Jack Kennedy’s birthday celebration…well.”

Izzy huffed. Got up. Looked over her shoulder as she walked away. Then she dove like a dolphin into the pool.

“I’d like to see Marilyn Monroe dive like that,” she shouted as she splashed water at me. More water got on the waiter bringing our drinks than got on me. Izzy pulled herself up on the ladder and slipped out of the pool. Every eye was on her as she stalked toward me like a minx.

After a couple weeks in Juan-les-Pins, we decided we should see something else. Izzy wanted to take me to meet her family. And to take care of some legal items. But there was a diversion.

When we landed in Milan, there was news everyone was talking about. The Corriere della Sera featured blaring headlines with mug shots of two people we knew.

DUO ARRESTED: ACCUSED OF INT’L FRAUD.

The front-page stories, in Corriere della Sera and all the international newspapers, were about Izzy’s ex-fiancé and my old work colleague, Jonathan. They were not only being prosecuted for fraud in Italy (an irony that was lost on no one), but they were wanted by Interpol for extensive financial crimes in England, France, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and the United States. Each jurisdiction indicted them, and after their trial in Italy, they faced tribunals in multiple countries.

The financial fraud that Izzy’s ex-fiancé and Jonathan perpetrated was for millions upon millions of dollars. But they got tangled up with the wrong people. People who demanded a reckoning. Izzy’s ex-fiancé and Jonathan created a pyramid scheme and stole money from highly connected investors. Their case unwound when Izzy talked to Il Patrizio about the two. Il Patrizio knew. And knew what to do.

Izzy told me that Il Patrizio considered many forms of retribution. He had acquaintances who had been duped by the thieves. In Sicily, those guys would have met a brutal end. But Il Patrizio considered that the best revenge was to expose the criminals for the fraud and make them pay in long prison sentences in the most dangerous prison in Italy. And to destroy them. Financially and psychologically.

“Go see them and make sure they know your role in their disgrace,” Il Patrizio wrote to me in one of his last letters. “The best form of retribution is their public shame.”

Three days after Izzy and I arrived in Milan, I visited Jonathan at San Vittore Prison.

“Hey, buddy. I’m so glad to see you,” Jonathon said through the rusting bars of the maximum-security visitor area. He gripped the grimy bars separating us and leaned close. He was panting and desperate. His half-opened eyes were darting erratically and involuntarily. He whispered anxiously, “I really need your help.”

I sat back and glowered at Jonathan for a long time. I didn’t say a word. He was a broken man. He had fresh cuts on his face and scabbed-over scars that looked to be a few weeks old. He was filthy. Unshaved. Unshowered.

“I need money, man,” he said, poking his hands through the bars as if I were going to hand him a wad of cash. “They’re extorting me here. And I can’t pay. It’s really bad. I don’t have money to buy clothes or soap. I need money to buy favors. It’s deadly in here without it.”

I didn’t react.

“Tell me what you did to Antonia,” I growled through my teeth.

“What are you talking about, man? Antonia? Who’s? Who’s Antonia?”

My wrath was broiling. I was Krakatoa about to erupt and spew lava on Jonathan for his mendacity and feigned stupidity. But I contained myself. I made a mental note to talk to the guard about Jonathan later. Prisons and prisoners don’t care about thieves, but they despise crimes against women. And they make the perpetrators pay. There is an honor code among criminals. I wasn’t going to let Jonathan be only a financial crimes prisoner. He would be known for what he did.

“It was me,” I said dispassionately as I stared at Jonathan. “I want you to know it was me who got you put in here. Me.”

“What do you mean, it was you?” Jonathan asked as he pulled his grubby hands back inside the bars. He nervously rubbed the bloody crust on his knuckles.

“I should have encouraged Izzy to carve your eye out when she had the chance at Lago di Braies. But I held back. Then, Antonia, when she finally told me what happened in Mexico City years before, begged me to not seek revenge in anger. And I agreed, as hard as it was to say I would resist the urge to wring your neck. But I couldn’t let it go. And I thought about retribution. How you needed to pay. And how I wanted you to know. I got influential people – people in positions of power – to pay attention to what you were doing. Your crimes. And now you will pay. You are nothing. You are dirt. You will have nothing for the rest of your life. When you leave this prison after many years, if you are eligible for libertà condizionata – your conditional release – there will be men who will be watching you. And they will make sure that you do no more than live like a rat in the gutter.”

I was seething and spitting out words as my anger erupted. The volcano could not be contained. I was glad I was there by myself. I wouldn’t want Izzy to see me like this. Antonia, either.

“Help me, man. Help me,” Jonathan said as he started to sob and wipe his nose on his sleeve. He shouted, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry. You’re just sorry you were caught. And you will be sorry for that for the rest of your life,” I said as I calmed, and the anger cooled. “This is your immurement. I only wish they could wall you in and leave you to rot. But this will be worse. You will spend every single day of the rest of your life walled up in your own mind. The claustrophobia of it will be crushing. You will think of me every day. Meanwhile, today is the last day I will ever think of you.”

At my prompt, the prison guard grabbed Jonathan by the collar of his prison uniform. And when Jonathan flailed his arms to resist, the guard pulled out a leather sap and smacked Jonathan on his temple. Jonathan buckled and fell to the floor. Then the guard twisted his arm behind his back and made him stand. Jonathan was screaming as he was being pushed through a metal door and down a corridor.

I didn’t feel a single tinge of remorse for Jonathan’s suffering.

Izzy didn’t need to see her ex-fiancé to tell him. Everyone in Padua and Venice told him that she knew. That was enough for her.

But Izzy wanted to tell her grandmother.

Her grandfather had passed away, and her father was gone. That meant that because I was married to the heiress, I had special legal standing.

“Grandmother, this is Thomas,” Izzy said in Italian. I had never heard her speak so formally – and so tensely. “We are married now, and by Italian law, Thomas is the rightful executor of all family assets – property, titles, and money. We have already consulted the law offices and the constabulary. All the necessary transactions are complete. Your role as trustee has been discharged and you no longer have providence over these matters.”

Izzy’s grandmother at first held firm. Then she started to shake.

“Oh, my dear Isabella, I was just looking out for what was best for you. I am so sorry.”

“You are only sorry you don’t have control. You made choices. You are the one who made my father leave. And you severed my links to our family because I wouldn’t marry a criminal. You did see that he is being called to account for his criminality in multiple countries. Correct? He wanted to plunder our family fortune. And use me to do it. Then throw me away like yesterday’s rotten fish. Now Thomas is the trustee. And he won’t steal. He has more money than he needs in four generations. But I do know we will do good with it.”

Izzy’s grandmother pretended she was ill. Then she called Il Marchese and La Marchesa di Dandolo to the villa to ask them to intervene on her behalf. It didn’t work. Especially when La Marchesa remembered so vividly our meeting on Santorini and what Izzy said to her: “Non e’ romantico incontrare il tuo amore in una libreria?” Wouldn’t it be romantic to meet your love in a bookstore?

We left for Buenos Aires the next day.

Il Patrizio passed away in November. Even though I had known him for only a white-hot year, I felt the loss like I had known him a lifetime. As if we were related. In fact, I grieved his passing much more than either of my parents. He was in the center of a nearly inexplicable circle that involved Izzy, her return to me, my burgeoning photography avocation, and a satisfying morsel of retribution. I don’t think it would be too much to say I loved him for all of it.

Since Il Patrizio’s death, Izzy and I wrote each other daily. In one of her recent letters, she told me she was concluding her time in Capri. What I didn’t mention in my last letter to her was that I was in Paris.

VIA PRIVATE COURIER

6 December 19__

Paris, 6^th Arrondissement, 48° 51′ 24.5″ N, 2° 19′ 59.8″ E

Dear Izzy,

I glanced into the darkness of the Paris sky and saw Orion’s Belt. I had taken a midnight walk along the Seine because I couldn’t sleep. And I was thinking about how glorious it would be for you to be here with me, my love. We would sit under the morning stars. We would light a warm fire. Curl up under a blanket. Sip tea (with cream). Later, when the baker opened his boulangerie, we would savor a croissant fresh out of his oven.

Everything would happen slowly. We would snuggle. Talk about the constellations. Wonder what the ancients contemplated about the brightness of Mars in the December sky.

You are a navigator. A pirate. If you would have been alive millennia ago, you would have found your way by the stars. You still do. I have provided you map coordinates to find me. Please do.

Thomas___

P.S. The courier will also hand to you an airplane ticket to Paris. Bring nothing. We will buy new. I will explain later. I will greet you at the airport.

Izzy came to Paris three days later.

“You cannot imagine how much I missed you,” I said as I swirled her in an arc outside of passport control. Her trench coat flared and whipped up in the air. One of her shoes fell off. Several people cheered when we spun about. Izzy kissed me wetly and deeply, then pointed her toes and slid her foot back in her shoe.

“What is happening?” she asked with a quizzical look on her face. She laughed as I squeezed her firm hips through the silky fabric of her polka dot dress. “You were supposed to be in New York. Now we’re in Paris. How?”

“More on that later. I am done in New York for now. The better news is that I have a surprise for you,” I said as I beckoned to a red-jacketed porter. Although I told Izzy in my letter that it was okay to bring nothing, she brought two suitcases, a trunk, and an art case.

“Will I like the surprise?” Izzy asked.

“I think you will. We have a short drive into the city. Then it will be revealed. Patience, my little pirate.”

Our taxi ride from Orly to the 6th Arrondissement took less than an hour. Izzy spent most of our travel time with her head against the car window, taking in the views of Paris. We held hands. My heart fluttered like a little sparrow when she lifted my hand and kissed the back of it as we rolled up the Boulevard St-Jacques.

“I went to art school right there at Beaux-Arts,” Izzy said as she glided out of the taxi and pointed across the square. “I spent a lot of time in Le Quartier Latin.”

“How would you like to spend a lot more time here?” I asked with an expectant smile on my face. I kicked at the gravel under my feet.

“What do you mean?”

“Come with me,” I said as I led her from the car to the Hausmann building on the corner. The building was directly across the pebbled square from École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. “I didn’t mention it in my letters, but there was a very specific reason I had to meet with bureaucrats in Paris before I went to New York. My Aunt Helena, I discovered, left me an apartment here. An inheritance.”

The concierge held open the heavy entrance door, welcomed us both warmly, and then directed us toward the elevator while his assistant rolled Izzy’s luggage on a cart.

“Wait until you see this space,” I said. I was quaking with excitement, both about the apartment, and to be with Izzy again.

“I know this building,” Izzy said as she hugged against me in the elevator. “I walked past it every day on my way to school. And I wondered who lived here. As we discover, it was your aunt.”

We exited the elevator into the grand entrance gallery of the apartment. The last rays of daylight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows and highlighted the high ceilings and classic architectural elements. I walked across the parquet flooring to the turntable and gently laid the needle on John Coltrane’s record Giant Steps as I prepared to give Izzy a tour. I was talking very quickly. Excitedly.

“The dining room can seat twelve people. Or just the two of us. There’s a chef’s kitchen with a small table in it. This floor, what Hausmann called the noble second floor because the nobles wouldn’t be expected to walk up any more stairs, has two bedrooms. The staircase leads to the first floor. There is another ensuite bedroom on that floor, plus a library and a sitting area. This apartment also came with a wine cellar. Dear Aunt Helena laid down hundreds of bottles there.

Izzy didn’t react like I thought she would. She didn’t smile. She didn’t frown. She stood still and took it all in.

“Look at this,” I said as I led her to one of the three balconies in the living room. She walked out with me and grasped the wrought-iron railing. “You have a panoramic view of the Palais de Etude and the courtyard of Beaux-Arts. And the fireplace works.”

I pointed back into the apartment. I could see her eyes widen. She had the mischievous look like she did just before she dove in at Grotta Azzurra.

“Light a fire,” she said.

We christened the bedrooms on the noble second floor. The space in front of the fireplace, too.

“This is a beautiful,” Izzy said as she got up and wrapped a blanket around herself. She walked out of the master bedroom into the middle of the living room. Darkness came early in December in Paris. “You really own this?”

“Yes, my Aunt Helena really left this apartment to me. I knew she spent a lot of time in Paris, but I had no idea. She gifted this for me as a surprise. Other things, too.”

“For example?”

“The furniture. The art. The wine. A scooter. A car. And bank accounts. Swiss bank accounts.”

People who have generational wealth never talk about money. That was for the nouveau riche. Like me.

“I’m hungry,” Izzy said. “And I could use a small walk. I know a café nearby that’s my one of my favorites. Shall we go?”

We got dressed and went out of the building. The concierge nodded to us, then asked me if I needed a car. I told him we were going to walk around a little bit, then eat a late dinner.

We walked in the chill of the evening, then Izzy led me to the cobblestoned Rue de la Harpe, one of the most popular streets in the district. While we walked, she gave me a guided tour of the buildings and their history. And of the street.

“Rue de la Harpe is infamous,” she said as we ambled slowly in the dark. “In 1800, a barber and baker committed a series of murders here. There was a story published with the title A Terrific Story of the Rue de la Harpe in a French magazine that told of how the chief of police discovered the crimes and the connections between the men. Then an Englishman stole that story and wrote The String of Pearls in a penny dreadful magazine in London. Its protagonist was Sweeney Todd. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. That fictional story is based on the true crimes that happened here.”

“Well, let’s choose our baker wisely. I love croissants and baguettes, but I prefer mine from people who won’t kill me. And I’ll get my whiskers shaved elsewhere,” I said as I laughed. Then I tapped Izzy on her firm ass with the back of my hand. “I have more important things to do.”

“You are incorrigible. But I do love your diablerie,” she said as she first huffed, then laughed, as she used the French word for devilishness. Then she backed up to me in the dark and tossed her scarf over her shoulder and into my face. “The place I want to go is right down here.”

We went to Café de Flore. We had kir royal to start. I ordered a croque monsieur. When the waiter asked if I wanted on egg on top, I said cheerfully, “Of course. It’s the only way.” He smiled, but then he frowned when I couldn’t remember the French word for runny eggs. All I could come up with was oeufs baveuse. Oeufs coulants, he corrected me. Izzy ordered the Quiche Lorraine. We had a bottle of Chateau-Figeac Saint Emilion. And when that seemed to evaporate, we asked for another. With our selection of the wine, our waiter no longer was disdainful of my accent nor word choices.

I had a calvados after the meal; Izzy took a poire. We were a little sozzled on our walk back. It was very late.

We spent the next couple weeks getting used to each other again. I enlisted Izzy as my Argentine tango partner every day. And even though she hadn’t studied tango, her ballet and modern dance training made her a quick student. She was lithe and enthusiastic, and our apartment was filled with the rhythm of tango from the phonograph when it wasn’t playing Billie Holliday or Charlie Parker or Johnny Hallyday. I knew all the words to his song Pour Moi la Vie Va Commencer, which was an apt description of how I felt about life now that Izzy was back.

When we weren’t practicing the tango, we explored or, in Izzy’s case, re-explored, Paris, especially in the 6^th Arrondissement. We walked and walked and walked. Even though it was cold and rainy, we still went out every day, then we would come home and build a fire in the fireplace. We would warm our feet. And the rest of us.

“I have to make some photos in the 16^th,” I said to Izzy one cold morning as I walked back into the bedroom and she opened her eyes. I had prepared her a café crème. And I peeled and quartered a peach that I surprisingly found at that time of year at the Passy Market the day before when I was scouting locations for photos. I also made her a single piece of toast that I cut into four triangles, each with a little dab of honey butter on the edge. “Would you like to come with me? My client lives in the Castel Béranger, and I would like to take a few photos of you in the lobby there for my book.”

“You have seen the interior of Castel Béranger?” Izzy said as she rolled toward me. The coffee sloshed a little onto the saucer. “No one gets inside that building who isn’t a resident. Or someone very important.”

“I have been in there a few times, I’ll have you know,” I said as I picked up a peach slice and pushed it toward her lips. “Have you seen it?”

“No, but we studied all the elements of it in art school. My oils maestro was obsessed with Art Nouveau. Et, bien sûr, the works of Hector Guimard. One of our semester assignments was to paint all the Metro entrances that Guimard designed. I did that, and I also worked on sketches of Castel Béranger. But I didn’t know anyone to allow me access to the interior.”

“Well, now is your chance. I would love to have you join me.”

The interior of Castel Béranger is a mélange of teals and aquas and jewel tones. And all painted in the organic shapes and curved lines that characterize Art Nouveau. I took dozens of photos of Izzy as we waited for my client to join us in the lobby. When my client arrived and Izzy addressed her as Chère Madame, my client’s eyes brightened. Then she and Izzy spent the next fifteen minutes tête-à-tête. It was a good warm up for my photo shoot. I had a lot to learn about the subtleties of Parisian society.

Access, in a closed world, is given in two ways: through Old World connections and protocol; and the other is through confidence and force of will. Izzy had both. I had the latter and none of the former except what was granted to me by Il Patrizio in small doses. But, I had a professional camera and a naive expectation that doors would open for me. They did. I was able to enter Sainte-Chappelle and take a series of photos of Izzy while the sunlight illuminated the church’s 1,113 stained glass windows and cast their blue hue on her as she stood in the apse on the marble tiles. I felt a sense of awe that I’d only felt a few times in my life.

As December advanced toward a Christmas in Paris for us, I wanted to have a special dinner with Izzy, one we would long remember. That dinner necessitated something spectacular to wear, so Izzy made arrangements to visit the atelier of Cristóbal Balenciaga and before that, the classic boutique de lingerie, Aubade.  Meanwhile, I conspired with the concierge from our building to secure a reservation for the salon privé called La Belle Otero at the infamous restaurant Lapérouse.

The private dining room is named for the Parisian courtesan Agustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias, who was once the star of Les Folies Bèrgere. It was reported that she was involved with a variety of royals, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, Prince Albert I of Monaco, King Edward VII, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Russian Grand Dukes Peter and Nicholas, and the Duke of Westminster. There has never been a courtesan to match her allure and prowess. In fact, she was so desired that six former lovers committed suicide after their love affairs with her ended. And supposedly, the twin cupolas of the Carlton Hotel in Cannes were modeled upon her breasts. She left quite a legacy. And we were going to dine in a room that evoked her vitality.

Izzy wore a black Baby Doll dress with a large pink ribbon tied at her waist. The rusched hem fell just above her knee. I watched the seams of her stockings with anticipation as she walked ahead of me when we arrived at 51 Quai des Grands Augustins.

The house captain led us swiftly and discreetly up two staircases, each one narrower than the previous. When we arrived at the curved wall of the second landing, he removed a brass skeleton key from his vest pocket and unlocked a hidden door. He guided us in with his eyes without saying a word.

Silent Night. That was the theme I planned.

Before we left the apartment, I told Izzy I had an idea. A surprise.

“We are going to a restaurant that is just a short walk from here along the river,” I said as I held up her coat for her to put on. “My idea, and I hope you will agree, is that we say nothing for the entire evening. Not a word. I call it Silent Night. It’s a Christmas theme.”

“No talking? At all?”

“None. This will be a sensory experience. We can look at each other. Communicate through our eyes. Through gestures. Through touch.”

“Can you achieve an evening without talking? A silent night?” Izzy asked as she prodded my side while she was sliding on her coat. “You like talking. And you like it when I talk. You know when.”

“I’d like this night to be memorable. And this silent night could be entertaining.”

“I’m sure I can be quiet,” Izzy said as she stepped into the elevator. “I’m not so sure about you.”

The salon privé was dark and small and intimate. There was a round dinner table set in the center, fitted with an orange damask tablecloth. Along one edge of the room was a pliant banquette covered in leopard print and at least a dozen red pillows. The dark wood paneling absorbed what little light there was in the room. On the wall over the banquette was a discreetly tilted grand mirror, which was scratched beyond functionality. I had been told in conspiratorial whispers by the concierge when I was making the reservation, that the scratches were from courtesans who would scrape proffered diamonds on the mirror to test their authenticity before they would succumb to the charms of their courtiers.

No one could enter or exit our salon without pushing a velvet-covered button to summon the waiter. When we did, he knocked, waited for our response, then entered with a bottle of champagne. He set two glasses on the table, then backed out of the room and sealed the door.

I looked at Izzy. She raised her eyebrows. Tilted her head toward the champagne. That was my cue to open it.

We lounged on the banquette to drink our champagne and enjoy the amuse bouche the waiter expertly and quietly left for us. The champagne went quickly, and since we hadn’t eaten much all day, it quickly went to my head. It went to Izzy’s, too.

She pulled her skirt up a little to show me the tops of her stockings. Then she gestured for me to unsnap her garters. I sunk to my knees in front of her and moved very slowly. Deliberately. And when she made a little noise, I raised my head and made the shhhh gesture by putting my index finger to my lips. She complied.

We ate dinner. After all, Lapérouse was a Michelin three-star restaurant that once featured Auguste Escoffier as its executive chef. But the Salon La Belle Otero wasn’t only about fine dining. It was about an erotic experience. Izzy and I looked at each other deeply as we ate. Sighed with every bite. She lit a candle on the table, then turned off all the remaining light. We called the waiter to clear the room. He did so without a word.

Later, after more time on the banquette, I pushed the button for the waiter and requested our desserts. When he brought them, Izzy noticed an ornate notecard on her silver serving plate.

Izzy raised her eyebrows at me as she pulled the card from its ivory-colored envelope.

I had written the card in French in my best calligraphy. It took me several attempts to get it exactly as I wanted it.

Izzy read my handwriting. As she did, I got down on one knee, and held up a simple ring to show her.

Isabella, ma chérie, te demander serait trop superficiel. J’ose de t’implorer de marcher à mes cotés pour le reste de nos vies. C’est bien plus qu’une demande en mariage. Tu es en moi et je suis en toi. Chaque molécule de moi est une molécule en toi.

It was my overture. The card said in French: “Isabella, my dear, asking you would be too superficial. I dare to implore you to walk by my side for the rest of our lives. It’s much more than a marriage proposal. You are in me, and I am in you. Every molecule of me is a molecule of you.”

“Oui, oui, oui!” she shouted as she passionately kissed my neck. “One thousand times yes. And forever.”

Our Silent Night was no more.

“You, Izzy, are my favorite color,” I said as I slipped a small platinum ring on her finger.

Izzy breezed out of Lapérouse with a red satin pillow she pinched from the Salon La Belle Otero. The maître d’ spotted the purloined pillow, harrumphed, looked up at Izzy’s glowing pink cheeks, then didn’t say a word.

“I would suggest we’re the only ones in the 6^th with a souvenir from a whorehouse in their salon,” she said as she tossed the pillow on one end of our white couch. She pulled her hair down from her intricate bun and dropped her dress right there.

“Isabella, my love,” I sighed.

“I have to go to New York,” I said to Izzy on a Tuesday morning in early August as we strolled among booths in the farmer’s market filled with tomatoes and olives and herbs and sausages. “My publisher wants to talk about Blue Places. I’m late. I’m very late. And I have a contract to deliver that manuscript. They’re unhappy. Then I need to have a discussion with the administrators at Columbia. The break for my sabbatical is over, and they expect me back. I’m scheduled to teach a full course load this coming semester. I would like you to join me in New York. Would you, please?”

We had come to Limone sul Garda, a village in northern Lombardy, to escape the August heat in Capri. Il Patrizio offered us his house on Lake Garda, and Izzy eagerly said yes. She had stayed there on the slopes of the Cima della Mughera many times when she was young. It was a refuge for her away from the pressures in Padua. And now, Capri.

“I don’t have money to travel,” Izzy said, looking away me. “I don’t have ten lire to my name. Nothing. Everything is gone. I was surprised my grandmother let me leave with my suitcases.”

“What about the money from selling your ceramics? That’s gone, too?”

“It’s complicated. And I don’t have it. Actually, I never had it. It was because of my age when I started. The money I made from my ceramic art was deposited into the family trust. And that trust, as I told you, is controlled by my grandmother. Now, she has it all under lock and key. In a sense, there is no such thing as my money in my family. It’s family money.”

We walked a little further in the market, letting the scents and sights fill in where we didn’t have words to say.

“Would you like a lemon ice?” I asked as we approached a vendor who was selling gelato in lemon shells. Then I teased her. “You can have anything you want, as long as it’s less than ten lire.”

Izzy squeezed my arm. I realized that what I said was raw. And ill timed.

“The thing about how I was raised is that there were a lot of appearances of easiness. A casualness about money. And no worries. There is a mystique about generational wealth. But family success requires compliance. A suppression of your real self to be a representation of the Old World. I didn’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that. As a result, I am here without enough money to buy a gelato.”

“I understand,” I said as I paid the gelato man and handed Izzy her lemon ice. She took a small bite, then kept the spoon in her mouth so she didn’t have to say more.

“We are going to take care of all of this,” I said.

“I don’t know how,” Izzy said as the potent sourness of the lemon ice caused her face to pucker – she squinted as she clamped her lips closed. The lemons of Limone sul Garda were once considered the best in the world. In fact, the town is the northernmost location where lemons are grown outdoors, which creates a lemon with a formidable acidity.

“We have the money from selling our blue photos at the gala. We can get that from Il Patrizio. And, of course, I will buy a ticket for you to accompany me to New York. On the way there, I have to stop in Paris to talk to some bureaucrats. Then I have three photography commissions in the city, thanks to Il Patrizio and you. When I’m done with the photo shoots, we’ll fly to New York from Paris. Once we’re in New York, we’ll need to determine the rest of the scheme. I had to make plans when I didn’t know you would be here. Now I need to change them.”

I didn’t know what would happen. I needed to renegotiate with my publisher about the deadline for my manuscript. And I had to talk to my department chairman about my academic assignments. Since it was off-season for butterfly migration and research, the university wanted me to conduct weekly on-campus seminars with post-grads, and to teach two sections of biochemistry to undergrads. The entirety of the thought seemed so distant. And overwhelming.

“I can’t join you,” Izzy said decisively. “Send me a letter when you arrive in New York. I will stay here for a while, then I will return to Capri. I understand that you must go. I cannot imagine a minute without you.” She reached over and ran her fingers through my hair.

“Come with me. Join me,” I pleaded, even though I knew when Izzy made up her mind, that was firm.

“Not now,” Izzy said. “I didn’t want to say more, but mi padrino is ill. He didn’t want anyone to know, but the pain he has in his back is very serious. I am going to return to Capri to help Subedar with his care. I will do some painting. Perhaps I’ll create some drawings for some ceramics pieces. And I will be his nursemaid.”

Izzy took great care of me, so I understood that she would be a wonderful caregiver for Il Patrizio.

“I don’t want to be away from you,” I said as tears pooled in my eyes. “And I won’t. I’ll write you every day. I miss you already.”

We walked back in silence to Il Patrizio’s converted lemon house, a limonaie as they called them in Limone sul Garda. I couldn’t resist ringing the lemon-shaped doorbell that is typical of all the houses in town.

Il Patrizio’s limonaie was captivatingly rustic, and a stark contrast with his marble-filled palazzo on Capri. The house was an afterthought, built long after the terraced lemon groves were planted. It was designed as an extension of the thick stone walls that protected the lemon groves from winter winds. Thin pillars, facing the lake and the sun, supported a network of wooden beams. In winter, glass panels were attached to the pillars and beams, which created a seasonal greenhouse. When temperatures fell, a gardener lit fires inside the greenhouse, like they used to do in orangeries throughout Northern Europe in the 1600s.

“Come back to me,” Izzy said as I packed my things. Then she said the words she had once written on the top of a menu while we were in Barcelona, the day before she left. “Like the pull of the moon on the oceans, come back to me. Like the pull of gravity, come back to me. Like the pull of a thousand sails, come back to me.”

“I never want to leave.”

“Then don’t.”

I hired a car to take me to Milan, then I flew to Paris. In typical French style, my first meeting with the bureaucrats required a second meeting. And a third. And waiting. And many more pieces of paper that necessitated me to retain another French lawyer to help me work though the details.

In the meantime, I walked around the city looking for blue locations for my photo shoots. It was an odd time to be in Paris; most Parisians left the city in August, so the ratio of tourists to locals seemed to be ten-to-one. My assignments were with three different American actresses who wanted their photos taken in front of the Parisian icons. I agreed, provided they would also allow me to take some candid photos that didn’t include the Eiffel Tower. They agreed. The biggest challenge I had in the photo shoots was moving their cloying and overly macho boyfriends out of the photos and out of their eyeline. I felt sad for those actresses. Their lives were a series of being used by powerful men. I thought they should spend some time with Izzy. That would readjust their thinking. The actresses were treasures to be plundered. Izzy would teach them about proper pirates.

Paris, France 48° 51' 14.40" N  2° 19' 59.52" E

Dear Izzy,

It’s mid-day and I’m sitting at an outdoor table at Les Deux Magots. I must admit I came to this café with the hope I would see Simone de Beauvoir and John-Paul Sartre. Alas, it is August, and sensible Parisians are somewhere in the mountains, not unlike you are in Limone.

I finished my photo shoots, and I leave for New York City tomorrow morning. I got some good photos, but nothing compares to photographs of you. I think posing changes how a person looks. I like the natural look. Capturing the moment. Like you diving in Grotta Azzurra.

It was a little bit of a challenge on the locations. First, it’s very hot in Paris. All the heat of the summer has soaked into the boulevards and buildings. Second, even though there are fewer Parisians here, there are tons of tourists. I can tell by how they’re dressed. And how they gawk when I take photographs. (Parisians wouldn’t look even if I were photographing Charles de Gaulle.) If they’re leaning on something, they’re Americans. Why is that? Do I always lean on things when I’m standing? I’m going to pay attention to that.

I know I asked a hundred different ways if you would come to New York with me. And I understand why you can’t. I have thought a lot about Il Patrizio and how much he has done for me. Will you please send a telegram about him? And about you?

I miss you.

Thomas____

P.S. I’m meeting with the photographer Art Shay when I arrive in NYC. He’s the one who took the surreptitious nude photos of Simone as she was getting ready to see Nelson Algren. It’s a tangled web. And a complicated story.

I finished my business in Paris, then I flew to New York City on an old Air France DC-4. Because I didn’t plan enough ahead during tourist season, the direct flights on the 707s were sold out, so my flight made refueling stops at Shannon, Ireland and Gander, Canada. It took almost twenty hours to go from Orly until landing at Idlewild Airport in NYC. I was exhausted when I arrived. But I had a lot to do.

“You committed to deliver a complete manuscript by now,” my publisher said gruffly as he puffed on a Cohiba. We were sitting in his high-floor office on Sixth Avenue. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “What have you been doing? You had a schedule. We agreed to it.”

“Life happened,” I said as I turned to my editor, who was sitting next to me and staring me down. “I have been sending segments as I go. I just didn’t anticipate all that would happen in the past year. I met some artists and writers. I took photographs. And I fell in love.”

“It’s the same old story,” the publisher said as he re-lit his Cuban cigar with an expensive lighter.

“What kind of lighter is that?” I asked as I leaned forward.

“Don’t try to change the subject, kid.”

“I’m not trying to change the subject. Once you start paying close attention to the color blue, you notice it in all kinds of places. That’s what happened to me, At first, I was going to natural places with the color blue. Then manmade architectural places. But then I started to notice blue everywhere. And it’s worth writing about. And noting. Like your lighter. That’s lapis lazuli on it.”

“It’s an S.T. Dupont D57. A classic. Made in Paris. Eighteen karat gold,” he said as he held the lighter up for my editor and me to admire. He harrumphed as he did. He snapped the lighter open. “Did you hear that cling? Once you know, you can hear that sound across a room and know it’s the quintessential S.T. Dupont lighter.”

I pulled an art portfolio from my briefcase and laid it on his desk.

“I have a modest proposal for you. I started out writing about blue places. But that risked just being a travelogue, and who wants to read that? I mean, some people will. But you want to sell books. You know what people like? Adventure. And imagination. And for many people, their favorite color is blue.”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of your contract,” the publisher said, plopping back in his leather chair. “We have a contract. And how do you know what people want?”

“I’m a researcher. I collect data and process that into usable narratives. I’ve spent the past year talking to people all over Europe and South America. Writers, yes. And regular people on the street, too. If there’s anything that I know they want, it’s a sense of freedom that comes from imagination.”

I could see I was getting somewhere with him. My editor, on the other hand, seemed dismissive. She worked on multiple projects, and mine clearly wasn’t a top priority anymore.

“Let’s hear it. What are you proposing?”

“I propose a series of books about the color blue. Photographs. Essays. Big places and small items.”

I turned the portfolio so my publisher could see the array of photographs I took of Izzy in blue places. There were also photographs of very famous people.

“You took these photographs?” he asked, half in disbelief.

“Yes, I’ve been working in Capri. There was a Blue and White Gala last month. Everyone who was anyone was there. Every single print sold to collectors. And that has gotten me commissions with a lot of others. For each photo session, I find something blue.”

“Fascinating,” he muttered. “Yes, I heard about the gala. I didn’t know you were the artist.”

“The gallery featured my photographs of Izzy in blue places,” I said. “These photographs. And many others. There is a market for this. Just like there would be for a photo of you with your blue lighter. May I?”

The publisher scowled at me. I had a sense he scowled at everyone. Then he waved his hand, acceding to my request. I pulled out my Leica and took a low angle photo as he lit his cigar with his blue and gold S.T. Dupont lighter. Smoke swirled thickly as the lighter discharged a tall blue flame outlined in orange.

“Did you get it?” he asked as he puffed away.

“I did. I’ll show you in a few days. It’ll give you time to consider my proposal. I didn’t mention it, but we can also create essays. Maybe there’s an idea for a radio show for each story. It’s books. And more.”

“Get out of my office,” the publisher said. He wasn’t throwing me out. He was thinking.

My next stop was to go uptown to Colombia University and plead my case for extending my sabbatical. I wasn’t successful. The chairman of my department put it this way: “Look, we don’t care if you’re tenured. We let you take an early sabbatical because of the extensive research you were doing and the funding that came with that. From what I can see, you didn’t do much, or anything, to advance your academic body of knowledge. We’ll talk about that later. But I need you to be in the classroom starting with the fall semester. Then we can talk about field research and your sabbatical after that.”

I walked out of that meeting feeling deflated. New York City seemed to be the place where I was being told I was a disappointment to everyone. I decided I needed to take a walk. And a couple hours later, after I had wandered south through Central Park, I found myself at 12^th and Broadway outside the Strand Bookstore. There was a sign that said Pablo Neruda would be reading from The Captain’s Verses the following evening. I had spent some time with him when he read his poems on Capri, now I would get to hear him in New York. I left a note for him with the manager and asked him to make sure the poet got it before his session.

New York, New York   40° 43' 59.8368'' N  73° 59' 27.5064'' W

Dear Izzy,

I went to a reading by Pablo Neruda at Strand Bookstore this evening. What strange symmetry to see him again after our time on Capri. I had written him a note in Spanish the day before saying, “Dear Señor Neruda, I was most honored to spend time with you on Capri. And I have admired your poetry so much that I translated the entire set from Los Versos del Capitan into American English just as an intellectual exercise. I wanted to share your writing with people who sadly don’t speak or read Spanish. I will be at your reading this evening and would like to give you a gift of my handwritten notes with the translations. I hope you don’t consider me too bold.”

Well, not only did Pablo (he wants me to call him Pablo) enjoy the translations, he asked me to sit in the wings with him and to read three of my translations at his prompting. He can speak English, but he seems very shy about doing that when it comes to anything but saying hello and saying just a line or two before he goes back to Spanish. I had to laugh because the moderator didn’t speak Spanish, so I also did a little live translating like I was in the UN.

Here is my favorite translation of a poem Pablo wrote for Matilda while he was exiled on Capri:

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Izzy, I hate being away from you. As Pablo said, “Everything carries me to you.” I have a thousand decisions to make. I fear I committed to 12 weeks of teaching. I don’t know if I can do it.

T____

I didn’t hear from Izzy for almost two months. Meanwhile, I did hear back from my publisher. He not only extended my contract, but he also extended the time to deliver it. That was a relief. What wasn’t a relief was spending each day wondering about Izzy. Then I got a startling telegram.

Capri. Il Patrizio in final days. Isa. STOP.

I struggled with the thought of going to Capri, both to comfort Il Patrizio and to support Izzy. The timing was terrible, so I spent a sum of money to send a long telegram to him.

My Dear Friend,

I am reaching to you across the ocean, across space and time. While your physical presence is fading, your cosmic energy will always shine brightly. Thank you for your guidance, your caring, and your camaraderie. You have changed the trajectory of my life, and for that I will be eternally grateful. And mille grazie for being il padrino to Isabella.

Ti mando tanto affetto, mio amico.

It was 4:41 a.m. when the first rays of the sun crested Mount Vesuvius in the early morning hours of the Blue and White Gala.

“Sol Invictus, placere dimitte nobis,” Il Patrizio proclaimed in Latin from his balcony a few minutes before sunrise. Then he continued in English with his stentorian benediction to the Roman god. “Invincible Sun god, please forgive us. Let us be worthy to see thee rise again and make this darkness wash away.”

In his golden cape, he looked like a Roman emperor as he addressed the throng.

 “It is once again the morning of the unconquered one. Let us worship Sol Invictus. Please join me on the hillock and let us all turn our eyes to the East.” With that invocation, Il Patrizio beckoned everyone outside to watch the earliest golden glimmers as a warm July morning dawned on Capri.

“Today is my birthday,” I whispered to Izzy as I hugged her close. She was drenched. Her wet white dress clung to her body. It hid very little.

“Happy birthday,” she said as she ran her fingertips along the front of my hip. She squeezed some water from the hem of her dress, gently undulated her hand by my face, and then took her thumb and made the sign of the cross my forehead. “I grant you the golden rays of the sun on this glorious day. The remainder of your gift will be granted to you later.”

She gazed at me with smoky eyes, licked her lips, and pulled her wet hair into a ponytail. I felt wobbly. Everyone at the gala felt the same craving – whether man or woman, paired up or “confirmed bachelors” – when Izzy did a suggestive dance to conclude the evening’s festivities. Everyone desired her.

Izzy moved as erotically as Salome while the orchestra played Strauss’s operatic Dance of the Seven Veils. Her classical ballet skills were evident. It was clear she had practiced. Her desirability came naturally.

When I edged my way to the front of the crowd that was encircling her, I felt a hand grasp my elbow.

“She is an exquisite dancer. So compelling. So sensual. I understand why you missed her so terribly,” Il Patrizio whispered over my shoulder.

I recited to him a few lines of The Daughter of Herodias.

She freed and floated on the air her arms
Above dim veils that hid her bosom’s charms...
The veils fell round her like thin coiling mists
Shot through by topaz suns and amethysts.

“That’s by the poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy,” I said quietly as I mirrored the way Izzy was moving her body.

“She has one more surprise for you,” Il Patrizio said enigmatically.

Izzy radiated the amethyst aura that I caught on her emergence from the Grotta Azzurra. When she first began her dance, others swayed and danced as the orchestra began to play more loudly and the intensity built. But then the crowd parted. They moved back. And Izzy danced sinuously among hundreds of people. They ogled. Lusted.

Like the Sirens beckoning Odysseus to smash his ship on the jagged rocks of the shore, Izzy’s dance compelled the hungering throng to pursue her to the Roman bath in the palazzo. But Circe wasn’t there to provide her warning as she did for Odysseus:

First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If anyone unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song.

The guests at the Blue and White Gala were willingly seduced by Izzy’s siren song. There was no going back.

As the performance built to its climax, everyone held their breath in anticipation. Then, Izzy dove headfirst into the blue mosaic-tiled pool without making a splash. There was total silence. When she emerged, she walked slowly and deliberately out of one of the rounded edges of the pool in her gossamer dress. I took a quick series of photos in the natural light. The crowd was fully energized and ready to shatter into a thousand pieces. And they did. Scores of people jumped into the pool in their white clothes. Others stripped down. I didn’t take any more photos. That was the arousal of the bacchanalia Il Patrizio stimulated.

“You look cold,” I said to Izzy as we stood together and watched the morning sun move higher in the sky.

“It’s not the cold,” she said as she cupped her hands over her pert nipples. “Let’s go. It’s your birthday. There is no point in delaying your gift.”

“You are my gift,” I said. “Alas, Il Patrizio would be disappointed if we weren’t here to see the last of the guests away. We have plenty of time.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t quite get enough sleep,” Gina Lollobrigida said as she pulled her sunglasses down and stared at me with her chocolate eyes. She looked stunning in her sleeveless aqua-colored dress. Some people didn’t need a beauty sleep. She sipped a cappuccino and absent-mindedly pulled apart a croissant. “Let’s do the photos tomorrow, when we both have had some rest.” In my mind, I was relieved. It was my birthday, and I still hadn’t slept.

“I am very honored to do a photo session with you. My style is natural, as you saw at the exhibit. Perhaps we can visit Anacapri and see what happens.”

“Yes, up at the top of the mountain. And then we can go to the water. If you can take a photo of me that is anything like you did with your modelo, I will be very pleased. She is quite stunning, and you captured her essence so well. She is a sumptuous young lady. She is why I didn’t sleep well. I dreamt about her dance.”

“She is my muse,” I said. “I was chasing the most beautiful blue places in the world and was contracted to write a book about it. Then Isabella appeared. And yes, I find her very attractive.”

“Many people do. And did,” Gina said. “I want my photos to have that sensibility. That intimacy. To do that the right way, we will need to chase away the paparazzi.”

“I will ask Il Patrizio to help us with security,” I said. Gina nodded. She understood. It was an Italian understanding.

Izzy and I passed the ensuing weeks at the palazzo basking in the afterglow of the Blue and White Gala. Il Patrizio sold every art photograph in the collection for a substantial sum of money. However, he was offered a princely sum for the nudes of Izzy, and several guests harangued him to buy the shadow box installation. There was a bidding war for that set. He refused.

I spent the time that July snapping photos of the beautiful people of Capri. In addition to a multi-day photo shoot with Gina, I was able to take candid photos of celebrities and others of the glitterati that populated the island that summer. I carried my Leica everywhere with me, and it seemed like everyone knew me from the gala. I had Il Patrizio to thank for that. Recognition is hard sought and rarely won. He changed that for me.

Il Patrizio’s back was degenerating quickly, so I processed the film I shot each day, then emerged from his darkroom to solicit his guidance on how to best present the art to the clients. He grimaced in pain as he stood over the light table to examine my photographs with his discerning eye. Sometimes I would stand back and consider that I was at the knee of the most celebrated photographer of a generation. He was gifting his talent and skill and knowledge to me. What he was teaching me wasn’t only about photography.

When I wasn’t taking photos, I went on long walks with Izzy. And took many photographs of her. Mostly, I tried to stay in bed with her.

“Everyone lusted for you,” I said to Izzy the day after the gala, barely concealing the tinge of jealousy I felt. It was an odd mixture of envy and pride. Right then, envy prevailed, even though Izzy gave me a birthday present I would recall on my death bed.

“It was just a dance. A piece of art. I learned it as part of my repertoire in my ballet training. I was pleased to be able to perform. Mi padrino asked if I could do a performance as a finale. To bring the evening to a surprising conclusion. He wanted a piece of performance art. I told him I would dance Salome.”

“You knew. I think you always know that people lust for you.”

“I don’t know that,” she said. “Although I went to boarding school and art school, I led a very careful and sheltered life. I had chaperones nearby. Always. And when they weren’t near me, there were fellow students and professors who watched over me and reported back to my grandmother. No one has said the things to me like you have. No one.”

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You’re my Venus de Milo,” I said. “And because of you, I have been taking photographs of interesting people on this island. You are nonpareil. Without equal. But people say things to me.”

“What do they say?”

“They’re very careful. You know how subtle the language is here. But the implication is that you are a free woman.”

Izzy jumped up and stormed around the room. Jerked open a drawer, then slammed it closed. She grabbed a handful of fresh flowers from a vase and threw them across the room. I thought she was going to break something. She stood in the middle of the room, quaking with anger. Then her demeanor changed. She squatted on the floor and started to sob.

“Do you know why I was so curious – and so jealous – of your girl in Brazil? And why I hate the sound of Portuguese?” Tears were streaming down her face, and she didn’t attempt to wipe them away. She could barely speak between the sobs.

“I have no idea. I thought you were just curious.”

“It’s because of all the stories I told myself. Of all the women you had. And the loves you had before me.”

I started to correct her, but she cut me off.

“You are the second man who has ever shared my bed. And you’re the first man I’ve loved. My ex-fiancé stole my virginity; you gave me the power to be a pirate. Or Helen of Troy. Or Venus de Milo. You. You did that. You released this in me. You gave me the safety. And you gave me love. I am how I am because of you.”

I sat there for several minutes, letting the pressure release from the room. When it was calm, Izzy came back to the bed.

“I have loved two women in my life,” I said as I sat cross-legged across from her. “The first one left me in Mexico City. I never heard from her again until I traveled to Iguazú Falls last year after you left. She told me a horrifying story of why she abandoned me. And I’m sick to death about it. She is happily married now. And has a baby. Yes, I did love her, but she left a hole in my heart I never thought would be filled. Until you.”

“And what about me?” Izzy asked.

“You are the second woman I have loved. I say this with all my heart: There was no me before you. Everything about me is because of you. I just didn’t know it. I feel like it was my destiny to meet you. And here we are. Let’s be pirates. That’s what you said when we first met. Those words changed my life. You changed my life.”

“I’d like to meet her someday,” Izzy said as she curled up on my lap and nuzzled in my ear. “I don’t care who lusts after me. I want you. Only you.”

“Women aren’t allowed to own property in Italy,” Izzy said as we walked down the path at the Gardens of Augustus. “We were granted equal rights under the law in 1946, immediately after the war. But it isn’t what it seems. We were permitted to vote, but we don’t have real rights.”

“Then how did your grandmother repossess your ceramics studio?” I asked hesitatingly as we walked lower on the path.

“She doesn’t own it. It’s in a family trust. She is the executor of the trust. But she’s not the owner. It’s why it was so devastating when my uncle died in the war. The risk – the very real risk – is that our family properties will go to the male cousins in my family.”

“Oh, I understand that same thing happened with Maison Hermès,” I said nodding. “They bypassed the women and turned control of the company over to the sons-in-law.”

“Yes, I knew Catherine from art school in Paris. And she and I discussed that unfortunate provision.”

“Oh,” I said, coming to another realization. “Now it makes sense. I thought you must have known Catherine more than seeing her at a few parties on Capri.”

“Yes, I do know her. Well.”

I was tempted to ask why Catherine whispered “Izzy told me everything” at the gala. But it wasn’t the right time. Although I was curious about what it meant.

“The scandal I created for my family was profound,” Izzy said. “Because I am the only child of an only child, my husband would become the rightful owner of our family holdings, including all the properties. And I came to the realization that although he proclaimed himself a wealthy businessman, I discovered he was working on extensive credit. He had no money. And he was committing fraud. On top of all that, he didn’t love me. He never loved me. He wanted my family’s money. I wasn’t interested in being used by him to plunder generations of my family holdings. Also, I didn’t love him. I told my grandmother all of this. She knew, and she didn’t care. To her, family obligations came before my happiness. She is a miserable woman, and she doesn’t care about my wellbeing.”

“I cannot tell you how happy I am that you are here,” I said to Izzy. As I looked at her, I saw her begin to cry. She was crying a lot those days.

“This is a cruel world. Do you know who my fiancé is in business with? His closest business associate? You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Who?” I asked with mounting curiosity.

“It is your friend Jonathan. He and my fiancé are involved in questionable business ventures with some very bad people. I almost don’t want to say more.”

“The guy you sliced with a stiletto at Lago di Braies?” I asked incredulously. It would make sense. Jonathan was a crook. And worse. The mere mention of his name prompted an internal rage in me.

“The very same. It seems like horrible people in this world gravitate toward each other.”

“Have you told Il Patrizio about this?” I asked, understanding the import of my question.

“I have. As I told you, he is mi padrino. He told me not to worry, that he would take care of it.”

“What does take care of it mean?”

“He is going to take care of it, Thomas.”

I stood alone in the blackness on the rooftop terrace of the palazzo and mindlessly watched an unbroken line of lights streaming to the crest of the hill. The lights were carried by guests who were queuing up for the see-and-be-seen event of the summer on Capri. Il Patrizio designed his Blue and White Gala to showcase his new art installation – my photographs of Izzy in the blue places we visited. Everyone who was anyone was coming to the gala.

“Life has certainly taken a series of bewildering twists,” I said aloud into the warm night sky as I glanced at the waxing moon. I felt adrift. And a lifetime away from my academic field work.

Guests streamed into the grand entryway of Il Patrizio’s palazzo. And one by one, no matter who they were or pretended to be, the gala director demanded their engraved invitation. Once the document was checked and verified against the approved list, she presented a specially chosen – and very blue – Hermès scarf to the attendee. The exchange happened with a grand flourish. Most invitees received the newly released Astrologie. Others were gifted the brand-new Arabesque. There were subtle gasps as each guest received their cherished gift and an appreciative recognition of its value.

The morning before the Blue and White Gala, Il Patrizio sent one of the house staff to me with a request to meet him in his library. Although very little happened quickly in Capri, I knew he wanted to see me immediately. I buttoned up a light grey linen shirt and pulled on the new white linen Capri shorts I bought just the day before. I was tempted to go downstairs barefoot, but at the last second, I slid my feet into a pair of backless blue loafers. I was glad I wore shoes; when I arrived in the library, I wasn’t pleased I decided to wear shorts.

“Thomas, may I to present to you Madame Jacqueline Hermès of Maison Hermès,” Il Patrizio said in a posh French accent as his eyes twinkled. He bowed slightly toward the elegant women standing beside him. She was tall, thin, and impeccably dressed. She had been whispering to him as I walked in. “Madame is here to provide us guidance for something very special that will transpire tomorrow evening.”

“Honoré de vous rencontrer,” I said. Madame Hermès smiled an understated French smile and acknowledged me with a slow closing of her eyelids as she made an almost imperceptible nod forward.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur,” she said in her exquisite Parisian accent. “I have admired your art. Il Patrizio was so kind to give us a private tour in advance of the gala. I do have some queries for you if you would make the time later.”

“It would be my pleasure. At your convenience, Madame.”

Jacqueline Hermès seemed pleased. Then she walked a few steps toward a younger version of herself, including her aquiline nose and rich mahogany hair. They both reminded me of what the French sometimes idealized as La Marianne. I first saw the Eugène Delacroix painting La Liberté guidant le peuple in the Louvre when I was a teenager studying in France. I was smitten with that image of a bare-chested goddess-figure of Marianne leading combatants over the barricades and the fallen. And then, there I was in shorts and slip-on shoes, smitten with Madame Hermès and her daughter. They were mysterious and beautiful and Mariannesque. But clothed.

“I would like to present to you, my daughter, Madame Catherine Frédérique Hermès Dumas of Paris.” Madame moved her hand toward Catherine, and I could see the affection they had for each other as Catherine looked back toward her. “However, she likes to depart Paris in the summertime. Catherine particularly likes it here on Capri. As a point of fact, she first met her husband on this beautiful island.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” I said as I turned and made eye contact with Catherine.

“Enchanté,” Catherine said in return as she reached out her hand to touch mine. I was caught off-guard by her informality. I admired her moxie very much, a young woman contravening formality in front of her very serious and formal mother, but I concealed my smile. I saw Catherine’s mother give her a disdainful French pout that’s more forceful than a crack with a leather riding crop.

“When Il Patrizio said he wanted to give his guests a gift from Maison Hermès, we were intrigued. Then when he requested several hundred carrés…well, Maman and I had to see for ourselves what he had in mind,” Catherine said conspiratorially in English as she held onto my hand for an extra beat.

“I have always been enamored with les carrés de Hermès,” Il Patrizio said as he curled his fingers over a rolled-edge silk square. “We requested that guests dress all in white. My conceit, a necessary evil here on Capri, is to gift the guests a Hermès scarf when they enter, then ask them to wear it as their blue element.”

Il Patrizio designed every moment and every interaction. Including this one. I felt like he was a film director, and we were actors in his movie.

“We have brought for you some very special carrés that are collector’s items,” Madame Hermès said, reclaiming the dialog in French as she pointed to another table across the large expanse of the library. “Shall we look?”

We strode across several antique Persian rugs to a seating arrangement in a wing of the library. Madame Hermès walked next to Il Patrizio as Catherine took my arm and we made our way a golden-lighted alcove surrounded by shelves of classic books from floor to ceiling. There was a stack of orange boxes arrayed on a carved teak table between two leather sofas. Madame Hermès sat on one sofa with Il Patrizio, and Catherine and I sat across from them.

“Here we have the vintage scarfs,” Catherine said, taking the lead from her mother. She was addressing two audiences: Il Patrizio, a Hermès expert; and me, who just a year before wore an old baseball cap and a tattered shirt on Capri. But she didn’t patronize me. I was intrigued. Plus, I noted how she pronounced the word vintage. Perfection.

“Let’s start with the most recent design,” Madame Hermès said as she gracefully moved beside Catherine and pulled a ribbon from a stack. Catherine moved closer to me.

“The first of our vintage carrés is called Les Voitures Nouvelles. It was introduced in 1961,” Catherine said as she pulled a scarf out of a warm citrus-colored box and opened it wide to show the elegant Golden Age paintings. “These horse-drawn carriages traveled up and down the grand boulevards of Paris when my great-great grandfather started his harness workshop on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1837. And now, here we are more than a century later speaking about blue silk scarves. And blue places. It’s quite a journey.”

Jacqueline Hermès and Catherine Hermès Dumas spent the next hour detailing the design and provenance of the exceptional scarves Il Patrizio planned to give to his most elite guests. In addition to Les Voitures Nouvelles, the mother and daughter brought a handful of several other designs, each one older and rarer than the next. Those included the powder blue Phaeton from 1958 featuring a Roman chariot drawn by four horses — what Catherine said was called a quadrigae in Latin; Oiseaux des Champs et des Bois from 1954, which showed brightly colored birds on a dominant teal and cerulean background; and the humorous A la Gloire de la Cuisine Française from 1942, which was a blue-on-blue version created during the Second World War.

“This one is a rebuke by Maison Hermès to food rationing and the German occupation,” Madame Hermès said as she showed the various breads and cheeses on the scarf. “We created many blue designs during the occupation of Paris. We were not going to be dominated by gray.”

I wrinkled the corners of my eyes just a little, thinking back to my obsession with the movie Casablanca and the line I mistakenly said to Izzy.

“A thousand thanks to you for entrusting me with your silk artwork,” Il Patrizio said as he touched the edges of A la Gloire de la Cuisine Française. “I will be a discerning steward of which of the guests receive these vintage pieces. I hope I don’t create too many jealousies. Then again, maybe I do.”

We all laughed a bit. Later, I would understand how very significant the choices Il Patrizio would make and what they would signify in Capri for years to come.

“Our first silk carré was designed by Hugo Grygkar. This watercolor holds a special place in the history of Hermès. It originally was a painting on the office wall of Emile Hermès, the grandson of our house’s founder, and that painting inspired the very first Hermès silk scarf,” Catherine said as she moved to a cream-colored box, the only one of its kind. She opened the box like it contained a Fabergé egg, then she pulled out an exquisite scarf. “The silk woven into this piece required two hundred and fifty mulberry moth cocoons. This carré is from 1937. It is the original scarf created at Maison Hermes. It is our very first offering and it celebrated the centennial of our founding. It is named Jeu des Omnibus et Dames Blanches – a play of words on an old-fashioned game. What was the origin of this game? It was the new omnibus lines, which appeared in the 1820s, and whose horse-drawn vehicles encircle the central medallion on this scarf. The players placed their bets, then wooden balls were selected from a bag to reveal the winning number. Very few of these scarves are available in the world. The woman who receives this carré will be very fortunate, indeed.”

Just then, the doors on the far end of the library opened. We all turned to look.

Izzy walked in. We stood.

“Speaking of the fortunate one, voilà,” Il Patrizio said as Izzy made her way toward us. She was absolutely radiant in her Capri print minidress. “Please let me introduce La Principessa Isabella di Padua.”

I took a few steps back to observe how society’s most high-born interacted. It wasn’t what I expected.

“Isa and I have met on many occasions,” Catherine said as she walked over and kissed Izzy three times in rapid succession. “And we have been at many events together on Capri.”

Guests were dressed in white from head to toe. That was by design. Wearing all white wasn’t a request from Il Patrizio. Dress and decorum weren’t suggestions in Caprese high society. They were understood. And misunderstood at an interloper’s peril.

If an attendee dared to arrive wearing anything other than all white, they were turned away. It was a serious breach of protocol to disregard the instructions on the invitation. And that violation had repercussions. An infringement of politesse in Capri meant a person would be blackballed for upcoming social events. It just wasn’t done. Still, some attempted. And failed. It didn’t matter who they were or how much they shouted.

As the guests were given the brilliant blue scarves, they were instructed to add it to their ensemble. That meant draping it over their shoulders for some. Or tying it in their hair. Some made expert patterns with the scarf around their neck. Men tucked their scarves in their shirts as ascots. Others pulled their scarves through their belt and let it drape down the side of their legs like toreadors. No matter what, the essence was to comply with Il Patrizio’s wish that the event would feature blue and white.

Blue Hermès scarves were an integral element.

The palazzo was replete with thousands of small candles. After guests were given their scarves, they were handed a taper and directed to an area to ignite it. All of this was done without a whisper. Once their candle was lit, they entered the gallery and lit ten or more votives. Il Patrizio wanted hundreds upon hundreds of candles to light the art. And total silence. No one was exempt.

Guests milled in quietude for almost a quarter of hour. All the votives were flickering. Then it was time for more Il Patrizio stagecraft.

A fanfare of French horns announced a change in tone. Il Patrizio appeared at the top of the balcony overlooking the gallery and announced in Italian, “The time for our silence has ended. Thank you for your reverence and your attention. Now, let us talk and laugh and dance until we celebrate the sunrise over Vesuvius. Let there be tears of joy and let there be tears of excitement. And yes, unleash the debauchery.” The crowd below laughed heartily and then cheered. “Yes, I said debauchery. We are on Capri after all.”

It took a few moments for the buzz to settle. There were little titters in corners of the crowd. Then Il Patrizio continued his oratory.

“Thank you for attending this Blue and White Gala. I am pleased to have you all at my home. The concept for this exhibit came to me a year ago when I saw a photograph that was taken right here on Capri. It’s the largest in the gallery.”

At that moment, on Il Patrizio’s cue, a spotlight illuminated the photo of Izzy emerging from the waters of the Blue Grotto. The crowd turned as one and an appreciative murmur swept through the crowd.

“I am in awe of the aura of that photo. Then I got this letter from the photographer. He is an artist. If you would please indulge an old man in his dotage, I would like to read it to you.”

The crowd murmured its agreement. And then a hushed silence fell once again in the gallery. Il Patrizio read my letter to him that I sent from Barcelona the day Izzy left.

Mio caro Patrizio,

I have sent this collection of my photographs for your care and protection. You remarked about a photo of Isabella emerging from the turquoise waters of Grotta Azzurra when I was in your darkroom with you. I have not forgotten for a single moment how you said, “A good photographer sees the world differently. He also needs a bellissima modello. E un po’ di fortuna.” I wrote those words in my journal the night I met you. And I say those words daily as a benediction.

I have included 47 rolls of undeveloped film from Capri, Lago di Braies, Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, Chefchaouen, Barcelona, and other places where I was seeking the most beautiful colors of blue. There are also photographs from Yugoslavia, plus photos that were taken on the journeys from one location to the next. Most include images of Isabella. I trust there will be one or two serviceable ones in the collection.

You will find the film and my roll notes in the box presented by the gentleman in front of you. He is the chief concierge of my hotel in Barcelona, and I have entrusted him with a safe delivery of my film. Now my work is in your hands.

I am undertaking a crossing of the Atlantic from Lisboa to Curaçao in the coming weeks. I will write you when I am sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on the Santa Maria.

I trust you are well. Mille grazie, Signore.

Thomas______

“I safeguarded his film by processing it. The exhibit you see before you this evening is a result of that work, his talent, and his Muse,” he said as he gestured for all the exhibit lighting to be brought to full intensity. This exhibit is what he would call Words in a Deeper Blue.”

That was the cue for Izzy and me to walk to the balcony to stand on each side of Il Patrizio. He put his arms around us as the applause built and built. Izzy nodded. Il Patrizio blew light kisses to the assembled partygoers. I stood rigidly and tried to wish away the tears that were welling up in my eyes.

I took a single photograph that night. It was of Il Patrizio and Izzy together as a sea of blue and white held their hands up high, some swirling their blue Hermès scarfs. Izzy had her Jeu des Omnibus et Dames Blanches scarf cinched around her waist. My mind wandered to the first time I saw her. And her white dress. And the scarf tied around her waist.

“BRAVA! BRAVO! BRAVA! BRAVO!” came the shouts in waves. Then a string quartet began to play Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor. That built another layer of crescendo. Izzy and I descended the staircase together and swam into the flow of the crowd, while Subedar escorted Il Patrizio down the back staircase because he didn’t want anyone to see how bad his back was hurting.

Izzy made her way through the crowd to the photo of her emerging from the Blue Grotto. She looked like she was born for that moment. Maybe it was because I had taken hundreds of photographs of her. I didn’t know what to think. I just knew she looked like she wanted me to take ten thousand more photos of her.

When Il Patrizio told me he was hosting a gallery showing of my photographs, I was stunned. But when I discovered that he was hosting a gala with the glitterati of Capri (and the world), I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel fright. Or flight. I felt overwhelmed with a sense of joy.

“Thomas, I would like you to meet Gina Lollobrigida,” Il Patrizio said to me in Italian as he turned to a woman I had watched in many movies. Some people said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Several people stood close by to stare at her and to try to catch her eye. “Gina, this is the artist I mentioned. I haven’t had a chance to discuss it with him yet, but he will take your photos tomorrow. It is so, Thomas?”

“It’s an honor to meet you, signorina,” I said as I nodded. “I don’t know what Il Patrizio told you of me, but I’m just a humble photographer.”

“He has told me much,” Gina said as she smoothed the fabric over her voluptuous hips and squinted at me with her almond eyes. “I admire your art, and your modelo. And I think you will like some photos of me. Please join me for a late breakfast at Grand Hotel Quisisana and we can discuss how much I will wear. Or not wear.”

I thought for a second that she was referring to the nudes of Izzy. Then, in an instant, I knew she was referring to those photos of Izzy. She wasn’t the last woman that evening to say she would like some photos taken of her in various states of undress.

“I will be there,” I promised. Then in my head I said, “Who’s life is this? One year I’m camping in muddy fields taking photos of butterflies, now I’m being asked to take photos of movie stars.”

Il Patrizio’s guest list included the generationally wealthy and the newly famous. There were hundreds of people at the gala, including the French director Jean-Luc Godard. Standing next to him was Bridget Bardot – everyone called her BB – along with Catherine Dumas and Jacqueline Hermès. I saw Izzy talking to them, and I made a mental note that I would ask her about it later. Catherine had mysteriously said to me as I walked by her earlier, “Isa told me everything.”

The Italian novelist Alberto Moravia, who wrote The Conformist and The Roman while living on Capri, closely examined the exhibits with Alfred Hitchcock and Humphrey Bogart. They dwelled a long time in front of the set of photos I took of Izzy at Chefchaouen. Sophia Loren and Clark Gable were there. And so many others – some famous, and some very quiet and powerful. There were poets there, too.

“I finished writing Los Versos del Capitan in 1952 while I was exiled here on Capri,” Pablo Neruda said to me in his rapid-fire Chilean accent. I thought I had trouble catching words in Catalan; but I strained even more to understand Neruda’s Chilenismos while he was wheeling around and scanning the room, looking for Matilda Urrutia. “I brought an original copy for you. I wrote it for Matilda. Have you met her?”

“I haven’t seen her yet, but as soon as I do, I will make sure to send her your direction,” I said.

Neruda handed me a copy of Los Versos del Capitan from the original 50 chapbooks he published, then told me a worldwide publication had just launched.

“I am doing a reading next week. I would like to have you as a special guest if you would like to join me,” he said.

I had gotten accustomed to being around celebrated writers while I was in Buenos Aires, so although it felt surreal, I said the only thing I could say: “I would be honored, sir. And tonight, I will read your poems in their entirety.”

I spent hours chatting with the guests. Many had questions about what I was thinking at the very moment I took a particular photo. Others wondered about my plan to see the most beautiful Blue Places in the world. Some said they wanted to read my book when it was published.

I had a long conversation with Maria Callas about her most recent voyage to Buenos Aires. We compared notes about our favorite restaurants, and then when I told her I studied the tango, she asked the band to play La Cumparsita. We danced together, and I was surprised that an opera singer could dance like that. I suppose she thought the same about an American academic.

The crowd near us broke into wild applause when we arrived at la resolución. Maria took a theatrical bow. I looked far across the room and saw Izzy smiling with her eyes.

Il Patrizio had crafted the entire evening that culminated in me seeing Izzy after she disappeared a year earlier. And as soon as I saw her, he and Subedar took their leave.

“We will retire now,” Subedar said as he took Il Patrizio by the hand. We have food and champagne for us in our rooms upstairs. We will see you both in the morning.”

And like magicians, they disappeared. Izzy and I stood in the kitchen and stared at each other. A few hours later in her room, we finally said our first words.

“Look at that luscious peach,” I said to Izzy as she laid face down on the bed. Naked. I ran my hand over the smooth and firm curve of her ass. “I’ve thought about you every day. No, that’s a lie. It was every minute of every day. There wasn’t a moment or a molecule that separated me from you. I used to document the times I thought of you in my journal, but then it was filling page after page. Just know, I could have filled a hundred journals with notes that said, Izzy.”

I started to feel nostalgic. Sad. Scared. “Saudade,” I muttered to myself.

“I know you must go. But first, let me have a bite of that peach,” I said as I pretended to bite her well-formed derriere. Izzy squealed and pushed me away.

Other than her name when I first saw her, those were the first words I said to Izzy after a year apart. When Il Patrizio and Subedar left the cucina, Izzy enfolded her fingers into mine, led me upstairs, and removed my clothes slowly. Then she dropped her dress. Untold hours flashed by without a word.

“I didn’t get married,” Izzy said as she pulled her knees up to her chest. Her hair was hanging over her eyes and she didn’t try to push it away. “When I left Barcelona, I returned home to Padua, but I couldn’t stay. I’ve been here ever since.”

“You what?” I asked as I flipped over quickly and got very close to her. I pushed her legs down and laid on top of her with my head between her breasts. I pushed her hair out of her face and gazed in her eyes. “You didn’t get married? You’re not married? Wait, you didn’t get married?” I was repeating myself. Izzy laughed loudly and playfully pushed me off her.

“I didn’t get married. And I created the scandal of the year in Padua. My grandmother disowned me. She repossessed my ceramics shop and has vowed to never speak to me again. She said I brought shame on our family name. That also means my mother could not speak to me. So, I came here.”

“By here you mean Capri? Or by here you mean to this palazzo?”

“Il Patrizio is mi padrino – my godfather. It’s a spiritual obligation in Italy. And I don’t mean the struggle for my soul. That’s gone. I mean for my care and wellbeing.”

At that very instant I had a blinding realization. I already recognized there is very little left to chance in this world. I knew the difference between fate and chance.

It wasn’t by chance that I met Il Patrizio. It wasn’t by chance that I met a guy who led me to his darkroom. Was it by chance I met Izzy?

“He knew right away that you were with me on Capri last summer, didn’t he?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“He knows everything that happens on the island. And he knows everybody. There isn’t a thing that happens on Capri that he isn’t part of or knows about.”

Since I had met Izzy, I had more moments of clarity than I had in the entirety of my life before I met her.

“So, you’re here, and you’ve been here. And you’re not married? And we’re here together right now? Or am I hallucinating?”

“You’re not dreaming,” Izzy said as she rolled over in the bed we had just wrecked for the past few hours without saying a word. “You’re here. And I’m here. And that’s all that matters. We lost a year. Let’s not lose another minute.”

Even though I was exhausted, I had another round in me. And I wasn’t going to waste it.

Izzy and I barely left each other’s sides on the lead up to the Blue and White Gala. She accompanied me to the tailor to buy a white linen shirt and pants. She stood next to me as I watched the cook prepare meals in la cucina. And she impishly dribbled water on my forehead in the bathtub when I soaked for a long time, then fell asleep.

At the Blue and White Gala, Izzy wore what she called a camicia origami. Her thin white linen dress was decorated with linen-on-linen embroidery along the centerline. It buttoned all the way down the front, although she left the buttons open to her navel that evening. Over the course of the night, I saw several sneaky men – and a few women – try to angle to peek inside her dress. They had already seen the photos in the shadowbox. They wanted to see the real thing.

“Pirates don’t wear anything underneath,” Izzy told me as she was completing getting dressed. “It keeps everything smooth and streamlined.”

“You’re still a pirate who makes my blood boil,” I said as I felt the urge again.

Izzy spritzed Fiori di Capri on her neck, then rolled up her sleeves to the middle of her forearms. Her hair had gotten very long in the year we had been apart. She had resisted the trend that a lot of young women were doing that year and cutting off their hair above their ears.

“I love the scent of Fiori di Capri,” I said to her as I pulled her hair up from the back of her neck. “I think Il Patrizio does, too. He was wearing it when I first arrived.”

“Yes, when he was able to walk more, he liked to amble with me along the edge of the Gardens of Augustus. That walk always included a stop for a long afternoon chat at the original Carthusia shoppe. He doesn’t go much anymore, so I bought a flacon for him when I was there last week. I knew I wanted to wear this perfume when you arrived.”

“You knew I was coming, too?”

“Oh, Thomas, my sweet pirate. There is so much I need to tell you.”

Il Patrizio’s face radiated happiness like the summer sun when he greeted me at the gate to his palazzo that afternoon. His wholehearted reception was in stark contrast with first time I met him, when he partially blocked the door with his red velvet slipper.

“Bentornato, welcome, welcome, welcome back, mi amici,” he said ebulliently as he smiled and opened wide the thick oak door that led to his garden. The jasmine on the patio was in full bloom. And so was he. His cream-colored linen suit was accented with a crisp white shirt. To add even more flair to his ensemble, he had a purple cape draped over his shoulders. The cape was lined with vermillion silk, which I glimpsed as he swept the cloak around him and reached up to squeeze my shoulder. “I am so very happy you have made a return to Capri.”

I had arrived on Capri a few days earlier after a two-week sea voyage from Buenos Aires to Naples on the MS Giulio Cesare. Thankfully, the seas were mostly calm on the Atlantic crossing. I laughed to myself one time when we did get a patch of rough seas for a few hours and I thought about Izzy saying in exaggerated Italian-accented English, “I’m-a nah gonna be-a sick-a.” Then how she said, “Pirates never get seasick.”

An event that disturbed the calm was the raucous crossing the line ceremony at the equator. There were days of planning ahead of the crossing. Everyone onboard were told what was coming, but when it came time for the actual event, they had no idea what hit them.

On the day of the equator crossing, our Italian crew reveled in their sea creature costumes. And they amplified the excitement by encouraging passengers to embarrass themselves in a day of debauchery. The concept was that anyone who hadn’t crossed the equator on a ship should dress up to impress King Neptune. And by “dress up,” they meant wear as little as possible. Both women and men wore bathing suits, coconut bras, and grass skirts. Plied with pitchers of martinis before the parade, many participants ended up wearing nothing at all. There were a lot of averted eyes the days following the crossing as some celebrants realized what they had done and how much their fellow passengers had seen. I kept my pants on. I had crossed the equator already, so I was exempt from the craziness. But I did watch.

To erase a little of the shame, at the end of the ceremony, all passengers were granted an ornate credential by King Neptune certifying they crossed the equator on the Giulio Cesare.

To All Sailors Wherever Ye May Be: and to all Mermaids, Whales, Sea Serpents, Porpoises, Sharks, Dolphins, Eels, Crabs, Lobsters, and all other Living Things of the Sea.

Know ye that on this Third day of July 19__ in Latitude 00000 and Longitude -23.000 there appeared within Our Royal Domain the MS Giulio Cesare bound North for the Equator and for the ancient lands of Italia.

And be it known by all ye Sailors, Mariners and Land Lubbers, who may be honored by his presence, that, _____ _____, having been found worthy to be numbered as one of our TRUSTY SONS OF NEPTUNE, has been gathered to our fold and duly initiated into the solemn mysteries of THE ANCIENT ORDER OF THE DEEP.

Be it further understood that by virtue of the power invested in me I hereby command my subjects to show due honor and respect to him whenever he may enter Our Realm. Disobey this order under penalty of our royal displeasure.

Neptunus Rex, Ruler of the Raging Sea

I needed to get my bearings once I arrived on Capri. To get my balance back after a couple weeks at sea. The island was where I met Izzy. As hard as that was to reconcile, and as unstable as it made me feel, I wanted to return to that place. Plus, I needed to collect the undeveloped rolls of film I sent to Il Patrizio from Barcelona for safekeeping.

It wasn’t easy sensing Izzy there. It was like how I felt the presence of Alfonsina Storni at Café Tortoni. Only the feeling I got about Izzy was more intense. On my return to Capri, I could feel the molecules that touched her. When I entered Carthusia i Profumi di Capri, the famous perfumery, I was reminded of the lemon and bergamot shampoo we bought on Santorini. I could smell her. And I could feel her.

I spent a couple days wandering the quiet streets of Anacapri, then I spent time close to my hotel, window shopping on Via Cameralle and Via Vittoria Emanuele. When I was finally calm enough, I sent a request to Il Patrizio by hand-delivered mail and asked to meet with him. I was delighted when a handwritten note was delivered right away to my attention at my hotel. It said, “My dear Thomas. My villa is being prepared for you at present. I shall anticipate your arrival at the indicated time.”

I spent the entire morning getting ready. I didn’t eat well. I rejected the coffee and fruit that was sent to my room. I was unsettled. I fussed and fretted, took a long bath, then I chose my best suit and tie for the meeting. I added a custom boutonniere I had made for me by a florist near my hotel. Then I slid on a pair of brand-new dark chocolate suede loafers I bought the day before on my shopping trip near the Piazzetta.

When I arrived at Il Patrizio’s villa and saw him wearing a royal purple cape, I felt underdressed.

“Buongiorno, Signore,” I said as I kissed the hand he offered me. Then he smiled, pulled me close, and kissed me, once on each cheek. He not only looked stunning, but he also smelled wonderful, too. His neck was scented with Fiori di Capri. I had written down the details in my notebook just the day before as the saleslady at Carthusia Profumeria told me in Italian about the classic perfume.

“It’s a combination of carnation, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang, oakmoss, ambergris, sandalwood. All of these elements are grown here on Capri,” she said as she spritzed the fragrance on what French perfumers call a mouillette – a term I knew from my butterfly pheromone research – and waved it near my nose. “Wild carnations are picked by hand on Monte Solaro. Then lily of the valley and oak are blended with the aroma of amber and sandalwood. Fiori di Capri is an original formula from 1380.”

I had to ask her for several clarifications of her elegant description. For instance, I didn’t know the Italian word for lily of the valley, nor for sandalwood. I had been studying Italian for less than a year, and those words don’t usually appear in normal conversation. I was familiar with ylang-ylang because I had observed it growing in Brazil and remembered that some Brazilians believed it was an aphrodisiac. I found the scent of Fiori di Capri intoxicating.

“You have a newfound elegance. Una vera raffinatezza,” Il Patrizio said to me as he looked me up and down, taking in every detail. He touched sleeve of my jacket and rolled it between his thumb and middle finger. “The bespoke suit. The way you wear your hair. The way you’re standing. Sei più rilassato.”

“I had this suit made for me in Lisbon, at Retrosaria Bijou,” I said to him self-consciously as I tugged at the lapels of my suit and then straightened my tie. “The hair? That’s funny. All the artists in Buenos Aires are wearing their hair longer. I thought I would, too. And after all these years, I did learn to stand up straight. The Argentine tango demands correct posture. I’ve become an aficionado now. A tanguero they call it. Dancing in the milogas five days a week made me a lot stronger. And a lot more confident. It’s not easy asking a partner to dance in Argentina. There’s an entire art that has nothing to do with the quality of one’s dance aptitude.”

Il Patrizio laughed and touched my hair. His eyes sparkled.

“You must show me some of your techniques someday,” he said.

The day was warm and sun drenched – one of those perfect days that happen on Capri in July. Il Patrizio proposed that we take a lemonade under the pink and purple canopy of bougainvillea in his courtyard. “We can have a cool drink while we talk,” he said as he guided me to a chair. I looked intently at him. And then at all the plants and flowers and orange trees arrayed in his garden. Il Patrizio was a world-renowned photographer and artiste, and with that talent came an eye for layout and visual appeal. Nothing was there by chance. Everything he did was by design.

 Just a moment after we sat down, a bare-chested young man with black hair and a cinnamon complexion strolled quietly into the garden from the palazzo. He was barefoot and dressed in olive-colored high waist trousers. He carried a heavy silver tray with both hands extended far in front of him, which made his muscled torso flex prominently.

After I got over the initial surprise of seeing him walk toward us, shirtless, I noticed at what he was carrying. He had a cut crystal pitcher on the tray in addition to a mound of lemons in a cerulean ceramic bowl, a sugar bowl, a carafe, and two tall limoncello glasses.

“Please say hello to my special friend, Subedar,” Il Patrizio said as he gestured toward the young man. Subedar stood silently and looked down self-consciously. “He has been with me since my last voyage to Northern India. That was just after I saw you last summer.”

Subedar set the tray down on a table next to Il Patrizio, then looked at me and smiled. Then he reached behind his back, pulled a khukuri from the belt on his trousers, and deftly cut a dozen lemons in half. Then he wrapped a piece of muslin around each lemon half as he squeezed the juice into the mouth of the pitcher and over the ice. Then he decanted water very slowly from the carafe into the pitcher, pouring it down the lip so it created a clear layer on top of the lemon juice. Finally, he picked up the sugar bowl in his left hand, and pursed fingers the fingers of his right hand into a mound of raw sugar granules. With a theatrical move, he raised his hand high above the pitcher and sprinkled the sugar into the pitcher. He repeated that action three times. Then he picked up a glass rod from the side of the silver tray.

Il Patrizio never averted his eyes from Subedar. And with a very discreet and subtle move, I saw him reach in and touch Subedar’s leg as the young man stirred the lemonade with the glass rod. The only sound at that moment was ice cubes clinking in the crystal pitcher.

Subedar poured glasses of lemonade for Il Patrizio and me and set them down on the mosaic-tiled tables next to our chairs.

“Would you like anything more right now, signore?” he asked in perfect English.

Il Patrizio smiled a wicked smile. He blushed when he looked over at me.

“I can see why you’re so happy,” I said as Subedar walked away. “You once told me, ‘A good photographer sees the world differently. He also needs a bellissimo modello. E un po’ di fortuna.’”

“You understand what it means to have a muse,” Il Patrizio said as he gazed at the blue sky above. “At my advanced age, I feel the fortune all the more intensely. Love can be fleeting. I am happy to have it now. He is my muse. And yes, a beauty. Subedar is both loving and brave. He was in the army, you know? And now he is here. Are you familiar with the saying about the Gurkhas? If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha. Subedar is afraid of nothing.”

Nothing in Capri can be rushed. And there was no rushing Il Patrizio as he was inundated with good feelings. It reminded me of butterfly behavior – when the endorphins were at high levels, there was a euphoria among the trees. Just like that moment under the bougainvillea in Capri.

We sat in the garden for a couple hours. Subedar checked on us a few times. He and Il Patrizio held long gazes.

“I was in Buenos Aires for almost a year,” I said when Il Patrizio asked where I had been. “To tell you the truth, I went to South America to hide. When I first arrived in Argentina, I was working on my Blue Places manuscript, but I found my energy and my interest waning. I was alone. And I wrote less and less. Then one thing led to another. I went to the same restaurant every day: Café Tortoni. The literati of Buenos Aires were there. I met a group of artists – painters and poets and writers. And I studied the tango.”

“I also studied Italian,” I said as I switched from English to my newly acquired Italian. “I thought I should learn another Romance language. I was lucky to find the best tutor in Argentina. She taught me so much and was so elegant. But not everyone there had that elegance. Do you know the joke they say there about the people who live near the port of Buenos Aires – the porteños? They say they are Italians who speak Spanish, think they’re French, and would secretly like to be British.”

Il Patrizio laughed a full-throated laugh. “Oh, we all would like to be someone else, wouldn’t we? It’s hard to get through a day in our lives without the fantasy of being someone else or being somewhere else.”

“I spent almost a year seeking that kind of escape,” I said. “It’s strange how Byzantine a simple plan can get. I thought my life was going in one direction – that was my academic work. I met a girl from Brazil who I thought would be with me for the rest of my life, but she left me one day in Mexico City without an explanation. Then I spent some years alone, chasing butterflies, only to find the love of my life on Capri. Then…she left me one morning in Barcelona. At least she had an explanation.”

Il Patrizio spent a long time sitting quietly. Then he sighed. “Lost love is still love. And sometimes lost love isn’t lost at all.”

“It’s all gone now, except for the memories,” I said as I leaned back in my chair and let the late afternoon sun warm my face. I was a little embarrassed I let my feelings out like that. Except for Izzy, I never talked to people about how I felt. I had one face I showed most people, and then I had an entire inner dialog I kept to myself. But I felt safe with Il Patrizio. And he felt safe with me.

“Let’s make our way to the Piazzetta to take a Negroni and watch a little of the passeggiatta,” Il Patrizio proposed as he sipped the last of the lemonade.

“I could probably use a drink,” I said as I got up. Il Patrizio held out his hands and asked me to assist him.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he rose slowly and grunted as he did. “Something pains me terribly in my back. Age I suppose.”

“Maybe you just need some tango lessons,” I said mischievously.

“I thought my back was aching because of the dancing with Subedar, but it seems like it may be something else.”

I laughed a little. I felt honored Il Patrizio trusted me enough to be himself. Subedar had called a car for us. He met us at the gate and said he would welcome us when we came back.

“I have some pieces of art to show you when we return,” Il Patrizio said as we were shown to the two best chairs on the plaza. The waiter brought two velvet pillows for him to place on his chair behind his back. And another person from the staff brought a needlepoint stool for his feet. Il Patrizio looked regal sitting on the Piazzetta with the pillows and his purple cape.

“You are the Sheikh of Araby,” I said to him as I adjusted the footstool. He grimaced a little as I did.

“What is that?” he asked. “The Sheikh of Araby?”

“It’s an old song from the 1920s. It was written about the actor Rudolph Valentino after he starred in the movie The Sheikh. The song was very popular in the United States. My grandfather used to sing along to the 78s he played on the Victrola all the time. The Sheikh of Araby was one of his favorites. Would you like to hear a verse?”

“Are you going to serenade me on the Piazzetta?” he asked as he laughed quietly and fanned his face with a Kyo-Sensu painted with vivid blue butterflies. “What will the people say?”

“They are here watching people. It’s the passeggiatta. Let’s give them a show. And who cares what they say?”

I sang the old Jazz Age standard with enthusiasm, including the hand gestures. We had an audience.

Over the desert wild and free,
Rides the bold Sheik of Araby.
His Arab band at his command
Follow his love’s caravan.
Under the shadow of the palms;
He sings to call her to his arms.

I’m the Sheik of Araby,
Your love belongs to me.
At night when you’re asleep,
Into your tent I’ll creep.

The stars that shine above,
Will light our way to love.
You’ll rule this land with me;
The Sheik of Araby.

“You, signore, are the Sheikh of Araby,” I said as I finished the chorus of the song and a few people near us applauded. “I have seen the world far and near, and I have made the acquaintance of no one more elegant.”

“You flatter me, my dear Thomas. I have been fortunate to have a classical education, a rewarding creative life, and a very talented tailor. And to have a tenor sing to me in the Piazzetta. È una bella giornata.”

We sat and talked and watched people. And after a couple aperitivos, I suggested to Il Patrizio that perhaps we should ask Subedar to join us for a dinner.

“I can ask the maître d’ to call the house. And I can have him arrange for a dinner for us,” I said as I raised my hand to get our waiter’s attention.

“I think I would be more comfortable at my villa. My back can endure only so much time in this chair. I hoped you would join us for dinner. Subedar is expecting us back by nine.”

There was subtlety required in the milongas in Buenos Aires. And there was subtlety required in interactions in Capri. I had no expectation I would be invited for dinner. My intent was to have a brief meeting with Il Patrizio, retrieve my film, and move along. I didn’t have a plan for staying on Capri. I felt edgy arriving. And then I was thrown off-guard with a dinner invitation. Everything happened slowly in Capri; then it happened all at once.

“I would love to take dinner with you if it’s not an imposition,” I said.

“No, no, no. Not an imposition at all. I had hoped you would have sufficient time to spend with me. We have art to look at. And a meal later.”

Just then, a car arrived to take us to Il Patrizio’s palazzo. Even though he was in pain, he gave a twirl of his cape before he got in the car. “That will give them something to talk about for the summer,” he said as he leaned back in the seat and sighed.

“I want to show you something,” Il Patrizio said as he led me through his grand ballroom. I still was just as stunned seeing the portraits he took of kings and queens and musicians and movie stars a second time. “Let’s go this way.”

I thought it was strange we didn’t see Subedar when we arrived. Although I could smell the aromas of food cooking.

Il Patrizio led me deeper into the palazzo. I didn’t realize how grand the place was the first time I was there. That time, we went from the grand ballroom directly to the darkroom. This time I was getting the grand tour.

“I had this room recently painted and prepared by a gallerist from Milano,” he said we entered a room big enough for two hundred people to gather in comfortably. There were just a few candles lighting the interior as we walked farther into the room. Il Patrizio went to one wall and activated a light switch that controlled the gallery lights over the mounted pieces. “I asked for the walls to be nearly black – the color of squid ink pasta – so the blue art would predominate your vision.”

I could barely control my emotions at that moment. Everywhere I looked there were large format photos of Izzy.

“Please, come to the middle of the room,” Il Patrizio said as he put his hand in the middle of my back. I walked deeper in, barely able to breathe.

The photo I took of Izzy as she emerged from the water at the Blue Grotto had been printed in oversized format. It was as wide as I could stretch my arms.

“How, how, how?” is all I could mutter to start.

“I had that one printed in Germany,” he said, standing behind me. I could hear the pride in his voice. “I told you when I first saw it that you captured an aura. You did. I experimented with different sizes. This scale shows it best.”

The enormous photo of Izzy was the one where she emerged from the water of the Blue Grotto. Only her head was above the waterline. There wasn’t a ripple around her, not even in large format. The water tension over her hair made it look like she was wearing a shimmering silver hood. I couldn’t avert my eyes.

“It’s stunning,” I said nearly breathlessly. I was transported to that exact moment in my mind as my voice trailed off. “That was a magical…truly magical.”

“Let’s look at the others,” Il Patrizio said as we stepped farther into the gallery. “You took hundreds of photos of Isabella. And your prodigious talent made it difficult to curate. There were very few I wanted to leave out of the exhibit.”

I felt like I was outside my body. Everywhere I looked, there were photos of Izzy. Adding to that surreal sensation was the compliment from one of the leading photographers in the world.

Mounted on the black walls were triptychs from our road trip to Yugoslavia. There were individual photos arrayed of Izzy standing in front of the waterfall at Lago di Braies. Photos of Izzy painting en plein air at Plitvice Lake and standing in front of the unraised dome at Saint Sava in Belgrade.

Each photo or section had gallery labeling on it. One photo stood by itself under the title The Laugh. It was a candid snapshot of Izzy at dinner at Rastko’s home in Serbia. Rastko’s family were surrounding Izzy, everyone was packed in tight, and Izzy was laughing with her head tilted back as she held a huge sausage in both hands. I remembered the joke Rastko’s sister told when I took that photo. “A girl should dream,” she said.

Then there was the set labelled Santorini. One photo was of Izzy looking back at me over her shoulder. The blue in her eyes was accented by the blue dome behind her. There was also a series of high-speed photos mounted vertically and printed in black-and-white where she jumped off the huge promontory at the hidden beach. As I looked at those photos, I remembered at that moment about how I thought she was lost in the sea, then bobbed out of the water like a mermaid. Or a pirate.

Il Patrizio designed a section of the gallery to show scores of the same photo of Izzy at the Blue Grotto, each photo using a different saturation and contrast. In the center was a large-scale version of the original the photo I took of her standing in the wooden boat before she dove in the water. It was shot from low angle, and with her white dress glowing before she jumped in, Izzy looked like Venus rising from the azure waters of the Grotto.

Il Patrizio had created a museum gallery of photos of Izzy. There was a section devoted to Izzy eating. There was her eating a bambalouni in Sidi Bou Said. And her in front of Le Pirate.

The section of Izzy in Marrakech was gorgeous. At the Jardin Majorelle and around the city. At that moment, I wished Jacques Majorelle had gotten a chance to see the photo of Izzy and him in front of the paintings they created for me.

“I am overwhelmed,” I said as Il Patrizio led me from section to section of the exhibit.

“As was I when I got your film. I must say, I was a bit surprised when your man delivered the box and message to me. I was unsure what you wanted me to do with your work. And for several months, I did nothing. But once I returned from India, I had a number of commissions, and I spent time teaching Subedar to process film.”

“Look at this. How could you know to name this Scents?” I asked as we got to a series of photos from Fez. There was the one of Izzy in her white dress and blue turban in front of the Blue Gate. And one of her holding a sprig of mint in front of her face at the tannery. And there was one of Izzy with the Mint Man wearing a crimson berry dyed hat.

“I could see it in the photos,” Il Patrizio said. “Each one tells a story. These tell a story.”

He pointed to a set of photographs encased in a mounted shadow box. Inside the box, the lighting was dim. When I went closer to examine the exhibit, which was titled Il Pirata, I realized why: they were a set of nudes I took of Izzy in Fez wearing nothing more than a cerulean scarf on her head.

“You can see a lot in those photos,” I said with a hint of embarrassment in my voice.

“That is Venus in her full glory,” he said as he stood close to me and looked at Izzy at the confluence of her most vulnerable and most bold.

“When I first met her, she said let’s be pirates, and that always carried through with us.” As I said that, I felt off balance. I wondered how Il Patrizio would know. Had I mentioned it in my note? A year had gone by, and perhaps I had written about Izzy being a pirate back then. I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.

“There are more to see,” he said as he pushed another switch that lit up even more photos. When I turned to the end wall, I noticed a parallel set of photos of Subedar. Many were in various outdoor locations, but there was also a set of him standing in front of photos of Izzy. There was Subedar holding a paint brush dripping blue in front of a large scale photo of Izzy and the Old Woman painting in Chefchaouen. And Subedar soaking wet in front of a life-sized print of Izzy in Barcelona when she splashed water at me from lizard sculpture at Park Güell.

“I am having a gallery opening here in three days time,” Il Patrizio said as he swept his arm to show the vastness of the gallery. “And you are the featured artist.”

I stood in stunned silence. There were only a few times in my life when I felt a sense of cognitive awe: the first time I saw the resplendent glory of the Milky Way galaxy as I camped alone in the total blackness of butterfly preserve in Mexico; when Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama, placed a white silk khata prayer shawl on my neck as he said “May whoever is given this be happy night and day”; and the day my grandfather held my hand the entire day before he died and told me over and again how proud he was of me. When I saw Izzy emerge from the water in the Blue Grotto was another. And there was Il Patrizio telling me I was going to have a gallery showing of my photos.

“How did you even know I would be here?” I stammered, unsure of the right thing to say and how to say it.

“There is very little that happens on Capri that I don’t hear about,” Il Patrizio said as he sat down on the lone chair in the gallery. “You made arrangements for your hotel before you left Argentina. A whisper came to me that you were on a ship to Napoli. And that you were on your way to Capri. I have been working on this exhibit for months.”

“Months?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, for months. I was going to have a gallery opening. This is high season for the glitterati of Capri. All the collectors are here. And all the beautiful people. They should see your work. And they shall.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“You have done enough. Speak Italian. Speak French. Speak English. It will depend on your audience. If they speak Portuguese, pretend you don’t understand them. It will be better that way.”

I was perplexed. What an odd thing to say, I thought. But that was a time for subtlety. A lot was said in those few words. I would have time to review my thoughts later.

“This was just the first showing,” Il Patrizio said. “The gallerist arrives in the morning to complete the work. And we need to think about an agent to set pricing for the pieces. But that’s tomorrow. For now, my back could use a more comfortable chair, and my stomach could use some good food. Let us make our way to la cucina.”

I was hungry, too. It had been a long day, and I was feeling overwhelmed. Il Patrizio led me down a few passageways and then we entered a candlelit kitchen. There was an array of dishes – meats and breads and cheeses – on a marble island. Subedar was standing behind the table. He was wearing a white chef’s apron. He acknowledged us, then picked up a bottle of vintage Pol Roger champagne, nodded to Il Patrizio, popped the cork into a cloth napkin in the classic style, then began pouring the wine.

“Four glasses?” I asked as Subedar as he decanted the champagne from the bottle, then held a single glass up to admire the fine bubbles. “We’re only three here.”

“Your hair has gotten much longer. Like a pirate,” I heard a voice say behind me from the shadows.

I turned around slowly. She was there.

“Izzy,” I said.

5 October 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
8:15 a.m.

My Dear Izzy,

I’m at my usual table at my usual place having my usual breakfast. I’ve been here every morning for weeks. I arrive as soon as the doors open. It’s quiet, and I get considerable work done early in the day.

Today, after such a long time apart, I thought I would write you a letter I won’t send. But writing to you lets me pretend I’m with you. Even if it’s just in my mind.

I decided to claim this particular table. It’s a tradition here. The famous tango singer Luis Gardel had a designated table. His was near the front window. Mine is a little farther back. The benefit of my quotidian habit is the waiter calls me by name when I enter. I’m known here.

My table (which I sometimes call “our table”) has a round Carrara marble top set on a wooden pedestal. It’s tucked into a little alcove between two mahogany pilasters, against the wall about halfway back in the café. (Count seven tables on the right side as you walk in…or three chandeliers…I will be there.) Four oak armchairs are arrayed around the table. The chairs have cordovan leather seats and backs affixed with hundreds of brass tacks. The leather is darkened in spots where people touch it. (Remember the tannery in Fez? Maybe you don’t want to. That odor!)

I don’t let anyone sit in the chair on my right. That’s where you would sit if you were here. That’s your chair. That seat has an uninterrupted view of the entire café. It would be great seat to watch people and make up dialogue like we did on Capri. There are plenty of people here to watch. And I do.

I have welcomed two people at a time to sit with me at my table, but no more. I always keep your chair unoccupied. I’m superstitious about it.

What can I tell you about the normal things that fill my day? I ordered a hot chocolate and churros this morning. Even though spring is here in the Southern Hemisphere, it was chilly this morning. I usually have a coffee, but today I wanted hot chocolate. The truth is, I have avoided the hot chocolate. It reminded me too much of the xocolata calenta we had just before you left Barcelona. But today, I felt brave.

I like to read the morning newspapers. I usually start with El Mundo, although I avoid most of the propaganda they publish. Then I read the business tabloid Clarín. After that, I flip through Le Figaro and Le Monde (they’re usually a week or two late here, so it’s old news, but I like to know what’s happening in France). Then I spend time with the New York Times. At the far end of the café near one of the salons there is a rack of newspapers that reminds me of cafés in Vienna.

Izzy, I think there is a reason I started writing you now that I think about it. You will be married tomorrow. And that’s that. I’ve imagined you in your wedding dress. The Belgian lace of your veil. The assembled nobility to witness you. I’ve imagined every detail. And I wish it were me waiting for you at the end of the aisle in the chapel. I’m crying just writing this.

Alas, I am here in a café in Buenos Aires, sipping hot chocolate. Later I will write more pages for my manuscript. My editor is clamoring for more material, but I must admit I have lost the spark of the Blue Places project. I lost the thread. And I lost you.

I wish you a happy wedding.

Thomas_____

6 October 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
8:33 a.m.

Dear Izzy,

As I write this, I realize with the time zone difference, you are likely already married.

I spent hours yesterday sitting in the Alfonsina Storni Salon at the café. I have a sense about the vibrations of the universe. I know you would laugh if I told you this, but I could feel her there. And I thought about this time we live in…and how you and Alfonsina would be great friends, except she is long gone (and now that I think of it, so are you).

Here are a couple favorite stanzas from my favorite poem of hers… (I have a book of her poems…the entire poem should be read…)

Tú me quieres blanca
Tú me quieres alba,
Me quieres de espumas,
Me quieres de nácar.
Que sea azucena
Sobre todas, casta.
De perfume tenue.
Corola cerrada
Ni un rayo de luna
Filtrado me haya.
Ni una margarita
Se diga mi hermana.
Tú me quieres nívea,
Tú me quieres blanca,
Tú me quieres alba.

Alfonsina was a liberated woman at a time when it was difficult for women to have a voice. I thought of what she wrote when I thought about you diving into the waters of the Blue Grotto. You have a spirit – a freedom, a voice, a joie de vivre – about you, that I found the most compelling of all. These words by Alfonsina tell a story: You want me pale/Made of sea foam/A mother of pearl/Made of white lily/Untouched among the others/Made of thinning perfume/Petals sealed/Not touched by moonbeams/Not called ‘sister’ by the daisies/You want me like snow/You want me white/You want me pale.

You are dressed in white today. But I always adored you however you showed yourself – the pirate or the princess. With me, you could be both. I didn’t want you pale. You weren’t. I loved you for that.

Thomas_____

18 October 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
8:02 a.m.

Dear Izzy,

I have spent many afternoons in the Biblioteca Nacional Argentina. Recently, I devoured Sobre héroes y tumbas. Everyone in the city is talking about Anthony Sabato’s Of Heroes and Tombs. It was the book of the year. So, imagine my surprise one day when I met him here at Café Tortoni.

I recognized Sabato from a press photo. His bald head and huge moustache. And those chunky glasses. I got up from my table as he was walking in and introduced myself. Asked if he wasn’t meeting anyone if he would like to join me for a coffee.

He ordered a yerba mate. We talked about writing. And research. And heroes. I think he decided I was okay to talk to. “An American who speaks Spanish. And now with a porteño accent” he said to me. “What a strange mix you are.”

I have loved spending time here in this country. There is a real beauty in how the Argentinians speak. I find, even after a few months, that I am picking up and using their pronunciations. And vocabulary. I can’t help myself. There’s a real elegance to the sound of Argentine Spanish that has ruined me for anything else. Plus, they have a very particular way of speaking that blends a confounding mix of sophistication and street talk. (I never knew as many malas palabras as I’ve learned here in just a few months.) They’re snobs – with dirty mouths.

I laughed when an arrogant local left the café after bloviating about something pretentious, and my waiter, who is from Rosario, leaned over and whispered, “Porteños are Italians who speak Spanish, think they’re French, and would secretly like to be British.” It’s an old joke here, but I laughed a lot because of the context.

I wonder what he says about me when I’m not here.

Thomas_____

3 November 19_
Glaciar Perito Moreno
50°30′S 73°08′W
5:56 p.m.

Dear Izzy,

I just ended my tour of Glaciar Perito Moreno. It’s more spectacular than I could have imagined. Even though it’s far away from any other Blue Places location on my list, it was worth the time to get here and see it.

There was a lot of rumbling and cracking and splashing I could hear when I arrived at the parking area. When I walked the hour and a half to get as close as I could to the glacier, I realized the noise was because shards of ice break off and fall into the lake. (It’s called “calving” when pieces break away. Like giving birth to a new piece of ice.)

The brilliant blue glacier is five kilometers wide and stands 75 meters above Argentino Lake. The docent I met on my way out told me the ice field is the world’s third largest reserve of fresh water. I’m coming back here for a fresh drink of water someday.

I took photos. There is something that happened that is keeping me from writing more.

Thomas_____

11 November 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
3:40 p.m.

Dear Izzy,

I have been away from my table at Café Tortoni now for weeks. Since the weather was predicted to improve in Patagonia, I thought I would take the time to see Perito Moreno Glacier in early November. That turned out to be quite an adventure.

It took five days to drive there, and six days to return. There’s a lot more to the story as I indicated in my earlier letter.

I mentioned I met the writer Anthony Sabato. My meetings with him led to an introduction to the highly celebrated Argentinian writers Silvina Campo and Jorge Borges. They visited my table to say hello.

When they asked to have a seat, I mentioned that I am superstitious about leaving your chair open in case you walk into the café. Right away, and for no apparent reason other than I miss you, I told them all about you. How we met. Where we traveled. And, truthfully, why I’m in Buenos Aires. Alone.

Silvina thought it was so romantic that I leave a chair open for you. And Borges, even though he is completely blind, spoke in English about your beauty, having never seen you. He was right. Borges said to me in his sweet Argentinian accent, the words of a poem he wrote, to tell me to cease feeling sorry for myself. He said, first in Spanish, then in English:

Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche
esta declaración de la maestría
de Dios, que con magnífica ironía
me dio a la vez los libros y la noche.

No one should read self-pity or reproach
Into this statement of the majesty
Of God; who with such splendid irony,
Granted me books and night at one touch.

That one serendipitous meeting led to many days of meetings with Silvina Campo and a group of writers in a back room that used to be a peluqueria. (I haven’t had a haircut since I’ve seen you. It’s the style here now for men to have long hair.) We talked about writing. And philosophy. I spent two sessions describing my Blue Places project to them, and another session talking about the mating rituals of butterflies in Brazil.

Silvina painted a butterfly on canvas as I was talking. She had the owner of Café Tortoni mount it on the wall in the meeting room. During that period of time, she also wrote a poem called Tu nombre that I thought was perfect because of what I call you: Izzy, Iz, Isa, Isabelle, Isabella. The beginning in Spanish is Nadie consigue pronunciar tu nombre/ Sólo yo conozco la inflexión perfecta. It’s so elegant.

Tu nombre
No one can pronounce your name.
I alone know the perfect inflection.
They lack the tenderness in which it flows
and the sweetness in the consonants.
They don't know how to distinguish the color
of the exact musical note.
That's why each day I respond
by inventing a name:
blue, bird, breeze, light.
Common words
that can be said simply
even without knowing you, without loving you.

One day I mentioned that I needed to see Perito Moreno Glacier for my writing project. Silvina said she wanted to see it, too. And that she and her writing assistant would publish a story in her sister’s magazine, Sur. I agreed. “The more, the merrier,” I said. I thought we would fly to the airport near the glacier. But Silvina wanted to drive to Patagonia and collect stories along the way.

When Silvina and her assistant came to my hotel to get me in her car, I was surprised to see another person was going on the trip – a driver. I didn’t look at him much to start, but after we had been on the road for a while, I heard Silvina say something about “my husband.” And from the back seat of the car, I had a crazy realization: our driver was Adolfo Casares, the writer of La invención de Morel.

The trip down was absolute madness. We drove for a couple hours, then stopped. Silvina wanted to sketch and paint when we stopped. Casares and the writing assistant leaned on the car and smoked. I annotated my notebook. This process repeated itself the entire way to Patagonia. I thought we would never get there.

Only Casares and I drove. When I drove, Silvina sat in the front seat while her assistant and Casares sat in the back. When he drove, I sat in the front and Silvina and her assistant sat in the back.

We made it to Perito Moreno. Eventually. The walk down the pathways to the blue was spectacular – and long. Casares and the assistant stayed with the car. Silvina and I went to see the glacier.

I took at least a dozen photos of the glacier, and at least that many of Silvina. She is about to turn sixty and is at a very elegant time in her life. She comes from Argentine aristocracy, and I must admit that I thought a lot about you at her age having your photo taken at the glacier.

When we got back to the car some hours later…well, let’s say there was quite a scene. Casares and the writing assistant were in flagrante delicto. Silvina was furious. And embarrassed. (So was I.) Silvina threw them out of the car, tossed their clothes on the ground, told me to get in, and we zoomed away. Once we had driven for a few minutes, she pulled over and asked me to drive the rest of the way to El Calafate. (Truth is, she didn’t know how to drive, unlike you, who can drive like a racer.) “It smells like sex in here,” she said with disgust as she rolled down the window. I turned my head to the side so she didn’t see me laugh.

I did drive, but only so she could get her things from the hotel. Then she asked me to drive her to the airport. Silvina flew back home. And she asked me to return the car back to Buenos Aires. I did, but with only me as a driver, it took six days to get back. I don’t know what became of Casares or the writing assistant.

I haven’t seen Silvina since I returned. I have a feeling I won’t for a while. And I suppose there won’t be an article about the trip in Sur.

Thomas_____

24 December 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
8:13 a.m.

My Dear Izzy,

It’s Christmas Day tomorrow. And it’s really hot here today. I walked near the river and my shirt is wet from sweating. I have imagined you walking around Christmas markets in the winter chill of Padua with a scarf perfectly wrapped around your neck. And decorating a tree.

Tomorrow, I will wake up late. The café is closed, so I will not have my usual table at my usual time. I was invited to join a group of writers for a Christmas feast in the Recoleta neighborhood. I’m not sure I’ll go.

Thomas_____

8 March 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
9:01 a.m.

Iz,

It has been months since I wrote. I didn’t write you, and I didn’t write my manuscript. My editor is losing patience with me. I get telegrams every few days with threatening notes: WHERE IS THE NEXT CHAPTER? WHY AREN’T YOU IN THE MALDIVES? I NEED ANOTHER STORY FOR THE MAGAZINE!

I mentioned to her that I have fallen in with a group of writers and painters here in Buenos Aires. My editor doesn’t care, she wants new places and new copy. I just don’t know if I can deliver it.

T_____

P.S. I bought myself a new hat for Christmas. I remember your hat when I saw you for the first time. Let’s wear hats and go to Paris.

10 March 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
8:56 a.m.

Dear Izzy,

I don’t know why I didn’t mention it earlier, but I have been taking tango lessons. I was inspired because there is a tango show most nights here at Café Tortoni. Then I was introduced to a very talented bailarin. I have been going to her studio three days a week to learn to tango. I was never much a dancer, but I must say I think I’ve gotten quite good…and a bit obsessed. I’m afraid tango may be my new blue. They call a person who is passionate about tango history, music, and lyrics a tanguero. I’m that.

When I was first learning, I was stiff and uncomfortable. But real Argentinian tango requires pasión. And close contact. My teacher instructs me in the Milonguero style. It’s danced in a very close embrace, and with full upper body contact, the partners leaning into each other. It certainly is passionate. (No, not that kind of passionate, though.)

I have learned many steps and techniques. My favorite is the viborita — the viper. It’s when the man places his right leg between his partner’s legs and takes a sacada to her left leg and then her right leg in succession using a back-and-forth slithering motion of the right leg and foot. Another move is called the calesita — the merry-go-round. That is where the man places his partner on one foot by lifting her and then dances around her while she rotates on a single leg. Tango requires a lot of body control in addition to remembering all the intricate steps. I’m usually exhausted when I’m done with my lessons.

To help me improve even faster, mi maestra has brought me to tango dance clubs and encouraged me to dance with others. But it’s not easy. There is a strict social protocol in the milongas of Buenos Aires. These are deeply cultural, and a skill that requires a lot of subtlety and sensitivity to small cues. For instance, there’s the cabeceo. It means using eye contact and nearly imperceptible head movements to select a dance partner from across the room. Some people also call it the code – el codigo. Civility and respectfulness are essential to dance the tango with proper partners. There’s no such thing as the American style of walking up to a woman and saying “let’s dance.” That’s a surefire way to never, ever dance in Buenos Aires.

And that, for today my dear Izzy, is la resolución That’s what they call it when there’s an 8-count to end a tango. And this is la resolución to this letter.

Thomas_____

P.S. If I saw you across the room at a milonga, I would lock eyes with you. You would look back. And I’d know in that instant you were my partner. A partner who can tango. And we would dance. And dance. And dance. I would never want to arrive at la resolución.

20 April 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
9:03 a.m.

Dear Izzy,

Tu me manques. I always loved how the French say you are missing from me instead of I miss you.

That’s what I thought today as I got enmeshed in the middle of a conversation with a pair of French tourists who couldn’t speak Spanish and my waiter who didn’t speak French. There was a little drama where everyone’s voices were getting louder at the next table to mine (ours). Then I leaned over and became a cultural ambassador. It all became funny later. In multiple languages.

After it was all calm again and my new French friends had smoked several Gauloises, then said au revoir, I sat here and thought of the phrase tu me manques.

Thomas_____

P.S. In addition to learning tango, I have also spent the past nine months learning Italian. I knew a little, but since I’ve been terrible with my travel and manuscript, I thought I could at least do something academic. I don’t think I’ll study butterflies in Italy and publish articles about it. But I thought I should know, at least. Ciao, bella, is what I’d say to you. Or ciao, Isabella.

30 June 19__
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires, Argentina
34° 36′ 32.1″ S, 58° 22′ 42″ W
8:19 p.m.

Dear Izzy,

I have stayed in Buenos Aires for as long as I needed to.

I’ve finally realized I’m done doing nothing.

I sail to Europe tomorrow.

Thomas_____

“Olá, já faz muito tempo, Antônia.”

“Tomás. It has been a long time. A very long time.”

Our planet is vast and tiny at the same time. The world contracted because of a telegram I received from one of my former research colleagues. And his message led me to travel far to an environmental research station near Iguazú Falls.

Thomas,

Just rtn’d from Iguazú stn. Migration in full flutter in Braz. Para. & Arg. Saw Antonia at Reserva Selva Iryapú. What happened?

Bernard____

“I feared I would never see you again,” I continued in Portuguese as I stood back and took in the entirety of someone I knew so well years ago. I tried to rapidly reconcile what was the same, and what was different, from three years ago. For a moment, I felt I was imagining the entire scene. It wasn’t déjà vu, it was one of those flashes in front of my eyes where I both recognized and didn’t recognize Antônia in the same instant.

“How did you find me?” she asked, blinking rapidly as she removed her hat and crossed her arms across her body. Her lower lip was trembling. She used to do that when she was going to cry. Other researchers who were near her in the field stepped a few paces away, but stayed close enough to hear every word we were saying.

“It was a series of coincidences,” I said. My ears felt plugged like I was underwater. My voice sounded distant. I felt unsteady, so I sat down in the undergrowth below the trees. Antônia squatted cross-legged across from me.

“I have been traveling on sabbatical for the past several months, but I took a detour. I thought I would add blue butterflies to a manuscript I’m writing. So, I sent a telegram to Bernard asking about the Morphos he’s studying in Brazil. And about the migration intensity. He said these are the peak weeks for Blue Morpho variants in this region. And, in his telegram he said he saw you near Iguazú Falls. Once I arrived here, I asked about a woman scientist from Sao Paulo. The rest was easy. I have a compass.”

I pulled the compass Izzy gave me from my backpack, opened it, and then sat quietly for a minute. Butterflies were flitting under the rainforest canopy. I couldn’t bear to look at Antônia right then, so I traced the path of a huge male Blue Morpho that was double the width of my hand as he landed on a piece of rotting fruit on the ground and extended his proboscis to sip.

“Morpho peleides only get three or four months,” I said awkwardly, referring to how long an adult Blue Morpho lives. I should have been talking about more substantive things. Instead, I fell into the comfort of my academic background. “That male is particularly iridescent. He’ll find a mate.”

“I’m happy you found me,” Antônia said as she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

When I applied for my sabbatical, I submitted an exacting proposal for how my year away from academia would proceed. The concept included a complete itinerary, with maps and a tight schedule to follow. I committed to take photographs from each location I would visit, then provide my editor with manuscript pages she could use for multiple purposes. Not only was she going to aggregate the pages into a future book, but she was also going to edit individual articles for magazine publication. She wanted me to not only write about my observations about Blue Places, but also provide remarks on sensory experiences that would benefit magazine readers.

I had a plan. Then I met Izzy at the Blue Grotto, and my entire plan exploded. That explosion had aftershocks.

When I walked off the Santa Maria in Curaçao my plan was to get to Cartagena, then take a boat to the Rosario Islands. The second part didn’t happen.

When I arrived at Aereopuerto Internacional Rafael Nuñez, I changed my mind about my plan. Customs clearance took hours, and by the time I got my luggage I had already missed my boat to Rosario. With nothing else to do, I took a taxi to the Centro Histórico and asked the cab driver to deposit me at the best seedy bar in town. As I was sitting in the gloom, leaning my head on my hands, a guy sat down cowboy style next to me and ordered an Aguila, the most popular beer in the region.

“Where ya headed?” he asked in an accent right out of an old Western movie.

“Me?” I asked, not sure if he was talking to me or to any of the dozen or so day drinkers arrayed along the wooden bar. I took another sip of rum.

“Yes, you. You’re all dressed up with nowhere to go.” I was wearing one of the bespoke suits Senhor de Almeida crafted for me in Lisbon.

“I was supposed to go to Rosario, but that got messed up with customs. So…here I am, going nowhere.” My luggage was stacked beside me.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked as he squinted at me. He was wearing aviator sunglasses in a dark bar.

“You from Cartagena?” I said, changing the subject. I knew he wasn’t, but he was drinking the local beer.

“Born and raised on a ranch in the Pecos,” he said. “But I spend a lot of time south of the border, far from the Republic of Texas. My given name is Maurice, but if you call me that I’ll shoot you.” He reached over to shake my hand. He squeezed hard.

I looked over at him. Sized him up. He had long, dark brown hair streaked with grey that jutted out from under his baseball cap. He had a thick mustache and hadn’t shaved his whiskers in a couple weeks. He looked like a guy you’d want on your side in a bar fight. At that moment I just didn’t care. I had some scrap in me. I wouldn’t have minded a couple rounds of fisticuffs in a bar in the Walled City of Cartagena. Fortunately, our costeño barman walked up at that moment and asked if we wanted another. I nodded and spun my finger to indicate I’d buy a round.

“Okay, Maurice. I spend a lot of time south of the border, too,” I said dismissively. I wasn’t looking for a lot of conversation that afternoon. “Or at least I did. I was born and raised on the streets of Chicago. But I’ve lived a large chunk of years in Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil.”

I looked at him and he stared back at me.

“Don’t you ever call me Maurice again. That won’t work out well for you.”

We sat and drank and didn’t say anything for a while. But Maurice couldn’t stay quiet for long.

“I can do a service for you. You have business to take care of. I can get you there,” he said. He was relentless. He hushed his voice and leaned close to me. “I fly low, so I don’t have to file a flight plan. Where do you wanna go?”

I should have said nowhere. I should have said I have a schedule. I should have said I have tickets to travel. Instead, I pulled out a map and pointed.

“How far can your plane fly?” I asked him.

He grabbed my map and looked at where I indicated.

“You want to go to Bolivia?” he asked. “Bolivia? Have you ever been to Bolivia? What kind of passports do you have?”

“I’m traveling on an American passport,” I said. “It’s the only one I have.”

“You’re gonna have to hide that one,” he said. “If you want me to fly you to Bolivia, you’re gonna need a Mexican passport.”

“I can’t get a Mexican passport, Tex” I said. “My U.S. passport works everywhere.”

“Not in Bolivia, it doesn’t. Not if we end up on the ground there and the MNR gets ahold of us.”

“What’s the MNR?”

“Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario. The MNR. They don’t mess around. Do you know how to shoot a pistol?”

Before I met Izzy, I would have gotten out of there as fast as possible. But she taught me what it was like to live a little on the edge. Even if this edge included the possibility of a forged Mexican passport and the thought of holding a gun in my hands.

“I would never shoot anyone,” I said. “But I do know how to fire a pistol in the air.” I wasn’t a very convincing pirate. I thought about what Izzy would say. How she would laugh at my predicament.

“Tex. Everyone calls me Tex,” Maurice said. with a snicker. “You can call me Tex, too. Just don’t call me Maurice.”

The next afternoon, Tex picked me up at my hotel and drove me to a sketchy airport outside Cartagena. He handed me a clearly stolen Mexican passport as we bumped down a rocky entrance road and past a broken gate.

“This doesn’t even look like me,” I said as I compared the photo to my face.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s close enough” he said, brushing me off. “They can’t tell the difference in the jungle. You just better be able to speak Mexican.”

Two days earlier I was in the first-class cabin on the Santa Maria. Using my own name. With my own passport. No one asked me if I knew how to shoot a pistol, although I did win the skeet competition on the sail across the Atlantic. I did know how to shoot. I hoped I wouldn’t need that skill. Ever.

Yet there I was, holding a dun-colored Mexican passport with the number 1717 written in ink above the official seal that said Poder Ejecutivo Federal Estados Unidos de Mexico. Inside on the first page was an embossed red foil seal that included a signature by Emilio Ochoterena, Consul de Mexico. It didn’t matter that the passport photo didn’t look like me. The passport was expired.

“That’s my DC-3,” Tex said with pride as we rumbled up to dilapidated airplane with oil streaks flowing from the engine cowlings. “This plane can land anywhere. Look at those tires. I can land in an unplowed field if I need to. And believe me, I’ve had to do that a few times.”

We loaded my luggage onto the plane, then pulled the cargo door behind us to close it. The plane was stuffed to the edges with cargo. Food. Fuel. Crates. Luggage. I didn’t ask what it was. Tex told me to sit on the right, in the co-pilot’s seat, and put on headphones.

“I don’t know how to fly an airplane,” I said as I yanked on the yoke like a child and pretended to fly while Tex was working on his pre-flight checklist.

“First rule: Don’t touch a goddam thing unless I tell you to. Right now, just don’t touch a goddam thing.” He shot me a menacing glare, then went back to flipping switches and running his finger over a list in a small book. Finally, we were ready, and one switch flipped after another started the propellers whirling. The engines sputtered, belched acrid smoke, and began spinning with a grudging groan.

“Are they supposed to smoke like that?” I yelled into my headset.

“Everything’s fine. Conditions normal. We’re ready to go,” Tex said as he pointed at the instrument panel. He pulled on leather gloves, snapped them tight, then pushed the throttles forward one-third. We taxied onto a short runway, then Tex pushed the throttles to full power and the vintage DC-3 roared into the late afternoon sky over Colombia. We flew south. Most of the time we were skimming the treetops.

“I’ve spent my time under the radar for a few years now,” Tex said as he laughed at his own joke. “We look like ground clutter on Colombian radar.”

After flying for a couple hours, Tex throttled back and said, “We’re gonna have to set down. Can’t fly this one at night over the Amazon. Not enough light to guide us. Plus, I have some supplies for this village. They’re expecting me.”

He pointed to what looked like a small clearing in the canopy of trees barely wide enough for the plane to land. He made the airplane porpoise. We went higher, then dove lower to swoop into the landing spot. It was a rough surface, and I thought the plane was going to flip over on its nose as we rolled down the makeshift runway. We slipped and slid left and right as the plane slowed.

When we rolled to the end of the landing strip, Tex gunned the right propeller and spun the plane back in the direction we came. Then he cut off the engines. He handed me a pistol.

“Remember when I asked you if you know how to shoot?” he asked as he spun the magazine on the revolver. “Well, this is that time.”

When I looked out the copilot’s window, I saw a convoy of army trucks accelerating toward us. There was a huge dust cloud following them.

“Wait here,” Tex said as he unbuckled from the pilot’s seat and made his way to the back of the plane. “If they take me hostage, shoot me, then make sure you have a bullet for yourself. You don’t want to be tortured here.”

When he asked me at the bar in Cartagena the day before, I told him I couldn’t shoot anyone. I certainly couldn’t shoot myself.

I watched Tex kick open the cargo door, then hop down from the plane as several men ran up to him and pointed rifles. Then a guy who looked like he was in charge walked up slowly to Tex, stood there for a second, then punched him in the solar plexus. Tex crumpled to the ground. He laid there for a minute, then the boss had a couple army men yank Tex back up. The boss was interrogating him. Tex looked confounded.

I made a decision. I’m not sure if it was brave, or stupid, but I got up and walked out of the cargo door of the plane with my hands above my head.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen. We come in peace,” I said quietly and calmly in my best version of Colombian-accented Spanish as I fixated on a dozen rifles barrels just a few feet from my face. I could smell the gun oil. “My friend here offered to give me a ride to a butterfly research station after a stop in Bolivia. And it seems that he has brought you supplies.”

Tex stared at me. He might have wanted to mention he couldn’t speak Spanish before we landed at Araracuara airport, the site of a former penal colony for Colombia’s worst and most dangerous criminals. We were in peril. I left the pistol in the airplane. I brought my words and my wits with me.

“Please, come see for yourself. There is food and fuel. We just need to rest before we fly to Uyani in the morning. We cannot navigate at night, and we have come to ask for your indulgence. Por favor, caballeros.”

The boss walked over from Tex and stood very close to me. I was much taller than him, but then again, he had a pistol pointed at me, so he had the advantage. He ordered some of his men to enter the plane and examine the cargo.

“Wait, wait,” Tex said, more as an appeal than as a command.

“What my friend means is the supplies are all yours. If you would please just leave our maps. And our personal luggage.”

The army men quickly unloaded the airplane onto donkey carts with the help of some locals and rolled away. Several of the soldiers broke into a crate of oranges and ate the fresh fruit without cutting them. Then they tossed the peels on the ground, where a pack of skinny dogs chewed them up.

The leader seemed marginally satisfied. I had spent a lot of time in fields studying butterflies and their behavior. That part was easy. The essential part I learned while doing research in remote places – the hard part – was managing local people who viewed outsiders as an existential threat. My special skill was I knew how to calm people. And to quickly assess what they want. I knew how to observe their behavior, too.

Just like the explorers from ages ago did as they landed on foreign lands, gifts helped. But also joining in local customs was vitally important. Even though I didn’t smoke, in Cuba it was always necessary to have a stock of good cigars to share. In Brazil, I took trinkets and polished stones. And in Mexico, I offered small toys – and money. In the situation at Araracuara, the army leader wanted an assurance that Tex and I weren’t a threat. And that we had something he wanted. We had a plane filled with what he wanted.

He wasn’t a killer of foreigners – he was a revolutionary.

Once the tension lessened, El Jefe invited us to join him later in his tent. I asked him if I could have permission to go to the plane and retrieve my satchel with my maps so I could show him our plans for the flight. He agreed.

When we were sitting in his tent, I showed the boss where I had been in the world, and where I intended to travel. I talked about Blue Places. And about my time studying butterflies in Central and South America. Occasionally, I would stop to translate some for Tex, who sat there looking glum.

El Jefe seemed keenly interested in my butterfly research. From what I could gather, he had been an academic at a major university in Colombia, then became a revolutionary. When we landed at his outpost, he had already spent more than a year in the jungle and didn’t have a lot of intellectual stimulation. He was clearly a dangerous man. But curious, too.

That night, we slept on cots in an open-air cow shed. Heavy rain clattered on the rusted metal roof, which meant I didn’t sleep well. When the sun rose, an aide to El Jefe brought us coffee, then the commander himself walked into the shed and told us we were free to leave.

“Never, ever return here,” he said as a last command.

I shook his hand. Tex didn’t say a word.

“We will fly south to Bolivia today,” I said. “And I am certain my friend will never fly his airplane near Araracuara ever again.” Tex nodded his agreement. It was the first eye contact he made with me since the army men came at us with rifles.

“You’re some kind of fucking pirate, I’ll give you that,” Tex said as we zoomed into the sky and made our way out of Araracuara airspace. “Those supplies were for the villagers. But it looks like the revolutionary army is there now. I don’t know how you managed it. We were dead men. But here we are.”

Tex let me fly the plane for a while as we made our way over the treetops down to Bolivia.

“Just hold it steady and look at the horizon. As long as you keep that altimeter steady and the horizon level, we’ll be fine.”

By the time we arrived at the town of Uyuni, I felt like I had been beaten by a sock filled with marbles. Every fiber in my body ached. It was the stress of a genuine near-death experience. Tex couldn’t stop talking about it.

“You’re an air pirate, man,” he said. We should be dead. Instead, we’re in Bolivia.” He spun the DC-3 out of the sky and bounced down at a makeshift landing strip on the edge of the Altiplano.

“I’m going to Uyuni Salt Flats. And if I were you, I’d think about a different route back to Cartagena.”

“After all that, I’m going back to Texas, buddy,” he said. “I’m gonna fly to Brazil, sell this airplane to some lucky bastard, then let someone else fly me home. I’m done with this chapter.”

“Wait here,” I said when we landed in Uyuni. “If I’m not back in 24 hours, go ahead and leave. Do me a favor, though, and wrap my luggage in a tarp if you’re gone. It can get a little wet around here.”

Driving into Uyuni Salt Flats is like driving into a giant mirror. As Tex and I stood outside the plane, a guy driving an old U.S. Army Jeep zoomed up and said he was willing to drive the hour or so across standing water so I could take some photos of the blue sky mirrored in the water atop the world’s largest salt flat. To my chagrin, two college students from Ireland were in the back seat.

As we drove deeper into the flat, I became more and more disoriented. Up and down seemed reversed. Adding to the bafflement, the salt flat is at high altitude – it’s 3,656 meters above sea level. I didn’t notice that Tex had to keep climbing as we moved along the Andes, but I did know I had developed a headache as we were flying. I thought it was an adrenaline headache that was the result of having rifles pointed at me. Instead, it was a tinge of altitude sickness from breathing at 12,000 feet.

When our driver pointed to where we were going, it looked like it would just take a few minutes to get there. But that’s a trick the flatness plays on the eyes. The reflection of standing water on top of the salt gave the impression of infinity. It took the better part of an hour to get to a place that looked like it was five minutes away. While we splashed along on a figment of a road, the driver reached into a small burlap bag and handed us some coca leaves to chew. The Irish girls were excited for the opportunity. I was less interested, but I wanted to relieve the symptoms of the altitude.

The vast expanse of white, glistening salt stretches across 10,582 kilometers of the Altiplano. El Salar de Uyuni, as it’s called locally, is a photographer’s dream. But Izzy, my Muse, wasn’t there with me. Our driver stopped the Jeep at a place where it seemed like we were the only people on earth. There were thick, cumulus clouds overhead, which contrasted with the bright blue sky. And the water on the salt lake bed made the reflection stunning, as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting.

I stood alone for a moment and imagined a photo of Izzy there. It would be the companion picture of her emerging from the water at the Grotta Azzurra. I imagined her jumping in the water, even though it was only up to my ankles on my boots. I imagined all of that. And none of it happened.

I took a full complement of landscape shots, an embarrassment of blues in vivid reflection. After a while, our driver pulled a small table and folding chairs from the back of the Jeep. Then he opened a basket in the back of the vehicle that was filled with a selection of salteñas. Bolivian salteñas are basically boiled empanadas, and the warm ones in the basket were made with stewed beef along with bits of potatoes, onions, a hardboiled egg, and an olive. I laughed when one of the Irish girls bit into a salteña, squirted gravy all over herself, toppled over in her chair, and landed on her back in the salt water. I took her picture as she stood up. She was furious and screaming at the sky. Her friend laughed. So did the driver.

Our driver suggested we should wait for sunset to get the very best photos. I set up my camera to take a series of photos as the sun fell behind the distant mountains. Then, when we were in the gloaming, I asked the Irish girl who hadn’t fallen in the water if I could take a few silhouette photos of her. She gladly agreed. Her friend, who still had salt crystals in her hair, griped at her the entire time.

I imagined Izzy in those silhouettes. And I imagined telling her about it.

When it was nearly dark, our driver encouraged us to get in the Jeep for the ride back. It was starting to get cool, so he opened a thermos and offered us hot api, which is a sweet, thick, syrupy drink made with purple corn flavored with cinnamon and chives.

“What are you going to do for the rest of the evening?” my silhouette model asked me as we arrived in the town of Uyuni. Her salty friend pushed on her arm and hissed at her.

“Oh, I think I’ll head to my hotel. It’s been a long day.”

“Could be a long night if you’d like to buy me a pint or two,” she said as she stood very close to me. Her friend stomped her foot behind her.

“Oh, I’m flattered. But it would probably be the best for the both of us if we said our good-byes right here.” I smiled. She scowled a little at me, then broke into a smile, too.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she said as her friend grabbed her elbow and started to drag her away. As she walked away, she reached behind and flipped her skirt up. I raised my eyebrows and walked to my hotel. I couldn’t sleep for a while.

In the morning, I got a ride back to the airstrip where Tex had flown me the day before. I brought a thermos filled with api, along with a sack of fried donuts covered with powdered sugar they called pasteles. And I had a bag of coca leaves. I was chewing some as my taxi driver stopped in front of the DC-3.

“You came back,” Tex drawled as he started to gather his bed roll from under the left wing.

“You slept outside?” I asked, knowing the obvious answer.

“Always good to be in the outdoors when I can.”

“I brought you Bolivian coffee and some donuts,” I said as I handed him the thermos. “Be careful, that api never seems to cool down.”

“Where are we headed? I need to get this plane to Sao Paulo,” Tex said.

“I need to go to Iguazú Falls,” I said as I pulled out my map. Tex pulled his navigational charts at the same time. “I think I should get to the Brazilian side to start. But I could fly with you to Sao Paulo and then arrange transportation down.”

“No, I owe you one, buddy,” Tex said as he looked intently at the charts. “Actually, I owe you my life. That whole mess was gonna end quickly. I thought the MNR in Bolivia was bad. But those were some muy malo hombres at Araracuara. I’ll fly you right to the falls. That’s on the way to Sao Paulo.”

Tex flew me to Iguazú. We didn’t talk much on the flight. And he seemed to fly higher above the trees than we did on our way down. Maybe it was because of the coca leaves he chewed on incessantly. Tex circled over Iguazú Falls, then said, “We need to stay on the Brazilian side. Argentina has radar that will pick me up. And my communications aren’t working well.”

I nodded. “That works for me. I need to start on the Brazilian side.”

When we touched down in Iguazú, Tex helped me unload my luggage.

“I still don’t know how you did it,” he said laughing as he pulled down my last case. His bags were still in the plane, along with barrels of fuel he needed for refueling. But he didn’t seem to bother with them.

“We looked death in the eye. And still, we are here.”

“Thank you for everything, buddy,” I said. “It’s not many times in a lifetime we get to have an adventure that we can tell in our old age. This will be one of them.”

“You take care of yourself,” Tex said as he slapped me on my back, then walked up the ladder back into the airplane.

Sometime the next year my letters to him were returned to me by his sister along with a couple clippings from the Pecos Enterprise and Folha de S.Paulo newspapers.

His plane had crashed just short of landing in Sao Paulo.

When Antônia leaned over and kissed me I heard one of her colleagues cluck her tongue in the top of her mouth. I didn’t care. I felt a flood of nostalgic feelings wash back over me.

“We have a lot to talk about,” she said in Portuguese. “For now, I must finish my observations for the day. How long will you be here?”

“I came to see you…mostly,” I said. “I’m staying in town. Would you be interested in dinner?”

“Sure, I could have dinner. I just need to clear a couple things up here. And then make arrangements. I can meet you tonight.”

I felt like I was getting ready for a first date with her again. I bathed. Brushed off my clothes and picked out something I thought Antônia would like. Then I went down to the restaurant and made a request for a special table, just like I did the first time I met her in Rio de Janeiro years before when we were just out of our post-doc programs and newly assigned to field research. So much had happened since then.

When Antônia arrived at the restaurant, she looked stunning. Her hair had gotten very long. And she filled out like a woman. I watched her as she walked across the restaurant. So did other people. She kissed me on my cheek for the second time that day.

“Thank you for having me out to dinner,” she said. “I don’t get many opportunities to put on a dress these days.”

“Thank you for meeting me,” I said awkwardly. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to talk to me or ignore me. Or even if I’d ever see you again. But here you are. As loucuras que me levam até você. The crazy thing that leads me to you.”

When the waiter came over with the wine list, I asked what kind of wine she liked and if she had changed her tastes from her favorite – Malbec from Mendoza.

“Nothing to drink for me, Thomas,” she said hesitantly. “I might as well say it.  I’m pregnant.”

I paused for a millisecond. My juvenile fantasy about a magical reconciliation where we picked up right where we left off vanished. Words from a Brazilian poem ran through my mind: o universo não conspira a nosso favor – the universe does not conspire in our favor. No rekindling was ever going to happen with Antônia, but missing Izzy made me think irrationally.

“Well…congratulations are in order,” I said with a feigned smile. “When is your baby due?”

“I’m four months now. I feel well, so I’ll likely wrap up my research here by December, then I will go to Sao Paulo. Back home. My husband is there.”

The torrent of information coming toward me was nothing compared to the conversation we had as we talked about our lives apart over the past three years. By the time dessert came, I summoned the courage to ask Antônia the question I wanted to ask most.

“Why did you leave?” I could feel tears coming. “Not even a note. I had no idea what happened to you. I wrote. You didn’t write back. It was like you disappeared. Or died.”

“Calma. Tudo bem,” she said as she put her hand over my hand. “I had to go. I didn’t do the right thing, I know that. But I was scared.”

“Scared? Scared of what?” I asked as my voice rose. “Not scared of me. I loved you.”

“Not you,” Antônia said as she waved her hand near my face. “Not you. It was your friend Jonathan.”

There are moments in a life when everything becomes instantly clear. When the blurriness of a story comes into specific focus. I had that moment right then. I flashed back to when Jonathan and his wife met Antônia and me in Mexico City. We spent several days together, and it was in Mexico City where Antônia left me.

“Yes, it was Jonathan. I couldn’t tell you. I thought you would do something awful,” she said. “He threatened me. And he said if I ever told you, he would ruin both of us, personally and professionally. You know him. I didn’t know what to do. So, again, I ran. Outra vez, eu tive que fugir.”

“I should have let Izzy stick that stiletto in his eye,” I said through clenched teeth. “That fucking bastard.” I sat there trembling with anger. And felt a sadness for things that could have been but never could be.

“Calma. Calma,” Antônia said over and over in a voice she used to soothe me in the old days. “Calma. Calma.”

Antônia and I talked for a couple more hours as we sat on a couch in the lobby of my hotel room. She told me of what she thought as she left. How she thought of a thousand reasons to stay. “Eu tive que correr, pra não me entregar,” she said. She had to run so she didn’t give in. And how she was so afraid I’d do something reckless. I was a hot head. She begged me not to do anything now to jeopardize either of us. I assured her I would honor her request.

Then she told me how she met the man who would become her husband. How very much in love she was with him. And how I would always be a part of her life.

I told her about Izzy. About the Blue Places project. And how life repeats itself. How Izzy left.

“At least she left me a note,” I said with a mistaken tinge of bitterness in my voice.

“We cannot change the past,” Antônia said wistfully. “But we can change how we think about it. And we can change what we do with our futures. You must go to her. You cannot ignore those feelings. Pursue her. Do not let it go.”

“We will likely never see each other again,” I said as the tears came. “But I’m glad to have seen you for these moments. I want you to know that.”

“Goodbye, Tomás,” she said as she hugged me for the last time in my life.

“My dear Antônia,” I said through more tears. “When Izzy asked about you, I didn’t tell her the full essence of saudade.”

“Tell her. And do not suffer a lifetime of saudade without her.”

I left Iguazú Falls in the first light of dawn.

I laid face down on the bed in my hotel room in Barcelona. The sheets still smelled like Izzy. I didn’t want to get up.

A chambermaid knocked on my door in the late morning, and then again in the late afternoon. Both times I muttered to her to please go away. I said I needed to rest. That she could come back the next day. But when she came the next day, I made the same request. On the third day, the hotel director came directly into my room to inquire if I was well.

I wasn’t.

I hadn’t bathed or eaten. The director asked if I needed a doctor. I told him no. That I just needed to sleep. He suggested it might be good for me to get some fresh air. I rolled over on the bed and said I would do as he asked. But I didn’t.

Four days after Izzy left, a burly hotel doctor came to my room, assessed my health, and demanded that I go outside. I resisted at first, but he picked me up off the bed and walked with me until I was downstairs and on the street. The hotel director watched me through the window. He looked worried.

My walk along the streets of the Gothic Quarter was a slog. I was weak from not eating. I couldn’t think clearly. I missed Izzy like I missed nothing else in my life. Everything – every thought, every moment, every promise – reminded me of her. I wasn’t prepared to feel like that. I had spent a large part of my life alone, and I didn’t dwell on things I missed. This was different. I used to wake up early just to see the first moment she opened her eyes.

“This is the best moment in the history of great moments. The very moment I get to see you again,” I would say to her as she fluttered her eyelashes each morning. Izzy would cover her eyes with one hand, purr in her morning voice, then pull me closer to her with the other hand.

As I wandered slowly, trying to distract my thoughts, I walked toward a street vendor who was peddling his entrepà con jamon ibérico. The food looked good and smelled better. For the first time in days, I felt a twinge of hunger. I paid the vendor with some pesetas that were jangling in my pocket, then I nibbled the sandwich as I walked. After a few bites I felt nauseous, so I lobbed the entrepà to one of the many seagulls that menace the skies of Barcelona.

“Enjoy it, you little bastards,” I yelled to the squabble of seagulls that were fighting over my entrepà. A pair of tourists walking toward me crossed the street to get away from the ruckus. Or maybe it was me. I looked like hell. I smelled worse.

I returned to the hotel and drew a warm bath.

“Every drop of water that has touched me has touched you,” Izzy said to me the day before she left. I felt her everywhere as I lowered myself into the bathwater. She was in every molecule. She was infused in me.

I washed myself all over with a bar of Sabater Hermanos peony soap that burned my eyes when I rinsed my hair. I let it sting me for a minute just so I could feel something. Anything. Even if it hurt.

I went out again that afternoon. I felt a little better than I did in the morning, but I still wasn’t feeling great. At least I smelled like peonies. And I had on a set of clean clothes. The hotel director seemed genuinely happy to see me sauntering through the lobby without the help of the hotel doctor.

“You might like to enjoy a horchata de chufa,” the hotelier said in Catalan as he walked up to me quickly and handed me a cream-colored notecard on which he had written a name and address in flourishes with a fountain pen. “It is the most delicious horchata in all of Barna.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed me tight as he stared in my eyes.

I think he missed Izzy, too.

In my torpor, I convinced myself I could understand more Catalan than I could, especially when the manager called Barcelona what the locals call it – Barna. But I didn’t understand anymore of what he said, except for something about the horchata being good for my health. I smiled for the first time in days and thanked him for being so gracious. He kissed me on the cheek.

I shuffled along to a shop named Orxateria Sirvent, which the hotel director told me was the best in the city. When I arrived, I stood in a long line, and then when it was my turn, I asked for their special horchata, which is made from water, sugar, and ground tiger nuts. The hotel director was right, not only was the horchata flavorsome, but that sweet drink boosted my energy enough to think a walk to Sagrada Família was possible. When I arrived at the east side of the basilica, I stood in the square near Carrer de la Marina and examined every detail of the Nativity façade, including the statues of two chameleons that symbolize change flanking the bronze doors.

“What am I doing here?” I asked quietly as I tilted my head to the sky. No one was there to hear me. My internal dialog kept probing about why I returned. I didn’t have an answer.

I spent the next hour slumped on a stone bench while my thoughts ricocheted about whether I should honor Izzy’s request to not look for her. I was seeking a sign. Anything that would tell me I should pursue her to Italy.

A sign didn’t come.

Finally, I took a deep breath and walked to a chapelle in the basilica, where just a few nights earlier I lit a candle and said a prayer for everything to be okay. That petition failed me. Izzy left.

As I stood in the church and smelled the scents of candles and incense, I also looked at all the construction that was ongoing. I thought about how Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família was an unfinished masterpiece. And while Izzy and I had the symmetry of holding hands in Casa Botlló, the symmetry of a life not finished crashed into me like the unrelenting waves that nearly swamped our boat to Capri. I didn’t want to be like Gaudí and die before mi obra maestra was complete.

“Isabella, please don’t be my Sagrada Família,” I said as lifted a taper to light another wick. I stared with blurry eyes at the flickering candles on the votive stand.

After I left the basilica, I took the long way back to the hotel. When I arrived, I asked the concierge to summon a travel agent to meet me at my room later. First, I needed a siesta. Then, I needed to do some planning – and get back to a writing schedule.

“I need to travel to Porto. A train will be fine. Or if there is an airplane, that would work. Maybe that would be faster. I will be in Porto for one day, then I would like to take a ship to the Caribbean,” I said to the travel agent that afternoon. “From there, I will travel to Las Islas del Rosario.”

The travel agent took bountiful notes and used a red grease pencil to mark on a map he had unfolded on the desk. His valise was bursting with brochures, which he grabbed each time I added a detail.

“There is a luxury ship that sails every week from Lisboa,” he said to me in Castellano – the standard dialect of Spain. The hotel director must have told him I didn’t understand a word in Catalan. He pulled a brochure from his case. “The luxury ocean liner is called the Santa Maria. Her sister ship is the Vera Cruz.”

“The Santa Maria!” I said with almost a shout. This was another moment of symmetry. “Like the Santa Maria that Christopher Columbus sailed?”

“A bit newer, I might say, than the ship of Cristóbal Colón. It was commissioned only a few years ago by Companhia Colonial de Navegacao,” he said as he laughed a little bit. “It anchors at several ports on its journey. The Santa Maria departs Lisboa, then it sails to Vigo. From there, it stops in Madeira at the port of Funchal. As a bonus, at this time of year, the ship goes south to Tenerife. Have you been to Las Islas Canarias? It’s beautiful there. Also, if you ever have the time to return in late winter, the Carnaval de Santa Cruz de Tenerife is illustrious. As big as Rio Carnival. That’s for another time. ¡Vale! After Tenerife, there are five days in the open ocean to La Guairá, Venezuela. The final docking for the Santa Maria in that region is in Curaçao.”

“How many total days at sea?” I asked.

“It can be seven to ten days depending on where you want to embark and when you disembark.”

“How will I get to Islas del Rosario after the stop in Curaçao?”

“I can make arrangements for you to travel from Curaçao to Cartagena. To get to Las Islas del Rosario you must take a small boat from Cartagena. I would suggest a private boat.” He showed me his map and the Xs on the places he described. I thought of how Izzy said the word symmetry. I met her on a boat to Capri; she wouldn’t be on the boat to Rosario. I wished she would.

“May I ask why you are going on such a journey?” the agent asked. He arched his eyebrows and seemed genuinely curious.

“I’m going to see all the most beautiful blue places in the world.”

He was the third person I showed my notebook with the list of Blue Places. I spent half an hour talking about how I was inspired to do the trip, how I managed to get a book contract, and how I had already seen some places. I mentioned Izzy. He elegantly didn’t ask any questions about her.

“When would you like to depart?”

“I’m ready to go as soon as a berth is ready on the ship.”

“And what class of service do you prefer, Señor?”

“First class, si us plau.” I knew a few words in Catalan.

For the first time since the agent arrived, he looked genuinely surprised. He looked up from his notes and pulled his reading glasses to the end of his nose.

“Senyor, saps el cost, és així?” He converted to Catalan in his surprise.

“Yes, I do know the price. I see it here in your brochure. It’s no problem,” I said as I held up the brochure from the shipping line. The agent didn’t need to know anything about Aunt Helene and the inheritance. In fact, I didn’t even tell Izzy the entire story. And now it appeared that I never would.

“I will make the arrangements, señor” the agent said. He converted back to Spanish. “And I will have all your travel documents sent to the hotel.”

I read the brochure about the sailing to take my mind off Izzy. The ship looked very elegant. And a good size – about half the size of the Titanic, the agent told me. Just as fast, but much safer.

Santa Maria:               20.906 gross tonnes

Length:                        185.9 m

Width:                         23.1 m

Propulsion:                 Parsons Steam Turbines with twin-screw propellers

Service speed:             20 knots

Passengers:                 First class: 150; Second class: 250; Third class: 232;

Tourist class: 664; Total: 1,296

Crew:                          319

I wired the funds to the agency for all my travel, including my stay in Isla del Rosario. Then I started questioning if I was really going to go. I had one more thing I needed to do before I left Barcelona.

With the help of the concierge and his aide, I carefully packaged all my rolls of film in a box, then I made a request.

“Would you be able to have someone from the hotel personally deliver this package to a villa in Capri?” I asked as the concierge stared at me tight-lipped. He squinted. He was used to doing unusual assignments for guests, but this was very much out of the ordinary. And out of Barcelona.

“I will pay for a person’s time and travel to take this package to Capri. I need a guarantee that it will go directly from my hand to the recipient there.”

“There is nothing forbidden in the box, is there, señor?” the concierge asked as he considered what he could do to help. I realized the danger a person could be in under the critical scrutiny of the Guardia Civil that created the police state for Generalíssimo Francisco Franco. It’s why Izzy was so delighted – and so surprised – to see a group dancing the sardana in Park Güell. Franco had outlawed the dance along with the speaking of Catalan. But they were rebels in Barcelona. Some were pirates.

“No, you just saw me put everything in the package. There is nothing else. It’s my work for the last three months. It is rolls of film I took in the Blue Places I have visited so far. But I cannot risk the package being lost in the parcel service.”

“Yes, yes, I see,” said the concierge. He sat there very quietly for a minute. Looked me directly in the eyes. Rubbed his chin and then pulled his red jacket tight. Then he said, “I will take care of it personally.”

I was delighted. I needed reliability and discretion. He was exactly what I hoped for.

“Well, then we will need to make a request for the travel agent to come back. He has another assignment.”

We made arrangements for the hotel concierge to fly to Sorrento, then take a private boat to Capri. I paid for three nights at the finest hotel on the island. Plus, I gave him a cash honorarium that would significantly outweigh the pay he would forego during his travels.

“Please present this note when you arrive at this address,” I said as I handed him an envelope with a wax seal. “You might have to wait a few minutes for Il Patrizio to arrive at his gate. Don’t be surprised if he is brusque. But he will understand once you give him this message.”

da: Barcellona, Spagna.  41.3819° N, 2.1773° E

a: Capri, Italia

Attenzione: Il Patrizio.   

Mio caro Patrizio,

I have sent this collection of my photographs for your care and protection. You remarked about a photo of Isabella emerging from the turquoise waters of Grotta Azzurra when I was in your darkroom with you. I have not forgotten for a single moment how you said, “A good photographer sees the world differently. He also needs a bellissima modello. E un po’ di fortuna.” I wrote those words in my journal the night I met you. And I say those words daily as a benediction.

I have included 47 rolls of undeveloped film from Capri, Lago di Braies, Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, Chefchaouen, Barcelona, and other places where I was seeking the most beautiful colors of blue. There are also photographs from Yugoslavia, plus photos that were taken on the journeys from one location to the next. Most include images of Isabella. I trust there will be one or two serviceable ones in the collection.

You will find the film and my roll notes in the box presented by the gentleman in front of you. He is the chief concierge of my hotel in Barcelona, and I have entrusted him with a safe delivery of my film. Now my work is in your hands.

I am undertaking a crossing of the Atlantic from Lisboa to Curaçao in the coming weeks. I will write you when I am sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on the Santa Maria.

I trust you are well. Mille grazie, Signore.

Thomas______

I was in Porto less than four hours, which was just a little longer than it took me to fly there from Barcelona. It’s a beautiful city, and the Capela das Almas has tiles that are a spectacular shade of blue. But the color had lost its luster for me. I spent an hour in Chefchaouen appealing for Izzy to go with me to Porto. I told her about the 15,947 azulejos that cover the façade of the chapel. I was there, but the tiles might as well have been made from brown mud. Sadness robbed the joy of blue from my eyes.

I took just a few photographs of the Chapel of Souls for my manuscript. It just wasn’t the same without posing Izzy in the frame. I had a small laugh when I looked at my notes later that night and noticed that I had accidentally written Chapel of Lost Souls on the title page. I was a lost soul at that point.

The blue of the Chapel of Souls was still blue. I just couldn’t see it.

I took a train to Lisbon from Porto’s São Bento Station. The blue tiles that covered the interior of the station were as I had described to Izzy. But I looked at them as an academic instead of as a romantic. The difference in perception was startling. She made me feel like a poet; I made her feel like a pirate. No amount of blue was going to repair that loss.

I had to wait ten days in Lisbon for the TN Santa Maria to return from its round-trip voyage across the Atlantic and then be provisioned to steam west again. Although Lisbon is a vibrant and colorful city, I still lacked the energy to walk up and down its steep streets. And I didn’t have the Portuguese escudos necessary to ride the funiculars. So, I initially stayed in my room. But I did have some things I had to take care of.

I needed a new suit and a tuxedo for the first-class service on the Santa Maria, so while I had time, I asked the concierge to recommend a clothier in the city who could make me something presentable. And with high quality.

She directed me to Haberdashery Street.

“The name of the street is Haberdashery Street?” I asked her in Portuguese.

“Yes, it is so,” she said smiling. “In the old world, each street was named for the guild it supported. Now, it’s an area. You will discover the finest haberdasher at Retrosaria Bijou on the corner of Rua da Conceição and Rua da Correeiros. The shop is at Rua da Conceição 91. I will call to announce your arrival. Your appointment will be later this afternoon.”

I felt a tiny stroke of luck that I brought my camera with me as I went walking through the city before I went to Retrosaria Bijou. Many buildings along the way had massive murals made from azulejo tiles, and I thought they might be a good addition to my book.

Because I was wandering and didn’t have a quick deadline, I fortunately found myself at the famous bookstore, Livraria Bertrand. I wandered in and began looking among the shelves. The shop had a scent of books and tobacco and wood that had accumulated since its opening in 1732.

I piled an assortment of books on my table and sipped a robust Portuguese coffee sweetened with cane sugar as I flipped through the pages. Ultimately, I selected five books written in Portuguese and one in English. When I went to purchase the books, I asked the clerk to bill them to me at Corpo Santo Hotel.

“Yes, of course, sir,” the clerk said. “Before you go, would you like to have the Livraria Bertrand cachet embossed on the cover pages of your books? It will show their origin from the oldest bookstore in the world.”

“That’s a beautiful touch,” I said as I wrote the details of my hotel for billing. The clerk wrapped the stack of books in simple brown paper and bound them together with a heavy red string.

“It’s prudent to obscure the titles in Lisboa, senhor,” he said. “We are living in curious times.” As I walked toward the haberdasher, I wondered what title I bought that could be controversial.

That night, I started reading the classic poems by Fernando Pessoa in his book Mensagem. The blurb on the back of the book said Pessoa liked the word mensagem because of the expression in Latin: Mens agitat molem. The blurb said the Latin translated as “the spirit moves matter,” but at the time I bought the book I think the more colloquial American translation was “mind over matter.” I took that as a sign, even if it was in Portuguese and Izzy would hate it. I thought for a minute about what it would be like to tell her and then watch her wrinkle her nose when I did.

For the first time since Izzy was gone, I started feel the weight lift off my chest and my shoulders. I began to intellectualize what happened. She had obligations. A commitment. I had spent a lot of time in my room reading my new books. I double underlined a quote by Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend: “Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”

I once had a good thing with Izzy. Albeit brief. I urged myself to remember every moment.

Retrosaria Bijou was everything I hoped it would be. The haberdashery – the Portuguese word is retrosaria – opened in 1915. The concierge made a special arrangement for me, and I was greeted by the owner, Senhor Augusto de Almeida. He showed me around the loja unica with its Art Nouveau façade and interior filled with exquisite fabrics, fine threads, jeweled pins, drawers filled with buttons, and a spectrum of sewing tools.

The proprietor guided me to fabrics for my tuxedo, shirts, and cummerbund. Then he showed me a collection of fine, lightweight gray wools for a suit he would make. He also suggested that I should have at least three proper dress shirts and pants for the less formal days. He was very familiar with the ocean transit requirements for the Santa Maria.

After summoning a tailor from the back of the shop who did a series of measurements of me while I stood on a wooden box, Senhor de Almeida sent me on my way with a tally sheet of costs. He was a genuine old-world businessman. I told him I would have the funds wired to him.

“You can pay me in American dollars,” he said. “Cash. And for that, a discount.”

I smiled and shook his hand.

“Your clothes will be ready in three days. I will see you then,” he said as he closed the door behind me.

When I went back three days later, my new clothes were ready. I asked Senhor de Almeida to have them sent to my attention on the Santa Maria.

“I will make a special case for them,” he said. “This will be my gift to you.”

I asked to take his picture in front of his shop. It was painted a vivid teal blue.

The year before I went on my voyage on the TN Santa Maria, it was hijacked.

“The crime was carried out by twenty-four Iberian leftists led by Henrique Galvão, a Portuguese military officer and political opponent of António de Oliveira Salazar,” said the man standing next to me in the main lounge. We were drinking a shot of ginjinha – a sour liqueur that’s made by infusing Morello cherries in alcohol, then adding sugar and cloves – that was offered as a welcome to the ship.

“Wait. Our ship was hijacked? What happened?”

“The mutineers boarded the ship in two of the stops where our ship is scheduled to dock: La Guaira, Venezuela, and in Willemstad, Curaçao. They disguised themselves as passengers. They brought suitcases that had secret compartments to hide their guns. During the taking of the ship, one officer was killed, and several others were wounded.”

From the telling by my new drinking buddy, no one knew where the ship was for several days because the rebels cut off all communications. Finally, the United States Navy fleet discovered the ship and a group of four warships surrounded it. The rebels entered Recife harbor in Brazil on the TN Santa Maria, where they exchanged 600 passengers and 300 crew for political asylum.

“I wouldn’t mind a little diversion to Brazil,” my new friend said with a wink.

As I thought about it, I had some unfinished business in Brazil. But I knew only one pirate. She was in Padua. She wouldn’t be taking command of the ship.

As we stood in the lounge the captain came to each of us, introduced himself, and then nodded to our private purser who would take care of us for the voyage. The schedule of activities for the first day included a Charlie Chaplin movie, then dinner. After dinner, there was bingo, then dancing in the ballroom.

“We will have card games during the day tomorrow. And you can join us for skeet shooting if you would like,” my private purser said. “I will also help you unpack your items and prepare your dance card.”

“I think tonight I’ll pass on the dance tonight, thank you,” I said.

“As you wish, Senhor.”

The time aboard the Santa Maria was very pleasant. There were lots of distractions to keep my mind busy, plus, I spent four hours each day of the voyage writing my manuscript at a desk in the main cabin. Writing while other passengers lounged and read books from the library added an air of mystique to me that I got quizzed about at night over dinner. When you tell people you’re a writer, they quickly jump to the idea it’s fiction and destined for a bestseller list. I had more pedestrian desires, although when I told them about the Blue Places, they, to a person, were intrigued. On the third night at sea, I regaled a group of 20 people for four hours about blue butterflies in Cuba, Mexico, and Brazil.

I disembarked from the TN Santa Maria in Willemstad, Curacao.

“How did I not have this place on my list of Blue Places?” I said to one of my fellow passengers as we were led down the gangway onto the pier by our pursers. “Look at all those blues.”

The buildings that line the harbor are a candy-colored visual treat. I stopped my porter so I could get my camera from my bag. I took a roll of film from the floating bridge that separates the Punda area from the Otrabanda area.

This was a challenge for me: Stay here. Or go with my schedule. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to share this with Izzy.

When she asked about my life, I once told her, “There was no me before you.”

“Who were you waiting for in Capri?” I asked as we laid in the dark. Izzy rolled on her side away from me.

“My fiancé.”

A few days before that revelation, I was eager to leave Chefchaouen. I was suffering a blue fatigue. Yes, I needed to see more blues, but blues that were enhanced by other colors, like the whites and blues of Oia. Plus, if I were honest with myself, I was traumatized when I thought Izzy was lost in the blue city. I wanted to leave that disquieting sensation far behind.

I arranged for a car to take us north in Morocco from our dar in Chefchaouen. By my calculation, the most efficient route was to cross the Strait of Gibraltar by ferry from Tangier to Algeciras, then take a series of trains to Porto. My next Blue Places location was scheduled to be the Capela das Almas de Santa Catarina.

The Chapel of Souls is covered by 15,947 azulejos depicting the death of Saint Francis and the martyrdom of Saint Catherine. A university colleague raved about the blue Portuguese tiles on the chapel. He walked the Caminho Português from Lisbon to Porto and saw the Chapel of Souls at the termination of his trek. He described every detail – which I documented in my Blue Places notebook – and said it was the pinnacle of his pilgrimage. “Even an atheist like you will appreciate the art and splendor of the Capela das Almas de Santa Catarina,” he said. “You’ll get an entirely otherworldly sense of the color blue there. You’ll feel a spiritual connection to blue.”

I had to go.

“We can take a train to Seville, then go west to Faro,” I said to Izzy as I outlined the route on my hand-drawn map. I was enthusiastic about the plan. I could get a lot of writing done on the trains. “Plus, the Algarve has many blue butterflies. I could add those to my manuscript if you would do a small field adventure with me.”

“Butterflies?” Izzy asked.

“Yes, Ria Formosa lagoon in the Algarve has one hundred and thirty-five species of butterflies that we know of,” I said as consulted my field guide. “Many of them are blue. That includes the Black-eyed Blue, Glaucopsyche melanops; Common Blue, Polyommatus icarus; Chapman’s Blue, Polyommatus thersites; the Holly Blue, Celastrina argiolus; the Panoptes Blue, Pseudophilotes panoptes; the False Baton Blue, Pseudophilotes abencerragus; and the Adonis Blue, Lysandra bellargus.”

“You want me to go camping? And look for butterflies? In Portugal?”

“I do. It’ll be a boost for my academic work, even though I’m supposed to be on sabbatical, I can use the data. Plus, at this time of year you’ll be able to see the Spanish Festoon, Zerynthia rumina, one of the most beautiful butterflies in the world.”

Izzy didn’t say a word or even blink as I continued to extol the benefits of my plan. My happy energy switched off my ability to pay attention to signals from her.

“We can go by train through Lisbon. São Bento Station in Porto has azulejos inside that tell the story of Portugal’s history.”

I smiled. Izzy frowned.

“I don’t want to go to Portugal,” she said, barely moving her mouth.

“Wait. What? How about this? I have one more little idea for you. The tiles of Capela das Almas de Santa Catarina were made at the Viuda Lamego ceramic factory. I can see my butterflies in Faro, and you can see your ceramics in Porto.”

“I’m not going to Porto,” she said, this time more insistently. “And I don’t want to listen to you speak Portuguese with your Brazilian accent while we visit a ceramics factory named The Widow Lamego.”

I saw Izzy hold a stiletto to Jonathan’s eye when we were at Lago di Braies. This moment was scarier.

“You don’t want to go because you don’t want to hear me speak Portuguese?”

“I don’t like the sound of it,” she said as she shuddered. “It hurts my ears.”

I suddenly realized there was a lot more to her refusal to travel to Portugal than hearing me speak Portuguese. The tension went back to our early days in Capri, when Izzy asked me endless questions about a Brazilian girl I knew. I decided to not engage at that moment. We had to plan our travel. I didn’t allow that distraction, as tempted as I was to tell her everything.

“I promised my editor I’d deliver a manuscript based on my original Blue Places list,” I said as I finished packing. We had our backs to each other. “She sold the project to the book publisher with a list of places I would visit and write about. I need to go to them. And Porto makes the most sense. It’s a budget of time and money.”

“We already visited Saint Sava church in Belgrade,” she said. “I propose you add something different to your list. It features a lot of blues I know you haven’t seen. I’m sure of it. And I think your publisher will like it.”

“Where?” I asked as I scribbled in my notebook. I envisioned my book contract crumbling and the angry words from my editor, but I still wanted to write some final impressions about the blues in Chefchaouen.

“Barcelona.”

“Barcelona? Wait a minute. Are you sure? I thought you said your father was from Barcelona. Do you really want to do that?”

“Do you know why I became a ceramista?” Izzy asked.

“I don’t know. But I’d love to.”

“I became a ceramista because of my mother. As I told you, my grandparents sent her to Barcelona to study art. Of course, they wanted her to be far away from Italy when the Fascists seized power. When my mother was in Barcelona, she studied under Josep Maria Jujol, who was a close associate of Antoni Gaudí. Don Jujol taught my mother the ceramic technique sgraffito that he and Gaudí used. And she taught me.”

Izzy explained that sgraffito in ceramics is created by applying contrasting layers of glaze to the work, then scratching through the outer layer to reveal parts of the underlying color. Although I still hadn’t seen her artwork, I understood more each time she described the processes.

“Everyone knows Gaudí and La Sagrada Familia. But what does that have to do with ceramics? He was an architect.”

“Gaudí and Jujol created some of the most beautiful ceramics in the world. They’re on display in Park Güell. You’ll see blues you’ve never seen in the mosaics. I have not been there myself, but my mother talked about it all the time. And I’ve seen pictures in books. I don’t know if I told you, but did you know my mother’s name is Isabella, too?”

“Wait. Your mother and you have the same name?”

“What’s so strange about that?” Izzy asked. “What’s your father’s name?”

“Thomas.”

“And his father?”

“Thomas. In fact, I’m the sixth Thomas in a row.”

“So why do you think it’s strange that I have the same name as my mother?”

“I’m sorry. You make a good point. Isabella is a beautiful name. If you have a daughter, you should name her that. But call her Izzy.”

“Most certainly not,” she said. “She would be Isabella. Or Isa. Or Bella.”

Our flight from Tangier to Barcelona on an Iberia Airlines DC-4 was brief and smooth. The service was extraordinary. After our last time on a DC-4 when we flew to Marrakech, a donkey ride would have been better. We had wide, cushioned seats instead of a metal bench along the edge. I had my own window to see the scenery as we flew along the Mediterranean coast. And a chef cooked for us. If the flight was any indication, I was going to like Barcelona.

When we landed, we stopped at an information center to inquire about a place to stay. The kiosk attendant recommended a hotel in the Barrio Gòtico – the Gothic Quarter – after he asked a set of rapid-fire questions about our requirements in an accent I couldn’t understand. Izzy easily adapted to the patois. I was, once again, lost.

The kiosk attendant called a hotel, abruptly closed the shop, and offered us a ride in his Pagaso Z-102. There was barely enough room in the car, but the attendant wanted to show off. It was strange time in Spain – Francisco Franco was still the Caudillo, which translates into English as warlord – but there was an economic boom in the country and people were displaying wealth like the nouveau riche.

Izzy sat in the front of the sports car; I was stacked in the back with our suitcases. While the attendant quickly ground through the gears, he chatted just as rapidly with Izzy in a clipped Catalan dialect. I was able to understand a word here and there. I spoke Spanish, but I had no idea about the pronunciations and word usage in Catalan. Later, Izzy told me he was boasting about the car – and how it was built in Barcelona. Then he interrogated her about her family. She didn’t respond.

Our hotel was in an area of winding and very tight streets in the center of the Barrio Gòtico near Saint Felip Neri Plaza. The attendant slammed on the brakes then accelerated like a race car driver as we wove through a maze of narrowing streets. At one point we arrived at a carrer that was too tight for his Pagaso to squeeze through. Then he jammed the car in reverse and backed up until we were at an intersection where he could open the car door fully. He got out with Izzy and started walking. I had to carry the bags around the corner to the hotel. I saw the hotel porter blanch when he saw me loaded down with our bags. He ran up to me and took them out of my hands with a grand apology.

One detail I heard Izzy tell the kiosk attendant was that we would need a place for a week. We didn’t discuss how long we would stay before she said that. I could adjust my schedule. Again.

The hotel was old-world perfect. We walked up a grand staircase to the tall front doors, and the attendant talked to the proprietor sotto voce. Then the attendant stood in front of me, shook my hand, and made it was clear he was looking for a gratuity. I shook his hand again, then put my hand on his shoulder and said in English as I smiled: “Thank you. You are a real piece of work, you know it? I’ve met schmucks like you in lots of places. And the next time you think you’re going to get a tip from me, be lucky it’s not the tip of my shoe in your ass.”

I kept smiling as I gave him a gentle push out the door. He didn’t understand what I said. He didn’t speak English. But Izzy did. I wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s machismo act. The kiosk attendant looked back at me through the glass in the hotel door. I stared back. Then he turned and walked down the stairs as he waved his hand dismissively in the air.

Izzy called the concierge as soon as we got in our room. A few minutes later a young woman came to collect our clothes for laundering.

“I want everything to be fresh,” Izzy said to me as she sent the laundry girl away. “We’re in Europe again. And I want to get the dust from the desert off my clothes.”

We were still wearing our traveling clothes. I was in a suit and Izzy was wearing a knee-length patterned dress.

“Should we change clothes before we go out?” I asked.

“I sent everything away. We can stroll in the Park Güell like this.” She twirled and her skirt flared out. It was a moment of brightness on a tense day. I felt calmed when I saw Izzy smile for the first time in a while.

We walked through the labyrinthine streets of the Gothic Quarter. Although the streets were small and tight, I thought they had a much calmer, uplifting spirit to them than the darkness of Chefchaouen. Then again, Izzy being missing for hours in the streets of the blue city colored my perception of the places.

We found a taxi stand after we had walked for ten minutes or so, and we took a quick ride to the entrance of Park Güell. I knew from reading a brochure that I wanted to take Izzy’s photo in front of the three fountains. The lighting in the later afternoon was perfect.

I asked Izzy pose in front of the first fountain, which was designed to show an architect’s compass encircled by the world and is said to represent the Catalonian region of L’Argentera. Izzy stood tall like a ballerina in front of the fountain and imitated the shape of the world with a wide circle of her arms.

At the next fountain, Izzy pretended to be a pirate slaying a dragon. She was waving her imaginary sword at the dragon’s head like a modern-day Saint George.

“Izzy the Pirate is now Saint Isabella, the Dragonslayer,” I said as I snapped away.

“I’m no saint,” she said as she pointed her imaginary sword at me. “But I am a pirate. And a dragonslayer.”

As we walked up the grand staircase leading to the Hypostyle Room, Izzy jumped over the barrier and ran up to the lizard sculpture spewing water. She threw her hands into the stream and splashed it toward me as one of the security guards came running and shouting for her to get away from the fountain. I took photo after photo as Izzy hopped over the barrier opposite the guard and sprinted up the staircase.

I didn’t see Izzy when I got to the Hypostyle Room, which is Gaudí’s Modernist interpretation of a Greek temple. The word hypostyle comes from the ancient Greek hupostulos and means supported by columns. In the Hypostyle Room, there were eighty-six Doric columns, some straight, some arched, and some reclined.

“Thomas,” I heard from behind one of the columns. “Is the guard still there?”

Izzy walked out from the edge of a curved column. The hem of her skirt was wet. And she was laughing.

“No, the coast is clear,” I said as I hugged her. “Pirates can’t stay away from water. Or dragons.”

“It’s in our blood,” Izzy said as she put her hands on her hips and thrust her elbows out. “Once a pirate, always a pirate.”

We walked down to the Greek Theatre. There was a group of people performing a Sardana dance, the traditional dance of Catalonia, while a few musicians played guitars and small drums. Everyone was singing and clapping along. Izzy ran to the group to join the dance circle. I sat on a bench and took another series of photos.

Roll 45, Frames 16-24: Leica M, 70mm, f/2.8 lens; f/8, speed 1/200; Izzy, dancing Catalan Sardana dance in circle, laughing, blue hair tie, skirt swirl, Park Güell, below Hypostyle Room. 5:32pm, Barcelona

“I learned the Sardana from my father,” Izzy said breathlessly as she dashed back to me. “I haven’t danced it for a long time. But I haven’t forgotten it.”

“It’s in your blood. Like being a pirate,” I said.

“This bench is why I wanted you to see Park Güell,” Izzy said as she turned toward me, plopped down, and gathered her feet under her like a swami. “This is called the Undulating Bench. It’s almost as famous as La Sagrada Familia.”

The bench defined the edges of the Greek Theater, or Nature Square, as the signs called it. The information on the sign said the bench is the longest corrugated bench in the world. It was not only comfortable, but also a visual treat – the bench is a giant mosaic of smooth glass pieces.

“Remember when I told you my mother studied with Josep María Jujol?” Izzy asked as she ran her hands along some of the mosaic fragments. “He perfected a ceramic technique called trencadis, which means decorating with broken ceramic. Look at all the pieces he put together on this bench. It’s more than 100 meters long – all covered in trencadis.”

“You were right about the blues here,” I said to Izzy. Her eyes were glowing.

“Wait until tomorrow,” she said as she adjusted her skirt. I looked far up her leg. “We will visit Casa Batlló. You don’t have that in your Blue Places notebook, but you will. You’ll see tomorrow. Now, let’s go back to our hotel for a rest before dinner.”

We didn’t rest.

Our rooms included a relaxation area and a private outdoor bathtub on a large terrace. I heard Izzy’s toes squeak on the wooden floors as she made her way out to the tub. She was wearing only the bottoms of her lingerie.

I heard the water running. Then I heard the words I longed for: Join me.

We went for dinner at ten in the evening, which is considered early by Barcelona standards. We started with a bottle of cava and some salt-dried anchovies and olives. The waiter then brought microtomed slices of jamon ibérico for us to enjoy as an amuse bouche before our main plate – the fideuá marisco.

Fideuá is Catalan dialect for fideuada, which means a large amount of noodles. For our dish, the fideo noodles were cooked with fish stock, squid, langoustines, prawns, monkfish, and mussels. The chef told us he added garlic, Spanish onion, tomato, saffron, and sweet pimentón.

Although we had a vermouth to start dinner, and a bottle of cava during dinner, the maître d’ insisted that we have a shot of orujo casero after dinner. “Es muy muy rico,” he said with an extended roll of the “r” as he ceremoniously poured the special blend that was reserved for his best customers.

Izzy and I were a little tipsy on our walk home. She pulled her dress off and threw it toward a chair before I could get inside the hotel room door.

Even though we were up very late the night before, we got up very early on our first full day in Barcelona.

“Do you keep track of the places where we made love?” I asked Izzy playfully as she was washing her face in the sink.

“I don’t have to because I know you write it in your little book,” she said as she wrinkled her nose, then flicked water at me. “But since you asked, I remember every time. And I always will.”

“Now who’s the pirate and who’s the poet?” I asked.

Our cleaned clothes were delivered to our room while we were out to dinner the night before. I untied the ribbon from one of my folded shirts and slipped it on while I watched Izzy pull a light cotton dress over her head.

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to zip me up?” she asked.

“Only if I can unzip you later.”

“We will see. Maybe…,” she said as she bit her lower lip.

We stopped for breakfast at Granja Dulcinea. Izzy and I both ordered a Barcelona morning time specialty, the suizo, which is Swiss hot chocolate topped with a huge dollop of whipped cream. The tastiest part is that they brought a melindoro, a ladyfinger cookie, to dunk in the xocolata calenta.

“I’m never leaving,” I said once again.

Izzy’s mouth was full of cookie and chocolate, so she looked up and raised her eyebrows at me.

We stopped at Casa Gispert Mercado to buy some macadamia nuts as we were walking to Casa Batlló. As we walked down the Paseo de Gracia, I felt a sense of wonderment when we got to Number 43. Izzy was right. This place should have been on my Blue Places list.

Casa Batlló’s marine-inspired façade was a corrugated surface with insets of stone, glass and ceramics. I realized at that moment when we walked up to the building why Izzy got us up early to see it. The glint of the early morning sun made the building glow and sparkle. The roof was composed of large tiles that looked like dragon scales in a scale of colors from terra cotta to ocean green to Mediterranean blue.

“Some people call this the House of Bones or the House of the Dragon,” Izzy said as she pointed out the scales on the roof that resembled a dragon’s back and the giant four-pointed cross on one pinnacle. “Gaudí’s work often featured Saint George and the slaying of the dragon.”

“Izzy the Dragonslayer,” I murmured as I looked up at the ceramic pieces on the façade that made the main walls look like a version of Monet’s oil paintings.

“That’s my pirate name,” Izzy said. “When I fly my pirate flag it will feature a dragon with two swords crossed through it.”

I experienced another moment of cognitive awe when we entered Casa Batlló.

Izzy led me directly to the lightwell.

“Voilá, your blues, sir,” Izzy said as we moved toward the center of the house. “Gaudí created this as a four-story skylight so natural light would reach all the rooms in the house. Do you see those blue ceramic tiles?”

“I see blue as far as my eye can see,” I said, my mouth agape.

“Do you see how the blue is more intense – darker at the top – and lighter as you look down? That’s to ensure the same intensity of light hits every window. Plus the windows are narrower at the top and larger at the bottom so each floor gets the same level of sunlight.”

Izzy reach over and intertwined her fingers with mine.

“You are holding the hand of a woman whose mother held the hand of the man who created that design and those blue tiles – Don Jujol,” Izzy said, squeezing my hand tighter. “We are now all connected. His molecules to my mother’s molecules, to me, to you, and now back again. A moment of symmetry. Just like the water in the ocean. Every drop has touched you and every drop has touched me.”

I did the only thing I could do. I cried.

I took many photos at Casa Batlló, including a few I knew Izzy would want to present to her mother. I hoped she would tell the story exactly as she told it to me. But I knew that wasn’t possible. I wasn’t even sure she would be able to tell her mother who took the pictures. I knew she wouldn’t.

We had originally planned to visit La Sagrada Familia that afternoon, but I deferred. I had such a feeling of completeness from seeing the blues of Casa Batlló, and from the connection of Izzy to ceramic tiles in the Casa and around Barcelona, that I didn’t want anything to interfere with that feeling.

That afternoon we took a small walk, and in the later afternoon had vermuteao at a bodega not too far from our hotel. Our waiter brought us vermouth in small tumblers, with a large ice cube, a slice of orange, and an anchovy-stuffed olive. He set a sifón, a bottle of carbonated water, next to our glasses, but Izzy and I drank our vermouth neat.

“Reminds me of our first Negroni on Capri,” Izzy said as she took the first sip.

We got a selection of olives and pan con tomate, bread rubbed with tomato and olive oil. Then we had a second vermouth. And a third. We followed that up at a place down the street with a carafe of tinto de verano – red wine mixed with lemonade.

Izzy said she wanted to go dancing.

“We need to eat a real meal,” I said to Izzy as we stumbled out of our second bodega of the day. Evening was rapidly cascading into night. “We should go to Bar Marsella…we should go to Bar Marsella…we should go to Bar Marsella because that’s where Picasso and Hemingway used to go.” I was at the repeat-myself-stage-of drunkenness.

“Picasso and Hemingway used to go there together?” Izzy asked very loudly in Italian. She became more Italian by the minute when she was drunk.

“I don’t know. But I know they used to go there,” I said as I leaned on a building and looked through blurry eyes at a sign on the corner post. “Oh look, Els Quatre Gats. The Four Cats. I’m so hungry I could eat a cat.”

The maître d’ was standing on the street outside the famous restaurant. He wasn’t charmed. But he took one look at Izzy and accommodated us. We ordered a lot of food, and I took cryptic notes on a menu I asked Izzy to sneak out under her skirt. We ate croquetó de bacallà and ostra gillardeau nº2 for appetizers; Izzy had the arròs vegetal and I chose el clàssic steak tartar for our main course. We had a magnum of Juvé y Camps Reserva de la Familia estate wine with our meal.

We had way too much to drink that evening and night. There wouldn’t be any dancing.

We went back to our room and didn’t turn on the lights. We both sprawled on the bed. My head was spinning. I shouldn’t have done it, especially because I was drunk, but I asked the question that had gnawed at me for weeks.

“Who were you waiting for in Capri?” I asked as we laid in the dark. Izzy rolled on her side away from me.

“My fiancé.”

“Your fiancé!” I said loudly, both as a question and as a statement. “You’re engaged to be married? When?”

“In three months.”

“And I was your last little fling before that?” I slurred. It was like someone showed me a movie in high speed. And I already knew the ending.

“I don’t have little flings. I’ve never had a little fling. How dare you?”

We were both tense. And drunk. I jumped up and sat in a chair. Izzy was still curled in the bed. I poured a glass of water and gathered my emotions.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“I wanted to tell you a hundred times. I wanted to tell you when we were in Capri when you asked me why I was there. I told you I waited for someone for three days. That was for him. He didn’t come.”

I had so many questions I didn’t know where to start. That one question led to a dozen more. I couldn’t stop myself. I was falling down a hill.

“Wait. We’ve been traveling together for weeks. And you couldn’t tell me then. Why?”

“I wanted to tell you. I almost didn’t travel to Lago di Braies. But I did.”

“Isa. Listen. I wouldn’t want to change a single moment of being together. Not a single moment. But there is the moment before and the moment after. We are now at the moment after you told me. There’s no going back. You are to be married.”

We sat in in silence the dark. Finally, Izzy got up and lit a candle that was on a shelf in front of a mirror. The flame cast a yellow light across the room. After an excruciatingly long pause, Izzy spoke.

“You never called me Isa until now. Don’t start. You want an answer? This is it: I don’t love him. And he doesn’t love me. But there are expectations – in my family and in his. My grandmother didn’t want what happened to my mother to happen to me.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“That I fall in love with the wrong man. A man who won’t stay.”

“Like your father.”

“Yes, like my father. There is a heritage to consider. A lineage.”

“What about Izzy the Pirate? Where is she?”

“Woman aren’t allowed to be pirates in Padua. Not in my world. But you let me say I was a pirate. You encouraged it. So, I believed I was. For a while.”

“Why didn’t your fiancé come to Capri?”

“That’s what he does. He is from a prominent family, and he is involved in businesses all over the world. He travels for months. I never hear from him. He has never written me a letter or sent me a telegram. I usually get word from his assistant that he would like to meet me. I get an airplane or train ticket. Then I go. And he often does not come. I have spent a lot of time alone.”

“How long have you been engaged?”

“Almost two years. It’s a very long time, and yes, it’s very unusual. My grandmother arranged one Italian suitor after another to court me when I was younger. After I met a few, I told my grandmother no more. I prevailed for a few years, but I wasn’t getting any younger. Ultimately, I met my future fiancé and thought he would be as good as I could expect. So, I settled for him. He proposed marriage to me after getting approval from my mother and my grandparents.”

“Why didn’t you get married for the past two years?”

“He was too busy. He’s being primed to take over the company from his father. It’s a colossal enterprise. And when he’s not doing business deals, he’s traveling. Like now. He had business dealings in South Africa in some mines. But then he decided to go on safari in Rhodesia, Tanganyika, and Kenya. I only discovered that when I went back to Padua. That was just before I drove to Lago di Braies. His aide told me that he would not be back in Italy until just before the wedding.”

“So, you will be married in three months.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt like I had a stone on my chest, a relationship form of peine forte et dure. I was being crushed.

“I’m going for a walk,” I said as I grabbed a hat and a jacket. “Don’t wait up for me.”

I stayed out all night wandering the streets of Barcelona. At one point in the dark of night, I found myself in front of the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. For some reason I felt I should go inside. I was one of only a very few people in there, and most likely the only skeptic. I lit a candle and made a wish that things would okay again.

After I left the basilica, I ambled along with my hands in my pocket. By that time the only people on the streets were bakers going to work and policemen. No one said a word to me or even looked at me. I watched the sun come up over La Barceloneta, had an espresso standing up in a small bodega, then walked slowly back to our hotel.

Izzy was gone.

She left a note on the hotel stationery.

Thomas,

I’m sorry I could not slay the dragon of obligations. Please don’t search for me. The pirate is gone.

Isa

Our journey to Chefchaouen was punctuated by a fraught silence. It was because of a movie. And my thoughtlessness.

I wanted to make a grand gesture while I presented Izzy a daraa and tagelmust I paid to have fabricated for her in Souk Sebbaghine. While she painted every day with Jacques Majorelle, I spent my time in the souks and drank mint tea with the purveyor of the finest fabrics in Marrakech. I conscripted him to create a custom-designed indigo robe and cerulean scarf for Izzy that were emblematic of the nomadic Tuareg people.

Each day when I visited the souk, he offered me tea, then we sat and talked. After a while, he brought me into the back of his shop to see the progress. The daraa was being crafted from an exquisite silk damask. When we first met and I asked about having the robe made, he showed me panels and panels of dyed textiles, each one more beautiful than the previous. I couldn’t decide. Then he showed me the prettiest piece of cloth imaginable.

“This one,” he said. “The finest I have.”

I agreed. And he went to work. It took almost three weeks to complete. And when he was done, that was my signal it was time to end our stay in Marrakech and travel to Chefchaouen, the city called the Blue Pearl of Morocco.

“She will be most beautiful,” the artisan said to me in broken English when he offered me an intricately inlaid Thuya wood box containing the gifts. Then he bowed. “A princess of Sahara.”

My plan was to give the blue robe and scarf to Izzy as our chauffeur drove us into the center of Casablanca, not because there was a new blue I needed to see, but because I wanted to quote my favorite movie when I handed her the gift. I thought it would be clever to say the classic line from the movie as she opened the box: “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray. You wore blue.”

I miscalculated.

A few years earlier, I had seen Casablanca several times at a theater that showed classic American movies. I could recite every single word from it. When I jabbered to Izzy about the film a couple days before we left Marrakech, I ceaselessly quoted dialog. She was unamused.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” I said in my best Bogart accent. “That’s what I said when I first saw you at the bookstore in Oia.”

Izzy slapped my leg and pointed a finger at my eye. I teased her daily about telling La Marchesa di Dandolo that she didn’t know me. That endless repetition of a worn-out joke wasn’t one of my most charming qualities.

Finally, after I quoted the lines from a dozen more scenes, Izzy had enough. “Basta! Basta!” she shouted as she dashed across the room, jumped in bed, and covered her ears theatrically with a pillow.

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” I said. She didn’t hear me. And she didn’t talk to me the rest of the night.

I wasn’t thinking. In retrospect, a film about a shady American expatriate involved in a love triangle during World War II was more appealing to me than it was to Izzy, whose grandparents experienced harrowing perils during the war. During one long night in Majorelle’s riad, Izzy told me some of her family story as she spoke into the blackness.

The Fascists forced non-partisan Italian citizens to sequester German soldiers in their homes. Family heirlooms were looted. Crops were ripped from the fields. Animals were shot. Everyone was hungry. Painfully, her favorite uncle was killed in the Italian campaign in Egypt.

A few years before the world war started, Izzy’s grandparents sent their only daughter to Barcelona to study art. They thought she would be safer in Spain while tensions were rising in Italy. But nothing goes as planned during a war. Their only son was conscripted into the Italian army. He had no choice. Danger lurked everywhere they turned.

Izzy’s mother went from one boiling cauldron to another. She left the rising Fascism in Italy only to arrive in Spain as the Civil War raged in Madrid. To add to the complications, Izzy’s mother fell in love in Barcelona, first with the modernist art of Gaudí, and then with the mendacious charms of a Spaniard. Fortunately, Izzy’s mother left Barcelona before its fall to the Nationalists. She had a place to go. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards didn’t have anywhere to go and they became refugees in occupied France during World War II.

When she returned to Padua, Izzy’s mother brought more than her paintings; her Spanish novio traveled with her and said he intended to stay. Izzy’s grandparents were insistent that he leave their villa and go back home to Spain. They had high expectations for their only daughter. And even though a world war was on the verge of exploding, there was a family legacy to consider. There was an unbroken line going back centuries.

However, Izzy mother brought another surprise with her from Spain. She was pregnant.

In that era, in that region of Italy, in that noble society, there was no such thing an out-of-wedlock birth. The mere mention of being with child before marriage was spoken of only in whispers if ever spoken of at all. To reveal her pregnancy would be a scandal. And a pregnancy with a non-Italian, no less. Dio mio.

Her parents demanded that she marry her Spanish novio immediately. It wasn’t an insignificant mandate. He arrived with very few possessions. Fortunately, he did have one important possession: his name. He claimed he descended from a reputable lineage and had a sufficiently noble surname to make the marriage plausible in the eyes of the family – and the patricians of Padua. Although he possessed a hidalgo title in Spain, Izzy’s grandmother called him only The Spaniard. And years later, when she discovered he was in direct lineage of the caballeros villanos, she felt justified. Izzy told me her grandmother once said, “He’s descended from little more than pirates on horseback.” And Izzy said back to her in Spanish, “Then I am a pirate, too.”

Izzy’s father spoke only in Spanish to her when she was young. Her mother and grandparents spoke to her in Italian. Izzy would sometimes mix the two languages, which infuriated her nonna. “A proper Italian girl must speak proper Italian” is what Izzy told me her grandmother would admonish when Izzy would blend Italian and Spanish in a single sentence.

Izzy’s father stayed in Italy until she was ten. Then one day he was gone. No warning. Only a note to say he returned to Spain. Izzy and her mother never heard from The Spaniard again.

“I missed him every day for years,” Izzy told me when she explained more of the story of her family. She began to cry in the dark, but then held back the tears. “Mi mancava ogni giorno. Mi mancava ogni giorno.”

Izzy’s family had lots of expectations for her. They didn’t expect her to miss her father.

I mapped out a new plan to transit through Fez instead of going up the coast through Casablanca. I could see the Blue Gate.

I gave Izzy the blue robe and scarf as we made our way north from Marrakech.

“Oh, I adore this,” she said as she slid the cerulean scarf through her elegant fingers. The tagelmust was as long as three body lengths, and Izzy caressed every bit of it from end to end. “This color is exquisite. Oh, look how it’s dyed a deeper blue at the ends.”

Our chauffeur stopped the car at the western gate and discharged us into the cacophony of the outer wall. Cars and bicycles and people intersected like a frenetic ant colony. Horns honked. Men shouted. Donkeys brayed.

I took a photo of Izzy in front of the Blue Gate, which is covered with cobalt-blue arabesque tiles that are emblematic of the blue pottery of Fez. She had wrapped the scarf in layers around her head to create a cerulean turban. It was a perfect complement to her white dress.

“You are a Greek goddess,” I said as I focused through the viewfinder. “A direct descendant of Venus de Milo and Helen of Troy.”

“I am a Bedouin who roams the desert,” she said with a Moroccan accent as she pulled a panel of scarf over her mouth and nose. Only her eyes were peeking out. I could see little crinkles at the corners. “Or a pirate who roams the sea.”

We walked through the Blue Gate into the narrow and twisting streets of the Fez medina. The tangle of drebs – streets, alleys, dead-ends, and squares – defied outsiders. The design kept invaders disoriented. It worked. I was far from being an invader, but I was immediately disoriented.

The medina was bursting with foreign scents and sights and sounds. The tightness of the drebs forced extreme, up-close encounters with people and animals. Everything was for sale, and scores of vendors dashed out of shops and tried to lure us inside. The intensity and volume of the noise added to the tension. Workers pushed through the narrow streets rolling hand carts. Others slapped donkeys laden with deliveries while they shouted balak, balak. It meant look out, look out.

But no shout or warning could have prepared us for one overwhelming odor. As we were poking our heads in and out of small shops, we suddenly found ourselves in an area that had a terrible stench.

“We should go back that way,” I said to Izzy as I pinched my nose closed. I had to wipe tears from my eyes. The acid in the air was overpowering. I had never smelled anything as bad as that smell. Before the hour was over, I would smell worse.

“It is the Chouara Tannery,” said a little old man who sprinted from a cubbyhole of a leather shop. He thrust fistfuls of mint at us. “Hold the sprigs in front of your face. It will help.” He waved his hands and spoke French as he energetically encouraged us to follow him. I was reluctant. But curious.

The Mint Man led us deep through his cluttered shop to a terrace in the back. Two stories below in the blazing sunshine was a courtyard crammed with enormous stone vats.

The vats were arranged in terraces of six vats wide by two vats deep, so workers had access to them from an aisle on each side. I counted and noted seventeen terraces of twelve vats each, all filled with intense colors that glistened in the sun. Additionally, at one end of the courtyard there was another hundred or more rectangular baths filled with white liquids. The wafting stench from the white baths assaulted my nostrils and throat. I had to fight the urge to retch, but the visual appeal of the colors – especially the vibrant blues, made me linger.

“Hides from cows, sheep, goats, and camels are soaked several days to soften them,” the Mint Man said as he pointed to the white baths. “The smell – yes, hold the mint up and breathe through your mouth – is a mixture of cow urine, pigeon feces, quicklime, salt, and water. After the hides are cleaned and softened, they are soaked in vats of dye. You can see the workers standing in there. They are using their feet to push the skins deep into the pools. The red is from poppies; the orange is from henna, and the deep blue is from the indigo plant.”

I took a picture of Izzy holding a spray of mint to her face and hoped I’d captured the bright blue dying vats in a blurred background. I focused sharply on the mint.

Roll 32, Frame 1: Leica M, 35mm, f/1.4 lens; f/1.4, speed 1/400; Izzy, sniffing mint at dying vats; bokeh? Chouara Tannery. 5:22pm, Fez, Morocco

I also took a photo of Izzy with the Mint Man. He put on a crimson berry dyed Fez hat for the photograph.

“The odor is not as bad as when we arrived,” Izzy said as she lowered the mint from her face and held it by her side.

“I agree,” I said. “That’s what happens. Happens with butterflies, too. They are highly activated by pheromones, but after an hour of manic activity, they start to calm. And if they don’t find a mate quickly, they begin to lose interest. It’s called perceptual attenuation – the idea that biological beings pay less and less attention to non-life-threatening stimuli as time goes on. Our brains can process only so much information.”

“Does that mean you will lose interest in me?” Izzy asked. It wasn’t just a playful question. She stopped and looked directly in my eyes. The Mint Man moved back a few steps.

“Isabella, every day is something new with you. I will never lose interest.”

“Don’t make promises you cannot fulfill,” she said. Then she handed the sprigs to the Mint Man and walked quickly out of his shop. I found some money to give the Mint Man for his time, then apologized for the abrupt departure. He refused the money and said he would see us again. I thanked him as I exited and promised I would return.

I saw Izzy walk around a corner and quickly followed her. She was hard to miss in her white dress and blue turban. She ignored me.

We got lost on our walk out of the medina. Or should I say, I got lost? We needed to find the Blue Gate. But, as I found out later, the Blue Gate is green, the color of Islam, on the medina side. The exterior is blue; the interior side facing the medina is green. I should have paid attention to Izzy the first of three times we walked by it. She pointed to the gate each time.

“Do you have the compass I gave you?” she finally asked as we stood near the large green gate. It was the first time she spoke to me since we left the Chouara Tannery.

I rooted in my satchel and showed her I did. “How’s that going to help?”

“It’s the western gate,” Izzy said with some exasperation in her voice. “If you point your compass at that green gate, which is actually the Blue Gate, you’ll see it’s aligned to the west.”

I did what she said. My compass needle indicated west.

We walked through the Blue Gate from the green side and left the medina. Our chauffeur waiting for us.

“Pirates should know how to navigate,” she said dismissively as she yanked open the car door.

“I can find my way, including by celestial navigation. I use a sextant in the field all the time to record my locations. It’s just when I’m with you, my bearings become wobbly. I don’t want to be anywhere except with you. And for that, I don’t need a compass.”

“Then you’ll always be able to find me,” Izzy said.

The remainder of our drive to Chefchaouen was uneventful, albeit long. Izzy and I napped. We were exhausted after our time in Fez. We both awoke as we entered the winding roads in the Rif mountains and our driver arced from switchback to switchback. Chefchaouen derives its name from the shape of the mountains above the town, which resemble goat horns (chaouen). Chefchaouen means “look at the horns.”

I reserved a dar for three nights based on a recommendation from the artisan at the souk in Marrakech. The hotel was situated in the heart of the medina. I wanted to be able to explore from dawn to dusk. My look at the Blue City wouldn’t start that night. It was in a moonless darkness when we arrived. Our chauffeur carried our bags to the hotel and handed them to a porter as we filled out the necessary papers.

The dar was built around inner courtyard covered with red tiles. The arched walls of the interior were painted bright white, and everything from the hotel doors to the walkways around the courtyard were painted various shades of Chefchaouen blue. Inside our third-floor room, the floor was painted blue, as was the molding around the window and the interior of the bookshelf. Even the exposed pipes were painted blue. It was a sensory appetizer to the Blue City.

“I want to take a bath,” Izzy said as soon as we were alone in our room. She pulled her hair to her face and sniffed it “I can still smell the tannery on me.”

“Please let me help.” I saw her shoulders drop as I said it. She was jittery all day since we left the dying vats in Fez. She relaxed for a second.

I filled the bathtub as Izzy undressed. She got in the bath and slid slowly into the warm water. I lit a candle and left her to soak for a few minutes while I rinsed her scarf and dress in the sink.

After I wrung out her clothes and laid them down to dry, I walked over to the bathtub and knelt on a towel. I asked Izzy to arch forward and hug her knees while I washed her hair. Then I wet a sponge, loaded it with sandalwood-scented soap, and swirled it in gentle arcs on her back. After I rinsed her with handfuls of bath water, I washed her back again and pressed into the muscles until I heard her sigh.

I laid a dry towel on the edge of the tub and Izzy reclined on it while I supported her back. I asked her to tilt her head back as I washed under her neck. Everything happened slowly, and the only sounds we could hear were water droplets falling back into the bathtub. I raised her arms one by one and squeezed soap suds onto her sides as I washed from her wrist to her ribs. I set her hands back in the water, then I guided the sponge slowly across her breasts and down her belly.

I moved even closer and concentrated on her face as I moved the sponge. Izzy didn’t open her eyes, but I saw her eyelids flutter. I soaped down her legs and between her toes. When I was done, I used a small wooden pail to pour warm, fresh water over her.  

Then, Izzy stood straight up in the tub. I handed her a towel, but she only partially dried off, then handed the towel back to me.

“The water is yours, sir,” she said to me as she raised her arms and rounded them in a large oval. She was doing ballet in the bathtub. “This is the fifth position in the Cechetti method.” She held the position as I observed every bit of her.

Then she dropped her arms to her sides slightly away from her hips. “And this is the first position. If I were wearing a tutu, this is where it would be.” She pointed with her fingers rounded and extended.

“I like your imaginary skirt.”

When I finished my bath and walked into the bedroom, Izzy was wearing the damp cerulean scarf on her head. And nothing else.

“Take my portrait,” she said.

I hesitated.

“Take it,” she demanded. “I am Isabella the Pirate now.”

We made love while Izzy wore the scarf. All I could see was her eyes. Later, she slowly unwound the scarf, then tied my hands behind my back.

“You’re my prisoner now,” she said.

“I’m not a good prisoner. I will never try to escape,” I said. “I’m staying.”

“They never stay,” Izzy said.

We woke very early in the morning. I wanted to see the sunrise. Izzy wanted a coffee.

“I’m staying,” I said to Izzy for the second time in Chefchaouen as we walked into the most intense blue I had ever seen. “This place is the bluest of the blue.”

Vivid blue filled my eyes wherever I looked. Every door was blue. Every building was blue. Every alleyway was blue. Every window frame was blue. Every intricate metal grate was blue. And when I looked all the way up, the sky was blue.

The blue walls of ancient buildings were trimmed in a darker shade of Chefchaouen blue. The risers of stairs were darker blue than the treads. I started first thing in the morning and took many pictures of the blue and the architecture, I but wondered how they would turn out. The way stairs were painted made them appear to ripple like waves in the ocean.

I was in a blue dream.

Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 by Moorish and Jewish refugees fleeing the Reconquista of Spain. During the Spanish Inquisition, Sephardic Jews took refuge in the city. They painted their homes talcum blue, the color of divinity in Judaism. Blue threads are traditionally woven into Jewish prayer shawls for that reason. Five hundred years after its founding, and Chefchaouen earns its name of the Blue Pearl.

Everywhere we looked, we saw blue.

“What’s that smell?” Izzy asked as we entered a small square. I hoped there wouldn’t be another tannery. One was enough in a lifetime.

As we walked closer to the men squatted along the walls, we didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

“Hashish, hashish,” insisted a young guy who hopped up and ran toward us. He opened his palm and showed an oily black wad to Izzy. Besides being the Blue Pearl, Chefchaouen is in an area that produces a large percentage of the world’s marijuana and hashish. Tourists visit the city to see the blue buildings – and to smoke hash. We came only for the blue buildings.

“No, no, no,” Izzy said, turning her back to the young man. Then she switched to French as he pursued her. “Dégage.”

He insisted. I stood in place, scanning the square, and bracing for a fight. The young man followed her as she stepped away. He grabbed her arm.

“Va te faire foutre!” she turned and shouted. For the first time since we entered Morocco, there was complete silence. After a count of five, a few men got up, talked agitatedly, and pointed at Izzy. She turned back. This time she told them to go fuck themselves by just glaring at them. They all sat back down.

I suggested that we get walking. Fast. I didn’t want to get stabbed from behind.

We didn’t intend to get high on hashish – or arrested for fighting – before breakfast. But the adrenaline of the incident with the hash seller intensified our hunger.

“Let’s have a breakfast,” Izzy said. “I’m famished.” Some people can’t eat after a fight. But Izzy was a pirate. She was invigorated.

We wound through a few streets to put distance between us and the hash sellers, then we saw a sign for a restaurant. A young guy was outside in the alleyway, and when he saw us look at the menu, he beckoned us to enter. He escorted us up several flights of stairs to his café. As we relaxed in our chairs and admired the view of the River Fouara, we ate a typical Chaouen breakfast – fried eggs, olives, baked breads, and honey. After breakfast, the owner brought cups of mint tea as a token of thanks.

“I never want to smell mint again,” Izzy said as she pushed the cup away from her once the owner left our table. “The smell of mint is now the smell of a tannery to me.”

“I didn’t think of that until now,” I said. I was doing everything I could to forget the odor from the softening of the animal skins.

I didn’t drink my tea.

After breakfast, we went out for the main photo shoot of the day. As we were wandering, I asked for permission, then took a photograph of an old woman stooped over and painting a wall Chefchaouen blue. She used a primitive brush made from coarse dried grass tied in a thick bundle with a leather strap.

Roll 34, Frames 2-5: Leica M, 35mm, f/2.6 lens; f/8, speed 1/100; Izzy in yellow dress, ribbon in hair, ancient woman painting wall with deep blue paint, shows Izzy grass paintbrush, paint drips from bundle. Medina. 8:30am, Chefchaouen, Morocco.

The passageways of the blue city were narrow and convoluted. I created a map with sketches in my notebook, but there were no signs to indicate where we were. I wrote the names of hotels and restaurants and mosques where a small sign was visible, but mostly it was blue corridor after blue corridor, interspersed with small squares where vendors were arrayed along the edges. In some very narrow corridors, there were small shops that didn’t have signs – just an alcove packed with rugs or clothing or handmade objects.

In the afternoon, we walked past a bookstore where the proprietor was sleeping on a pile of yellow-papered books.

“Say nothing,” Izzy said to me through tight lips as we entered the shop. The proprietor didn’t move.

“I’m looking for a copy of The Iliad,” I said to Izzy, being careful to not provoke her with another bookstore comment. “I need to learn more of the story of Helen of Troy – the most beautiful woman in the world. The woman whose beauty made men go to war.”

“Oh, her beauty didn’t make men go to war. She was married to King Menelaus, but she escaped with Paris. That’s what caused the Trojan War. Envy. Obligations. Expectations. But not beauty.”

“Well then, I guess I don’t need the book,” I said as I shrugged. “I once saw the painting El Juicio de Paris by Enrique Simonet. It was at the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes in Málaga. It’s one of the most beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen.”

“Then you already know the story,” Izzy said. “Aphrodite bribed Paris with an offer of the love of the most beautiful woman on Earth if he would choose her as the most beautiful goddess over Hera and Athena. He did, and presented her the Golden Apple. Of course, Aphrodite didn’t tell Paris that Helen was married to King Menelaus. It depends on what story you believe – either Paris raided Menelaus’s house to kidnap Helen from him or Helen went willingly.”

“I’d like to believe in love,” I said. “I do believe in love. Helen went willingly with Paris. Although, like Paris, I would raid a house to steal you away.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Izzy said as she looked over her shoulder.

We spent the remainder of the day traversing the winding streets of Chefchaouen. I captured a full spectrum of colors of the blue city on film. As evening advanced, the blues became more intense, and they glowed a blue-black when the lights came on. On our way back to our hotel, we stopped at a hammam to make appointments for the next day.

We returned to our dar as darkness descended on the city. I used three rolls of film from dawn to dusk. Most of those photos included Izzy as the central subject. She was becoming my Muse. I started my journey focusing on blues; then I found myself focusing more and more on Izzy every day. I didn’t think the university would have granted me a sabbatical to follow Izzy around the world. At that moment, I didn’t care.

That night we took a simple meal in our room. We ate a Moroccan salad made with cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, salt, vinegar, and feta cheese. The hotel restaurant also sent up a seasonal fruit bowl of cubed strawberries, peaches, mangoes, and pineapples soaked in cold orange juice. The note that accompanied our meal said the water we had in the glass bottle came directly from the Ras el Ma waterfall.

I wanted to ask Izzy some questions that night, but I didn’t want to ruin the mood. We had other things to do. And when we were done, and I brushed her hair and handed her a glass of juice for aftercare. After that, she curled on the bed with a pillow wedged between her knees and fell quickly to sleep. I wrote her a letter by candlelight.

Chefchaouen, Morocco    35°10′17″N 5°16′11″W   12:38am

Dear Izzy,

It’s not very often, or very accurate, when I use the word exhausted. But tonight, I am exhausted. I’m not exhausted from walking. I walk for hours in the field. (Someday, I’ll tell you the longer version of searching for the Xerces blue butterfly around San Francisco. That butterfly went extinct in 1941, but every year after that someone would claim to have seen one. One year, it was my turn to go in the field as the expert researcher. I walked up and down hills, through rain and fog and heat. After walking nonstop for two months and looking at a thousand habitats, the answer was the same: The Xerces blue butterfly is still extinct.)

Back to exhaustion. We had a long day. It started in the square when that bad guy tried to force you buy his hashish. You were, no doubt, Izzy the Pirate when you made it clear he should step back. Where did you learn that French argot? It wasn’t at art school.

Just so you know, in a fight, I’d bet on you. But I’m not too bad with my fists. I grew up brawling. And I was ready.

What else was exhausting? The claustrophobia of the streets and alleyways. The heat during the midday when I insisted that we stay out to take more pictures. And the saturation of blue was exhausting, to be honest. No matter where I turned my eyes there was blue, blue, and more blue. It was like eating a dozen croissants. The first one is great; the twelfth one is too much. There is beauty in quiet moments, too. And enough is enough.

Tomorrow, we go to a hammam. Not at the same time…but I would. Are you looking forward to being steamed, sweated, pummeled, and scrubbed by an ancient Moroccan woman? I hope your bath tonight was gentler.

I have so much more to say. But I’m exhausted. So, I will lie down. And as I fall asleep, I will have a small laugh as I think about what you said to the Hash Man.

T____

The next day, Izzy and I woke up late. Women’s appointments at the hammam were earlier in the afternoon than the men’s appointments. With Izzy occupied at the hammam, I had time to write notes for my manuscript. I ate a ginger and cinnamon cookie as I wrote while I was sitting in the shade of a small square. As I sat there, I was approached by several of the hundreds of cats that are all over Chefchaouen. Since Izzy wasn’t there to be my model, I took a few photos of the cats framed among the blue walls of the city.

“I’ll meet you after your session in the hammam,” Izzy said as she walked up to me at my writing place. “I will be in the Place Outa el Hammam. You know it. It’s the main square.”

I didn’t really know what I was in for at the hammam. For one thing, the baths are public. I was the only non-Moroccan there. A big guy wearing a white loincloth instructed me to strip down. When I did, he slathered my skin with a black, olive-based soap called beldi. Then he pointed me for to go into a steam room, which I sat in for a quarter hour. Then I started to overheat.

When I stumbled out of the steam room, the attendant had me lie down on a wet marble table, where he doused me with buckets of cold water, then he nearly sandpapered off my skin with a coarse washcloth called a kessa. After that, he applied a series moisturizing treatments, balms, and oils while he gave me a deep tissue massage. It was incredibly painful. And delightful.

After my session, I staggered to Place Outa el Hammam, but Izzy wasn’t there. Since our hotel was close, I thought maybe she was waiting there. I was right. She was waiting on the bed. Izzy had a small ampule of oil that she dribbled on her body as she stared at me. Then she invited me to strip down and hug her.

“You are so smooth,” she purred as she grabbed a handful of my hair.

“And you smell delicious,” I said. “You don’t smell at all like a pirate.”

Izzy howled and tossed me off her in one twisting move. Somehow, she ended up sitting on me, holding my arms above my head.

“I’m a pirate,” she said. “You should know that by now.”

We ordered room service again that night.

Our last day in Chefchaouen was going to include a walk high above the city, then we would make our way down from the hillside and take some final photos. As we made our way up, ominous clouds began to billow and the wind howled.

“We should probably go back down,” I shouted to Izzy, who was teetering on the ledge of an ancient wall.

“You go ahead. I’ll be right behind you,” Izzy said as she held her arms out to her sides for balance.

I hesitated for a minute, then started to make my way down the stairs. I kept looking back, but I didn’t see Izzy. I was just about to turn around and go back to get her when Izzy came bounding down the steps, jumping two at a time.

“Vamos,” was all I heard as she rushed by me.

When we entered the warren of streets in Chefchaouen, we heard the first crack of thunder. Then there was another. And another.

Then the deluge.

Izzy was several buildings ahead of me when the rain washed down, and lightning flashed above us. Rain at that time of year in northern Morocco was highly unusual. And no one was ready for it. As the rain poured down, people ran into the streets. Vendors tried to move their goods inside. Mothers yelled for their children. Delivery men shouted at their donkeys.

I couldn’t see Izzy. One minute I could see her ahead of me, then she was gone.

I ducked into an alcove as the lightning intensified. I thought she must have done the same thing. The storm raged for at least an hour, and the rain continued for several more. After the lightning abated, I walked back in the streets to find Izzy. There was almost no one on the streets then, and I thought I’d see her quickly. But I walked and walked and walked. No Izzy.

I went back to our dar and asked at the front desk if they had seen her. They hadn’t. I checked our room. No Izzy.

I changed into some dry clothes, pulled on my waxed canvas jacket I used to wear in the fields, and went out to search for Izzy. I went to the hashish square. I walked to Place Outa el Hammam, the main square where she told me she would meet me the day before. I walked in concentric circles and wrote myself notes as I did.

Hours went by. And then it was dark. I couldn’t find Izzy. And I had no one to help me find her. I returned to the hotel, where I was going to enlist the proprietor to help me arrange a search. There were no police to call.

“La dame est à l’étage. Elle t’a laissé ce mot.”

Izzy was there. She left a note for me.

Chefchaouen, 10pm

Thomas,

The storm is gone and I am here. Come upstairs and kiss me as if it were the last time.

Isa

She quoted from Casablanca.

We flew from Carthage to Marrakech on a rickety C-47. The only tickets available to us were on a Société Commerciale d’Aviation Nord Africaine airplane that looked like it arrived directly from a battlefield. Adding to the war motif, the paint scheme on it was an original military design, with a small sign near the nose cone as the only indication it was privately owned.

C-47s were used for troop transport during the World War II, but ours smelled like it was used to transport goats and garlic when it wasn’t ferrying passengers and cargo between Tunisia and Morocco. The stench wafted around us as we loitered on the tarmac and broiled under the Tunisian sun waiting for the entrance hatch to open.

I was apprehensive. Izzy insisted.

“Monsieur Majorelle is anticipating our arrival,” she said as she urged me up the loading gangway. “Il Marchese sent him a wire, and Monsieur Majorelle offered his riad for as long as we desire.”

My pre-flight trepidation was warranted. There were no windows for passengers. Or seats. We sat on benches along the sides of the plane while cargo was loaded between us. The bathroom was a bucket in the back of the plane.

Izzy and I sat close to the pilot so we could see out the forward windows.

“I hope we survive,” I said as we angled steeply into the Tunisian sky.

“We’re pirates. Nothing bad happens to pirates,” Izzy said over the din of the engines.

“Lots of bad things happened to pirates.” I made a gesture of a knife slicing across my throat.

“Not today,” she said as reached over and held my hand.

We were on our way to see a blue neither of us had ever seen.

Our plane yawed and pitched for the entire flight while the yoke juddered in the pilot’s hands. I regretted my decision to sit so close to the front; the pilot reacted too swiftly and chattered too frantically give me confidence in what he was doing. My internal dialog was going rapid fire.

I was scared. Lizzy was sleeping.

 When we landed with a screech and a thud in Marrakech, I said a small prayer to a deity I didn’t believe in. I wasn’t the first person to pray on the flight. There was a moment when we lost altitude rapidly and the pilot and co-pilot yelled at each other. When Muslim passengers laid down prayer rugs in the aisles and began to chant, I thought it was because they feared they would be in the Great Kingdom soon, the one with rivers flowing with water, milk, honey, and wine. I realized later it was the Dhuhr, their noontime prayer. I didn’t feel comforted either way.

Izzy and I went directly from the airport to Jardin Majorelle. Before we left Sidi Bou Said, we received a telegram at our hotel saying that Monsieur Majorelle had arranged a tour for us to commence our sojourn in Marrakech: Rendez-vous à Jardins Majorelle. svp entrer par Av. Yacoub El Mansour. Chez residence 14:30 –jm.

As our driver brought us closer to the gardens, I became more and more skeptical. Rather than driving to an elegant house and gardens in a prime neighborhood, we wove through dusty streets obstructed with cars and people and detritus. I was just on the verge of telling our driver that we were abandoning our plans when he gestured at a sign for Avenue Yacoub El Mansour and said we were almost there. As we pulled into a rutted and rocky lane lined with wilting palm trees and crowded with overgrown underbrush, we saw movement ahead near an electric-blue wall. I had made a sketch of the house from the description Il Marchese gave me, so I knew we had arrived at Jardin Majorelle. The villa was grander – and sadder – than anything I imagined.

Jacques Majorelle was waiting for us at the house he once owned. He was propped against a cobalt-blue column that was chipping paint in large flakes. I was a shaken when I saw him through the open car window as we pulled up near him in a cloud of road dust. Il Marchese warned us Majorelle was in poor health – that was an elegant way of describing it.

“Bonjour, et bienvenue,” the artist said without an expression. He winced in pain as he stepped down two small stairs to greet us.

Majorelle certainly had the mien of an artist. His wiry beard dangled to the middle of his chest, and his mustache concealed his mouth. He was wearing an off-white cotton djellaba, a long and loose robe, over his clothes. Most striking, on his head he had a sheshia, which is a traditional Moroccan hat made with reeds interwoven with dark blue yarn. There was a blue yarn pom-pom at the crown of his oversized hat. Four other dark blue pom-poms connected the brim to the crown with blue yarn strings. It was an architectural wonder balanced on his head and I couldn’t resist staring at it.

Majorelle quickly removed his sheshia when he saw Izzy get out of the car.

“My dear Isabella,” he said in drawn out, elegant English.

“Good afternoon, Maestro,” Izzy said as she offered her hand. Majorelle took her hand and in both of his, then kissed the back of it. For the first time ever, I saw Izzy blush.

Izzy met Monsieur Majorelle when she studied art in Paris. After the collapse of his finances, Majorelle offered, for a substantial fee, to provide seminars at prestigious schools and give private lessons for artists and benefactors. He led a series of practicums at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts to demonstrate technique and reveal his color theory, especially pertaining to the vibrant blues of southern Spain and northern Morocco.

“S’il vous plaît, I have arranged a small tour of the property,” Majorelle said as he sat down on a stair with a grunt. He breathed heavily and spoke without raising his eyes from the ground. “My health isn’t what it once was. And I am heartily sorry for the state of ruin of the gardens. I do wish you could have seen them a decade ago. They were glorious.”

“I was too young to travel to Marrakech, then,” Izzy said. “But you painted a picture in my mind when you were in residence at ENSBA. Grâce a vous, Monsieur, je suis devenu ariste. Je suis ceramiste.”

“Oh, I have followed your work, my dear Isabella. You mother has written me from time to time. And one of my patrons gifted me with one of your pieces.”

Izzy appeared stunned. First, she blushed when Majorelle kissed her hand. Then the revelation that the famous artist owned a piece of her work threw her off balance.

“I am honored, Maestro,” Izzy said, flustered, as she tried to brush aside her discomfort. “Shall we start the tour? It appears we have much to discuss later.”

“Monsieur Majorelle studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nancy in 1901, and later at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1917, he visited Marrakech for the first time, where he fell in love with the vibrant colors and quality of light he found here,” our Moroccan docent said in French as Majorelle sat on the stairs and hid his eyes under his broad-brimmed sheshia.

We walked along overgrown garden paths as the docent continued his monologue. The artist did not join us.

 “Monsieur Majorelle drew inspiration for his art and the color schemes he used from the Sahara’s nomadic Tuareg people, whose deep-blue robes and veils signified wealth and are said to ward off evil spirits. They are the blue people of the desert. Monsieur Majorelle also drew inspiration for his blues from the bold Moroccan skies and the shade of blue in traditional Moroccan tiles.”

We didn’t walk far on the garden paths. They were unnavigable and so filled with dead and tangled plants that it was impossible to move forward. It was hard to imagine the beauty the place had once been. We turned and made our way back toward the blue house.

“In 1937, Monsieur Majorelle emblazoned his residence with a vivid and profoundly rich paint, giving birth to Majorelle Blue, a color he invented and trademarked. The trademark application explained that Majorelle Blue is an enhanced form of ultramarine blue, in the same family as lapis lazuli blue and Guimet blue. It shares a close affinity with the renowned Klein blue,” our docent said with practiced efficiency as he escorted us around the decrepit parts of the house.

Ten years of neglect in the Moroccan heat ravaged the brightness of the exterior paint and the structure. Parts of the house were sagging and broken. “Majorelle Blue exhibits a slightly warmer aspect compared to Klein blue, incorporating approximately twenty percent violet – a fusion of red and blue.”

Our tour was blessedly brief. I couldn’t help but consider how the condition of the house was an apt metaphor for Monsieur Majorelle himself. He, like his house and gardens, was incredibly handsome and vibrant in his best years. Now he, and the property, were broken-down. Ravaged. Yet, he still wanted us to see the place. And him. I had many questions about why.

Majorelle dismissed the docent and shuffled around the house as he explained his vision when he built Jardin Majorelle.

“In 1923, my wife, Andrée, and I moved to this property. I was painting a lot of commissions at that time. During that period, I worked on a series of blue colors, both for my paintings and for the exterior of our abode. After much discussion and an exchange of many French francs, we were able to persuade the renowned architect Paul Sinoir to design this villa in the Cubist style. By that time, I had perfected Majorelle Blue. We painted the main surfaces of the villa with Majorelle Blue, then used aqua blue and sandstone-colored paints as accents. When I commenced with the garden design, the Blue was a perfect backdrop for the many cactuses and palms I planted. In the later years, when we opened the gardens to the public, this was the place where many photos were taken.”

“May I take your photo here, Monsieur Majorelle?” I asked as I pulled my Leica from my bag.

“I’m afraid both the house and I are in a bit of ruin,” he said as his voice drifted off. “But I will agree if Isabella joins me.”

Izzy hesitated, then stepped up to where Majorelle had propped his hand against a post. “Let us stand tall, Maestro,” she said as she placed her hand in the middle of his back. For a fleeting moment, a flash of the handsome young artist shined through. I knelt on one knee as I took the shots from below, so I could capture Izzy, Majorelle, and the cobalt-blue luster that still clung to one wall.

I plopped in the gravel to make my roll notes. Izzy gently guided Majorelle to a place to sit down.

Roll 19, Frames 06-08: Leica M, 35mm, f/1.4 lens; f/4.5, speed 1/200; Izzy and Jacques Majorelle, Cubist villa bg, Majorelle Blue and aqua, Jardin Majorelle. 4pm, Marrakech

Majorelle slumped against a post and indicated he needed a few minutes before he could move. Izzy sat close to him. I took advantage of the time and pulled out a notecard and envelope:

Jardin Majorelle, Av. Yacoub El Mansour, Marrakech, Morocco

31°38′34″N 8°00′11″W

Dear Izzy,

Majorelle Blue may be the most stunning blue of my life. What do I do now?

T___

When we arrived at Majorelle’s riad, it was in nearly as sad a state inside as Jardin Majorelle was on the outside. There were empty wine bottles scattered in various rooms. There was almost no food in the pantries. And the gardens looked like they hadn’t been tended for a year.

“We can help the Maestro,” Izzy said to me that first night. Although the riad was large and our rooms were far across a courtyard from Majorelle, she still whispered.

We got to work. In the early morning, Izzy left our bed early and was in the kitchen by the time I walked over. She made lists of meals she wanted to prepare and suggested that we start cleaning room by room. When a nurse came to check on Majorelle, Izzy instructed her in French to remove all the wine bottles from the house and make sure none more would be delivered. Then she asked the nurse to order several cases of mineral water for delivery that afternoon.

Majorelle didn’t appear until after noon. He didn’t look like he slept.

“Thomas and I will go to the Le Marché du Mellah for provisions,” Izzy said as Majorelle staggered into the kitchen. Izzy poured him a cup of black tea infused with mint leaves she found growing wild in the garden. “In the meantime, you should drink this. Some French mineral water will arrive this afternoon.”

Majorelle turned his entire body stiffly to scan the room. He seemed unable to turn his neck.

“I like to take a taste of French wine to start my day,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Maestro, today we start with tea. And mineral water. We need to tend to your health. I baked you some bread,” Izzy said as she ripped a small piece from a loaf she pulled from the oven. “I’m sorry you don’t seem to have butter. We will buy some at the souk.”

Majorelle was too frail to object. And Izzy was too resolute to be put off by any objection he might raise.

Majorelle sipped the tea and reluctantly nibbled on the bread. Crumbs dangled in his mustache and tumbled onto his beard. He didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

“We will return soon,” I said as we turned to walk out to the courtyard.

It took us a little less than half an hour to walk to Le Marché du Mellah. Izzy had reviewed several Moroccan cookbooks in Majorelle’s kitchen that morning, and she had a list of items and ingredients she needed.

“We have to find Ras el Hanout,” she said as she walked quickly in the frenetic market. “Every one of them is different, from what I understand. Customized by each vendor. We will need to taste them.”

We made our way from stall to stall. What we discovered was that Ras el Hanout translates as top shelf. It means that the spicemonger uses the best spices he has available. Typical Ras el Hanout includes cardamom, nutmeg, anise, mace, cinnamon, ginger, peppers, and turmeric as a base. Many of the vendors told us theirs had as many as 35 spices. And one particularly insistent vendor claimed his contained 80 spices.

“You cannot find a finer blend, my friends,” he said, first in French, then English, then Arabic.

“Nothing succeeds like excess,” I said, shrugging as I appealed to Izzy. “Oscar Wilde said that. Let’s at least buy some of this gentleman’s Ras el Hanout just for comparison.” She agreed.

We bought oranges and pomegranates at one shop. Then we went to another stand where we got onion, cabbage, zucchini, tomato, carrot, and turnip for a couscous dish Izzy planned to make.

“Buy a liter of Argan oil over there, please,” Izzy said as she directed me to an adjacent stand. She was bargaining with a vendor for some threads of saffron. “I’m going to encourage the Maestro to take Argan every day. He can dip his bread in it. It will boost his immune system.”

“He needs that, and more,” I said.

We stopped at a fish stall and bought a fresh monkfish.

For our final stop, I bought a bouquet of Damask roses for the riad and a small bundle of blue tansies for inspiration as I wrote my manuscript. Our arms were full, and we had a warm walk back to the riad.

That night, Izzy and I went in the kitchen to prepare the meal. Although I had lived in a lot of camps for my professional work, I also knew how to cook fine food. I had been fortunate to learn to cook and prepare ingredients when I was a teenager in Aix-en-Provence.

I spent a year there with a family in a cultural exchange program, and the mother of the family spent every day teaching me to make French classics. Her own teenagers didn’t really talk to her, and her husband only grumbled. So, she took me on as a project to teach an American boy who had only ever boiled meat and potatoes and transform me into a young adult who appreciated the French mother sauces: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato. Before Aix, I didn’t know there were chefs. After Aix, I added Chef Auguste Escoffier to my obsessions. Madame and I cooked every day from his recipes.

“Drink the mineral water,” Izzy said to Majorelle as he hobbled around the kitchen, pulling on cupboard doors and leaving them open.

“I would like a taste of wine,” Majorelle said. He was a bit desperate.

“I’m sorry, but the wine is no more. But we have liters of mineral water. As your people say, it’s good for your liver,” Izzy said to him in French. We had converted to speaking French in the house. Majorelle seemed calmer when we spoke his native language with him. I didn’t think he would be calm in the coming days as no more wine arrived.

I prepped monkfish fillets while Izzy chopped vegetables. I sizzled the monkfish in hot oil to brown it, then Izzy used the pan to pre-cook the onions and garlic. We layered the ingredients in a tagine, covered everything with tomato sauce, and let it simmer. Izzy added saffron threads at the very end, and that scent made Majorelle sit up a little bit. I had a sense he hadn’t eaten a good meal in quite a while.

After dinner, where Majorelle ate just a few bites but was very complementary about the flavors, he invited Izzy to join him in his painting studio. I whisked her along with my hand. I cleaned the kitchen, then sat down to write Izzy her daily letter.

Chez Majorelle, Marrakech, Morocco 31°38′02″N  7°59′59″W

Dear Izzy,

You are in the studio with Monsieur Majorelle, and I am feeling the afterglow of cooking my first meal with you. Forgive me for saying it, but I imagined a lifetime of cooking with you as I did. (I would document every single one. Then, many years from now, we could look back and remember, “Meal #489: gnocchi alla vodka with capers, grilled white asparagus, baked focaccia with garlic butter, bright Chianti.”)

I am looking at the blue tansy in front of me. I am going to dry one of these flowers between the pages of my notebook. Tomorrow, I would like to go back to Jardin Majorelle and spend some hours absorbing the color and looking more closely at the grounds.

I will say I am worried about your anti-Biblical action to turn wine into water. I hope all will be well with your Maestro as the days advance.

I admire your caretaking for Majorelle. He has found the pirate he needs. So have I.

T___

“May I take a sample of the paint from Jardin Majorelle?” I asked the artist as I prepared to visit the location again. Izzy told me the night before in a whisper after we had a silent coupling that she wanted to remain at the riad while I went to the gardens.

“You may do as you choose,” Majorelle said. “I no longer own the property, and it appears there has been some damage.”

I wanted to add a Majorelle Blue paint chip to my journal. As much as I tried to describe the color, mere words couldn’t do it justice. I needed the paint.

“Isabella and I will have some studio time today,” Majorelle said. He sipped mineral water after he dipped a chunk of crusty bread in Argan oil. Izzy stood behind him and looked quite pleased.

We fell into an easy rhythm at Majorelle’s riad. Izzy and I would go to the souks in the morning to shop, then when Majorelle got up, the two of them would go into his studio. I returned to the souks in the later afternoons. For me, it was the best time because low sun angle made the dust motes dance and shimmy as people walked by. I often visited Souk Sebbaghine, the cloth dyers’ souk, and each time I saw a new blue. That souk, which is also called Souk des Teinturiers, is filled with iridescent skeins of fabrics dyed with indigo, saffron, mint and poppy.

Every day when I returned to the riad, Izzy and Majorelle were still in the studio. I entered quietly each time and took photos of them deep in discussion. They had several easels set up, but I couldn’t see what they were working on. And to honor the artists, I wouldn’t look.

“Your fingertips are stained blue,” I said to Izzy one evening as we started to prepare dinner.

“They are blue,” she said playfully. And if you behave yourself, you won’t have any blue on you.”

“Maybe I don’t want to behave,” I teased. “Pirates aren’t well behaved. They do as they please.”

For the first time since we arrived weeks earlier, I saw Majorelle laugh. Izzy had trimmed his hair, beard, and mustache that afternoon while I was gone, and he looked much healthier than when we arrived. In fact, he even helped us peel the fruit that evening.

Chez Majorelle, Marrakech, Morocco 31°38′02″N  7°59′59″W

Dear Izzy,

The blue city of Chefchaouen awaits us. I wired a deposit for a dar, and I secured a chauffeur at Souk Semmarine who agreed to drive us there in three days. The road trip will take an entire day. I have a surprise for you along the way.

How does a pirate adapt so well to the domestics of the riad? I have been transfixed with the transformation I’ve seen with Monsieur Majorelle. He has been generous with us; and you have nurtured him back to a sense of health.

I am curious beyond words about what you are creating in the studio with your Maestro. I hope to see it soon. And I hope you will be able to add the final touches to your work before we must leave for Chefchaouen.

While you and Majorelle painted, I wrote. My manuscript is in good order and the pages been sent to my editor. I am obligated to send more as I see more blues.

This time here with you – and with Majorelle – has been enlightening.

T____

Two days after I wrote that letter to Izzy, she and Majorelle called out to me to join them in the artist’s studio. They were dressed in their painter’s aprons, and both had splatters of blue paint on their hands.

“We wanted you to never forget Majorelle Blue,” the artist said with a clear voice. He was standing in the studio without leaning on anything. “And to make sure that you will, your dear Isabella and I have worked these days on a gift for you.”

“We created three paintings. One by the Maestro. One by me. And one we painted ensemble,” Izzy explained.

Majorelle stepped up briskly and turned each of the three easels so I could see what they had crafted.

“They are renditions of Jardin Majorelle,” said the artist. “Now you will have Majorelle Blue with you always.”

I stood in stunned silence. Then I examined each painting with great focus as Izzy and Majorelle stood to the side.

“I am honored. I had no words to describe the beauty and intensity of Majorelle Blue. Now I have no words to describe how honored I feel. This blue persists in my mind and in my memory.”

I hugged Izzy, then I hugged Majorelle. At first, he seemed surprised, then he kissed me once on each cheek.

“The honor is all mine,” said Majorelle. “This month has been one of the finest months of my life.”

I took a photo of Izzy and him in front of the paintings.

Izzy said she arranged a courier to package the paintings and have them delivered to her family’s palazzo in Padua. That was the final brushstroke.

When our chauffeur came for us on the final day at Majorelle’s riad, the artist himself helped us gather our items. We gave him a list of where we would be next and promised to write him from the places we visited.

He cried when we said our final goodbyes.

“I will see you again,” Izzy said wistfully.

“I fear it has come to this time when I am so old and my body is falling apart,” said Majorelle. “But for this one moment, I remember the artist I once was. And for that, I thank you.”

I looked in my notebook as we were driving out and found a sketch Majorelle had slipped between the pages. It was of Izzy’s face, with a focus on her eyes. At the bottom of the sketch, he wrote a message in the familiar French used between friends: Souviens-toi toujours de la beauté du bleu.

Always remember the beauty of blue.

We didn’t go to Sifnos. Instead, we went to Africa.

As we drank Tunisian coffee from Keller et Guérin demitasse cups, Izzy and I spoke softly in our morning voices about a blue place in Morocco that wasn’t on my list.

“To see the most scintillating blue you will ever see, you must go to Marrakech,” Il Marchese di Dandolo declared at the restaurant the day before. “You will be transfixed. That blue, which is named Majorelle Blue, is awash on the architecture at Le Jardin Majorelle. That special color of blue you won’t see anywhere else. It’s the creation and property of the French painter, Jacques Majorelle. La Marchesa and I are longtime patrons of his work.”

“Però un piccolo avvertimento,” Il Marchese continued.  “Our dear friend, Monsieur Majorelle, has had a series of unfortunate occurrences befall him. The first injury was when he separated from his most darling wife, the Lady Andrée Longueville, and that fracture after so many years together damaged his constitution. He started drinking too much wine, eating poorly, and stopped creating art. Then his let his financial status collapse into ruins. The cost of maintaining the property and gardens became too much for him. Monsieur Majorelle never understood how expensive it was to maintain a villa and exotic gardens in that region of Morocco. He’s an artist, not a businessman. And the Lady Andrée Longueville watched over the details. Our family purchased several of his paintings as a financial gesture, but that assistance wasn’t sufficient to sustain him. He sold the gardens a decade ago or so, I think, and they have fallen into disrepair.”

I made notes while Il Marchese was talking. A few were about the color Majorelle Blue. Many more were salacious questions I had about such a precipitous fall from grace by the scion of Louis Majorelle, perhaps the most famous French decorator and furniture designer in history.

“I am curious about his story. And his art. Does Monsieur Majorelle still reside in Marrakech?” I asked, perhaps more curious about his personal story than I should have been. I was bordering on inelegant. I was certainly impertinent.

“Yes, thanks to a small trust left by his father, he owns a riad in the medina. If you add Jardin Majorelle to your Blue Places travels, I will wire him to announce your arrival. I will tell you he is not in good health. He was in a terrible accident. In his last letter to me, he said he was quite unwell. But he will greet you warmly. Shall I tell him La Principessa Isabella will be joining you?”

Izzy reacted to that question like she had gotten an electrical shock. She exhaled quietly. Her eyelid twitched while she gazed at a far horizon across the sea. Then she raised her hands and flared out her fingers toward Il Marchese. It was her Paduan way of saying yes, and once again a gesture I didn’t completely understand. There are subtleties of language; and there are subtleties of culture.

I paused for a moment and wondered if the lightning bolt was because Il Marchese di Dandolo asked Izzy if she was planning to join me in northern Africa, or if it was because he called her by a specific title – Principessa.

“We have to go,” Izzy said enthusiastically that morning as we talked more about the Blue Places on my list. We had just received a telegram that was slid under our door by a hotel porter saying we were to be welcomed at the home of Monsieur Majorelle. Il Marchese made arrangements for us and prevailed on the artist.

The schedule I created before I departed on sabbatical was a pointless fiction. I lingered for more weeks on Capri than I intended. That lost time on my itinerary compounded into extra days waiting for Izzy at Lago di Braies; and then we spent a week on Santorini when I had planned only two days. I valued Izzy more than I worried about the delays, for certain, but I needed to create a new, achievable plan.

“We can be there tomorrow. We will take the overnight ferry to Athens,” Izzy said.

She hopped out of bed and phoned the concierge before I had a chance to tell her my plan was to go to see the Chapel of Souls in Porto, then go to Juzcar, before crossing the Strait of Gibraltar south to Chefchaouen in Morocco. In my original plan, I curated the visual interest quotient while maximizing my traveling efficiency. Izzy’s new plan changed that.

It sensed that Izzy was trying to distract me from the questions she knew I would ask. She calculated that if I had to arrange logistics to get to Marrakech, I would have less time to formulate just the right question – a question she didn’t want to answer.

I scanned my maps and sketches by candlelight in our cabin on the overnight ship from Santorini to Piraeus. I cross-referenced my maps and notes with my original list of Blue Places. I needed to be efficient to see as many colors of blue as possible. Plus, I had a manuscript to work on. And a deadline to deliver it.

I wrote my daily letter to Izzy on shipping line stationary.

Aegean Sea, West of Serifos, 2:30am, 37.1563°N, 24.4886°E

Dear Principessa Isabella,

You are a mystery. A beautiful, complicated, and frustrating mystery. That wasn’t a slip of the tongue – or an endearment – when Il Marchese di Dandolo referred to you as La Principessa Isabella, was it? As I wrote before, I have questions. Much is unspoken between us.

I formulated a new plan for Blue Places. When we arrive in Athens, I propose that we fly to Tunisia before we go to Marrakech. Sidi Bou Said is on my original list. The town is close to the Carthage airport, so it should allow for easy travel for us. (I like being in Blue Places; I don’t like getting to them.) I’ve drawn you a small map in the margin of where we are and what I suggest for our next destinations.

After we tour Sidi Bou Said, we can travel farther west to Marrakech to visit Jacques Majorelle and drink in the blue he created. It was very generous of him to invite us to stay at his riad. I will send a letter of thanks to Il Marchese and La Marchesa di Dandolo when we arrive. I’ve already sent them a telegram of acknowledgement.

What you do with these letters? Do you read them? I would like to think you do. I know you read my first letter to you because you came directly to Lago di Braies. But we haven’t spoken of any of the others since. Yes, I talk a lot (it’s because I spent so much of my time in field research, not talking to anyone except butterflies and mosquitoes). These letters release the thoughts in my head. I always feel more at ease when I tell you what I’m thinking.

I am going to lie down beside you in a few minutes. Does what Il Marchese said change anything between us? I fear my family lineage is a bit more plebian. My grandfather used to joke we are a family of horse traders and peat bog farmers.

Before I sleep, I will gently brush your hair aside and whisper this in your ear while you sleep: La principessa mia. Princess Isabella. Izzy the Pirate. Izzy. Izzy. Izzy.

Then I will extinguish the candle.

T____

We booked passage an Olympic Airlines flight from Athens to Carthage, Tunisia. Izzy insisted on paying for the flight. I admired her independence, but it confused the arrogant booking agent at the Athens Airport.

“Two tickets to Carthage,” Izzy said as we stepped up to his desk make our flight arrangements.

“You are married, no?” the middle-aged man asked. It was both a question and a judgment.

“We are not married, but we are traveling together,” Izzy said brusquely to the agent as she slapped her hand down on her passport in front of him. “We will sit together. And if you must know, we will do other unspeakable things together in the dark of night. Things you can only dream of.”

The shock effect worked.

The agent arched his thick eyebrows at me, clicked his tongue, then turned to scowl at Izzy. I was certain he had never heard a woman talk in that manner before. And to be honest, neither had I.

The ticket agent looked disdainfully at Izzy as he slowly and deliberately counted the Italian lira she offered as payment for the tickets.

“You will need to exchange this paper for drachmas,” the agent said, pointing down the hall to a currency center. He pushed Izzy’s money back toward her.

“You will exchange them. And you will do it now,” Izzy said firmly. She glowered at the agent. “If you want international clientele in this country, you need to service them as international clientele. What do you think Kýrios Onassis would say about your demand?” She was referring to Aristotle Onassis, the owner of Olympia Airlines and one of the wealthiest men in the world.

The agent stared back at Izzy, then he broke his gaze. He picked up Izzy’s money and harrumphed. But she had prevailed.

Then he examined Izzy’s documents, and as he read them, his eyes widened. The agent suddenly sat up stiffly in his chair and his demeanor changed to full formality. He cleared his throat and straightened his suit jacket.

“Yes, yes. Everything is in order, Despinis. I present to you your ticket,” he said as he bowed to Izzy as he handed her the documents he held in both hands. “I am at your service.”

Izzy wrinkled her nose and looked away.

Our seats on the quad-engine DC-6 were situated in the front of the airplane, but in line with the propellers, which changed pitch and roared as we flew west through ominous clouds over the Ionian Sea, crossed Sicily south of Palermo, then flew southwest over the Mediterranean Sea toward Carthage. In just a little more than three-and-a-half hours from our departure in Athens, we bisected the Tunisian peninsula called Cape Bon before we descended over the Gulf of Tunis. Sidi Bou Said was clear from my window as we were landing. Izzy drew a map of our flight route in my notebook and wrote the dates and times next to each waypoint.

Customs clearance and passport control occurred rapidly for Izzy. I was taken aside and questioned about my travel plans, and was asked several times why I was traveling with an unmarried woman. I told them in French that I was her bodyguard and that it was important to maintain confidentiality. They nodded like they understood. I’m a better liar in French than I am in English.

La Villa Bleue sent a driver to meet us, and as soon as we were presented our documents of transit, he whisked us to our hotel, which looked east over the Gulf of Tunis. As we drove through the narrows streets into Sidi Bou Said, I felt a sense of déjà vu – the town featured the same white and blue paint scheme we had left behind the day before in Oia. I knew from my extensive notes before I arrived that the town buildings were blue and white; I didn’t know it would resemble Oia so obviously, even in the hues of blue. I was fascinated by the history of blues, and how some places like this featured blue so prominently. There were some facts I recalled easily.

Sidi Bou Said was re-named for Abu Said Ibn Khalef Ibn Yahia El-Beji, a 13^th Century Sufi saint. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, he returned home to the small town of Jebel El-Manar – the Fire Mountain. The name referred to the lighthouse beacon on the cliff at the end of the peninsula on the Gulf of Tunis. That lighthouse point, the Jebel El-Manar, was what I saw on our descent into the Carthage Airport.

“The Baron must have been quite an inspiration,” I said to Izzy as we were pulling in front of our hotel. She didn’t ask what I meant.

Our porter set our luggage down and exited backwards from the room, calling me “Sidi” as he bowed and rolled his hand toward me in a circle three times. Izzy teased me for bowing back. Then she said she wanted to take a bath before we explored the town. I mistook that as an overture; she spurned that idea. I pouted at the rejection and petulantly told her I would meet her by the pool when she was ready.

I went downstairs in my traveling clothes, and sat on a sofa and looked at the sea. The islands of Zembra and Zembretta were on the horizon. I sipped thé aux pignons – Tunisian mint tea with pine nuts – the hotel proprietor offered me while I reviewed my notes about Sidi Bou Said. I wanted to refresh my memory of the blues.

Notes on Sidi Bou Said

Sidi: Sir, Master, Saint

Blue and white colors inspired by palace of Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger.

1872: Born in Boulogne. Wealthy merchant banking family

1886: Steamship Marseilles – North Africa. Returned to Paris to study art

1903-1905: Travelled to Tunisia and Egypt to paint

1909: Returned to Tunisia with wife and son to settle in SBS

1912-1922: Built Dar Ennejma Ezzahra (Star of Venus)

1932: Died in SBS

Promoter of Arabic music

As an artist, considered whitewashed villas boring

Added blue to the white city for charm and Mediterranean feel

Promoted accenting architecture with blue paint with blue windows and fences

Lobbied local government to establish town colors as blue and white

2,000 BC: Blue pigments pioneered in Egypt and Afghanistan

Blue’s connection to rain and the sky brought connotations of blessing and peace

Middle Ages: new blue dying methods spread across Mediterranean trade routes

Sea blue symbolizes peace, openness, and unity

Visitors to SBS: Colette. Simone de Beauvoir. André Gide.

Gide: SBS is like “bathing in a fluid, mother-of-pearl sedative, like milk”

Artists: Henri Matisse Michael Foucault. Paul Klee.

Klee: The Tunisian Journey (1914)

August Macke: watercolor, the Café des Nattes

By the time the hotel proprietor offered me a third cup of tea, I remembered a lot more about Sidi Bou Said, but I began to wonder if Izzy wasn’t coming.

“I needed a little time by myself,” Izzy said as she walked up to me and kissed me on the cheek. She was wearing a long-sleeved white dress that cascaded to her ankles. Her hair was covered with a multicolored scarf. She looked stunning. “Now, I’m ready.”

I didn’t have a plan to explore the town other than to stroll the streets and take some photos. We stopped at a small stand in the medina that sold bambalouni, a Tunisian form of a beignet. I took a photograph of Izzy taking a bite. The framing of the vivid turquoise moucharabieh latticework screen behind her, her intoxicating blue eyes flaring as she savored a first bite, and the dusting of powdered sugar on her lips gave me a pause. After I took the photo, I sat cross-legged under an orange tree and made roll notes in my notebook:

Roll 17, Frame 22: Leica M, 35mm, f/1.4 lens; f/16, speed 1/100; Izzy, hair covered with silk scarf; white dress; biting bambalouni in front of moucharabieh, Rue Taieb Mhiri. 4pm, Sidi Bou Said

When I was done with my photo notation, I ate a few butter-filled dates we bought at the same stand as the bambalouni. I licked my fingers and raised my eyebrows when I looked up at Izzy. She gave me a knowing smile when I did.

We wandered through a labyrinth of winding cobblestone streets, crooked flights of steps that lead to hidden gardens, and blue wooden gates opening onto flower-filled courtyards. It was striking to see how the blues of the doors, window frames, and iron grilles changed color and darkened their hues as the sun fell lower in the sky. We walked from edge to edge of the town.

Izzy was more relaxed than I had seen her in days.

“When I was in one of the shops, a Berber told me that we should take a dinner at Café des Delices. He said we will see the most beautiful blues if we we’re seated before sunset. Let’s walk that direction, since we didn’t make a reservation at Restaurant Le Pirate,” Izzy said with a small laugh as she pointed up the street. I took her photo in front of Le Pirate earlier when we were near the ruins of Carthage. In fact, I took more photos of her that day than in all the previous days combined. I was on my third roll of film as we made our way to the restaurant.

Dozens of people were milling about on the street when we arrived at Café des Delices. The restaurant, which also had a confounding sign that read Café Sidi Chaabane, was the most popular restaurant in the city. It was fully booked, and that’s why a crowd assembled outside the entrance, waiting for a last-minute cancellation.

Izzy strode up to the tuxedoed man at the reception desk, removed her sunglasses and head scarf, and asked him a question. He shook his head no. Then Izzy did something I’d seen her do before: it’s called “pulling up” in ballet. It’s a posture of power that made her even taller than she was naturally. She indicated to the man that she wanted him to come close. Then she leaned in and whispered something to him as she put her hand on his shoulder. She broke Tunisian protocol; women never touched men who were not their husbands, and certainly not in public. Izzy was sans souci.

The maître d’ overcame the surprised look on his face, then he beckoned with his hand for us to follow him. He tossed orders to staff with his eyes as he led us in.

We were seated at a premium table overlooking a magnificent array of ultramarine umbrellas on the terrace below us.

“Very elegant table,” I said to Izzy as I took a few photos. “What did you say to the maître d’ that resulted in this?” I asked as I swept my arm in an arc toward the scores of blue umbrellas and the sea view.

“I told him you were visiting the most beautiful blue places in the world. I also might have mentioned that you’re a famous writer, and that you wanted to see the blues of Sidi Bou Said in its glory. I also promised you would feature Café des Delices in your book.”

“Flattery works around the world, doesn’t it,” I said with an admiring laugh. “The famous writer part is a bit of a stretch, unless you consider a big audience the few hundred people who read my academic articles about butterflies.”

I touched her hand. She squeezed my hand back.

“You know I adore you,” she said.

I almost couldn’t breathe.

We ordered mechouia salad and merguez. And we had a large bottle of water to accompany our mint tea. The chef came to our table to tell us about his creations. Other diners watched the theater that was being put on on for us.

The chef explained that our mechouia salad was made with grilled vegetables seasoned with ground coriander and caraway seeds and garnished with tuna fish, capers, and cilantro. To prepare the vegetables, he grilled onions, tomatoes, peppers, and garlic until their outer layers became charred and totally black. Then he peeled the vegetables, finely chopped them, and mashed them together before he seasoned and drizzled them with olive oil and lemon juice. Then the chef proudly told us about his specialty, the merguez, which was a grilled mutton sausage flavored with cumin, harissa, chili pepper, sumac, fennel, and garlic.

We ate our fill. The chef sent a fruit bowl to our table when our meal was done.

“I’m getting the royal treatment here,” I said to Izzy with a wink. She understood the import of my comment and that a question was coming someday.

“You won’t receive the royal treatment when your breath smells like that,” Izzy said as she leaned in and fanned her hand in front of her nose. She dipped her fingers into a bowl filled with lemon water, dried them on a fresh napkin, then slid her hand all the way up my leg under the tablecloth. She squeezed me. Hard. “Go ahead. Say it again,” she challenged as she stared in my eyes.

That night in our hotel Izzy unleashed a passion that was insatiable. We barely slept. We finished round after round, and she wiggled and said it was time for more. In the early dawn, just a moment before she fell asleep, she mumbled in Italian, “Ti amo, mio pirata.”

I said, “I love you, my princess.” She was already asleep.

Sidi Bou Said, Carthage, Tunisia 36°52′0″N, 10°20′0″E

Dear Izzy,

Do you recall what you said as you fell asleep this morning? I do, and I’ve said it again and again. Ti amo, mio pirate. I love you, my pirate. Do you know what I said to you while you were asleep?

There was something magical – poetic – about visiting Sidi Bou Said immediately after Oia. That wasn’t in my plans. Then again, what’s a plan? I didn’t plan to meet you. I didn’t plan to stay in Capri for those weeks. And I certainly didn’t plan to write you this letter when you sapped my strength. I’m no Samson, and you’re no Delilah. Our story isn’t that tragic. Or fraught. Instead, after this night of unquenchable passion, I think of Helen of Troy.

I thought, when I first saw you, that you must be the most desired woman in the world. And like Helen of Troy, I suspect you haven’t had complete control over who was selected to be your suitor.

Am I Paris in your story? And is that why you said, “Let’s be pirates” when we were on the boat at Grotta Azzurra? Do I have my perspective wrong? Was it really you who chose me instead of me instead of me falling under a spell for you? I will need to read The Iliad again. I should have bought it at the bookstore where we met at in Oia.

As I contemplate this moment of complete delight in the breaking of the dawn, I’m reminded of the Sara Teasdale poem Helen of Troy. This is part of it:

In all the islands set in all the seas,

And all the lands that lie beneath the sun,

Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,

Men’s lives shall waste with longing after me,

For I shall be the sum of their desire,

The whole of beauty, never seen again.

And they shall stretch their arms and starting, wake

With “Helen!” on their lips, and in their eyes

The vision of me. Always I shall be

Limned on the darkness like a shaft of light

That glimmers and is gone. They shall behold

Each one his dream that fashions me anew; --

With hair like lakes that glint beneath the stars

Dark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglow

Like burnished gold that still retains the fire.

Yes, you are an amalgam Venus de Milo and Helen of Troy. You are both. We will walk the streets of Chefchaouen soon, and I will explain every detail of why I say that. And I will recite the entire Helen of Troy poem for you. I didn’t have a chance to mention this to you yet, but one of my collection obsessions when I was young was to memorize hundreds of poems in their entirety and be able to recite them in gatherings. In the last decade, I have mostly recited them to the wind while I waited for butterflies.

Izzy, we go to Marrakech in just a few hours. You have shattered me. I have never felt this exhausted, and this exhilarated, in my life.

T____

P.S. I said “I love you” while you were sleeping, mi amor.

We left for Marrakech the next day.

“I would let you do that forever,” Izzy said as she leaned her head back and made subtle sounds and movements that encouraged me to do more of what I was doing.

She was submerged in a deep marble bathtub. I was washing her hair with a shampoo scented with lemon and bergamot we bought at an aromatopoiía during our languid stroll the previous evening on the marble streets of Oia.

“Every day,” I said as I massaged her scalp with flexed fingers. “I’ll do this every day. I promise. Ti prometto che lo faro.” She tittered when I spoke to her in snippets of Italian or Spanish. I leaned close and inhaled the fragrance of her hair. I meant every word.

I decanted cool water from an earthenware bowl as Isabelle rotated her neck side-to-side to allow it to cascade over her head. I noticed every curve of her body as she swayed in the steaming bath water. She hooked her legs over the smooth sides of the tub.

After I finished rinsing, I dipped two fingers into a ramekin of olive oil, rubbed my hands together to warm it, and pulled the oil through her luxurious hair.

“You know I’m going to request this treatment again tomorrow,” Izzy said as I worked the olive oil into the ends of her hair. She made little cooing noises while I did.  “For now, join me. The water is still warm.”

It demanded every bit of my self-control not to splash into the bathtub. Instead, I undressed unhurriedly, folded my clothes neatly, and then slid in quietly. My self-control didn’t last long.

“I don’t want to leave,” I said to Izzy later that morning. After our time in the bath, she wrapped a white sheet around her hips like a Greek goddess, twisted a towel around her hair, and laid down across the bed with the grace of a ballerina. I sat at a desk across the room. Golden sun was shining on the façade of our villa, and the Meltemi winds of the southern Cyclades made the thin white curtains in our bedroom undulate and dance. I made an ink sketch of that moment in my notebook and titled it Isabelle de Milo.

“We can’t stay forever. You have more blue places to see,” she said.

“This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. What else is there?”

The truth was I was speaking in a form of code. A cypher. What I meant was I wanted to stay with her. I didn’t care where. I didn’t necessarily want to leave Santorini, although there were so many tourists it was difficult for me to get high quality photographs for my book.

“I know a place we can stay on Sifnos,” I said as I got up and brushed the linen curtains aside. The low sun glinted off the emerald-blue waters of Ammoudi Bay that was 300 steps below us. “You can work on your art, and I can write. It will be beautiful. And quiet. And if we get tired of that existence, we can still be pirates.”

“Sifnos is known in Greece for its ceramics,” Isabelle said as she spread out on the bed. “But today, right this moment, we are in Oia. Let’s savor it while we can. I want to swim after lunch. I am going to dress for the beach.” I watched her as she did. I desired every part of her – and all of her.

The blue domes of Agios Spyridonas and Anasteseos, the Church of Saint Spyridon and the Church of the Resurrection, were directly in front of us when we exited our sugar cube-shaped cliffside villa. The church domes, and the color of the Aegean Sea, were the blues I wanted to add to my checklist of Blue Places. Now I had.

I stopped to take a couple more photos while it was quiet. I took one of Isabelle looking back at me over her shoulder. The blue in her eyes shined like the blue of the sea.

Before I departed on my sabbatical, I read about the white buildings with blue highlights that the Greek islands were known for. I recorded many notes about this particular place, including map coordinates. Each Blue Place in my notebook was annotated with historical facts and small maps, along with descriptions of the blue color of that location and feelings the storyteller had when they saw it. I added much more detail with each new place I visited and dedicated multi-page spreads in my new notebook to each. I also documented details about my film rolls to match the location and the photographs.

I knew about the blues on Oia, but I learned much more that afternoon. That education started as we were seated for lunch at a taverna with a view of the caldera and the sea that filled the bay with the most magnificent shade of blue I had ever seen. Our waiter delivered a bottle of water to our table and recommended two Santorini specialties – tomato keftedes and fava.

“The tomatoes on Oia are grown on volcanic soil, and they have much more flavor and aroma than a typical tomato,” he said with the great pride of being a lifelong resident of Oia – one of the Apanomerities, as the locals were called because the town was named Apano Meria in the past.

My mouth was watering when our waiter brought the fried tomato fritters along with the fava that was served with a topping of lemons, olive oil, and capers. We had just picked up a piece of bread to dip in the fava when we heard a small commotion behind us.

“Isabella!” exclaimed an elegant older woman as she walked quickly into the restaurant. The woman extended her arms as she approached our table. “Mio Dio, io. Che cosa. Sono così sorpreso di vederti qui. E sono così felice. Mi presenterai al tuo gentiluomo?”

Izzy stood up and looked a little wobbly, like she was standing on sea legs. Then she smiled and greeted the woman in formal Italian. She did the same for the older gentleman. She hugged both warmly after she greeted them, and the woman kissed her on her cheeks. They held a long embrace. The man squeezed one of her hands.

Izzy turned toward me and said as an introduction in English: “This is Thomas. He is a writer from America. He is on a sabbatical from his research at his university and is on a voyage to see the most beautiful blue places in the world.” I stood up when the couple came over, but Izzy stood apart from me. She continued in Italian: “L’ho incontrato ieri sera quando eravamo entrambi alla libreria rupestre in via Nikos Nomikos. Volevo sapere di più sui suoi viaggi, quindi oggi pranzeremo.”

I could discern just enough Italian to know what Isabelle said. She told the couple she had just met me, and we were meeting for lunch to talk about my travels. I was reeling when she invited them to join us at our table. First, she denied knowing me, then she thrust us into an uncomfortable moment. I shrugged. There was nothing more I could do. I had to acquiesce to the conceit of the story.

“I am honored to introduce you to Il Marchese e La Marchesa di Dandolo,” Izzy said to me with a formal enunciation. “The Marquis and Marquise are the heads a very important house in la Regione Venezia. La mia famiglia è connazionale della propria famiglia da generazioni. My family have been compatriots and friends of the family di Dandolo for generations.” When she made the introduction, she bowed slightly. I mirrored her movement.

“And now you are in Grecia,” Il Marchese said in English, leaving open the chance for me to explain more. Il Marchese held the chairs, first for La Marchesa, then for Isabelle. He gestured for me to sit, then he sat.

“I have just started my travels around the world to see the most beautiful Blue Places. It’s a quest that started in my childhood.” I took my journal out of my satchel to show him my list.

“I started at the Blue Grotto – Grotta Azzurra – in Capri. Although the journey has just commenced, I’ve already been awed. I saw the turquoise waters of Lago de Braies; I went to the Blue Lake and the Blue Cave in the Croatia Region of Yugoslavia; and I visited the blue dome of Saint Sava in Belgrade. Now I’m here in Santorini. I have many more places to visit. I have a long list and the world is immense. My goal is to see all the Blue Places in one year. At the conclusion, I will write a book about my adventures.”

I told them about how I became obsessed with blue, and how my academic research led me to this moment and this place.

“Tell us – what is your favorite blue?” La Marchesa asked. I looked closely at her. I hesitated for a second. I wanted to provide her a proper answer. There wasn’t an easy answer.

“I will say I am captivated wherever I go. The more blues I see, the more I add to my manuscript. Each time I see a new blue I think, that’s the one. I hope my photographs will permit me to remember them for a lifetime. I could create a collage from what I’ve collected so far. A spectrum of blues.”

“Interesting,” said La Marchesa. “And a good, diplomatic answer. I’m sure you’ll feel overwhelmed when you first see the stained-glass windows in Chartres Cathedral. And you will be captivated by the depths of blues in the Marble Caves of Patagonia. For me, the blues of the Aegean Sea are enough for a lifetime. But tell me – have you looked deeply into the blue eyes of Isabella? Even for a single moment? Are her eyes on your Blue Places list?”

Izzy pushed her foot against my leg as a caution. I took a sip of water. I had a thousand answers – and not a single one came to me.

“I wouldn’t want to appear that forward or presumptuous,” I demurred as I swatted at the air. “But I will admit it to you it was difficult to look away from her eyes. I am searching for the most beautiful blues, Signora, and was surprised when I saw Izzy’s eyes across the bookstore. I fear I may have found my favorite blue already.”

Izzy sat back in her chair and feigned surprise.

La Marchesa looked intently at me with a subtle smile at the corner of her eyes that appeared when she heard me say Izzy. Then she nodded subtly to her husband and turned to look at Isabelle face-to-face. She took a quiet breath and said, “In the words of Plato: At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. Isabella, I think you may very well have met a poet.”

La Marchesa reached over and covered Izzy’s hands with hers.

“Non e’ romantico incontrare il tuo amore in una libreria?” Isabelle asked.  “Wouldn’t it be romantic to meet your love in a bookstore?” Isabelle fidgeted and her voice cracked when she said it.

“Si, love is everywhere,” Il Marchesa said as she brushed the back of her hand across Il Marchese’s cheek. “I met my love when I was walking along the walls of Cittadella. Just by chance, on that very day he was walking from the northern Bassano Door, and I had entered at the southern Padova Gate. We met on the rampart. It felt magical as we looked down on the city after we first met. I remember feeling dizzy. It wasn’t because of the heights.”

“He requested my betrothal under the clock tower some months later. He presented me a letter in his elegant handwriting that day that said, I felt an arrow of love strike my heart on the battlement walls of Cittadella. I can think of nothing but you. Be with me forever, my love.”

Both Il Marchese and La Marchesa wiped tears from their eyes. I did, too. I couldn’t look at Isabelle at that moment.

“He is my poet,” La Marchesa said. She trembled a little as she held Isabelle’s hand. I could see tears in Isabelle’s eyes, too.

There are rare moments in a life when everything comes into specific focus. When every detail is clear. When the past and the future converge. Together, we arrived at one of those moments – a magical crossroad of sorts. All of us felt it deeply. We basked in the silent knowledge that we were experiencing a moment of grace.

No one dared utter a word for several minutes. We watched boats gliding around in Ammoudi Bay. Il Marchese nodded to the waiter for another round of drinks. Isabelle spoke first.

“I may need to maintain this as a matter of confidence for some time. I’m not certain my grandparents would approve of finding romance such a distance from Padua.”

For the first time since I met Isabelle, she seemed fragile. Vulnerable. She seemed smaller. It was as if she released a pressure inside her.

“We are not so far from Padua,” La Marchesa said as she lovingly touched Isabelle’s cheek and then pulled a strand of Isabelle’s hair through her fingers. “I have known you since you were a little girl. You used to sit on my lap for hours. We have talked of many things. Your secret is safe with us. Onoreremo il nostro silenzio. We will honor the silence, my love.”

“It is so,” Il Marchese said, then he stood up and kissed Isabelle on the cheek.

I sat quietly. I was afraid to move and break the spell. There was more said without words than with the acknowledgement that Isabelle’s secret was safe with the Marquis and Marquise of Dandolo. I observed a cultural dance, and saw the rhythm, but didn’t understand the significance of each step. Isabelle interpreted the meaning for me some days later.

Meanwhile, we spent more of the afternoon talking about Isabelle’s art (Il Marchese was a collector of her ceramics); where they had seen the most beautiful blues; and where I was traveling to next. Il Marchese was an historian and told me even more than I knew about the essential story of why the buildings in Oia, and throughout the Greek islands, were painted white with blue trim. In my tradition of writing daily to Isabelle, I wrote a her late that night with the details to memorialize the day.

Oia, Santorini, Cyclades 36°28′N 25°22′E

Dear Isabelle/Izzy/Isa/Isabella,

Imagine my shock (dismay, grief, and sadness) when you denied knowing me to the Il Marchese e La Marchesa di Dandolo. I understand a little more now – they are lifelong friends of your grandparents and were surprised to see you in Oia with a man who isn’t a Paduan. But meeting me in a bookstore? I’m laughing about that little fact as I write it. I love bookstores, but I love even more how adroit you were in creating that fiction of our meeting.

Yes, I have some questions. Many questions. But we have time.

Il Marchese is a prodigious intellectual. And La Marchesa is stunningly insightful (she knew immediately we didn’t meet in a bookstore). While I watched you talk to La Marchesa, I was fortunate to get an oral history from Il Marchese as he explained Greek history in detail, including why the domes and doors of Oia are the color of blue that they are. Here are the essential elements:

In response to a 1938 cholera epidemic, the Greek government ordered homeowners to whitewash their homes with limestone paint to slow the spread of the disease. (Cholera propagates in contaminated water.) Lime is a disinfectant, so whitewashing buildings sanitized the city. Even now, people collect rainwater on the flat roofs of their houses, and that water is fresh and safe to drink because the lime purifies it. Of course, the white color also keeps the buildings cooler in the summer by reflecting sunlight (although creating cave houses in the sides of the hill also helped).

Why blue paint? In the olden times, Greek housewives used a cheap cleaning agent called loulaki. That powder was a deep indigo blue. People mixed blue loukaki powder with limestone paint as an accent color for doors. As you can imagine, Greek islanders ended up with all kinds of blue shades that complemented the white walls. It’s actual blue paint that’s on the church domes, but around the city you see variations on the shades of blue depending on how they mixed the ratio of loukaki powder and white paint.

One other historical fact – the hulls of fishing boats here are traditionally painted blue. We looked at that when we went to Ammoudi Beach. I used a full roll of film here between photos of the churches and the boats. I need to process some of those photos soon.

Now comes the difficult part of this letter: What do I call you? You introduced yourself as Isabelle when we first met. I called you Izzy when you said you were a pirate. (La Marchesa smiled when I used that name.) People in Padua call you Isa. And the Marquis and Marquise called you Isabella. You have lots of names. What do you call yourself?

When you jumped off the rocks today, I thought you were a mermaid. Or a pirate. I was afraid. And thrilled. I call you Izzy when you do things like that. Izzy the Mermaid. Izzy the Pirate. Izzy. Izzy. Izzy. Those are the words I say every night just before I sleep.

T____

After the tension and excitement with Il Marchese e La Marchesa di Dandolo, Izzy was filled with pent-up energy she needed to release.

“Let’s go for a hike,” she said after Il Marchese and La Marchesa took their leave from the restaurant. “I want to see the beach.”

Of course, Izzy wasn’t satisfied with the easily accessible beach just below the restaurant we had just left.

“La Marchesa told me the route to a secret beach,” she said as she twirled on the boardwalk. Her dress flared out in the wind, and her hair swung over her shoulders. I knew La Marchesa told her many things.

I spent the time at lunch in a scintillating conversation with Il Marchese di Dandolo. I learned so much, not only about the blues and whites of Oia, but about other blue places he had been. I wrote rapidly in my notebook as he listed more beautiful places they had seen on their travels around the world. However, while I was talking with him, I paid partial attention to Isabelle and La Marchesa. I heard snippets from time to time, and even though the two women were speaking Italian, they did so with such clear enunciation that I was able to understand some of it. It was obvious that La Marchesa and Isabelle shared a very special bond.

“Are we really going to risk walking along that narrow ledge to go to a beach?” I asked, the quaver in my voice announcing my trepidation. I suffered devastating acrophobia, but I was determined to follow Izzy anywhere.

“Yes, let’s go. It should only take 10 or 15 minutes to get there.”

After playing a game of vertiginous balance along a knife edge above the craggy boulders lining the sea edge, Izzy led us on a scramble through scree and then over scrub brush on the steep side of a hill. Finally, we arrived at a narrow dirt path that flattened out and led to a small beach.

Izzy set down her bag, grinned, pulled off her dress, and dove into the water without saying a word to me. I sat down in the dirt and watched her powerful strokes as she swam to a small rock outcropping across the bay. I could see the glint from her swimsuit. I took out my camera and twisted in my long-range lens.

Then I saw Izzy in her bright white swimsuit climbing up the jagged grey-black rocks of the island outcropping. I watched through my camera viewfinder as she scaled higher and higher. I took a couple photos while I fought off my internal dialog saying be careful and don’t fall. Izzy arrived at a flat spot on the side of an outcropping.

Then she dove in the sea.

I took several high-speed photos as she did. She sliced into the water, and then – silence. I watched through my camera to see when she bobbed up. But she didn’t. Right when I was about to jump in the basin in a panic, I saw Izzy’s head pop up halfway between the rock and where I was on the beach. She swam the rest of the way on the surface.

“That’s what a pirate does,” Izzy said, breathing heavily as she walked unsteadily over the small rocks on the beach. “I want to do that again, but I’m not sure I will.”

“You scared me to death,” I said as I took in the sight of her. She swam underwater for at least a minute after she dove from a height that would frighten any daredevil. “I almost had to jump in. And the truth is, I’m not sure I’m a good enough swimmer to save you.”

“I don’t need to be rescued,” Izzy said. She didn’t mean from the water.

That night, I read Isabelle a few lines of the poem Santorini – The Naked Child by the Greek poet Giorgos Seferis.

Bend if you can to the dark sea forgetting
the flute's sound on naked feet
that trod your sleep in the other, the sunken life.

Write if you can on your last shell
the day the place the name
and fling it into the sea so that it sinks.

We found ourselves naked on the pumice stone
watching the rising islands
watching the red islands sink
into their sleep, into our sleep.

Isabelle fell gently to sleep. I stayed awake until dawn.

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“The sky is a special shade of blue today,” Isabelle said. She was lying on her back in a wildflower meadow. She shielded her eyes with one hand as she looked up. “Celeste is a dominant theme in my art. The color is difficult to reproduce perfectly in ceramics, but I developed a technique. It took me almost three years. I get asked by other ceramicists, but I won’t tell anyone how I did it. It’s a secret.”

Izzy and I played a word game as we rolled along the winding roads out of the Dolomites. When Isabelle plotted our trip to Plitvice Lakes she said the drive would take most of the daylight hours. She traced our route on a map with a red pencil. We were embarking on an open-air, top-down drive from one blue lake to another. We had a lot of time to talk about my favorite color.

“Tell me the colors of blue you know,” Isabelle said as she leaned over the suede seat of the Cisitalia to open a wicker picnic basket in the back seat. I should have been watching the winding road ahead as I was driving. Instead, I looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror as she reached over the seat. I couldn’t help myself. My mind was elsewhere. “Tell me how many you know.”

“In English? Or other languages?”

“English, let’s start there,” she said as she sat back down in the front seat, fluffed her skirt, opened a square of wax paper, and handed me a hard-boiled egg. Then she ripped a piece of crusty bread from a loaf and dangled that in her hand while I thought about her question.

“I’ll tell you in English, but you already know that there’s not just one word for blue in Spanish and Italian. There’s celeste. That’s what we call light blue or sky blue in English.”

“Claro, y azul,” she added.

“Dark blue. Yes. I used to be able to recite so many colors – and that doesn’t include the hues. I studied the names for hours at a time. Some kids knew the names of baseball players. I knew the names of butterflies. And shades of blue.”

“Yes, we studied color theory in art school. I still probably don’t know as many blues as you do.”

“What about shades of green? The Japanese use a single word – aoi –for what you and I call blue and green. It’s both. And turquoise is a bluish green. But it’s blue, isn’t it?”

“Inglese,” Isabelle said impatiently. “Tell me the blues you learned as a child. Or as a scientist. You study blue butterflies.”

“Okay. Since you’re an artist, I’ll start with pigments: Egyptian blue. Ultramarine. Lapis lazuli. Cobalt blue. Prussian blue. Indigo. Cerulean.” I sensed talking about paints would lead to me learn something new.

“Van Gogh used three blues in Starry Night: Prussian blue, cobalt blue, and ultramarine. That’s the most famous blue painting in the world. I’m sure you know it.” I nodded. I had seen it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

“Also, there are many famous blue paintings done by Americans. Maybe that’s why you like blue. There’s Mary Cassatt’s Elise in a Blue Chair; Georgia O’Keefe painted Abstraction Blue; and have you seen the modernist Mark Rothko’s Number 61, which he also called Rust and Blue?”

“I’ve been traipsing through fields with a butterfly net,” I said pathetically with a small laugh. “I haven’t exactly spent my time in art galleries and museums. Should I add those to my list? This quest could take years.” Just when I thought I had a complete list of Blue Places, Isabelle presented an entire idea I didn’t consider. “We did have a print of The Blue Boy at my house when I was a child. I’m not sure why. My father liked to do paint-by-numbers on velvet.”

“Thomas Gainsborough. Hmmm…is that why you’re named Thomas?”

“I don’t think so. My parents weren’t that intellectual. Or thoughtful.”

I drove a while thinking about what Isabelle said. And wondering why we had a print of The Blue Boy in a house that was nearly falling apart.

“Let’s keep playing. Tell me more blues you like. Or should I say, adore? You adore blue. You’re The Blue Boy,” she said as she poked my ribs.

“There are blues in nature: Glacier blue –the Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia is on my list. Teal – like the duck. Sapphire. Cornflower. Periwinkle. Robin’s egg. I think robin’s egg blue is one of my favorites – it has been since I was a child and first saw a nest filled with them. We’re seeing lakes, but they don’t have blues named for them. The Aegean Sea does. And, of course, outside of nature, there’s an ink – Azzurra Savoia. You know that blue.”

“I do know Azzurra Savoia,” she said. “I received your letter when I was in my studio. My hands were dirty when I first read it. Then I put it in the pocket of my pottery apron. Later that day I rediscovered it and read it several times. A first letter. A person only ever gets one in a lifetime. Your last line asked me if I will read it in 50 years. I’ll be an old lady in 50 years. But yes, as long as someone will hand me my reading glasses, I will.”

That wasn’t actually the last line. I wrote this as the last line: These past days with you have been the best in my life. Isabelle didn’t comment on that.

We had driven for a few hours and talked about lists of blues in English, Spanish, Italian, and French. It was exhausting driving on the edges of hills with steep drop-offs, so we decided to stop early for lunch along the Tagliamento River when we saw it glint ahead of us. I parked the car on a flat spot of gravel just off the road and opened the hood to let the engine cool. That’s where Isabelle talked about the color of the sky.

In addition to a picnic basket, the hotel staff also sent a plaid blanket for us to set down when we ate. They paid attention to many details, including the addition of royal blue napkins for us, along with a bottle of lemon water to rinse our hands.

Izzy ate half a caprese sandwich and purred happily while she did. I had a tuna and egg salad sandwich. I licked my fingers when I was done. We drank water that was in glass bottle with a swing-top stopper. Izzy rolled her eyes when I drank directly from the bottle instead of pouring the water into a glass. I took a few of photographs of her when she wasn’t looking.

No cars had been by since we parked, so I suggested with a wink to Izzy that we could spend some more time on the blanket. She agreed.

After lunch, we got back on the road. Isabelle wanted to show me Trieste. That city was the midway point on our drive to Plitvice Lakes. As we rolled along the Gulf of Trieste, Isabelle told me about how her father often took her sailing there from Venice, and how much she liked spending time there.

“You will see some new shades of blue in this region. You can add them to your journal,” she said as she revved the engine as we entered the apex of a curve. “The Adriatic Sea has sparkling blue waters. Mira. Guarda quell'acqua.” Her mixture of Spanish and Italian was sometimes comical. I had to pay attention. Maybe it was by design.

I tried to sketch and take notes in my journal, but it was difficult. Izzy drove like she learned from Giuseppe Farina. Besides her race car driver tendencies, there was a lot running through my mind about Isabelle. Questions I would ask later.

We arrived at Hotel Plitvice in the gloaming. As we pulled the car into the entrance, the headlights bounced off the stark angles of the modern building that had been built in the late 1950s. Our room overlooked the lake, but by the time we got to it we couldn’t see any of the blues that Plitvice was known for. I could see the outline of the Milky Way. It was that black. We’d have to look in the morning.

The trip from Lago di Braies took much longer than we intended, between the switchback roads in the mountains, the extra time for our picnic, the traffic in Trieste, and then the border crossing into Yugoslavia that was a challenge with my U.S. passport filled with visas and travel stamps from Mexico through Central and South America. It wasn’t easy to explain why I was visiting blue places around the world – and why in Yugoslavia. The border guards were particularly focused on why I had so much camera equipment and film.

“Is this woman your wife?” one of the guards asked me – first in Croatian, then in fractured English when I didn’t understand – as we stood next to Isabelle’s car. I looked at Isabelle and smiled a tepid smile.

“We are friends, traveling to see Blue Places,” I said. “We are going to see the world. I’m writing a book. And taking photographs of the places we visit.” I made a lot of gestures and grinned. Then I made a sign in the air like I was handwriting and clicking my camera. It was a form of border crossing charades.

The guards growled at me, then to each other loudly and animatedly. Then they pulled Isabelle aside to interrogate her. One was holding her elbow. She answered calmly at first. Then I saw her agitation grow. Finally, she shook her arm free, took a step toward them, and said something brusque in Italian that changed the entire situation. With a big flourish of transit papers and stamping of documents, the border guards released us to drive toward Plitvice Lakes. Izzy spun the wheels of the Cisitalia and sprayed gravel everywhere as we sped away from the crossing.

“They wanted to know what kind of unmarried woman would be traveling with a man who wasn’t her husband,” Isabelle said, nearly spitting out the words. “They said I am a woman of low morals. Una puttana.” She was seething. “I reminded them they are working on the border of Italy. And asked them if I needed to call the Consulate.”

“Well, you did just meet me in Capri, and now we’re on a blue voyage.”

Izzy skidded the car to a halt just a short distance from the border hut. “Get out,” she screamed. “Get out of my car. You can walk to Plitvice.”

Lightning? Or just thunder?

I sat there for a second. Hesitated. Then I got out of the car.

A border agent pulled up in a military vehicle and squealed to a stop.

“Problem?” he asked.

“You called her a whore, una puttana,” I said through my clenched teeth. “You’re the problem, you fucking asshole.”

Isabelle called for me to get back in the car. It was too late. The border agent was furious. He didn’t know what I said, but he could feel it. He ordered me to wait by Isabelle’s car as he flagged another military vehicle.

Two hours and a bribe later, and we were released to go.

“No sunrise was ever wasted,” I said to Isabelle as I walked to the picture window to see if there was enough light to see the lake. I loved sunrises. Isabelle wasn’t as enthusiastic.

“Just a few more minutes,” she said with a low, morning voice.

“I’m hoping we can see the sunrise so I can take some photos. I want to watch the blues transition this morning.”

Isabelle rolled out of bed in her nightgown. Her hair was wild and messy. That was my fault. “Okay, let’s go,” she said as she twirled her hair up and slid a wooden pin through it to hold it.

She got dressed quickly, then grabbed a small valise that was filled with paints and supplies. I slung two cameras over my shoulder and picked up her portable easel. She would paint en plein air. I would take photos of her painting en plein air. And I would take some photos of the waters of Plitvice Lakes. Maybe write some descriptive paragraphs later to send to my editor.

We walked on a crunchy path for a few minutes from the hotel to the lake. It was still the early dawn, la madrugada as they say in Spanish, and the colors were muted, with murmurs of midnight blue and twinkles of turquoise in the last vestiges of moonglow. We walked along the wooden boardwalk that bisected the lower lake. Isabelle stopped.

“Here. This is where we should watch your sunrise,” she said as she opened the legs on her easel and took a palette from her valise. Then she squirted dabs of paints on the palette. And waited.

The morning was cool, and there was a mist rising from the water. I asked Izzy to look directly at me while I took her picture.

“No matter how many blues an artist has, and no matter how many blues she mixes, it will never capture the blues on the hills and in the waters that we can see with our eyes.”

“There’s magic in these moments,” I said. When I’m in the field, and the first birds are waking and singing their first few notes, those are magical moments. I love the quiet. And then, as the sun begins to rise, and the warmth comes to the day, the butterflies alight and open their wings to absorb the sun’s energy. And when the blue butterflies appear, I often say a little benediction for that special moment.”

Isabelle set down her paints and kissed me.

“You are a poet.”

“That’s one of the finest compliments I’ve ever received,” I said. Years of academics and research, and all I ever wanted to be was a poet.

We spent a couple hours watching the blues change from the boardwalk. After Isabelle painted a small canvas, we walked to Veliki Slap, which is the big waterfall on the lower lakes. Isabelle asked me to stand in front of the waterfall, and she quickly sketched me.

Groups of tourists were arriving by the time the sun was fully up, so as tempted as Izzy was to splash in the waterfall, we decided to return to the hotel, eat some breakfast, and continue to the Blue Cave. I wrote her a note in Azzurra Savoia ink on Hotel Plitvice letterhead while she went back to the room for a bath.

Plitvice Lakes, Croatian Republic, SFR Yugoslavia

Dear Izzy,

We added more colors of blue to my world. When I was a child, I never imagined I’d see places like this. Or the colors. Or that I would meet someone like you. If you were a color, you would be my favorite shade of blue.

T____

It was just a few hours of driving to arrive in Split, Croatia. When we got there, we went to the port, and Isabelle arranged to have her car shipped across the Adriatic Sea to Venice. From there, someone from her family would drive it to Padua. She kept only a single suitcase and packed the rest of her possessions in the trunk of the car. I traveled light, so her choice to send items home didn’t surprise me.

We booked passage on a speedboat that departed from Split. We cruised down the Dalmatian Coast, then made our way past Hvar and Vis islands before we arrived at Biševo. Unlike our boat ride to Capri where Isabelle said we were pirates, this ride was smooth and everyone enjoyed themselves.

The Blue Cave in Biševo was much like the Blue Grotto on Capri. We took a small boat into the cave, only I didn’t have to squeeze in with Isabelle; we each had our own seat.

“Should I dive in?” Izzy asked me as we were paddled along by a boatman.

“They said there is no swimming allowed in here,” I whispered.

“Rules. Always rules,” she said as she frowned. But she stayed in the boat.

We went back to Spilt in the late day and bought train tickets to Belgrade. We were going to see the Church of Saint Sava. I had taken many notes in my journal on the trip to the Blue Cave. And I took several photos. I wanted to record my observations while they were fresh. I also wanted to continue my daily letter writing to Isabelle. I asked for some stationary, and a grim and quite dismissive train porter brought me what appeared to be rice paper folded into a version of an airmail envelope.

I wrote on the thin paper at the table while I sat in the lounge car. I ate sataraš, which were sliced and stewed summer vegetables, and mlinci, a roasted flatbread. I said no thank you when the waiter offered me grah, a greasy looking pork hock bean stew with pickled turnips. I wanted a snack. And to finish my letter to Isabelle.

Steam Train – Zagreb to Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia

Dear Izzy,

Where are we going? Maybe I can begin to answer that question by saying where we’ve been. I’m writing this on the overnight train to Belgrade. It’s a Soviet train that puffs black smoke like in the old movies, and it seems that we’re stopping at every town along the tracks from Zagreb to Belgrade. At least we had the foresight and good fortune to book a sleeper car for this part – it was a long time on a wooden seat on our way from Spilt to Zagreb (they told us it would be approximately seven hours, but it was almost 10 hours). I didn’t realize, though, that we would be sharing our sleeping space with two Yugoslavians. Thankfully, this is just one night.

It was a good decision to send your car home. I enjoyed riding in and driving that beautiful automobile, but it took a lot of time and concentration. I would rather concentrate on you. And my Blue Places. You are sleeping now. It was a long day. We drove to Split. You organized your car shipping (I have never seen anyone do that before, but you, as with seemingly everything, managed to make that happen) and then we went to the Blue Cave.

What colors did you see? I said cerulean as soon as we entered. I also thought it was aquamarine. That’s a blue I forgot to say when we were playing our color game. (I said ultramarine but forgot aquamarine.) Is there such a color as transparent blue? If there is, that’s what I’d say of it. The colors inside reminded me of the Blue Grotto. Perhaps it’s because it’s lit from above rather than below like the Grotto, so the water seemed even clearer. Transparent. Like when you first rinse your watercolors from your paintbrush in a glass jar and just a hint of blue is there. But transparent.

You wanted to swim, just like you did at Grotta Azzurra. But when we took the tour before the boat ride into the cave, they talked about the eroding limestone and how fragile the cave was. (Even though we learned that they blasted the entrance to the cave with dynamite in the 1880s.) I’m glad you stayed dry this time. And away from dynamite.

I’m having a small snack of Croatian foods. When I’m done eating, I am going to finish this letter, and then I will come to lie down with you in our sleeping quarters. I hope the Slavs don’t snore. And I hope they didn’t eat pickled turnips. I don’t like the smell of them.

Thomas

P.S. I’m done eating and done writing. Now I am folding this letter. I’m not sure when you will read it.

Our train arrived in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, at 1:07 in the afternoon. We transitioned from the quiet of the caves and lakes to the frenetic energy of one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe. Adding to the cacophony, I couldn’t read any of the signs because they were written in Serbian Cyrillic. It was my first brush with illiteracy.

Fortunately, being slightly lost travelers in a foreign train station comes with a small advantage: everyone seems to want to “help.” That help sometimes comes with an emptying of your pockets, or the theft of your luggage when you look away, but it wasn’t like that in Belgrade. There were many policemen and army men in the train station, so the usual bands of pickpockets you would normally see in cities like Rome, Paris, or Mexico City were at a minimum.

“Taxi, taxi?” a man in a grey driving uniform and black cap asked us. First, he spoke Serbian, then Russian, then Italian. Isabelle responded in Italian.

“Yes, we need a taxi to the Metropol Palace hotel,” I said loudly in English.

“My pleasure, sir. A fine hotel it is,” said our happy taximan. He called a porter over and the two of them led us to the car. “It is a short journey. Will you need transportation to additional places during your stay? I will be your man.” I was surprised at how well he spoke English. I didn’t know a word of Serbian. Not one.

“We’re going to see the construction site at the Church of Saint Sava. It’s only a short walk. We will be okay, thank you.”

As we were pulling up to the hotel, our driver said, “What have you planned for dinner? I could offer you a very special Serbian dinner at my sister’s house. It will be a feast. And you might not get the chance again to see the real Serbia.”

I glanced at Isabelle. “I’m not sure,” she said quietly. “What do you think he wants? Do you think he wants money? If you want to, we can go. Do you feel it’s safe?”

Something told me it would be okay.

“That is very generous of you,” I said to our taxi driver. “We would be proud to be your guests at dinner. What time should we be ready?”

“I will be here at eight o’clock sharp,” he said with his British accent. He was beaming. “My name is Rastko. And you?”

“We’re pirates,” Izzy said. “Ask for the pirates – Thomas y Isabelle.” It was the first time she called me by my full name.

“And so, I shall ask for the pirates,” Rastko said as we made our exchange of luggage and taxi fare.

After we bathed, we walked to the construction site for the Church of Saint Sava. I had been told about it by a Serb who was working in Mexico City. I met him at a bar just by chance when we both asked the barman for a cerveza at the exact same moment, and over the course of the night and a few more cervezas we talked about everything that people who just met shouldn’t talk about: religion, politics, and money. The Church of Saint Sava was at the intersection of all three forbidden topics.

Construction of the church started in 1935, but it wasn’t long after that when the Germans bombed Belgrade at the outset of World War II. After the war came the Communists, who were anti-religion, and they ruled Yugoslavia, so construction halted. Then the people of Belgrade had an uprising about the unexpected costs to build the massive church. The Church of Saint Sava was a mess of religion and politics and money, all compounded by bad planning. When Isabelle and I arrived to see the blue dome they were constructing on the ground, the place was filled with rubble. But the blue shined through.

The dome, and the entire structure, was designed to resemble the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the blue mosaic tiles in the interior were, by Byzantine tradition, designed to evoke the heavens. I took a few photos, but was feeling a little out of place looking at a dome that someday would be skyward but was being completed on the ground. It was unsettling. Unfinished. Isabelle didn’t want to leave.

“This color is magnificent,” she cooed. “I must create some ceramic pieces from this memory. This blue. Is this celeste profunda?”

Seeing the joy of blue through Isabelle’s eyes overwhelmed me. Words in a deeper blue. That’s what I would often say to myself when the feeling of the color washed over me.

We spent hours walking around the construction site. Isabelle initiated a conversation with an artisan who was working on some tiles – he was adding gold leaf to tiny imperfections in the Saint Sava blue tiles.

“The Japanese do that with gold paint,” she told me as she stood close to the artisan, leaning into his work. “But this is entirely different process. Look at it closely. Then stand back and look. Where you look matters.”

We went back to the Metropole Palace after our excursion to the Church of Saint Sava. We had just enough time to wash up and then we needed to be in the lobby to meet Rastko.

Our taxi driver was dressed in a suit and tie when he met us. He gave us both firm handshakes, one pump up and down. Isabelle first. Then he told us the drive to his sister’s house would take about 30 minutes. I began to feel a little edgy – not for myself, but also because of Isabelle. I didn’t want to take a risk.

“Let’s go, I’m famished,” Isabelle said as we walked out to Rastko’s car. She sat in the front seat.

The drive to Rastko’s sister’s house was bumpy. We drove out of the main part of the city, where the roads got darker and darker. Pretty soon, there were no streetlights at all. Just when I started to question myself about this dinner choice, we pulled up in front of a modest, but nicely kept house. As soon as Rastko turned off the car, several people ran out of the front door.

There was a big commotion of children laughing, words said in Serbian, and then the greetings. Rastko’s sister was thin and tall. And very pretty. She took Isabelle by her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. Isabelle blushed. Then it was my turn. We were welcomed into the house, and as we crossed the threshold, we were offered a spoonful of slatko and a glass of water. I learned later that evening that slatko is a traditional greeting in a Serbian homes to make a guest feel welcomed – a sweet entrance. When we finished the cherry preserve, we were immediately handed glasses of šljivovica.

“We have made the šljivovica here,” Rastko said, smiling broadly and sweeping his arm to indicate they made it in the house. As he poured the drink he introduced us to everyone there – his wife, his sister’s husband, and the assembled children of various ages who ran in and out of the rooms giggling from hearing us speak English.

The dinner started with distilled plum brandy. Then we ate a Serbian specialty, sarma, which was pickled cabbage wrapped around a minced meat and rice. That was followed by karađorđeva šnicla, which Rastko told us is also called devojački san, which translates to a young woman's dream. He laughed when his wife offered one to Izzy and said in Serbian: A girl should dream. It was a large sausage coated in breadcrumbs and served with tartar sauce. Izzy opened her eyes wide and then laughed. Everyone in the room laughed. I took a photograph of that moment.

We were stuffed after all the food, but Rastko insisted that we try the gibanica.

“The cheese pie has to be it for me,” Izzy said, looking at me with pleading eyes. “Remember what I said about pirates?”

Rastko and his family weren’t done. They brought out plates with knedle for a dessert. These ones were mashed potato dumplings with a surprise plum inside. While we ate the knedle slowly, Rastko picked up a kaval, a form of a flute, and played traditional Serbian songs. After a few songs, everyone in the room began singing along and cried while they did. An hour went on like that after the meal.

“Isabelle and I are so honored to have been welcomed in your home,” I said to Rastko at an interlude. “But I’m afraid we must get back to our hotel. We leave early tomorrow for Greece. That is next on our journey to see all the colors of blue.” We had spoken about the quest all evening between eating and drinking and laughing. It was hard to call a halt to that night.

Rastko looked crestfallen, but acknowledged we needed a ride back.

“One more thing,” he said as he beckoned me to follow him into a room at the back of the house. “I have a small gift for you.”

Mounted on one wall was an icon of Saint Sava in the most magnificent hue of blue. It was in the style of the tiles Isabelle was so fascinated with at the construction site.

“This is for you,” Rastko said as he took the icon down and handed it to me. “Many years ago, my father was an artisan at the Church of Saint Sava.” He blessed himself in the Eastern Orthodox sign of the cross. “This was the first icon he made. May it bring a blessing to both of you. And to your travels to your magical Blue Places.”

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“What’s the Portuguese word for being devastated and incredibly happy at the same time?” Isabelle asked me that question one sweltering morning in Capri as we laid exhausted and tangled up in sweaty sheets on my hotel bed.

Just our fingertips were touching. That was enough.

I slowly and gently reached across her and picked up my Blue Places notebook. In the heat and humidity of the island, the creases on some pages were becoming so thin I feared the paper would rip and I’d lose a section.

We had been together for just a few days. A few fragmented, incandescent, secret days. It wasn’t easy. A stolen kiss here. A silent coupling there. And a repressed acknowledgement that every single time might be our last time. We were both filled with wanderlust. I was going to Blue Places. I wanted her with me. She wasn’t sure.

Saudade.

That’s what I thought as I held the gossamer notepaper in my hands. I learned that word when I lived in Brazil with another girl. Someone long gone. Someone Isabelle wouldn’t stop asking about.

That word is about a pain so deep it can’t be isolated. Or healed. A thirst that can’t be slaked. A nostalgic longing for a love who isn’t there. I thought about what saudade really means: it’s a longing for a love that might never return.

“Saudade,” I said out loud. “It’s Portuguese for missing someone.”

That translation was close enough. She knew the meaning. She was prodding me.

“I don’t know the word for being devastated and incredibly happy at the same time. What are you feeling right now?”

“Both,” she said. “I’m devastated and incredibly happy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I’ll save devastated for later when you’re gone.”

Isabelle rolled on her side, facing away from me.

So, I waited. And waited. And waited. While I waited, I thumbed my old journal.

I laid there and thought about her question. Devastation and happiness. And I wondered why I ever met her. Deep down I wondered if I wished I never had.

I felt happy. She felt empty.

“You have to go,” she mumbled into her pillow.

“Not yet. We have a few more hours before the boat leaves for Sorrento. Our train is tonight.”

We had talked about traveling to Lago di Braies together. Isabelle changed her mind.

“You have to go,” she said. “I’m not asking if you have to go. I’m telling you it’s time to go.”

“What did I do?”

“Nothing. But it’s time for you to go.”

Isabelle hopped out of the bed and pulled on her satin slip. She tied her hair back in a thick bun all in one smooth move, like a magician who has practiced a routine a thousand times. In a way, I was afraid she had. And I didn’t want to know.

“Really?”

I didn’t move. Even though it had been just a few days with Isabelle, I learned to wait – to see if the storm would blow over. If it was lightning bolts or just thunder.

“Where’s this going?” Sweat was dripping from my hair and stinging my eyes. My voice was catching, and I was about to cry.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You made choices. I made choices. We all do, whether we choose to accept that or not.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked a little too loudly. “One minute I’m wrapped up in you, and the next minute you want me to leave. How is that possible?”

I felt sick.

She stared at me. I looked down.

“I choose not to go,” I said after sitting in silence for several minutes. “I’m never leaving. Besides, this is my hotel room.”

“Good.” Her smile returned. She laughed. A crinkle appeared at the corner of her eyes. A vein was pulsing in her neck.

She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off her slip, and folded back the covers. Then she patted the bed next to her.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

Later, after another long session, I reluctantly got out of bed with Izzy and strolled around town. Since we ignored our scheduled boat transit, I wanted to find a photography lab to process the film I exposed in the Blue Grotto. My plan was to paste photos into my journal and annotate them. My editor expected notes along my journey. I didn’t want to let too much time pass; my mind was already bleary after the days we spent wrecking the bed.

After getting lost on back streets and alleys, and asking many people in broken Italian about where I could develop film, I chanced into a conversation with a reliable-looking local who said he knew an artist who could help.

“Sure, I know a man. A very talented man who will have what you need. He can help you. But we must have a drink first,” he said as he wandered toward a café and gestured for me to join him. Nothing in Capri happened quickly. And even though I wanted to get back to Isabelle soon, I understood this was going to take a while.

We had a drink. Then another. When he suggested a third, I said I would need my focus to be in a darkroom among all the chemicals, so I was going to have to pass. He ordered a third drink; I ordered a water. I paid.

“Let’s go visit the artist subito,” said my new friend as he slapped the table and adjusted his hat. Subito meant right away. Everything moved slowly in Capri, then it happened all at once.

We walked quickly up staircases and streets that pointed at the sky. After making our way through several winding and narrow turns, we arrived at the artist’s villa at the top of a hill. My partially knackered friend pushed bougainvillea away from a Medusa’s head door knocker and rapped at the thick door. We waited several minutes. My new friend didn’t knock again. Finally, the door opened slowly. Just a little. Then a little more. My new friend bowed deeply and theatrically. He removed his hat.

“Buon pomeriggio, Patrizio. I trust you are very well today,” said my new friend to the exquisitely dressed man who answered the door. “I have a small request. For this, I will be forever grateful and in your debt. My request is this: Mi amici would like to work in your darkroom. You are both artists. Is this request possible?”

The artist was wearing a purple-patterned silk ascot tucked inside a long-sleeved white linen shirt. His taupe linen trousers were finished with Caprese tailoring worn by the jetsetters who populated the Piazzetta. Most strikingly, he was wearing red velvet slippers. They were similar to the pantofole papali I’d seen in a picture of Pope John XXIII, where a pilgrim who had an audience with him was kissing his papal slipper. I also noticed that my new friend called him Patrizio. That was a significant honorific in Italy, one that few people could earn. This man with the red slippers was most certainly a patrician of high stature in Capri. And in Italy.

The artist stood at his door for a minute. Glanced up and down the street. Then he said something to my new friend in a dialect I didn’t understand. After another pause, he turned to me and said in clear English, “Would you like to enter now?”

My new friend tipped his hat to me, bowed from the waist to the artist, Il Patrizio, then took his leave quickly. It was as if a wisp of wind blew in and pushed him down the street. I didn’t have a chance to thank him.

“Entra, per cortesia,” said the artist without introducing himself. He made a grand gesture at his door. The door led to a courtyard that belied the modesty of the entrance. This was much more than an artist’s villa. It was an Old World palazzo. When he led me into a grand ballroom, I suddenly realized who was showing me his house. There were framed portraits of kings and queens on the walls; there were photos of movie stars riding Vespas and splashing in the surf; there were candid shots of the most powerful people in governments around the world. They all had traveled to Capri to have their photos crafted by this artist.

I dwelled in front of several photos. I recognized them from various magazines. They were iconic. He was famous.

“Come to the darkroom,” said the artist. “Let us see what you have.”

“I took some photos in the Blue Grotto,” I stammered. I was a little embarrassed because everyone has an amateur photo of the Blue Grotto, yet there I was with one of the most celebrated photographers in the world. I didn’t want to appear unserious.

I handed the artist two canisters of exposed film as we entered the darkroom. I originally wanted to borrow some working space and developer chemicals, but he stepped in and moved briskly. He didn’t say a word while he worked.

He developed the negatives, then printed the contact sheets. We went out to his light table to examine them. I intended to print the photos as mementos. He wouldn’t abide that approach.

“Let’s see here,” the artist said as he used a loupe to look rapidly at one photo after another. Then he paused.

“See something interesting?” I asked, leaning over to get a glimpse of what frame he was examining.

“Isabelle,” he purred. I thought perhaps I misheard him.

“You know Isabelle?” I asked, a bit incredulously.

“I know her family. She’s quite talented,” he said as he gestured for me to join him back in the darkroom. There was no more discussion of Isabelle. The artist worked quickly and created a series from a single photo with various degrees of exposure and saturation. Then he set a timer. And we waited.

“That’s one of the finest photos I’ve ever seen,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the series. “You captured an aura.”

I didn’t have words. Or know how to respond. I was standing in the presence of one of the greatest photographers of the era, and he was telling me my photo was extraordinary.

He took the large format photos out to a marble table and fanned them out. Then he stood back, rubbed his chin, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and pointed at one.

“That one. That one belongs in a gallery. Do you have an agent?”

“I have an editor for my academic work and writing,” I said.

“No. An art agent. This piece deserves to be in a collection.”

He was referring to my picture of Isabelle emerging from the water of the Blue Grotto. Only her head was above the waterline. There wasn’t a ripple around her. Just a microsecond later and the photo wouldn’t have shown the surface tension of water creating a glistening silvery hood on her hair. Her eyes were open wide. Her lips were slightly apart.

She looked like a sculpture in a turquoise sea.

“Do return to me, signore,” said the artist as I gathered my photos and began to say goodbye.

“I will write to you, Patrizio. I thank you for your hospitality today. I am honored. Mille grazie.”

“A good photographer sees the world differently,” he said. “He also needs a bellissima modello. E un po’ di fortuna.” Il Patrizio winked as I looked back. He pushed the door closed with his red-slippered foot.

“Yes,” I said to myself as I walked away. “I need a little bit of good fortune.”

When I returned to the hotel, Isabelle was dressed for dinner. I stopped at the hotel room entrance and took every bit of her into my sight. We had only been together a few days, but I didn’t like to be away from her for a minute. I could not get enough of her. I wanted to remember that exact moment.

“Como?” she asked as she met my gaze, then she thrust out her lower lip. She used different phrases in different languages depending on what she was talking about.

I couldn’t get used to her lips – they were like an artist’s interpretation of what perfect lips should be. The lips that were so prominent in the photo I had in my satchel.

“You have the lips of Aphrodite,” I said.

“Which one?” She always wanted – demanded – precision.

“Aphrodite of Cnidus. It’s considered the most beautiful statue of antiquity.”

“What about Venus de Milo?”

“Yes, Venus de Milo is another piece of perfection. Like you.”

She wanted me to comment about her beauty. But as soon as I told her, she shook her head no. Brushed it off. Said this or that was off. Not right.

“How can you say that?” she asked. “My lips look nothing like Venus de Milo.”

After spending more than two weeks in Capri, I suggested to Isabelle that my itinerary required a move to the next place.

“I have a schedule,” I said, opening my Blue Places journal to the list of locations. I had jotted potential dates for arrival based on the seasons. The voyage included six continents, and I needed the timing to work. Plus, I told some people I would meet them in various locations at various times.

“My next stop is Lago di Braies. You know that. But first I’m going to the Fabbrica Italiana di Penne a Serbatoio Aurora. I’ll travel to Turin, then take a train to the lake. I won’t be more than a few hours at Aurora. Will you join me?”

“I’ll meet you at Lago di Braies,” Isabelle said. “I will journey on the train as far as Milano with you. I need to go to my home before I venture to the lago.”

“How many days will you be?” I asked. Just the night before, Isabelle told me she would join me.

“I will be some days. I have some commissions I need to complete.”

During our days in Capri, Isabelle and I talked about ourselves. About life. My life was simple – butterfly research and the occasional academic conference. Isabelle had another existence. She was an artisan – a renowned ceramista. She didn’t make fanciful little plates for tourists. Her ceramic pieces were collected by art world cognoscenti and sold in auction houses from Rome to London to Paris.

Isabelle descended from a family that wielded significant influence in northern Italy for hundreds of years. As a result of that lineage, there were many opportunities available to her – and many expectations. She set her own expectations.

She attended boarding school at Institut Le Rosey in Rolle, Switzerland, where she added French and English to the languages she spoke fluently. Isabelle, who was named for her great-grandmother, grew up speaking Italian and Spanish in her house, and that fact invoked a little bit of a family tension every time she would accidentally speak Spanish to her very formal Italian nonna.

Isabelle’s free spirit was something she inherited from her Italian mother, who defied her family expectations. Her mother didn’t marry an Italian from the social circle her parents expected. Instead, she fell in love with a Spaniard when she spent a year studying in Barcelona. Isabelle’s father spoke Spanish to her from birth; her mother and grandparents spoke Italian to her; and her nanny spoke French. When she went to study art at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she already spoke French like a native. When she was with me, she spoke English. Sometimes she and I would speak Spanish, although I was a little out of practice.

After art school, Isabelle returned to Italy. Her ancestral home was in Padua, an ancient and revered city that was founded more than 400 years before Rome. Padua was the home of the mathematician Galileo; the sculptor Donatello; the architect Andrea Palladio; and perhaps most famously, St. Anthony of Padua, a venerated follower of St. Francis of Assisi and the patron saint for the return of lost items. “I hope I never have to invoke St. Anthony for you,” I said one day when she told me about the saint.

We took the northbound train from Sorrento the day after I spent the afternoon with Il Patrizio. I hadn’t yet shown Isabelle the photo of her in the water at the Blue Grotto. I wanted the time to be just right.

I was on my way to Turin to tour the Aurora Pen factory. They had created a new blue ink and I was looking forward to seeing it. After the tour, I planned to go by train once again through Milano on the way to Bolzano. I was to call my colleague, Jonathan, from Bolzano and arrange to stay at his house.

That was the plan. Izzy had other plans.

“I’m going to disembark at Milano,” she said as the train gently rocked along the tracks. We were seated in the club car and were offered drinks by the tuxedoed waiter more often than we needed.

“Somehow, I hoped you changed your mind and you would join me at Aurora. Especially since your family knows the proprietors. I thought maybe I’d get a special tour if you were there.”

Isabelle smiled. “You will get a special tour. A car will be waiting for you at the station in Torino to take you to the Aurora manufactory. You will see everything you want to see.”

“How?”

“I made arrangements while you were away yesterday. I attended school in Switzerland with the eldest son of the owners. And my grandparents have known his grandparents since we were bambini.”

I went to school in Chicago, and I certainly didn’t know the eldest son of the owners of a prestigious business. I did know a Greek kid whose dad owned a diner. But if I wanted to arrange a ride from some guys from my old neighborhood, it probably would involve a stolen car. Not that any of those guys had a telephone in their house.

This was an entirely different world for me. I escaped my old neighborhood and went to university, but I spent most of my life in fields. Isabelle spent hers in palacios, art studios, and auction houses.

When Isabelle and I stepped off the train in Milano, there was a distinguished grey-haired gentleman there to meet her. She didn’t introduce me, and he didn’t make any gestures to greet me. He had a porter with him. He guided the porter to stack Isabelle’s bags and as soon as he did, the porter left. Isabelle and I stood next to the train as it hissed in the heat.

“Here’s the number and address where I’ll be. Jonathan or Andrea will answer the telephone when you call. Please tell me you will join me at Lago di Braies.” I handed her a calling card with all the information. I also had written the next three locations where I would be after Braies, just in case.

“I have a few things I need to do,” she said. “I will meet you there.”

“Where can I find you if you don’t come?” I asked.

“I will meet you there. Not to worry,” she said as she put on her sunglasses and flipped her hair over her shoulders.

We shared the shortest and saddest kiss of my life. Isabelle kissed me on the cheek, and I heard her say ciao as she walked away with the grey-haired man. I stood on the platform for a long time, then gathered my bags and went to the track to take my train to Turin. I felt a weight on my chest. It was from missing her already.

As Isabelle promised, a driver met me on the train platform in Turin. I wondered how he knew it was me among all the passengers. Had Isabelle given him a description? And what did she say?

The tour of the Aurora factory was a sensory experience. I saw their design process to develop new fountain pens. The docent showed me the museum they were developing about the history of writing, including their beautiful, gold-nibbed writing instruments; and the eldest son of the owner personally escorted me to meet his father and see the new blue ink they developed. Their lead calligrapher wrote a short note to me in that blue ink before I arrived. Then the owner of the company turned as his assistant handed him a small wooden box. He brought me over to a tall table and beckoned me to open the box.

“It’s a gift from Isabelle,” the owner said with clear pride. His son stood beside him, very upright and beaming.  “She wanted you to have our very finest pen and our newly created blue ink.”

I didn’t know what to say. Grazie. Mille grazie, was all I could manage. The pen I was given as a gift was worth more than what I earned in a year as an academic.

When it was time to leave my tour at Aurora, I shook hands with several people who lined up to see me off. I told them time and again how I would use the pen to document my voyage to all the Blue Places. And how every time I picked up that special pen, I would think about the treasure of a deep memory that the tour gave me.

When I got to the car, the driver opened the back door for me, then handed me a leather satchel created by a famous leather house in Florence. There was a note inside the supple bag.

If a pirate is going to sail the Seven Seas, he needs a proper travelogue. Write to me in Azzura Savoia ink when I’m not with you. –Isa.

“Isa. She calls herself Isa,” I said aloud. The driver nodded.

I thought about her name as I opened the bag. Inside its red suede interior was a folio filled with stationery; beside it was a hand-sewn journal. There was a brass navigational compass in one of the side pockets. When I pulled it out to examine it, I found another note.

I’m always with you. And if I’m not, use this to find me. – Isa

While I was on the train to Bolzano, I wrote in my new journal about the tour of Fabbrica Italiana di Penne a Serbatoio Aurora. I created a swatch of the new blue on the first page. Izzy referred to Azzurra Savoia in her note. She knew the color. And I’m sure she knew it was created to honor the House of Savoy and quietly, to honor the Azzurri, Italy’s national football team. When I finished writing about the ink and the tour, I removed a piece of watermarked stationery from the leather portfolio and wrote a short letter to Isabelle:

Dear Izzy,

Just today I learned you call yourself Isa. I will call you that, and a hundred other names when I am with you. I called you Izzy because I like to shorten names and I like the sound of it. In my work, I do that with butterflies. Now you have flown into my life, so I guess you could say I’m using butterfly taxonomy with you.

Thank you for all you did for me today. Arranging a ride to Aurora was an honor. The tour was more than I imagined. And the gift of the satchel and writing materials is extraordinary. I’m on my way to Lago di Braies as I write this – my first letter to you. If you read this 50 years from now, please know that you were missed at this very moment. These past days with you have been the best in my life.

–Thomas

When my train arrived at Stazione Ferroviaria di Bolzano, I went inside and asked the station manager to use his office phone to call Jonathan. It took some persuasion in a mix of Italian and Spanish to get my idea across that I wished to call someone local to retrieve me. When the call finally went through, Jonathan answered on the ninth ring.

“Where have you been?” Johnathan asked as he skidded into the train station a few hours later. He told me he would retrieve me within an hour when I talked to him on the phone. It was a lot longer than that, and I lost faith he would arrive. Just as I was going to inquire at the information kiosk about a hotel in town, Jonathan zoomed up in his tiny Alfa Romeo. I wondered where I would put my bags.

“I thought you said you would arrive two weeks ago,” he said as he drove wildly down a narrow road out of town. “Circumstances have changed significantly since I last heard from you.”

While he drove like a road rally racer, he told me over the sound of the rushing wind how Andrea had left him, and even though divorce wasn’t legal in Italy, she wanted a divorce. “She wants to go to Monaco to get it over with” he said, gesturing with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other. He was driving with his knees. He clearly had a lot to drink before he arrived at the train station. At those high speeds, it didn’t take us long to arrive at his house.

I had imagined Jonathan’s house a hundred times from what he described in letters. He told me his house was on Lago di Braies. It wasn’t. There aren’t any houses on the lake. It’s why the trip from the train station was so short – he lived far away from Lago di Braies. That evening I was thanking the stars we didn’t have to drive an hour with him drunk. I’m not sure we would have made it.

Ever since I first met him years earlier, everything with Jonathan stretched credulity. He was always like that. The location of his house was in a long line of lies.

“C’mon in,’ he said as he led me into the entryway of his expansive house. The architecture was magnificent. However, as he gave me a quick tour, he left off the lights in several rooms, and many rooms were empty. There were holes in the plaster where art had been ripped from the walls. And there were deep gouges in the wood floors. I had a sense Andrea didn’t leave recently. The interior was a disaster.

“Sorry about the state of the house right now,” he said. “Going through a few renovations. How about a drink?”

We spent several hours sitting at Jonathan’s kitchen table talking about the old times in graduate school, how he landed in Italy, and what happened with Andrea. “Woman problems,” he said. “Or should I say women problems? Too many women, and one unforgiving wife.” Apparently, his randy behavior hadn’t changed either since I saw him a decade earlier.

I was famished.

“Any chance we could raid your icebox?” I asked as I got up and started to look around the kitchen. When Jonathan and I were starving grad students, icebox raids sustained us.

“Sorry, my friend. I didn’t plan well. Don’t have any food in the icebox. Or really, in the pantry. We could find a restaurant, I guess.”

From the appearance of the house and the kitchen, Jonathan was drinking most of his meals. Something went wrong. He lived a high-flying lifestyle because he made a small fortune investing in the stock market after he graduated. Later, he married Andrea and moved to Italy. He bought a big house. And kept spending money. Lots of money.

We went to a local restaurant. I ordered a merenda – the cold-cut specialty of the South Tyrol. Jonathan ordered a Schiava – a red wine specialty of the area that tastes like cotton candy. Then I ordered the Asparagi alla Bolzano. One of my notes in the Blue Places journal reminded me to get that regional dish. Even though it was late in the season for asparagus, the owners still had it on the menu and were proud to tell me of the origins of their delicious Bolzner sauce that is a mixture of eggs, mustard, salt, pepper, chives, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and butter. Jonathan order a birra.

“Are you going order any food?” I asked Jonathan when he asked for another beer. He indicated to the waiter with his palm high above the table that he wanted a big one.

“I’ll eat some bread,” he said. “I ate earlier.” I knew he was lying.

After the spaghetti alla Bolognese, I was full. But the owner of the little establishment wanted us to taste some of his wife’s Buchteln, an apricot-filled pastry served with vanilla sauce. Jonathan asked for an after-dinner drink, then picked at the Buchteln. He finally ate a few bites.

“You’ll pay, right?” Jonathan asked me when the owner brought the bill. “I left my money at home.” He didn’t seem ashamed.

I paid for dinner. Jonathan vomited in the parking lot.

“My stomach doesn’t do well with sweets,” he said as he spit in the grass and wiped his mouth with the back of his shirt sleeve. I demanded the car keys.

I got up early the next morning. Jonathan was snoring loudly in the living room. The ornate couch he was on was the only piece of furniture in there. In the morning light, things came into clearer focus. I walked from room to room, looking at the skeleton of the house.

“I’ve had better days.”

Jonathan had shuffled into the kitchen while I was rummaging through the cupboards searching for coffee. I found a Bialetti coffee pot that hadn’t been cleaned since its last use. From the looks of it, that was a month or two before I found it. I washed the pot with cold water because the hot water didn’t come out of the faucet, then I looked for some coffee.

“The stock market really wiped me out,” he said. “That goddam Kennedy and his Flash Crash. I invested everything I had when he got elected. He promised prosperity, and I believed him. I couldn’t lose. Then, the market started dropping this year. Andrea kept spending extravagantly like the money would keeping coming forever. I thought it was just a small market correction. Then the whole thing collapsed in May. It was all gone. All of it. Everything I worked for – gone. Andrea, too.”

Jonathan looked pitiful. I didn’t trust him, though. I’d seen his act play out when we were university students. He worked people over. I knew what was coming.

“Any chance you could spare a few lira, mi amici,” he said, holding his hand in his head. “I’m tapped out.”

“I can give you enough for today, but I’m on a budget and have several more places to go.” I lied. I could have given him money, but I knew that would lead to him asking for more. “Let’s go to Lago di Braies and we can talk about it.”

When we arrived at the lake, Jonathan told me he was going to nap in the car. He said I should go ahead and hike around. After I looked at the tip of the lake in the morning fog, I walked to the hotel to inquire if they had a room available later in the week. Since Isabelle told me she would need a few days at home, I thought I’d stay with Jonathan for those days, then move to the hotel.

“Make that two rooms,” I heard Jonathan say behind me.

I spun around. Jonathan stood uncomfortably close to me and was breathing in my face. He was on his way to being drunk already.

“I’m meeting someone here,” I said. “How are you going to pay for a room?”

“I’m not. You are,” he said defiantly.

I wanted to punch him, but even in his partially inebriated state, Jonathan could still do me in. He was a street brawler in the old days; I knew from letters I got from him from time to time that he spent a year in Japan training in judo. I didn’t want to wrestle him in the hotel lobby.

“Jonathan, I’ll pay for one night. That’s all.”

I finished my transaction with the hotel manager, arranged to have funds wired, and then told Jonathan I would drive us back to his house. He asked to stop at a store to buy some drinks. I agreed to stop as long as there was food available at the market, too. He piled crates of beer and several bottles of Latschenschnaps – a liqueur made with pinecones macerated in grappa – into the tiny trunk of his car. I bought pasta, tomatoes, olive oil, and two loaves of bread and put those on the back seat. Of course, I paid.

When we got back to Jonathan’s house, I cooked up an early dinner for us, then after I finished cleaning up I told him I needed a rest. The truth is, I needed a rest from his negativity. He hated the dinner I made and didn’t eat a bite.

I went up to my room and wrote to Isabelle.

Dear Isabelle/Izzy/Isa

It’s worse than I feared. Jonathan was an insufferable boor when he was on top of the world. Alas, he has sunk into a great abyss that is financial, physical, and mental. His wife left and his fortune is gone. Along with that, he lost what remained of his meager manners. As much as it pains me, you will meet him at Lago di Braies.

I arranged a room for us at the Grandhotel Prager Wildsee. Please come there directly. Jonathan told me in a letter that he had a house on the lake. It’s untrue. There are no houses on Lago di Braies. Only the Grandhotel, which was built in 1899. The proprietor told me the lake was originally bought by Joseph Hellenstainer for his wife Emma in 1856 because she was homesick. He paid 100 Austrian florins in cash. I cannot promise to buy you a lake. But I can promise you a boat ride on the lake. Please come soon. A pirate’s life is lonely without you.

T_____

Jonathan and I spent two more days sitting in the darkness of his depressing house. He drank. I cooked. And when we ran out of food, we went to eat at the same restaurant he took me to the first night. Again, he didn’t eat.

“It’s time to make our way to Lago di Braies,” I said to him the next morning. He was feeling particularly bad. He ran out of beer the night before, so he drank the Latschenschnaps. That liquor is to be sipped. Jonathan drank directly from the bottle. And when he finished one entire bottle, he went for another.

“I need a little time,” Jonathan said as he plopped on a kitchen chair and burped loudly. His house was a mess. He was more of a mess.

“You need a shower,” I said. “You’re ripe.”

“Shower doesn’t work. No hot water.”

I knew that. I had been taking cold sink baths for the days I was there. Jonathan seemed to have given up bathing.

“We have to be there by three this afternoon at the latest. Isabelle could arrive today. I want to be there before her.”

We arrived at the hotel at 3:45pm. Jonathan spent the morning drinking the last of the Latschenschnaps, then he grudgingly washed up and put on a suit he had in his closet. He needed a shave.

We checked into our rooms. I booked several nights for Isabelle and me in a lake view suite. I made it clear to the desk clerk that although I would pay for one night for Jonathan, I would not be responsible for any of his purchases at the hotel. And I would not pay for him to extend his stay. The clerk said he understood, then gave a stern look to Jonathan as he explained the system at the hotel.

When the valet led me into my room, he opened the balcony doors wide to let in the fresh air and to show me the balcony that overlooked the aqua blue lake. There was a note on the small dining table that was held under a champagne glass.

Io sono qui. Cercami sul lago. –Isa

I am here. Look for me on the lake.

The valet smiled at me when he saw me notice Isabelle rowing a wooden boat near the shore. She waved for me to come down. I wanted to hop over the railing, but it was a long drop, so I gave a tip to the valet and asked him to show me the fastest way to get to Izzy.

I splashed through the water and nearly tipped Isabelle out the boat as I flopped in. She stowed the oars as I was getting up.

“You didn’t think I would come, did you?” she asked before she said hello.

I walked over a crossbeam and kissed her. Hard. I held her face and stared into her eyes. “I wasn’t sure,” I said. “But now you’re here, and that’s all that matters.” I could hardly contain my joy. I wanted to shout. Instead, I sat down.

“What did you do without me?” she asked, with a little twinkle in her eyes.

“There is no me without you,” I said.

I offered to row the boat on the lake. Isabelle insisted that she do it.

“Turn around and look at Lago di Braies,” she said. “Tell me about the colors.”

“What if I want to look at you?” I asked.

“There will be plenty of time for that later. Now, tell me about the colors. About your first love. Your blue.”

I tried to describe the blues as Izzy rowed slowly. Later that evening, I wrote about the turquoise blues and emerald greens of the lake. About how the hues of blue changed with the passing of clouds and the depth of the lake. About how blue wasn’t enough of a description. How it shimmered like a peacock. Then it turned a dark blue. Navy blue. Almost black.

Isabelle rowed us to a remote cove that was still sunlit. No one was around. She stood up in the boat, surveyed the horizon to make sure, and then lifted her dress over her head. She was wearing nothing underneath. Then she dove into the lake headfirst.

“Oooooooh….that’s so refreshing,” she squealed as she paddled a little distance from the boat. “Your turn.”

I stripped down. Jumped in feet first. And when my head bobbed above the water, I screamed.

“IT’S SO DAMN COLD,” I hollered, treading water quickly to try to warm up. Isabelle swam over to me.

“What kind of a pirate are you? Pirates don’t complain about the water.”

I was shivering when Isabelle wrapped herself around me. I put one hand on the boat so we didn’t sink. She kissed me deeply. Held her chest against mine. Encircled me with her legs. I was warming up.

We slipped back in the boat and passionately melded into each other on the most beautiful lake in the South Tyrol. Later that evening, I wrote about looking at the reflection of the blue from the lake in Isabelle’s eyes as we made love.

Dear Isabelle,

Walt Whitman was mistaken when he wrote, “We were together, I forget the rest.” I won’t forget a thing. I remember how you looked. How you smelled. How you tasted. The curve of your hips. The dimples of Venus I lusted for when you removed your dress on the boat and turned to dive in the lake. How you kissed me. The blueness of your eyes. And what you whispered to me.

They are words in a deeper blue.

Thomas

By the time Isabelle rowed us back to the boat house, the sun was moving behind the Dolomite peaks that surrounded the lake. As we were walking into the hotel lobby, Jonathan was there. He was in a foul mood.

“Where have you been?” he demanded of me. He didn’t acknowledge Isabelle. “I’ve been here all day and they told me you wouldn’t pay my bar tab. Now I’m cut off. I looked for you. Where in the hell were you?”

He was steaming. And seemed desperate.

“Jonathan, this is Isabelle,” I said as a response.

Jonathan took a deep breath. I thought it was to calm down.

“Look at the hot little body on you,” he said as he ogled Izzy. She crossed her arms over her breasts and took a step backwards.

“Thomas said you were beautiful. But wow. Sei una bella ragazza. Così sexy.”

I didn’t think anyone in Isabelle’s life had talked to her like a panting dog. I grabbed Jonathan by the shirt and told him that was once. And that was enough. That was enough for a lifetime.

“I don’t speak to spazzatura,” Izzy said to him. “And you can fuck off.”

Maybe someone had spoken to her like that before. She wasn’t having any of it.

Hotel security came quickly and ushered Jonathan away.

“That’s Jonathan,” I said with a nervous laugh.

“I hope all your friends aren’t like that,” she said as she walked to the room. While we were on the boat, the valet had brought her bags up from her car. She drove from Padua to Lago di Braies in her Cisitalia 202 Cabriolet.

We freshened up and went downstairs for dinner. Jonathan was waiting for us.

“How about a going away dinner with my friends?” he asked as we entered the restaurant. Neither Izzy nor I wanted any more of a scene, so we grudgingly agreed.

Jonathan leered at Isabelle throughout the service, but she held her own. She was strong and determined. No fool like Jonathan was going to throw her off.

“How did you lose all your money?” she asked him bluntly. “I understand why your wife left you. But your money, too?”

I almost laughed, but I didn’t want Jonathan to stab me with a fork.

“Oh, look at the signorina,” he said. “Isn’t she a sassy little puttana?”

Isabelle ignored him and switched completely to talk about the lake. How it’s more than a kilometer long and 400 meters wide. How it’s one of the deepest lakes in the province of Balzano. How the Croda del Becco is at one end of the lake and how the Austrians call the mountain Seekofel. And she spoke Spanish and Italian in poetic terms about the colors of blue.

“It’s also one of the coldest lakes in the region,” she said. “Some people shiver when they go for a swim. Isn’t that right, Tom?”

I turned to her to laugh, but Jonathan bellowed, “TOM! She called you Tom.” The maître d’ came to our table and shushed Jonathan.

“Hey man, I’ll quiet down if you bring me another drink.”

We ate quickly, and when the cheese and dessert cart was rolled to our table, both Izzy and I couldn’t say no thank you quickly enough. The dinner went on my room tab.

“Jonathan, this is goodbye,” I said as we stood up. “I sincerely hope you take care of yourself.”

“Say, Isabelle. I understand you come from family money,” Jonathan said as he grabbed Isabelle’s arm. “Would you be interested in investing with me? I could make you a lot of money.”

Isabelle barely looked at him. She shook her head very slightly. Dismissively.

“Well, instead of investing, how about you loan me money. I need two or three million lira, tops.”

Isabelle walked away. I stayed behind for a minute.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” I said to Jonathan. He seemed desperate and deranged. “You need to get yourself together. You were always a cretin, but this is a new low for you.” I stepped toward him and he staggered. Then I went to my room.

When Izzy and I woke in the morning, we got a note from the hotel manager saying Jonathan was removed from the premises by the police during the night. He had done a lot of damage to his room, and I was responsible for paying for it. The note also said Jonathan was caught with a number of items he had stolen from hotel rooms, including jewelry and cash. They told us we should inventory our things to make sure we weren’t victims. We took a look at our room and our things. Everything looked in order.

I called room service and asked them to bring a continental breakfast for us to enjoy on the balcony. There was still fog on the lake, and we wanted to enjoy coffee in our bathrobes as the sun burned the fog off.

After breakfast was delivered, I retrieved my new satchel from the room. I wanted to show Isabelle all the items, and how I pasted her notes in my book. And, the moment was right to show her the photo I took of her at the Blue Grotto.

“It was in here, I’m sure of it,” I said to Izzy as I looked again for the photography set I had in my case. The photos developed by Il Patrizio. The one he said was gallery-worthy. The photos were gone. So were the negatives.

“Jonathan,” we said in unison.

I had told Jonathan about my experience with the artist, and how valuable he considered the photograph of Isabelle. It all made sense at that minute. Jonathan was a thief. I wanted my photograph back. It was personal more than valuable to me.

“Pirates don’t allow their property to be stolen and kept,” Izzy said. “We are going to take back what is rightfully ours.”

When Jonathan sobered up at the police station, he persuaded them to release him on his own recognizance. In addition, he fast-talked the police into believing several of the items he had were his own. That included photographs and my expensive camera. He told them he was a photographer who was documenting blue places around the world. He stole my photos, and he stole my story. I was going to get the photos back.

Izzy and I waited until it was very late, then we skulked out of the hotel lobby and went to her car.

“Do you want to drive?” she asked as we stood under the coolness of nightfall. We could see the Milky Way and intense clusters of stars above us.

“I think you better drive. This is an Italian racing machine,” I said as we pulled open the doors. Isabelle pulled on driving gloves.

It was a fast drive in the dark of night to Jonathan’s house. I wanted to kill the lights and sneak in. Izzy wanted to kick down the door. She prevailed.

We pulled up to the front door. Izzy got out first and started banging on it. I turned the knob. The door wasn’t locked. We found Jonathan sitting in the kitchen, nearly passed out drunk. The photos, negatives, and camera were on the table in front of him, along with an assorted collection of beer and liquor bottles.

“Two million lira,” he said as we walked in. “Two million lira or I burn the negatives.” Jonathan flicked open a Zippo lighter and rolled the flint. An orange and blue flame flicked its tongue toward the negative strips.

“I won’t give you two lira,” Izzy hissed as she stood over Jonathan. “That photo is Tom’s. So is the camera. And the negatives. Hand them over.”

Jonathan was about to say something. Then he moved to grab Izzy’s wrist. She moved faster, and in an instant, she was pressing a stiletto below Jonathan’s left eye.

“One word, one move, one breath, and I will carve your eye out.”

Everything happened in half speed after that. Jonathan handed over the photo folio and the negatives with shaky hands. I picked up my camera and slung it across my body. Still, Izzy kept the knife just a centimeter below Jonathan’s eye. There was a trickle of blood rolling down his cheek.

“If we so much as ever hear your name again, you will live to regret it,” Izzy said. “You might think you’re a tough guy now, but you have no idea.”

It was the kind of threat that gives a person chills. Jonathan sat still as Izzy and I backed out of the kitchen, then walked out the grand entrance to her car.

“It’s time you learned to drive a proper car,” Izzy said as she got in the passenger seat. She opened the photo portfolio and gasped.

We stayed several more days in Lago di Braies. In the ensuring days there was nothing remotely as dramatic as what happened on the first one. We took a rowboat out every day. I made sketches in my notebook. Took photos. And Isabelle and I bookended each day with a lust that couldn’t be slaked. I wrote her a letter by candlelight as I looked at her reclining on the bed one evening:

Isabelle,

Do you feel my eyes on you?  Do you feel me when I think of you? You must feel me all the time, because there isn’t a moment I don’t think of you.

I thought when you said “let’s be pirates” on the boat in Capri that you meant it as a witticism. I didn’t know you meant we would be real pirates.

I grew up in a mean town. But I never witnessed anything so undeniably powerful as what you did with Jonathan and that cutlass. (Yes, I know it was a stiletto, but a cutlass is a pirate knife.) I could not be more attracted to your dangerous side.

Meanwhile, we are here at Lago di Braies. We swam naked in a freezing lake. We recovered our treasure. And you allowed me to drive your Cisitalia. I’m beginning to think we really are pirates. Let’s search for more treasure in Yugoslavia. And let’s find more colors of blue.

T_____

We spent two more days at Lago di Braies. Then the weather started to change. We loaded the car for the drive to Plitivice Lakes in the Croatian area of Yugoslavia. That drive would take us ten or twelve hours, depending on the road conditions. From there, we were going to visit Blue Cave on Biševo Island, then drive east to Belgrade. After that, we would make our way south to Athens and take a ferry to Oia on Santorini.

“Are you ready to see all the blues in the world?” Isabelle asked me as I settled into the passenger seat of her Cisitalia. I thought about the likelihood that my itinerary to see all the Blue Places would happen. And I thought about what Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina: It’s hard to love a woman and do anything.

“Yes. Yes, I’m prepared to see all the blue places in the world. With you.”

With that, Izzy gunned the engine and we left Lago di Braies and its chromatic spectrum of blues behind us.

We were headed to places neither of us had been.

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Our tour boat was bobbing and rolling in the heavy sea swells at the entrance to the Blue Grotto. The July sun was broiling my neck. And my head was throbbing. I should have refused absinthe the night before. I wasn’t thinking.

If I had been thinking, I would have realized we’d have to wait in the heat while endless boatloads of tourists unloaded into skiffs to make their way into the cave. If I had been thinking more clearly in my absinthe fog, I would have grabbed my sun hat instead of my old baseball cap. If I had been thinking at all, I would have postponed my visit. I’ve thought a lot about what would have been if I had.

I felt a shaky after sailing from Sorrento to Capri. But crashing through the roiling sea from Capri to the Blue Grotto in a clattering powerboat made my stomach grind like a cement mixer. I was burping up bile and sweat was burning my eyes.

My fellow passengers weren’t doing any better. They weren’t well. Many were green and grumbling.

Our Caprese boat captain warned us before we boarded that the conditions were going to be rough. It was the windiest day of the year, and there was even talk of closing the Grotto that day.

“We’re-a gonna go tru a-heavy seas,” he said in sing-song English. “If you feel-a sick-a, hang-a da head over da side and give-a da calazione back-a to da ocean. And-a if-a you canna do dat, stay-a here on da land.”

There were some nervous titters, but no one changed their mind. The first passenger lost his breakfast just a few minutes after we launched out of Marina Grande harbor. Surging waves broke over the bow of our boat. It was too late to go back.

Seasickness is contagious. One-by-one, people leaned over the side. Everyone except for me and the woman sitting across from me. She was wearing a sparkling white sundress accented with an apricot-colored scarf that was cinched around her waist. While the brim of her hat flapped wildly, she didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the wind and the waves.

“I’m-a nah gonna be-a sick-a,” she said as she pulled off her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and crinkled the corner of her blue eyes. No one else on the boat so much as acknowledged each other, let alone made eye contact. Seasickness turns people into suffering loners.

“I’m-a nah gonna eeder,” I said as I laughed a little too loudly. Other passengers turned to scowl at me. Then I puffed up my cheeks and grabbed my stomach – the universal sign for being sick.

“Don’t you dare,” the woman in the white dress said in perfect English. “We made it this far; let’s be pirates. Pirates never get seasick.”

We both paused for a second, examining each other. I suddenly felt self-conscious about my clothes: wrinkled khakis rolled above my ankles; a light blue oxford button-down with the sleeves curled to my elbows; worn-out deck shoes with a broken leather lace; and a faded baseball cap. I was dressed for the sea. She was dressed for a garden party.

She wore a stack of bracelets on one wrist – at least 20 in various shades of white and blue. She had a long silver ring on her left index finger and several smaller rings on other fingers. She had a ring on her right thumb. Besides being captivated by her eyes, I was fascinated with her elegant hands. They were the hands of a concert pianist. Of a flamenco dancer. Or of an artist.

She pulled off her hat without breaking eye contact. Her long hair was tied with a bow. She loosened the bow, pulled the silk scarf from her waist, and tied it on her head. Then she slid her large sunglasses back on. I wanted to see her eyes again.

“Isabelle,” she said as she raised her chin, prompting me to respond.

“That’s not a pirate’s name.”

“It is if I say it is,” she said, this time making a brush-off gesture in the air. “Who gets to decide what a pirate name is?”

Our boat rocked side-to-side and squeamish passengers were clamoring to get into the skiffs.

“Izzy,” I said. “That’s your pirate name.”

“No one ever calls me Izzy. Only Isabelle.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Well, if you’re gonna be a pirate, you have to be Izzy.”

She hesitated. Took off her sunglasses. She stared at me. Then smiled.

“Then Izzy I shall be.”

“Thomas,” I said. “You can call me Thomas.” I forgot about my sickness.

“Izzy and Tom, the first pirates to land at the Grotta Azurra in two centuries,” she said, waving her hand like a sword. “Let us see what we have to plunder.”

She didn’t hear me say that no one called me Tom.

Everyone else from our boat had shimmied down the rope ladder to jump into the four-person skiffs that would take them into the cave. Isabelle climbed down the ladder into a wooden boat, and I followed. There was only one place left at the bottom of the boat for the two of us.

“Well, this is a bit of a dilemma,” I said as I stood awkwardly, bumping against Isabelle as the sea rocked the boat.

“Sit on my lap,” she said. The others chuckled. She wasn’t kidding.

The entrance to the Blue Grotto is low and narrow. Going inside required us to lie down so we wouldn’t hit our heads on the rocks in the black tunnel that leads into the cave. That meant I had to recline on Isabelle.

She smelled like lemons. I smelled like last night’s liquor. She was soft in all the right places. The roof of the entrance was jagged. Neither of us said a word for the minute it took to transverse the tunnel. I didn’t want to sit up when the oarsman said we could.

I gasped.

The color inside the cave was breathtaking. We had gone through the black entrance into a blue-lit cave. Inside, the water was calm and smooth, and a boatman was singing Neapolitan songs. It was almost an out-of-body experience, except that I was sitting on Isabelle’s lap, so I also was aware of that. I wanted to stay in my body.

The water in the Blue Grotto glows because of an unusual feature – there is a hole the width of a bus directly beneath the entrance to the cave that lets sunlight in. The sun was bright when we entered and it bounced off the white sand bottom of the cave, which gave the water an ethereal blue glow from being lit from below. I had my camera out and was shooting with my lens at full aperture.

“Do you think pirates sat on each other’s laps?” Isabelle whispered in my ear as I clicked away. I wanted to remember the colors and the feeling of the moment.

“I don’t think so. Successful pirates had their own seats.”

I quickly swapped in another roll of film.

Isabelle shifted under me. She had already removed her sunglasses. Now she was taking off her jewelry. She piled everything into her scarf and tied it into a little pouch.

“Hold this,” she said. “It’s pirate treasure.”

Then, as the boat went deeper into the Blue Grotto, Isabelle pushed me forward, stood up and kicked off her ballet shoes. I took a photo of her face in the blue glow.

“Stop that,” she said, pushing the lens away.

“You must-a sit down, signorina,” the boatman said gruffly while making a gesture to be seated.

Isabelle dove into the water. A glint of silver in the glowing azure.

When Isabelle dove into the Blue Grotto it created a massive commotion. There was shouting. A few people screamed. Meanwhile, Isabelle swam from one side of the cave to the other as swiftly as the bluefin tuna that populate the Tyrrhenian Sea around Capri.

“You gotta get a-back in da boat,” our oarsman yelled to Isabelle. “Tell-a your wife she gotta get a-back in da boat,” he shouted at me when Isabelle swam away again. I could hear her laughs echoing off the cave walls.

“She’s not my wife,” I shouted to the oarsman.

“I no-a care. Get dat-a ragazza outta da acqua.”

After a few minutes, Isabelle swam back to our boat, and the oarsman and I pulled her aboard. He barked at her while she squeezed the water from her hair over the side. Then she wadded up her skirt and squeezed the water on my pants.

“They’re gonna get wet anyway,” she said as she wrung more water from her dress. “I’m sitting on your lap on the way out.”

“You’re Izzy from now on,” I said to her on the boat ride back to Capri. “You’re a real pirate.”

By the time we returned to Capri, Isabelle’s dress was dry. So was my mouth.

“Let’s go have a drink,” she said as we walked along the pier away from Marina Grande. “I’m thirsty. And I’ve had enough seawater today.”

We rode the funicular up to the Piazzetta. We found two open seats at a café directly on the square, ordered two Negronis, and watched the passeggiatta – the evening stroll that happens in towns across Italy. The waiter brought us olives and cheese to have with our drinks.

“Do you like to make up stories about people?” Isabelle asked. Then she added without waiting: “I create dialog for everyone I see.”

“Including me?”

“Yes, I’ll tell you later.” I was leaning in, trying to discern Isabelle’s accent. Was she Italian? Spanish? French? Or from somewhere else?

“Look at those two,” she said, directing my eyes to a middle-aged couple strolling slowly, the man shuffling a few steps behind the woman.

“I wish he would have just stayed at the hotel,” Isabelle said in an exaggerated American accent as she flicked a wisp of imaginary hair from her face. “He doesn’t want to go shopping. Or see anything. And now he’s doing his childish pout, so I’ll go back to the hotel. I don’t think he drags his feet when he’s on the golf course every weekend.”

Then Isabelle scowled and said in a low, gravelly voice: “I hate these stupid trips. Why did we have to come to Capri? Or Italy? What would have been wrong with Las Vegas? Instead, I have to act interested while she looks at useless junk. And museums. So many museums. I need a drink. And a nap.”

I laughed. Isabelle was just getting started. She pointed at a policeman standing on a corner of the square.

“Here I am, standing like a statue. My knee hurts from last night when I had to wrestle a drunk on the square. Same thing every night. Hey, look at that regazza. Those tourists love a man in uniform. Ciao, bella.”

I gave it a try with a little dialog from our waiter.

“Who are these people? Why does her dress look like it was in the water? Does she look like a woman who would want a second Negroni? Is that guy going to buy her dinner? Is she really a pirate?”

It was Isabelle’s turn to laugh.

“I’ll have another Negroni,” she said in Italian as she called the waiter over. And mi amici would like to see the menu.”

“What were you doing at the Blue Grotto?” Isabelle asked.

“I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

“You first.”

“Well, it’s a very long story.”

“I have time,” she said. “We can order limoncello after dinner.”

I started at the beginning. I told her about how I collected things – coins, stamps, marbles. And how collecting things led to my infatuation with blue.

“I had thousands of marbles. First, I sorted them by type. Then I started sorting them by color. I loved the blue ones the most. That led me to collecting blue marbles from all over the world. Which led to blue stamps. Which led to collecting as many colors of blue fountain pen ink as I could find. I got them from Japan. England. Germany. Czechoslovakia. China. India. Switzerland. And Italy. In fact, I’m going to visit the Aurora pen manufacturing plant to see some of their classic pens and inks. They’re in Turin.”

“Yes, I know the manufactory,” Isabelle said with an interesting turn of a word. “Generations of my family have been associates of the proprietors of Fabbrica Italiana di Penne a Serbatoio Aurora in Torino.”

I didn’t know what to say. Or ask. Aurora pens and inks were world famous. And very, very expensive. What did she mean her family were associates of the owners of Aurora? I filed that away and continued.

“I taught myself the names of hundreds of shades of blue.”

Isabelle leaned across the table. This was usually the part in a conversation when most people would stifle a yawn, make up an excuse about having something else to do, and then leave.

“Okay, I understand. What did you do with all your knowledge about blue? With your love of blue?”

“I studied blue butterflies all over the world.”

I was trying to discern if she was toying with me or if she was genuinely interested.

“Blue morphos?” she asked.

“Yes, those. And many others. I did my post-doctoral field work in Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Mexico. There’s a massive biodiversity in those places. That helped with my research. I published several academic papers. And wrote two books.”

“From blue butterflies to the Blue Grotto. What’s the connection?”

There’s a moment in every story when a person must decide how much to tell. To hold back. Or only tell the good parts. For some reason, I wanted to tell Isabelle everything.

“I decided to visit all the most beautiful blue places in the world. This is the first one.”

I told her about my research. How I made a list of blue places. How I asked people where they were when they saw the most beautiful blues. How I thought about making photos at all of them. About writing a book.

“I took a photo of you at the Blue Grotto,” I said. I watched for her reaction. “It was while you were swimming, when you first broke through the water after diving in.”

“I don’t like pictures of me. Too much of this and too much of that. I’ll need to see it when you process it.” She flicked her wrist to test if I was listening.

“My great aunt passed away a few months ago and left me a small inheritance. It’s more money than I’m used to. I can tell you that a butterfly field researcher’s salary doesn’t allow for around-the-world travel.”

I had been doing field research for nearly 10 years. It was rewarding work, and it provided me the freedom to live in exquisite locations – even if the accommodations were rustic. But it’s lonely work, and I found myself more and more drawn to the academic conferences I was invited to, not because I enjoyed the presentations, but because I could interact with people. I could have real conversations, which were better than the ones I’d have with myself sitting out in a field observing butterfly behavior.

“When Aunt Helene died, I decided it was time. I applied for a sabbatical from the university and set off on what I’ve called my Blue Adventure. Now, here I am. With you.”

Isabelle sat there for a long time. She sipped her drink. Used her fingers to eat a piece of grilled asparagus. Then an olive. She squinted a little at me. Yet, she still didn’t say a word. Then she wiped her hands on her napkin and leaned forward.

“How long will you be here?” she asked finally.

I paused. I wasn’t sure what answer she wanted. Did she want me to say I was leaving tomorrow? Did she want me to say I could stay a while?

“I’ll stay here until you leave,” I said. I wasn’t usually that bold, but I thought I’d take a chance. She said we were pirates together, after all.

“That might be a while,” she said as she pushed back in her chair and twirled her hair in her slender fingers.

I asked her what lured her to Capri. There was another long pause.

“I was supposed to meet someone here,” she said, looking off in the distance. “This dress and accessories were here for me at my hotel. That was it. After three days waiting, I got a message. Now I’m here alone.”

I waited to see if she wanted to say more. She didn’t.

“Where will you go next?” she asked, changing the subject.

I fumbled in my satchel for my journal and showed her my rough itinerary. I had been carrying that book around for a couple years, filling it with notes and sketches and quotes people said about the color blue. And I documented the favorite places where they saw that color. The pages were tattered, and the leather cover was scratched and stained from saltwater and ink.

“That’s a lot of notes,” she said. “Tell me where you’re going.”

I flipped through my notebook until I got to the pages titled Blue Places.

“Here they are,” I said as I turned the journal around and slid it toward her. No one had ever touched that journal, and now I was giving Isabelle full access.

I created a list and annotated each page with a reference to another page in the journal. “It’s a bit of a mess, but this is the general order I’m hoping to follow. I’ll show you the map later.” Isabelle pushed her Negroni to the side and picked up the journal to see the list.

BLUE PLACES

• Blue Grotto, Capri, Italy

• Lago di Braies, South Tyrol, Italy     

• Oia, Santorini, Greece

• Plitvice Lakes, Croatia          

• Blue Cave, Biševo Island, Croatia                

• Temple of Saint Sava, Belgrade, Serbia        

• Chapel of Souls, Porto, Portugal       

• Chefchaouen, Morocco         

• Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia           

• Lapis Lazuli Mines, Afghanistan      

• Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Iran          

• Blue Lagoon, Iceland

• Blue Ice Cave, Iceland          

• Blue Lagoon, Jamaica

• Great Blue Hole, Belize        

• Ambergris Caye, Belize        

• Devil's Bay, British Virgin Islands               

• Dean’s Blue Hole, Bahamas  

• Upper Joffre Lake, British Columbia, Canada

• Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada

• Crater Lake, Oregon, USA    

• Casa Azul, Mexico City, Mexico      

• Rosario Islands, Colombia    

• Uyuni Salt Flat, Bolivia         

• Marble Cathedral, Chile        

• Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina     

• Maldive Islands                     

• Heart Reef, Australia 

• Waitomo Caves, New Zealand                      

• Jodhpur, India

• Swaraj Dweep, India 

• Mughal Masjid, Mumbai, India                    

• Wat Rong Suea Ten (Blue Temple), Thailand          

• Five Flower Lake, Sichuan, China    

I had detailed notes about the locations from people who had been to each of the blue places. And I was determined to see them all. The luxury of the money Aunt Helene left me was that I didn’t have to hurry. Having enough money slows the world down.

“You’re going to Lago di Braies?”

“That’s my plan. I’m supposed to meet a friend there – really more of a former colleague. He lives on the lake and said he’d show me around. I’m going to take the train up north when I’m done here.”

“May I join you?”

I thought for a second maybe I misunderstood. But I didn’t. Then I said the only thing I could think of to say at the time: “Yes. I will tell you the guy I’m meeting isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Actually, what I mean to say is he’s an arrogant bastard. But I figured I could manage a couple days with him.”

“When are you supposed to be there?”

“I’ll send him a message when I’m at the train station. He has a big house. I’m sure there’s an extra room for you.”

“We’ll see if we need that,” she said, never breaking eye contact. I didn’t know if she meant she was going to stay with me, or if she wasn’t going to Lago de Braies.

“Let’s stay here for a while,” she said. Again, I didn’t know if she meant the café or in Capri.

She meant Capri.